Population Exchange

We walked through Kayaköy, in the Fethiye district, southwestern Turkey in May 2014. Modern ruins. Up until 1923 people lived here – but they were Greek, and this is in Turkey.

This had not been a problem until the early 20th century when the Greco-Turkish war (1919-1922) broke out. Greece had expected more land from the breaking up Ottoman Empire (Turkey) in the post World War 1 carve-up. Like many intractable issues, both Greece and Turkey could cite ancient historical links to the same land. The eventual peace treaty resulted in a “population exchange”. People in both Turkey and Greece were divided up, not so much on ethnic but religious grounds, and sent to their supposed respective ‘homes’.

“Population exchange” sounds like a policy response dreamt up in the halls of power, far removed from the everyday lives of real people. It sounds neat and sensible – the kind of simplistic “solution” put forward by shallow thinkers. Of course it was devastating on all sides, creating around two million virtual refugees. In each case they were longstanding native people of the expelling country. Neither population enjoyed proper representation in their supposed new home country.

It was in 1923 that the Anatolian Greeks of Kayaköy were forcibly removed and sent to Greece. Left behind were hundreds of houses and churches covering a small mountainside. Now they are crumbling, revealing snippets of a life lost around a hundred years ago. The completely abandoned village a reminder of the cost of dealing in that most ancient of lies: ‘folks who are different to us cannot be tolerated’.

The village is presumed to be the inspiration behind “Eskibahçe”, the imaginary village chosen by Louis de Bernières as the setting of his 2004 novel “Birds Without Wings.” It also appeared in the Russell Crowe movie: The Water Diviner.

The imagined voices and cries of the dispossessed hung over the town, creating half-seen shadows in the bright Spring light.