Ethnic Cleansing and Diplomacy: A View of the Greek-Turkish Exchange of Populations of 1923-24 from the US National Archives (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange 1922/1923-Conflicted Memories and Global Legacies
In: Südosteuropa-Mitteilungen, 2023
The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange 1922/1923. Conflicted Memories and Global Legacies The collective memory of the "Asia Minor Catastrophe" is omnipresent in modern Greece. The term refers to the expulsion of the Greek Orthodox population from Asia Minor in September 1922 as result of the lost war against Turkey (1919-1922). This violent displacement was made subsequently legal by the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, signed at Lausanne 30 January 1923, as part of the Lausanne Peace Treaty. In Turkey's official culture of remembrance and politics of history, the exodus of over a million Orthodox Christians from Asia Minor and the following Lausanne Convention is overshadowed by the "liberation of Izmir" by Kemal Atatürk. Although the Treaty of Lausanne was not the first interstate population exchange agreement in modern history, its impact at the global level was unprecedented. In the decades that followed, up to the end of the Cold War, the alleged "success story" of the Greek-Turkish population exchange was repeatedly invoked to justify and enforce large-scale population resettlements for the purpose of national homogenization projects.
Migration Letters, 2023
In 1924, the League of Nations authorized a special commission to resettle the hundreds of thousands of refugees created by the Greco-Turkish War. The Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC) would be responsible for rehousing Greek refugees expelled from former Ottoman territories and resettling them in Greece. The RSC had a unique commission. In an attempt to effect a "permanent solution" to ethnic violence in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations had helped broker the Treaty of Lausanne between the warring nations of Greece and Turkey that ended the conflict and authorized each nation to denaturalize and expel any Greeks in Turkey and any Turks in Greece, over one and a half million civilians in total from both countries. With the League's approval, the RSC carried out the task of resettling hundreds of thousands of refugees who had been created by international accord, forced out of their ancestral homelands, and expelled to Greece with the vague promise of citizenship, housing, and welfare. This paper follows how the Refugee Settlement Commission, a supranational organization created and legitimized by the League of Nations, sought to enact their visions of modernity and civilization through the resettlement of these refugees.
Contrary to common belief, the Lausanne Convention (1923) was not the first international treaty to foresee an “exchange” of populations, although it was indeed the first to make such an exchange obligatory. This sad “privilege” of first mention ever belongs to a bilateral treaty signed between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire in September 1913, whose success led the Ottomans to suggest a similar exchange concerning the Greeks of the Aydın vilayet in Asia Minor with the Muslims of Greek Macedonia. The Greek government was initially negative, but the Young Turks attempted to enforce it either way, adopting a series of persecutions against non-Muslim citizens of the Empire and embarking on a naval arms race against Greece. Facing an augmenting flow of refugees from Asia Minor and in fear of new hostilities, Athens was soon convinced that a consensus might be preferable. Upon the formal acceptance of such talks in principle, intensive contact between the two sides on a high level resulted in significant progress within the following months, allowing for a joint committee to be created in İzmir in June 1914 with the task to prepare the ground for the exchange. However, the eruption of World War I in Europe and the decision of the Ottoman government to join the Central Powers had a detrimental effect on the talks, as all related activity was suspended and the idea would come up again only after the end of the war, in totally different terms.
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."
Fabricating Fidelity: Nation-Building, International Law, and the Greek–Turkish Population Exchange
Supported by Athens and Ankara, and implemented largely by the League of Nations, the Greek-Turkish population exchange uprooted and resettled hundreds of thousands. The aim here was not to organize plebiscites, channel self-determination claims, or install protective mechanisms for minorities -all familiar features of the Allies' management of imperial disintegration in Europe after 1919. Nor was it to restructure a given economy and society from top to bottom, generating an entirely new legal order in the process; this had often been the case with colonialism, and would characterize much of the Mandate System in the interbellum. Instead, the goal was to deploy a unique legal mechanism -not in conformity with European practice, but also distinct from most extra-European governance regimes -in order to resolve ethno-national conflict by redividing land, reshaping national identities, and unleashing new processes of capital accumulation.
The Lausanne Convention, signed by the Greek and Turkish governments on 30 January 1923, after the defeat of the Greek army at the Asia Minor front in 1922, imposed the compulsory exchange of the Greek and Turkish populations. With a few exceptions, almost two million people were forced to leave their homeland and migrate to the other country. For many decades, these people were forbidden to travel to their homeland and visit the places where their families had lived for centuries, while in their new homeland they were treated with hostility. Within this context, education operated as a factor of cultural homogenization, which would ensure that the future generations of refugee families would forget their past and conceal their cultural heritage. Moreover, a typical choice made by the cultural and educational policies of the two relevant nation-states was the elimination of any element that could possibly undermine the dominant national narrative by demonstrating common characteristics and experiences of the two peoples. We should not forget that the division and enmity that were maintained by both sides were based on not only the long historical sequence of wars, but also on the deeply embedded stereotypical images, which racially and culturally demonized the other, thus excluding any possibility of reconciliation. Within this asphyxiating propagandistic environment, the refugees were the only ones who had lived on the other side, preserving memories of peaceful coexistence and who, therefore, could question the image of the detested other. Even so, despite the similarities in the attitudes of the two states towards their new citizens and their refugee memory, it does not appear that the refugees were as equally active in both countries. In Greece, for many reasons, the refugees quickly organized themselves into cultural associations, achieved political representation, established institutions and museums, and created archives of written and visual documents and oral testimonies. In Turkey, on the other hand, the descendants of refugees only started to be active collectively a little before 2000. Today, the most active foundation in Turkey is the NGO Lozan Mübadilleri Vakfi. The foundation holds cultural events and exhibitions in Turkey and Greece, collects oral testimonies and organizes trips to the places of origin of Turkish refugees in Greece. Furthermore, it has developed a remarkable publishing activity. This paper aims to place the Greek and Turkish memory communities of the refugees of the Lausanne Convention within the same framework of observation. In the first part, a brief outline of the historical context of the population exchange is given, how it was handled politically and the position it took in the two national historiographies. The second part reviews the history of refugee associations and foundations in both countries. The third part shows the differences and, mostly, similarities that arise from an analysis of the narratives of Greek and Turkish refugees, as these appear in the bilingual publication of the Lozan Mübadilleri Vakfi. An attempt is also made to interpret refugee trauma and its intergenerational evolution. In the fourth part, some thoughts are given on the question of whether it is possible to create a common lieu de mémoire for the refugees on both sides, and what its characteristics should be.
Leiden Journal of International Law, 2011
Supported by Athens and Ankara, and implemented largely by the League of Nations, the Greek-Turkish population exchange uprooted and resettled hundreds of thousands. The aim here was not to organize plebiscites, channel self-determination claims, or install protective mechanisms for minorities – all familiar features of the Allies’ management of imperial disintegration in Europe after 1919. Nor was it to restructure a given economy and society from top to bottom, generating an entirely new legal order in the process; this had often been the case with colonialism, and would characterize much of the Mandate System in the interbellum. Instead, the goal was to deploy a unique legal mechanism – not in conformity with European practice, but also distinct from most extra-European governance regimes – in order to resolve ethno-national conflict by redividing land, reshaping national identities, and unleashing new processes of capital accumulation.