Int. J. Turkish Studies Vol. 12, Nos. 1&2, 2006 Rıfat N. Bali FROM ANATOLIA TO THE NEW WORLD: THE FIRST ANATOLIAN IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA • “Green card” – these two magical words have for many come to symbolize the American dream. They have become the key to “making it,” the last step in turning the vast North American continent into one’s new home. Turkish youths share this mindset, for by continually publishing the stories of Turkish artists, physicians, businessmen, engineers, students, stockbrokers and managers who have achieved success, the Turkish press has fired the imaginations and nurtured the desires of its readers to emigrate to America. The number of applicants for Turkey’s share of green cards has followed suit. A similar phenomenon can be found in earlier centuries, when there was no need to pursue a green card, through an attorney or a lottery. All one needed was to take suitcase in hand, purchase a ticket with one’s measly hard-earned savings, and wait patiently in port for the next steamer bound for the New World. The great majority of the first wave of immigrants from the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic would end up disproving the image of Turks, long portrayed by Western travelers as, lethargic, cheating tricksters, or as scimitar-brandishing, frightful Turks sporting fezzes and curling moustaches. Among those from that generation and its descendants famed for their talent or intellect were Moris Schinasi, a millionaire cigarette manufacturer who funded construction of a children’s hospital in Manisa, the city of his birth, film producer Elia Kazan (Germirli Elia Kazancıoğlu), novelist William Saroyan, whose Armenian parents emigrated from Harput, and popular singers Neil Sedaka and Eydie Gorme, (Gormezano), whose Sephardic families emigrated from İstanbul and Çanakkale respectively.1 Even less spectacular success, however, was no less publicized in the homeland, where the stories contained in letters from the immigrants were told and retold until they acquired near-legendary status. Today, the dream of most Turkish youth is to reach North American shores by legal or illegal means and become the owner of a gas station or market, if not a low-level director in the banking or financial sectors. • This article has been translated from Turkish by Paul Bessemer. 1 Rıfat N. Bali, Anadolu’dan Yeni Dünya’ya (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004), p. 21 and Musa’nın Evlatları Cumhuriyet’in Yurttaşları, (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001), pp.83-106; Elia Kazan, A Life (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1988) ; William Saroyan, The William Saroyan Reader (New York: Barricade Books, 1994). 54 Rıfat N. Bali Reasons for Going to America Most important of the general reasons for immigration that also applied in Turkey’s case was a vision of America as the land of opportunity. Besides the letters from America sent by friends and relatives, sources promoting this vision included the newspaper advertisements of oceanic transport companies and travel guides. Changes in oceanic transportation itself formed another general reason. The replacement of sailing ships by steamships not only cut the voyage from two months to as little as one week, but it also introduced a definite system of sailing schedules and fees so that emigrants no longer had to wait for a vessel to take on sufficient commercial cargo to afford to sail.2 As for reasons specific to the Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic, the main motivation for both Muslim and non-Muslim immigration was that the wages of unskilled workers were roughly five to ten times higher in America than in Turkey. In ten to twenty years, immigrants could accumulate several thousand dollars more while living under the same humble conditions that they had in Turkey. Then they could, and sometimes did, return to Anatolia, and spend the remainder of their lives in comfort. A second shared reason was that both Muslim and non- Muslim males, when called to arms during the empire’s later wars, often secretly fled. A third reason, more particular to non-Muslims, was that corruption and favoritism were widespread in the Ottoman Empire but impinged on the minorities most of all. While various reforms meant to instill a spirit of Ottomanism among the minorities elevated their expectations for equal status and treatment to the brink of nationalism and separatism, compulsory military service, which was one of the reforms, actually had the opposite of its intended effect. 