Examining the Effectiveness of Population Exchanges in Solving Conflicts based on Irredentism – A Case Study on Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)

Shane Hensinger1

New York University

I. INTRODUCTION 2

II. BEGINNINGS 3

III. SLAVIC-SPEAKING CITIZENS OF GREECE 7

A. BRIDGE OR CAUSAL FACTOR? 13

IV. SETTING THE STAGE – GREECE AND TURKEY AFTER WWI 15

V. THE GREEK-TURKISH POPULATION EXCHANGES 19

A. THE SOLOMONIC CHOICE – WHO GOES AND WHO STAYS? 22

VI. THE HUMAN COST OF POPULATION EXCHANGES 24

VII. GREECE AND TURKEY AFTER THE POPULATION EXCHANGES 26

VIII. CYPRUS AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE MACEDONIAN CONFLICT MODEL 28

IX. INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POPULATION EXCHANGES 29

X. CONCLUSION 31

XI. Bibliography 34

1 BA, New York University 2008 (expected). Many thanks to my advisor for this project, Professor Amy Higer, whose wise counsel and gentle prodding have proven invaluable. Additional thanks to Professor Veena Thadani and Professor Oona Hathaway of Yale Law School (now Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley) as well as Metropolitan Nikitas of the Orthodox Institute at UC Berkeley for their assistance and support.

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A note on language – I will be using the former names of places in the Ottoman Empire – such as calling Istanbul “Constantinople” and Izmir “Smyrna” when discussing these or other cities and islands before the declaration of the Turkish state in 1922. After this point I will revert to using the Turkish name for the place. The use of any particular place name does not necessarily indicate political acceptance of that name by the author.

I. Introduction

The use of transfers of populations between two or more states to solve territorial or self-

determination issues is today looked upon as barbaric and potentially in violation of

international law. But less than 100 years ago the invocation of both voluntary and forced

population transfers between former adversaries in the Balkans was an accepted and

commonplace occurrence which took place under the watchful eye of the international

community with little debate as to the moral or human rights implications of such

massive movements of populations. The suggestion of population transfers as a means to

solving seeming intractable conflicts was one accepted and promoted in the diplomatic

lexicon.

Today, almost a century onward from the period when Balkan population transfers in

reached their zenith, the world can look to the region and reach a conclusion as to the

effects of the populations transfers between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria and their effects

on the irredentist conflicts which raged at the time and apply that knowledge to the larger

sphere of state-to-state conflict. The past century has seen highs and lows in relations

between all three states but curiously there has not occurred a single armed conflict on

the basis of irredentist claims between any of the three states since each engaged in a

series of population transfers with the other. Whereas Greece and Turkey have come

close to armed conflict over issues of territoriality in the Aegean (vs. issues of

irredentism) the one area where they have closest to armed conflict – Cyprus - was the

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one area where their respective ethic populations remained mixed. In all other areas the

de-mixing of each state’s populations has resulted in a long period of relative peace

between the states. This paper will argue that population transfers can be a strong

mitigating factor on solving irredentist conflicts and will examine their role in the

southern Balkans in bringing a measure of relative peace and stability to the states in the

region.

The focus of this project will be on Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). I will explore the history of the southern Balkans

from the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire through the end of the Greek-

Turkish War until today and focus on the role irredentism played in inter-state conflict in

the southern Balkans. I will be exploring different theories on irredentism and ethnic

conflict to understand the role population exchanges play in removing causal factors

which contribute to conflict. Finally I will look at the issue of international law and how

the current regime of jurisprudence affects the possibility of mandatory exchanges of

populations between states.

II. Beginnings

If Greece exists today as a homogenous ethnos, she owes this to [the Asia Minor Catastrophe]. If the hundreds of thousands of refugees had not come to Greece, Greek Macedonia would not exist today. The refugees created the national homogeneity of our country – Augustinos Kandiotis, Metropolite of Florina (Karakasidou 141)

It is a worn but truthful cliché that the beginning of the 20th century saw the collapse of

many ancient empires (Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Imperial Russia) and the rise of new

ones (American, Soviet Russia, Imperial Japan). Throughout the world but in particular

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in Europe the rise and fall of large empires would leave behind various ethnic and

religious minorities scattered like the pieces of a forgotten puzzle.

The borders of one state would recede and in its wake would be left the flotsam and

jetsam of imperial attempts to change the demographic balance of a region – in particular

the human remnants of the previous ruling state - populations based on either religion or

ethnicity. Though rooted in the place they called home these populations often (but not

always) expressed close ties to the previous rulers. In some cases, as in the Muslims of

Crete, the defined minority identified itself closely not with its ethnic kin in another land

but as a part of the land on which it stood – Cretan Greek but Muslim, not Turkish. In

other cases as in that of the Greek Orthodox population of Constantinople the defined

minority considered itself to be exclusively Greek and not Turkish or Ottoman – in the

case of the Constantinopolitan Greeks and the Greeks of coastal Asia Minor they

considered themselves to be the purest form of Greek, to be more “Hellenic” than the

Greeks of the Greek state.

In each situation, whether discussing the nation-states of Greece, Bulgaria or Turkey no

state was or is in any way ethnically or religiously monolithic. As a result of the

colonization of the area by the Ottoman Empire and previously by that of the Byzantine

Empire the area was religiously and ethnically mixed to a degree that perhaps no other

area of Europe could match for its complexity.

