What do you think?
Rate this book
Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey
In the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, nearly two million citizens in Turkey and Greece were expelled from homelands. The Lausanne treaty resulted in the deportation of Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and of Muslims from Greece to Turkey. The transfer was hailed as a solution to the problem of minorities who could not coexist. Both governments saw the exchange as a chance to create societies of a single culture. The opinions and feelings of those uprooted from their native soil were never solicited. In an evocative book, Bruce Clark draws on new archival research in Turkey and Greece as well as interviews with surviving participants to examine this unprecedented exercise in ethnic engineering. He examines how the exchange was negotiated and how people on both sides came to terms with new lands and identities. Politically, the population exchange achieved its planners' goals, but the enormous human suffering left shattered legacies. It colored relations between Turkey and Greece, and has been invoked as a solution by advocates of ethnic separation from the Balkans to South Asia to the Middle East. This thoughtful book is a timely reminder of the effects of grand policy on ordinary people and of the difficulties for modern nations in contested regions where people still identify strongly with their ethnic or religious community.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Bruce Clark
1 book7 followersBruce Clark is the international security editor of The Economist, and notable as the author of Twice A Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey.
He studied Philosophy at St John's College Cambridge. His writing for The Economist is usually focussed on religion or defence.
His book Twice A Stranger is a history of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey which took place in the early 1920s following the Treaty of Lausanne. The book won the Runciman Award in 2007.
He studied Philosophy at St John's College Cambridge. His writing for The Economist is usually focussed on religion or defence.
His book Twice A Stranger is a history of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey which took place in the early 1920s following the Treaty of Lausanne. The book won the Runciman Award in 2007.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
June 14, 2015
"I remember the day they went away. Some kissed the earth, some took bowls of soil with them. They were decent types; their menfolk used to attend our funerals, and we would exchange presents of food on each other's feast days...They were regular people and they cried as they left us...."
Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions That Forged Modern Greece and Turkey is a tightly reasoned, well-balanced and thought-provoking book about a highly contentious subject. It is also a heart-rending last chance to listen to the voices of men and women who survived the upheavals.
Beyond those lands where fragmented tribal rule predominated, imperial systems proved for millennia to be among most durable models of governance. The empires were often vast, stretching in some cases across continents; they ruled an extraordinary array of different peoples. Maintaining order was no small task and brute force was seldom the last resort.
During the 19th century, most of the dominant global empires of the past had begun to fray at the edges. In the first decades of the 20th century the Hapsburg, Russian and Ottoman empires would all meet their end and novel political entities would take their place.
“In the Ottoman world, as in many places where religious and ethnic groups were obliged to live together under an authoritarian roof, the advent of modernity, and of freedom in the contemporary sense, has led to ethnic division, not to integration…The sad fact is that multinational empires have given way not to multinational democracies but to sharply defined nation-states; and the process of redefinition has often been a violent one.”
Bruce Clark explores in depth one particular example of this process—the massive forced population exchange of Muslim ‘Turks’ and Orthodox Christian ‘Greeks’ that in 1923 brought to a close nearly a hundred years of armed conflict, re-creating two nation-states of Turkey and Greece from the Ottoman empire's ruins. The population exchange was the a culmination of the bloody dismembering of one of the world’s largest multi-ethnic empires; but it was also something of a beginning—a new way of creating nations that would become the blueprint for future partitions.
“At one level, the great separation between Greeks and Turks can be understood as a practical way of handling an immediate political and humanitarian crisis. As a result of the [Greco-Turkish] war which had just been won by Turkey, hundreds of thousands of people were homeless, destitute, ill…[The transfer] offered a way of containing the crisis at a high but manageable cost.”
Clark’s meticulous account of the history takes the reader through the fighting and horrors before and after the exchange, drawing on newly unearthed archival materials as well as on earlier scholarly works. The book’s discussion of the British-brokered negotiations, which came to be centered on the will of two astonishing leaders, Elefthérios Kyriákou Venizélos and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is filled with insights into the two men and the political and military realities they faced. Both Venizélos and Kemal had a keen sense that the transfer was not just an answer to a crisis, but an opportunity to consolidate power and shape their emerging nations into something more manageable, more readily governable.
On another level—the human level—the separation rent apart communities that had existed for hundreds of years, tore people from their homes, sent them penniless to lands where they knew no one and often knew not even the language.
Clark never loses sight of these 'ordinary' people whom the 'great' men moved around like so many pawns on a chess board—these men and women tell their stories here as well and I felt their heartbreak, the longing for lost places and family, the tears for the many, many dead. It made me understand the true cost of the nation-building experiments that began in earnest in the 19th century and continue to this very day. In nearly every oral history, the eighty and ninety year old immigrants remembered friends of other faiths, remembered their old lives with nostalgia, but concluded that leaving home became inevitable and somehow right.
The best form of government with which to replace authoritarian imperial polities was far from settled in the early 20th century. Modern liberal thinkers sometimes believe they know the best answers but solutions that rest on noble ideals such as democratic representation and tolerance of minorities have too often proved far from durable. Western sensibilities recoil at the very notion of separating peoples based on professed religion—even to impose a fragile peace or to protect the vulnerable—yet conflicts rooted in religion, tribalism or ethnicities, and the humanitarian disasters that result, still challenge us.
In the final chapter Clark adds this warning: “As globalization and liberal capitalism advance, they are bringing yet another set of principles about culture and citizenship to the partially modern, partially traditional societies of Turkey, Greece, and to many other places besides. Today's challenge is to ensure that these new understandings of identity and belonging do not exact such a high price in blood as the previous ones did.”
Twice a Stranger provides no simple answers but the questions it asks and the stories it tells are worth reading for those who care enough to go deeper than today’s headlines and learn more than just the myths nations tell about themselves and their past.
Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions That Forged Modern Greece and Turkey is a tightly reasoned, well-balanced and thought-provoking book about a highly contentious subject. It is also a heart-rending last chance to listen to the voices of men and women who survived the upheavals.
Beyond those lands where fragmented tribal rule predominated, imperial systems proved for millennia to be among most durable models of governance. The empires were often vast, stretching in some cases across continents; they ruled an extraordinary array of different peoples. Maintaining order was no small task and brute force was seldom the last resort.
During the 19th century, most of the dominant global empires of the past had begun to fray at the edges. In the first decades of the 20th century the Hapsburg, Russian and Ottoman empires would all meet their end and novel political entities would take their place.
“In the Ottoman world, as in many places where religious and ethnic groups were obliged to live together under an authoritarian roof, the advent of modernity, and of freedom in the contemporary sense, has led to ethnic division, not to integration…The sad fact is that multinational empires have given way not to multinational democracies but to sharply defined nation-states; and the process of redefinition has often been a violent one.”
Bruce Clark explores in depth one particular example of this process—the massive forced population exchange of Muslim ‘Turks’ and Orthodox Christian ‘Greeks’ that in 1923 brought to a close nearly a hundred years of armed conflict, re-creating two nation-states of Turkey and Greece from the Ottoman empire's ruins. The population exchange was the a culmination of the bloody dismembering of one of the world’s largest multi-ethnic empires; but it was also something of a beginning—a new way of creating nations that would become the blueprint for future partitions.
“At one level, the great separation between Greeks and Turks can be understood as a practical way of handling an immediate political and humanitarian crisis. As a result of the [Greco-Turkish] war which had just been won by Turkey, hundreds of thousands of people were homeless, destitute, ill…[The transfer] offered a way of containing the crisis at a high but manageable cost.”
Clark’s meticulous account of the history takes the reader through the fighting and horrors before and after the exchange, drawing on newly unearthed archival materials as well as on earlier scholarly works. The book’s discussion of the British-brokered negotiations, which came to be centered on the will of two astonishing leaders, Elefthérios Kyriákou Venizélos and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is filled with insights into the two men and the political and military realities they faced. Both Venizélos and Kemal had a keen sense that the transfer was not just an answer to a crisis, but an opportunity to consolidate power and shape their emerging nations into something more manageable, more readily governable.
On another level—the human level—the separation rent apart communities that had existed for hundreds of years, tore people from their homes, sent them penniless to lands where they knew no one and often knew not even the language.
