Greek refugees
Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies were established from the Dardanelles to Caria, with the most important being Miletus, Phocaea, Ephesus and Smyrna.
Following the spread of the Hellenistic civilization in the 3rd century BC, Greek became the lingua franca of Asia Minor, and by the fifth century AD, when the last of the Indo-European native languages of Anatolia ceased to be spoken, Greek became the sole spoken language of the natives of Asia Minor.
Thus, many renowned Greek-speaking figures who lived during this time were Asia Minor Greeks, including Saint Nicholas (270-343), John Chrysostomos (349-407), Isidore of Miletus (6th century), and Basilios Bessarion (1403-1472).
The Greek speaking Christian population began to decline with the invasions of the Muslim Seljuq Turks in the 11th century.
The persecutions, massacres, expulsions, and death marches of the Asia Minor Greeks were renewed during the early 20th century by the Young Turk administration of the Ottoman Empire and during the subsequent revolution of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, the Allies granted Greece, with the Treaty of Sèvres, the administration of Eastern Thrace (apart from Constantinople) and the city of Smyrna and its environs.
A series of events, with the Great Fire of Smyrna been their peak, ended the 3,000-year-old Greek presence in Asia Minor.
The argument that Greeks constituted the majority of the population of Anatolia claimed by Greece during Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) has been contested by a number of historians.
In their book about the British foreign policy of World War I and post war years, Cedric James Lowe and Michael L. Dockrill argued that: Greek claims were at best debatable, [they were] perhaps a bare majority, more likely a large minority in the Smyrna Vilayet, which lay in an overwhelmingly Turkish Anatolia.
Descendants of the refugees took part in the great Greek migrations of the Interwar period, as well as the large immigrations to the United States, Australia and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s.
The income tax revenues of the Greek state rose by about 400%, or five-fold, within four years, mainly thanks to the refugees (from 319 million drachmas in 1923, to 1.137 billion in 1927[11]).
The urban population increased greatly, resulting in the creation of the modern Greek metropolises of Athens and Thessaloniki.
The demographic changes of the Anatolian Christian population were severe, as well as the changes in the demography of Greece herself, where thousands of people died of diseases.
Apart from malaria, which caused the death of tens of thousands, diseases that had not appeared in Greece for years (cholera, plague) increased the already high mortality rates.
Within the first ten days of October 1922, 50,000 Greeks mainly from Kydonies/Ayvali arrived in Lesbos, creating a huge humanitarian problem.
The issues concerning the missing Greeks were soon raised in the International Red Cross, without any success and cooperation from the Turkish side.
The descendants of the refugees have founded hundreds of organizations and institutes in Greece and in the diaspora to promote their civilization and to keep in touch with their roots.
