How Two Became One: Orthodox and Muslim History of Alaçam Houses

Introduction

Relocation of human communities from one place to another for various reasons is a situation frequently encountered in the ordinary course of history. Massive human movements described as ‘migration’ in literature is the name of the first and only ‘compulsory’ process unnamed for natural events, economic and political reasons in history. However, we experienced an unusual period which officially recorded the “compulsory” status of migration in documents in our recent history. Two peoples that experienced this period in its bitterest state are the Turkish and Greek peoples. Reasons for the compulsory migration which resulted in the “Convention and Protocol Concerning the Exchange of the Turkish and Greek Peoples” in 1923, in fact, are based upon the period prior to 1923. Approximately 1,6 million Greek Orthodox Christians lived in Anatolia, in other words, Asia Minor before the World War I. There were approximately eight hundred thousand Muslims in Greece in the same period (Barutciski, 2003, p. 28). 1912-1913 Balkan Wars and World War I resulted in mass movements of civil population within the Ottoman Empire, which was already falling due to the rising ethno-nationalist movement. Such developments further laid the infrastructure for the very first action of conquest in order to re-gain Anatolia once Greece had occupied İzmir in 1919. Inspired by the Megali Idea (Great Idea), the Greek army started an attack on the Turkish territories on March 23, 1921, but was wiped out in 1922 (Smith, 2009, p. 82). Bashing of the Greek army led to mass population movements as a reaction to both the violence applied to Turkish civilians during the retreat of the Greek army and to the exposure of the Christian civilians in Anatolia to the rage of the advancing Turkish army and bands (Hirschon, 2003, p. 5). After the developments in which living together became impossible, a mass refugee migration known as Megali Catastrofi (Great Catastrophe) started, of which majory was the Orthodox Greeks in Anatolia. This migration caused the Greek Orthodox population reduced approximately one million people in Asia Minor by the end of 1922 (Barutciski, 2003, p. 28). Muslim nationals in Greece experienced a similar period as well. Except very few exceptions who were very poor or too old to travel, people from each side mutually started to migrate through each and every way they could find (by sea or on foot) (Cabanes, 2014, p. 174).

Compulsory Population Exchange just came to the fore in both countries at such a time. Even if demographic changes which started with wars caused the heterodox structure of the regions, there were still places where various groups had been together in terms of language, ethics and religion both in Greece and Turkey. However, both parties which were at the beginning of the process of being a nation-state “made ‘religion’ a ‘national identity’” (Shields, 2013, p. 120-135) and found a solution to the process of creating a homogenous society through a protocol. A protocol signed by and between the Turkish and Greek delegations at Lausanne, Switzerland, on January 30, 1923 was the inception of the compulsory migration. This Protocol gained currency in the course of the peace talks at Lausanne by which the borders of the Republic of Turkey were drawn and the Turkish and Greek delegations mutually signed the “Convention and Protocol Concerning the Exchange of the Turkish and Greek Peoples” (Arı, 2014, p. 31). First two articles of the protocol describe who will be relocated on the Turkish and Greek sides and how as follows: