Istanbul
a Greek citizen who was Muslim, then he should have been expelled to
Turkey and his property confiscated by the government for the purpose
of redistribution to Orthodox Christian expellees from Turkey. But if he
had neither Greek nor Turkish citizenship, he could remain in Greece and
keep his property, at least for the time being. The newspaper sides with
the refugees from Anatolia and attacks the ministers handling the popula-
tion exchange.
In an article entitled “The Kapancıs Have Become Serbian subjects
As Well, a Manifest Scandal,” the newspaper expresses outrage that “the
Ministry of Agriculture has sent an order to the local Mixed Commission
for the Exchange of the Population by which it makes it known that one
of the Kapancıs [Mehmet Kapancı, son of Ahmet Kapancı] is a Serbian
subject and that his property should therefore continue to belong to him.
Once known, this scandal has upset the refugees and those that know
the Kapancı family. It would not be strange if the rest of the Turks of this
family were to become Serbian subjects.”^16
Four days later, the newspaper continues to fan the flames of outrage in
an article with the long heading “Unexplored Matters: The Refugee and
Public Properties. Some Are Plundered and Others Are Ignored. Mehmet
Kapancı [son of Ahmet Kapancı] Has Began to Take Action—Uproar
and Protests—The Scandal Has to Be Dealt With.... Someone Has to
Talk.” The article begins by claiming that immediately after the order
given by the Ministry of Agriculture for the restitution of the property
of Mehmet Kapancı, he, or rather his wife, had visited the tenants of her
lands and demanded that they either pay their overdue rents or evacuate
the properties. Most of the tenants began to protest and express their
outrage in various ways to both the police and the Mixed Commission.
The newspaper declares “that the scandal has to be dealt with with force
equal to the impudence with which the ministry has provoked it. We
regret that we have recently learned that along with Mehmet Kapancı’s
successful claim, other wicked acts are occurring with the connivance and
culpability of the ministry.”^17 It argues that such important scandals harm
the rights of the refugees to receive their just compensation.
The following day, the newspaper continued to focus on Mehmet
Kapancı. In an article entitled simply “The Pillaging,” it writes that Me-
hmet Kapancı has usurped a property that is not his and lists what the
writer of the article considered his unjust claims: a mansion on Leōforos
Dēmokratias (Republic Avenue; the new Greek municipality had Hel-