A whole century has passed since the Asia Minor Catastrophe. 40 years ago, in 1982, the Greek match monopoly had released a series of 10 paper matchboxes entitled: “60 YEARS WITHOUT ASIA MINOR” 1982. The series featured photos of greek philosophers, important events, places and was released in a circulation of 10 million pieces.
The Asia Minor Catastrophe is considered perhaps the greatest calamity of Hellenism throughout time. It has been mentioned that the “Asia Minor Catastrophe” can only be compared to that of 1453 and considered even greater, because the thousands of years of greek presence in the Ionian land were uprooted.
With the Treaty of Lausanne and the mandatory exchange of populations, Eastern Hellenism was forced to leave its homes after two thousand years. 1.5 million refugees arrived in Greece under miserable conditions. The nearly bankrupt greek state had to house and treat this huge population.
At the same time, with the departure of Muslims from the Greek territory, Greece became more ethnically and religiously homogeneous. The Great Idea -the main goal of Greek foreign policy for almost 100 years- has come to an end.
The Catastrophe of 1922 will cause deep breakthrough within Greek society at all levels: economic (creation of a large working class in the large urban centers), political (radicalization of the political forces), as well as cultural (new musical sounds, cuisine, new spiritual searches and literary movements, such as the generation of the ’30s, etc.)
After many years, in 1998, by a unanimous decision of the Hellenic Parliament, September 14th was established as the “Day of National Remembrance of the Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor by the Turkish State”.