Farewell Anatolia: Refugees & the Political Economy of New Greece

Abstract

The population exchange of 1923 between Greece and Turkey consolidated the influx of more than 1.5 million refugees from Anatolia and East Thrace into Greece. In this paper, we exploit the regional distribution of refugees at the sub-prefectural level as a natural experiment in order to delineate the political and economic effects of what the Greeks call Asia Minor Catastrophe. We find that the settlement of refugees produced positive persistent effects on the electoral share of left-wing parties such as the Communist Party in 1932 and the United Democratic Left in 1963. This is particularly the case for province districts with a high settlement rate of refugees originating from Asia Minor rather than from East Thrace and the Pontus (Black Sea) region. Mortality rates also persistently rose in Greek provinces with a high share of Ottoman Greek refugees both in the interwar and the postwar period. Moreover, Asia Minor refugees appear to have contributed to a rise in Greek human capital in the postwar period.