The Greek version of the documentary “Exiled for Peace” by Journalist-Writer and Director Osman Okkan, which addresses the “population exchange” between Turkey and Greece, is being screened in the Aegean Islands. The first screening, organized by the Federation of Greek Historians (FIMPOD), took place yesterday on the island of Leros, where Hasan Cemal, Murat Belge, Cengiz Aktar, Nilüfer Göle, Asaf Savaş Akat, Hale Soygazi, Faruk Günaltay from Turkey, and Can Dündar from Germany also met recently.
Subsequent screenings, organized by FIMPOD in cooperation with the Cologne-based “Turkish-European Culture Forum” and the “Turkish-Greek Peace Initiative,” will also take place on the islands of Nea Fokea, Attica, Plomari, Antissa, Nea Philadephia, Kalamata, Chios, and Kos.
The Greek version of the documentary, which Osman Okkan made in 2003 with his wife Simone Sitte, whom we lost in 2006, was first screened last August as part of the “Peace and Friendship Festival” held on Lesbos Island. The documentary was also screened in Athens, Piraeus, and Thessaloniki in March 2026, in cooperation with various universities and institutions.
The documentary, largely filmed on the islands of Lesbos and Crete in the early 2000s, examines the mutual forced migration in 1923, which encompassed approximately two million people from Turkey and Greece, this exile policy, and its effects that continue to shape the lives of those exiled even today.
The documentary, produced/prepared for the Franco-German joint television channel ARTE and the West German Radio and Television Corporation WDR, includes interviews with survivors of the tragic events of that period. In addition to witnesses from both countries from that era, the documentary also features the experiences and views of Mikis Theodorakis, Yaşar Kemal, Zülfü Livaneli, and Maria Farantouri regarding this process.
Having received the “Mahmut Tali Öngören Democracy and Human Rights Award” at the Nuremberg “Turkey-Germany Film Festival,” Osman Okkan, the producer of the documentary “Exiled for Peace – When Greeks and Turks Separated,” will personally attend some of the screenings on the islands.
The forced migrations, which are the subject of the documentary “Exiled for Peace,” took place in July 1923. In these migrations, carried out under the name of “population exchange” between Greece and Turkey as stipulated in the Treaty of Lausanne, approximately one and a half million Greeks were resettled from Turkey to Greece, and 500,000 Turks living there were resettled to Turkey.
Gürsel Köksal/Turkey
Comments
…Loading comments…