The 1923 Greco-Turkish Population Exchange: An Assessment of its History and Long Shadow at its Centennial
The 1923 Greco-Turkish Population Exchange: An Assessment of its History and Long Shadow at its Centennial

Author(s): Aytek Soner Alpan
Subject(s): Interwar Period (1920 - 1939)
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Greco; Turkish; Population Exchange; Assessment; Centennial; History;
Summary/Abstract: Nation-building is ipso facto accompanied by ethnic homogenization and demographic engineering operations, including exchanging or transferring populations. This method was considered a standard part of the policy repertoire of the nation-states to manage the so-called minority question in the period from 1875 to 1949, constituting a continuum in the history of greater Europe marked by ethnoreligious conflicts, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal violence. As predicted, this period was also defined by a miasma of forced displacements and refugee waves. Consequently, the minority question was coupled with an extensional phenomenon observed in the form of another question, the refugee issue.

• Details
• Contents