Imagine, if you will, that it’s 1922 and you’re living in a small mountain village thousands of miles from Istanbul above the shores of the Black Sea.
Imagine, if you will, that it’s 1922 and you’re living in a small mountain village thousands of miles from Istanbul above the shores of the Black Sea. You’re a practising Christian, and there’s a tumble-down cruciform church in the central square, with an icon of the Virgin hanging above the altar. Life until now has been ruled by the Ottoman Turks, but you speak a version of Greek handed down from the days when this part of Asia Minor was ruled by the emperors of Byzantium based in Constantinople. Suddenly, a government communiqué orders that you, and everyone else in the village, must leave immediately and return to where you ‘belong’ — mainland Greece.
It seems incredible now to be reminded that one of the many outcomes of the chaos following the end of the first world war was the enforced repatriation of more than one million Greek Christians living in Turkey.
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