Clark never loses sight of these 'ordinary' people whom the 'great' men moved around like so many pawns on a chess board—these men and women tell their stories here as well and I felt their heartbreak, the longing for lost places and family, the tears for the many, many dead. It made me understand the true cost of the nation-building experiments that began in earnest in the 19th century and continue to this very day. In nearly every oral history, the eighty and ninety year old immigrants remembered friends of other faiths, remembered their old lives with nostalgia, but concluded that leaving home became inevitable and somehow right.
The best form of government with which to replace authoritarian imperial polities was far from settled in the early 20th century. Modern liberal thinkers sometimes believe they know the best answers but solutions that rest on noble ideals such as democratic representation and tolerance of minorities have too often proved far from durable. Western sensibilities recoil at the very notion of separating peoples based on professed religion—even to impose a fragile peace or to protect the vulnerable—yet conflicts rooted in religion, tribalism or ethnicities, and the humanitarian disasters that result, still challenge us.
In the final chapter Clark adds this warning: “As globalization and liberal capitalism advance, they are bringing yet another set of principles about culture and citizenship to the partially modern, partially traditional societies of Turkey, Greece, and to many other places besides. Today's challenge is to ensure that these new understandings of identity and belonging do not exact such a high price in blood as the previous ones did.”
Twice a Stranger provides no simple answers but the questions it asks and the stories it tells are worth reading for those who care enough to go deeper than today’s headlines and learn more than just the myths nations tell about themselves and their past.
March 22, 2008
My maternal grandparents were born in Asia Minor and my grandmother suffered during the population exchange of 1923-4. They never really talked to my brothers and me about it like they did to my much older cousins, so I have always been fascinated and curious about that era in Greek-Turkish history. I wish, now, that my grandparents had spoken to me more about what happened, and I wish I was more aware of this period in Balkan history to ask them questions. But I was in my mid- to late teens when they died--only beginning to be aware of the world around me. I regret not reading more about the population exchange before visiting the villages my grandparents were born to be able to talk to the people there (mostly Cretan Turks who greeted me warmly with "Geia sou, sympatrioti") about the events that led to their being uprooted from their homeland and planted in a foreign land. Clark's book focuses more on Pontiac and Cretan Greeks, and Thracian and Mytilenian Turks, but their stories are most probably similar for everyone caught up in the turmoil of that period. Clark intersperses the accounts of the survivors with detailed explanation of the events of the 1910s and 1920s leading up to and including the politics behind the signing of the Lausanne Treaty helping the reader to understand the overall picture. It is well written and the reader does not need any knowledge of Balkan politics in the early 20th century to follow the events as they unfold. Highly recommended to anyone with ancestors from Ottoman Turkey and Greece.
October 14, 2018
20. Yüzyılın savaşlarla dolu ilk çeyreğinin en hazin hikayelerinden, Lozan Antlaşmasıyla karşılıklı tehcir ettirilen yüzbinlerce Anadolu Hristiyanı ve Yunanistan Müslümanının, ayrıldıkları ve gittikleri yerlerde "iki kere yabancı" olmasının trajik öyküsü. İrlandalı gazeteci Helen Clark, objektif ve hadisenin beşeri boyutuna yoğunlaşan ve genel okuyucuya hitap eden mükemmel bir "insan odaklı tarih" okuması kaleme almış, kitap Bilgi Üniversitesi tarafından da iyi bir çeviriyle Türkçeye de kazandırılmış...
Mübadelenin üzerinden yaklaşık bir asır geçtikten sonra, ilk kuşak da tamamen hayattan ayrıldığı için, tehcirin anıları unutulmuş, her iki topluluk da yeni ülkelerinde neredeyse tam entegre olmuş durumda. Nitekim hem Türk hem Yunan tarafları hem de mübadeleyi yaşayanlar, bunun kaçınılmaz olduğu noktasında ittifak halinde. Muhtemelen bu genel kanaat, diğer acıları da bir şekilde unutturmuş.
Kitapta, bu insanların yeni ve eski yurtlarındaki acı-tatlı hatıraları, birinci tanıklıklarla çok iyi ele alınmış; bilhassa Ayvalık, Tuzla, Pire, Drama, Samsun, Trabzon, Selanik ve Kuzey Yunanistan'daki diğer Pontus'lu Rum yerleşimleri üzerine anlatılan hikayeler etkileyici.
Kitabın en önemli özelliklerinden biri, bu mübadelenin Türk ve Yunan dini-milli kimliklerinin oluşumuna nasıl katkı yaptığına ilişkin ortaya koyduğu tezler. Bu çerçevede, iki ülke yakın siyasi tarihlerini de ana hatlarıyla kitapta takip etmek mümkün.
Özetle, Kitap; döneme, iki ülkeye ve mübadeleye ilişkin çok iyi bir kaynak niteliğinde...
Mübadelenin üzerinden yaklaşık bir asır geçtikten sonra, ilk kuşak da tamamen hayattan ayrıldığı için, tehcirin anıları unutulmuş, her iki topluluk da yeni ülkelerinde neredeyse tam entegre olmuş durumda. Nitekim hem Türk hem Yunan tarafları hem de mübadeleyi yaşayanlar, bunun kaçınılmaz olduğu noktasında ittifak halinde. Muhtemelen bu genel kanaat, diğer acıları da bir şekilde unutturmuş.
Kitapta, bu insanların yeni ve eski yurtlarındaki acı-tatlı hatıraları, birinci tanıklıklarla çok iyi ele alınmış; bilhassa Ayvalık, Tuzla, Pire, Drama, Samsun, Trabzon, Selanik ve Kuzey Yunanistan'daki diğer Pontus'lu Rum yerleşimleri üzerine anlatılan hikayeler etkileyici.
Kitabın en önemli özelliklerinden biri, bu mübadelenin Türk ve Yunan dini-milli kimliklerinin oluşumuna nasıl katkı yaptığına ilişkin ortaya koyduğu tezler. Bu çerçevede, iki ülke yakın siyasi tarihlerini de ana hatlarıyla kitapta takip etmek mümkün.
Özetle, Kitap; döneme, iki ülkeye ve mübadeleye ilişkin çok iyi bir kaynak niteliğinde...
April 17, 2013
An enlightening book that earns its fifth star on the strength of an outstanding final chapter. Clark makes some terrific arguments, for example:
- Pace Ascherson, the expulsion of Anatolian Greeks was not without prior provocation - had it not been for the ill-advised Greek invasion of Turkey in 1919 and the subsequent defeat and the scorched-earth retreat, burning villages and what not, some sort of Black Sea Greek community might very well have remained in situ today. Perhaps with its identity under threat or assault, but quite likely without mass clearances a la 1922.
- Also pace Ascherson, the expulsion of Greeks was by no means unilateral. 1.5 million Ottoman Christians were driven west to Greece, true, but half a million Ottoman Muslims (nominally 'Turks') were also forced east to Turkey, and throughout the negotiations process in Lausanne the Greek team headed by Venizelos actively colluded with Ataturk's Turks and Nansen of the League of Nations to bring about the eventual transfer. Hell, Venizelos was even given a hero's reception in Turkey seven years later.
- Far more than today's nation-states, the 19th-century empires (Habsburg, Ottoman, maybe even British?) were distinguished by their diversity - people from a bewildering rainbow of nations, languages, religions and cultures living, working and trading side by side, cheek by jowl, their mutual antagonisms kept in check by the overweening central authority above them. Identities were fuzzy, in many instances there were no clearly-defined 'national' identities. The principal marker was religion - you were an Ottoman Muslim, an Ottoman Jew or an Orthodox Christian - more often than not, what tongue you spoke or what race you belonged to didn't make a great deal of difference to either the state or to your day-to-day life.
- The idea of the nation-state, that is, an "imagined community" of persons belonging to a specific nation or race settling a well-defined patch of earth, marked by a particular language and culture, is a relatively modern notion, European in origin, according to Clark. If the old empires' borders were fuzzy, the modern nation-state's outlines are harder and much more sharply defined. And what today's nation-states have gained in clarity and homogeneity, they have lost in diversity and tolerance for minority presences and opinions. Whether this is a net gain or loss, Clark does not much judge.