As a way of illustrating the complex state of Balkan national/ethnic/religious identity it is

useful to examine census data from the early 20th century. A statistical table from

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Macedonia taken and published by the Greek government in 1904 provides us with the

following information (Pallis 322):

Greeks 523, 472Bulgars 119,005Moslems 404,238Various (Jews, Pomaks) 68,902

Population of Greek Macedonia in 1904

Even the use of statistics such as those listed above can be sensitive due to the nature of

Balkan politics and shifting borders. When referring to Macedonia is one referring to

today’s state recognized by the United Nations as the Former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia? Were the statistics for the table above from the region of Macedonia called

Pirin Macedonia, an area claimed by Bulgaria? Or were they representative of Aegean

Macedonia which was variously claimed by the states of Macedonia, Bulgaria and

Greece? Everything in the Balkans and in particular the use of language is loaded with

hidden and explosive meaning. For the purposes of the table from 1904 the information

provided states that the survey was taken and provided by the Greek government so the

figures refer to Aegean Macedonia (a term not accepted by the Greek state) – which

today is the northern Greek province of Macedonia (referred to in the map below as

Aegean Macedonia).

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The three regions of historic Macedonia

The Balkan wars between Serbia, Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria took place during 1912-

1913 and resulted in large-scale population flows in the Balkans of “enormous

magnitude”. Thereafter, at the Paris Peace Conference, politicians agreed that to achieve

a more lasting peace it was desirable in areas where the population was ethnically

intermingled to disentangle them by reciprocal migration. A special Convention

concerning Reciprocal Emigration was signed between Greece and Bulgaria to which

both governments recognized the rights of their subjects belonging to racial, religious or

linguistic minorities to emigrate freely to their respective territories. A Mixed

Commission was established to oversee the population exchange process… statistics of

the commission indicate that practically all the Greeks of Bulgaria, some 46,000 in all,

declared their decision to emigrate and left Bulgaria from 1923 – 1928. Of the 139,000

Bulgarians living in Greek Macedonia and Thrace some 92,000 availed themselves of the

possibility of emigrating” (Henckaerts 123-124).

The resulting exchange of populations between Greece and Bulgaria, and the exchange of

populations between Greece and Turkey (to be discussed later) resulted in a massive

change to the ethnic composition of Greek Macedonia, as the following table shows:

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1912 1926Nationalities Population % Population %Greeks 513,000 42.6 1,341,000 88.8Moslems 475,000 39.4 2,000 0.1Bulgarian 119,000 9.9 77,000 5.1Various 98,000 8.1 91,000 6.0Total………. 1,205,000 100 1,511,000 100

Census data for Greek Macedonia – before and after the population exchanges with Bulgaria and Turkey

The “various” figure includes Jews, Vlachs (a Balkan nomadic people who speak a

language similar to Romanian) Albanians and foreigners. The “Moslem” figure includes

Turks, Pomaks (Slavic Bulgarian Muslims), Albanians (sometimes called Chams or

Tsams) and Moslem Gypsies (Pentzopoulous 134).

The two illustrative tables provided so far show that the “disentangling” of the mixed

population of Greek Macedonia resulted in large-scale changes in ethnic makeup in the

province but did not succeed in making Greek Macedonia 100% Hellenized. A small

minority of Slavic-speaking people referred to as “Bulgarian” were left behind in Greece

and it is this small minority that will be discussed in the next chapter of this project.

III. Slavic-speaking Citizens of Greece

The mixture of populations in Southern Macedonia was itself an indication of the extraordinary function of the region as a corridor route from Central Europe to the Straits, as a coastal route from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and as an outlet for the interior of the Balkans to the Mediterranean (Pentzopoulos 133).

The very use of the name “Macedonia” is subject to fierce political debate in the world

today. Greece claims that the state officially called “Former Yugoslavian Republic of

Macedonia” (FYROM) but which refers to itself as “The Republic of Macedonia” by the

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nature of its name lies claim to the northern Greek province with the same name. Ancient

symbols, such as the 16-pointed star of Vergina which was previously found on the flag

of FYROM, have been interpreted by Greece as lying claim to a Macedonian state which

extends beyond its current internationally-recognized borders and to a Macedonian

minority which exists outside the borders of the newly independent FYROM. Greece and

at times Bulgaria claim FYROM has irredentist aims on both state’s territory (Brown 35).

A book used for research on this report, Anastasia Karakasidou’s “Fields of Wheat, Hills

of Blood – Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia 1870 – 1990” was denied

publication by Cambridge University Press which feared for the safety of its staff in

Greece after the author claimed there existed a distinctive Slavic Macedonian nationhood

in Greek Macedonia (Brown 35). Finally published by the University of Chicago Press

the book has inspired a great deal of controversy in the Balkans and in particular in

Greece from which its author has received numerous death threats (Library Journal).2

The claims of Slavic-speaking citizens of Greece can be corroborated by evidence

gathered by other social science researchers: “64% of the rural inhabitants (of the region

near Florina) are Slavic speakers – distributed in forty-three Slavic-speaking villages and

twenty-nine mixed villages” (Roudometof 124).

