the use of forced population exchanges to solve conflicts based on irredentism - a case study on...
DESCRIPTION
This is my undergraduate senior thesis at NYU on the effect of forced population exchanges, such as those mandated by the Treaty of Lausanne, on conflicts based on irredentism. I looked at population exchanges between Greece and Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece and Macedonia (FYROM) and Greece as well as those following the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974. I used Macedonian Conflict Theory and Realist Theory to show what effects exchanging or forcing populations to leave have on irredentist conflicts in the Balkans. My thesis was one of the few nominated for honors for the graduating class of 2009 at New York University.TRANSCRIPT
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.
1
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
2
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
3
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
4
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).
5
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:
6
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
7
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.
8
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).
9
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.
10
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
11
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
12
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
13
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
14
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
15
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).
16
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.
17
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.
18
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.
19
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.
20
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).
21
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).
22
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.
23
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)
24
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
25
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
26
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).
27
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
28
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
29
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
30
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.
31
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.
32
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.”
33
XI. Bibliography
Alexandris, Alexis. The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations 1918 -
1974. Athens: Center for Asia Minor Studies, 1983.
Brown, Keith. The Past in Question - Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of
Nation. New York: Princeton UP, 2003.
Carment, David, and Patrick James. "Internal Constraints and Interstate Ethnic Conflict:
Toward a Crisis-based Assessment of Irredentism." Journal of Conflict Resolution
39 (1995): 82-109.
Clark, Bruce. Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and
Turkey. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2006.
De Bernieres, Louis. Birds Without Wings. New York: Knopf, 2004.
Gavrilis, George. Understanding Greco-Ottoman Conflict: Statist Irredentism, Belligerent
Democratization or a Synthesis? Diss. Colombia University.
<www.hks.harvard.edu/kokkalis/gsw1/gsw1/10%20gavrilis.pdf>.
Green, Sarah F. Notes from the Balkans - Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the
Greek-Albanian Border. New York: Princeton UP, 2005.
Henckaerts, Jean-Marie, and Louis B. Sohn. Mass Expulsion in Modern International
Law and Practice. Grand Rapids: Martinus Nijhoff, 1995.
Hirschon, Renee, ed. Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory
Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey. New York: Berghahn Books,
2003.
Kallis, Aristotle A. "To Expand or Not to Expand? Territory, Fascism and the Quest for
an 'Ideal Fatherland'" Journal of Contemporary History 38 (2003): 237-60.
34
Karakasidou, Anastasia N. Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood : Passages to Nationhood in
Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990. New York: University of Chicago P, 1997.
Llewellyn-Smith, Michael. Ionian Vision : Greece in Asia Minor, 1919-1922. New York:
University of Michigan P.
Mango, Andrew. Ataturk : The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. New York:
Overlook P, The, 2002.
Michas, Takis, and Michalis Papakonstantinou. Unholy Alliance : Greece and Serbia in
the Nineties. New York: Texas A&M UP, 2002.
Pallis, A. A. "Racial Migration in the Balkans during the Years 1912 - 1924." The
Geographical Journal 66 (1925): 315-31.
Pentzopoulos, Dimitri. Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact on Greece. Boston:
C. Hurst & Company,, Limited, 2002.
Roudometof, Victor. Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict : Greece,
Bulgaria and the Macedonian Question. New York: Praeger, 2002.
Tsolainos, Kyriakos P. "Greek Irredentism." Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science 108 (1923): 160-61.
Wolff, Stafan. "Can Forced Population Transfers Resolve Self-determination Conflicts?
A European Perspective." Journal of Contemporary European Studies 12 (2004):
11-29.
35