The Activities of Turkish Red Crescent Association of the 27th Salonika Help Committee in Population Exchange (October 1923-October 1924)

The Turkish- Greek Population Exchange Agreement which has accepted between Turkey and Greece in the Conference of Lousanne, was brought into force by Turkish Grand National Assembly on 25 August 1923. As agreed upon Greek Orthodox Christians living in ？stanbul and Turkish Muslims living in Western Thrace were excluded and all the other community was started to be exchanged starting from the date 1 May 1923. After agreement brought into force, Exchange, Construction and Settlement Ministry was founded to be concerned with the issues regarding the Exchange. However, the budget and the organization of the ministry were not enough to accomplish all the works about exchange itself. Fort he reason, the Ministry started negatiations with Turkish Red Crescent Association and two worked together on exchange issues. Both in Turkey and Greek committees of help were founded by Turkish Red Crescent Association. These committees dealt with needs of people who were exchanged. One of the committees founded by Turkish Red Crescent Association was the 27th Salonika Help Committee. This Committee helped hundreds of thousands people in terms of health, food housing and other problems. This article aims at analizing the activities of 27th Help Committee in Salonika in terms of Red Crescent Archive, Ottoman Red Crescent Journals, Turkish Grand National Assembly Official Reports and the reports ve research works prepared by Turkish Red Crescent Association