The Migrated Archives during the Population Exchange (Documents, as Movable Cultural Worth, Pertaining to Migrants)

The Population Exchange Convention was signed on January 30, 1923, as an appendix to the Lausanne Treaty. According to the agreement and its appendix, the Orthodox Greek Turkish citizens settled in Turkey and the Muslim Greek citizens settled in Greece were subjected to compulsory exchange. The exchange had been a popular topic in many scientific studies; however, the archival documents, official records, and enrolments related to the migration were underestimated. The documents were registered with the Directorate General of Vakıfs (DG of Vakıfs), Istanbul District Office, and consisted of official records belonging to the Muslim community. The collection of these records was managed by the mixed commission during the purification process in Greece. These official records concerned the judiciary, social, religious, and educational issues of the Muslim community subject to the exchange in Greece. One particularly notable record was The Catalogue of the Records Concerning the Comers Due to the Turkish-Greek Exchange, an index register composed of five volumes, listing the aforementioned records. Additionally, the court records (şeriye sicilleri) of the Muslim Turkish society up to 1924 formed an essential part of this archive. Regional documents from areas such as Crete, Thessaloniki, and Mytilene, including case records, marriage records, estate records, kassam records, and ferağ and intikal records, were also found in the archive. Some of these records dated back to the 17th century. One of the most important records was the birth registers of the immigrants, which were meticulously documented. The vakıf records of the Muslim community in Greece were also included in the archive, with many registers concerning Muslim vakıfs in Thessaloniki, Kavala, Crete, Dráma, Chios, Siroz, Vodina, and Vardar. These vakıf registers included evkaf council decrees, accounts of receipts and expenses, and tables of daily fees. Among the challenging documents in the archive were the records of the “Refinement of Vakıf Registers,” managed during the population exchange. These records detailed requests for refinement from the community administration, the location of the vakıfs, their categories, and their values. Another group of records belonged to the Community Administrative Committee, including decree registers, decision summaries, incoming document registers, registers of receipts and expenses, and salary registers. Records regarding Muslim schools, the number of students, and course materials were also present in the archive. In conclusion, the archive materials played an essential role in reassessing the exchange process and analyzing the pre-convention social, cultural, and economic activities of the Muslim community in Greece and the islands. The uniqueness of the archive lay in the inefficiency of the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives and others. The immigrant records or “registers” were crucial documents for researchers, providing valuable information about the socio-economic activities of Muslim Greek citizens. Plans were made to detect and classify these records housed at the DG of Vakıfs, Istanbul District Office. Efforts to expose the content of the documents and sample the information based on their topics were also part of the agenda.

31.10.2008 – Ayşe Nükhet Adıyeke, AHMET ASKER