page_title: Population exchange between Greece and Turkey
hierarchical_section_title: Population exchange between Greece and Turkey
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Document de l'empire Ottoman d'archive concernant la recensement officiel de 1914. La première colonne est pour les musulmanes. Population totale: 14.155.755**. Deuxième colonne: les grecs. La troisième colonne: les arméniens. Population totale: 1.219.323 English: The Ottoman Empire archive document regarding the official census of 1914. first column "musulman" (muslims) total pop: 14,155,755**, second "grecs" (Greeks), third "arménien" (Armenians) total pop: 1,219,323
context_page_description: 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 initial request for an exchange of population came from Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, as it was a plan he had come up with before WWI. In a letter he submitted to the League of Nations on October 16, 1922, Venizelos proposed a "compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish populations," and asked Fridtjof Nansen to make the necessary arrangements. The new state of Turkey also envisioned the population exchange as a way to formalize and make permanent the flight of its native Greek Orthodox peoples following their genocide, while initiating a new exodus of a smaller number of Muslims from Greece as a way to provide settlers for the newly-depopulated Orthodox villages of Turkey; Greece meanwhile saw it as a way to provide propertyless Greek Orthodox refugees from Turkey with lands of expelled Muslims.
context_section_description: The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey (Greek: Ἡ Ἀνταλλαγή, romanized: I Antallagí, Ottoman Turkish: مبادله‎, romanized: Mübâdele) 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 (1,221,489 Greek Orthodox from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, the Pontic Alps and the Caucasus, and 355,000–400,000 Muslims from Greece), most of whom were forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from their homelands.
  The initial request for an exchange of population came from Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, as it was a plan he had come up with before WWI. In a letter he submitted to the League of Nations on October 16, 1922, Venizelos proposed a "compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish populations," and asked Fridtjof Nansen to make the necessary arrangements. The new state of Turkey also envisioned the population exchange as a way to formalize and make permanent the flight of its native Greek Orthodox peoples following their genocide (1914–1922), while initiating a new exodus of a smaller number (400,000) of Muslims from Greece as a way to provide settlers for the newly-depopulated Orthodox villages of Turkey; Greece meanwhile saw it as a way to provide propertyless Greek Orthodox refugees from Turkey with lands of expelled Muslims.
  This major compulsory population exchange, or agreed mutual expulsion, was based not on language or ethnicity, but upon religious identity, and involved nearly all the indigenous Orthodox Christian citizens of Turkey (the Rûm "Roman/Byzantine" millet), including even Turkish-speaking Orthodox citizens, and on the other side most of the native Muslims of Greece, including even Greek-speaking Muslim citizens, such as Cretan Turks. Each group were citizens, and mostly native peoples, of the state which expelled them, and neither had representation in the state purporting to speak for them in the exchange treaty.
caption: 1914 document showing the official figures from the 1914 population census of the Ottoman Empire. The total population (sum of all the millets) was given at 20,975,345, and the Greek population was given at 1,792,206.
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