BY HIKMET BILA
VATAN- A statement made by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was considered an 'opening' again. The media immediately underlined his statement about the mined lands, when he said that people from different ethnical identities have been expelled from our countries, which was actually the result of a fascistic approach. Of course, this statement is nice in the light of modern approach, which is based on the belief that all the citizens of a country are equal, regardless of their ethnical and religious origin. This statement is particularly favorable for those who want to bring the issue of 'minorities' on the agenda again and again in Turkey, but it is against the logic of history to interpret, praise or criticize the historical incidents with only one or two sentences. When Erdogan said that we had expelled those from different ethnical identities, he should have clarified who have been expelled - were they Armenians, Jewish or Greek people with Turkish citizenship - and when and how they were expelled.
Let's open a parenthesis of history. The Large Scale Attack which was won in August 26-30, 1922 ended, when the Turkish armies entered Izmir in September 9. It wasn't a secret that during the Greek invasion of Western Anatolia and Eastern Thrace and the ally invasion of Istanbul (including Greece), most of the Greek minority with Turkish citizenship made cooperation with occupiers (and even got involved in massacres). Now it wouldn't have been incomprehensible for them to leave the Turkish territory with the defeated Greek army. As a matter of fact, thousands of Greek people with Turkish citizenship, mostly from the Western Anatolia, the Black Sea Region and Eastern Thrace, migrated to the Greek territory on ships, trains and other vehicles that they could have found in that era.
Some other Greek people with Turkish citizenship left Turkey, as required by the Treaty of Lausanne. This was a decision made by the conference upon a suggestion by the Norwegian delegation in the first stage of Lausanne talks. The mutual compulsory migration has started as from 1923, as required by this decision envisaging the 'interchange' between the Orthodox Greek people outside Istanbul and Muslim Turks outside the Western Thrace. Greek people mostly from the Central Anatolia were sent to Greece, and the Turkish people in Greece predominantly from rural areas were sent to Turkey.
The migrations have never been favorable. Of course, it's not good to expel the people and oblige them to settle in the places that they don't know, but it would be unfair to define the migrations which occurred under the war conditions and by some international agreements after 1922 and 1923 as fascist in a way to bring Hitler to mind. The dramas suffered by the two sides due to these obligatory migrations have been the subject of innumerous books, researches and literary products. But even these sorrows don't give anybody the right to erase the historical facts and convict only 'one side' of those 'who have made history' with only one sentence.
Such evaluations which are away from historical facts can be remembered as the words which sound good, and even create political results, but they wouldn't be compatible with the truth. There are innumerous academic works which can build such concepts as 'immigration,' 'interchange,' 'miorities,' 'expelling' or 'being expelled' on a firm ground in the history of Turkey and the world and it's not so difficult to resort to them.