The 1964 Expulsion of Greeks from Istanbul Revisited Alper Kaliber

SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 2019, VOL. 19, NO. 3, 365–386 https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2019.1651082

ARTICLE Re-engaging the self/other problematic in post-positivist international relations: the 1964 expulsion of Greeks from Istanbul revisited Alper Kaliber

Department of International Relations, Altınbaş University, Gayrettepe Campus, Esentepe Istanbul, Turkey

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY By critically engaging with the critical constructivist and post- Received 29 January 2019 structuralist accounts of foreign policy, this study examines the Accepted 10 July 2019 mass expulsion from Turkey of Istanbul Greeks in 1964 and 1965. KEYWORDS As forms of radical post-positivism, these approaches provide ample Expulsion; Istanbul Greeks; insights to understand how this expulsion and the Cyprus conflict Cyprus conflict; Turkish have become instrumental for reinscribing both Turkish national foreign policy; foreign identity and the expelled Greeks as its inimical/threatening other. policy; national identity; Noting that radical post-positivism focused on specific foreign policy self/other; securitization cases in specific periods of time tends to overlook the role and significance of state-building processes in the configuration and negotiation of self/other interactions, this study argues that the gross violence in Cyprus in the 1960s was utilized to justify the economic, social and cultural marginalization of Istanbul Greeks as well as their premeditated expulsion. However, the Greek expulsion may be fully comprehended only when it is contextualized within the minority regime shaped throughout the formation of the Turkish nation state in 1923.

Introduction On 16 March 1964 the acting Turkish government under the leadership of Prime Minister Ismet Inönü annulled the 1930 Greco-Turkish Convention on Residence, Commerce and Navigation.1 This decision, seemingly ending a bilateral agreement between two sovereign states, was a deliberate action on the part of the then Turkish government to abolish the legal grounds allowing Greek nationals to reside in Turkey. Even if the abrogation of the 1930 Convention seemed to target, at the outset, only Greek nationals, in practice it resulted in the decimation of the majority of Greeks of Istanbul since Greek families were often composed of both Greek and Turkish nationals. Diﬀerent sources estimate that nearly 12,500 Istanbul Greeks with Greek nationality were deported during 1964 and 1965 (Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans 2014).2 Yet, there is ambiguity about how many of their relatives holding Turkish citizenship followed suit. According to the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, ‘30,000 Turkish nationals of Greek descent have left Turkey permanently in addition to the Greek subjects already expelled’ (Cumhuriyet 11 October 1964).3 It is estimated that due to expulsion and other repressive measures the Greek population in

Turkey decreased from 80,000 to 30,000 during 1964 (Cumhuriyet 21 February 2014). Given the current population of Greeks in Turkey estimated at around 2,000 individuals, it is obvious that the expulsion in 1964 became ‘the beginning of the end’ for Turkey’s Greek community, and migration to Greece continued throughout the 1970s. The literature on the Greek expulsion often converges on the idea that the then Turkish government took this decision, which coincided with escalating armed conflict in Cyprus, in order to bring Greece and Greek Cypriots to the negotiating table. The Greeks of Istanbul were exploited by the Turkish government as a ‘trump card’ to urge Greece to put pressure on Greek Cypriots in order to stop their attacks on Turkish Cypriots (Demir and Akar 1999,11–17; Alexandris 1992;Akgönül2007;Akar2012;Sözeri2016). Even if these studies are critical of the Greek expulsion, they seem to reproduce the official rhetoric in Turkey stating that the government’s decision to terminate the Greco-Turkish agreement and to deport Istanbul Greeks was taken as a response to the attacks against Turkish Cypriots. Yet, a more accurate and nuanced account suggests that the gross violence in Cyprus was utilized by the political establishment and the media in Turkey to justify the premeditated expulsion of Istanbul Greeks. There are numerous indications suggesting that the preparations for the expulsion of the Greeks were carried out long before 1964 and that a consensus was reached to this end by the official authorities in the 1950s. Among these preparations were the establishment of the Higher Council of Minorities in 1962,4 the modification of the tax regime applied to the Greek nationals in 1963, and the resuscitation of the 1932 law prohibiting the exercise of twenty professions by foreign nationals living in Turkey. The rhetoric of existential and urgent threat produced through the Cyprus conflict enabled the marginalization of Istanbul Greeks in political, societal and economic terms, their othering, their dispossession and ultimately their forceful deportation. This in turn served to inculcate the notion in Turkish public opinion that ‘emergency situations require emergency measures’, a notion sorely needed by a government aiming to undertake a radical policy of mass deportation. As such, the Turkish government started the practice of mass expulsion prior to the six-month period envisaged in the 1930 Greco- Turkish Convention, with reference to Article 16 of the convention which states that expulsion is due to be carried out immediately in emergency situations. By critically engaging with the post-positivist accounts of foreign policy as a ‘boundary producing’ (Campbell 1998, 62) and identity marking practice, this study examines the massexpulsionofIstanbulGreeksin1964asoneofthemosttragiceventsinmodern Turkish history. It suggests that critical constructivism and post-structuralism as forms of radical post-positivism (hereafter RPP) provide invaluable insights to understand how the excessively securitized Cyprus conflict and the Greek expulsion have served the construction of a specific notion of the Turkish self and of the expelled Greeks as its inimical/ threatening other. RPP also allows us to explore how a specificconceptionofTurkish national state identity has enabled the legitimization of the expulsion as acceptable and even imperative as a policy. In so doing, it unravels how foreign policy and identity co-constitute each other. However, this poststructuralist insight may be misleading on its own since it may lead us to insulate the securitized Cyprus issue as the sole political/historical context within which the construction of the Greeks as the threatening other became possible and the expulsion was materialized. Implying that self/other interaction has predominantly been shaped by the level of threat associated with the other, and confining the analysis to specific representations in specific periods of time, foreign policy account of RPP does not SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 367 fully engage in the case-specific historical, socio-political conditions leading to different modalities of self/other relations and of othering strategies. In particular, the role and significance of state building processes in the configuration and negotiation of self/other interactions largely remain understudied in RPP. To elucidate, this account is ill-equipped to address the political economy aspect of the expulsion (a key to comprehending why the Greeks were subject to mass deportation) and to trace other discursive and material practices rendering the forced deportation possible as a premeditated policy before the Cyprus crisis had emerged. This study then argues that the historical/political circumstances of the expulsion may fully be comprehended only when they are contextualized within the minority regime that was shaped throughout the Ottoman/Turkish modernization, which led to the formation of the Turkish nation state in 1923. It suggests that the deep-seated mistrust of the Turkish state elite vis-à-vis non-Muslim minorities, the perception that external powers conspired with minority groups during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, their ambition of a homogeneous society, and the policies of Turkification of economic and social life that crystallised throughout the centralisation of state authority and the modernization process constituted other ideational and material bases of the institutionalized practices of othering against non-Muslims in Turkey (Aktar 2000;Keyder1987). This article proceeds as follows. It first discusses how foreign policy discourses of states are functional in the (re)construction of national/citizenship identities and their corre- sponding others. To put it differently, it delineates the role and significance of foreign policy in creating and maintaining a sense of national we-ness as a homogenous and unified entity – unified against the internal and external securitized others of the nation. The study also reengages in the self/other problematic introduced by radical post-positivist International Relations (IR) and underlines the significance of state building processes in the ways in which these categories are negotiated and constructed, which has remained largely under-theorized. The subsequent section of the article recounts the Greek expulsion in 1964 as well as anti-Greek discourses disseminated by the political establishment and the media in Turkey.5 The article also examines the material emergency practices consolidating and confirming representations of Greeks as the threatening other, i.e., the anti-Greek campaigns of civil society organizations and the draconian economic measures against deportees and their families. The concluding part wraps up my arguments and reflects on the implications of the expulsion on the relations between Turkish and Greek societies.

