Istanbul - Changing Demographics

[mcgillianaire]

In the 1930s when the population of this most cosmopolitan of cities used to be between 700-800,000 about 300,000 was made up of Greeks. There was also a significant number of Armenians and Jews. But today there are no more than 20,000 Jews; 50,000 Armenians and less than 3,000 Greeks out of a population between 13 and 16 million. By any measure that is a shockingly disappointing transformation. I'd still love to visit it though.

Comments

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

Your dates may be slightly off.

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

The BBC radio programme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hj6sn) that mentioned this treaty made the point that despite it, the population of Greeks in Istanbul was still that high because it did not take part in the exchange.

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

Ah, did not know that.

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

From the link you provided above:

"The Turks and other Muslims of Western Thrace were exempted from this transfer as well as the Greeks of Istanbul and the Aegean Islands of Imbros (Gökçeada) and Tenedos (Bozcaada).

Due to punitive measures carried out by the Republic of Turkey, such as the 1932 parliamentary law which barred Greek citizens in Turkey from a series of 30 trades and professions from tailor and carpenter to medicine, law, and real estate,[9] the Greek population of Istanbul began to decline, as evidenced by demographic statistics.

The Varlık Vergisi capital gains tax imposed in 1942 on wealthy non-Muslims in Turkey also served to reduce the economic potential of ethnic Greek businesspeople in Turkey. Furthermore, violent incidents as the Istanbul Pogrom (1955) directed against the ethnic Greek community greatly accelerated emigration of Greeks, reducing the 200,000-strong Greek minority in 1924 to just over 2,500 in 2006."

(The figures from the radio programme were provided by people living in Istanbul, not academics so are not as exact as the ones quoted above).