Volume 54 supplement 17 (2009)

Summaries

Ottoman and Republican Turkish Labour History

Edited by Touraj Atabaki and Gavin Brockett

Işıl Acehan "Ottoman Street" in America: Turkish Leather Workers in Peabody, Massachusetts
This article examines the role of "Turkish" leather workers in New England's labor movement in the early twentieth century. It begins with the exodus of a large Ottoman population from eastern Anatolian provinces to eastern Massachusetts, and their employment in New England's leather factories. Throughout the article, the rise of the leather business in eastern Massachusetts cities (including Peabody and Salem), the Turkish immigrants' concentration on Peabody's Walnut Street (which came to be called "Ottoman Street"), the importance of kin and friends in providing practical information vital for adjusting to the new environment, and the coffeehouse as a response to industrial conditions are discussed at length. The author argues that although many of the Turkish leather workers originated from rural backgrounds and had no experience in unionizing and striking, their quick adjustment to the industrial city and their growing awareness of labor rights was a result of lectures given within the Turkish community, changing circumstances in the old country and in the United States, such as the Balkan Wars and World War I, and their unchallenged place in the tanneries of Peabody, MA.

Gulhan Balsoy Gendering Ottoman Labor History: The Cibali Régie Factory in the Early Twentieth Century
This article examines the "mutual distancing" between Ottoman labor history and women's and gender history. For this purpose, I first summarize the scholarship produced by each field and scrutinize the ways in which both fields have remained unresponsive toward one another. I then offer a specific way to make women visible to labor history in the particular setting of the Cibali Régie Factory in the early decades of the twentieth century. Using photographic images of the factory and an approach which applies gender as a conceptual tool of historical analysis, I discuss the social conditions of work, the sexual division of labor, and the channels through which power structures were established in the Cibali factory. This study does not claim to present a comprehensive history of labor in the Ottoman Empire; my goal is rather to make women visible to labor history, to remind one that women were present on the shop floor, and to discuss how the available sources can be interpreted in gendered ways. In that sense, this article challenges the mainstream of Ottoman labor history, and seeks to answer the question as to why the female workers who appear in the photographs, in archival documents, and in other sources have so far remained largely invisible in the historiography.

Mustafa Erdem Kabadayı Working in a Fez Factory in Istanbul in the Late Nineteenth Century: Division of Labour and Networks of Migration Formed along Ethnoreligious Lines
In terms of production volume, most Ottoman state factories cannot be regarded as success stories, yet the labour relations they initiated, engendered, and supervised were important for the emergence of factory labour in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. One of those state factories was the Imperial Fez Factory, where, throughout the nineteenth century, approximately 500 workers were employed, making it the second highest concentration of industrial workers in the empire after the Imperial Arsenal. Very recently, a limited number of wage ledgers for the fez factory became available for research. Those ledgers provide unprecedented information not only on remuneration but also on the production process and labour-control practices in the fez factory. Those ledgers enable us, for the first time, to formulate research questions within the framework of a broad labour history, in particular for the Ottoman factory workforce in the late nineteenth century. This article examines the effects of the ethnoreligious characteristics and gender of Ottoman factory labourers on employment practices and wage earning at the fez factory.

Yavuz Köse Vertical Bazaars of Modernity: Western Department Stores and their Staff in Istanbul (1889-1921)
This article examines Western department stores active in Istanbul between 1889 and 1921. It explores two aspects crucial for the department stores' retail system: location and personnel. It goes on to demonstrate that Western department stores were situated not only in the Western districts of the city but also in traditional areas, such as the bazaar district. Rather than being exclusive they appear to have been closely connected with local business and aimed to appeal to the ethnically highly mixed customer pool. Equally, the workforce was heterogeneous, with the majority of local employees having diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Greek, Jewish, and Armenian, though rarely Muslim. Based on a large-scale sample drawn from the address registers of the Annuaire Oriental yearbook, the analysis of personal letters, and on Ottoman daily newspaper and journals, this study sheds light on the individuals who worked at a number of department stores, their ethnic composition, sex ratio, duration of employment, the job types they carried out, as well as their income situation, career paths, and domiciles. It hopes to contribute to the labour history of the late Ottoman Empire by exploring, for the first time, the employees of Western department stores, workers who have rarely attracted the attention of scholars so far.

Nursen Gürboğ a Compulsory Mine Work: The Single-Party Regime and the Zonguldak Coalfield as a Site of Contention, 1940-1947
This study examines the forms of state domination over mine labour and the struggles of coal miners at the Zonguldak coalfield during the Second World War. It is focused on the everyday experiences of compulsory workers as reflected in petitions by those workers and the surveillance materials of the single-party regime at the time. Its aim is to reveal how, under an authoritarian regime, compulsory workers created a political agency. The compulsory labour system was one of the most coercive devices with which the state controlled mine labour between 1940 and 1947, but the compulsory workers negotiated with the political elite for their living and working conditions, and did so within a political sphere which had been devised by the ruling elite as a governmental strategy for managing and shaping the population. By subverting the political discourse of the ruling elite, the miners contributed not just to the development of workers' rights, but also helped reveal the merits of a democratic society.

Can Nacar "Our Lives Were Not As Valuable As An Animal": Workers in State-Run Industries in World-War-II Turkey
This article explores the lives of Sümerbank and Etibank workers inside and outside their workplaces during World War II. First, it examines their social origins and the process of recruiting those workers. Secondly, it draws attention to the unhealthy conditions in which they worked, the sundry forms of violence they were subjected to, and the insufficient wages they received. It goes on to analyze social services - nutrition, accommodation, and healthcare facilities - provided by those two enterprises. Drawing on official reports, petitions, and workers' personal accounts, it highlights the inadequacies of those facilities, and the hierarchical and exclusionary practices inherent in them. Following this framework, it responds to the studies which portray workers in state-run enterprises as privileged government officials and those enterprises as centers of social education. Finally, it focuses on workers' reactions to their social conditions in the form of high turnover rates. The discussions of politicians, government officials, and journalists revolving around high turnover rates suggest that this reactive form of labor activism played an important role in the formulation and enactment of social policies concerning labor.

Yigit Akin The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics in Early Republican Turkey: Language, Identity, and Experience
The years between the late 1940s and late 1950s constituted a critical period in the historical formation of the working class in Turkey. During that period, Turkey experienced a number of structural transformations. It also saw the elaboration of a new discourse on the working class by labor representatives, organizations, and by workers themselves. That discourse provided the workers and their organizations with the channels necessary to articulate their demands when other forms of expression were considered ineffective and dangerous. Using the language of equality, justice, and human rights, workers appealed for improvement in their status both at the workplace and within society at large. This new political culture and language was built on the critical assessment of the corporatist construction of labor relations and the rejection of the idea that employers and workers were members of the same (national) family. Based on worker and union newspapers, the primary objective of this essay is to discuss the basic components and characteristic features of this new discourse and its place in working-class politics in early Republican Turkey.