After the Arab and Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire will be separated and made into states, the creation of a Turkish state has matured internationally. Since there are no more empire to save the successors of the Unionists have their hands free, they no longer have to be wary of actions to be taken against non-Turkish subjects.

Purges by way of exchange of population

Arriving at the Treaty of Lausanne, the majority of the non-Muslim population was driven out of Anatolia and the problem of the Armenian population had been resolved with the genocide of 1915. Before the Turkish War of Independence, the assets of these subjects not Muslims had already been confiscated. “Notable Turks seized land and businesses abandoned as a direct result of the departure of the Greeks and Armenians in Turkey … One factor that has attracted the provincial bourgeoisie of Anatolia to the national cause was the possibility that the Greeks and Armenians can one day return to their land, workshops and shops confiscated. This fear is one of the main themes of the Congress of Erzurum and will be more clearly addressed at the Sivas Congress. Arriving at the date of 30 January 1923 the Anatolian Greek population subject to population exchange had already fallen, and the Armenian population had been reduced to less than 100,000. Regarding religion, the Anatolian population was about was homogenized! But it is understood later that the religious homogeneity was not enough.

If one approaches the subject from the perspective of the Greek population, “the migration of Greeks from Turkey started with the Balkan war in 1912 and continued permanently from that date. Their migration began and peaked in 1914-1915 with the Turkification policy Aegean coasts for military reasons … The departure of the Greeks who had played an important role in the economic life of the country was now Turkified in haste . These Greeks had left behind much of their wealth trying to flee a victorious army. (…) After the war, shared by the state itself or with significant tolerance to the seizure of the land and the property abandoned by local notables, can be considered as an effective tool in supporting new regime and in the training of its new executives. (…)

To give you an idea of ​​just abandoned property on the city of Izmir, in an interview with the Anatolia newspaper dated June 18, 1924, the Minister of Finance Hasan Fehmi Bey confirms: “The Greeks have left 10,678 properties, 2,173 stores, 79 plants, 2 steam rooms, 1 hospital; Armenians and Jews have left 1,600 properties, 2,821 shops, 89 mills, 2 steam rooms, 1 hospital. “The goal of National Defense, was to defend” Turkish goods “from the expropriation of non-Muslims. Where associations of national defense were the most active, concerned the countries where the expropriation took place. The new classes of rich were ready to fight like lions to avoid losing their property and fear of revenge of Armenians and Greeks if they returned. “

Cite here the example of “the storm of those who got rich on the backs of Armenians”. In newspapers dated April 2, 1924 are published articles about Armenians who returned to Turkey in 1924. “While we do not allow minority subjects who left with a Turkish passport to go, how do those who leave the country with a foreign passport can return and reclaim their property? “There we wrote. These articles have published for months began to turn into a storm and knocked heads, those of the minister of internal affairs and many bureaucrats. The case of the storm of those who have enriched themselves at the expense of Armenian demonstrates how far we are willing to fight to defend like lions confiscated property.

The Turkish government also does not want the exiles returned, and that is why it distributes releases where we threatens those who have returned, “Among those who have returned, those who want to leave the country may do so within a month, otherwise we will not be responsible for what happens to them. “ And those who are reclaiming their property and obtain judicial confirmation that the goods belong to them, they were told that “the Ministry of Internal Affairs gave the order not to make these goods,” or we sent hired killers to those who insisted. Thus, for various pressure tactics most genocide survivors were forced to leave again their land and dispersed in other countries. Sarkis Çerkezyan tells us that following his father lived at the time: “The lawyer had made him understand the reality of the situation, saying Mr. Çerkezyan it is important not that you claim anything if you claim that your property you will be hanged in turn, the gallows is there. “ Those who want to save their lives, are forced to leave their property and rebuild their future in other countries.

“The Republic was as the resurgence of the Ottoman Empire which distributed land to his trusted and that way, she placed above the law … The financial resources acquired during the wars preceding the establishment of the Republic the strengthened. When the non-Muslim population has been out of the game, their properties and their statutes were the resources of the new regime could now be distributed to the people. This distribution has accelerated the creation of a local bourgeoisie, and this class is subordinate to the orders of the state (…)

We understand the extent of looting by the correspondence between the Prime Minister Ismet Inonu and Rauf Orbay at the Lausanne Conference; even those who saw themselves as the “true son of the fatherland” were in a contest looting goods Anatolian Greeks. In a cable dated December 2, 1923 sent by Rauf Orbay Ismet Pasha, it says “after placing the homeless in western Anatolia can still accommodate sixty thousand households.” About a month and a half later, in a cable dated January 20, 1923, Ismet Pasha asked the Prime Minister Rauf Orbay if we can still accommodate these households. The reply dated 23 January 1923 Prime Minister Rauf Orbay is significant “today, we can easily place twenty thousand households,” he said. This means that in a period as short as a month and a half two-thirds of the houses of the Greeks who were forced to leave the country were seized or assigned (…)

The daily İli Türk made a classification of those who settled in the abandoned properties of an exclusive area of ​​the city of Izmir. The newspaper had settled “officials in 44 properties abandoned by the Greeks, notable in the 27 properties, giving opportunists notable tunes in 14, arrived immigrants following the exchange of population in the 52 .. . And in the best 13 properties, deputies receiving 3,000 to 4,000 pounds per year (18). Ahmet Emin Yalman stated the following: “The main cause for looting ambitions had become as widespread was that politicians lived looting (…).

The scale of the looting could not prevent the existence of a handful of entrepreneurs and non-Muslim capital. The liquidation of these companies and the non-Muslim capital was now become one of the main policies of the Republic (…)

However, there were non-Muslims who have not been subject to this exchange policy. They had provided assistance to the Turkish War of Independence. “In 1921 in Söke, he was given permission to stay in Turkey by government order dated December 17, 1924 at Constantine Dimitri who had protected the Turkish population and the fact spying for Turkey. (…)

Translation Vilma Kouyoumdjian