Post Second World War Immigration from Balkan Countries to Turkey

Abstract

One of the important consequences of the end of the Cold War has been the growing impact that ethnicity has had on the domestic politics of countries as well as international politics. An area that has been deeply affected by ethnopohtics is the Balkans. The collapse of communism and the disintegration of Yugoslavia have led to tremendous instability and ethnic strife in the Balkans. Turkey's domestic politics as well as its foreign policy have been deeply affected by these developments. One reason for this can be attributed to the fact that in Turkey there are large numbers of people of Balkan descent.As the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans began to contract, large numbers of people who identified themselves with the Empire steadily migrated to Thrace and Anatolia. They were mostly the descendants of Turks who had settled in various parts of the Balkans during the past centuries (Karpat 1985, ch.4). Although there are no exact figures, one source puts the size of this migration between late 1870s and early 1920s at as high as 1,445,000 (Eren 1993, p. 298). In spite of this massive migration many Turkish and Muslim communities were left behind in various parts of the Balkans after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The modern Turkish State has continued to allow members of these communities to migrate and settle in Turkey.