Events

The Parallax of 1922: The Greco-Turkish war in history, memory and international politics

Hosted by the Hellenic Observatory

LSE Lecture Theatre, Ground floor, Centre Building, LSE, United Kingdom

Speakers

Dr Georgios Giannakopoulos

Dr Georgios Giannakopoulos

Professor Yaprak Gürsoy

Professor Yaprak Gürsoy

Dr Ioannis Grigoriades

Dr Ioannis Grigoriades

Dr Ozan Ozavci

Dr Ozan Ozavci

Professor Elisabeth Thompson

Professor Elisabeth Thompson

Chair

Professor Kevin Featherstone

Professor Kevin Featherstone

On the occasion of this autumn’s centenary of the end of the Greek-Turkish of 1919-1922 war, the Hellenic Observatory held a panel discussion where historians, political scientists, and IR scholars reflected on the legacies of 1922 in history, public discourse, and policy making.

The autumn of 2022 marked the centenary of the end of the Greek-Turkish War in Anatolia. The Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 became one of the most significant conflicts in a decade of ethnic violence otherwise known as the Greater War decade (1912-1922). The failure of the Greek expansionist project in Anatolia and the destruction of the Greek orthodox communities in Asia Minor became the success of the Turkish nationalist transformation of the Ottoman empire giving rise to complex regional and international dynamics captured by the ensuing Lausanne treaty (1923). The Greek-Turkish 1922 is a story of trauma and triumph; of war, violence, and national pride and humiliation; a story of displacements and population transfers that heralded the consolidation of the national state and catapulted the pursuit of national homogeneity to the mainstream of international politics.

This panel invited historians, political scientists, and IR scholars to reflect on the legacies of 1922 in history, public discourse, and policy making.

The theme of this panel was inspired by the work of Dr Giannakopoulos (The Global 1922 Project) and Dr Ozavci (The Lausanne Project).

Meet our speakers and chair

Dr Giorgos Giannakopoulos is a lecturer in Modern History at City University of London. He is also the Co-ordinator of The Global 1922 Project. He is a member of the Royal Historical Society and he serves in the executive committees of the Modern Greek Studies Association in the UK and the Greek Politics Specialist Group.

Professor Yaprak Gürsoy is the Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at LSE. She has worked on Greek and Turkish politics from a comparative perspective, with a special interest in regime change and civil-military relations in both countries, including the period after the Lausanne Treaty and the exchange of populations.

Dr. Ioannis N. Grigoriadis is an Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair of European Studies at Bilkent University; Senior Fellow and Head of the Programme on Turkey, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP); Editor-in-Chief, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. He has published extensively on Greek and Turkish politics and history and is a team member of HOMEACROSS, an ERC-funded research project exploring space, memory and the legacy of the 1923 Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey.

Dr Ozan Ozavci is Assistant Professor of Transimperial History at Utrecht University. Dr Ozavci is also co-leading the Lausanne Project and the Security History Network. He is a fellow at the Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges and a core member of the Contesting Governance Platform. 

Dr Elizabeth Thompson is Mohamed S. Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace at the SIS School of International Service at the American University, Washington D.C. 

Professor Kevin Featherstone is Eleftherios Venizelos Professor in Contemporary Greek Studies and Professor in European Politics in the European Institute at LSE, where he is also Director of the Hellenic Observatory.

More about this event

This panel discussion was a hybrid event.

Podcast and Video

Watch the video here .

The Hellenic Observatory (@HO_LSE) is internationally recognised as one of the premier research centres on contemporary Greece and Cyprus. It engages in a range of activities, including developing and supporting academic and policy-related research; organisation of conferences, seminars and workshops; academic exchange through visiting fellowships and internships; as well as teaching at the graduate level through LSE's European Institute.

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