Across a Table, Across the Aegean

In July 2023 TLP brought high school history teachers from Greece and Turkey together at the Musée Historique de Lausanne for a workshop, intended to develop new ways of teaching the events surrounding the 1923 population exchange. Our aim: to challenge one-sided approaches to historical events that have been central to nation-centred narratives on both sides of the Aegean. These approaches have exploited a shared trauma of imperial collapse as opportunities for “othering” that continue to hamper dialogue. By the end of the three days a number of proposals had been co-created by pairs of Greek and Turkish teachers, ideas which are now being turned into lesson plans that will be shared for free across a number of professional teacher networks in both countries. The informality of the gathering also provided opportunities for participants to engage in their own “Track II Diplomacy”, making connections across the national divide.

THE TEACHERS ALSO LEARNED TO MASTER THE FONDUE.

Chosen from a large pool of applicants, the teachers* met each other at dinner on the evening of the first day. This was the first of a series of culinary experiences which were almost as memorable as the more formal interactions: sampling fondue at the Café du Grütli and entrecôte de cheval at Café de l’Evêché, participants were able to sample the local wine of the canton of Vaud. They were joined by Angelos Palikidis, Assistant Professor in History Didactics at the Democritus University of Thrace, who acted as workshop facilitator. Angelos has served as Director of the Laboratory of Technology, Research & Applications in Education since 2017, and was closely involved in developing a new history curriculum for Greek Primary and Secondary Education in 2018-9. This experience combined with his research into history textbooks and museum education made him a valuable contributor.

The following morning we convened at the Musée Historique de Lausanne for the first of two days of collaboration. In the weeks before the workshop all participants had shared with the organizer links to textbooks, videos, websites and other resources – those they identified as models of good practice (such as the resources prepared for Muslim community schools in Western Thrace), and those best avoided. We began by inviting participants to share their hopes for the workshop, as well as their experience of teaching the population exchange. The shared constraints were immediately clear. Both Greek and Turkish systems “teach to the test”, with little if any of the coursework or essays found in other countries’ curricula. Although teachers profess an interest in breaking their classes into break-out groups, few stray from the traditional “chalk and talk” model.

It is a case of (to paraphrase Augustine) “Make me a good, critically-aware historian, but not until after the Pan-Hellenic exams.”

Any innovation potentially faces pushback from pupils (and their parents) unused to group work, uncomfortable when presented with multiple historical narratives, and unnerved by activities intended to help them create their own narratives. Indeed, the likely reflex, inculcated by years of prior experience of what learning is “supposed” to look and feel like, may simply be to ask “Which of these alternatives do I need to memorize in order to do well in my exams?” While the cohort we were addressing (Grades 11 and 12) are relatively mature and will bring prior knowledge to the exercise, it was acknowledged that the approaching national exams meant that those most invested in history as a discipline (those intending to study it at university, say) might be more, rather than less resistant. To paraphrase Augustine, it is a case of “Make me a good, critically-aware historian, but not until after the Pan-Hellenic exams.”

The population exchange is firmly entrenched in the Greek curriculum and Greek textbooks, though it is normally taught by philology or philosophy graduates, rather than historians. In Turkish high schools the teachers usually hold at least a BA degree in history, but the exchange is given barely a sentence in textbooks. It was recognized that this represented both a challenge –our lesson plans would need to include enough background information to assist Turkish teachers, without patronizing their Greek colleagues– and an opportunity: the lack of attention means that the population exchange is not encumbered by the kind of state-sponsored rhetoric and misinformation encountered when addressing other facets of the Lausanne moment. Alongside high hopes of encouraging a new generation of Turks and Greeks to bring their imagination, empathy and critical thinking skills to bear, therefore, we were well aware of the constraints, and devoted considerable time to discussing not only how the lesson plans TLP will prepare can best be distributed to teachers in both private and public schools, but also the need to ensure that they were pitched at the right level. TLP will be working with the History Foundation (Tarih Vakfi) and the Association for History Education in Greece (AHEG) to explore some of these avenues.

BLINK AND YOU’D MISS IT: THE ONLY MENTION OF THE POPULATION IN THE OFFICIAL TURKISH HISTORY TEXTBOOK IS POINT 6 IN A LIST OF TREATY PROVISIONS

Over the two days different pairs of Greek and Turkish teachers spent four sessions brainstorming together, around materials which had been prepared in advance. Some of these materials will already be familiar to regular visitors to the TLP website. These include the artefacts handed down across generations of those displaced a century ago, which featured as part of Objects in Motion, a research project and online exhibition organized by the Institute for Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. It was not difficult to come up with useful questions and exercises drawing on these items: why were these items taken (and others left behind)? Why have they been kept for a hundred years, and how has their function changed in that interval? What things would we take with us today? We also considered a series of extracts taken from testimonials written by those displaced. These tended to have been written some time after the exchange itself, and allow us to trace the changing emotional responses to the same experience, from alienation and fear to nostalgia and pride. Their class and gender aspects can be explored. As many students will have their own family memories (or even artefacts), there is an opportunity to reflect on how such objects and narratives function as mnemonic constructions. Given the importance of local and family histories, clearly we will need to be careful about how we approach a precious inheritance.

Rather than a case of a primary experience being reimagined or reinvented over the generations, here we have an instance in which memory created the “original” experience, rather than “recalling” it. Indeed, the experience of forced displacement was so dislocating that it seems likely that many individuals we might otherwise describe as “eye witnesses” of the exchange were incapable of articulating that “witness”. As humans we have a story-telling instinct, yet the events of a century ago defied easy translation into a coherent narrative.

MIRKAN DENIZ’S COPY OF THE TREATY TABLE, ON SHOW IN THE MUSEUM

I cannot end this brief account of the workshop (a longer report can be downloaded by clicking here) without thanking the staff of the Musée Historique for their hospitality. The seminar room they provided was a cool retreat in baking Lausanne, with breaktaking views of the Lake. Coffee breaks were taken outside on the Museum’s terrace, which we had to ourselves. Last but not least, the exhibition Frontières. Le Traité de Lausanne, 1923-2023 provided a source of useful inspiration. The workshop ended with a trip across Lake Geneva on the CGN ferry. Though some of us did not have the stamina for a third night out on the town, it was wonderful to see how most of the party seized the opportunity to spend the evening getting to know Evian and catch a later ferry home. Quite how late a ferry we will never know…

* TLP is not naming the teachers who took part, recognizing that in some cases their participation in such a peace-building exercise may not be welcome by the authorities of their home country. Redacting the names of those most likely to face such unpleasant blow-back was felt to be unfair, however. In a spirit of professional solidarity, therefore, none of the teachers’ full names are given here or in the longer-format report which was drawn up afterwards.

This workshop was funded by the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities (SIAH), under the AHRC’s Impact Acceleration Account, with in-kind support from the Musée Historique de Lausanne (MHL) and Pädagogische Hochschule Luzern. Our thanks to Ahmet and Dimitrios for their help gathering and translating materials used in this workshop, and to Kalliopi Amygdalou of HOMEACROSS for sharing that project’s draft educational resources for comment. 

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