Constructing the nation and its ‘others’: foreign policy as practice of difference As opposed to the Realist school, in which ‘the domestic is clearly demarcated from the international sphere’ (Diez 2000, 6), a variety of critical works have shown that these realms are ‘thoroughly interconnected and mutually constituted’ (Hobson 2002, 16). Despite many differences, the post-positivist scholarship on IR has been concerned with self/other and inclusion/exclusion problematics in relation to the constitution and reproduction of state and national identities (Rae 2002, 17; Linklater 1992). Realists treat the state as a given and unitary entity having ‘undifferentiated interests’ and no distinguishable identities from other states, and thus ‘eliminate the problem a priori’ 368 A. KALIBER

(McSweeney 1999, 34). They take national/state identity ‘to be settled’ and do not need to explore ‘what it is or how it came into being’ (Hansen 1997, 375). In the post-positivist IR, one may differentiate between two approaches distinguishable from others through their understanding of identity (Hopf 1998,181–5). They both contend that foreign policies and the international dimension of states are inherent in the processes of (re)construction of their institutional/political identities. The first and the relatively moderate position adopted by conventional constructivists emphasizes the role of stable and ‘sedimented’ state identities in the formulation of the state’s foreign policy interests and behaviours (McDonald 2008, 62). Conventional constructivists drawing a clear distinction between corporate and social dimensions of state identity (Wendt 1999) reproduce the realist categorical separation between domestic and international realms of states’ institutionalized practices as monolithic and separate domains. For them, identity construction is mainly an ‘internally driven’, ‘self generated, self sustained process’ (Rumelili and Cebeci 2016, 34) whereby the role of others is limited or non-existent. The Wendtian approach, premised on a unitary understanding of the state, ‘bracket[s] off the domestic aspects of state identity’ (Rae 2002, 9; see also Weldes 1996, 280) and hence falls outside of this analysis. The second and more radical approach adopted by critical constructivists and post- structuralists conceives foreign policy as exclusionary, disciplinary and securitizing6 practices of the state integral to the reconstruction of unstable, contingent state/national identity (Campbell 1998;Weldesetal.1999;Doty1993;Barnett1999). To this radical post-positivist approach, foreign and security policy functions as ‘one of the most important practices through which states construct their identity’ (Hansen 1997,374–5) and those of their others. While conventional constructivists tend to play down the role of others in identity construction, the binary distinction between self and other lies at the root of critical constructivist analysis (Wilhelmsen 2017, 67). Another seminal difference distinguishing these two positions is their approach to the foreign policy/identity nexus. For conventional or ‘liberal’ (Rumelili 2004) constructivists, identity precedes foreign policy. The ways in which state identity is defined influence and shape foreign policy discourses and interest perceptions (Wendt 1999,224–233). Yet, for RPP there is a dialectical relationship between these two whereby state identity and foreign policy shape and constitute each other simultaneously. Foreign policy is an integral part of political processes of inclusion/exclusion: processes where the standards and boundaries of national identity are (re)defined, where the others of the nation are specified, where the domestic society is mobilized around national causes and where certain segments of society (ethnic, religious and political minority groups) are declared as ‘different’, ‘alien’ and ‘pernicious’ elements. To illustrate, post-structuralist IR shows us the historically and politically constructed nature of boundaries demarcating ‘inside and outside, us and them, domestic and foreign, and the sphere of citizen entitle- ments and that of strategic responses’ (Connolly 1991, 201). While the inside of the political community is symbolized by state sovereignty and is identified with security, peace and amity, the outside is symbolized by international anarchy and is associated with insecurity, lawlessness and enmity (Walker 1993; Campbell 1998). The inscription of these boundaries and binary oppositions through foreign policy is central to the constitution and reproduction of state identity (Campbell 1998,9)aswellas SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 369 to the definition of who we are, who we are not and who they are (Hudson 2007,104–105; Doty 1993;Walker1993). ‘By virtue of telling us what to fear’ the state elites are able to ‘fix who we are’ (Campbell 1998, 170). To put it differently, insecurity itself is the ‘product of processes of identity construction in which the self and the other, or multiple others, are constituted’ (Weldes et al. 1999, 10). As such, the national foreign policy rhetoric of the state apparatus operates through othering strategies in which the self is negatively defined against the threatening other. The self and its others are constructed simultaneously, and hence ‘there is no one without the other’ (Alaranta 2015, 31). The existence of constructed others is ‘both essential to the truth of the powerful identity and the threat to it. The threat is not posed merely by actions the other might take to injure or defeat the true identity, but by the very visibility of its mode of being as other’ (Connolly 1991, 66). Thus, as observed by Connolly, ‘identity requires difference in order to be and it converts difference into otherness in order to secure its own self certainty’ (Connolly 1991, 64). It is through the definition, declaration and targeting of others that ‘asenseofunityinasharedcollective identity is pursued’ (Rae 2002,3).‘In constructing an “other” that appears threatening, the state is able to confer the appearance of unity upon the “self”–i.e. a domestic population’ (Hobson 2000,159). Statist discourses defining the state and its others ‘also produce citizens as particular kinds of subjects, often as consumers of statist representations of insecurity and danger and as a unified population with shared interests’ (Weldes et al. 1999,14–15). Furthermore, some segments of the domestic society may be silenced, marginalized and even punished in the name of national cohesion and solidarity, as was the case in the mass deportation of Istanbul Greeks in 1964. Foreign policy discourses target both international and domestic societies and serve to conjure up a preconceived image of the nation as a unified and organic collectivity. As such, the state is able to speak as the one and only representative and signifier of this ‘imagined’ unity in both domestic and international contexts. Thus, RPP does not theorize foreign policy as ‘the external view and rationalist orientation of a pre-established state, the identity of which is secure before it enters into relations with others’ (Campbell 1998, 51). Foreign policy, in other words, is not a given and premeditated response ‘to an external reality to which the state or other social actors relate objectively’, but is ‘co-constituted by ideas or identities’ (Wilhelmsen 2017, 169). To radical post-positivists it is, in turn, an exclusionary and boundary inscribing practice ‘in which resistant elements to a secure identity on the “inside” are linked through a discourse of “danger” with threats identified and located on the “outside”’. Then, the function of state’s foreign policy discourses is not the ‘representation of the nation to others as a pregiven object, but a construction of the nation in the very moment of representation’ (Diez and Manners 2008, 184). ‘The outcome of this is that boundaries are constructed, spaces demarcated, standards of legitimacy incorporated, interpretations of history privileged, and alternatives marginalized’ (Campbell 1998, 68). Desiring to secure the maintenance of domestic political order and power relations, the modern state apparatus disciplines the domestic society via dangers and threats originating from the so-called chaotic nature of the inter-state system. The inimical others of the nation both inside and outside are convoluted into one another through the discourses of danger articulated via foreign policy (Campbell 1998). When the threatening other on the inside is straightforwardly linked to threatening other(s) on 370 A. KALIBER the outside, the danger it invokes grows exponentially, requiring imminent and stron- ger measures. The externalization of threats serves ‘a disciplining function inside the state by defining and representing’ dissident or other groups (i.e., ethnic or religious minorities) as ‘foreign and alien and linking them to external threats’ (Rumelili 2004, 35). In these cases, the nation is more easily mobilized against the internal and external threats through politics of securitization whereby issues are ‘presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure’ (Buzan et al. 1998,23–24). The exploitation of the excessively securitized Cyprus issue to ‘justify’ the mass deportation of Istanbul Greeks epitomizes this politics of emergency where securitization functions as a ‘rhetorical device that seeks to legitimize exceptional policy measures’ (Huysmans 2006, 139). By declaring a specific threat as a challenge to national security, the securitizer also implies that ‘all necessary means would be used to block that challenge. And, because such a threat would be defined as existential and a challenge to sovereignty, the state would not be limited in what it could or might do’ (Waever 1995, 56). As radical post-positivists reveal, the relationship between foreign policy and identity works in both directions and they mutually constitute each other. ‘Foreign policies rely upon representations of identity, but it is also through the formulations of foreign policy that identities are produced and reproduced’ (Hansen 2006, 1; see also Wojczewsk 2019,4; Wilhelmsen 2017, 169; Prizel 1998, 12). In other words, articulating and justifying certain policies necessarily requires making reference to certain identities but ‘at the same time these identities are constituted and reproduced through the formulation of policies’ (Wilhelmsen 2017, 169; see also Siddi 2018, 38). As it will be clear in the following pages, the then Turkish government’s securitized discourse on Cyprus served towards the construction of a specific notion of the Turkish self and of the expelled Greeks as its inimical/threatening other. But the identity constructions through the Cyprus conflict, in turn, enabled the representation of the expulsion as a legitimate, acceptable and even a necessary policy. Yet, RPP focusing on specific foreign policy cases in specificperiodsof time often tends to isolate the exact moment of the event from its historical antecedence. As I will discuss in the next section, each and every foreign policy representation or specific moment of state identity making is enabled by specific historical conditions of state formation.

