LAUSANNE’S CHILDREN

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1 Whether we like it or not, those of us who live in Europe or in places influenced by
European ideas remain the children of Lausanne; that is to say, of the convention signed
on a Swiss lakeside after the First World War, which led to a massive, forced population
movement between Turkey and Greece. Lausanne’s continuing importance was
reaffirmed one more time in Spring 2004, when efforts to bring peace to the war zones of
the Balkans were shaken by two days of rioting in Kosovo. Under the noses of police and
soldiers from some of the world’s leading military powers, thousands of people, mostly
Serbs, were driven from their homes. Several villages inhabited by newly returned Serb
refugees were burned down, a dozen historic churches were destroyed and twenty
people were killed. The stated goal of western policy – to enable all the region’s peoples
to live decently and amicably without fear of persecution on ethnic or religious grounds
– had been dreadfully mocked.

2 In response to these events a statement was issued by a think-tank known as the

European Stability Initiative (ESI). Its authors, young Europeans with experience of
political or humanitarian work in the Balkans, made an appeal: in order to solve a dispute
over a territory, governments should not split it up and force everybody on the ‘wrong
side’ to move. That was what the governments of Turkey and Greece, with the
encouragement of the ‘international community’ had done in Lausanne in 1923. As a
result, about 400,000 Muslims were forced to move from Greece to Turkey, while at least
1.2 million Greek Orthodox Christians were either shifted from Turkey to Greece, or, if
they had already moved to Greece prior to this exchange, they could never return to their
old homes.

Echoes of Lausanne in the Balkans

3 As was pointed out in that idealistic document, written eighty-one years after the
Swiss conference, there are still many people inside and outside of the Balkans who
would like to see the ‘Lausanne principle’ reapplied now; for example, to break Bosnia up
into one or more states, or to divide up Kosovo. Yet, yielding to this sort of pressure, the
document asserted, would betray the values which have underpinned all western policy
in Europe’s most volatile region, at least since 1996, when Bosnia was placed under
international guardianship. Whatever its failings, the agreed aim in the Balkans had been
to give a ‘principled and effective answer to the vicious logic of ethnic separation’.
Especially since the massacre of 7000 Muslims near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in
July 1995, the basis of this policy has been an ‘anti-Lausanne consensus’ – or so the ESI
think-tank argued.

Echoes of Lausanne in the Rest of the World

4 Whether their conclusion was right or wrong, the ESI paper’s authors were correct
when they pointed out that the Lausanne convention, providing a population transfer
between Greece and Turkey, has haunted the region, and in some ways the world, ever
since it was concluded. Indeed, its long-term effects have not been confined to the Balkans
or to Europe. For the remainder of the century, the giant Greek-Turkish Exchange was a
powerful influence on policy makers all over the world - they undertook huge exercises
in ethnic engineering. As the history of the 20th century shows, the temptation to use
such methods is especially strong in certain types of political or geopolitical situations.
For example, it can arise where one form of imperial authority (from Soviet communism
to British colonial rule) is collapsing; or when a new nationalist power wants to
consolidate its authority; or when a new strategic order is being created in the aftermath
of a war.
5 Thus Nazi Germany negotiated several population exchanges, both with its Italian
allies and, during their 1939-41 partnership with Soviet Russia. All these agreements
were intended to ‘tidy up’ the ethnic map of Europe and consolidate German populations
in strategically useful ways. In 1937, as Britain was considering the future of Palestine
after the eventual expiry of its mandate, a government commission, headed by a
bureaucrat with experience of settling refugees in Greece, strongly advocated a
Lausanne-style Exchange between Arabs and Jews. It urged the leaders on both sides to
demonstrate a ‘statesmanlike’ flexibility. This was exactly what Greek and Turkish
leaders had shown in 1923.

6 After the Second World War, up to 12 million German civilians were deported
from their homes in eastern Europe to Allied-occupied Germany. This was a process
which Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt consciously modelled on the removal of
Orthodox Christians from Anatolia in 1923. Soon afterwards, the end of British rule in
India and Palestine led to population exchanges across newly established borders, on an
unprecedented scale.

7 Those upheavals were not decisions taken by any intentional agreement. But the
Greek-Turkish example loomed large in later discussions of how to respond, and of how
far mass population movements were an inevitable consequence of old empires
collapsing. Even now, in Israel’s political debates, the view is sometimes heard that the
‘population exchange’ brought about by the fighting in 1948 should have been completed,
or that it should be completed now. In other words, all Palestinians should be obliged to
move to another Arab country. In Israel that is regarded as an extreme opinion, but not
so extreme as to be beyond discussion; and there are some American politicians who
strongly advocate that option.