2

In 2003 in the midst of the author’s own field research in Greece he at one point happened to be riding a bus through Greece from the port of Igoumenitsa in Epirus to Thessaloniki in Greek Macedonia when he began speaking to a women sitting next to him. The woman was a teacher on the small inlet of Mathraki to the west of Corfu in the Ionian Sea. She told the author she was on her way to her village outside of Florina, a city close to the border with FYROM. In casually speaking with the teacher and after asking her a number of questions the women told the author a story of her family, a family which spoke a Slavic language in private but only Greek in public due to pressure from the Greek state, enforced by police and agents of the Greek security services, due to a prohibition on speaking anything other than Greek in this northern area. She said that during the period following the independence of the FYROM the area in which her village was located was saturated with security patrols and the people lived in fear of the Greek state. The opening of the border between Greece and FYROM was of great joy to this woman and her family. She mentioned in particular how “beautiful” she found the faces of the Macedonians in FYROM to be.

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Map showing Slavic-speaking areas of Greece

These Slavic-speakers, sometimes referred to as “Bulgarians” and sometimes as

“Macedonians” are the remnants of the exchange of populations between Greece and

Bulgaria in the early part of the 20th century. Their position in Greece was affected by

events during WWII and after when Bulgaria, allied with Nazi Germany, invaded and

annexed portions of Greek Macedonia and Thrace and imported colonists from Bulgaria

to the area. “The new Bulgarian regime brought with it official recognition of the

Macedonian struggle against Ottoman, Greek and Serbian oppression… Macedonian

activists returned from exile to take up influential positions, and it appeared to many in

the region that a resolution of old issues had been reached” (Brown 44).

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An alternative narrative exists which claims that “Bulgarian occupation… was

particularly harsh. Strong efforts were made to ‘Bulgarize” the local Slavic-speaking

population. Propaganda and torture accompanied the priests and teachers the troops

brought with them from Bulgaria…. Many rural residents of the region fled Bulgarian

occupational forces to seek protection in more secure Greek strongholds” (Karakasidou

202).

Despite the claims and counter-claims around the occupation of Greek Macedonia the

period of occupation resulted in the growth of resistance movements to both Nazi and

Bulgarian occupation. In the area of Greek Macedonian populated with Slavic-speakers

the communist resistance was able to setup small brigades “referred to as the ‘Slavo-

Macedonian Liberation Front’ which promised equal treatment to the minority

population… As a result the Slavo-Macedonian villagers supported the communists

during the Greek civil war (1944-49) (Roudometof 103).

After the war it is estimated up to 30,000 Slavic-speaking Macedonians left Greek

Macedonia for the constituent Peoples Republic of Macedonia which was part of the

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. “The post-1945 generations of Macedonians born into

the People’s Republic of Macedonia included several thousand refugees who fled into its

territory at the aftermath of the Greek Civil War. These refugees became known as

‘Aegean Macedonians’… Consequently the Macedonian national homeland, the

symbolic center of the Macedonian transnational community… extends to include the

Bulgarian and Greek regions of Macedonia… the ideological elaboration of Macedonian

nationhood was bound to follow the familiar examples of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria.

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All these states stressed nationhood rather than citizenship as their basic component of

nation building” (Roudometof 105).

As can be seen from the example provided above the issue of a “Macedonian” minority

in Greece became more pressing after the birth of the Former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia (FYROM) in 1991. The influence of “Aegean Macedonians” in FYROM,

who were in reality Slavic-speaking Greek refugees from the Greek Civil War, led the

new Macedonian state to pursue a policy of building the new state around nationhood

which led to a view of the Slavic-speaking minority of Greek Macedonia as part of the

larger Macedonian “nation.”

Because of the Greek state’s history of losing territories which were heavily Hellenized

(coastal Asia Minor, Constantinople, Southern Epirus) to “the post-WWII Greek state

talk of a Macedonian minority was propaganda against Greece’s territorial integrity.” As

has happened elsewhere in the Balkans (Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo) “the absence of civil

culture… has turned disputes over human rights of linguistic, religious and ethnic

minorities into national disputes” (Roudometof 135).

The Greek state and the population of Greece reacted harshly to the establishment of the

FYROM and imposed a trade and diplomatic embargo on the young state. Immigrant

communities of Macedonians and Greeks in Australia, Canada and the United States

turned the issue into a “transnational symbolic conflict… a conflict involving those who

do not inhabit the region yet identify with each of the sides involved in the conflict”

(Roudometof 106). The small Slavic-speaking community in Greek Macedonia found

itself turned into “an undesirable element” which put “Greece at variance with currently

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existing international treaties and norms concerning the status of minorities within

particular states” (Roudometof 135). This occurred despite the fact that there has never

been any reputable evidence shown by the Greek government that Slavic-speaking

Greeks are anything other than entirely loyal to the Greek state. Indeed “the inhabitants

of these villages have a strong sense of national feeling for Greece – perhaps stronger

than that of other Greeks” (Pentzopoulos 139).

The strong sense of nationhood which Greece considered essential to its survival after its

defeat in Anatolia in the 1920s has been predicated on the enforced reality that Greece is

100% ethnically Greek and Greek-speaking. While Greece does posses a relatively

linguistic and ethnically homogenous population it also contains various minority

communities including the Turks of Western Thrace and the Slavic-speaking

communities of Greek Macedonia. These minority communities have acted as irritants in

Greece’s relations with neighboring states which take a paternalistic view of their ethnic

and/or religious kin, including Turkey and FYROM.

