Victims and Avengers of the Nation: the Politics of Refugee Legacy in the Southern Balkans (original) (raw)
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Papyri - Volume 4 - Thessaloniki as a crossroad and shelter of refugees (1912-2012)
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EUSTATHIOS PELAGIDIS, former Associate Professor of the University of Western Macedonia. Hellas This work demonstrates, with data, that Thessaloniki has to show greater social his-tory, in relation to other Greek cities. And this not only during the Byzantine period (330-1453), when accepted laminated refugee flows from across the Balkans due avaroslavikon epiodromon but also in subsequent periods. A closer look, though, leads to the conclusion that the century after the liberation from the Turks (1912 – 2012) is distinctive for the most massive and frequent refugee flows of ex¬patriate and foreign populations that inundate this city. This is the reason why this city is rightfully proud for its bright social contribution this period during which it has been either a CROSSROAD or a SHELTER for weak social groups both of the same nationality and of others. Α) THESSALONIKI AS A CROSSROAD OF MUSLIM REFUGEES a) 1912-1924: From the Balkan Wars until the Convention concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, 460.000 Muslim refugees from Macedonia and the Balkans (Bulgraria – Serbia) were hosted and then sent to Turkey. b) End of the 20th c.: Due to the NATO bombings of Kossovo (1999), about five thou-sand (5,000) Kossovar Albanian Muslims are hosted in this city and are then sent to Australia. Β) THESSALONIKI AS A CROSSROAD AND SHELTER OF OTHER FOREIGN POPULATIONS a) ARMENIAN REFUGEES After the Asia Minor catastrophe (1929), about three thousand Armenian refugees from Asia Minor resort to this city. Residues of those refugees are the Armenians of Thessalo¬niki (1000 – 1500), who comprise the current Armenian Community of Thessaloniki. b) REFUGEES FROM ASIAN AND AFRICAN COUNTRIES In the hospitable shelter of Thessaloniki, “SOCIAL SOLIDARITY, RECEPTION CENTRE FOR REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS” (Siatistis 12), about two thousand (2,000) refugees have been hosted until today (2001 and on), coming from Asian and African countries with intense internal problems (Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Nigeria, Iran, Guinea and oth-ers). C) THESSALONIKI AS A SHELTER AND CROSSROAD OF REFUGEE POPULATIONS OF THE SAME NATIONALITY a) 1912-1924: During these twelve years, 1912-1924, approximately 430,000 farmers and 170,000 expatriate refugees from Anatolian cities, uprooted after the Balkan Wars and the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922), passed from Thessaloniki and scattered all over Macedo¬nia. b) REPATRIATED POPULATIONS OF THE SAME NATIONALITY (1990-2000): Approximately 150,000 c) GREEKS FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (1955 and on): 15,000 persons GREEKS FROM IMVROS (1964 and on): 2,000 persons d) CYPRIOT GREEKS (1974 and on): 10,000 persons (SOURCES: Archival newspapers and reliable Bibliography) NOTICE: We consider that, during this period, the most important cause of the recep-tion and hosting of so many refugee flows was firstly the Greco-Christian cultural element of the city and secondarily, its geographical position.
Migration in the Southern Balkans: From Ottoman Territory to Globalized Nation States.
This volume collects ten essays that look at intra-regional migration in the Southern Balkans from the late Ottoman period to the present. It examines forced as well as voluntary migrations and places these movements within their historical context, including ethnic cleansing, population exchanges, and demographic engineering in the service of nation-building as well as more recent labor migration due to globalization. Inside, readers will find the work of international experts that cuts across national and disciplinary lines. This cross-cultural, comparative approach fully captures the complexity of this highly fractured, yet interconnected, region. Coverage explores the role of population exchanges in the process of nation-building and irredentist policies in interwar Bulgaria, the story of Thracian refugees and their organizations in Bulgaria, the changing waves of migration from the Balkans to Turkey, Albanian immigrants in Greece, and the diminished importance of ethnic migration after the 1990s. In addition, the collection looks at such under-researched aspects of migration as memory, gender, and religion. The field of migration studies in the Southern Balkans is still fragmented along national and disciplinary lines. Moreover, the study of forced and voluntary migrations is often separate with few interconnections. The essays collected in this book bring these different traditions together. This complete portrait will help readers gain deep insight and better understanding into the diverse migration flows and intercultural exchanges that have occurred in the Southern Balkans in the last two centuries.
