A research on identity and memory of Selanik refugees in the context of food culture in Niğde province

Food, one of the most vital substances for human life, serves a variety of social and cultural purposes in addition to being a biological necessity for humans. Despite the perception that it is straightforward, food frequently offers complex information about the community to which it belongs. Culinary culture serves practical purposes in defining the boundaries between communities, remembering who the community's members are, and relating to the past. The subject of this study is the culinary tradition of refugees from Selanik who were relocated to various regions of Niğde as part of the forced population exchange agreement made on January 30, 1923, at the Lausanne Peace Conference. The study explores how Selanik refugees define their present and sense of self through the foods they cook and consume, recall the past through food memories, and draw borders between their community and other communities through food. For the study, 97 participants were interviewed in semi-structured interviews in 15 various Niğde settlements (city center and villages), several rituals were observed, and some images were taken. The study has a total of six chapters. After a short introduction, in the second part, it is demonstrated how the food produced and consumed even personally can be connected to memory by outlining how memory functions. The third part tries to demonstrate the presence of refugees in Niğde and the context in which Selanik refugees have preserved this identity from the first settlement time to the present by providing historical data about the forced population exchange. In the fourth chapter, it is demonstrated how the recipes that Selanik refugees own have helped them forge relationships with different communities in Niğde by uniting their culinary culture with their newly formed refugee identities. The functional role of Selanik refugees' foods in creating cultural memory and passing it on to future generations is explained in the fifth chapter, and it is demonstrated how crucial dishes are to remembering the past. The conclusion section reveals the evolution of the Selanik refugee community's identity, which was created within the framework of culinary culture today, and the meanings that the culinary culture of Selanik refugees carries. Although the forced population exchange in Niğde took place nearly a century ago, refugees carried this traumatic experience of forced migration to the next generations through their unique culinary culture and specific foods such as bide-pita, muhacir bread, kaçamak, muhacir tarhanası, keşkek, and örfene. The study highlights how significant food culture is in forming the identity and memory of today's Selanik refugees.