Greek refugees
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Greek refugees is a collective term used to refer to the Greeks from Asia Minor who were evacuated or relocated in Greece following the Treaty of Lausanne and the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey.[citation needed]
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[edit] Usage of the term
The Greek refugees from Asia Minor are usually called in Greek simply Οι Πρόσφυγες (The Refugees), with a capital Π, cause of their population strength and the circumstances of their relocation. Alternative terms used are Οι Μικρασιάτες πρόσφυγες (The Asia Minor refugees) or Οι πρόσφυγες του '22 (The refugees of ’22). Further distinctions are made to denote the refugees from various historic regions of Anatolia: Πόντιοι πρόσφυγες (Pontic refugees), Καππαδόκες πρόσφυγες (Cappadocian refugees), Μικρασιάτες πρόσφυγες (The refugees from Asia Minor), to refer to the Greeks from the geographic area of the peninsula; special reference is made for the Refugees from Smyrna (Πρόσφυγες της Σμύρνης), since the core of the Greek population lived in the city of Smyrna . The refugees from Eastern Thrace are also included.
[edit] Historical background
[edit] Antiquity
The eastern coast of the Aegean was inhabited by Greeks as early as the 9th century BC. Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies were established from the Dardanelles to Caria, with the most important been Miletus, Phocaea, Ephesus and Smyrna. The prominence of the Ionian colonies and the Ionic dialect gave to the region the name Ionia. The Greeks of Asia Minor contributed significantly in the ancient Greek history, from the Ionian Revolt, the Ionian League and the conquests of Alexander the Great, to the Hellenistic kingdoms of Pergamos and Pontus. The Arabic, Turkish , Persian & Urdu name for Greece is Younan (یونان), a corruption of "Ionia." The same is true for the Hebrew word, "Yavan" (יוון). The Ionians were the first Greek-speaking people that Semitic, Turkic and Persian language speakers encountered, and the name spread throughout the Near East and Central Asia. The Arabic, Turkish , Persian and Urdu name for Greece is Younan (یونان), a corruption of "Ionia." The same is true for the Hebrew word, "Yavan" (יוון). Following the spread of the Hellenistic civilization, Greek had become the lingua franca in Asia Minor by the time of the Roman conquest.
[edit] Byzantine Empire
After the founding of Constantinople by Constantine the Great in 330 and the split of the Roman Empire in 395, Asia Minor, the major part of the Greek East, became the most important region of the Byzantine Empire. For the centuries to follow, the area was the main manpower and wheat source of the state. Numerous invasions and epidemics (especially the Plague of Justinian) devastated the area in various times. However, Asia Minor remained densely populated, compared to the rest of the Medieval world. The Greek population began to decline rapidly with the invasions of the Seljuq Turks in the 11th century. The establishment of the Seljuk Empire deprived the Byzantines of a large part of Anatolia. The Fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, marked the end of Greek sovereighty in the area.
[edit] Ottoman Empire
The first centuries of the Ottoman rule were named by the Greeks The Dark centuries. The custom of the Janissaries and the various restrictions on the religious, economic and social lives of the non Muslim inhabitants of the Empire, constituted an imminent danger for the continuation of the Greek inhabitation of Asia Minor. Conditions were improved the following centuries, but the Greeks remained in the status of Dhimmi. Islamization and gradual Turkification continued. The ideas of The Enlightenment and the subsequent Greek War of Independence, raise the hopes of the Asia Minor Greeks for sovereighty. Many Greeks from Anatolia fought as revolutionaries and faced the retaliations of the Sultan.
[edit] 20th Century
The persecutions, massacres, expulsions, and death marches of the Asia Minor Greeks were renewed during the early 20th century by the Young Turk administration of the Ottoman Empire and during the subsequent revolution of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Potic Greek population was the most severely affected; its misfortunes became known as the Pontic Greek Genocide. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, the Allies granted Greece, with the Treaty of Sevres, the administration of Eastern Thrace (apart from Constantinople) and the city of Smyrna and its environs. The Pontic Greeks attempted to establish their own republic, the Republic of Pontus. The defeat of the Greek army during the Greco-Turkish War led to what became known in Greece as the Asia Minor Catastrophe. A series of events, with the Great Fire of Smyrna been their peak, diminished the 3,000 year old Greek presence in Asia Minor. The Treaty of Lausanne, which was signed in 1923, anticipated the compulsory exchange of populations. The remaining Greek Orthodox population of Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace, as well as the Muslim population of Greece (the Greeks of Constantinople, Imbros and Tenedos and the Muslims of Western Thrace were excluded) were denaturalized from homelands of centuries or millennia.
[edit] Population strength
The first censuses of Ottoman Anatolia included statistics based only in religion, cause of the millet system. According to the Ottoman census of 1915, the Greek population of Asia Minor amounted to 2,601,312 people.[1] The estimations of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Greek state and various Western sources, place their number much higher. The number of Greeks excluded from the population exchange was about 300,000 (270,000 living in Istanbul[2]). There are not exact figures of the refugee population in Greece. The first national Greek census after 1923, conducted in 1828, showed the number of the Greeks of Asia Minor origin to be 1,164,267. A small number of refugees had fled to Russia and the Middle East the previous years. In addition to them, approximately 250,000 Greek Americans of Asia Minor descent, who had American citizenship and had emigrated to the United States between 1866-1917, were de jure denaturalized from those homelands and lost the right of return. It is usually estimated that the refugees in Greece numbered approximately 1.5 million people. Descendants of the refugees took part in the great Greek migrations of the Interwar period, as well as the mass immigrations in the United States, Australia and Germany in 1960s-1970s. Today, about 40% of the population of Greece claims full or partial descent from the Asia Minor refugees; as does an almost equal percentage of diasporan Greeks.
[edit] Conditions of the population exchange
The populations which were expelled suffered greatly. Since this was the first compulsory population exchange in human history, no special measures for the protection of the refugees were taken into account. The refugees were packed in ships without any of their possessions and placed in quarantine before landing in the Greek ports. Greece, which had been in a state of war for about 12 years, was a bankrupt state, which had just changed its political system, after a revolution and the expulsion of King Constantine I. The unorganized transfer, as well as the severe economic and healthy conditions, had as a result the spread of diseases and a high mortality rate. Thousands of Asia Minor Greeks had drawn in the sea (especially in the Gulf of Smyrna) or died of epidemics, mainly of malaria. The hospital facilities of Greece could not support such a large number, and even the cemeteries were not many enough. The conditions of their expulsion and relocation were worsened by the fact that the vast majority of the refugees were women and children (aged under 15), since the male population was not allowed to leave Turkey, and was subjected to labour battalions.
[edit] Areas of settlement
The core of the refugee population settled in Attica and Macedonia. Numerous suburbs, towns and villages were established to house the additional population of Greece, which rose by about 1/3 in just a few months. In addition, to this day every town in Greece has a quarter named Προσφυγικά, The Refugees' (quarter). These new settlements were usually named after the place of origin of their inhabitants:
[edit] List of settlements
This is a list of refugee settlements in Greece (the place of origin is in parenthesis)
[edit] Possitive effects
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[edit] Negative effects
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[edit] Impact on the Greek psyche
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[edit] Popular culture
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[edit] See also
- Population exchange between Greece and Turkey
- Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)
- Treaty of Lausanne
- Pontic Greek Genocide
- Great Fire of Smyrna
- Greeks of Turkey
- Istanbul Pogrom
[edit] Further reading
- Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus, Renee Hirschon
- The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, Stephen-Pericles Ladas
- Greek-Turkish Population Exchange: An Analysis of the Conflict Leading to the Exchange, Safiye Bilge Temel
- Population Dilemmas in the Middle East: essays in political demography and economy, Gad G. Gilbar