State building and othering strategies The process of state building is often deemed to be beyond the analytical interest and scope of theories of International Relations. For realism, the socializing effect of competitive international anarchy forces states to be homogenous and ‘like units’ that have similar objectives and interests (Waltz 1979). As the nation-state is presumed as an ontological given and a natural fact, realists do not need to investigate state building processes and how these processes inform states’ policies. Domestic differences and features of states are meaningless for and need not be included in the theory of international politics. Moderate post-positivism, i.e., the Wendtian constructivism, similarly brackets off domestic aspects of state formation as it assumes that states have one single corporate identity defining their ‘intrinsic self organizing qualities’ (Wendt 1999, 385). Once built, these qualities may resist change. States’ sedimented identities or role conceptions are shaped SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 371 not by their dissimilar domestic features, but rather by their interactions with other states and through their socialization into international norms, institutions and meanings (Wendt 1999; see also Alaranta 2015,23). Radical post-positivists unravel the ways in which foreign policy representations are instrumentalized by state elites in the constitution and maintenance of state/national identities through discourses of insecurity and strategies of othering. However, a critical enquiry is still needed on how and in what ways the specificities of different cases, i.e., the ‘nation’s founding myths and cultural frameworks of reference’ (Siddi 2018,38),specific economic, socio-political and institutional contexts and circumstances of state making have enabled different degrees and modalities of othering. One may suggest that the first generation of radical post-positivist works of the 1980s and 1990s on the foreign policy/ identity nexus largely overlook possibilities of different variations of self/other relationships, and tend to assume these relations solely as the ‘conquest of the other’ (Hansen 1997,390). Yet a group of second generation studies since the 2000s show that ‘self/other relations cannot be reduced to a singular form and that multiple and conflicting practices coexist in the construction of collective identities’ (Rumelili and Cebeci 2016, 31) as well as their others. As Wilhelmsen (2017) observes, identities are not necessarily constituted ‘in relation to radical and threatening otherness’. Constructions of identity can draw upon varying ‘degrees of “Otherness”, ranging from fundamental difference between Self and Other to constructions of less than radical difference, and the Other can be constituted through geographical representations as well as political representations such as “civilizations”, “nations”, “tribes”, “terrorists”, “women”, “civilians”,or“humanity”’ (Hansen 2006,6). Alternatively, a collective identity or a group of people (Istanbul Greeks in our case) that is declared as the other may be exposed to multiple strategies of othering simultaneously, e.g., denigration, stigmatization, deportation. In a similar vein, in the course of identity definition different others may well be associated with varying levels of threat and danger ranging from the existential to the non-dangerous that is also contingent and contextual. Rumelili (2004) makes a clear distinction between ‘inclusive identities constituted in relation to acquired differences and exclusive identities constituted in relation to inherent differences’ that are embracing different kinds of self/other interactions. To her, in the former case, as exemplified in the European Union’s relations with Central and Eastern European states, the other is constructed as ‘less self’ and its status as the other may change over time. In the latter, as exemplified in the EU’s relationships with Morocco, ‘possibilities for change in the “other” are by definition non-existent, and the other is placed in a position of perma- nent difference’ (Rumelili 2004, 37).7 Yet, to substantiate these arguments there is still a pressing need for a more systematic, theory-driven and historicized treatment of changing patterns of self/other interactions and of their policy implications in a given polity. Nevertheless, RPP offers a rich discussion on the politics of identity where identity and difference, self and other are examined as relational and affirmatively constructed concepts (Weldes et al. 1999; Campbell 1998). It often assumes a necessary relationship of mutual constitution between identity and its others (Wojczewski 2019). ‘Identity requires difference in order to be and it converts difference into otherness in order to secure its own self- certainty. Identity is thus a slippery, insecure experience dependent on its ability to define difference’ and its others (Connolly 1991, 64). Connolly also observes that ‘the multiple 372 A. KALIBER drives to stamp truth upon those identities function to convert differences into otherness and otherness into scapegoats created and maintained to secure the appearance of a true identity’ (Connolly 1991, 67). Thus, RPP implies that both identities and their others are contingent and contextual, and hence are always subject to change and transformation. ‘This is why we need to pay close attention to the complex, historically changing discursive processes within which national identities’ and their others are ‘produced, reproduced and permanently renegotiated among different social actors’ (Alaranta 2015,27). This is where the significance of the processes of state building is evident, an aspect which often remains under-theorized in post-positivist accounts of foreign policy.8 It is in state building processes that self and other engagements are negotiated, the regime of citizenship is constituted, the modalities of inclusion/exclusion are institutionalized, and hence, insiders and outsiders are configured. To take an example, throughout the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire and the foundation of the Turkish nation state non-Muslim minorities were perceived and represented as an obstacle and even a threat against the ‘ideal’ of a homogeneous society and the policies of Turkification of economic and social life (Aktar 2000;Keyder1987). This does not mean, however, that state building process serves as an unchanging, fixed essence of state identity which determines its notions of the self and the other irreversibly. If state identity is always in the process of making (Campbell 1998), the self/other engagements that are embraced by that identity have also been subject to change. Thus, state building processes may have a contingent role; that is, different modalities of state building may enable different degrees and strategies of othering. Depending on specific historical and socio-political circumstances, practices of othering may manifest themselves in different degrees and modalities with diverse political consequences. To illustrate, throughout 1964 and 1965 not all non-Muslims, not even all members of the Greek community were expelled. Istanbul Greeks holding Greek nationality were subject to double or harsher strategies of othering that resulted in their immediate deportation. As Rae observes, practices of othering employed by state elites may range from denigration of others to their subjugation to the ‘strategies of pathological homogenisation’ (Rae 2002, 27). Such strategies may also take different forms ‘rang[ing] from attempts to legally exclude minority groups from citizenship rights, to strategies of forced conversion or assimilation, expulsion and extermination’ (Rae 2002, 5). The ways in which self and other relationships are negotiated and the identity problematic is solved serve to make certain policies legitimate, desirable and doable, while making others unjustified, undesir- able and infeasible. In its current form RPP may suggest that representation of Istanbul Greeks as an existential threat and as such their placement ‘at the top end of the scale in terms of difference and danger’ (Wilhelmsen 2017, 173) enabled the legitimization of the expulsion as an acceptable, and even necessary policy. The current form of RPP doesn’t establish a relationship of causation, but does suggest that specific constructions of self/ other relationships and the representations of threat and insecurity attached to them would not entirely determine, ‘but would condition the range of emergency measures [e.g., expulsion] political actors could undertake legitimately’ (Wilhelmsen 2017, 174). This account implies that if there were alternative foreign policy representations attaching a far less threatening quality to the referent object, then the expulsion would not be legitimized and practiced as an acceptable policy (Wilhelmsen 2017,178). SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 373

