As a sociocultural anthropologist, I study heritage politics and homeland tourism among descendants of the 1923 Greek-Turkish Population Exchange. The Population Exchange forcibly expelled formerly Ottoman populations to Greece or Turkey on the basis of their religion. Today, their descendants work and travel across a politically charged border that separates not only two hostile nation-states, but two world regions, Europe and the Middle East, that are often portrayed as antagonists. In my work, I demonstrate how Greek and Turkish exchangees use ancestral trauma, common cultural hospitality practices, and an “etiquette of reconnection” to maneuver around national prejudices and create salient, transnational alternatives.
My fieldwork is multi-sited. A central node is the village of Mustafapaşa (formerly Sinasos) in Cappadocia, Türkiye, but I also conduct fieldwork in Istanbul, Thessaloniki, and countless exchangee homeland villages throughout Greece and Türkiye.