Although forced population movements are not unique to the twentieth century, as anyone of Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, or Choctaw ancestry can attest, such atrocities are among the greatest disgraces of the past century. One of the earliest such movements in this era was the population exchange between Turkey and Greece under the terms of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which settled the conflict from which the modern Republic of Turkey emerged.Like most Americans, I know little about Turkey or the history of the territories its present government controls. So I consider the way in which I spent the evening of Monday, May 25, as one of my life’s wholly unexpected experiences. On that occasion, my wife Elizabeth and I found ourselves in the village of Şirince, high on a mountainside about nine kilometers from the town of Selçuk, which itself is about three kilometers from the ruins of the fabulous city of Ephesus, one of the greatest metropolises of the ancient world.
By a series of events unlikely to have happened to anyone but a certain lovely, vivacious, and outgoing Louisianan (a.k.a. my wife), Elizabeth, who had gone to Selçuk earlier on Sunday while I was still occupied with business elsewhere in Turkey, had become acquainted with an affable carpet dealer by the name of Aydin. Through him, we met Metin, a young man who works with or for Aydin. (In Turkey it seems that everybody works with or for a great many others, who are described in most cases as brothers, cousins, uncles, or nephews.) Both Aydin and Metin speak good English and have spent time in the United States.
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