Population exchange between Greece and Turkey: Difference between revisions

[[File:Kayaköy (7023405881).jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|The [[ghost town]] of [[Kayaköy]] (Livisi) in southwestern [[Anatolia]]. The Greek village was abandoned during the 1923 population exchange.<ref>{{cite book| last1=Mariana| first1=Correia| last2=Letizia| first2=Dipasquale| last3=Saverio| first3=Mecca| title=VERSUS: Heritage for Tomorrow| publisher=Firenze University Press| isbn=9788866557418| page=69| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=84PCBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA69| language=en| year=2014}}</ref>]]

 

 

On 16 March 1922, [[Minister of Foreign Affairs (Turkey)|Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs]] [[Yusuf Kemal Bey|Yusuf Kemal Tengrişenk]] 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".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kritikos |first=Giorgos |date=1999 |title=Motives for compulsory population exchange in the aftermath of the Greek-Turkish War: (1922-1923) |url=https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/deltiokms/article/view/2528 |journal=Bulletin of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies |volume=13 |language=en |issue=13 |page=212 |doi=10.12681/deltiokms.147 |issn=2459-2579 |quote=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". |via=[[National Documentation Centre (Greece)|ePublishing]]|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |editor-last=Bourne |editor-first=Kenneth |editor-last2=Cameron Watt |editor-first2=Donald |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jooqzwEACAAJ |title=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 |date=1985 |publisher=[[University Press of America|University Publications of America]] |isbn=978-0-89093-603-0 |volume=3, The Turkish Revival 1921-1923 |pages=657–660 |language=en |quote="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". }}</ref> Eventually, the initial request for an exchange of population came from [[Eleftherios Venizelos]] in a letter he submitted to the [[League of Nations]] on 16 October 1922, following Greece's defeat in the [[Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)|Greco-Turkish War]] and two days after their accession of the [[Armistice of Mudanya]]. The request intended to normalize relations ''de jure'', since the majority of surviving Greek inhabitants of Turkey had fled from [[Greek genocide|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.<ref name="The Greek-Turkish Population Exchan">{{cite journal|last1=Shields |first1=Sarah|title=The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange: Internationally Administered Ethnic Cleansing|journal= Middle East Report|date=2013|issue=267|pages=2–6|jstor=24426444}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Howland|first1=Charles P.|title=Greece and Her Refugees|journal=Foreign Affairs|date=1926|volume=4|issue=4|pages=613–623|doi=10.2307/20028488|jstor=20028488|url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/greece/1926-07-01/greece-and-her-refugees}}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=May 2024|reason=Outdated (1926) and unacademic source}} [[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.<ref>Naimark, Norman M (2002), Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, Harvard University Press. p. 47.</ref> Historian Dinah Shelton similarly wrote that "the Lausanne Treaty completed the forcible transfer of the country's Greeks."<ref>Dinah, Shelton. Encyclopaedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, p. 303.</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The quoted entry is a tertiary source which makes only a passing reference to the population exchange, and should be replaced with a more comprehensive secondary source, per [[WP:SCHOLARSHIP]].|date=May 2024}}