CHILDREN OF THE SAME HOME

A house in Suleymanpasha, the central district of Tekirdag. It is in Ertugrul Mahallesi (neighbourhood). It is now being restored by the municipality. It will be opened to the public as “The Museum of Tekirdag Photographs.”
The house is a traditional two-story Tekirdag house. It was constructed in 1904 by Father Mavridis, who lived there at the time. The Mavridis, who were Ottoman subjects, lived there until the Battle of the Sakarya. When the Greek army was defeated, 19,400 Greeks were pushed to move to Greece. One such family, the Mavridis, first migrated to Xanthi, then to Athens.

At about the same time, the Turkish and Muslim Mevlevioglu family lived in Doyran, which is now a small border town in Macedonia. The family were in difficulty following the Balkan Wars.

In 1923, the population exchange treaty was signed between Turkey and Greece upon Venizelos’s wish and the imposition by the allied powers. Taking his family with him, Mevlevioğlu Ekrem moves to Salonika from Doyran, and then from there, takes a boat to Tekirdag. The family settle in the house where the Mavridis used to live before they left.
Father Mavridis has two children in Xanthi: Dimitris ve Hiristina. The Mevlevioğlu family have three children in Tekirdag.
Children in the Mavridis family grow up listening to the stories of Tekirdag. The Mavridis call Tekirdag “our home” in their stories. And the Mevlevioğlu do the same when they talk about Doyran. They keep on calling Doyran “our hometown.”
Speaking his last will, Father Mavridis tells his engineer son Dimitris to find their house in Tekirdag. Dimitris Mavridis looks for their house in Tekirdag visiting the city and İstanbul several times. He creates a great archive by collecting photographs and documents about Tekirdag.
Mevlevioglu Ekrem Bey, whose surname becomes Eskinat with the introduction of the surname law of 1934, has three children. His son, Doğan, becomes a pharmacist and settles down in Tekirdag. Intrigued by family stories, he involves himself in history, particularly the history of the population exchange and narrates the information he finds to his son, Ekrem. And when Ekrem becomes the mayor of the town, he asks experts to investigate historical documents in an effort to give the town, whose traditional style has now been worn down, a healthier look and an identity.
The experts often come up with visual documents from Dimitris Mavridis Collection. And they begin to follow Dimitris Mavridis. They reach him in Athens. Dimitris Mavridis is unsure about what to do with the photograph collection he has in his hands.
Ekrem Eskinat talks about his dream to open a museum in Tekirday and suggests that Dimitris share his collection with him. Dimitris, at first, does not greet Eskinat’s suggestion warmly. He loves Tekirday of his family sagas so deeply that he does not want to share it with others. Added to his ambivalence is the impact of the discourse of Greek official history, which makes cooperation with a Turkish mayor unpleasant.
However, neither the Mevlevioğlulları, nor the Mavridis are aware of the fact that their families have lived in the same house one after the other. When they meet in Athens for the third time, Mavridis shows Eskinat the photographs of his father’s house and gives his friend its current address.
Their astonishment turns into silence, and then it leaves its place to a joyful confession. Ekrem Eskinat tells Dimitris Mavridis, in detail, how his grandparents moved from Doyran and settled in that house, and putting his hand on Mavridis’ shoulders says excitedly, “We are the children of the same house.”
Now that the knot has been untied, Dimitris Mavridis agrees to donate his collection to the Museum. The house in which the two families lived one after the other has now been expropriated and will be turned into a museum after its restoration.
Thanks to their project, the separation imposed by the historical necessities turns into a joint effort in which the two societies can understand each other better. This effort is also important as a local and civil reconciliation which can become a symbol intersocietal peace.
This modern history and the historical information that makes up its background constitute the source for our documentary film. Surely, a crucial life symbol of Anatolian cultures, “the house-home” will constitute the point of conflict and conciliation in our documentary film. Finally we believe that we will have achieved our mission provided the documentary can tell all societies that “We are the children of the same home”.