Separation—Only Separation

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bremained in land looked upon as “unredeemed” Bulgarian terri- btory.

bIt was therefore agreed by the Convention of Neuilly (1919) that for bthe sake of peace and stability, there would be reciprocal emigration of the bGreek minority in Bulgaria and the Bulgarian minority in Greece. The btreaty spared oceans of blood.

bBut the Greek-Turkish hatred raged on. During World bWar I some 600,000 Greeks and 300,000 Muslims had been sep- barated. Turkey was now a defeated power, and Greece in 1920 binitiated the Greco-Turkish War by occupying Smyrna and bwestern Asia Minor. The Turks, however, under Ataturk, de- bcisively defeated the Greeks in 1922, and the Greek army re- btreated from the area. In rapid succession, within a few months, balmost the entire Greek population of western Asia Minor, Pon- btus, Eastern Thrace, and much of Constantinople—one million bpeople—fled to Greece.

bTo halt the apparently endless wars, the Turks and Greeks bmet and concluded the Lausanne Convention in 1923, on “com- bpulsory population exchange.” It was a triumph of good sense. Un- bder it the flight of the Greeks was formalized, and under the bauspices of a League of Nations international commission, the bremaining 150,000 Greeks in Turkey (except for Con- bstantinople) were forcibly repatriated. The convention provided bfor the compulsory transfer of most of Greece’s Muslims— b400,000 people—to Turkey. The same international commission bcontinued its work in this and other population exchanges. By bthe time it had completed its work in 1932, more than four million people bin the Balkans and Turkey had been involved in deportations, flights, and bforced exchanges. But no wars.

bIn much the same manner, the very last Greek-Turkish bproblem, on Cyprus, was finally resolved. Decades of bitter bhostility, communal riots, wars—there was, again, apparently bno end to it. And then came the Turkish invasion and the flight bof Turks north and Greeks south. The hostility remains, but the bopponents are separated by a border. Today there is hate, and bthat is sad. But there is no bloodshed.

India and Pakistan

bAs Indian nationalism, led by men like Gandhi and Nehru, binexorably pushed Britain out of the subcontinent, the nation b