Settlement of the Arab Refugees to Konya (1920-1928)

The political borders of the Turkish Republic have been determined with the Lausanne PeaceTreaty. Many people living in Anatolia during the Ottoman Period have lost their life during theOttoman-Russian War, Balkan Wars, First World War, and the Turkish War of Independence. Thisfact caused the deterioration of the political, social and economical structure. The newly founded TurkishRepublic gave prime importance to the reestablishment of these structures. Hence, first the socio-economicalsystem was reestablished after the military victory. As the Turkish economy was based in thoseyears heavily on agriculture and livestock farming, the need for a working force emerged. Thus, differentpolicies to increase the population in Turkey have been developed and immigrants from the Turkish andMoslem world were received with open arms. During this period a significant number of people migratedfrom the Balkans, Caucasus, Afghanistan, India and Arabic geography to the Republic of Turkey. Thispopulation had been settled in various areas of Turkey. Within this framework, population coming fromthe Turkish and Moslem world was settled in Konya.Factors such as the climate conditions, transportation (railway), extensive farmlands, and thesmall impact of the long lasting wars led to the preference of the immigrants to settle in Konya duringthat period.Hence immigrants coming from the Arab geography such as Damascus, Aleppo, Benghazi,Medina, Tripoli, .Beirut, between the years of 1923-1928 have been settled into different settlementareas within the city district of Konya City such as ifte Merdiven, ems and Tarla.In order to determine the immigrant from these regions, the Ankara Republic Archives havebeen consulted. Thus the archive logs with the numbers 16, 18, 33, and 39 written in Ottoman languagehave been analyzed together with the logs concerning the real estate’s given to the immigrants. Theanalysis of these records reveals data about the immigrants from Arab world, their place of immigration,immigration dates, numbers, places they were settled in, and the real estate’s they were allocated.