Pontic Greeks Today: Migrants or Refugees
This paper offers a conceptual framework in terms of which the current Pontic Greek experience of displacement from the Soviet Union can be interpreted in a historically informed way, by addressing two sets of issues: methodological and substantive. With respect to the former, I argue that 'refugeeness' is a modern phenomenon associated with the formation of nation states, entailing thus a necessary correlation between 'nationalism' and 'refugees'. This accounts for the mobility pattern of the Pontic Greeks from the Ottoman Empire to the Caucasus through the 19th century as an instance of migration rather than refugeeness. In turn, I seek to establish the historical and conceptual links between 'nationalism' and the cultivation of 'national identity' as part of the modern Greek state's irredentist policy which supports all current claims to 'repatriation' and the Greek homeland. Yet, this bears no necessary historical relation to 'ethnic identity claims' which show themselves to be contingently construed and relationally specified. Substantively, in view of these peoples' repeated uprootings, any attempt to define their movements in terms of volition is insufficient to capture the complexity of their experience which often acquires dramatic proportions, as in the recent case of the Greeks from Central Asia, which includes phenomena of social nmn^'i and historical gaps in the group's collective consciousness. Both features turn them into refugees.
The University of Utah , 2016
Bülent Ecevit "What land were you torn away from, what makes you so sad having come here?" asked Mehmet the soldier from Anatolia, addressing the Anzac lying near. "From the uttermost ends of the world I come, so it is written on my tombstone, " answered the youthful Anzak, "and here I am buried in a land that I did not even know." "Do not be disheartened, mate, " Mehmet told him tenderly, "you share with us the same fate in the bosom of our country." "You are not a stranger anymore, you have become a Mehmet just like me.
The First World War and the refugee crisis: historiography and memory in the Greek context
Minor Greek communities -is attributed mainly to the abandonment of Greece by its allies after the royalist victory in the 1920 elections. By being confined to the margins of national history, Asia Minor refugees are placed in a void, without any reference to the extended population movements that took place all over Europe or to the series of refugee waves from the Ottoman empire to Greece that became systematised after 1914. 2 The same holds true for the period that followed. In the context of Greek historiography, the reception of the Asia Minor refugees is presented as an epic achievement of the Greek state -perhaps the most important one in peacetime. This narrative, though, obscures the fact that, during the interwar, refugees were constructed as distinct social subjects all over Europe and that they dynamically interrelated with the managing policies of the receiving states. The aim of this article is to examine the historiographical construction of Asia Minor refugees in the context of Greek historiography. It will not focus solely on historiography, though. Historiography neither reflects nor represents the past, but constructs it in a way that is meaningful for the present; it is subject to reinterpretations and rearticulations. Most importantly, it becomes a field of power antagonisms related to the spaces and trajectories of representations. Therefore, alongside the mainstream historiographical configurations of the issue under discussion, we will take under consideration the agency of the refugees, the strategies they developed and the paths they followed so as to ensure a space for their experience in the historiographical narrative.
During the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) -and largely as a result of it- some 70,000 Greek and Slavomacedonian political refugees left or were forced to leave Greece, seeking refuge in neighboring Yugoslavia and other People’s Republics in Eastern Europe. This paper aims to explain the military necessities behind this decision and the way this primarily humanitarian issue evolved into a political one, as these children -soon accompanied by thousands of other political refugees from Greece- were usually treated in Yugoslavia not as Greeks, but as “Aegean Macedonian” refugees (also known as Egejci) who fled persecution for their identity and not for their ideology. This misinterpretation often threatened to evolve into a major issue in bilateral relations, as many among this disputed refugee population pursued a privileged relationship with the centers of power in Belgrade and Skopje by promoting their exodus from Greece as a central element of the new national Macedonian narrative. In this context, the present paper will attempt to explore the relationship between refugees, historians and Slavomacedonian Diaspora organizations in Australia, Canada and elsewhere, as well as the way they interacted and influenced public discourse in Yugoslav Macedonia before independence (1991).