While Greece and Bulgaria engaged in a voluntary population exchange through the 1919

Peace Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, an exchange which reduced the ethnic kin of each

state in the other state’s territory, Greece and Macedonia (which was at that time a

constituent state of Serbia which was itself part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) did not

(Hirschon 25). The remnant Bulgarian/Macedonian population in Greek Macedonia

developed a new sense of nationhood over time and that nationality, while strongly

Greek, was also partially “Macedonized” by the traumatic events of WWII and the Greek

civil war. The subsequent closure of borders between NATO-member Greece and

Warsaw Pact-member Bulgaria served to cut off this population from its roots in the

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Bulgarian state while more open borders with the Federal People’s Republic of

Yugoslavia encouraged cross-border trade and contacts between the constituent statelet of

Macedonia and the northern Greek province of the same name – Macedonia. After the

dissolution of Yugoslavia and the subsequent independence of Macedonia (FYROM) the

remnant Slavic minority population in Greece which was never exchanged with Bulgaria

has served to heighten tensions between Greece and Macedonia – mainly because Greece

fears irredentist claims by FYROM on its territory in Greek Macedonia.

A. Bridge or Causal Factor?

Current political narrative in the southern Balkans claims that had Greece exchanged its

entire Slavic-speaking population with either Bulgaria or with Yugoslavia then relations

between Greece and FYROM would today be much warmer. This may be true – but there

also exists evidence to suggest that the number of Slavic Greeks in Greek Macedonia is

too small and much too Greek-identified to encourage irredentism from the FYROM,

which is the primary reason for poor relations between Greece and FYROM..

International Relations Realist theory surrounding ethnic conflict suggests that for

conflict to arise the fears of an ethnic group must be acute, the more acute “a given ethnic

group perceives its security dilemma to be the more probable the chance of ethnic

conflict will be” (Gavrilis 2). Producing conflict requires a number of causal factors to be

present: “history of conflict or genocide, geography, offense-defense balance and

weapons stockpiles” (Gavrilis 2). None of these causal factors were present in the

Slavic-speaking population in Greek Macedonia at any point during the Greek state’s

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conflict with FYROM over what it perceives to be FYROM’s irredentist aims on its

territory.

Current theory on irredentism holds that motivational factors for irredentist conflict

include “domestic and international political considerations, economic gain and military

interests” all of which must align for one state to seek the detachment of another state’s

territory based on ethnic ties with the other state’s citizens (Carment 87). None of these

factors are present in the diplomatic conflict between Greece and FYROM. Greece’s

much stronger diplomatic and military position as a member of the European Union and

NATO effectively precluded any action on the part of FYROM to engage in irredentist

adventures in Greek Macedonia.

The reverse is also true – despite evidence of Greek-Serbian machinations to dismember

FYROM in the days after its independence, including the sudden (and miraculous)

discovery of “239,360 Greeks who lived in Macedonia – people of ‘pure’ Greek national

consciousness who did not enjoy minority rights” Greece ultimately rejected a proposal

from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to partition the state between Greece and

Serbia and reported the offer to the European Union (Michas 54). The combination of

Greece’s membership in the European Union, a more advanced civil society in Greece

and the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in Macedonia all constrained Greece’s

irredentist actions in FYROM (Michas 56). Even Macedonia’s president at the time, Kiro

Gligorov, knew that irredentism from Greece was a relatively minor threat: “We never

considered Greece a real threat because we knew that she was constrained in her actions

by her membership in the European Union and above all in NATO” (Michas 56). As has

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been shown irredentism requires a number of factors to be present for conflict to erupt

and those factors do not exist in Greece and FYROM today.

IV. Setting the Stage – Greece and Turkey after WWI

In those days we came to hear of many other countries that had never figured in our lives before. It was a rapid education and many of us are still confused. We knew that our Christians were sometimes called “Greeks.” Although we often called them “dogs” or “infidels,” but in a manner that was a formality, or said with a smile, just as were there deprecatory terms for us… Be that as it may, one day we discovered that there actually was a country called “Greece” that wanted to own this place…. – De Bernieres (5-6)

The declining years of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent rise amongst the Greek

Orthodox minority within the Ottoman Empire of the desire for self-determination led to

the creation of what has alternatively been known as “The Big Idea,” “The National Idea”

and the “Megali Idea.” In Greek the phrase is known as Μεγάλη Ιδέα or “The Great Idea”

(Alexandris 38). For the purposes of research and documentation in this project it will be

known as the “Megali Idea.”

The Megali Idea was irredentist in its scope and claims. In essence the Megali Idea called

for the reconstitution of the Byzantine Empire under the aegis of the Greek state

encompassing all “unredeemed” Greeks in Anatolia as well as recapturing the city of

Constantinople which would then serve as the capitol of a new Greek empire (Hirschorn

4). While this dream was first enumerated in the mid-19th century by Greeks from the

mainland who formed the “Organization of Constantinople” to bring to reality the Megali

Idea (Alexandris 38) it was latter-day political leaders in Greece, in particular the Greek

Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos who during WWI saw a chance to make the dreams

of the Megali Idea concrete and ordered Greece into the war on the side of the Allies in

1917. Backed by what it perceived to be iron-clad promised on the part of the Allies

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Greece believed its claims to modern-day Turkey would be recognized and that it would

be rewarded for its role in supporting the victorious war effort during WWI while Turkey

would find itself dismembered due to the decision of the Ottoman Empire to side with the

Central Powers.

