Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey (Forced Migration (12))

Following the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 by nationalist Turkish forces, the 1923 Lausanne Convention specified the first internationally ratified compulsory population exchange. It proved to be a watershed in the eastern Mediterranean, having far-reaching ramifications both for the new Turkish Republic, and for Greece which had to absorb over a million refugees. Known as the Asia Minor Catastrophe by the Greeks, it marked the establishment of the independent nation state for the Turks. The consequences of this event have received surprisingly little attention despite the considerable relevance for the contemporary situation in the Balkans. This volume addresses the challenge of writing history from both sides of the Aegean and provides, for the first time, a forum for multidisciplinary dialogue across national boundaries. "This volume is a long overdue endeavour to tackle the thorny and delicate issue of the compulsory population exchange . . . The argumentative force of the volume lies in the careful analysis of the contradictory and ambiguous ramifications of the convention." -The Greek Review of Social Research Following the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 by nationalist Turkish forces, the 1923 Lausanne Convention specified the first internationally ratified compulsory population exchange. It proved to be a watershed in the eastern Mediterranean, having far-reaching ramifications both for the new Turkish Republic, and for Greece which hadto absorb over a million refugees. Known as the Asia Minor Catastrophe by the Greeks, it marked the establishment of the independent nation state for the Turks. The consequences of this event have received surprisingly little attention despite the considerable relevance for the contemporary situation in the Balkans. This volume addresses the challenge of writing history from both sides of the Aegean and provides, for the first time, a forum for multidisciplinary dialogue across national boundaries.
Renée Hirschon was educated at the universities of Cape Town, Chicago and Oxford. Intensive fieldwork among the Asia Minor refugees settled in Piraeus resulted in the monograph "Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe". She has been Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, and Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean. She is currently Research Associate of the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, and Lecturer, St Peter's College, University of Oxford. Contents......Page 3 List of Figures......Page 4 List of Contributors......Page 5 Notes on Terminology and Orthography......Page 6 Preface......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 1 'Unmixing Peoples' in the Aegean Region......Page 12 2 The Consequences of the Lausanne Convention......Page 17 3 Lausanne Revisited......Page 22 4 The Consequences of the Exchange of Populations for Turkey......Page 30 5 1922: Political Continuations and Realignments in the Greek State......Page 37 6 Economic Consequences following Refugee Settlement in Greek Macedonia, 1923-1932......Page 42 7 Homogenising the Nation, Turkifying the Economy......Page 50 8 The Story of Those Who Stayed......Page 59 9 Religion or Ethnicity......Page 69 10 Inter-war Town Planning and the Refugee Problem in Greece......Page 77 11 When Greeks Meet Other Greeks......Page 83 12 Housing and the Architectural Expression of Asia Minor Greeks Before and After 1923......Page 92 13 Space, Place and Identity......Page 100 14 Lessons in Refugeehood......Page 107 15 Muslim Cretans in Thrkey......Page 115 16 The Exchange of Populations in Turkish Literature......Page 121 17 The Myth of Asia Minor in Greek Fiction......Page 128 18 Between Orientalism and Occidentalism......Page 134 References......Page 141 Appendix......Page 151 Index......Page 155