The Effects of the population exchange on the Greek and Turkish political regimes in the 1930s

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This article focuses on the population exchange between Greece and Turkey and its consequences for the political regimes during the interwar period. It is the contention of this article that, through different mechanisms, the population exchange between Greece and Turkey contributed to the creation of authoritarian regimes in both countries. Around 1,200,000 refugees that left Asia Minor at first supported the Republicans in Greece. In time, their grievances led some of them to incline toward communist ideas. The rise of communism in Greece caused conservative circles to feel threatened and resulted in their support for the authoritarian regime of Metaxas in 1936. In Turkey, on the other hand, the political and military elites that won the War of Independence were left unchallenged after the economic elites of the newly founded republic left the country due to the population exchange. This became one of the reasons why the Turkish state elites were able to unify under the single party authoritarian regime in the 1930s.