A comparative analysis of the construction of national narratives by the refugee and exchangee associations in Greece and Turkey

This thesis comparatively analyzes the roles played by the exchangee associations, whose numbers have increased gradually in the last decades in Turkey, and the refugee associations, which have a deep-rooted history in Greece, in the construction of their respective nationalist narratives. Taking from the 1922-23 Forced Migration/Population Exchange discourses used in both countries, the study begins with a historical discussion and aims at introducing how these discourses are reproduced by the refugee associations in Greece and the exchangee associations in Turkey. In this regard, the official statements of the associations, the events organized by them and the semi-structured interviews conducted with their members (both in Greece and Turkey) are examined and under the light of the obtained results, three main hypotheses are tested. In order to conduct this research, a modernist nationalist approach is taken as a starting point, and particularly the assumptions of Michael Billig's banal nationalism are employed to construct the framework of the thesis. It is hoped that these findings will fill a void in the International Relations and Political Science literature on the role of the two understudied actors, i.e., the refugee and exchangee associations, as well as to contribute to the refugee/exchangee research in both countries.