- Neither does he categorically denounce the population exchange, saying that by its own lights, it was a qualified success. Transferring Christians en masse to Greece and Muslims likewise to Turkey had the net effect of pre-emptively removing potential thorns in the mutual relationship, eliminating future casus belli, and helping to build the cohesive nation-states that are today's Greece and Turkey. No minorities mean no problems, no conflicts, and no difficult questions to answer to oneself. This reminds me very much of what's going on with minorities in Bangladesh today. In fact, the whole book should be of great interest to South Asians who are interested in subjects such as the partition of 1947, the riots and the population exchanges in Bengal and Punjab, the unresolved issues of roots and memories, and even the ongoing homogenization of the Bangladeshi nation-state at the expense of Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and pahari minorities.
- Finally the kicker - the hermetic nationalist project in many countries is at grave danger from the forces of globalization, mass immigration, footloose capitalism, and the advent of technology. If Turkey eventually joins the EU, the population transfer of 80 years ago might even be partially reversed, with Anatolian Greeks buying land in their old homeland, and Macedonian and Thracian Turks vice versa. Already there is a thriving traffic of elderly people and their progeny visiting their ancestral bhita-matis in either country. And whether you like it or not, windows are being kicked open onto the outside world all the time, immigrants pouring in and mixing things up, historic nationalist myths being subjected to cold scrutiny. The best way to conclude is with Clark's own words:
"So at the very moment when people on both sides of the Aegean have more or less absorbed their hard nationalist lessons - a process which has taken a couple of generations, and required a great deal of forced learning as well as forced amnesia - it suddenly turns out that an entirely different set of ideas about identity and territory have been mandated by the international institutions that have replaced the League of Nations as guardians of the European order.
"That is a dangerous state of affairs. As Arnold Toynbee persuasively argued, the sudden arrival of western concepts about nationalism and statehood brought a tidal wave of misery, bloodshed and dislocation to an Ottoman world where such ideas were completely alien. It has taken most of the past eighty years for those ideas to be absorbed 'successfully' by the countries concerned. As globalization and liberal capitalism advance, they are bringing yet another set of principles about culture and citizenship to the partially modern, partially traditional societies of Turkey, Greece, and to many other places besides. Today's challenge is to ensure that these new understandings of identity and belonging do not exact such a high price in blood as the previous ones did."
- Pace Ascherson, the expulsion of Anatolian Greeks was not without prior provocation - had it not been for the ill-advised Greek invasion of Turkey in 1919 and the subsequent defeat and the scorched-earth retreat, burning villages and what not, some sort of Black Sea Greek community might very well have remained in situ today. Perhaps with its identity under threat or assault, but quite likely without mass clearances a la 1922.
- Also pace Ascherson, the expulsion of Greeks was by no means unilateral. 1.5 million Ottoman Christians were driven west to Greece, true, but half a million Ottoman Muslims (nominally 'Turks') were also forced east to Turkey, and throughout the negotiations process in Lausanne the Greek team headed by Venizelos actively colluded with Ataturk's Turks and Nansen of the League of Nations to bring about the eventual transfer. Hell, Venizelos was even given a hero's reception in Turkey seven years later.
- Far more than today's nation-states, the 19th-century empires (Habsburg, Ottoman, maybe even British?) were distinguished by their diversity - people from a bewildering rainbow of nations, languages, religions and cultures living, working and trading side by side, cheek by jowl, their mutual antagonisms kept in check by the overweening central authority above them. Identities were fuzzy, in many instances there were no clearly-defined 'national' identities. The principal marker was religion - you were an Ottoman Muslim, an Ottoman Jew or an Orthodox Christian - more often than not, what tongue you spoke or what race you belonged to didn't make a great deal of difference to either the state or to your day-to-day life.
- The idea of the nation-state, that is, an "imagined community" of persons belonging to a specific nation or race settling a well-defined patch of earth, marked by a particular language and culture, is a relatively modern notion, European in origin, according to Clark. If the old empires' borders were fuzzy, the modern nation-state's outlines are harder and much more sharply defined. And what today's nation-states have gained in clarity and homogeneity, they have lost in diversity and tolerance for minority presences and opinions. Whether this is a net gain or loss, Clark does not much judge.
- Neither does he categorically denounce the population exchange, saying that by its own lights, it was a qualified success. Transferring Christians en masse to Greece and Muslims likewise to Turkey had the net effect of pre-emptively removing potential thorns in the mutual relationship, eliminating future casus belli, and helping to build the cohesive nation-states that are today's Greece and Turkey. No minorities mean no problems, no conflicts, and no difficult questions to answer to oneself. This reminds me very much of what's going on with minorities in Bangladesh today. In fact, the whole book should be of great interest to South Asians who are interested in subjects such as the partition of 1947, the riots and the population exchanges in Bengal and Punjab, the unresolved issues of roots and memories, and even the ongoing homogenization of the Bangladeshi nation-state at the expense of Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and pahari minorities.
- Finally the kicker - the hermetic nationalist project in many countries is at grave danger from the forces of globalization, mass immigration, footloose capitalism, and the advent of technology. If Turkey eventually joins the EU, the population transfer of 80 years ago might even be partially reversed, with Anatolian Greeks buying land in their old homeland, and Macedonian and Thracian Turks vice versa. Already there is a thriving traffic of elderly people and their progeny visiting their ancestral bhita-matis in either country. And whether you like it or not, windows are being kicked open onto the outside world all the time, immigrants pouring in and mixing things up, historic nationalist myths being subjected to cold scrutiny. The best way to conclude is with Clark's own words:
"So at the very moment when people on both sides of the Aegean have more or less absorbed their hard nationalist lessons - a process which has taken a couple of generations, and required a great deal of forced learning as well as forced amnesia - it suddenly turns out that an entirely different set of ideas about identity and territory have been mandated by the international institutions that have replaced the League of Nations as guardians of the European order.
"That is a dangerous state of affairs. As Arnold Toynbee persuasively argued, the sudden arrival of western concepts about nationalism and statehood brought a tidal wave of misery, bloodshed and dislocation to an Ottoman world where such ideas were completely alien. It has taken most of the past eighty years for those ideas to be absorbed 'successfully' by the countries concerned. As globalization and liberal capitalism advance, they are bringing yet another set of principles about culture and citizenship to the partially modern, partially traditional societies of Turkey, Greece, and to many other places besides. Today's challenge is to ensure that these new understandings of identity and belonging do not exact such a high price in blood as the previous ones did."
Want to read
April 30, 2010Read with Birds Without Wings. Which book will make me truly comprehend what these people went through? Could also read Not Even My Name: A True Story andThe Road From Home: A True Story of Courage, Survival and Hope and Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950.
September 11, 2016
Συγκλονιστικό βιβλίο
September 4, 2012
A fascinating story that I knew a little bit about having lived in Turkey 45 years ago, having studied Turkish and Middle Eastern history, and also having seen at least one Turkish movie about the population exchanges between Greek and other Christians living in Turkey after WW I and Muslims living outside Turkey in lands that formerly had been part of the Ottoman Empire.
"Twice a Stranger" refers to the migrants having been left "strangers" in the homelands of their forefathers and "stranger" in the lands they were sent to.
Basically, the Ottoman Empire was on the losing end of WW I and all the territory outside Anatolia and a small piece of eastern Thrace - the peninsula west of Istanbul between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea were lost to the Turks. The victorious countries of Europe were busy parcelling out the former pieces of the Ottoman Empire - Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Greece and other areas in the Balkans. Greeks had been living in Anatolia for over 2500 years and became Christians during the Byzantine Empire. When the Turks came west from northern Central Asia, starting about 1000 years ago, they eventually came to Anatolia. Gradually in the 14th and 15th centuries the Ottomans began to conquer other Turkish groups and consolidated power in Anatolia. In 1453 they conquered Constantinople. In any case, the Ottomans kept moving west through Greece and the Balkans and were defeated at the gates of Vienna in 1683. They held sway in what eventually became Yugoslavia for more than 200 years. The remaining Muslims in Europe are the Bosnians and Albanians, the rest of the area being inhabited by Catholics in the north and Orthodox Christians in the south and east.