However, this poststructuralist insight may be misleading on its own as it may lead us to insulate the securitized Cyprus issue as the sole political/historical context within which the construction of the Greeks as the threatening other and the concomitant repressive practices became possible. Then, one may tend to reflect on the expulsion only with respect to the specific constructions of the Cyprus conflict and in a specific timeframe without engaging in the historical/political circumstances and other ideational and material factors enabling such an extreme policy of pathological homogenization. This account runs the risk of presuming the expulsion as an exceptional policy or a temporary deviation from the norms, and standards of minority politics in Turkey. Furthermore, it is ill-equipped to address the political economy aspect of the expulsion and to trace other discursive and material practices rendering the forced deportation possible as a premeditated policy before the Cyprus crisis had emerged. The study at hand argues that the historical/political circumstances of the expulsion may fully be comprehended only when they are contextualized within the minority regime that was shaped throughout the Ottoman/Turkish modernization, which led to the formation of the Turkish nation state in 1923. It is proposed that the deep-seated mistrust of the Turkish state elite vis-à-vis non-Muslim minorities, that elite’s perception that external powers conspired with minority groups during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, their ambition for a homogeneous society and the policies of Turkification of economic and social life that crystallised throughout the centralisation of state authority and modernization process constituted other ideational and material bases of the institutionalized practices of othering against non-Muslims in Turkey (Aktar 2000; Keyder 1987). To this understanding, the Greek expulsion may well be viewed as an integral part of the long-lasting policies of nationalizing or Turkifying the economy. As students of Turkish politics have shown, the Turkification of economy started when the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) government ascended to power in 1908 in the Ottoman Empire. Particularly in tandem with the Balkan Wars when secessionist tendencies of non-Muslim bourgeoisie became apparent, the government immediately began to pursue nationalist policies in economic, cultural and political realms. The leadership of the CUP, impressed by the German policies for nationalizing the economic sphere, was convinced that unless the non-Turk (gayri Türk) elements were eliminated from the economic space the loss of new lands and even of Anatolia could not be prevented and survival of the ‘Turkish nation’ could not be achieved (Avcıoğlu 1983,1113–1114). The CUP government took a series of measures for the creation of a ‘national economy’ (milli iktisat) and a national/Muslim class of entrepreneurs who would remain loyal to the territorial integrity of the state and would not endanger the privileged status of the modernizing bureaucracy. As Kızılyürek pointed out, nationaliza- tion and Turkification of the economic sphere turned out to be an indispensable part of the project aiming at transforming the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish nation state (Kızılyürek 2011,162). The CUP governments deemed it necessary to neutralize the minorities, whom they accused of conspiring with foreign powers to divide the Ottoman Empire, and began to implement a policy of ethnic destruction which was particularly effective in the period between 1915 and 1918. This policy resulted in a substantial erosion of the heterogeneous structure of the population in Turkey before the modern nation state was founded. Strikingly, whilst prior to World War I the non-Muslim minorities constituted approxi- mately 18% of the population, in 1924 nearly just one out of every 40 persons belonged to 374 A. KALIBER minority groups in Turkey (Keyder 1987,79).Turkification policies were, in Ayhan Aktar’s terms, aiming at ‘consolidating the hegemony of Turkish ethnic identity and its bearers over every field of societal life from the everyday language and the official account of history to be taught at schools, from the course of commercial transactions to the recruitment policies for official posts’ (Aktar 2000,101–135). To him, the forceful and/or voluntary migrations of religious minority groups from Anatolia and the immigration of several Muslim groups – most notably from the Balkans and the Caucasus – to Turkey in this period constitute the first stage of the Turkification process. The second stage occurred through the Population Exchange Agreement concluded between Turkey and Greece in the aftermath of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The Tax on Wealth adopted in 1942, which imposed a much more severe burden on Greek, Jewish and Armenian minorities when compared with Turkish nationals, set the stage for the third step of the Turkification process (Aktar 2000, 136). The expulsion of Istanbul Greeks in 1964 constituted the final stage of Turkish governments’ deliberate moves since 1914 to Turkify the economic, societal and cultural life in the country. Yet, mentioning the political economy dimension does not deny the significance of the securitizing narrative on Cyprus enabling the expulsion and other repressive practices against Istanbul Greeks, which constitutes the focus of the next section.

