Population exchange between Greece and Turkey
The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey was based upon religious identity, and involved the Greek Orthodox citizens of Turkey and the Muslim citizens of Greece. It was the first compulsory large-scale population exchange, or agreed mutual expulsion of the 20th century.
The "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" was signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, on the 30th January 1923, by the governments of Greece and Turkey. It involved approximately 2 million people, most of whom were forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from their homelands.
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[edit] Displacements
After the Ankara-based government of the Turkish National Movement rejected the Treaty of Sèvres that had been signed by the Constantinople-based Ottoman government, a new peace conference was organised at Lausanne, Switzerland, in order to draft a treaty to replace the Treaty of Sevres. While the Lausanne Peace Conference was ongoing, but separate from it and its resulting Treaty of Lausanne, the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" was signed at Lausanne on 30 January 1923 by the governments of Greece and Turkey at the insistence of Venizelos and Kemal Atatürk.[1][2][3]
By the time the Exchange was to take effect, May 1, 1923, most of the pre-war Orthodox Greek population of Aegean Turkey had already fled. The Exchange therefore only involved the Greeks of central Anatolia (both Greek and Turkish speaking), and the Greeks of Pontus, a total of roughly 189,916[4]. The total number of Muslims involved was 354,647[5].
The agreement therefore merely ratified what had already been perpetrated on the Greek population. Of the 1,300,000 Greeks involved in the exchange, only approximately 150,000 were resettled in an orderly fashion. The majority fled hastily with the retreating Greek Army following Greece's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War, whilst others fled, amid scenes of indescribable panic, from the shores of Smyrna.[6][7] The unilateral emigration of the Greek population, already at an advanced stage, was transformed into a population exchange backed by international legal guarantees.[8]
In Greece, it was considered part of the events called the Asia Minor Catastrophe (Greek: Μικρασιατική καταστροφή). Significant refugee displacement and population movements had already occurred following the Balkan Wars, World War I, and the Turkish War of Independence. These included exchanges and expulsion of about 500,000 Turks from Greece and about 1,500,000 Greeks from Asia Minor, Anatolia and Eastern Thrace to Greece.
The convention affected the populations as follows: almost all Greek Orthodox Christians (Greek- or Turkish-speaking) of Asia Minor including a Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox population from middle Anatolia (Karamanlides), the Ionia region (e.g. Smyrna, Aivali), the Pontus region (e.g. Trapezunda, Sampsunta), Prusa (Bursa), the Bithynia region (e.g., Nicomedia (İzmit), Chalcedon (Kadıköy), East Thrace, and other regions were either expelled or formally denaturalized from Turkish territory. These numbered about half a million and were added to the over one million Greeks already cleansed by the Turkish army before the treaty was signed. About 500,000 people were expelled from Greece, predominantly Turks, and others including Greek Muslims, Muslim Roma, Pomaks, Cham Albanians, Megleno-Romanians, and the Dönmeh.
[edit] Aftermath
The Turks and other Muslims of Western Thrace were exempted from this transfer as well as the Greeks of Istanbul and the Aegean Islands of Imbros (Gökçeada) and Tenedos (Bozcaada). Due to punitive measures carried out by the Republic of Turkey, such as the 1932 parliamentary law which barred Greek citizens in Turkey from a series of 30 trades and professions from tailor and carpenter to medicine, law, and real estate,[9] the Greek population of Istanbul began to decline, as evidenced by demographic statistics.
The Varlık Vergisi capital gains tax imposed in 1942 on wealthy non-Muslims in Turkey also served to reduce the economic potential of ethnic Greek businesspeople in Turkey. Furthermore, violent incidents as the Istanbul Pogrom (1955) directed against the ethnic Greek community greatly accelerated emigration of Greeks, reducing the 200,000-strong Greek minority in 1924 to just over 2,500 in 2006.[10] By contrast the Turkish community of Greece has increased in size to over 100,000 since the signing of the Lausanne Treaty, while Greece is also host to tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants.[11]
The population profile of Crete was significantly altered as well. Greek and Turkish speaking Muslim inhabitants of Crete (Cretan Turks) moved, principally to the Anatolian coast, but also to Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Some of these people identify themselves as ethnically Greek to this day[citation needed]. Conversely, Greeks from Asia Minor, principally Smyrna, arrived in Crete bringing in their distinctive dialects, customs and cuisine.
The expelled populations suffered greatly. According to Bruce Clark, leaders of both Greece and Turkey, as well as some circles in the international community, saw the resulting ethnic homogenization of their respective states as positive and stabilizing since it helped strengthen the nation-state natures of these two states.[12]
At the same time, forced deportation has obvious challenges: social, such as forcibly being removed from one's place of living, and more practical such as abandoning a well-developed family business. Countries also face other practical challenges: for example, even decades after, one could notice certain hastily developed parts of Athens, residential areas that had been quickly erected on a budget while receiving the fleeing Asia Minor population. Even to this day, both Greece and Turkey still have properties, and even entire villages such as Kayaköy that have been left abandoned since the exchange.
[edit] See also
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- Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)
- Greek refugees
- Greek genocide
- Greeks in Turkey
- Turks of Western Thrace
- Cretan Turks
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ Gilbar, Gad G. (1997). Population dilemmas in the Middle East: essays in political demography and economy. London: F. Cass. ISBN 0-7146-4706-3.
- ^ Kantowicz, Edward R. (1999). The rage of nations. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans. pp. 190–192. ISBN 0-8028-4455-3.
- ^ Crossing the Aegean: The Consequences of the 1923 Greek-Turkish Population Exchange (Studies in Forced Migration). Providence: Berghahn Books. 2003. pp. 29. ISBN 1-57181-562-7.
- ^ Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen. (2005). Immigration and asylum: from 1900 to the present, Volume 3. ABC-CLIO,. p. 377. ISBN 1576077969.
- ^ Renée Hirschon. (2003). Crossing the Aegean: an appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey.. Berghahn Books,. p. 85. ISBN 1571815627.
- ^ Sofos, Spyros A.; Özkırımlı, Umut (2008). Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey. C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd. pp. 116–117. ISBN 1-85065-899-4.
- ^ Hershlag, Zvi Yehuda (1997). Introduction to the Modern Economic History of the Middle East. Brill Academic Pub. p. 177. ISBN 90-04-06061-8.
- ^ Yosef Kats (1998). Partner to partition: the Jewish Agency's partition plan in the mandate era. Routledge. p. 88. ISBN 0714648469.
- ^ Vryonis, Speros (2005). The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6–7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul. New York: Greekworks.com, Inc.. ISBN 0-97476-603-8.
- ^ According to the Human Rights Watch the Greek population in Turkey is estimated at 2,500 in 2006. "From “Denying Human Rights and Ethnic Identity” series of Human Rights Watch"[dead link] Human Rights Watch, 2 July 2006. Archived copy.
- ^ "THE TURKS OF WESTERN THRACE". www.hrw.org. http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1999/greece/Greec991-04.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-02.
- ^ Bruce (2006). Twice A Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey. Granta. ISBN 1862077525.
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