As a result of the rapidly blowing winds of nationalism, the cities of Istanbul and Thessaloniki, two important commercial and cultural centers of the Ottoman Empire, found themselves within two national states, which had declared themselves separate and officially “other”. However, these cities did not suddenly lose their multilingual and multicultural structures inherited from the imperial time. The subject of this study is a critique of the memoirs titled The City where I was Born. Istanbul 1926-1946 (Istanbul nella memoria 1926-1946) written by Mario Vitti in 2010 and The Sole Legacy (Η Μόνη Κληρονομιά) written by Giorgos Ioannou in 1974. These memories which took place approximately with the years of the Second World War left different traces on Vitti and Ioannou. On the one hand, there was Turkey which was trying to become rapidly homogenized as a newly-established national state, and on the other hand there was Greece which was struggling with the trilateral occupation of Italy, Germany and Bulgaria. In this context, what the authors remember/forget or long for about these two places is different. This study is an investigation of what these two authors — one born and brought up in Istanbul and the other in Thessaloniki — remember and forget in the memoirs and stories which they wrote about the aforementioned cities. An attempt was made to answer the following questions:

a) How do Istanbul and Thessaloniki come to life in the memories of these two authors, who describe more or less the same period?

b) Does the act of remembering parallel social and political events?

c) Which social events of the period are remembered and which are “forgotten” in the works?

d) How do the authors define their own identities, or at least have a sense of belonging?

e) Can any homesickness be mentioned in the works of these authors, both of whom left the cities where they were born and raised?

Researchers such as Halbwachs and Roediger have argued that individuals remember with the help of social, political and cultural processes. Vitti and Ioannou also remember, even their most personal memories, in the context of the social and political events of the period they narrate . Born in 1926 on Büyükada to a Greek mother and an Italian father, who was one of the Istanbul Levantines, Vitti’s childhood and early teenage years were spent on Beyoğlu Tomtom Kaptan Street. The book titled Istanbul nella memoria 1926–1946, in which he describes Pera of that time, is important in terms of the time period it refers to. The period between the years 1926 and 1946 was a period when the Republic of Turkey defined its national identity and historical narrative and took its first steps as a national government with laws enacted and incidents experienced in this direction. Indeed, in the afore-mentioned years, Turkey was trying to define its national past and national identity with theses such as the “Sun Language Theory” on the one hand; and on the other, it was trying to leave out anything that did not fit this definition of identity. Jewish Events in Thrace (1934) and practices such as the Wealth Tax (1942) in the country, which systematically tried to homogenize itself, are important events that have marked the history of the Republic of Turkey in recent times.

Giorgos Ioannou, the son of immigrant parents from Eastern Thrace, was born in Thessaloniki in 1927. The author’s childhood and early teenage years coincided with the most difficult times in Greek history in the 20th century. In his 1974 memoir Η Μόνη κληρονομιά, he tells the story of Thessaloniki, which was occupied during the Second World War. The period in which Ioannou was born and raised coincides with one of Greece’s most turbulent periods: The Dictatorship of Metaxas (1936–1941), the Italian Occupation (1940), the German Occupation/Hunger/Resistance (1941–1945) and Civil War (1946–1949). A year after the Italian invasion, in 1941, Germany also invaded Greece, and its systematic policy resulted in the death of three hundred thousand people across Greece only because of hunger. By June 1941, the country was under the ternary occupation of Italy, Germany and Bulgaria.

Istanbul, unlike Thessaloniki, was not occupied during the Second World War and did not face hunger and a massacre, and thus is remembered to be more “positive” than Thessaloniki, but the historical events of that period remain clear in memory. Thessaloniki — unlike Istanbul, which did not experience the war — resisted the bombings, fires, large strikes, arrests and deaths that occurred during the trilateral occupation and subsequent Civil War. Both authors reject a stereotypical identity definition prepared in accordance with the nationalist approach of the time. However, the need to belong to a place is very clear in both works.