3 The Sephardic Jewish Immigration A reason for out-migration specific to Sephardic Jews was the role of merchants who visited international exhibitions to display goods from the Orient, such as carpets, and returned with wondrous tales of new electrical devices, means of transport and other machines available in America.4 Shortly afterward, in the first 2 John J. Grabowski, “Streets Paved With Gold: Immigration and The Image of America,” Journal of American Studies of Turkey 9 (1999): 17-32, consulted on http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~jast/Number9/Grabowski.html 3 Leland James Gordon, American Relations with Turkey, 1830-1930: An Economic Interpretation, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932), pp.298-302. Marc D. Angel, La America (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1982), pp.11- 12; Joseph M. Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America (Los Angeles: Pele Yoetz Books & Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1987), p.21; Michael Molho, “Radicacion de los Exilados de España en Turquia y Emigracion de los Sefardis de Oriente a America,” in Actas del Primer Simposio de Estudios Sefardies ed. Iacob M. Hassan, pp. 65-72 (Madrid: Instituo Arias Montano, 1970). 4 Bali, Anadolu’dan Yeni Dünya’ya, pp.57-81; Mair José Benardete, Hispanic Culture and Character of the Sephardic Jews (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1982), p. 161. From Anatolia to the New World 55 years of the twentieth century, thousands of Jewish families were dispersed by disastrous events. On March 13, 1908, for instance, a large fire destroyed much of Hasköy, one of İstanbul’s principal Jewish districts.5 An earthquake in Thrace on August 6-7, 1912, added to the suffering caused by the recently ended Balkan War.6 That war and the Tripolitan War of 1911 already had produced a large migration of displaced Jews and Muslims toward İstanbul and prompted the Jews of Bulgaria to call upon their coreligionists in Europe and America to come to the aid of the 200,000 Jews in Thrace and the Balkan countries. Two years later, the distress created by the Balkan Wars was made nearly unbearable with the outbreak of the First World War.7 The sources are not in agreement about the number of Ottoman Jews who immigrated to America. Marc Angel estimates that nearly 30,000 Jews from the Near East arrived between 1890 and 1924. Moreover, unlike the earlier great wave of Eastern European immigration, the bulk of the Ottoman and Near Eastern Jewish immigration took place more than a decade into the twentieth century, as only 2,738 of the 30,000 had reached the North American shore by 1907.8 David De Sola Pool, writing at the time of the immigration, provided figures that differ from Angel’s.9 Year of Immigration Turkey in Europe Turkey in Asia 1899-1902 190 297 1903-1905 413 284 1906 252 209 1907 588 330 1908 379 256 1909 346 344 1910 953 435 1911 723 454 1912 760 621 1913 1,319 790 Total Figures (15 years) 5,923 4,020 5 Rıfat N. Bali, “Hasköy Yangını (13 Mart, 1908),” Tarih ve Toplum, no. 159 (1997): 21-24. 6 Kemal Gürülkan, “7.2’lik Marmara Depremi,” Tarih ve Düşünce, no. 5 (2000): 38-53. 7 Angel, La America, p. 12; Marc D. Angel, “Notes on the Early History of Seattle’s Sephardic Community,” Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 7 (1974): 86-87; Papo, Sephardim, p. 21; David De Sola Pool, “The Levantine Jews in the United States,” in The American Jewish Year Book 5674 (October 2, 1913 to September 20, 1914) ed. Herbert Friedenwald and H. G. Friedman, pp.207-220 (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913), pp. 209-10 and “The Balkan Wars and the Jews,” The American Jewish Year Book 15 (1913-1914) (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America), pp. 188-195. 8 Angel, La America, pp. 5-6, 11. 9 De Sola Pool, “The Levantine Jews in the United States,” p. 208, and “The Immigration of Levantine Jews into the United States,” Jewish Charities 4 (1914):20; Louis M. Hacker, “The Communal Life of the Sephardic Jews in New York City,” The Jewish Social Service Quarterly 3 (1926): 32-40. 56 Rıfat N. Bali Louis M. Hacker, on the other hand, claimed in 1926 that some 40,000 Sephardic Jews lived in New York alone. Adding in the 20,000 Sephardic Jews inhabiting other cities in North America at the time would put the total figure at 60,000.10 In any event, by the early twentieth century New York had a Sephardic Jewish community large enough to support the newspaper La America.11 It was especially concerned with Turkish Jews who arrived at Ellis Island without sufficient knowledge of the immigration laws and were forced to remain on the island for months before being sent back. American relatives and friends of the detainees were coming to the island and answering the questions directed by the immigration officials at the newcomers, sometimes making matters worse. Moise Gadol (1874- 1941), the owner of La America, translated and published the laws pertaining to new immigrants and suggested that relatives and friends leave the task of visiting Ellis Island to