Our author Metin Özbaskıcı shared a new memoir with us. His memories belongs to the period his family worked as tobacco workers in are being told with a literary style in the memoir. We recommend strongly to the ones not read it yet. After this usefull recommendation, let's come to our point. Are those things told in the memoir about only the life of Mr. Özbaskıcı? I don't think so. If it was only about the life of Mr. Ozbaskıcı, our friends, our brothers and sisters read this memoir wouldn't say that they found something about them in the memoir. The main reason of being impressive of the memoir for people shared similar memories with Mr. Özbaskıcı is that the this is the story of all of us!
We know what was the main ways of subsistence of our ancestors. They were giving some crafts and providing services for settled agriculturalist and nomadic herders in exchange of various foods. In that way, They as basketmakers, sieve-makers, blacksmiths, tinners, coppersmiths, musicians, acrobats, folk dramatists, medicine makers, adobe makers, dentists and folk healars disfunctional. Our craft products have started to be produced with more advantaged conditions in factories. Services we had provided before started to be provided by the modern foundations spreading all regions. So it's almost impossible to believe that some Gypsies were highflier dentists before for many people today. However many kind of health care were up to the Gypsies before spreading of modern healing foundations.
Our jobs have been non-effective with industrialization. We had to find new ways to survive. We found. Some of us started to work in the hard jobs with incomes never guarantied and no one else want to work in. Shoe shiners, scrap and paper collectors, porters, flower sellers, pedlars are in this category. Some of us started work as agricultural laborers as Mr. Özbaskıcı pointed in the memoir. The mail subsistence way of the Gypsies came from Salonika to Turkey with the Turk-Greece Population Exchange (1924) was tobacco working in tobacco farms and tobacco factories in cities. Some of us worked in fields of nut, sun flower and cotton in different regions. Gyspies working in agricultural lands around İstanbul were being called as Harmancis for long years.
These periods, the days we lost our traditional jobs and started to look for new ways to survive were one of the hardest parts of Gypsy History.Being qualified about traditional crafts and nonexisting of any competition in this jobs gave us a big opportunity in the past. Such that big empires want to benefit from our abilities on crafts we have a great fame just like horse dealing and blacksmithing. Historians told that Roma Gypsies had a big importance in support services of Ottoman Army with their craft abilities. As we lost our traditional crafts, we also lost our relative advantaged position.
Our new jobs don't require qualification comparing to older ones. Other ethnic and social groups could work in these jobs easily. This creates competition between us and them. There are many Gadjo groups working as scrap and paper collectors, shoe shiners and porters and this make living harder for us. Life is more diffucult for us in this period of Gypsy history than the other times. Losing of traditional jobs sometimes damaged Gypsy culture and social solidarity. In these examples, children of the families lost social solidarity could fall into the hands of crime organizations.
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We still live in the same period of Gypsy history Mr. Özbaskıcı pointed in his memoir! There are some Gypsy families and individuals able to have education and able to work in different jobs with high incomes. It's known by everybody that they have a better position in society today. However population of them is limited comparing to millions of people living in hard life conditions. Most of us are working in the jobs with incomes unguarantied. Children of these families have a precious little opportunity to have education. Poverty and prejudices stop our people to change our life.
This situation is not a local problem. These problems are common for descendants of peripatetic Gypsies all over the world. We won't able to change anything by ignoring our problems. We should understand the reasons of our problems. We could find the reason of our problems in the period of Gypsy history we tried to explain above. Retrieving the things we lost, being and accepted as one of the honorable element of humanity is only possible with understanding the history and the problems we inherited.
Gypsy journey goes on! We have to convert memories to history to reach roomy campgrounds in the journey. We will write our history keeping our memories. When we write our history, we will be able to understand reason of the pains, be able to make others understandable about our pains.
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Have a nice week!
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