The Cyprus conflict and the expulsion of Istanbul Greeks: what exactly happened? The Cyprus dispute as a protracted ethnic conflict between Turkish and Greek Cypriots has often poisoned the relationship between Turkey and Greece deemed as the ‘motherlands’ of these communities. Considering the link established between the trajectory of the Cyprus dispute and that of the Istanbul Greeks by the Turkish officials and the media, it is worthwhile to point briefly to the political atmosphere on the island of Cyprus and its repercussions on Turkish society in the 1960s. On 30 November 1963, President Makarios of the Republic of Cyprus proposed 13 amendments to the 1960 Constitution founding the republic. With these constitutional amendments, Makarios aimed at replacing the bicom- munal structure based on near equality of Greek and Turkish Cypriots within a majoritarian system where the latter were given a minority status (Akgönül 2007, 254). These amendments were categorically rejected both by the Turkish Cypriot leadership and by Turkey as they paved the way for Enosis (union with Greece) (Ertekün 1984,9–11). No sooner had the Turkish Cypriots publicly refused the amendments than Greek Cypriot attacks were launched on 21 December 1963, containing several Turkish Cypriot villages and destroying houses and properties (Soysal and Ertekün 1999, 205). As the Greek Cypriots’ attacks transformed into a widespread military campaign, the intensifying bi- communal clashes came to occupy the centre of the political and public discourse in Turkey as a ‘national cause’. It became a daily experience to read of violently murdered, missing, captured and starved Turkish Cypriots in the Turkish press. Such was the frustration in Turkish public opinion against Greek Cypriots exercising economic embargo, imposing legal restrictions and conducting onslaughts, that the fate of Cypriot ‘brethren’ became the hottest issue domestically (Soysal and Münir Ertekün 1999,205).Duetotheinflux of news (albeit often over-dramatized) on atrocities committed against Turkish Cypriots, the SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 375

Turkish public found itself embroiled in a social hysteria which would soon be mobilized to justify the government’s policies on Istanbul Greeks. At this juncture, for many observers, the Turkish government was in urgent need of gaining a new ‘trump card’ to convince Greece to exert pressure on Greek Cypriots to stop violence against Turkish Cypriots. Shortly afterwards, the Greek minority resident in Turkey came to be seen as just such a trump card against the Greek side and also as a means for ‘retaliation’ (Demir and Akar 1999, 27). Yet, as mentioned before, this portrayal may present only a partial account of the issue. Not only were Greeks seen as an instrument to pressurize Greece and Greek Cypriots, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the gross violence in Cyprus was utilized to legitimize the mass expulsion of Istanbul Greeks by the political establishment and the media in Turkey. The discourse of security and retaliation articulated through the Cyprus issue served to aggravate the pressures on the Greek minority beyond Istanbul and went as far as ‘closing down the schools providing education in Greek in Imbros and Tenedos’ (Tercüman 12 April 1964). On 14 February 1964 a parliamentary question was submitted by a deputy of the ruling Republican People’s Party (RPP) to Prime Minister Ismet Inönü:

(1) What is the total population of Greek nationals residing and working in Turkey? (2) How many of those pay income tax? (3) What is the total amount of income tax paid by Greek nationals? (4) What is the amount of income tax per Greek national in Turkey? (5) Has any action been taken against those avoiding income tax? (6) Has the government been closely monitoring the economic and social activities of Greek nationals? (7) Will the residence permits of Greek nationals be revised and the necessary measures be taken? (Yeni Sabah 14 February 1964)

The response of the government to this parliamentary question came on 16 March 1964, the anniversary of the occupation of Istanbul by the Allied troops some 42 years previously. Holding Greece responsible ‘for encouraging Makarios in trampling upon’ (Alexandris 1992, 280) the Cyprus Constitution, the Inönü government annulled the 1930 Greco- Turkish Agreement on Residence, Commerce and Navigation, and declared its decision to deport Greeks of Greek nationality residing in Turkey. The Greek minority, one third of whom held Greek nationality, had been established in Istanbul long before 1918 and were allowed to reside there under the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 and the 1930 Convention. Even if the abrogation of the 1930 Convention seemed to target, at the outset, only Greek nationals, Greeks with Turkish nationality naturally followed suit in abandoning the country due to family ties. The decision of the government was reported by Turkish dailies as ‘Several rights of Greeks in Turkey abolished’ (Cumhuriyet 17 March 1964) or ‘Some privileges of Greeks abrogated’ (Tercüman 17 March 1964). In other words, the government’s decision was conveyed as abrogation of privileges granted to foreigners residing in Turkey. This coverage in printed media was juxtaposed with headlines reporting that the Turkish parliament had held ‘an emergency plenary session’ where it ‘authorized the government to carry out an armed intervention in Cyprus when deemed necessary’ (Cumhuriyet 17 March 1964). Similarly, the Turkish government, securitizing the issue 376 A. KALIBER as requiring emergency measures, announced its decision of expulsion by referring to Article 16 of the 1930 Convention. Whereas in case of annulment the signatory governments would normally give six months to the citizens of the other party to leave the country, Article 16 stipulated that minority groups would be swiftly deported from their resident country should the security of the parties to the Agreement be at stake. Referring to Article 16, the Turkish government formulated its policy of expulsion as ‘an emergency measure undertaken in exceptional conditions’ of survival due to the exacerbated Cyprus conflict. The securitizing narrative on Cyprus has enabled the construction of a specific Turkish identity and the Greek minority as its existential threatening other. As Wilhelmsen points out, there is a link between identity construction and policy formulation: ‘a policy will appear legitimate if it is consistent with the identity construction on which it draws. This means that going up the scale of threat representation will make possible tougher or more violent policies’ (Wilhelmsen 2017, 173). Representation of the Cyprus conflict and Istanbul Greeks as existentially threatening renders practices of emergency (expulsion and a series of draconian measures) ‘seem logical, legitimate and, ultimately, necessary’ (Wilhelmsen 2017, 173). These concrete material practices – i.e., deportation and other repressive measures against Istanbul Greeks – in turn served to confirm and reinforce their status as the threatening other of the Turkish self and the related securitizing narrative. The policy of expulsion was put into force soon after the Inönü government declared the abolishment of the Greco-Turkish agreement, as a necessary response to deal with the imminent threat confronting Turkey. The first group of the expelled Istanbul Greeks mainly included businessmen claimed to have been conducting activities detrimental to Turkey (Demir and Akar 1999,73–74). The deportees were allowed to take only 220 Turkish Liras (22 dollars) with them when leaving Turkey. They could travel only with a single piece of luggage not weighing more than 20 kilos.9 It was forbidden to take any of their belongings made of valuable materials such as gold or silver (Akgönül 2007). As another draconian measure, the Turkish land registry office halted all transactions of Greek nationals’ immovable properties. On the basis of the ministerial decree 6/3807/1964, it was forbidden for Greeks to buy, sell or transfer their houses or any property (Helsinki Watch Report 1992). Their bank transactions including drawing money from their own accounts were severely restricted. Furthermore, banks were given instructions to refuse to give loans to ‘businesses entirely or partly owned by the Hellenes [. . .]. Bank accounts were blocked, goods seized, and even furniture and personal effects impounded in order to guarantee the treasury against any future failure to pay taxes’ (Alexandris 1992,284).10 The members of the Greek community were informed about their order of expulsion by police officers at their homes or offices. They were taken to the Greek Department at police headquarters and forced to sign a document in which they admitted the following charges before deportation: they had violated laws, joined the Eleniki Enosis Association, trans- ferred money to Greek terrorists in Cyprus, and consented to leave Turkey of their own will (Alexandris 1992, 284; Demir and Akar 1999, 76). Particularly in the earliest cases, the deportees were given just over 48 hours to rearrange their business and their lives before leaving the country where they had lived for generations. The basis for the government’s deportation policy hinged upon the existence of a clandestine organization allegedly aiming at undermining Turkey and providing financial aid to Greek Cypriots (Akgönül 2007, 263). For the government, 95% of deported Greek SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 377 businessmen were members of a dissolved ‘Eleniki Enosis’ association who ‘carried out activities endangering Turkey’s internal and international security’ (Milliyet 3 May 1964). Founded in the period of rapprochement between Turkey and Greece in the 1930s, the Eleniki Enosis Association aimed at consolidating solidarity and cultural development among the Greek community in Turkey. The association, which had organized aid campaigns sending food and clothing to Greece during World War II, had remained inactive since its donation campaign for the victims of the earthquake that took place in the Greek islands in the 1950s. The term Enosis,or‘union’, which in the context of the Cyprus dispute was equated with unification of Cyprus with Greece, had haunted Turkish public discourse since the 1950s as the worst-case scenario in the conflict. It is evident that to justify the mass deportations, the government wanted to utilize threat perceptions and the anger that the term Enosis was likely to invoke in the Turkish public. The fact that Enosis symbolized the Greek ‘Megali Idea’11 for many Turks made it easier for the government to mobilize Turkish society against Istanbul Greeks and to securitize them as an imminent threat to the Turkish nation. This was achieved by straightforwardly associating the Greek minority in Turkey with the intercommunal clashes in Cyprus throughout 1963 and 1964. To this end, the Turkish press put a heavy emphasis on the so-called common ethnic, religious and cultural origins of the Greek minority in Turkey and the Greek Cypriots constructed as the members of the same Hellenic world. Mentioning the alleged financial aid provided by the Greeks in Turkey to ‘EOKA12 terrorists’,portrayingGreeksasthe‘fifth column’ encircling Turkey since the Ottoman period and comparing the ‘extreme poverty’ and ‘misery’ of ‘oppressed’ Turks in Western Thrace and Cyprus with the economic and social welfare and privileges of Greeks in Turkey were other discursive strategies employed by the media to justify the securitizing narrative and the concomitant oppressive practices against Istanbul Greeks, as the next section of the current study surveys.