Map showing irredentist Greek claims under the Megali Idea c1918

Utilizing all the resources of the Greek state, the Greek Diaspora and relying on the

support of those who considered themselves to be “Philhellenes” such as British Prime

Minister Lloyd George, Venizelos entered the Paris Peace Conference confident that

Greece’s claims to large swathes of Anatolia would be recognized and Greece rewarded

(Llewellyn-Smith 64). France, through the use of the Sykes-Picot agreement which

divided up “Near and Middle East” saw that its interests could be secured in a similar

agreement. America was thought friendly but was considered an “unknown factor.”

(Llewellyn-Smith 66).

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The Paris Peace Conference attended by all parties to WWI was to be an official stamp of

Greece’s occupation of coastal Asia Minor. By utilizing the backing of its French and

British allies Greece was confident of success. The Ottoman Empire, attending as a

defeated party to WWI, would be at the mercy of the victors.

The result of machinations between the Greeks, French and British (as well as Italy) was

the Treaty of Sevres, which was signed by the allies and the Ottoman pasha in 1920. The

treaty was shocking in its scope and the draconian terms it imposed on the Ottoman

Empire. It allowed for the continuing Greek occupation of large parts of Anatolia, zones

of influence for the Italians, British and French & a demilitarization of the area around

Istanbul. The Treaty of Sevres reduced the Ottoman Empire to an exclusively Asian rump

state centered in the highlands of Anatolia. All European Ottoman territories were either

awarded to Greece or internationalized and the most fertile lands and areas containing oil

or mineral resources were awarded to either European powers or to Greece. Essentially

the Treaty of Sevres was in the Greek view a treaty recognizing Greece’s irredentist

claims to parts of Anatolia. By imposing the treaty on the Ottoman Empire the victorious

allies in WWI legitimized Greece’s irredentist aims and also solidified their own

economic positions in Asia Minor.

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Map showing territory awarded by Treaty of Sevres 1920

The Treaty of Sevres represented a pyrrhic victory for the Greek state as it predictably

aroused the fury of the Turkish people who “had resigned themselves to accept a period

of stringent allied controls and the loss of the non-Turkish portions of their empire. They

were not prepared to tolerate the loss of parts of the Anatolian heartlands, still less

invasion by their secular enemies” (Llewellyn-Smith 102). The Treaty of Sevres led to

the Turkish War of Independence from 1919-1923 and from there to the complete and

total collapse of the Greek position in Asia Minor. Thus was set the stage for what was to

come: the near complete exchange of each state’s respective ethnic populations as

mandated by the Treaty of Lausanne.

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V. The Greek-Turkish Population Exchanges

A women’s voice rose up clearly and desperately into the morning air, echoing from the stone walls of the buildings: “Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go!...”She was confronted by the reality of this final departure. She would never see her life’s best and most long-standing friend again… Don’t go!” she cried. “Don’t go!”

The wailing was infectious, and others among the onlookers began to moan as the Christians passed them by. Before long the men were choking back tears and the women were giving free rein to them. Soon it was like a howling and ululation of those who became carried away by grief at a burial, multiplied beyond understanding by the sheer number of people. The Sergeant felt that he had never heard anything quite so disturbing in all his life, not even when men are dying between the lines of battle. (De Bernieres 478)

By the end of 1922 Greeks irredentist dreams in Asia-Minor literally lay in flames. The

Greek army had been driven back from the interior of Anatolia to the coast and then from

the coast to the islands and mainland of the Greek state. With them came more than 1

million Greek Orthodox refugees from coastal Asia-Minor as well as the villages of the

hinterlands. Left behind in the new Turkish Republic were an estimated 300,000 -

500,000 Orthodox Christians, some who spoke Greek as a first language but many, such

as those of the region of Cappadocia, who spoke Turkish and over more than a thousand

years had formed close ties with their Muslim neighbors (Clark 101). In Greece an

estimated 400,000 Muslims remained, mainly concentrated in the villages of Thrace and

Macedonia.

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Map Showing Greek Territory Won and Lost 1832 - 1947

Both Greece and Turkey were aware that the remaining refugees would require

resettlement in the country of their respective co-religionists. For Turkey this would

present less of a problem as the borders of the new Turkish Republic encompassed more

territory than that of the Greek state. For Greece, humiliated by its defeat in Anatolia and

stunned by the need to take in such a large amount of refugees, especially comparable to

its population, the situation was dire. Whereas Greece would be negotiating from a

position of weakness and defeat Turkey would be negotiating from a position of strength

and victory which was a reversal of the positions of the two states during their earlier

negotiations in Sevres.

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In November of 1922 both states met at the Lausanne Conference in Switzerland. In

Greece, domestic political changes along with the shock of the Asia-Minor Disaster had

led to a definitive end to its “wild dreams of reconstituting the Byzantine Empire – the

so-called Megali Idea or Great Idea – which had dominated and distorted the external

policies of the small Hellenic state during its first century of independence” (Clark 91).

“For Turkey the conference signaled the end a real empire, not an imaginary one; and the

emergence of a new secular republic which aspired to be compact and uniform rather

than sprawling and diverse” (Clark 91). For both states the Lausanne Conference

represented a beginning and an end but for each state the meaning of that beginning and

end couldn’t have been more different.

