Excesses of nationalism: Greco-Turkish population exchange (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rethinking the Greco-Turkish Population Exchange in the Civilizationist Present
Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2022
The unapologetic rise of “ethno-nationalism,” white nationalism, and suprem- acist narratives in the contemporary world context has led scholars to revisit the histories of totalitarianism, fascism, and authoritarianism. Challenging the idea that these violent racialized histories have been confined to the past, critical scholars argue that their legacies are in fact prominent aspects of the history of the present. What does it mean to remember the 1923 exchange of Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians between Greece and Turkey today? An exploration of the implications of the Greco-Turkish exchange through the prism of biopolitics in the contemporary world context—juxtaposing the biopolitical dimensions of the 1923 exchange with the contemporary refugee crisis, white identitarian civilizationism and violence, neo-Ottomanist Islamic civilizational counter-mobilization, and the reopening of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul as a mosque—raises questions about the scope of memory work on the hundredth anniversary of the 1923 exchange. These questions are to be addressed through the palimpsests of the history of the present.
Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2020
This article argues that the Turkish government facing the 1964 Cyprus crisis applied the principle of negative reciprocity toward Greece and expelled Greek citizens living in Turkey. By doing so, Turkey aimed at pressuring Greece to bring the Greek Cypriot side to the negotiation table. Although Turkish policy proved to be a failure, the expulsions continued. The deportation resulted in the demise of the Greek minority in Turkey for the following reasons: first, there were intermarriages between the Greek citizens and the Greek minority; and second, Turkey’s Greeks finally lost their hope of being treated as equal Turkish citizens.
A Century of Greek-Turkish Relations, 2024
Turkish Relations is an important handbook written by leading authorities from both shores of the Aegean Sea. Greek and Turkish scholars present in a balanced and objective way, as well as in a graspable and meaningful manner, the main periods in which key events brought the two sides into dispute or even conflict. These events, which are integrated in parallel and conflicting national narratives, fuel the historicity of the two national rivals. A century since the end of the Greek-Turkish war, the trauma of the Greek military defeat and the "disaster of the Asia Minor Greeks", the establishment of the Republic of Turkey and the emblematic Treaty of Lausanne, render this kind of handbook undoubtedly essential. It opens the discussion to the wider audience in a rational and composed way and most importantly, the reader can follow through the pages, the dialogue between Turkish and Greek scholars. A book of this kind was missing from public history."-Prof. Sia Anagnostopoulou, Panteion University "As an expert on the subject of "minorities" for the past fifty years with a number of publications in Turkish, English, and French, and based on the experts that are participating in the A Century of Greek-Turkish Relations: A Handbook, there is no doubt that this will become an indispensable tool, and above all, an objective account of the Greek-Turkish relations for both experts and the wider public."-Prof. (emeritus) Baskin Oran, Ankara University "As editors of this important and timely book, Nikos Christofis and Anthony Deriziotis assert that uneducated narratives have perpetuated misunderstandings within Turkish-Greek relations. In their enlightening work, they dismantle these misconceptions, offering a nuanced exploration of the historical and contemporary complexities between the two nations. By featuring insights from leading experts, this book provides a crucial resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Turkish-Greek relations, presenting new historical insights and analytical viewpoints on bilateral relations."-Prof. Evren Balta, Özyeğin University "A comprehensive and insightful survey of Greek-Turkish relations. A number of distinguished academics have offered their expertise succeeding in the formidable task of touching upon several sensitive issues avoiding stereotypes and easy readings of problems that are burdened by history. A must read for students and experts alike."
Introduction--Humanism In Ruins- Entangled Legacies of the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange.pdf
Humanism in Ruins: Entangled Legacies of the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange. Stanford University Press, 2018
The principal legacy of the 1923 exchange is arguably its contribution to the institutionalization of the management of difference via forced migration—a form of spatial redistribution of different groups according to their backgrounds and “origins.” Informed by the principle of segregation, the 1923 exchange is organically related to other cases that operate with the same logic: the construction of walls, apartheids, partitions, and forced migrations. In the book, I conceptualize these dynamics as segregative biopolitics. The 1923 exchange signaled a modern fusion of the eugenicist logic with demography, mobilized through racialized thinking and statistics, and implemented as spatial segregation—all of which gained a legal framework in the international arena with the ratification and execution of the 1923 exchange. Against this backdrop, Humanism in Ruins offers a multi-sited analysis of how difference is regulated in refugee integration and in cultural politics in the post-1945 era. Considering the scale of atrocities of the Second World War, one might have expected that the underlying racialized logics, repertoires and archives of knowledge that contributed to the atrocities in the first place, such as eugenics and segregative biopolitics, would have been effectively put into question by the institutions established to find solutions to the postwar crises, such as refugee associations (particularly one that the book engages for the first time), or platforms founded to promote peace, such as the United Nations or UNESCO. Following the Second World War, however, population transfers again took place en masse across Europe and beyond in the name of securing peace and stability, generating a massive refugee crisis. The Greek-Turkish exchange constituted an important reference point for these population transfers as a story of "successful repatriation." Within this framework, the book addresses how despite major transnational efforts—spearheaded by UNESCO—to overcome scientific racialism and accompanying archives of knowledge that inform repertoires of cultural identification, the effort remained largely a limited one in the post-Second-World-War era. The book traces the implications of these limitations for the cultural policies developed over the last few decades through the case of Turkey—based on the legacies of the population exchange, as well as in the European Union and UNESCO. The book ultimately raises questions for the resurfacing of fascistic and racist discourses in different parts of the world today.
For the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century with its still wide swathes of territory stretching from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf and its seemingly endless procession of confessional, ethnic and linguistic groups, the innovation of states based on national identity represented a mortal threat, as indeed, it did to other imperial structures of similarly diverse composition. None of the major empires, the Romanov, the Hapsburg and the Ottoman, would survive the early decades of the twentieth century. What set the Ottoman case apart from the others was the direct involvement of the Western powers in the process of imperial dismemberment. When even its erstwhile allies began to help themselves to portions of Ottoman territory whose integrity they had recently promised to protect—the French seized Tunisia in 1881 and the British helped themselves to Egypt the following year—it was clear that the external environment was turning increasingly hostile to the empire’s existence.