The expulsion and the Greek minority in the public and media discourse This section of the study mostly draws on the detailed examination of all issues of four Turkish dailies throughout 1964, which constituted the mainstream of the then Turkish press.13 These papers volunteered to disseminate the discriminatory, humiliating, criminalizing and securitizing discourses against Istanbul Greeks throughout the expulsion. They seemed to fully endorse the government’s policy of expulsion without any critical questioning and did not shy away from using a militarist discourse and the ‘we’ subject in their news and analysis on foreign policy issues such as the Cyprus conflict (Sözeri 2016). It may be suggested that a variety of different but intimately linked discursive strategies were employed by Turkish press to justify the government’s policy of deportation. The establishment of an intimate link between Greek Cypriots and Istanbul Greeks and the stigmatization of the latter as the inimical other of the Turkish nation, their securitization as a ‘fifth column’ and ‘exploiters’ of the Turkish economy, putting the blame on Greece for deportations, criminalization of members of the Greek minority as well as their dehumanization and humiliation have been amongst these discursive strategies. It is observed particularly during the period from March to September 1964 that newspapers featured news stories about the deportations on a daily basis and that these stories were juxtaposed with, or in some cases in nested layouts with the reports on the armed conflict 378 A. KALIBER in Cyprus, which in turn served to keep the Turkish society alert at all times.14 Turkish dailies frequently published lists and tables including the numbers, names and professions of Istanbul Greeks to be deported, and at times their alleged crimes. This made the deportees open targets and subjected them to lynching campaigns.15 Such a criminalizing and demoralizing atmosphere paved the way for further psychological breakdown on the part of the expelled Greeks, which forced and expedited them to undersell their property in order to leave Turkey promptly. Having reminded their readers of the common ethnic, religious and cultural origins of the Greek minority in Turkey and the Greek Cypriots, the newspapers contended that direct financial and other various kinds of assistance were provided by the former to Archbishop Makarios and ‘EOKA terrorists’ in Cyprus. To cite one example among many, according to the daily Hürriyet, ‘the members of the Eleniki Enosis Association, a hotbed of treachery and malice, which carried out activities to the detriment of Turkey and was consequentially closed down by court decision, those sending financial aid to the EOKA organization in Cyprus, and the Greek nationals who smuggled the wealth and profits they acquired in Turkey into Greece were deported from Turkey’ (Hürriyet 18 July 1964).16 For Turkish dailies, rather than the Turkish government the Greek Cypriot leader Makarios, who had unilaterally breached the 1960 Constitution, should be held responsible for the expulsion (Cumhuriyet 18 March and 7 April 1964). It is fair to argue that the Turkish dailies did not avoid using humiliating language against Istanbul Greeks, which was in some cases generalized to the whole Greek nation (Sözeri 2016) constructed not only as the threatening, but also as the ‘inhuman’ other. To illustrate, in newspaper columns the Greeks were referred to as ‘genetically flawed and ruthless blood- shedders’ (Kaflı 1964), and as ‘the evil, historical enemy of Turks’ (Kabaklı 1964).

These fully-ﬂedged creatures [Greeks] have established their hegemony in Istanbul market and have been sucking our blood by making use of the advantages of 1930 Agreement, our tolerance and the absent-mindedness of the authorities so much so that they have been nourishing our enemies and their hostility . . . . We, on the other hand, cannot create employment for our own Turkish citizens in the country. It is high time we became extremely vigilant and stop feeding those malign, ungrateful people. (Fenik 1964) The political economy aspect of the expulsion is more apparent in the discourse of ‘national economy’ widely used by the government-controlled media and civil society throughout the period of expulsion. While deportations continued, on 14 April 1964 three student organizations – the Turkish National Youth Organization, Turkish National Student Federation and National Turkish Student Union – launched an anti-Greek campaign to stop all business activities with Greek merchants. Their common declaration was published on the front pages of almost all newspapers in support of ‘a request of the youth’ (Sözeri 2016,42).

GREAT TURKISH NATION, keeping in mind that each lira they earn by exploiting you, will turn out to be arms directed at your brethren in Cyprus, the best thing you can do in the service of Turkishhood is to cut oﬀ all business with those exploiting us economically . . . . In this period of economic warfare, if you do not wish to be the slaves of world nations, become a volunteer in this campaign (Cumhuriyet, 14 April 1964, emphasis original).

