Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
78 
the Lycian coast came to inhabit Nea Makri on the Attic). Regard, for strategic 
reasons, was also had to the increasing of the Greek proportion of the population of 
Macedonia and Thrace, a task made easier in the case of Macedonia by the fact that 
most of the exchanged Muslims left their homes and land there
188
. The refugees from 
Turkey settled in those regions were chiefly from the Black Sea; the ensuing tensions 
with portions of the indigenous population have palpable effects even today
189
. The 
settlement policy meant that to a sensible degree the refugees and their immediate 
descendants were a race apart
190
until populations began to mix with the rapid 
urbanisation of the country which began in the 1950s. 
Throughout the 1920s negotiations between Greece and Turkey on property 
compensation had dragged on without conclusion. Venizelos, returned to office with 
a large majority in 1928, felt strong enough to make the necessary concessions, and a 
convention settling refugee property on the original home country and providing for 
a payment of £425,000 from Greece to Turkey was signed in Ankara on 10 June 
1930
191
. In October Venizelos was received by Mustafa Kemal in Ankara where 
treaties of friendship and commerce were signed and shortly thereafter the former 
nominated the latter without success for the Nobel Peace Prize. İsmet was to 
reciprocate the visit by one to Athens in 1931. The rapprochement and the economic 
188
Pentzopoulos, 132-140, 188, Table XXIII. The table, based on the 1928 census, shows that the refugee 
proportion of the population in Macedonia and Thrace was respectively 45% and 35%. The next highest was 19% 
in Central Greece. 
189
An explanation of the excitement, still aroused so easily at home and so incomprehensibly to foreigners, by 
the “Macedonian” question, which is well beyond the scope of this chapter, needs to take account not only of 
enduring refugee mentalities but also of the ethnic dimension of the Greek Civil War. 
190
Pentzopoulos, 201-212 
191
Pentzopoulos, 117-119 

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