Turkish emigres from Greece often reminisce about their days in their former homeland before their exodus in a population exchange in 1923. But little is known about the Roma people among those Turks who also had to leave their homes at the end of World War One.
Survivors and their grandchildren are now opening up and telling their stories.
Within the context of the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, Turkey and Greece agreed on a major population exchange of two million people based on their religion.
As part of the agreement, over one million Greek Christians and 500,000 Muslim Turks in Anatolian and Greek lands were uprooted.
In order to register the assets of exchangees in Greece, that were to be left to the government in exchange for Ottoman gold, commissions were established and payments, along with registrations, were made with “requisition for settlement” documents.
A group within the exchangees was Roma people from the Lagkadas region of Greece’s northern city of Thessaloniki, who travelled to Turkey by sea and scattered throughout the country.
