Özet:

The fact that they were excluded from the exchange did not prevent the Turks of Western Thrace from experiencing problems caused by the exchange. The main reason for these problems is that Greek immigrants were placed by the Greek administration in the region far above the capacity. The settlement of the immigrants took place in a way that disrupted the demographic, economic and social balances in Western Thrace. In the continuation, some of the lands belonging to the Turks were expropriated and neighborhoods and villages were built for the immigrants on these lands. Until the 1930 Turkish-Greek friendship, the Turks of the region had to face a number of uncertainties in their situation and some of them chose to emigrate to Turkey, unable to keep up with the new conditions. The aim of our article is to shed light on the difficulties experienced by the Turks of Western Thrace after the exchange and the changes in the region. Our main sources for this are the reports of Stilianopoulos, the Inspector of Minorities of Greece, and Floryas, the General Administrator of Thrace, together with the newspaper “Yeni Adım”, which was published in the region at that time. These reports are placed in the Eleftherios Venizelos archive of the Benaki Museum.

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