The Treaty of Lausanne is a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923 and signed in the Palais de Rumine in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially resolved the conflict that had initially arisen between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied French Republic, British Empire, Kingdom of Italy, Empire of Japan, Kingdom of Greece, Kingdom of Serbia, and the Kingdom of Romania since the outset of World War I. The original text of the treaty is in English and French. It emerged as a second attempt at peace after the failed and unratified Treaty of Sèvres, which had sought to partition Ottoman territories. The earlier treaty, signed in 1920, was later rejected by the Turkish National Movement which actively opposed its terms. As a result of Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War, Turkish forces recaptured İzmir, and the Armistice of Mudanya was signed in October 1922. This armistice provided for the exchange of Greek-Turkish populations and allowed unrestricted civilian, non-military passage through the Turkish Straits.
Trabzon, historically known as Trebizond, is a city on the Black Sea coast of northeastern Turkey and the capital of Trabzon Province. Trabzon, located on the historical Silk Road, became a melting pot of religions, languages and culture for centuries and a trade gateway to Persia in the southeast and the Caucasus to the northeast. The Venetian and Genoese merchants paid visits to Trabzon during the medieval period and sold silk, linen and woolen fabric. Both republics had merchant colonies within the city – Leonkastron and the former "Venetian castle" – that played a role to Trabzon similar to the one Galata played to Constantinople. Trabzon formed the basis of several states in its long history and was the capital city of the Empire of Trebizond between 1204 and 1461. During the early modern period, Trabzon, because of the importance of its port, again became a focal point of trade to Persia and the Caucasus.
The Pontic Greeks, also Pontian Greeks or simply Pontians, are an ethnically Greek group indigenous to the region of Pontus, in northeastern Anatolia. They share a common Pontic Greek culture that is distinguished by its music, dances, cuisine, and clothing. Folk dances, such as the Serra, and traditional musical instruments, like the Pontic lyra, remain important to Pontian diaspora communities. Pontians traditionally speak Pontic Greek, a modern Greek variety, that has developed remotely in the region of Pontus. Commonly known as Pontiaka, it is traditionally called Romeika by its native speakers.
The history of the Jews in Turkey (Turkish: Türk Yahudileri or Türk Musevileri; Hebrew: יהודים טורקים, romanized: Yehudim Turkim; covers the 2400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey.
Cunda Island, also called Alibey Island,, Greek Moschonisi, is the largest of the Ayvalık Islands archipelago in Turkey, which was historically called the Εκατόνησα (Hekatonisa) or Μοσχονήσια (Moschonisia) archipelago in Greek. It lies in the Edremit Gulf on Turkey's northwestern coast, off the coast of Ayvalık in Balıkesir Province, Turkey, with an area of 26.8 square kilometres (10 sq mi). It is located 16 kilometres east of Lesbos, Greece.
Muhacir are the estimated millions of Ottoman Muslim citizens and their descendants born after the onset of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Muhacirs are mostly Turks but also Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarian Muslims, Macedonian Muslims, Greek Muslims, Serb Muslims, Georgian Muslims, and Muslim Roma who emigrated to East Thrace and Anatolia from the late 18th century until the end of the 20th century, mainly to escape ongoing persecution in their homelands.
The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, by the governments of Greece and Turkey. It involved at least 1.6 million people, most of whom were forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from their homelands.
The Greek genocide, which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia, which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) – including the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923) – on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.
The Greeks in Turkey constitute a small population of Greek and Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox Christians who mostly live in Istanbul, as well as on the two islands of the western entrance to the Dardanelles: Imbros and Tenedos. Greeks are one of the four ethnic minorities officially recognized in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, together with Jews, Armenians, and Bulgarians.
The Republic of Pontus was a proposed Pontic Greek state on the southern coast of the Black Sea. Its territory would have encompassed much of historical Pontus in north-eastern Asia Minor, and today forms part of Turkey's Black Sea Region. The proposed state was discussed at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but the Greek government of Eleftherios Venizelos feared the precarious position of such a state and so it was included instead in the larger proposed state of Wilsonian Armenia. Ultimately, however, neither state came into existence and the Pontic Greek population was massacred and expelled from Turkey after 1922 and resettled in the Soviet Union or in Macedonia, Greece. This state of affairs was later formally recognized as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. In modern Greek political circles, the exchange is seen as inextricable from the contemporaneous Greek genocide.
