Conviviality, Coexistence/Toleration and Islandness

Throughout the region of what was once the Ottoman Empire, the rise of nationalisms has led to homogenisation and minoritisation processes: the construction of ethnic and national differences led to violence; forced migrations; oppression towards “minorities”; conflicts over territory, shared space, and borders; and changed demographics of the region. Within this violent context, I aimed to look at a place, Burgaz island, and its people, Burgaz islanders, who have not only enjoyed living together for centuries but also managed tensions and conflicts, showed resistance and resilience to the nation’s homogenisation processes through different acts of solidarity and an articulation of collective Burgaz identity based on embodiment and valuing of its diversity. The book depicts the evolving social landscape of Burgaz within a homogenising context. While the island’s diversity has been subject to demographic changes with those who has been leaving and the newly arriving inhabitants, the conviviality on the island has functioned as a resilience and solidarity mechanism against public and state violence during various crises, such as the 1955 pogrom, staged coup and economic crises.

Some might ask, “but it is because Burgaz is a small island that they live together in peace and have a strong sense of belonging?” My response is that it would be too reductionist to say that the social cohesion and strong sense of community and belonging to Burgaz is due to it being a small island. Islands have been places of hell and heaven, of paradise and prison (Baldacchino 2006; Royle and Brinklow 2018). “Islandness is an intervening variable that does not determine, but contours and conditions physical and social events in distinct, and distinctly relevant, ways” (Baldacchino 2004, 278). Small islands have a stronger sense of belonging, solidarity and island identity, where everyone knows each other, however the intensity of intimacy on small islands, can also create conflicts and tensions and it is difficult to manage tensions when one is in close proximity (Royle and Brinklow 2018; Baldacchino 2004, 2006). Islands with diverse populations have experienced inter-communal conflicts, even violence, such as in Cyprus, Ireland, Fiji and Trinidad (Baldacchino and Veenendaal 2018, 343). Violence also took place in the other Princes’ Islands during the night of the pogrom, for example.

While Baldacchino and Veenendaal (2018) point out that there is usually a strong presence of the state on small islands, in Burgaz, we see rather an absence of the state. There are very few policemen on Burgaz. During the Gezi Park protests, while the policemen exerted violence such as teargas to civilians, there were no tensions between the policemen and the islanders. On the night of the pogrom in 1955, while the police in Istanbul were reported to be passive in protecting the non-Muslims being attacked (see Güven 2006; Kuyucu 2005); in Burgaz, the police collaborated with the islanders to prevent the attackers to enter the island and cause destruction. This was also another reason, why Burgaz islanders, especially the non-Muslims did not experience the state toleration, neither its intolerance on Burgaz, but they experienced it Istanbul. However, the presence of the state and the military is very pronounced in Heybeliada, another Princes’ Island. The military navy school on Heybeliada brings in inhabitants from the military to the island, and there are more nationalists and more Sunni Turkish Muslim presence in Heybeliada.

In order to explain how Burgaz islanders live together and manage tension and crisis situations, I have redefined and showed the workings of two analytical concepts: conviviality and coexistence/toleration. I have described conviviality as shared ways of living and living with difference, which embeds embodiment of diversity through diverse senses, as well as performance of pluralism such as sociable sociality, labour of peace, which embeds the management of tensions. I have approached coexistence and/or toleration as a mental break in the people’s perceptions, which categorised themselves and others into different ethnic and religious compartments, to explore the construction and categorisations of differences, and the crystallisation of these ethnic and religious identities. Political tensions between Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, followed by the Turkish government’s discriminating policies on minorities (see Chap. 2) and the riots of 6–7 September 1955 (Chaps. 2 and 7), which were an attack on the socio-economic power of the non-Muslims, were various ways of consolidating the ethnic and religious identity of the non-Muslims and making them feel as though they were “others within.” This sensation was, I argued, a local consequence of coexistence/toleration, a creation of an Other and compartmentalisation of people into groups that had to coexist or continue to survive within the majority. That sense of coexistence/toleration and its potential consequences triggered the emigration of non-Muslims, while the sense of conviviality tied the non-Muslim islanders to Burgaz and enabled them to remain on the island. Among those who left Turkey, some returned back to Burgaz as a summer inhabitant. Conviviality also enabled the newcomers such as Armenians, Jews, Alevis and Kurds to adapt and become a part of Burgaz diversity. 

I have also investigated the mechanisms that enabled and sustained conviviality, in the ways in which conviviality have always taken over coexistence/toleration and intolerance in Burgaz. These mechanisms are shared ways of living and embodiment of diversity, shared memories and an articulation of a shared rhetoric that builds on solidarity and collective island identity that values diversity. While in Istanbul the riots are remembered as an experience of coexistence/toleration in which the non-Muslims’ ethno-religious identity made them the subject of attack by Muslims, in Burgaz the resistance against the riots is collectively remembered as memories of conviviality. Burgaz islanders collectively resisted the riots and protected their island from being invaded by outsiders. Kestane Karası (Aktel 2005) and Son Eylül [Last September] (Aktel 2008), both novelistic memoirs of Burgaz conviviality, describe how the islanders (both Muslims and non-Muslims) gathered together by ringing the bells of the church and made a plan of waiting and protecting the bays in order to prevent invasion of Burgaz during the 1955 riots. Ajda (Chap. 7) clearly remembers her father saying, “Unless they kill me and step over my dead body, they will not be able to set foot in Burgaz.” The shared memories of conviviality as described in Orhan’s vignette had created such a strong Burgaz identity that it overcame the crystallisation of ethnic and religious identities in times of crisis. The discursive effect of these memories (Bakhtin 1981, 269) is a type of “Burgaz ideology,” a sense of belonging to Burgaz that is also infused with a moral discourse about how a “real” Burgazlı should behave, both in everyday life and in times of crisis.

Can Conviviality Turn into Violence?

Referring to Bringa and Christie’s (1993) documentary We Are All Neighbours and Zaim Dervis’ (2010) film Shadows and Faces, Bryant (2016, 1) marks that “many people, under the right circumstances, could become killers.” In the contexts of Bosnia and Cyprus, where there was a war, conviviality turned into violence. What I argue in the book, is not so different than what Bringa (1995, 3) wrote when she reflected on the ethnography she conducted before the war: “There was both coexistence and conflict, tolerance and prejudice, suspicion and friendship.” In stable, peaceful times, both coexistence/toleration and conviviality coexist, like in Burgaz, and like in Dolina. People are aware of each other’s differences, whether it is ethnic, religious or ethno-religious. People also have shared ways of living together such as in the neighbourhood, in the form of komşuluk (neighbourly relations), where people visit each other for coffee, chatting, gossi** and so on.

When violence started taking place “elsewhere” such as 4 kilometres away from the village where Bringa did her fieldwork, or during the 1955 pogrom that first took place in Istanbul, the people in Dolina, in Burgaz and also other Princes’ Islands and different parts of Istanbul, resisted and showed first resilience to that violence. For instance, in Güven’s (2006) book, Muslims protected non-Muslims in their house, and the Muslim doorkeeper sent away the rioters to protect the non-Muslim family by relying on conviviality, their shared ways of living in the apartment, and the employer and the employee relationship; but then took the wood and joined the other Muslims in the pogrom looting on the street, attacking other non-Muslims. In Bringa and Christie’s (1993) documentary We Are All Neighbours, we see that, in Part One, the Muslim and Catholic neighbours visit each other and say that they will keep having coffee and being neighbours despite there is violence between Muslims and Catholics outside of the village, just 4 kilometres away. We see both coexistence/toleration and conviviality: in their minds, the mental break of the differences of Muslims and Catholics exist; they say they both have their different faiths; but they are neighbours and share neighbourly relations and friendship. They rely on conviviality (shared ways of living) as a resilience mechanism; they keep visiting each other as neighbours.

In Part Two of the documentary, we see a shift in the balance between conviviality and coexistence/toleration. Both Muslims and Catholics start becoming suspicious of each other. Nusreta and Svalak, and Anda and Remziye’s friendship get a pause. Nusreta does not want to leave her village, because she thinks that after the war, she will still live in this house and in the same neighbourhood. She is resisting the mental change, rejecting intolerance by holding on to conviviality, which weighs more than coexistence/toleration at that time. Years of living together and shared ways of living together, do not get blown up right away, because there is violence taking place just outside the village. Nonetheless, we also see the change in the terminology Nusreta use. In Part One, she refers to herself as Muslim, and them as Croats, but in Part Two, where violence starts coming closer, she says that the area is split in Croatian and Bosnian districts/lands, by using ethno-national identifications. At the end of the documentary, under war conditions, the balance between coexistence/toleration and conviviality breaks. Coexistence/toleration turns into intoleration and takes over conviviality. Violence comes to the village, neighbours start killing each other, intolerance turns into violence. At the end, both Croats/Catholics and Bosnians/Muslims articulate that they cannot live together anymore.