the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). The representatives of HIAS spoke Yiddish, however, which left them unprepared to help their Sephardic coreligionists, who did not. The Sephardic immigrants also did not bear names familiar to Eastern European Jewry and in appearance resembled Turks, Greeks or Italians far more than the Jews with whom the HIAS representatives had had experience. Often the HIAS agents did not even recognize them as Jews in need of assistance. At Gadol’s urging, in the last months of 1911 HIAS established its Orient Office with Gadol as its first secretary.12 The following year Albert Amateau of Milas began to work in the office as well.13 The Industrial Removal Office, established and supported by the famous philanthropist Baron Samuel De Hirsch, encouraged the new immigrants to move out of the Northeast and settle in cities as diverse as Seattle (Washington), Gary (Indiana), and Cincinnati, Toledo, Columbus and Cleveland (Ohio).14 English courses were also held for the Sephardic immigrants, but the cultural differences, harsh northern climate and other factors caused some greater difficulties than the language barrier. Cuba and Latin America promised these Jews, the majority of whom spoke the Judeo-Spanish dialect of Ladino, an easier acculturation process and a more amenable climate.15 In 1919 alone, HIAS sent to Cuba some two hundred Turkish Jews who were having difficulties adapting to life in the United States. Even before the first quota act, curtailing immigration to the United States, went into effect in 1921, ninety percent of the Jews who lived in Cuba in 1918 had come directly from Silivri, Çorlu, Kırklareli and Edirne.16 Muslims and Jews from Anatolia had no community to welcome and assist 10 Hacker, “Communal Life,” pp.32-40. 11 Angel, La America. 12 Angel, La America, pp.13-14. 13 Albert J. Amateau, “The 1910 Immigrant from Turkey,” The Turkish Times, February 1 and 15, 1992. 14 Angel, La America, pp.16 15 Mark Wischnitzer, Visas to Freedom (Cleveland & NY: The World Publishing Company, 1956), pp. 68-69. 16 Margalit Bejerano, “Sephardic Jews in Cuba,” Judaism (Winter, 2002), also available at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0411/is_1_51/ai_85068478 From Anatolia to the New World 57 them as their Armenian and Greek contemporaries did. Despite their shared religion, the Ladino-speaking Sephardic immigrants had little possibility of communicating with the largely Ashkenazi Jewish population in the United States. Indeed, the latter sometimes suspected they were actually Muslim Turks who, also being circumcised, were trying to pass themselves off as Jews. 17 Without skills, the great majority of the Sephardic immigrants could find only low-wage, menial labor in bakeries, restaurants and laundries. Others found work as watchmen, guards or ushers at theaters or as coat checkers at hotels, restaurants and nightclubs. Still others sought employment in produce markets, at shoe-shine stands, or in the readymade garment or dry-cell battery industries. Most workers took home a weekly wage of between five and six dollars. Of the 700 workers at the Interstate Electric Battery Company, some 400 were new Sephardic Jewish immigrants who labored 54 hours per week and successfully went on strike for better wages. As for those working in cloak rooms, they would subcontract the right operate such rooms to others and thereby become “employers” themselves.18 The Armenian Immigration The massacres of the late nineteenth century and of 1915-1923, shaped the mindset of the Armenian immigrants. To be sure, unlike other immigrants, they had no thought of returning, either for family reasons or for retirement. Before the massacres began, however, four main factors already had led to Armenian out- migration from İstanbul and Asia Minor. First, around the middle of the nineteenth century the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), after failing in the proselytization of Ottoman Muslims, redirected their efforts toward the Ottoman Armenian population. Later in the same century Ottoman- Armenian tensions and clashes arose along with Armenian national and revolutionary movements. The remaining two factors were not unique to the Armenians of the empire, but economic motivations and the desire to evade lengthy and often fatal military service inspired their emigration as well. American Protestant missionaries began arriving in Anatolia in the late 1820s and opened English-language schools in every city and region in which many Armenians lived. They especially encouraged students to go to America to continue their religious studies in order to return to Anatolia as Protestant pastors. But a number of the Armenian students did not return from America, instead entering the world of commerce. Even the Armenian craftsmen, artisans and other villagers who left for America motivated solely by the better job opportunities it offered came 17 Rıfat N. Bali, Anadolu’dan Yeni Dünya’ya, pp. 91-93. 