Abstract:

The Muslims from West Thrace and the Orthodox Greek from Constantinople were excluded from the compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish populations, decided in Lausanne in January 1923 (and later the Greeks from Imbros and Tenedos). They found themselves in a quite delicate situation as the reciprocity suggested by the article no. 45 became sometimes an occasion for a politics of reprisals, as the two minorities, strengthened in their particularism, were considered inassimilable and cumbersome by the two States for which assimilation was the only way to integration. That’s why so many measures were taken in Turkey as in Greece, all of them aiming at reducing the demographic, economic and cultural vitality of the two minorities; however, the late improvement in the greek-turkish relations and the new European frame are really bringing a change in the general atmosphere.

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