The upshot was that in the territory that is now the country of Turkey in 1920 had several populations of Christians, excluding the Armenians in the east who had mostly been expelled and or killed by 1920. The "Greek" i.e. Orthodox Christians included large groups in the eastern Black Sea and other Black Sea areas, the city of Istanbul, areas in central, western, and southern Anatolia. Many of these "Greeks" only spoke Turkish. Elsewhere there were Greek speaking Muslims in Crete, some of the Aegean islands, and Thrace and southern Bulgaria. The European powers met in Lausanne at the end of 1923, after the Greek army was roundly defeated at Izmir (Smyrna) with a huge loss of life, especially to fleeing Christians. There it was decided that all the Christian populations should be removed to Greece and that the Muslim populations be removed to Turkey.
This book is about this history, how the process evolved in different places, how the resettled populations eventually adapted to their new homes. But even after 80 years there are survivors of these forced migrations and their stories are both heartbreaking and life affirming. There were political consequences both for Turkey and for Greece. (And today, in 2012, Turkey is thriving economically and Greece is on the financial ropes.) It's a bit slow going, a bit academic, but full of history and story and information.
The novel "Birds Without Wings" is part of this story.
"Twice a Stranger" refers to the migrants having been left "strangers" in the homelands of their forefathers and "stranger" in the lands they were sent to.
Basically, the Ottoman Empire was on the losing end of WW I and all the territory outside Anatolia and a small piece of eastern Thrace - the peninsula west of Istanbul between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea were lost to the Turks. The victorious countries of Europe were busy parcelling out the former pieces of the Ottoman Empire - Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Greece and other areas in the Balkans. Greeks had been living in Anatolia for over 2500 years and became Christians during the Byzantine Empire. When the Turks came west from northern Central Asia, starting about 1000 years ago, they eventually came to Anatolia. Gradually in the 14th and 15th centuries the Ottomans began to conquer other Turkish groups and consolidated power in Anatolia. In 1453 they conquered Constantinople. In any case, the Ottomans kept moving west through Greece and the Balkans and were defeated at the gates of Vienna in 1683. They held sway in what eventually became Yugoslavia for more than 200 years. The remaining Muslims in Europe are the Bosnians and Albanians, the rest of the area being inhabited by Catholics in the north and Orthodox Christians in the south and east.
The upshot was that in the territory that is now the country of Turkey in 1920 had several populations of Christians, excluding the Armenians in the east who had mostly been expelled and or killed by 1920. The "Greek" i.e. Orthodox Christians included large groups in the eastern Black Sea and other Black Sea areas, the city of Istanbul, areas in central, western, and southern Anatolia. Many of these "Greeks" only spoke Turkish. Elsewhere there were Greek speaking Muslims in Crete, some of the Aegean islands, and Thrace and southern Bulgaria. The European powers met in Lausanne at the end of 1923, after the Greek army was roundly defeated at Izmir (Smyrna) with a huge loss of life, especially to fleeing Christians. There it was decided that all the Christian populations should be removed to Greece and that the Muslim populations be removed to Turkey.
This book is about this history, how the process evolved in different places, how the resettled populations eventually adapted to their new homes. But even after 80 years there are survivors of these forced migrations and their stories are both heartbreaking and life affirming. There were political consequences both for Turkey and for Greece. (And today, in 2012, Turkey is thriving economically and Greece is on the financial ropes.) It's a bit slow going, a bit academic, but full of history and story and information.
The novel "Birds Without Wings" is part of this story.
July 25, 2018
I bought this book in Crete but read it in Cyprus, two places that are relevant to the theme of strained yet deeply intertwined Greek-Turkish relations that this book explores. The Cretan woman I bought it from warned me that this book is sad, and she was warranted in her warning. Yet before I met her, I met another Cretan who told me, as we sipped a shared drink between Turks and Greeks called rakı, that he had never had a Turk sit on his couch before... The more the need for someone like me, and him, to read this book, a book that every Turk or Greek should read.
Author and outsider to the two communities Bruce Clark provides an in-depth overview of the post-WWI population exchange that took place between the two nations in the 1920s, an exchange that has forever tied them together. Using Greek and Turkish sources and presenting both perspectives, he explains the process of negotiating the Treaty of Lausanne, which determined the terms of the exchange, and the way it was carried out.
What makes this book extraordinary is his inclusion of excerpts from interviews with some of the few elderly people remaining out of the 1-2 million people affected by the exchange. He provides a home for the voices of the people whose families were uprooted and moved to an unknown land based on religion above all factors including native language. The exchange took place at a time when nationalism had only just hit the region in the minds of politicians, who were trying to forge national identities, but not the common people; therefore, religious identity mattered far more than ‘national identity’, which didn’t fully exist, and determined the new nationalities of the people.
The title of the book says it all: Twice a Stranger. Though they were classified as Greeks or Turks based on their religion, their identities were much more complicated than that. Often isolated in their homeland and then brought to a brand new, unfamiliar land where they also felt like outsiders, this exchange was tragic for many. For them, life felt like it was lived as twice a stranger: often confusing and often sad. Heartbreaking yet excellent and necessary work by Bruce Clark.
Author and outsider to the two communities Bruce Clark provides an in-depth overview of the post-WWI population exchange that took place between the two nations in the 1920s, an exchange that has forever tied them together. Using Greek and Turkish sources and presenting both perspectives, he explains the process of negotiating the Treaty of Lausanne, which determined the terms of the exchange, and the way it was carried out.
What makes this book extraordinary is his inclusion of excerpts from interviews with some of the few elderly people remaining out of the 1-2 million people affected by the exchange. He provides a home for the voices of the people whose families were uprooted and moved to an unknown land based on religion above all factors including native language. The exchange took place at a time when nationalism had only just hit the region in the minds of politicians, who were trying to forge national identities, but not the common people; therefore, religious identity mattered far more than ‘national identity’, which didn’t fully exist, and determined the new nationalities of the people.
The title of the book says it all: Twice a Stranger. Though they were classified as Greeks or Turks based on their religion, their identities were much more complicated than that. Often isolated in their homeland and then brought to a brand new, unfamiliar land where they also felt like outsiders, this exchange was tragic for many. For them, life felt like it was lived as twice a stranger: often confusing and often sad. Heartbreaking yet excellent and necessary work by Bruce Clark.
November 30, 2016
I enjoy learning about events about which I had previously only a vague understanding. I was aware of the hostilities between Greece and the newly established Turkish state in the first part of the twentieth century from, among other things, reading the excellent books by Mark Manzower and Andrew Mango. This book, Twice a Stranger, was an interesting account of the way in which the two countries sought an equitable solution to one of the perceived irritants in their tense and belligerent relationship. By exchanging their religious minorities each country hoped to achieve a more homogeneous and patriotic citizenry to solidify their nationalistic goals. The author provides numerous anecdotes that exemplify the fallacy of such a simplistic approach as societal and cultural histories proved more durable than religious affiliation. Additionally the book explains the complex political and logistical processes required to bring this about, their shortcomings and sometimes horrific consequences.
One of the author's stated goals was to remain impartial; neither to glorify nor condemn one side or the other. In this he was quite successful. The material was generally interesting and reasonably well written. However, it was at times repetitive and occasionally wandered off course. At the end Mr Clark briefly reflects upon more recent events including Turkey's hopes of joining the EU which might be seen as contrary to the goals of the Lausanne agreement that codified the population exchanges of 1923/4. However, the book was published prior to the latest political activities in Turkey and elsewhere in Europe that evinces a revival of strident nationalism and rejection of "others."
One of the author's stated goals was to remain impartial; neither to glorify nor condemn one side or the other. In this he was quite successful. The material was generally interesting and reasonably well written. However, it was at times repetitive and occasionally wandered off course. At the end Mr Clark briefly reflects upon more recent events including Turkey's hopes of joining the EU which might be seen as contrary to the goals of the Lausanne agreement that codified the population exchanges of 1923/4. However, the book was published prior to the latest political activities in Turkey and elsewhere in Europe that evinces a revival of strident nationalism and rejection of "others."
