Searching for Turkey's Afro-Turks
Thursday, February 8, 2007

Ã?ZMÃ?R - Turkish Daily News

During the last period of the Ottoman Empire boatloads
of Africans were brought to Turkey as slaves and their
descendants, who may number in the millions, have
remained in Turkey. Afro-Turks, whose fathers were
brought to Anatolia during the Ottoman Empire's slave
trade, founded an association in Ã?zmir in November
2006.

Mustafa Alpak, the founder of the Africans Solidarity
Association, is working to uncover the identities of
Afro-Turks who have lived in Anatolia for the last 120
years.

“In that period, pirates kidnapped Africans and
brought them to Anatolia to sell them as slaves,"
Alpak said in recent interview with daily Radical.
After 1857, when slavery was forbidden in the Ottoman
Empire, black citizens were freed but were not sent
back to their countries. Unlike other Africans who
were sold as slaves in other countries and could not
preserve their culture, "Africans in Anatolia have
lived together and preserved their cultures,� he said.

Alpak, whose father was brought to Anatolia as a slave
from Kenya, has written two books called “Black Women
Kemale: From Slavery to Freedom� and
“Kenya-Crete- Istanbul- Slave� which detail the
history of Afro-Turkish history.

Alpak has been searching for ethnic Africans scattered
throughout western Anatolian cities, and said the
association will launch sociological research to seek
out other Africans in Turkey and has asked UNESCO for
financial support.

Claiming that there were around 2 million Afro-Turks
living in the region that stretches from Antalya to
Istanbul, Alpak said that he has been able to reach a
scarce few of those who are living in �zmir, Aydýn,
Muðla and Balýkesir. Alpak said that the Africans who
were brought to Anatolia by Hýdýr Ali Paþa from Egypt
and Lebanon had settled in Ã?zmir while the Sudanese
remained in Muðla and that some from Somalia, Kenya
and Algeria remained in Aydýn.

“We have established our association 120 years after
Africans came to Turkey. There are almost 2 million
Afro-Turks scattered in various cities and we want all
of these people to come together," Alpak said.


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