Today, on 30 January 1923, the Convention on the Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey was signed in Lausanne, Switzerland.
This Convention was one of the two parts of the well-known Treaty of Lausanne, while it was a reference point for the political balance and Greek-Turkish relations in a particularly important period for the country.
What exactly did its provisions provide for and what were its consequences for the entire Greek population, society and Hellenism.
The Population Exchange of 1923 between Greece and Turkey (Turkish: Mübadele) was based on religious identity, and included the Greek Orthodox Christian citizens of Turkey, and the Muslim citizens of Greece. The only one in world history that was dictated by an interstate convention.
The Convention on the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations was signed in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, six months before the Treaty of Lausanne was to be concluded by representatives of the governments of the Kingdom of Greece and Turkey (the Grand National Assembly) and in particular, on behalf of Greece, by E. It concerned about 2 million people (about 1.5 million Greeks in Anatolia, and 500,000 Muslims in Greece), most of whom became refugees, losing de jure citizenship of the country they left behind.
Article 2 of the Convention excluded from the exchange the "Greek inhabitants of Constantinople", and the "Muslim inhabitants of Western Thrace". Also excluded from the exchange, according to Article 14 of the Treaty of Lausanne, were the inhabitants of Imbros and Tenedos.
According to estimates, by the autumn of 1922 some 900,000 Orthodox refugees (including 50,000 Armenians) had arrived in Greece.
According to some sources, the exchange of populations, although a confusing and dangerous situation for many, was carried out relatively quickly by respected supervisors.
If the purpose of the exchange was ethnic-state homogeneity, then this had indeed been achieved by both sides. For example, in 1906 over 80% of the population of present-day Turkey was Muslim. By 1927, only 2.6% were non-Muslim. create a new road map of World War I displaced persons.
On a smaller scale, history had seen, for example, the Greek-Bulgarian population exchange of 1919. Because of the unanimous decision by the Western European powers, Greece and Turkey, that the protection of minorities, as far as the evolution of this concept in Europe was concerned, would not be sufficient to ease tensions after World War I, the population exchange was the only viable solution[BP].[ACCORDING TO REPRESENTATIVES FROM ANKARA, THE "IMPROVEMENT OF THE SITUATION OF MANY MINORITIES IN TURKEY DEPENDED ABOVE ALL ON THE EXCLUSION OF ANY FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PROVOCATION FROM OUTSIDE".
This could be most effectively achieved by an exchange, and "the best guarantees for the security and development of the minorities that would remain after the exchange would be those provided by the laws of the state, and Turkey's liberal policy towards all its communities, whose members would not deviate from their obligations as Turkish citizens." An exchange would also be useful in response to the violence in the Balkans.
There were, in any case, "over a million Turks without food and shelter in countries where neither Europe nor America had or would acquire any interest."
The agreement promised that the property of the immigrants would be safeguarded, and that they could freely carry with them any movable property. It also required that property that would not be moved be recorded in inventories, which would be submitted to both governments to take care of future reparations.
After the establishment of a committee to deal with the question of property, movable and immovable, this committee would decide on the amount of compensation to be received by the beneficiaries for their immovable property (houses, cars, land, etc.).
A promise was also made that the refugees in their new place of settlement would receive possessions of equal value to those they left behind. Greece and Turkey were to calculate the total amount of the refugees' property, and the country with the difference in its favour was to remit it (the difference) to the other country.
All property left in Greece was to belong to the Greek state, and all property left in Turkey was to belong to the Turkish state. Because of the different nature of the populations, the property left behind by the Greek economic elite in Anatolia was greater than that left behind by the Muslim farmers in Greece.
The Refugee Rehabilitation Committee had no useful plan for the resettlement of the refugees. Having come to Greece to settle the refugees, the Commission had no statistics on either the number of refugees or the amount of land to be made available.
By the time of its arrival, the Greek government had already temporarily settled 72,581 farming families, almost exclusively in Macedonia, where the houses left behind by the Muslims, as well as the fertile land, made their settlement practical and auspicious.
In Turkey, the abandoned lands by the Christian population had caused much looting by immigrants, before the great influx of the population exchange migrants.
