Losing a Homeland, 1923–1924 Salonikan Muslims were quick to leave their hometown, but not
exempt from such hardship in Turkey. Between mid-November and the
end of December 1923 , 50 , 000 left Salonika for Turkey.^61 By July 1924 ,
100 , 000 from Salonika and its environs had arrived.^62 After arriving on
the ferry from Salonika, some refused to board ferries for Samsun and
remained in Istanbul.^63 Guesthouses were set up to house the migrants
in the Bayezid and Gülhane districts of Istanbul.^64 They were meant as
temporary shelter while migrants were en route to the assigned place of
settlement, but became more long-term homes for those who refused to
continue their journey.
Reşat Tesal, whose own family were victims of the incompetence of
the Turkish committee in Greece, says that from the point of view of the
exchangees, both the preparatory work in Greece and subsequent reset-
tlement in Turkey were badly bungled. Moreover, after they arrived in
Turkey, the refugees were preyed upon by malefactors. Most Muslim ex-
changees were wronged and mistreated, Tesal claims.^65
Businessmen in the various host cities came together to form com-
mittees to channel assistance to migrants, and in places where Saloni-
kan Dönme were resettled, Dönme already in Turkey played a leading
role in the effort to help their brethren. One example is Karakaş Kibar
Tevfik who ran the Şark Tobacco Company in Samsun.^66 Samsun was the
city where most Salonikans were supposed to be deported, because it was
the center of the Turkish tobacco trade, and thus a place where Muslims
from Salonika’s hinterlands could grow tobacco and merchants from the
city of Salonika could run the business end of the industry. In Istanbul,
the assistance effort was undertaken by the Karakaş Balcı İbrahim, Kibar
Saram, and Macit Mehmet Karakaş, the son of Mehmet Karakaş, who
were members of the Chamber of Commerce.
These efforts were crucial in helping Dönme get back on their feet,
because the Turkish government decided not to give migrants the equiva-
lent of what they had left behind in Greece, but only one-fifth of what
was recorded on the documents evaluating their property.^67 Nothing was
to be given those who claimed over 50 , 000 gold lira in property. Those
who left factories behind in Greece would not receive a factory in Turkey
if none was available in the area to which they were sent. Such policies
were especially harmful to the great textile, timber, and tobacco merchant
Dönme families of Salonika and compelled them to buck government
planning and settle where they could live as they had lived in Greece. The