Lausanne’s Twin Sister: The Helsinki Treaty

8 It is sobering to admit that we are still haunted today by the legacy of a treaty that
was concluded early in the 20th century, when colonial empires still existed and the right
of powerful nations to dictate the destiny of small and powerless ones was broadly
accepted. In Europe, in particular, politicians would much prefer us to believe that we are
not the children of Lausanne, but of Helsinki. It was the Helsinki agreements, signed by
thirty-five European governments (plus America and Canada) in 1975, that combined
two old principles in a new way, with the aim of freeing Europe from war and from the
hatred and oppression that can fuel war. On the one hand, it was agreed, countries must
respect the human and cultural rights of their citizens, including minorities; and at the
same time, states must respect each other’s borders, or at least avoid imposing boundary
changes by force.

9 For an optimistic moment, the fall of the communist system offered hope that the
Helsinki Treaty would be applied by many governments both in practice and theory.
Where countries did break up (as happened to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia) they
would do so peacefully and by consent, without posing any deadly threat to the fate of
people left in the ‘wrong’ place. The spirit of Helsinki promised to break one of the vicious
circles of European history: national or ethnic grievances, real or imaginary, leading to
territorial claims and hence to persecution, mass dislocation and war. Similarly outlawed
by Helsinki was the practice of creating ‘facts on ground’ by driving out one ethnic or
religious group – and then demanding border changes to ratify those facts.

10 The outbreak of wars in former Yugoslavia, and in the Caucasus, have dealt a
terrible, though perhaps not fatal blow to Helsinki’s message. As Croatia, Bosnia and
Kosovo descended into violence, the supposedly civilized World reacted with
bewilderment as well as dismay to the news that in places only a few hundred miles from
Europe’s prosperous and stable heart, tens of thousands of people were being killed, and
millions driven from their homes. This was done with the express intention of ethnic or
religious ‘cleansing’: some inhabitants were deemed undesirable owing to the fact that
they belonged to the wrong group. Especially chilling was the fact that these mass
deportations were not the result of spontaneous or impulsive actions in the heat of battle;
they were planned at the highest level by state authorities.

11 For the international agencies which have overseen Balkan trouble-spots

following war, reversing these practices has seemed an overwhelming moral imperative
- hence the talk of an ‘anti-Lausanne’ consensus. Both in Bosnia, with a degree of success,
and in Kosovo, with rather less success, peace makers have insisted that everybody who
was violently uprooted must be allowed to return. Great pressure has been applied to
governments which have expelled minorities, either in cold blood or in the heat of battle,
to allow them to reoccupy their homes.

Lausanne Strikes Back

12 But it would far from the truth to claim that the spirit of Lausanne has been finally
kicked out of the Balkans or anywhere else. For the Balkans’ international overlords,
restoring a degree of multi-ethnic harmony has often felt like pushing a stone uphill.
Billions of dollars’ worth of aid and expertise, and tens of thousands of soldiers have been
required to strengthen moderates, isolate extremists and make it possible for some
refugees to venture back to homes and farms from which they were thrown out at
gunpoint. It still looks all too possible that any slowing down of that huge international
endeavor would restore to power the very nationalist politicians who thrive on hatred
and conflict. If that is true, then it proves that Lausanne’s phantom is devilishly hard to
get rid of.

13 But there is a certain, very literal sense in which the legacy of Lausanne, as a fateful
landmark in European and World history, will soon be gone. The generation of Orthodox
Christians and Muslims, now living in Greece and Turkey respectively, who can still
remember the mass population transfer will not be with us for much longer. Anybody
who has a clear memory of the exchange, and has managed to survive into the 21st
century, must be aged more than ninety; and even the generation whose parents were
affected by the exchange is now elderly.
What Lausanne Can Tell

14 When one is lucky enough to talk to such exchangees or their relatives and/or visit
where they (used to) live, s/he can come to the conclusion that in every area affected by
the exchange, there are layers of contradictory evidence, both in the physical
environment, and in the consciousness of ordinary people. In all the Greek and Turkish
places where some new people were taken in, and others thrown out, local people have
been left with a mixture of memories and feelings; some reflecting what they have been
told to believe, some reflecting their real, lived experiences. To have any hope of
understanding Lausanne, it is necessary to disentangle these memories, as well as
consulting newspaper archives and diplomatic records. Dusty records and politicians’
memoirs can regard the Greek-Turkish population exchange as imperative at the time.
The memories of humbler people can provide an entirely different perspective to the
claims of officialdom to be acting in everyone’s best interest.

15 Quite apart from its wider implications for 20th century history, there is much
about the contemporary state of Turkey and Greece which cannot be understood except
in reference to Lausanne and the population exchange. Why do the two nations exchange
insults in political speeches and school textbooks, yet express a profound yearning in
their songs, novels and movies, to reconnect? Why is this love-hate paradox especially
sharp in certain regions and certain individuals? How was it possible for Greece and
Turkey, within the space of a few weeks in autumn 1999, to change direction from a
climate of hostility, close to open war, to one of intense mutual affection and compassion,
prompted by deadly earthquakes which had struck both countries?