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The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange under the Treaty of Lausanne

1923–1930 · Balkans, Anatolia & the Caucasus

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What happened

The Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, signed at Lausanne on 30 January 1923, provided in Article 1 for a compulsory exchange from 1 May 1923 of Turkish nationals of the Greek Orthodox religion established in Turkey and Greek nationals of the Muslim religion established in Greece, exempting under Article 2 only the Greeks of Constantinople and the Muslims of western Thrace. Religion, not language or self-identification, was the criterion, so Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians of Cappadocia went to Greece and Greek-speaking Muslims of Crete and Epirus went to Turkey. Fridtjof Nansen, League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, had promoted the exchange as a means of resolving the refugee crisis created by the 1922 collapse, and a Mixed Commission supervised transfers and property liquidation. Much of the movement had already occurred as flight in 1922; the convention retroactively made it permanent and stripped those transferred of the right to return. The Permanent Court of International Justice was asked in 1925 to interpret 'established' in Article 2 and held that it meant residence of a lasting nature under the convention's own terms rather than under national law. It was the first compulsory exchange of populations codified in an international treaty and was cited as a precedent for later transfers.

Parties

Greece and Turkey, under a convention signed at Lausanne on 30 January 1923 and supervised by a Mixed Commission under League of Nations auspices, compulsorily exchanged their Orthodox Christian and Muslim populations

Disputed

The denominator

The Mixed Commission's own accounting covered roughly 1.2-1.3 million Orthodox Christians moved from Anatolia and eastern Thrace to Greece, most of whom had already fled in 1922, and about 355,000-500,000 Muslims moved from Greece to Turkey. The exempted communities, the Greeks of Istanbul, Imbros and Tenedos and the Muslims of Western Thrace, together numbered a few hundred thousand and are excluded from the baseline.

Where the baseline comes from

• Population exchange between Greece and Turkey — Wikipediaopen-edited
• Treaty of Lausanne — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

The exchange itself was not a killing operation, and no reliable death toll exists for the transfers. Mortality among refugees in the Greek reception camps in 1922-24 from typhus, malaria and destitution was heavy and is usually estimated in the tens of thousands, but it is not separable from the deaths of the 1922 flight that preceded the convention.

Documented forms of violence

The convention itself stripped those transferred of nationality and of the right to return without the permission of the receiving government, as recorded in its published text.

Formal findings

• Permanent Court of International Justice (1925) — Advisory Opinion of 21 February 1925 interpreting Article 2 of the Lausanne Convention, holding that 'established' denotes residence of a lasting nature determined by the convention itself and by the Mixed Commission, not by Turkish or Greek municipal law. — source

Movements mapped

• Orthodox Christians of Anatolia -> Greek Macedonia and Thrace1.2 million
• Muslims of Greece -> Anatolia400,000

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Greece, Turkey

Related entries

• Overlaps with: The Persecution and Deportation of the Ottoman Greeks (the Greek Genocide)
  The exchange entry's 1.2 million Orthodox Christians are mostly refugees of the 1922 flight, whom the convention retroactively brought under the exchange; per the Mixed Commission only about 189,916 were transferred from Turkey after it took effect. Once the genocide entry is restricted to the 1913-18 expulsions and deportations (see the Smyrna item), the 1922 flight is no longer in its displacement figure. The only remaining overlap is people deported in 1914-18 who later left in 1922-23, a repeat displacement of the same individuals and not a duplicated count.

Sources

• Republic of Turkiye, Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Lausanne Peace Treaty VI - Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, 30 January 1923 (full text)official
• Permanent Court of International Justice, Advisory Opinion of 21 February 1925: Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations (Lausanne Convention VI, Article 2)press
• MERIP: The Greek-Turkish Population Exchangepress
• The Nobel Prize: Fridtjof Nansen, Peace Prize 1922 - factspress