January 9, 2016
It was not long time ago that ethnic engineering was not a condemned policy to create the strong nations that we view today as modern and developed. It happened multiple times in the past century that politicians agreed and worked on population exchanges or even forced population exodus of people out of their homelands as an end to specific political conflict or humanitarian crisis. In the book Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions That Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, Bruce Clark studied one of these ethnic engineering strategies that shaped what we see today as Turkey and Greece. The road to Lausanne was an inevitable path to end a conflict that caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and sufferings for people of both sides. That conflict that was originally ignited due to the spread of nationalist ideologies and in which its only end was through the completion of these nationalist aspirations in creating independent and defined nation states. Although the success of the Muslim and Christian population exchange differed from the decision makers and those directly affected by it, and the problems it faced suggest that nation-states may not always be completely natural, in this “age of nation-states” and nationalism, political leaders had very few other choices.
Despite the fact the Muslims and Christians in the Ottoman Empire had lived together, side-by-side for hundreds of years, the day had come when their co-existence became intolerable for both of the religions. The concept of the nation-state, in which people of similar language and cultural background can live independently where they can create their own laws that suit their homogenous community, was very appealing to those living under the formerly multi-ethnic Muslim Ottoman Empire. Specifically, Greece which wanted to achieve its nationalist goal by creating an independent, exclusively Christian state and annex parts of western Anatolia (Clark, 61), while Mustafa Kemal, the charismatic anti-Ottoman type of government and the extremely nationalist leader achieved his goal of creating the new republic of Turkey. It was the only way to stabilize the region again since there was no way of reviving the collapsing Ottoman Empire after the losses of WWI, the defeat of Sarkamish 1914 with the Russians, and all the territories that it had lost due to the nationalist movements by its component states such as Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, hoped to create a new republic of Turkey.
As a result, aggressive nationalist uprisings in Greece led to mass killings and exodus of hundreds of thousands of Muslims who were either killed or fled deeper into Anatolia seeking shelter under the rule of the Turks (Clark, 7). At the same time, atrocities against civilians were made on the Turkish side against Christians who were believed to be collaborating with the anti-Ottoman rebelling Greek army. Some were torching complete towns on their way fleeing back to Greece, such as the port of Smyrna (Clark, 10). Mistrusts and claims of betrayals that emerged between officers and civilians with every new massacres or raiding of a village started to break down the brotherhood infrastructure that used to hold Muslims and Christians together. “In this war, neither side had a monopoly of cruelty” (Clark, 67).
It was the nationalist ideologies and the dreams of strong nation-states that ignited the conflict, but also the realization of these nationalist aspirations that needed to be completed to put and end to the sufferings. The establishment of two independent, homogenous states of Turkey and Greece was the only way to stabilize the region. But to make these nation-states homogenous, Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 had Muslims in Greece transported to live in Turkey and adhere to the Turkish values, and at the same time, Orthodox Christians in Turkey moved to live in Greece and become Greek citizens. The Treaty was an outcome, as well as a solution that was agreed by decision makers in Turkey and Greece, as well as the world powers, to a decades-long conflict that had no end in sight unless a divorce between the two countries take place.
Even though it is still a controversial topic on how moral the population exchange was, one cannot undermine the success of this project from the point of view of those who signed the papers in Lausanne. Objectively speaking, if one looks back to the population percentage before and after the whole process of population exchange, Turkey achieved a great success in its nationalist aspirations. The huge percentage increase in the Muslim population in last ten years of the Ottoman Empire from 80 per cent to 96 per cent was enough to define Turkey as a Muslim nation (Clark 13). In such a place of almost totally Muslim population, where people could share the same values and practices, the process of reprogramming people’s minds into believing that this is where they belong and those are their true communities becomes more accessible and more effective in nation-building. The same story applies to Greece, which initially called for independence and predominantly Christian culture. The two countries, despite the economic and social difficulties in handling the refugee influx at the beginning, did achieve their ultimate goal of homogeneity eventually.
On the other hand, those ordinary people whose only fault was that they were born in a place where it would later be regarded as the ‘wrong place’ had to follow the orders and endured the hardship of displacement into a new land under harsh conditions. An account from a ninety years old who underwent relocation through trekking the mountains for days mentioned that he was part of a group of “8000 Christians villages whose numbers had been reduced to barely 6000 through abductions, exposure and disease by the time they arrived in southeastern Anatolia” (Clark 71).The success of the population exchange between Turkey and Greece was not as bright for them as it was for decision makers. However, people had no choice but to adapt and survive. Even though many people did not want to leave their homeland, migration was compulsory. In one case, Muslims who were not affected by the war, but forced to move declared, “We, Muslims, will never accept this exchange, and we declare that we are pleased with our Greek government” (Clark, 158). Despite this appeal to the Lausanne conference, these voices were never heard. In that big political game that was playing in Lausanne, the public and ordinary people have no place but to watch and follow orders.
It is true that people were forced to move but it was the only solution. If the population exchange did not happen, the war could have gotten even more severe and ethnic and religious cleansing was bound to take place. An extended human sufferings and religious cleansing and oppression or a forced exchange that would be unfair to the ordinary people who might have later been killed that would end the conflict were the two possible choices, and the latter was far more sensible. The idea of ethnic engineering, despite its toughness, was plausible to even the great humanitarian man who was entrusted by the world community to deal with the refugees crisis in Europe after WWI, Fritjof Nansen, who explicitly supported and was a broker between the Greek and Turkish governments to ensure the success of Lausanne Treaty (Clark, 56).
Even later after the population exchange, the process of adapting to the new home was facilitated culturally as well as governmentally in order to create a homogenous nation. Those Greek-speaking Muslim who migrated from Greece to Turkey hard terrible experience upon their arrival due to them being looked at as outsiders by the local Muslims. Their differences, whether it was linguistic or spiritual was not very welcomed (Clark 190). Therefore they had to adapt and assimilate into being Turkish. “The entire nation was being redefined, reeducated and reordered as its masters undertook a ‘revolution from above’” (Clark 190). This was true to a great extent since nation building require integrating citizens into becoming as one with common cultural, linguistic and religious practices by emphasizing on the importance of being Turkish and supporting their similarities. For example, the Turkish republican slogan says, “‘Happy is he who calls himself a Turk’” (Clark, 173). One can see that regardless of people’s origins, speaking Turkish and abiding by the Turkish laws constitutes a loyal and happy citizen. Consequentially, this kind of patriotic concepts, once it penetrate an ordinary person’s mind, would lead to the creation of a strong nation in which its citizens believe of its superiority over other nations, which is what nationalism was originally all about.
The rise of the nation-state idea and the Treaty of Lausanne gave an important example for later issues and conflict about homogeneity, and in which conflicts were never solved and coexistence was not possible. After World War I and many people throughout the new nation-states of Eastern Europe were also pressured to move or assimilate. And later, the Jews in Germany who were persecuted, executed in millions and endured the constant danger of racial and religious cleansing from the Nazis were left with no choice but to leave. The separation of Jews and giving them their own nation where they can rule themselves resulted in ending of and era of a totally aggressive movement against them in Nazi Germany. At the same time, the issue of the Kurds in the south in Turkey is still a controversial conflict where the Turkish government does not recognize this Kurdish existence on its, which had led on several occasions to bloody battle and increased hatred between the two.
The Treaty of Lausanne and the population exchange between Turkey and Greece might seem surprising to modern readers, but once given enough thought and looking at the results of the treaty that was very well discussed in the book “Twice a Stranger,” one would appreciate the ending of that gruesome conflict that led to bloody wars and humanitarian crisis in the region. The concepts and promises of nationalism had to be applied and met, and aspirations of free and independent nations could have never been extinguished if they were not given to those who ask and fight for it.
Despite the fact the Muslims and Christians in the Ottoman Empire had lived together, side-by-side for hundreds of years, the day had come when their co-existence became intolerable for both of the religions. The concept of the nation-state, in which people of similar language and cultural background can live independently where they can create their own laws that suit their homogenous community, was very appealing to those living under the formerly multi-ethnic Muslim Ottoman Empire. Specifically, Greece which wanted to achieve its nationalist goal by creating an independent, exclusively Christian state and annex parts of western Anatolia (Clark, 61), while Mustafa Kemal, the charismatic anti-Ottoman type of government and the extremely nationalist leader achieved his goal of creating the new republic of Turkey. It was the only way to stabilize the region again since there was no way of reviving the collapsing Ottoman Empire after the losses of WWI, the defeat of Sarkamish 1914 with the Russians, and all the territories that it had lost due to the nationalist movements by its component states such as Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, hoped to create a new republic of Turkey.
As a result, aggressive nationalist uprisings in Greece led to mass killings and exodus of hundreds of thousands of Muslims who were either killed or fled deeper into Anatolia seeking shelter under the rule of the Turks (Clark, 7). At the same time, atrocities against civilians were made on the Turkish side against Christians who were believed to be collaborating with the anti-Ottoman rebelling Greek army. Some were torching complete towns on their way fleeing back to Greece, such as the port of Smyrna (Clark, 10). Mistrusts and claims of betrayals that emerged between officers and civilians with every new massacres or raiding of a village started to break down the brotherhood infrastructure that used to hold Muslims and Christians together. “In this war, neither side had a monopoly of cruelty” (Clark, 67).
It was the nationalist ideologies and the dreams of strong nation-states that ignited the conflict, but also the realization of these nationalist aspirations that needed to be completed to put and end to the sufferings. The establishment of two independent, homogenous states of Turkey and Greece was the only way to stabilize the region. But to make these nation-states homogenous, Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 had Muslims in Greece transported to live in Turkey and adhere to the Turkish values, and at the same time, Orthodox Christians in Turkey moved to live in Greece and become Greek citizens. The Treaty was an outcome, as well as a solution that was agreed by decision makers in Turkey and Greece, as well as the world powers, to a decades-long conflict that had no end in sight unless a divorce between the two countries take place.
Even though it is still a controversial topic on how moral the population exchange was, one cannot undermine the success of this project from the point of view of those who signed the papers in Lausanne. Objectively speaking, if one looks back to the population percentage before and after the whole process of population exchange, Turkey achieved a great success in its nationalist aspirations. The huge percentage increase in the Muslim population in last ten years of the Ottoman Empire from 80 per cent to 96 per cent was enough to define Turkey as a Muslim nation (Clark 13). In such a place of almost totally Muslim population, where people could share the same values and practices, the process of reprogramming people’s minds into believing that this is where they belong and those are their true communities becomes more accessible and more effective in nation-building. The same story applies to Greece, which initially called for independence and predominantly Christian culture. The two countries, despite the economic and social difficulties in handling the refugee influx at the beginning, did achieve their ultimate goal of homogeneity eventually.
On the other hand, those ordinary people whose only fault was that they were born in a place where it would later be regarded as the ‘wrong place’ had to follow the orders and endured the hardship of displacement into a new land under harsh conditions. An account from a ninety years old who underwent relocation through trekking the mountains for days mentioned that he was part of a group of “8000 Christians villages whose numbers had been reduced to barely 6000 through abductions, exposure and disease by the time they arrived in southeastern Anatolia” (Clark 71).The success of the population exchange between Turkey and Greece was not as bright for them as it was for decision makers. However, people had no choice but to adapt and survive. Even though many people did not want to leave their homeland, migration was compulsory. In one case, Muslims who were not affected by the war, but forced to move declared, “We, Muslims, will never accept this exchange, and we declare that we are pleased with our Greek government” (Clark, 158). Despite this appeal to the Lausanne conference, these voices were never heard. In that big political game that was playing in Lausanne, the public and ordinary people have no place but to watch and follow orders.
It is true that people were forced to move but it was the only solution. If the population exchange did not happen, the war could have gotten even more severe and ethnic and religious cleansing was bound to take place. An extended human sufferings and religious cleansing and oppression or a forced exchange that would be unfair to the ordinary people who might have later been killed that would end the conflict were the two possible choices, and the latter was far more sensible. The idea of ethnic engineering, despite its toughness, was plausible to even the great humanitarian man who was entrusted by the world community to deal with the refugees crisis in Europe after WWI, Fritjof Nansen, who explicitly supported and was a broker between the Greek and Turkish governments to ensure the success of Lausanne Treaty (Clark, 56).
Even later after the population exchange, the process of adapting to the new home was facilitated culturally as well as governmentally in order to create a homogenous nation. Those Greek-speaking Muslim who migrated from Greece to Turkey hard terrible experience upon their arrival due to them being looked at as outsiders by the local Muslims. Their differences, whether it was linguistic or spiritual was not very welcomed (Clark 190). Therefore they had to adapt and assimilate into being Turkish. “The entire nation was being redefined, reeducated and reordered as its masters undertook a ‘revolution from above’” (Clark 190). This was true to a great extent since nation building require integrating citizens into becoming as one with common cultural, linguistic and religious practices by emphasizing on the importance of being Turkish and supporting their similarities. For example, the Turkish republican slogan says, “‘Happy is he who calls himself a Turk’” (Clark, 173). One can see that regardless of people’s origins, speaking Turkish and abiding by the Turkish laws constitutes a loyal and happy citizen. Consequentially, this kind of patriotic concepts, once it penetrate an ordinary person’s mind, would lead to the creation of a strong nation in which its citizens believe of its superiority over other nations, which is what nationalism was originally all about.
The rise of the nation-state idea and the Treaty of Lausanne gave an important example for later issues and conflict about homogeneity, and in which conflicts were never solved and coexistence was not possible. After World War I and many people throughout the new nation-states of Eastern Europe were also pressured to move or assimilate. And later, the Jews in Germany who were persecuted, executed in millions and endured the constant danger of racial and religious cleansing from the Nazis were left with no choice but to leave. The separation of Jews and giving them their own nation where they can rule themselves resulted in ending of and era of a totally aggressive movement against them in Nazi Germany. At the same time, the issue of the Kurds in the south in Turkey is still a controversial conflict where the Turkish government does not recognize this Kurdish existence on its, which had led on several occasions to bloody battle and increased hatred between the two.
The Treaty of Lausanne and the population exchange between Turkey and Greece might seem surprising to modern readers, but once given enough thought and looking at the results of the treaty that was very well discussed in the book “Twice a Stranger,” one would appreciate the ending of that gruesome conflict that led to bloody wars and humanitarian crisis in the region. The concepts and promises of nationalism had to be applied and met, and aspirations of free and independent nations could have never been extinguished if they were not given to those who ask and fight for it.
Read
July 26, 2022Το βιβλίο ασχολείται με την ανταλλαγή πληθυσμών μετά τη Μικρασιατική Καταστροφή και καλύπτει σφαιρικά και αναλυτικά την ιστορία της σε διπλωματικό, πολιτικό, στρατιωτικό και κοινωνικό επίπεδο. Προσπαθεί να επικεντρωθεί στους ανθρώπους που βίωσαν την ανταλλαγή, τις (συνήθως) τραγικές εμπειρίες τους, τα πρακτικά προβλήματα και την πορεία που ακολούθησε η αποκατάστασή τους. Ο συγγραφέας σε πολλά σημεία αφήνει να φανεί η αντίθεσή του με το γεγονός ότι οι άνθρωποι που θα βίωναν την ανταλλαγή αλλά και τα προβλήματα που θα αντιμετώπιζαν ήταν σε (πολύ) δεύτερη μοίρα μπροστά στο διπλωματικό-πολιτικό γίγνεσθαι.
Το βιβλίο δεν παίρνει θέση υπέρ ή κατά κάποιας πλευράς αλλά αφήνει τα γεγονότα να μιλήσουν μόνα τους (το οποίο αρκεί σε πολλές περιπτώσεις) και σίγουρα δεν είναι ένα βιβλίο γραμμένο για να δικαιώσει την όποια εθνική ή πολιτική πεποίθηση αλλά για να διευρύνει την κατανόησή μας αυτού του γεγονότος που σφράγισε την ιστορία.
Νομίζω ότι αξίζει να διαβαστεί από όσους ενδιαφέρονται για αυτή την ιστορική περίοδο αλλά και θέλουν να κατανοήσουν καλύτερα τις βάσεις πάνω στις οποίες χτίστηκαν οι ελληνοτουρκικές σχέσεις.
