Ege’nin İki Yakası Aydın Ve Grevena Çevresinde Mübadelenin -Zorunlu Göçün- Yarattığı Kültürel Değişmeler

Abstract

This thesis aims to compare how the exchangees settled in the province of Aydin in Anatolia and the Grevena Region of Greece based on the Exchange Agreement signed between the Government of the Turkish Grand National Assembly and Greece in 1923, and the local people of both countries made sense of this process and to demonstrate the effects of the exchange on these groups. I n the field studies conducted in these regions, interviews were carried out with the second, third generations through participatory or non-participatory observation and semi-structured conversations. These interviews were evaluated comparatively in order to comprehend and make sense of the pre- and post-exchange periods by making use of archival sources, newspapers of the period, books and articles written on the topic. Following general information given in the introduction part of the study, the first section provides information about the subject and scope of the study, its field, importance, purpose and boundaries, the process of the study, the method used in the study and the theoretical framework. The second section explains the conceptual structure and theoretical basis related to the study such as migration, types of migration, exchange, population exchange, exchangee, integration, culture, identity, cultural identity, nation-state concept, and the cultural and identity policies of nation-states. The third section examines history and memory in the context of exchange. The historical processes before and after the Lausanne Exchange are discussed in the context of Turkish-Greek relations. The geographies and histories of Aydın and Grevena Region, the migration process, understanding of historical memory and space of the exchangees are emphasized. In the fourth section, it is examined how the process of exchange affected the native peoples and the exchangees who were tested by displacement, the construction of cultural identities emerged after acculturation, whether the exchangees were able to preserve their identities, how the cultural identity was transmitted, and how the exchange that started with the concept of nation state was gradually evolved into transnational transformations in other generations. Information is provided on the changes in their languages, human conditions and economic structures, exchangee residences, faith structures and religious identities. In the fifth section, the material and spiritual elements, rituals, relations and cultural changes constituting the culture that the exchangees continued to have or already forgot are explained. In the conclusion part of the study, an evaluation is made based on the analysis done on the field and on the principle of the integrity of the socio-cultural universe, taken as basis by folklore, which is a comparative discipline, and it is stated that it will be a guiding study in the processes of similar migration cases that may occur in the future.