Electoral Impact and Partisan Contours of the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange

• In Event: Attitudinal Responses to Violence

Abstract

In early 1923, Greek and Turkish governments agreed to exchange almost all Muslims in Greece with almost all Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey. Muslims in Greece and Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey at the time made up roughly 10 percent or even more of the population in both countries. Hence, these minorities had a significant role in the nascent electoral politics and multiparty competition in both Greece and Turkey. We investigate the electoral behavior of the exchangees in the few elections before and after the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923 in order to assess the overall impact of the population exchange on the party systems of Greece and Turkey. This paper seeks to answer 4 empirical questions: First, were Muslims of Greece that were sent to Turkey overwhelmingly supportive of the anti-Venizelist parties? Second, did the Greek Orthodox Christians who were deported from Turkey to Greece become supporters of Venizelos? Third, were the Greek Orthodox Christians deported from Turkey mostly opposed to the new Turkish nationalist government in Ankara? Fourth, did the Muslims that were deported from Greece to Turkey mostly support the incumbent Turkish nationalist governments led by the CHP (Republican People’s Party)? In sum, based on our preliminary findings, we seek to demonstrate that the Greek-Turkish population exchange had a strong political partisan dimension, both in Greece and in Turkey, which has been almost entirely overlooked even in scholarly discussions that only depict the Population Exchange in nationalistic terms with Greeks and Turks as the main actors, beneficiaries, or victims (even in its 100th anniversary nowadays).

Authors

• Sener Akturk, Koç University

• Evangelos Liaras, IE University