Το βιβλίο δεν παίρνει θέση υπέρ ή κατά κάποιας πλευράς αλλά αφήνει τα γεγονότα να μιλήσουν μόνα τους (το οποίο αρκεί σε πολλές περιπτώσεις) και σίγουρα δεν είναι ένα βιβλίο γραμμένο για να δικαιώσει την όποια εθνική ή πολιτική πεποίθηση αλλά για να διευρύνει την κατανόησή μας αυτού του γεγονότος που σφράγισε την ιστορία.
Νομίζω ότι αξίζει να διαβαστεί από όσους ενδιαφέρονται για αυτή την ιστορική περίοδο αλλά και θέλουν να κατανοήσουν καλύτερα τις βάσεις πάνω στις οποίες χτίστηκαν οι ελληνοτουρκικές σχέσεις.
April 9, 2012
Four stars if you like history and/or are interested in geopolitical concepts like "humanitarian intervention" and/or "nation-building." If you take interest in the so-called nation-building in the Balkans, this is an interesting read for sure (also 4-stars). Though, this is not a "starter" book for those interested in history. 3-stars overall.
In what was arguably one of the "forgotten" treaties of WWI (Lausanne), one of the first attempts at modern nation-building took place. This involved a massive population-transfer between Greeks and Turks which uprooted over 2 million people from their anscestoral homes b/c they happened to live in the "wrong" place at the end of WWI(at least according to the Western Powers understanding) - in other words, Greeks living in "Turkey" and Turks living in Greece (again, as the Great Powers envisioned the "new" borders). This book documents this process through a variety of primary and secondary accounts of Lausanne and the subsequent political negotiating and eventual forced-transfers. The most fascinating part of the book are the interviews w/ those who are still alive (most in their 90s at the time of writing) and their accounts of what happened, their nostalgia and their view of the process. Other elements can drag a bit and the author doesn't always explain elements thoroughly (like the reasons behind the Greek invasion of Turkey in 1920).
The whole process of nation-building under Lausanne is an insight to the process of "modern nations" as the 19thC spilled into the 20th and how people's concept of "nation" changed along with it. In this regard, it is a very interesting read. The book is also a brilliant insight into big-power politics at the end of WWI and demonstrates the arrogance & hubris of Great Powers which has continued to the present day. In the end, it's hard to judge if Lausanne and the population-transfer was the "right" thing or not, b/c although it was largely "successful," it really opens a door for "manufacturing nations" which sets a dangerious precedent. Add to the fact that such a process is rarely neutral and problems emerge (see the modern Balkan connection here).
The only problem w/ the book is that outside of the primary accounts, it can be pretty dry. Secondly, the author is a journalist and not a historian. This really skews some of the analysis. That is, he leaves out absolutely essential background information which is needed to gain a full understanding of the events. "Neutrality" is presupposed by the author, but not always justified, given many on-the-ground realities of the time-frame. The reality is, the population-transfer and Lausanne Treaty cannot (and should not) be examined outside of: a) The Armenian Genocide; b) The Treaty of Sevres, and; c) The Kurdish Question. If these are brought into account (which they BARELY are in the book), it is hard to look at Turkey's position with any "neutrality."
My opinion above my be representative of my own biases, but I felt the book just scraped over these essential elements which is hard to swallow given the time-frame and context of the events under investigation.
Finally, the maps were good...but, they also failed to look at the elements A, B, C mentioned above. Also, no pre-WWI or post-WWI map was made available, which was/is strange.
Recommended for fans of WWI, history and geopolitics....but, not without some solid background in these areas.
In what was arguably one of the "forgotten" treaties of WWI (Lausanne), one of the first attempts at modern nation-building took place. This involved a massive population-transfer between Greeks and Turks which uprooted over 2 million people from their anscestoral homes b/c they happened to live in the "wrong" place at the end of WWI(at least according to the Western Powers understanding) - in other words, Greeks living in "Turkey" and Turks living in Greece (again, as the Great Powers envisioned the "new" borders). This book documents this process through a variety of primary and secondary accounts of Lausanne and the subsequent political negotiating and eventual forced-transfers. The most fascinating part of the book are the interviews w/ those who are still alive (most in their 90s at the time of writing) and their accounts of what happened, their nostalgia and their view of the process. Other elements can drag a bit and the author doesn't always explain elements thoroughly (like the reasons behind the Greek invasion of Turkey in 1920).
The whole process of nation-building under Lausanne is an insight to the process of "modern nations" as the 19thC spilled into the 20th and how people's concept of "nation" changed along with it. In this regard, it is a very interesting read. The book is also a brilliant insight into big-power politics at the end of WWI and demonstrates the arrogance & hubris of Great Powers which has continued to the present day. In the end, it's hard to judge if Lausanne and the population-transfer was the "right" thing or not, b/c although it was largely "successful," it really opens a door for "manufacturing nations" which sets a dangerious precedent. Add to the fact that such a process is rarely neutral and problems emerge (see the modern Balkan connection here).
The only problem w/ the book is that outside of the primary accounts, it can be pretty dry. Secondly, the author is a journalist and not a historian. This really skews some of the analysis. That is, he leaves out absolutely essential background information which is needed to gain a full understanding of the events. "Neutrality" is presupposed by the author, but not always justified, given many on-the-ground realities of the time-frame. The reality is, the population-transfer and Lausanne Treaty cannot (and should not) be examined outside of: a) The Armenian Genocide; b) The Treaty of Sevres, and; c) The Kurdish Question. If these are brought into account (which they BARELY are in the book), it is hard to look at Turkey's position with any "neutrality."
My opinion above my be representative of my own biases, but I felt the book just scraped over these essential elements which is hard to swallow given the time-frame and context of the events under investigation.
Finally, the maps were good...but, they also failed to look at the elements A, B, C mentioned above. Also, no pre-WWI or post-WWI map was made available, which was/is strange.
Recommended for fans of WWI, history and geopolitics....but, not without some solid background in these areas.
Currently reading
July 27, 2009a history of the huge population swap between Turkey and Greece in the 1920's forged from documents and personal accounts. About 2 million people were actively relocated to homogenize the populations of these two modern nation states. Was my grandfather among them? A mystery. The more I learn about the history of Turkey and Greece the more intrigued I am by how nationalism resolved and created problems that emerged during the decline of the ottoman empire. The whole history of Macedonia and Western Turkey is a fascinating tale of a region whose culture and religion was in constant flux.
February 22, 2020
*По-скоро 3.75
Тази книга няма претенции за научна стойност. Тя е едно добро популярно въведение за средностатистическия читател, без значение доколко познава модерната история на Балканите. Балансирайки между наратива на голямата политика и личните истории на депортираните, авторът се е постарал да запази безпристрастност при наличието на твърде пристрастяващи гледни точки. Гледни точки, които са ни до болка познати. Защото тази история е и наша. Сходни събития са оформили и още дават отражение върху живота ни.
А поуката е, че никой не притежава ексклузивно право на собственост над болката и страданието. Те са на всички.
Тази книга няма претенции за научна стойност. Тя е едно добро популярно въведение за средностатистическия читател, без значение доколко познава модерната история на Балканите. Балансирайки между наратива на голямата политика и личните истории на депортираните, авторът се е постарал да запази безпристрастност при наличието на твърде пристрастяващи гледни точки. Гледни точки, които са ни до болка познати. Защото тази история е и наша. Сходни събития са оформили и още дават отражение върху живота ни.
А поуката е, че никой не притежава ексклузивно право на собственост над болката и страданието. Те са на всички.
April 27, 2019
An extremely interesting and highly readable history of the largely religion-based population exchanges of Muslims previously living in Greece and Orthodox Christians in Anatolia the 1920s, and the legacy of these expulsions in the 21st century in both Greece and Turkey--but it badly could have used another round of editing.
February 16, 2018
Easy to read, compelling, succinct, and informative. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand modern Greece and Turkey.
