Reckoning with the 1923 Treaty of Peace and its legacies

edited by Ozan Ozavci, Julia Secklehner, and Georgios Giannakopoulos (Gingko, 2026)

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne remains one of the few interwar peace settlements that has endured into the twenty-first century. Yet, the memory of Lausanne has proved deeply contested. Celebrated by some as a triumph of state sovereignty and peacemaking, it has also come to symbolize forced displacement, the erasure of minority rights, and the codification of population transfers as instruments of international order. Serving as a sequel to They All Made Peace-What is Peace?, this edited volume foregrounds the lived realities and long-term legacies of the treaty, critically re-examining the political, cultural, and social consequences of its provisions and aftershocks.

Through case studies ranging from the refugee experience in Nikaia and Asia Minor orphans in Greece, to the enduring memory of loss in Pontic singing, the symbolic ethnicity of Cretan descendants, and the Kurdish experience in Turkey, the book documents the deeply personal and community-level consequences of forced migration and political rupture. These experiences are not confined to the immediate postwar period; they linger across time, informing the present-day politics of memory, migration, and identity. Additionally, essays explore how the treaty facilitated the continuation of imperial practices under new nationalist forms, shaped debates over public debt and cultural heritage, and affected actors and regions often overlooked in Lausanne historiography, such as Albania, Cyprus, and the Kurdish nationalist movements.

Through its interdisciplinary and transregional approach, The Lausanne Moment breaks new ground in Lausanne studies, bringing together historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, political scientists, and cultural theorists, as well as introducing Kurdish, Cypriot, Pontic, Albanian, and Cretan voices and perspectives, that have been marginal to mainstream narratives. By weaving together policy analysis, oral history, cultural production, and historical research, the volume offers an expansive and textured account of one of the twentieth century’s most consequential, yet paradoxical, peace settlements.

The Lausanne Moment was partly based on a conference that was held in November of 2023 at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki. For more information of the conference, click here.

480pp, available in hardback, direct from Blackwell’s for $73,24 , or wherever books are sold.

Contents:

Part 1: Home, Unravelled

  • Forced Migration as State-Making and Statecraft: The Lausanne Population Exchanges in Comparative Perspective – Fiona B. Adamson and Kelly M. Greenhill
  • The Issue of the Armenian Homeland and the Abandoned Properties Question in the Treaty of Lausanne – Ümit Kurt
  • Forging a ‘Blue Collar’ Identity: NER and the Education of Asia Minor Refugee Children in Post-Lausanne Greece – Dimitris Kamouzis
  • One century, Two refugee crises: Τhe legacy of the Lausanne Treaty in the refugee settlement of Nikaia (1924-2024) – Olga Lafazani, Eleni Kyramargiou, Alkis Kapokakis and Thanasis Tyrovolas

Part 2: High Hopes and Hard Truths

  • An Inevitable Defeat? Sèvres, Lausanne and the Battle for Kurdistan – Djene Bajalan
  • Turkey as the Land of Promise for Balkan Muslims? Albania’s Deterrence of Migration of Kosovar Albanians from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1935–1938) – Lediona Shahollari
  • Greece as an Ottoman Successor State: The Matter of the Ottoman Public Debt Distribution – Lukas Tsiptsios
  • Invention and Destruction of a Half-Baked Tradition: Lausanne Day in Early Republican Turkey (1923–1959) – Aytek Soner Alpan
  • The ‘Long Great War’ and Cyprus: The Asia Minor Campaign, the Treaty of Lausanne and Enosis – Nikos Christofis

Part 3: (Un-)wanted Legacies

  • Possessing the Virgin and the Quran: Cultural Heritage Policies During the Lausanne Peace Conference – Nilay Özlü
  • Excavating a nation. Archaeology in Turkey before and after the Treaty of Lausanne – Hélène Maloigne
  • Istanbul’s Robert College and the American College for Girls in the Post-Lausanne Landscape – Enno Maessen
  • Rituals of Postmemory: Remembering the Lausanne Rupture in Pontic Parakathi Singing – Ioannis Tsekouras
  • Symbolic Cretanness and the Assertion of Distinctiveness: Second- and Third-generation Cretans in Turkey – Efpraxia Nerantzaki
  • Why is the ‘peace’ of Lausanne afraid of the refugees?: Coloniality and Patriarchy in the New Imperial Order – Demetra Tzanaki

The Lausanne Moment situates the treaty within broader histories of state-led population engineering, colonial eugenic practices, and the moral politics of international humanitarianism. The “peace” of Lausanne, the volume suggests, was neither absolute nor apolitical – it was crafted, contested, and constantly renegotiated. The book’s contributors collectively ask not only what peace meant in 1923, but also what it means today for those still living with its consequences.