Istanbul
Syrians and Jews who were accused of collaborating with the Western
colonial powers, the cosmopolitan-free havens were absorbed again into
the hinterland. The new independent nation states retreated from the sea,
seeking their identities in more solid terrains.”^17
The year 1923 saw the legalized ending of a decades-long process of
expulsion and flight. The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria had engaged
in a population exchange in 1913. Following the loss of Salonika, in 1914
the Ottoman Empire proposed the “exchange” of 30 , 000 Balkan Muslims
for 120 , 000 Anatolian Orthodox Christians, but it was hindered by the
outbreak of World War I.^18 Cemal Pasha had plans to deport the Jews of
Palestine, but foreign intervention prevented it.^19 Perhaps as many as one
million Armenians were deported from Anatolia in 1915 – 17 , which led to
the deaths of most of them. Hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Chris-
tians were driven out of Western Anatolia under cover of war. Following
the end of the Greek invasion and civil war in 1922 , in which the Muslim
(later labeled Turkish) side was victorious, within one month 650 , 000
Orthodox Christians left Anatolia; by the end of the year 1 million had
emigrated to Greece.^20 It is ironic that a secular state approved the 1923
population exchange based on religion. Like the India-Pakistan popula-
tion exchange two decades later, legalized expulsions in newly established
secular nation-states made enemies of neighbors, divided people along
religious lines, and alienated individuals from self-ascribed identities.^21
At the same time as nation-states took upon themselves the ability to
categorize people into religious groups, determining who belonged in
which one, they also hindered movement between religions. Contrary to
policy in the Ottoman Empire, where conversion had been the primary
means of social integration and advancement, Christians and Jews were
prohibited from converting to Islam at the inception of the Turkish Re-
public. To preclude their remaining in the new nation-state, the Turk-
ish Grand National Assembly passed a measure in the summer of 1923
forbidding them to change their religion, evidence of the prevalence of
ethnicizing religion.^22
Populations subject to exchange are never consulted.^23 Worse, neither
are they allowed to return to their native land. Moreover, once in their
new country, they face the question of belonging, which is posed to them
both by others and by themselves. Do they want to stay or leave? Do they
want to go back? Do they regret the impossibility of returning? What
does the impossibility of returning mean for the survival of their group?^24