Having stated their appreciation of the government’s ‘right decision concerning the Greek nationals who were resident in Turkey and were exploiting our nation’, the student SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 379 organizations also demanded from the government ‘the immediate expulsion of the Greek nationals living and engaged in commercial activities in Turkey, the abolishment of educational privileges of minority schools which are breaching the unity of language and thought in the country and the reform of religious institutions’17 (Demir and Akar 1999,84). The launch of this campaign was covered by Turkish dailies as a ‘shopping boycott against Greeks who did not embrace Turkishhood’ (Milliyet 16 April 1964), or as ‘the request of the youth from the general public to halt business with the Greek’ (Hürriyet 14 April 1964). Although the campaign was not backed by Turkish society and soon ended, these demands were welcomed at the government level and were in fact fulfiled to a large extent within a short spell of time. The political economy aspect of the expulsion has been manifest in the already mentioned parliamentary question dated 14 February 1964. As such, the discursive practices of identity making drawing on an antagonistic relationship between the self and the other have been intertwined with material practices of boycotting, and other draconian fiscal measures put forward against the deportees. These remarks may well be viewed as the preliminaries to grappling with the political economy of minority/ citizenship regime in Turkey as well as its inclusion/exclusion practices, and the identity constructions on which it draws. Undoubtedly, further scholarly reflection is needed on the issue. Turkish press made a substantial contribution to the anti-Greek atmosphere in Turkey by also giving wide coverage to the crimes and offences committed or claimed to have been committed by the members of the Greek minority. In their headlines the papers feverishly accentuated the ethnic origins of those arrested, if they were members of the Greek community: ‘A Greek murderer and smuggler was arrested’ (Son Havadis 13 January 1964); ‘Two Greek tradesmen defrauded the market’ (Akşam 15 May 1964). A comprehensive examination of the news and commentaries on the expulsion throughout 1964 suggests that even though the official rhetoric makes a clear distinction between the status of Greek residents having both Turkish and Greek nationality, such a distinction is largely overlooked or entirely disregarded by the Turkish press. It is observed that particularly the news reports on crimes allegedly committed by members of Greek community were characterized by a humiliating, degrading language targeting the whole Hellenic world comprising Istanbul Greeks as well as Greeks living in Greece and in Cyprus. One should note that this language and the hate speech against Greeks had become common currency in the Turkish media without any questioning or criticism. The aim of these media reports, ‘strengthening the conviction that those expelled were offenders’ (Sözeri 2016, 47), was to reinforce the message that the expulsion was not a political decision, rather it was a security measure imposing itself in the face of a colossal threat. The news in the press underlined that those expelled were Greek nationals ‘working to the detriment of Turkey’sinterests’ (Cumhuriyet 24 March 1964), ‘those involved in destructive activities in Turkey’ (Tercüman 18 April 2021 June and 27 July 1964) or ‘Greek nationals carrying out detrimental activities against Turkish nation in political and economic terms’ (Cumhuriyet 14 and 31 May 1964). The then minister of interior Orhan Öztrak declared that the policy of expulsion targeted solely those involved in ‘harmful activities’ against Turkey’s internal and international security (Cumhuriyet 22 April 1964), a discourse recurrently echoed by other members of the cabinet. Among other allegations levelled against the deportees were establishing illegal associations, 380 A. KALIBER gathering money with the purpose of providing arms to ‘the Greek terrorists in Cyprus’, creating anti-Turkish propaganda, smuggling foreign currency and using forged invoices (Vatan 30 March 1964). It should be noted that the inflammatory public and official discourse also targeted the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, which was often seen ‘as an unwelcomed residue of Greek influence’ in Turkey (Alexandris 1992, 298). In parallel with the government’s decision on expulsion, the Turkish press resumed its pressure on the then Patriarch Athenagoras to deliver statements favouring Turkish policies in the Cyprus conflict (Demir and Akar 1999, 32). By April 1964, media campaigns (often using inflammatory language) accusing the Greek priests and the Patriarchate of spying and collaborating with Greek Cypriots had heated up considerably: ‘Cleaning up the Patriarchate: Spies in the guise of priests are to be purged’ (Akşam 12 April, 1964; ‘Certain clergymen undermine Turkish nation systemically’ (Cumhuriyet 23 April, 1964). Athenagoras and the Greeks of Istanbul were claimed to maintain close relations with the Greek Cypriot leader Makarios and to have donated 10 million dollars per year to ‘mainland’ Greece (Macar 2003, 201). Soon after another parliamentary question concerning the loyalty and the stance of the Patriarchate on the Cyprus issue, the Turkish government introduced a number of severe measures against the Greek Orthodox Church (Demir and Akar 1999, 124). The printing house of the Patriarchate was closed down on the grounds that its operation was an infringement of the Treaty of Lausanne (Cumhuriyet 11 April 1964). The legal basis for the closure of the printing house was announced to the Patriarchate as violation of the Act 5681 entitling only legal and physical persons to own printing houses (Macar 2003,202).Thisamountedto declaration and discontinuation of the printing house and its religious periodicals as illegal. Moreover, two senior members of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate were immediately expelled on 21 April 1964 due to allegations of involvement in subversive ‘political, administrative, educational and social activities’ (Cumhuriyet 22 April 1964). The students allowed to attend the Halki Seminary of the Patriarchate in Istanbul were limited to Turkish nationals, which resulted in the expulsion of several theology students. The theology department of the seminary was finally closed down in July 1971.18

Conclusion This article has focused on the mass deportation of Istanbul Greeks as one of the most tragic episodes in the modern history of Turkish politics and society. The Greek expulsion, which has remained largely understudied so far, had manifold and far-reaching repercussions for Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy. It struck an enormous blow to the ideal of a society in Turkey embracing multicultural diversity, pluralism and tolerance. It fuelled nationalist agitation and fervour on both sides of the Aegean Sea and further deteriorated Turco-Greek relations. Far from ending the violence in Cyprus, the Greek expulsion aggravated the atmosphere of hostility and distrust among Turkish and Greek Cypriots. It not only dragged the Cyprus question into another deadlock, but also contributed to the alienation of Turkey in international politics. Neither did it help the Turkish minority living in Western Thrace. To retaliate against Turkey’s anti-Greek policies, Greece put into force a series of measures stiﬂing the lives of the Turkish minority in Western Thrace. In the literature on the expulsion it is widely accepted that the Greeks of Istanbul were used by the then Turkish government as hostages to urge Greece to put pressure on Greek SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 381