18 Albert J. Amateau, “The Sephardic Immigrant From Bulgaria: A Personal Profile of Moise Gadol,” Archives (Spring/Summer 1990): 59-60; Victor D. Sauna, “A Study of the Adjustment of Sephardi Jews in The New York Metropolitan Area,” The Jewish Journal of Sociology 9 (1967): 25-26; Louis M. Hacker, “The Communal Life,” p. 38; Marc D. Angel, La America, pp. 139, 142. 58 Rıfat N. Bali from areas where the American missionaries had been very active.19 Official U.S. figures for 1834-1890 placed the Armenian immigrants within the broader category of immigrants from “Turkey in Europe,” which also included Bulgarian, Greek, Rumelian and Jewish immigrants from the Ottoman Empire. Only in 1869 were the categories of “Turkey in Asia” and “Armenia” created.20 Taking these and other considerations into account, between 1834 and 1915 the numbers of Armenians immigrating from Anatolia to the United States are as follows: Period Number of Immigrants 1834 – 1890 1,500 1891 – 1898 12,500 1899 – 1914 51,950 Total Number of Immigrants 65,950 Source: Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands, p. 290. The vanguard who immigrated before 1890 tended to be students, merchants and tradesmen. Only in the late 1880s did villagers and craftsmen began to pull up stakes from the impoverished land and exhausted soil of Harput and its environs--an area replete with missionaries and missionary schools.21 By the turn of the century, the largest and most eager groups of Armenians came from the areas of Gaziantep and Merzifon. After Harput, the region of Anatolia with the largest number of Armenian emigrants was the district of Kiğı in Bingöl province, from which about 2,000 Armenians--mostly craftsmen and farmers--would settle in New York, Illinois, Michigan and Rhode Island.22 Two waves of forced immigration were spurred by persecution and massacres against the Armenian population. The first, during the period 1890-1899, resulted from Sultan Abdulhamid II’s deployment of armed irregular Kurdish regiments, or “Hamidiye” to suppress Armenian revolutionary activity in the eastern provinces. The second wave, caused by ongoing massacres, lasted until 1915. Even in the relative lulls between the two, the inability of Armenian merchants to travel safely through Anatolia, along with high taxes and the ever-present fear that new disturbances would erupt, caused Armenians to leave in droves. Of the outbound tickets of Armenians traveling to America between the years 1899 and 1914, a full one-fourth were purchased and sent by relatives in America. But the growth in this trend is more striking: in 1900 the figure was 12 percent; by 1913 it had risen to 19 Nedim İpek, “Anadolu’da Amerika’ya Ermeni Göçü,” OTAM Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi, no.6 (1995): 259-61; Robert Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands: Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 37-39. 20 Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands, pp. 288-89. 21 Ibid., pp. 41,49. 22 Mark B. Arslan, “Armenian Immigrants to the USA and Canada from Keghi, Erzeroum, Armenia,” at: http://www.arslanmb.org/arslanian/KeghiImmigrants.html. From Anatolia to the New World 59 33 percent. 23 Ottoman officials attempted both to prevent Armenian nationalists and revolutionaries from emigrating and to deny those who slipped out reentry visas, fearing they would bring in weapons.24 These efforts were reinforced by the Ottomans’ more general concerns about the decline in population and prestige that ensued from the desire of so many to leave (and subsequently to denounce) the empire and about the loss in tax revenue that this exodus would produce. The Ottoman Foreign Ministry actively intervened with various foreign missions to discourage their countries from accepting Armenian immigrants. In response, a cadre of Armenian intermediaries sprung up to procure Armenians from the eastern provinces, such as Harput, Sivas, Adana and Diyarbakır, legal or illegal passage to the United States.25 The Greek Immigration Estimates of the numbers of Ottoman and Turkish Greeks who immigrated to North America vary greatly. Although Leland James Gordon placed the total number of Greek immigrants between 1900 and 1923 at 78,262, more recent works have given much higher figures. Stephanos Zotos, for instance, has determined that between 1821 and 1945, some 156,000 Greek immigrants arrived in America from European Turkey, while another 205,474 came from Asiatic Turkey, making a total of 361,474.26 These larger estimates help account for the fact that the Greeks were not forced to deal with the same loneliness and isolation as the Muslim Turkish immigrants. Instead their critical mass apparently provided a support network