At the beginning of the conference the head Turkish diplomat, Ismet Pasha, “confirmed

that Turkey wanted all Greeks to leave Anatolia as soon as possible” (Clark 93). Turkey’s

harsh position on the deportation of the entire remaining Greek population of Anatolia

was underscored by a report from Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize

winner who worked for the League of Nations in Lausanne. Nansen’s report suggested an

agreed-upon population exchange “on the grounds that “to unmix the populations of the

Near East… will secure the pacification of the Near East.” Nansen was simply stating

what others involved in the conference knew to be true. The British negotiator at the

Lausanne Conference called the idea “a thoroughly bad and vicious [one] for which the

world would pay a heavy penalty for hundreds of years to come” but he along with the

Turk’s Kemal Ataturk and the Greece’s Eleftherios Venizelos knew there was no other

reasonable and immediate solution to the problem of the minorities (Clark 44).

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Nansen had uncorked the genie bottle and loosed upon the conference what would come

to be the accepted solution to the years of war between Greeks and Ottomans – the

immediate and final un-mixing of their respective populations and their permanent

removal to the territory of each state’s co-religionists.

A. The Solomonic Choice – Who Goes and Who Stays?

By the time of the Lausanne Conference in November 1922 the issue of who which

populations would go and which would be allowed to stay in Greece and the new Turkish

Republic had been settled. Most Greeks had already fled Anatolia for Greece other than

those living in Constantinople, which during the war had been occupied by Allied forces.

The Greeks of Constantinople were amongst the most prosperous of all Greeks in either

Greece or Anatolia. They numbered close to 400,000 and had roots in Constantinople for

more than 1,000 years. Because Constantinople was (and remains) the seat of the

Christian Orthodox Patriarch and the Patriarchate the city held a special place in the

minds of the Greek people. Constantinople’s place in the minds of the Turks was no less

important but for the Turks “the Ottoman capital’s large population of Christians seemed

to epitomize the foreign domination of Turkey’s economy which they were determined to

overturn. Furthermore, the Christians had discredited themselves in Turkish eyes by

actively supporting the Greek nationalist campaign to annex western Anatolia and to grab

the city they longed to see restored as the new capital of Byzantium. So the expulsion of

the Christians on the Bosphorus was seen not merely as legitimate but as desirable”

(Clark 61).

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The issue was settled by the matter of monetary compensation. The new Turkish

Republic was bankrupt and couldn’t afford to compensate the Greek community of

Constantinople along with all other expellees if it were to follow through on its threat to

expel the Constantinopolitan Greeks. On the issue of the Orthodox Patriarch the Patriarch

was allowed to stay but was stripped of all political and legal authority over the Greek

Orthodox population of the New Turkish Republic. The patriarch’s new role would be

“purely religious” (Clark 97). As the Patriarch had tirelessly advocated on behalf of the

Greek campaign in Asia-Minor this was a hard pill for the Turks to swallow, who spoke

of the deal as a way of “keeping the snake in his hole” (Clark 97).

Consequently this portion of the Treaty of Lausanne allowed a reciprocal number of

Turkish Muslims to continue to reside in Eastern Thrace, who along with the Greeks of

Constantinople and the islands of Imvros and Tenedos would be last remnants of their

ethnic kin left on either state’s soil.

The text of the relevant portions of the Lausanne Treaty covering the population

exchanges between Greece and Turkey is as follows:

Article 1.

As from the 1st May, 1923, there shall take place a compulsory exchange of Turkish nationals of the Greek Orthodox religion established in Turkish territory, and of Greek nationals of the Muslim religion established in Greek territory.These persons shall not return to live in Turkey or Greece respectively without the authorization of the Turkish Government or of the Greek Government respectively.

Article 2.

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The following persons shall not be included in the exchange provided for in Article 1:a) The Greek inhabitants of Constantinopleb) The Muslim inhabitants of Western Thrace.All Greeks who were already established before the 30th October, 1918, within the areas under the Prefecture of the City of Constantinople, as defined by the law of 1912, shall be considered as Greek inhabitants of Constantinople.All Muslims established in the region to the east of the frontier line laid down in 1913 by the Treaty of Bucharest shall be considered as Muslim inhabitants of Western Thrace.

Article 3.

Those Greeks and Muslims who have already, and since the 18th October, 1912, left the territories the Greek and Turkish inhabitants of which are to be respectively exchanged, shall be considered as included in the exchange provided for in Article 1.The expression "emigrant" in the present Convention includes all physical and juridical persons who have been obliged to emigrate or have emigrated since the 18th October, 1912.

Article 4.

All able-bodied men belonging to the Greek population, whose families have already left Turkish territory, and who are now detained in Turkey, shall constitute the first installment of Greeks sent to Greece in accordance with the present Convention.

The carrying out of the exchange of populations was to be done under an international

commission with compensation for refugees to be determined by the commission and

paid on the basis of property and goods left behind. Of course the issue of whether those

forced to leave actually wanted to go was moot – they were legally required to leave

under the text of Lausanne.

VI. The Human Cost of Population Exchanges

…we will go back to our homes if it takes us another five hundred years (Tsolainos 161)

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The process of ripping apart people who had lived together for hundreds or thousands of

years relatively peacefully was bound to be deeply saddening and traumatizing for the

people involved. In particular the Muslims of Crete and the Greek Orthodox of

Cappadocia were two populations who for all intents and purposes considered themselves

to be Greek Muslims, in the case of those from Crete and Turkish Christians in the case

of the Cappadocians. Each population by virtue of language and isolation from the state

claiming religious kinship had developed a sense of identity which separated it from the

others to be exchanged but in the end their relative “otherness” didn’t spare them from

the fate of their religious kin.