Cypriots in order to stop their attacks on Turkish Cypriots. Even while criticizing the Greek expulsion, these studies seem to reproduce the official rhetoric in Turkey stating that the government’s decision to abrogate the Turco-Greek agreement and to deport Istanbul Greeks was taken as a response to the attacks against Turkish Cypriots. This account draws on the presumption that the expulsion would not have taken place had there been no brutal armed clashes in Cyprus. Yet, the current study argues that the gross violence in Cyprus was utilized by the political establishment and the media in Turkey to justify the mass expulsion of Istanbul Greeks as well as their economic, social and cultural marginalization. The resuming armed conflict in Cyprus was heavily securitized as an existential threat requiring an immediate response with the aim of manufacturing consent within Turkish society for the mass deportation of Istanbul Greeks. This approach better explains why the intercommunal clashes in Cyprus in 1964 were immediately linked to the Greek community in Turkey without any grounds. This study has revealed that RPP provides ample insights to understand how the Greek expulsion and the Cyprus conflict, which were intimately linked by the Turkish governments of the time, have become instrumental in reinscribing the boundaries and standards of Turkish national identity and its others. It is particularly useful to explore the construction of Istanbul Greeks as the threatening other of the Turkish self and the ways in which the concomitant policy of expulsion was legitimized in the course of securitization of the Cyprus conflict. The Greek deportation testifies also to the fact that foreign policy issues are securitized by ruling elites to secure the domestic order, internal power relations and the reproduction of core characteristics ascribed to the state and the nation. However, even if critical constructivists and post-structuralists accuse conventional IR of being ahistoric, they themselves often confine the analysis into very specific periods of time. Focusing on specific foreign policy representations in specific time periods or specific moments of state identity making, radical post-positivists often tend to ignore state building processes leading to different degrees and modalities of othering. The insulation of the securitized Cyprus issue as the sole political/historical context within which the construction of the Greeks as the threatening other was materialized may be misleading in two senses. First, one may underestimate the political economy incentives of the expulsion, and how and in what ways the existence of an economically powerful Greek minority was perceived as an existential threat to Turkey throughout its nation building process. Secondly, the Greek expulsion may be isolated as an exception in such a way as to ignore other extreme practices of pathological homogenization throughout the history of modern Turkey including the 1934 Thrace events (Bali 2008) and the Istanbul Pogrom of 6–7 September 1955. One may argue that the securitizing discourse circulated through foreign policy in contemporary Turkey has still a pivotal role to play in the domestic political realm and power relations. Even though the place of the non-Muslim communities in this rhetoric has declined to a great extent in parallel to their prominence in Turkey’s politics and economy, their risk of being pronounced once again as the imminent internal enemies is not unlikely. europeanisation reforms, which accelerated in the 2001–2005 period, created new spaces for the actors demanding a more participatory and pluralist political order in Turkey through the integration of different social groups, i.e., ethnic, religious and political minorities. Various steps have already been taken in recent years, yet a genuine reconciliation requires further reaching and sustainable measures. In fact, significant restrictions and discriminatory practices still persevere, particularly when it 382 A. KALIBER comes to the Greek minority’s freedom of religion, access to education and property rights. One may surmise that the state and a considerable section of the society in Turkey are still far from understanding and facing up to the traumatizing practices to which minority groups have been exposed. The author of these lines is convinced that resolving the problems of minority groups and securing their integration in the socio- political structure as equal citizens is of utmost importance for the consolidation of a peaceful and democratic political culture in Turkey.

Notes

1. The 1930 Convention signed by Turkish and Greek leaders Atatürk and Venizelos introduced seminal privileges for the nationals of the respective countries. Article 1 of the Convention on Residence, Commerce and Navigation stipulated that ‘the peoples of the signatory states shall have the right to enter the other country freely on the condition that they abide by the country’s relevant laws and on an equal footing with the country’s own citizens or, in case of any special clauses regarding foreigners, by benefiting from the conditions stipulated for the people who are the citizens of the most favourable country. Additionally, they shall travel, reside or settle in the other country freely, and leave whenever they wish to do so’. 2. According to Rıdvan Akar, this figure is around 12,000; see Demir and Akar (1999, 14) and also Karaosmanoğlu (2010). 3. However, this figure may even be much higher. Unfortunately, adequate and reliable statistical data are not yet available. 4. The Higher Council of Minorities (Azınlıklar Tali Komisyonu), set up on 7 November 1962 by aclassified prime ministerial decree 28/4869, aimed to monitor all transactions of the minorities offending against national security in Turkey. It included members from the General Directorate of Foundations, Ministry of Interior, Turkey’s General Staff, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Turkish Intelligence Agency. Even the composition of this commission itself gives an impression about how minority issues were excessively securitized by the Turkish state elite. Until it was abolished by the Turkish government in 2004, the commission acted as an invisible supreme authority interfering with and determining all government decisions and policies concerning minority issues in Turkey. See Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans (2014). 5. The expulsion of the Greeks of Istanbul began in 1964 and continued into 1965. However, I will use the phrase ‘the expulsion of the Greeks of Istanbul in 1964ʹ as is commonly used in the relevant literature. 6. Securitization is defined as a ‘speech act’ dramatizing issues political in nature as issues of supreme priority and existential threat ‘requiring emergency measures’. See Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde (1998,23–4). 7. Obviously, there exist a number of studies examining the relationships of the European self with different identities, i.e., the Southern and Eastern European, Russian, Turkish and the Middle Eastern, which differ substantially in a spectrum ranging from the less European, to non- and even anti-European (Featherstone and Kazamias 2001; Neumann 1999; Pace 2006). 8. For a comprehensive analysis of the role of foreign policy in building American national identity, see Trautsch (2018). 9. The exhibition on the expulsion, which opened in Istanbul on its 50th anniversary, was named ‘20 Dollars 20 Kilos’. 10. Alexandris bases this information on the explanatory memorandum of Alexander Dimitropoulos to the Secretary General, 10 September 1964, UNSC/S/5951. SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND BLACK SEA STUDIES 383

11. The Megali Idea (the Great Idea) ‘refers to a specific political entitlement ideology that demanded the reunification of all Greeks of the former Byzantine Empire’ (see Volkan 2014, 36). 12. Ethnike Organosis Kyprion Agoniston, or the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters, was a Greek Cypriot nationalist guerrilla organization, active between 1955 and 1959, which fought to end the British rule in Cyprus and carried out terror attacks against Turkish Cypriots. 13. These dailies are Tercüman (central right), Hürriyet (centre), Cumhuriyet and Milliyet (central left). 14. To illustrate, articles reporting the attacks against Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus were positioned side by side with those covering the deportation of Istanbul Greeks in the daily Cumhuriyet on 11, 12 and 13 April 1964. In a similar vein, the daily Hürriyet featured the news ‘70 more Greeks deported’ next to the story titled ‘Greeks launched heavy artillery firing in Kyrenia’ on its front page on 18 July 1964. Examples abound. 15. See, Cumhuriyet 24 March 2014 May, 19 June and 2, 9, 17 July 1964. 16. Translation of these headlines and news stories is by the author unless otherwise stated. 17. Here the term ‘religious institutions’ refers to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul. 18. For details of the pressure exercised by the Turkish governments on the Greek Patriarchate in the 1960–1974 period, see Alexandris (1992, 298–307).

Disclosure statement

No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Alper Kaliber is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Altınbaş University, Turkey. His areas of research include critical security studies, critical IR theory, Europeanisation and Turkey-EU relations as well as Turkish foreign policy. He is the co-editor of Is Turkey De-Europeanising? Encounters with Europe in a Candidate Country (2017). His publications have appeared in South European Society and Politics, International Relations, Security Dialogue and the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies.

ORCID

Alper Kaliber http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0160-8566

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