The Persistent Unconstitutionality of the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne

The so-called population exchange decided in 1923, is a humanitarian, moral, and political tragedy. Our paper examines the legal aspect of the issue and shows, with reference to the Greek constitutional order of the time, that the exchange was a clear violation of the Greek Constitution because it deprived Greek citizens of a number of rights, including the right to citizenship and property. We present the Greek legal discourse of the time, which highlighted the constitutional violation. In this context, one of the jurists of the time referred to the exchange of populations using, perhaps for the first time in history, the term "ethnic cleansing". Contrary to this criticism, the later legal doctrine was silent, ignoring the fact that the Convention and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne violated the existing Constitution and should, therefore, be considered partly invalid.