In Crete many Muslim families begged to be allowed to convert to Greek Orthodoxy to

be allowed to stay in Crete, their pleas were refused by the Greek government. Muslim

families near Thessaloniki wrote letters to the Lausanne commission stating their

happiness with “their Greek government” and stating “We, Muslims, will never accept

this exchange” (Clark 158.) In the end they too had to leave to make room for the

Christians moving in the other direction.

One of the most essential and yet overlooked factors in any type of population exchange

is the one just discussed – the human element. Theory can define parameters and help us

look for trends but it does not account for the massive human and emotional wreckage

caused by the loss of place which is incurred when one group of people with close ties to

a locale are yanked away and replaced with another group who themselves were suddenly

removed from their ancestral homes – all because of the diktat of diplomats meeting

somewhere far away. Proposing and carrying out a population exchange to solve

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irredentist conflict can be an efficient way of ending bloodshed but it is also a particularly

cruel and coldhearted method of diplomacy.

VII. Greece and Turkey after the Population Exchanges

In the nearly 90 years since the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey the

two states have never engaged in actual combat. Though they have come close on several

occasions – namely in 1974 during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus – they have yet to

come to actual blows. A metaphor may be the frequent “mock” Greek-Turkish dogfights

over the Aegean: each “pretends” to engage the other in actual combat but in the end no

one gets hurt and each state walks away claiming victory.

Prior to the population exchanges Greece and the Ottoman Empire, which was the

predecessor of the Turkish state, engaged in direct state-to-state conflict in 1824 (the

Greek War of Independence), Crete in 1897, The Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, WWI in

1917 - 1918 and the Asia-Minor campaign from 1919 – 1922. By acting to remove the

minority populations related to the other from the territory of each both Turkey and

Greece removed the primary locus of irredentist conflict in their relations and assured a

more peaceful future in the period since the population transfers ended.

The “Macedonian Syndrome” is a model of ethnic conflict created by Myron Weiner

which drew on empirical evidence from the early twentieth century Balkans. This “model

requires at least three actors: an irredentist state, an anti-irredentist neighbor and a shared

ethnic group (or minority). Although Wiener allows for the possibility that the minority

will act as a bridge of friendship, he alleges that reality in the Balkans implied the

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contrary… He [Weiner] argues that irredentist states formed alliances with regional and

extra-regional powers in order to fulfill their plans for extending their national

boundaries” (Gavrilis 2).

The “Macedonian Syndrome” provides a theoretical framework for looking at the issues

of irredentism in the Balkans. For the theory to apply there must be present three causal

factors: an irredentist state, an anti-irredentist state and a shared minority. By acting to

remove one causal factor the theory is short-circuited. The actions of Greece and Turkey

in removing the causal factor in their irredentist conflict – their respective co-religionists

– has been shown to reduce conflict and negate the issue of irredentism from their shared

concerns. The areas in each state where their co-religionist were allowed to remain –

Istanbul, Imvros, Tenedos and Western Thrace – have proven to be significant irritant

factors in their relations but have never risen to the level of armed conflict.

The situation of the minorities in each country “is not deplorable because they were

excluded from the population transfer, but because both Greece and Turkey have

persistently denied basic minority rights and even the recognition of minority status to

various minority communities… the constant exploitation and manipulation of this issue

in bilateral relations has done little to change the plight of the two minority groups.

Despite the difficult relationship between Greece and Turkey, international pressure and

international integration have thus far successfully prevented the outbreak of military

hostilities” (Wolff 16).

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VIII. Cyprus as an Example of the Macedonian Conflict Model

The situation in Cyprus upon the Turkish invasion in 1974 proves how well the

Macedonian Model explains the potential for conflict as well as a means of subjugating

conflict before it occurs. The Greek junta in power at the time encouraged a coup on the

island of Cyprus with the goal of encouraging enosis (union) with Greece; therefore

Greece acted as the irredentist state. Turkey emerged as the anti-irredentist state. Both

states shared populations on Cyprus. At this point all three causal factors were present –

irredentist state (Greece), anti-irredentist state (Turkey) and shared ethnic group or

minority (Greeks/Turks on Cyprus).

Conflict arose after a coup with explicitly irredentist aims (the union of Cyprus with

Greece). Turkey, acting as the anti-irredentist factor in the Macedonian Conflict Model,

invaded Cyprus to protect the interests of its ethnic kin. It is telling indeed that despite

numerous scares and close-calls the sole case of armed conflict in the arena between the

two states since the 1920’s was in the one territory that had been left out of their attempts

at unmixing their populations.

The Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 enacted a partition of the island and resulted in

large scale population transfers between the two halves of the formerly united nation.

Greeks fled the area occupied by Turkey while Turks fled the areas not occupied by

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Turkey. The resulting changes effectively unmixed the population of Cyprus in the same

manner an agreed population exchange would have produced.

IX. International Law and Population Exchanges

The use of forced population exchanges as a means of solving irredentist or self-

determination conflicts took place in the years before WWII during a time when the

framework of international law was a mere shadow of what exists today. After WWII and

the establishment of the United Nations there followed the adoption by the international

community of a series of covenants, conventions and rules which put in place the overall

framework of international human rights law.

In particular the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 15 (1),

“Everyone has the right to a nationality” and then in Article 15 (2) states, “No one shall

be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change that nationality.”

