Rethinking the Greco-Turkish Population Exchange in the Civilizationist Present

Abstract:The unapologetic rise of “ethno-nationalism,” white nationalism, and supremacist narratives in the contemporary world context has led scholars to revisit the histories of totalitarianism, fascism, and authoritarianism. Challenging the idea that these violent racialized histories have been confined to the past, critical scholars argue that their legacies are in fact prominent aspects of the history of the present. What does it mean to remember the 1923 exchange of Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians between Greece and Turkey today? An exploration of the implications of the Greco-Turkish exchange through the prism of biopolitics in the contemporary world context—juxtaposing the biopolitical dimensions of the 1923 exchange with the contemporary refugee crisis, white identitarian civilizationism and violence, neo-Ottomanist Islamic civilizational counter-mobilization, and the reopening of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul as a mosque—raises questions about the scope of memory work on the hundredth anniversary of the 1923 exchange. These questions are to be addressed through the palimpsests of the history of the present.