December 29, 2015
During the 20th century, there have been several mass exchanges of population. One of these was the panicky mass movement of different groups of people between the newly formed Pakistan and the newly independent India during the Partition of 1947. Another was the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia at the end of WW2. Two notable examples of this mass disruption and transfer of population occurred in the eastern Mediterranean, and both of them involved Greece and Turkey. In one case, Turkish and Greek Cypriots were forced to separate to different parts of Cyprus in 1974. In the other case, which occurred in the early 1920s and is described in "Twice a Stranger", was the forcible transfer of populations of Greek Orthodox folk living in Turkey from that country to Greece, and the rciprocal mass transfer of Moslems living in Greece from that country to Turkey. The 1920s population exchange was mastermined by the Greek leader Venizelos and the Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk, who helped bring it about via the Treaty of Lausanne.
Aspects of the forced homogenization of the Greek and Turkish populations that occurred in the 1920s - its antecedents, its execution, its results, and its effect on those who survived the often harsh conditions during the population exchange - are discussed in great detail by Bruce Clark.
The parts that I found particularly fascinating were the accounts of the affair that were given to the author and other academics by people who had experienced the events of the 1920s or what their children knew about them. Also, it was interesting to read how the memory of place of origin lingers in the minds of the descendants of those who were forced to move from one country to the other.
The author makes a convincing case that the newly formed nations of Greece and Turkey benefitted from the forced homogenization of their populations, but he emphasises that this was done at enormous human cost - loss of life, llness, loss of property, and so on. He also raises the interesting point that with the breakdown of borders following the fall of communism and the desire of Turkey to enter the EU, the results of the racial 'purifications' engineered by Ataturk and Venizelos might well begin to be reversed.
This is an interesting book, but I found that its writing style was a little on the dry side. Nevertheless, the book has satisfied my curiosity about an aspect of Balkan(?) history that I knew very little about, but wanted to know more about.
Aspects of the forced homogenization of the Greek and Turkish populations that occurred in the 1920s - its antecedents, its execution, its results, and its effect on those who survived the often harsh conditions during the population exchange - are discussed in great detail by Bruce Clark.
The parts that I found particularly fascinating were the accounts of the affair that were given to the author and other academics by people who had experienced the events of the 1920s or what their children knew about them. Also, it was interesting to read how the memory of place of origin lingers in the minds of the descendants of those who were forced to move from one country to the other.
The author makes a convincing case that the newly formed nations of Greece and Turkey benefitted from the forced homogenization of their populations, but he emphasises that this was done at enormous human cost - loss of life, llness, loss of property, and so on. He also raises the interesting point that with the breakdown of borders following the fall of communism and the desire of Turkey to enter the EU, the results of the racial 'purifications' engineered by Ataturk and Venizelos might well begin to be reversed.
This is an interesting book, but I found that its writing style was a little on the dry side. Nevertheless, the book has satisfied my curiosity about an aspect of Balkan(?) history that I knew very little about, but wanted to know more about.
January 15, 2014
a thought provoking study of the process by which the nascent republics of Greece and Turkey were formed in the wake of the first world war and the greco-turkish war. The book focusses on the population exchanges that took place between the two countries and the role these exchanges played in the formation of a state for the Muslim subjects and one for the orthodox Christian subjects of the former Ottoman empire. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the modern history of either nation and also to anyone interested in ethnic cleansing as a process as this book focusses on a successful (in many regards) process by which through population exchange both Greece and Turkey became more ethnically and religiously homogeneous nations and also notably for an event of such nature taking place in the twentieth century did so relatively peacefully.
May 14, 2013
The enormous, tragic upheaval endured by Greek and Turkish people involved in being transported from either Greece or Turkey to the country to which the Treaty of Lausanne decreed they 'rightly' belonged is told here. Supported by substantial archival material and brought alive by the personal accounts of several people still alive at the time of writing, this vivid account is a valuable record. Skilfully related in a style that is easy to read, it captures the reader's attention, providing a valuable insight into this event the repercussions of which continue to rumble on in Europe today, and to influence decision making related to conflict resolution in many parts of the world. Above all it is a wonderful account of the endurance of the human spirit.
October 4, 2015
Clark does a good job of illuminating a lesser-known case of "population exchange" than, say, that of India and Pakistan at the time of partition. The book is accessible but not polemical. The lessons are applicable to any contemporary scenario where "ethnic conflict " is seen by outsiders as "unresolvable. " The Greeks and Turks had good relations on the individual and village level. It was the particular political concerns of extreme and totalizing nationalism that mandated they be separated. We are more aware now of the inherent brutality of forced population transfer than we were 100 years ago, or at least we profess to be. We are, however, not more immune to parochial, xenophobic concerns and the allure of political expedients.
April 19, 2008
This book provided me with great information about a historical event I knew nothing about. Yet it helped me to understand many things about my Greek ethnic background and modern international politics. The author painstakingly details the political events of the population exchange between Turkey and Greece in the early 1920s under the Lausanne Treaty and its effects on the victims of the exchange. He quoted many of the people who had to leave their homes and move, under horrifying conditions, to a new country. Except for the seeming redudancy of information the author provides, the book is informative and emotionally evocative.
May 15, 2010
The story of the demise of the Greek community in Turkey and the Turkish community in Greece after the First World War, as told by a reporter for "The Economist". Very well-written, and I learned a lot from it. I would recommend reading it along with "Birds without Wings", a fictional account of the same period dealing with the same subject. The author is honest both about the tragedy of the expulsions for the individuals involved, and about the reasons that there may have been no other way. Very thought-provoking at a time of renewed ethnic and religious conflict in many parts of the world.
August 5, 2017
Balanced and detailed. Appreciated that Clark was careful to acknowledge the complexity of the countries' relationship, and places where their accepted historical narratives differ. Having personal stories woven in was fascinating. Really uncanny how much parallels what's going on today, and explains a lot about modern Greek and Turkish nationalism. My only complaint is that it felt quite dry and didn't draw much in the way of larger conclusions that could be applied usefully elsewhere-- but to be fair, this just isn't my style of book, and I skipped the last 15 pages.
May 15, 2014
A good non-fiction book trying to examine the population exchange (mübadele) around 1923. If you are interested about Greek-Turkish history, enjoyed 'Birds Without Wings' and would like to learn more about those years, this book is for you. I found it a bit too repetitive and believe it could have been edited to half its size. There are interesting things I learned from it though: The notion of a Turkish Orthodox Church and Papa Eftim is one example.
July 29, 2015
Not for everyone, but as one who lives in Turkey, I found this book has reshaped my understanding of the Turkish people. Specifically, the identity between being Muslim and being Turk, and the vision of Turkey as a mono-cultural nation. Twice a Stranger is written with clarity and compassion, and occasionally captures firsthand stories of a generation that, in 2015, is almost gone. I am grateful to Bruce Clark for taking a part of his life to write these things.
January 14, 2014
i hope, all of turk n hellas people read n talk bout this disaster and think and visit each other often.
yes, we got terrible statesmen, yes we got brits, frenchs to force us to sign but after ALL past years, we gotto learn n teach our girls and sons, resist for themselves. guess,they already know..
yes, we got terrible statesmen, yes we got brits, frenchs to force us to sign but after ALL past years, we gotto learn n teach our girls and sons, resist for themselves. guess,they already know..
June 1, 2015
Very interesting and easy read - keeps a good balance between the history of politicians and diplomats and that of the individual people in their daily lives, and keeps away from Greek vs Turk biases. Some terminology and phrasing I don't quite agree with, but overall well balanced and an enjoyable read!
April 6, 2016
A solid introduction to the aftermath of the First World War and the Treaty of Lausanne, which resulted in the massive exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. While at times overly emotive, this book manages to convey both the ambivalence of immigrants facing life in new and unknown places, and the undoubtedly horrific conditions in which many were forced to move.
December 8, 2013
A strong book dealing primarily with the stories of the people forcibly moved between the two countries that navigates between the nationalistic myths on both sides. A moving chronicle of a terrible human tragedy.
November 14, 2017
It was a reasing given in History class, usually I do enjoy them but this book is so boring that Everytime I tty to read I sleep.
one start is for the information and the effort.
The book is about the Turkish Greek war and population and political exchange that was happening between them.
one start is for the information and the effort.
The book is about the Turkish Greek war and population and political exchange that was happening between them.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews