Immigration To Turkey - Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

Historically, the Ottoman Empire—and the Turkish republic succeeding it—were the primary destination for Muslim refugees from areas conquered—or re-conquered—by Christian powers, notably Russia in the Caucasus and Black Sea areas, Austria-Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro (later Yugoslavia) and Romania in the Balkans. This has continued to the present day, with large numbers of Bosniak and Chechen refugees entering Turkey as a consequence of wars in Bosnia and Chechnya in the 1990s. Large numbers of Kurds fled north from Iraqi Kurdistan during the First Gulf War in 1991, though nearly all repatriated after the cessation of hostilities and the establishment of the Kurdish Autonomous Region in northern Iraq in the same year.

Nonetheless, the Ottoman Empire was also a popular destination for non-Muslim refugees: the most obvious examples are the Sephardic Jews given refuge mainly in the 16th century with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal (as well as before and afterwards), whose descendants form the core of the community of Jews in Turkey today; and the village of Polonezköy in İstanbul.

There are other more curious cases on which more detailed research needs to be done to establish a sound basis. One is the case of Hungarians claimed to have taken refuge in Gebze in early 19th century, and whose descendants might be among the inhabitants of Gebiz municipality depending Serik district in Antalya Province (see Karapinar).

Yet another concerns various claims relating Vendéens, especially of Cholet, who would have been accorded asylum by the sultan Abdülhamid I after the Revolt in the Vendée and settled in various Turkish provinces. On a more ascertainable basis, there were several thousand Cossacks in Turkey for two centuries, near Manyas and Akşehir, until 1962, when they were repatriated to Russia.