The Edge of Heaven - Fatih Akin

Complex, heavy story filmed both in Germany and in Istanbul.  Crossing of paths, random death, learning to be more human, both recognizing one's cultural sources, and in a way overcoming them.  Sound track is great.  Filming and settings are stunning.  He plays wonderfully with jumping around it time, and random crossing of paths. 

Border - Kapka Kassabova

Part travelogue, part self-reflective inner journey.   I am not sure about this using of place almost as a metaphor for some internal landscape of self-exploration, and self-expression, examination of inner conflict and emotions.
What make this book interesting is the setting - the border area between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece.  This is an area with a very charged history, from Ottoman times, through the Balkan Wars, and into the 20th C Cold War period.    Kassabova does explore some interesting places in the Rhodopes in both Greece and Bulgaria.  She also explores some interesting sounding areas in the Strandzha area of Bulgaria, and also just on the other side of the border in Turkey.  All places I would like to visit. 
A very topical book, with all the current issues around migration, border crossing, etc.  Much of it currently set in the very area she explores in the book.

Not Even My Name - Thea Halo

A moving account of  the life of Thea Halo's mother, a Pontic refugee from Turkey driven out in the 1920s.  The story is bookended by their modern day attempt to track down and revisit her mother's native village in the mountains on the Pontic shore.

An interesting read for several reasons:

The contrast between the political experience of a group like the Pontic Greeks in the early century, and the day to day experiences both at the time of Thea's mother's childhood and of their recent return to Turkey - both experiences feature Turks as important actors but it presents such a contrast of indifferent evil on one hand, and kindness and empathy on the other.  How does this happen?  What does this say about a society that it can show both of these attitudes, play both of these roles?  Is it something in human nature?  Is it something in the nature of society - us vs. them at times, us together at times?  Is it a comment on particular, personal vs. generic, theoretical experience of the Other?

What does it do to a dominant society when it has to work so hard to deny and cover up its past?  To concoct alternative false narratives and broadcast them far and wide?  To the point of looking foolish, ridiculous?  What does it do to the inner dynamic of the society itself?  Does it stunt the society's ability to reason, to come to grips with reality in other ways?  Does it leave the society vulnerable to oligarchy?  Evil?  Again, is it human nature or political man at the heart of this?  Turkey is not alone here - many societies live like this, including Canada, the US, Israel, Japan, Russia.  What does it mean to live a fiction so totally?

It is hard to imagine the state of Thea's mother when she arrives in the US.  It is hard to imagine the level of destitution she had been reduced to - essentially the loss of everything tangible and intangible.  A life teetering on the edge of invisibility, of nonexistence.  Loss of home, loss of all family, loss of all community, loss of name, loss of any material good save the clothes on her back. loss of mother tongue.  No sense of belonging anywhere or to anyone.  Loss of way of life, but replaced only by the experience of suffering - no knowledge of any life outside the old one.
Then picture so many of the immigrants to the US at that time, all coming from a similar level of habitual destitution or similar loss.  Surely that has some effect on the shaping of a society, its understanding and its values.   Surely this goes some way towards explaining the difference between the Old World and the New World in the early and middle 20th century.

Stories like this continue in the Middle East even today (and other parts of the world too) - Syria, Palestine, Iraq, eastern Turkey.  Still on the same bases - ethnic and religious difference, the vulnerability of minorities.  You can read some of these stories in the book recently posted, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms.

Some references:

Smyrna 1922:  The Destruction of a City, M. Housepian - Tor Ref.

The Slaughterhouse Province, Leslie Davis - Tor Ref.

The Blight of Asia, George Horton ??

Ambassador Morgenthau's Story - Henry Mortenthau - Tor. Ref.

The Black Sea: A History - Charles King

A basic history of the region.  Bit of an uninspiring read but some good background information.  While King covers the basics, he doesn't necessarily do a great job of putting things in the wider context - I am currently reading another book on the same subject which is much better in that way. (Black Sea by Neal Ascherson)  The most interesting part was the section about the Kalmouks and their reverse migration during the time of Catherine the Great.

Some interesting characters to look up:
Pero Tafur - Travels and Adventures - travelling in the area in the 1430s
Bratianu - La mer noire - Hungarian monks travelling the area in the same period

To find:
The Western Question in Greece and Turkey - Arnold Toynbee