My argument in the book, hence, is not that conviviality always wins, but that it has always won in Burgaz and it has not turned into collective violence. This is due to the strengths of embodiment of diversity, friendship, shared ways of living, shared memories and rhetoric that stressed Burgaz identity and sense of belonging to Burgaz. Even though people leave Burgaz, Burgaz culture is in them and cannot be taken away. These memories of conviviality do not remain just as an articulation of nostalgia, but they make Burgaz people who left, return back to Burgaz.

There has not been any war in Burgaz, nonetheless, there were times of crisis both at individual levels (blood feud in Chap. 6), or collective levels, where the pogrom took place in different parts of Istanbul and other Princes’ Islands. In these occasions violence could have erupted, such as on the 6–7 September in 1955, where boats from Istanbul came to the island to cause the pogrom. The non-Muslims in Burgaz experienced the oppression and the intolerance of the state, during Varlık Vergisi (Wealth Tax 1942) 1964 expulsion of the Rums with Greek citizenship, the 1960s, and 1980s coup and the intervention of the army in 1971, also in the last decade Gezi Park protests and the 15 July 2016 coup attempt/staged coup (2016). The night of the coup attempt brought back memories of the 1955 pogrom to Burgaz islanders, when boats from Istanbul came to the island to call out for the civilians to fight against the army on the 15th of July 2016. Some of my non-Muslim informants were near the harbour, and told me that they heard the boats reaching the island. A few Muslim Burgazlı yelled “Go! Leave!” to the non-Muslims. Similar to the night of the pogrom, when a few Burgaz islanders wanted to cause destructions, they were suppressed by other islanders. After the outburst of intolerance (yelling) on the 15th of July 2016, Burgaz islanders protested and did not buy anything from the few people who yelled “Go! Leave!”. Those who yelled these words then went to apologise to those to whom they had yelled. Intolerance again stayed at an individual level and did not turn into collective violence, because Burgaz islanders suppressed and resisted collective intolerance and violence by relying on conviviality, the collective survival and safety of the island community. Although I argue throughout the book that coexistence/toleration and conviviality coexist in Burgaz, in the title of the book, there is only conviviality. The memories and narratives I have collected, my ethnographic study, the post-ethnographic visits and interviews I have done, so far, have shown that conviviality has always taken over coexistence/toleration in Burgaz, but this does not guarantee that it will always be the case. The failed democratic initiatives as discussed in Chap. 8, Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism, the unknown coup attempt or staged coup on the 15 July 2016, the economic crisis, the increase of inflation and Erdoğan’s re-election as the president in 2023, create more and more anxiety for people living in Turkey and Burgaz. Some of my non-Muslim and Muslim informants told me that they started considering leaving Turkey, following the politically tense ambiance and the worsening of the economy.

The world we live in is experiencing and will experience wars, violence, pandemics, crisis situations, population movements due to wars and climate change, as well as acts of solidarity, shared ways of living and fighting for intolerance and against violence. What I want to contribute to peace and conflict; and migration and diversity studies is that one should always explore conviviality and coexistence/toleration together, explore how they take place, how they are related to each other, and analyse the situations in which the balance between them break. The relationship between these two are affected very much by the wider politics, how the political situation manipulates people and the ways in which the people who live in diverse communities react to the wider politics. It gives a wrong picture to focus on coexistence/toleration only, and assume people always have mental categorisations in their heads, and that they constantly categorise each other as how they are different from each other, and how they tolerate each other. It gives equally a wrong picture to explore pluralism by focusing only on the sociable sociality aspect of conviviality, ignoring social inequalities, racism, as well as ignoring or suppressing ethnic and religious differences. Conviviality is not utopia, nor a romantic view of social life. Conflict, tension, coexistence, toleration, loving and fighting are all part of living together in diversity and living with difference.