Claiming “Imagined Property”: Ṭaṣfiye Ṭalebnāmes and the Lost Material World of Migrants after the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange of 1923–24

Abstract

According to the exchange convention signed in Lausanne in January 1923, all people who were ‘subject to the exchange’ between Greece and Turkey were entitled to compensation in the receiving country with property of a value equal to that they left behind. In 1925, the Mixed Commission asked ‘exchangees’ in Turkey to fill in ‘applications for property liquidation’. These documents provide a wealth of information about ‘exchangees’ that was previously unavailable. This article studies a sample of these applications (ṭaṣfiye ṭalebnāme) that were drawn up in 1925 in western Turkey in order to find out how the applicants described their houses, living conditions and belongings back in Greece. Utilizing theoretical approaches from anthropological literature, the article analyses these standardised forms as places of encounter between the bureaucracy and those who were subject to the exchange convention. The property listed is conceptualized as “imagined”, i.e., lost property that people had to present in certain ways in order to be compensated for it. The paper traces different presentation strategies in the documents, showing how social status, bureaucratic literacy and narrative content were utilised in this endeavour.