to assist the adaptation of new arrivals. As did other immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, the Greek immigrants made great efforts to preserve their own culture in their new home. They and their fellow Greeks from Greece introduced Greek cuisine, and they and their fellow Ottoman immigrants of various faiths and cultures introduced the coffeehouse. In their version of these establishments, the Greek immigrants supported Karagöz plays about the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire and gambled or played backgammon (tavla), a popular pastime among all Anatolian groups.27 The Muslim Turkish Immigration According to official U.S. statistics on immigration, 22,085 immigrants who arrived between 1900 and 1925 registered as “Turk” on their immigration forms. 23 Robert Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands, pp. 44-58. 24 Ibid., p. 43. 25 İpek, Anadolu’da Amerika, pp. 262-64. 26 Gordon, American Relations with Turkey, p. 308; Stephanos Zotos, Hellenic Presence in America (Wheaton, IL: Pilgrimage, 1976), p. 74. 27 Dimitris Monos and Sandy Stotsky, eds., The Greek Americans (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996), pp. 56-62. 60 Rıfat N. Bali The great majority were illiterate and between the ages of 14 and 44, and 20,652, or more than 93 percent, were males. In the words of Frank Ahmed, whose father was a Muslim Turkish immigrant, America was a “far away Christian country” and no one knew what manner of life could be expected for the women there.28 When the Turkish immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, their greatest immediate problem was unfamiliarity with the English language. During those years, the officials responsible for questioning the new immigrants were equally unfamiliar with the Turkish language and often relied on non-Muslim immigrants to communicate with the Turkish arrivals. The Turkish arrivals themselves had no reason to be concerned about passing the medical examination for new immigrants, but they were gravely concerned about the process of accepting/refusing new immigration applicants.29 Once accepted, the Turkish immigrants would board in dormitory-type housing with others from their city or region in the Ottoman Empire, preparing communal meals and otherwise creating their own “communities.” For example, the population of Turkish immigrants in Peabody, Massachusetts, at one time reached 2,000 souls, 101 of them residing in a single house. Peabody’s Walnut Street was replete with coffee houses, and familiar foods were sold at nearby groceries, as often as not owned and operated by immigrants.30 Fights and disputes occasionally did break out between the Turkish and Greek immigrants. Not knowing English put the Turkish immigrants at a disadvantage and compelled them to take more menial, lower-paying jobs. As the majority came from rural settings, they could not immediately find employment in industrial plants whose owners sought workers with specific skills or, at least, a countryman to vouch for their diligence. At best, Turkish workers labored under the most difficult and unhealthy conditions in the tanneries, shoe, purse and other leatherworking factories of Boston, Salem, Peabody, Beverly and Lynn, Massachusetts. At the time, Peabody was the leatherworking capital of America, if not the entire world. There also were communities of Turkish workers in the automobile capital of Detroit, Michigan, and in Worcester, Massachusetts, where there was a large wire-producing industry.31 Numbers and Ethnic Distribution of the Muslim and non-Muslim Immigrants The exact numbers of Muslims and non-Muslims who have emigrated from Anatolia to America since the early nineteenth century remains in dispute and will, therefore, be briefly discussed here. Three scholars, Kemal Karpat, Leland James Gordon and Berrak Kurtuluş, have all arrived at different conclusions. According to 28 Frank Ahmed, Turks in America, The Ottoman Turk’s Immigrant Experience (Greenwich, CT: Columbia International, 1993), pp. ix-x, xviii; Barbara Bilgé, “Turks,” in American Immigrant Cultures: Builders of a Nation, ed. David Levinson and Melvin Ember, pp. 909- 915 (New York: Macmillan, 1997). 29 Ahmed, Turks in America, p. xxii. 30 Ibid., p. 29. 