Modern Istanbul’s most infamous resident that you (or at least I) didn’t know about #TurkishHistory #History

Researching history for a historical novel is – in addition to a boatload of work – lots of fun. One of the problems with researching, however, is that it’s just plain impossible to fit all the interesting historical tidbits into your novel. But they’re so interesting! You have to tell someone! As I’ve bored everyone I know with all kinds of information up to this point, I thought I’d share an interesting snippet with my blog readers today.

I’ll start by sharing who this ‘infamous resident’ was not. It was not Vlad the Impaler. Good old Dracula was not imprisoned during modern times, and he was imprisoned in the middle of the country at Tokat Castle.

So, who is it then? Trotsky! I know! I was shocked, too. I’m a bit obsessed with the Russian Revolution. Yet I had no idea that Trotsky made a stop in Istanbul before moving on to Mexico where he was eventually murdered with an ice pick. It turns out that Turkey was only his first stop in an exile journey that took him to France and Norway before landing in Mexico.

But how did Trotsky end up in Istanbul? After all, it wasn’t like he wanted to be there. He even wrote a letter to Atatürk stating: “I have the honor to inform you that I have arrived at the Turkish frontier not of my own choice, and that I will cross this frontier only by submitting to force.” But an exile doesn’t have the chance to choose his country of residence. Turkey was supposedly the only country initially willing to accept Trotsky and his wife and son.

Much to its own surprise, Turkey had become a place of refuge for Russians. Unlike Trotsky, these refugees were the ‘White’ Russians – those opposing the Revolution. It is estimated that a total of 185,000 refugees swelled Istanbul’s populations by as much as twenty percent. The Russians and the Turks (the Ottomans as it were) had been on opposite sides of four wars over the previous century. This was not a comfortable situation.

Trotsky actually spent four years, from 1929 to 1934, living in Istanbul. In the end, he spent the longest period of his exile years in Turkey. He spent many of those years living on Büyükada where he felt some measure of safety from the assassins he knew the Soviet government would send after him. (The Turkish government had insisted the Soviets promise not to kill Trotsky on their soil, but Trotsky was convinced Stalin was waiting and watching for his chance.) He also had a bevy of White Russians who might relish the opportunity to eliminate one of the founders of the Russian Revolution. Further, he was under surveillance of the Turkish Police Forces. Is it any wonder the man was a recluse who supposedly pulled a gun on a physician when the man when to pull a stethoscope out of his pocket?

Of course, I couldn’t leave Trotsky’s story out of my novel entirely, even though the man himself died several months before Rudolf and Rosalyn arrived in Istanbul. I’m not going to tell you how I incorporated one of Trotsky’s experiences in the city into the story, however. That would be a MAJOR spoiler alert, and no one likes spoilers.

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This blog is the third in a series of blogs I’m writing about the research I’ve done for my upcoming novel, Searching for Gertrude. The previous blogs are Why I chose Istanbul as the setting and Anti-semitism or antisemitism? Just click on the blog title to read the article.