Ethnic Cleansing and Diplomacy: A View of the Greek-Turkish Exchange of Populations of 1923-24 from the US National Archives

Abstract

This article is on the diplomatic processes leading to the decision to exchange populations between Greece and Turkey during the peace negotiations at the Lausanne Conference in 1923. The US National Archives has rich and hitherto unexploited archival material that encompasses the correspondence between Istanbul, Athens and the US Department of State. As the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives is still closed to researchers, US diplomatic correspondence gives a clear picture of how Greek and Turkish statesmen, as well as intermediaries such as the representatives of the League of Nations, developed and accomplished the idea of population exchange in 1922-23.