31 Ibid., pp. 61, 69-74. From Anatolia to the New World 61 Gordon, in the roughly one hundred years between 1820 and May 19, 1921, when the first quota act effectively put an end to mass immigration, the number of new immigrants claiming to have originated in Turkey is 186,463.32 Kurtuluş puts this figure at 326,437,33 and Karpat has arrived at the still more generous total of 415,793.34 Consequently, the safest generalization is that somewhere between two and four hundred thousand Ottoman and Turkish citizens arrived in the United States in that time period. Gordon further breaks down to religio-ethnic composition of the arrivals as follows: Religious-Ethnic Affiliation Percentage Greek 27 Armenian 18 Jewish 6 Serbian, Bulgarian & Montenegran 12 Syrian 26 Turkish 5 Other 6 Source : Gordon, American Relations With Turkey, p. 305. Nearly all of the immigrants who ultimately returned to Anatolia were Muslims. One reason was that non-Muslims who left in order to evade military service lost their Ottoman citizenship and, thereby, the chance of resettling in the empire. Another was that Muslim Turks were averse to the thought of being buried in a Christian country or marrying a Christian woman. Viewing the United States as a type of labor camp, they resisted the process of assimilation or Americanization to focus instead on the time they could return home.35 Those Muslim Turks who did not succeed in returning to Anatolia tended to marry Christian women and become fully Americanized. Life in the New World Turkish immigrants--whether Muslim or non-Muslim--usually strove to preserve the customs and way of life of the homeland they had left behind. In this regard, the most important of their traditions were those relating to food and coffeehouse culture. For the Ottoman Jews, the coffeehouses and restaurants that 32 Gordon, American Relations with Turkey, p. 305. 33 U.S. Department of Justice, 1987 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), p. 2, quoted in Berrak Kurtuluş, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’ne Türk Beyin Göçü (İstanbul: Alfa Basım Yayın Dağıtım, 1999), p. 52. 34 Kemal H. Karpat, “The Turks in America,” Turcs d’Europe…et d’Ailleurs, Les Annales de L’Autre Islam, vol.3 ed. T. D. Stephane, (Paris: INALCO-ERISM, 1995), pp. 232-33. 35 Bali, Anadolu’dan Yeni Dünya'ya, pp. 348-49. 62 Rıfat N. Bali they operated for their coreligionists became meeting places for the Sephardic immigrant community. There the immigrants could find friends and acquaintances from the old country, news about jobs and rooms to let, and the latest gossip as well as something to eat and a game of backgammon or cards. But the coffeehouses also could provide an all-too-comfortable venue for loafing.36 Many of the non-Muslim groups supported their cultural and community lives by publishing newspapers in their own Ladino, Greek or Armenian languages. Another cultural preservation effort in which Muslim immigrants also shared was the establishment of various associations. While the Muslim Turks established Turkish societies, the non-Muslim communities tended to found separate societies for their cities of origin as did Sephardic Jews from Silivri, Ankara, Çanakkale, Çorlu, İzmir and other cities.37 The great majority of immigrants from Anatolia were smitten with yearning for the lands that they had left. Visiting the Turkish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, even some non-Muslims who had fled to America in order to avoid military service spoke to Turkish journalists with longing when they remembered Turkey.38 Jewish and Muslim immigrants, in particular, contributed monetary aid to the homeland during the Turkish War of Independence. For instance, the General Secretary of the Turkish Society for the Protection of Orphans, Dr. Fuad Umay Bey, returned from America with considerable sums of money and other material contributions from the two communities. Anatolian Armenians and Greeks, in the wake of the collaboration of the Ottoman Greeks with the invading Greek Forces during the Turkish War of Independence, had little reason to contribute to such campaigns.39 Turkish Immigration to America since the Second World War When Turkish immigration to the United States revived after the Second World War, the new arrivals either were more highly educated than the earlier immigrants or were members of the skilled trades. In the 1950s, Turkey’s youth and professionals who wished to further their education abroad thought only of the United States. Of the thousands of Turkish doctors, engineers and technicians who went to the United States as a result, a considerable number did not return causing a considerable “brain drain” for Turkey. Birol Akgün has provided the following figures for Turkish immigration to 36 Angel, La America, pp. 20-21. 37 Bali, Anadolu’dan Yeni Dünya'ya, pp. 100-101. 38 Ibid., pp. 342-48. For a study of Turkey’s participation in the 1939 World’s Fair, see Nejat Akar, 1939 Nevyork Dünya Fuarında Türkiye (Ankara: self published, 2005). 39 Fuad Umay, Amerika’da Türkler ve Gördüklerim [Turks in America, and what I saw] (İstanbul: Vatan Matbaası, 1341) [1925], transcribed and “simplified” into modern Turkish as Cumhuriyetin Kuruluş Yıllarında Bir Devrimci Doktorun Anıları [The Recollections of a Revolutionary Doctor During the Years of the Founding of the Republic], transcribed by Cahit Kayra (İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2003).