At the same time it should be noted that, “No rule of international law prohibits an

exchange conditioned on the voluntary departure of people” (Henckaerts 123).

The Greek-Bulgarian population exchange mandated by the 1919 Peace Treaty of

Neuilly-sur-Seine was officially voluntary, and as has been shown a large number of

former Bulgarians chose to stay in Greece rather than move to Bulgaria. Today there is

debate as to whether a population exchange can ever be truly voluntary. “Most instances

of population exchange operate, however, under the pretext of voluntary migration but

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are in fact compulsory. Population exchange is then nothing short of a mass expulsion

and is unlawful” (Henckaerts 123).

Henckaerts’ opinion that “population exchange is nothing short of mass expulsion” is

predicated on the word “expulsion” and not “exchange.” According to Henckaerts

“Expulsion, whether individual or collective, refers to “an act, or a failure to act, by an

authority of a State with the intention and the effect of securing the removal of a person

or persons against their will from the territory of that State” (Henckaerts 4).

In the case of the Greek-Bulgarian exchange, which was officially voluntary, a

considerable number of Bulgarian nationals chose to stay in Greece where they received

Greek citizenship. The evidence suggests that the Greek state did not “act with the

intention… of securing the removal of a person or persons against their will from the

territory of that State (Greece).” Henckearts states, “One has to acknowledge… the

relative success of this exchange of population” (Henckearts 124). In the case of the

Greek-Bulgarian population exchange the exchange appears to not have been an

“expulsion” but rather a voluntary “exchange” and thus would not be a violation of

international law if it occurred today.

The International Law Association, in its “Declaration of the Principles of International

Law on Mass Expulsion”, argues that indirect means of encouraging “expulsion” under

the guise of “exchange” mean that even those exchanges which would appear to be

legitimate, such as the Greek-Bulgarian exchange, are invalidated by the fact that “mass

expulsion results from the use of coercion, including a variety of political, economic and

social measures which directly, or even more so indirectly [emphasis his] force people to

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leave or flee their homelands for fear of life, liberty and security” (Henckaerts 224). This

opinion adds to the body of international law but is not an absolute. As Greece, Turkey

and Bulgaria all engaged in population transfers there does not yet exist a rule of

customary international law which would hold that population exchanges are illegal

under international law.

There appears to be no clear or convincing claim in the body of international law

researched for this paper that a population exchange which did not use force or coercion

and which was entirely voluntary could not be judged as legal. Because a population

exchange doesn’t violate any of the principles of jus cogens, which are non-derogable

precepts of international law, there exists no rule that a voluntary population exchange

would immediately be “unlawful.” The issue, however, is one around which there exists

considerable controversy and debate and this portion of this project is designed to provide

an overview and not a definitive conclusion.

X. Conclusion

Population exchanges can be an efficient but harsh means of solving conflicts based on

irredentism. The use of population exchanges in the post-WWII world has been limited

by the necessity of respecting international law and human rights and by the growing

awareness on the part of much of the world of the desirability of multi-ethnic, diverse

populations.

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As has been shown population exchanges can act as a stabilizing factor in state-to-state

conflicts such as those between Greece and Turkey or between Greece and Bulgaria. By

removing shared minorities to the state of their ethnic kin a state can remove a causal

factor in conflict theory and reduce the chances of conflict between it and a neighboring

state. Population transfers can lead to greater ethnic homogeneity in newly-conquered

territories, such as in Greek Macedonia, which can produce a stronger sense of

nationhood and act as a stabilizing factor for new states.

Unfortunately population transfers are never as clean-cut as their proponents would like

to believe. Tearing apart people who have lived together for hundreds if not thousands of

years is bound to be harsh, messy and expensive. States often have a very difficult time

feeding, educating and housing those who were expelled. Refugees feel marginalized in

their new country and many, as in the case of the Cappadocian Greeks, are unable to even

speak the language of their new state when they arrive in their new homeland.

Societal problems, with resentment between newcomers and those already resident, are

frequent and well documented. Another problem, in the case of Turkey, was that the

Greek population filled a vitally important role economically and represented the vast

majority of the educated class in Ottoman Turkey. The sudden expulsion of this critically

important piece of the economy resulted in years of economic dislocation in the new

Turkish Republic. For Greece the need to absorb such a huge number of refugees in

(equivalent to 20% of its population at the time) in such a short amount of time

necessitated a large amount of borrowing on the international loan market which led to

greater indebtedness and economic dislocation in the future.

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A broad-based recommendation on the use of population transfers cannot be offered at

this time. Each situation requires careful analysis before the recommendation for or

against a transfer of populations can be given. Questions of legality abound around the

issue forcing of people to move from one place to another. Beyond the strategic and legal

issues exist those of morality. Is it right to tear apart people in the interests of a greater

cause – whether that cause be regional stability or ethnic homogeny? Too often in

discussions around issues of this type the voices of those whose lives will be shattered by

the decisions taken at a higher level are discounted or ignored in the interests of a

“greater good.”. The human cost is enormous when considering removing thousands or

millions of people from one place to another, even when that removal may bring a lasting

peace.

As scholars, politicians or theorists we must realize that any move in the direction of

recommending or implementing population exchanges as a solution to problems of

irredentism or self-determination must be carefully weighed against the vast misery and

sense of dislocation these “exchanges” bring to those forced to be “exchanged.”

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