The partition of the Ottoman Empire was a geopolitical event that occurred after World War I and the occupation of Constantinople by British, French, and Italian troops in November 1918. The partitioning was planned in several agreements made by the Allied Powers early in the course of World War I, notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, after the Ottoman Empire had joined Germany to form the Ottoman–German alliance. The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states. The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural, and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey. Resistance to the influence of these powers came from the Turkish National Movement but did not become widespread in the other post-Ottoman states until the period of rapid decolonization after World War II.
Greek refugees is a collective term used to refer to the more than one million Greek Orthodox natives of Asia Minor, Thrace and the Black Sea areas who fled during the Greek genocide (1914-1923) and Greece's later defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), as well as remaining Greek Orthodox inhabitants of Turkey who were required to leave their homes for Greece shortly thereafter as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, which formalized the population transfer and barred the return of the refugees. This Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations was signed in Lausanne, on January 30, 1923 as part of the peace treaty between Greece and Turkey and required all remaining Orthodox Christians in Turkey, regardless of what language they spoke, be relocated to Greece with the exception of those in Istanbul and two nearby islands. Although the term has been used in various times to refer to fleeing populations of Greek descent, the population strength and the influence of the Asia Minor Greeks in Greece itself, has attached the term to the Anatolian Greek population of the early 20th century. At least 300,000 Greek refugees were from Eastern Thrace, whereas at least 900,000 were from Asia Minor. At least 150,000 were from Istanbul, who left the city in three years before 1928.
Bruce Clark is the International Security Editor of The Economist, and the author of Twice A Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey.
Vazelon Monastery is a ruin located in the Black Sea region of Turkey. It was built in 270 and is 40 km (25 mi) south of Trabzon. Justinian I, a ruler of the Byzantine Empire, ordered the monastery to be repaired in 565, and it was renovated multiple times until the 20th century. The current structures date from the rebuilding in 1410.
Ambrosios Pleiathidis also known as Ambrosios of Moschonisia was the Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Moschonisia, in modern Turkey, from February to September 1922. He was executed by the Turkish Army at the end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922).
The Citizen, speak Turkish! campaign was a Turkish government-funded initiative created by law students which aimed to put pressure on non-Turkish speakers to speak Turkish in public in the 1930s and onwards. In some municipalities, fines were given to those speaking in any language other than Turkish. The campaign has been considered by some authors as a significant contribution to Turkey's sociopolitical process of Turkification.
Matthaios Kofidis was an Ottoman Greek businessman, historian and a politician, who was a member of the Ottoman Parliament. He was elected in three successive periods from 1908 to 1918. In 1921 he was among the notables of the Greek community of the Pontus region who were hanged by the Turkish nationalists of Mustafa Kemal.
The 1921 Amasya trials were special ad hoc trials, organized by the Turkish National Movement, with the purpose to kill en masse the Greek representatives of Pontus region under a legal pretext. They occurred in Amasya, modern Turkey, during the final stage of the Pontic Greek genocide. The total number of the executed individuals is estimated to be ca. 400-450, among them 155 prominent Pontic Greeks.
The evacuation of Ayvalik took place in May 1917 as part of the genocide policies of the Ottoman government. The population of the predominantly Greek-inhabited town of Ayvalik, Ottoman Empire on the east coast of the Aegean Sea was forcibly deported to the hinterland of Anatolia by the Ottoman authorities. The deportation was organized by Imperial German Army General and chief military adviser to the Ottoman Empire, Liman von Sanders, and included death marches, looting, torture and massacre against the local civilian population.
The 1914 Greek deportations was the forcible expulsion of around 150,000 to 300,000 Ottoman Greeks from Eastern Thrace and the Aegean coast of Anatolia by the Committee of Union and Progress that culminated in May and June 1914. The deportations almost caused war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire and were an important precursor to the Armenian genocide.