In Greece, the arrival of refugees 'broke' the dominance of the monarchy and the old politicians over the Republicans. In the 1920 elections, most of the newcomers supported Eleftherios Venizelos.
In the years after the Catastrophe, Eleftherios Venizelos forced the numerous Asia Minor refugees, the majority of them farmers, to settle in the large urban centres of Greece, with the result that many of them suffered.
This event, among other things, laid the foundations of Greek homelessness, which became particularly intense in the post-war years due to the destruction of the countryside.
It even survives to this day, since an unusually large percentage of the total Greek population is concentrated in Athens and Thessaloniki.
The great poverty and misery experienced by the refugees, the majority of whom were forced to integrate into the lower working classes, gradually led them to shift their support to the Communist Party, contributing to its growing strength.
By the time the Treaty came into force on 1 May 1923, most of the Greek Orthodox population living on the Aegean coast of Turkey had already fled. The exchange included the remaining Greeks of central Anatolia (Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking), Pontus and Kars, a total of about 189,916 people. On the other hand, it included 354,647 Muslims
The agreement therefore simply 'ratified' what had already happened to the Turkish and Greek populations[22]. Of the 1,300,000 Greeks involved in the exchange, only about 150,000 were settled in an organized manner.
The majority had already fled, following the retreat of the Greek army after its defeat in the Greek-Turkish War of 1919-1922, while others had fled Turkey from the coast of Smyrna. The unilateral migration of the Greek population was transformed into a population exchange with international guarantees.
In Greece the exchange was included in the events generally called the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Significant refugee movements had taken place after the Balkan Wars, World Wars I and II, and the Turkish War of Independence.
These included exchanges and deportations of about 500,000 Muslims (mostly Greek-speaking Muslims) from Greece, and about 1,500.000 Greeks from Asia Minor, Turkish Eastern Thrace and the Pontic Alps in northeastern Anatolia, and the remaining Caucasian Greeks from the former Russian province of Kars in the southern Caucasus who had not already left immediately after World War I.
The Convention affected the populations as follows: almost all Greek Orthodox Christians of Asia Minor together with Greek Orthodox populations from central Anatolia (Cappadocians), the Ionian region, Pontus, the former Russian province of Kars, Prussia, the Bithynia region (e.g. Nicomedia (Izmit), Chalcedon (Kadikoy)), Eastern Thrace and other regions, were either deported or officially lost their citizenship from Turkish territory.
All of the above numbered about half a million and were in addition to the Greeks who had been deported before the signing of the Convention.
All of the above numbered about half a million and were in addition to the Greeks who had been deported before the signing of the Convention. About 500,000 people were deported from Greece, mostly Greek-speaking Muslims, plus others such as Turks, Roma Muslims, Pomaks, Chamies, Vlachomoglenites, and Donme.
By the Lausanne Conference the Greek population had already left Anatolia, with the exception of 200,000 Greeks who remained after the withdrawal of the Greek army from the region.On the other hand, the Muslim population of Greece, not having been involved in the Greek-Turkish war in Anatolia, had remained almost intact.
The Turks and other Muslims of Western Thrace had been excluded from the exchange, as had the Greeks of Constantinople, and of Imbros and Tenedos.
Most of the property of the Greeks included in the exchange was confiscated by the Turkish government as "abandoned" and therefore belonging to the state. The properties were confiscated arbitrarily declaring the owners "fugitives" by court order. Further, landed property of many Greeks was declared "unclaimed" and consequently claimed by the state.
Consequently, most of this property was sold at face value by the Turkish government. Subcommittees operating within the Committee for Abandoned Properties had undertaken the task of identifying those to be exchanged in order to continue the work of selling the properties.In contrast, the Turkish community of Western Thrace grew to over 140,000.
The population of Crete also changed significantly.
The population of Crete also changed significantly. Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking Muslim residents of Crete (Turkocretans) moved mainly to the Anatolian coast, but also to Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
Some of them self-identify to this day as being of Greek ethnic origin[CITATION PENDING]. Similarly, Greeks from Asia Minor, mainly from Smyrna, arrived in Crete, bringing with them distinctive dialects, customs and cooking.
Source:iellada.gr
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