Global InformationPopulation exchange between Greece and Turkey information
The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey (Greek: Ἡ Ἀνταλλαγή, romanized: I Antallagí, Ottoman Turkish: مبادله, romanized: Mübâdele, Turkish: Mübadele) stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, by the governments of Greece and Turkey. It involved at least 1.6 million people (1,221,489 Greek Orthodox from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, the Pontic Alps and the Caucasus, and 355,000–400,000 Muslims from Greece),[2] most of whom were forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from their homelands.
On 16 March 1922, the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf Kemal Tengrişenk, had stated that "[t]he Ankara Government was strongly in favour of a solution that would satisfy world opinion and ensure tranquillity in its own country", and that "[i]t was ready to accept the idea of an exchange of populations between the Greeks in Asia Minor and the Muslims in Greece".[3][4] Eventually the initial request for an exchange of population came, under pressure (the fire of Smyrna took place only a month earlier), from Eleftherios Venizelos in a letter he submitted to the League of Nations on 16 October 1922, as a way to normalize relations de jure, since the majority of surviving Greek inhabitants of Turkey had fled from recent massacres to Greece by that time. Venizelos proposed a "compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish populations," and asked Fridtjof Nansen to make the necessary arrangements.[5] The new state of Turkey also envisioned the population exchange as a way to formalize and make permanent the flight of its native Greek Orthodox peoples while initiating a new exodus of a smaller number (400,000) of Muslims from Greece as a way to provide settlers for the newly depopulated Orthodox villages of Turkey; Greece meanwhile saw it as a way to provide propertyless Greek Orthodox refugees from Turkey with lands of expelled Muslims.[6] Norman M. Naimark claimed that this treaty was the last part of an ethnic cleansing campaign to create an ethnically pure homeland for the Turks.[7] Historian Dinah Shelton similarly wrote that "the Lausanne Treaty completed the forcible transfer of the country's Greeks."[8]
This major compulsory population exchange, or agreed mutual expulsion, was based not on language or ethnicity, but upon religious identity, and involved nearly all the indigenous Orthodox Christian peoples of Turkey (the Rûm "Roman/Byzantine" millet), including even Armenian- and Turkish-speaking Orthodox groups, and on the other side most of the native Muslims of Greece, including even Greek-speaking Muslim citizens, such as Vallahades and Cretan Turks, but also Muslim Roma groups,[9] such as Sepečides.[10] Each group comprised native peoples, citizens, and in cases even veterans of the state which expelled them, and none had representation in the state purporting to speak for them in the exchange treaty.
Some scholars have criticized the exchange, describing it as a legalized form of mutual ethnic cleansing,[11][12][13] while others have defended it, stating that despite its negative aspects, the exchange had an overall positive outcome since it successfully prevented another potential genocide of Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey.[14][15]
- ^ Mariana, Correia; Letizia, Dipasquale; Saverio, Mecca (2014). VERSUS: Heritage for Tomorrow. Firenze University Press. p. 69. ISBN 9788866557418.
- ^ Giuseppe Motta (2013). Less than Nations: Central-Eastern European Minorities after WWI. Vol. 1. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 365. ISBN 9781443854610.
- ^ Kritikos, Giorgos (1999). "Motives for compulsory population exchange in the aftermath of the Greek-Turkish War: (1922-1923)". Bulletin of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies. 13 (13): 212. doi:10.12681/deltiokms.147. ISSN 2459-2579 – via ePublishing.
Actually, Kemal had stated previously (16 March 1922) that "the Ankara Government was strongly in favour of the idea of that an exchange of populations take place between the Greeks in Asia Minor and the Muslims in Greece".
- ^ Bourne, Kenneth; Cameron Watt, Donald, eds. (1985). British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part II: From the First to the Second World War, Series B, Turkey, Iran, and the Middle East, 1918-1939. Vol. 3, The Turkish Revival 1921-1923. University Publications of America. pp. 657–660. ISBN 978-0-89093-603-0.
"Yussuf Kemal Bey had remarked at the previous meeting (16 March 1922), where speaking of the fundamental principles of peace, that Lord Curzon had dwelt upon the safeguarding of minorities". He also noted that "the Ankara Government was strongly in favour of a solution that would satisfy world opinion and ensure tranquillity in its own country. It was ready to accept the idea of an exchange of populations between the Greeks in Asia Minor and the Muslims in Greece". In reply to this proposal, Lord Curzon noted that "no doubt something was possible in this direction but it was not a complete solution. The population in Asia Minor was somewhere near half a million. For physical reasons such a large number could not be entirely transported and for agricultural and commercial reasons many of them would be unwilling to go".
- ^ Shields, Sarah (2013). "The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange: Internationally Administered Ethnic Cleansing". Middle East Report (267): 2–6. JSTOR 24426444.
- ^ Howland, Charles P. (1926). "Greece and Her Refugees". Foreign Affairs. 4 (4): 613–623. doi:10.2307/20028488. JSTOR 20028488.
- ^ Naimark, Norman M (2002), Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, Harvard University Press. p. 47.
- ^ Dinah, Shelton. Encyclopaedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, p. 303.
- ^ Bilgehan, Zeynep (13 March 2019). "Roma people tell of ancestors' 1923 'population exchange' stories". Hürriyet Daily News. Retrieved 9 May 2022.
- ^ Sepečides uni-graz.at Archived 2021-12-02 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Pinxten, Rik; Dikomitis, Lisa (May 2009). When God Comes to Town: Religious Traditions in Urban Contexts. Berghahn Books. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-84545-920-8.
- ^ Adelman, Howard; Barkan, Elazar (2011). No Return, No Refuge: Rites and Rights in Minority Repatriation. Columbia University Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-231-52690-6.
- ^ Mulaj, Kledja (2008). Politics of Ethnic Cleansing: Nation-state Building and Provision of In/security in Twentieth-century Balkans. Lexington Books. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-7391-1782-8.
- ^ Faulkenberry, Jason B. (2012). The 1923 Greco-Turkish Population Exchange: Successful Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (PDF) (Master's thesis). United States Army Command and General Staff College.
- ^ Moses, A. Dirk (2021). The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression. Cambridge University Press. p. 348. ISBN 978-1-107-10358-0.