7. Turkish and Greek Population Exchange – 1,600,000 People Displaced
In 1453 the fall of Constantinople to the forces of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire brought the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire to an end. The centuries that followed, however, witnesses a high degree of cooperation and friendship between the Turkish and Greek peoples. Under the Ottoman millet system, Greek Orthodox Christians were recognized as a distinct community and given the right to practice their religion and develop their own laws, schools, and institutions. The advent of nationalism in the early nineteenth century, however, would once again put these two populations at odds.
Beginning in 1821 Greek nationalists rebels, with the help of European great powers, waged a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. Their victory in 1835 won them an independent state and touched off the Ottoman Empire’s long retreat from the Balkans. The subsequent erosion of the Ottoman position in the region over the next eighty years would contribute to the outbreak of the First World War. Defeat in the First World War spelled the end for the Ottoman Empire, but animosity between Greeks and Turks would persist.
In the aftermath of the First World War, Greece made territorial claims to the western parts of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), hoping that they might rebuild their lost Byzantine Empire. But the arrival of Greek occupation troops in Anatolia touched off an uprising of Turks under Kemal Ataturk, reigniting the war. By 1923 Ataturk had driven the Greek forces from the new Republic of Turkey, but a good number of Greeks, who had lived there for generations, remained.
Likewise, hundreds of thousands of Turks were still living in Greece. According to the terms of peace between the two countries, these populations were to be exchanged. As a consequence 1,200,000 Greeks were expelled from Turkey and 400,000 Turks were expelled from Greece.