Le migrazioni forzate delle popolazioni musulmane del Caucaso e dei Balcani verso l'Impero ottomano tra XIX e XX secolo:conseguenze politico-identitarie

During the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was struggling to reform itself and survive as a modern state. This multi-ethnic empire had to face different challenges: Ottoman military and economic weakness, Russian imperial expansion, nationalism among Ottoman Christian people in the Balkans.Because of its weakness, the Ottoman Empire suffered several military defeats and territorial losses. The main refugee flows took place in 3 key dates. 1864: the Circassians (the main Muslim population of the northwest Caucasus) were forced to move to the Ottoman Empire by Russian expansion. No choice but flight or starvation. 1878: war between Bulgarian nationalists (supported by the Russian army) and the Ottoman Empire, which was defeated. The slaughter of Muslim civilians had the purpose to insure the existence of an overwhelmingly Slavic Bulgaria after the conflict. 1912-1913: Montenegro, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria declared war on the Ottoman Empire. These States were former Ottoman vassals. They fought in particular over Ottoman Macedonia. The end result of this war was a great diminution of the Muslim population (because of murder, starvation, disease and migration), and the creation of majority Christian states. Millions of refugees had to be resettled in the Ottoman Empire, which was forced to drain its limited resources to try to take care of them. It was a humanitarian emergency: the refugees suffered starvation and diseases. The mortality rate was very high. The Ottoman government had to face big resettlement problems: the selected areas were generally poor, so there were clashes between refugees and local communities. The Muslim refugee flows compromised the previous balance between the different ethnic and religious communities of the Empire. The Russia Empire and the Balkan states had used religion and ethnicity as ideological weapons against the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the Ottoman government shifted from Ottomanism — the equality of all subjects of the Ottoman Empire irrespective of their nationality and religion — to an ethnic and religious nationalism. The religious and ethnic minorities still living in the Ottoman Empire-especially the Christian Armenians- were perceived to be a serious danger to the state unity. This ideological shift led to a process of incremental violence between different ethnic and religious communities. The forced migration of Ottoman Muslim population was a turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire. It had a lasting psychological impact on the Ottoman Muslims, and on today Turkey. The knowledge of these historical facts could help us to better understand (not to justify) some features of the Turkish Republic, like its authoritarian regime and its paranoid fears about its territorial and political integrity.

L’elaborato si propone di trattare il tema dei flussi migratori (volontari o forzati) della popolazione musulmana dal Caucaso e dai Balcani verso l’Impero ottomano in seguito alle perdite territoriali subite da quest’ultimo tra XIX e XX secolo. Si analizzeranno le conseguenze demografiche, politiche, sociali e culturali relative a queste migrazioni e alla loro gestione da parte delle autorità governative nelle ultime fasi dell’esistenza della realtà imperiale ottomana. In particolare, si intende osservare l’impatto esercitato da queste ondate migratorie sugli equilibri politici, sociali ed economici delle zone in cui furono ricollocati i profughi e le dinamiche (sia conflittuali che di integrazione) sviluppatesi nel rapporto con la popolazione autoctona. In quest’ottica, il caso dell’esodo della popolazione circassa (avvenuto nel 1864) suscita interesse per diverse ragioni: per l’impatto avuto in senso conflittuale sugli equilibri intercomunitari delle zone dell’Anatolia in cui sono stati insediati i circassi, per l’esperienza di doppia migrazione a cui furono sottoposti coloro che furono dislocati nei Balcani, costretti quindi a migrare nuovamente dopo le guerre balcaniche (1912-1913) e, infine, in ragione del ruolo giocato dai circassi nell’apparato militare dell’Impero ottomano, sia dalle élite nord-caucasiche che dagli elementi arruolati nelle forze irregolari (ad esempio nella Teşkilat-i Mahsusa). Si intende inoltre dedicare una particolare attenzione al contributo dato dai profughi balcanici, per le modalità di espulsione e il trauma da loro subito, nell’affermarsi dell’idea di Stato-nazione e, successivamente, nella nascita della Repubblica turca. Infine, si affronterà il tema dell’identità dei turchi “alloctoni” nel discorso nazionalista a sostegno della (presunta) omogeneità etnico-linguistica del popolo turco, dominante nell’era repubblicana, e il tema della strumentalizzazione politica della memoria collettiva legata ai massacri e alle espulsioni di cui furono vittime le comunità musulmane dei Balcani e del Caucaso.