turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

1924, 1.500.000 émigrés had moved from Near East to Greece. This mobility
was one of the biggest and most imposing that our region ever faced in its
modern history. The term “émigré” was providing these people with the
passport to be placed among the national, social, political life of their new
country. Contemporaneously it was saddling them with the mission to represent
the living evidences of this great national tragedy.
With this implicit mission, the émigrés were settled in Greece and they were
almost always contemplated mostly in light of this national reality. Almost never
until now the Near East émigrés were contemplated in terms of the biggest and
most concussive population movement of the modern history of our region.
They were never contemplated as a coherence of modishness of the Balkans
in general. This movement was subsumed and almost always contemplated in
view of the Near East Tragedy!
The Near East émigrés were those who with their presence facilitated the
interpretation and the carriage of the difficult and complicated historical
subversions that had occurred in a whole region, including the Near East,
throughout the passing of the years. The Greek nation started to be delimitated
within the Greek domain, which meant that due to the émigrés begun to be
accomplished the gradual reconciliation of the race with the state. The Near
East Tragedy was a haphazard result of the incompetent policy of Greece, but
par excellance diachronic result of the age-old national rivalry with the Turkish
side. 1922 became in the national relation the tragic milestone of a series of
pogroms from the Turkish nation. The full of émigrés ships leaving the wrecks
of Izmir, anchoring the Greek ports graved in the memories of a whole nation
images with the flow of the Greek history frozen.
Whilst the native inhabitants dealt treated émigrés even with racist behaviours
in the places they settled, the same émigrés obtained a huge importance and
efficacy, since they were the unanswerable deponents of the Greek majesty
and the Greek tragedy. Via these émigrés, but also in their absentia, a Greek
Near East was created, with luminous example the biggest, the wealthiest, the
most civilized city “Izmir”, which was destroyed because of the Turks.
There is not only the national aspect of the inhabitancy of the émigrés in
Greece, but also a less official but of the same importance, the social one.
Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe
Speaking of this social perspective
of the population movement in
Greece, I am referring not only to
the contribution of the émigrés to
the social, economical, demographic
and cultural development of the
country, but to a more complex
social reality which they modulated
with their habitation mainly at
the urban centers as well. Perfect
example of this growth is the
settlements the émigrés created,
which were completely different
from the existing ones in each
hosting area.
With this they managed to determine their boundaries and the comprised a
new social rank, a very idiosyncratic rank. Within this rank, they managed to
start becoming of-the-same-race although they had huge linguistic, cultural,
origin differences, but with one thing in common: the Near East. Being émigrés
was allowing to them to survive in an originally hostile local environment and
was helping them to develop a feeling of pride and supremacy towards the
native inhabitants.
These strong solidarity mechanisms that the émigrés developed though had
a controversial influence. Although they delayed the economical prosperity,
somehow strangely they assisted in the modernisation of the Greek society.
This happened because many inland inhabitants followed their example of
creating settlements or even joining the émigrés’ ones.
Therefore, these people were not foreigners in the urban centers, since they
had something in common with the rest, being émigrés. The result was not to
hold back the modernisation of the society.
The émigrés solidarity mechanisms were absorbing the biggest part of the
quake caused by their own presence and integration in the Greek society.
The refugee’ settlements however, with their mechanisms of solidarity, they
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