“I am very much an American, but we have a balance. We are able to give love not just to where we live but also to where we came from.”
boy from Yaglidere, left his hometown during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. It was winter, the journey was challenging and the harsh conditions took their toll on the Cember family in the form of sickness and death.
Back then, not one of the 27,000 Yaglidere residents had heard of ‘America’. However, Izzet Aydin was so impressed by Lefter’s success that he decided to follow him. In 1967, Aydin headed to this unknown land with hopes of prosperity.At that time, Lefter was running two bars in the US and employed Aydin as a cleaner, his first job in the US. The initial six months was a struggle for Aydin. He worked four jobs simultaneously, and the only person he knew was Lefter.
Cember and the Aydin family built a strong bond over time and always looked out for one another, such that when Lefter got sick, he settled in Aydin’s house and passed away there in 1975.The flow of migration that originated with Lefter Cember and Izzet Aydin peaked in the 1980s. The amount of people from Yaglidere swelled in the US as the population in Yaglidere swiftly dipped.
First-generation immigrants from Yaglidere mostly worked in the restaurant industry and settled in the same places because their network was there. Lefter had found employment for the Aydin family in the restaurant industry because it was his line of work. The same pattern emerged with the Aydin family helping later migrants.
There is also a Turkish school in Manhattan named after Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The school’s mission is to raise new generations of Turkish-Americans in unity and establish a connection between them and Turkey. The 17-year-old daughter of Yavuz and Zehra Aydin, Sultan, is a third-generation immigrant. She is currently in high school and speaks English as her primary language, but she is also fluent in Turkish. She has been to Yaglidere with her family and remembers her hometown fondly.
Yaglidere, on the other hand, has not changed much over the years. The economy is based on hazelnut farming as it had always been. Townspeople make a living through agriculture and local shops.
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