“This expulsion is explained in many ways”: Ottoman Greek Orthodox internal exiles during the Great War (1914–1918)

Abstract

This article investigates the Ottoman Greek Orthodox internal exiles, focusing on the deportees’ experiences and the intricacies of their agency during the Great War (1914–18). It does so by examining deportees’ understudied ego-documents, taken either from the collections of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Athens or from family archives. Organized into labor-battalions or housed in open internment camps in town quarters, the inland exiles were deported to secure the rear front and homogenize the country, but their deportation was characterized by local influences and inconsistencies. Several of the Greek Orthodox exiles managed to survive and maintain their cultural ties by exploiting such inconsistencies, either by selling their skills or by resisting exile through solidarity, desertion, and resistance.