Marshaling Development: Turkish Thrace in the Interwar Years

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, this study examines the interwar transformation of Eastern Thrace through the prism of sovereignty. It argues that Turkish political and military elites came into a particular geopolitical consciousness about Thrace in the 1930s, viewing the region as a vulnerable yet indispensable frontier due to its geographical, symbolic, and military significance. In their quest to re-border Thrace to extend state sovereignty, the elites combined the tools of international diplomacy with a regional policy that sought to repopulate, redevelop, and refortify Thrace. The study coins the concept of marshaling development to describe these efforts to interrelated civilian and military ends. It demonstrates how officials marshaling development foresaw the reordering of peoples, materials, infrastructures, resources, and affective dispositions across the borderland space with a view to the joint goals of defense and development and with durable socioeconomic and demographic consequences extending well beyond the interwar years.