Fabricating Fidelity: Nation-Building, International Law, and the Greek–Turkish Population Exchange

Abstract

AbstractSupported by Athens and Ankara, and implemented largely by the League of Nations, the Greek–Turkish population exchange uprooted and resettled hundreds of thousands. The aim here was not to organize plebiscites, channel self-determination claims, or install protective mechanisms for minorities – all familiar features of the Allies’ management of imperial disintegration in Europe after 1919. Nor was it to restructure a given economy and society from top to bottom, generating an entirely new legal order in the process; this had often been the case with colonialism, and would characterize much of the Mandate System in the interbellum. Instead, the goal was to deploy a unique legal mechanism – not in conformity with European practice, but also distinct from most extra-European governance regimes – in order to resolve ethno-national conflict by redividing land, reshaping national identities, and unleashing new processes of capital accumulation.