STORIES OF EXCHANGE

STORIES OF THE EXCHANGE – Selection of the 85th Anniversary of the Exchange Story Competition

Publisher: Lausanne Exchangees Foundation

Prepared for Publication: Müfide Pekin

Size: 13×19.5 cm

Number of pages: 296

Inner paper: 1. Dough 90 gr.

Print: single color

Language: Turkish

Printing House: Express Printing House

Date of printing: October 2009, Istanbul

ISBN: 978-975-97905-9-2

Are there children and grandchildren out there who are curious about the relatives of their fathers and grandfathers who have long since been buried here? If so, do they think similar things to what I think? Have they thought about them?

Those who left here always told stories. They wrote novels, stories, memories… They expressed their longing. Our people never told stories. Actually, it was trying to forget. Deep down inside, they were trying to heal a bleeding wound. They thought that if they didn’t tell, if they didn’t tell, that deep wound would heal. Yet how strange! Their children and grandchildren heard what they didn’t say, understood what they couldn’t tell. That’s why the Lausanne Exchangees Foundation was founded. That’s why the “Exchange Stories Competition” was organized, to bring the stories you will read to light. The following generations felt the pain of those who left and those who came in their hearts. These stories were born from those unspoken pains.

Thousands of thanks to the hands that wrote and the hearts that made it possible…

From the Editor

The Lausanne Exchangers Foundation organized a “Competition of Exchange Stories” in 2008 to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Turkish-Greek Compulsory Population Exchange. Our aim was to open a new window to the “exchange research” activities that our foundation, which started its work ten years ago, had brought to Türkiye’s agenda. We had already heard many life stories in our “oral history” interviews. These stories were half-real, half-fictional stories as far as we could remember. In other words, our narrators were already passing on the exchange stories from generation to generation as part of the oral tradition. However, until recent years, the exchange was not given much space in written literature. In this respect, our foundation decided to organize the “85th Anniversary Exchange Story Competition” for the first time in Türkiye in order to contribute to the expression of the exchange in the field of literature. The interest in the competition was greater than expected. The competition jury, consisting of Semih Gümüş, Lamia Gülçür, Füsun Akatlı, Feyza Hepçilingirler, Füsun Çeliker and Müfide Pekin, evaluated 130 stories submitted by 102 competitors. There were participants from various cities and districts of Türkiye as well as from abroad. Meanwhile, three stories from literary lovers imprisoned in two prisons in Türkiye also participated in the competition. The youngest storyteller was 17 years old, and the oldest participant was 78 years old.

As a result of the meticulous evaluation of the competition jury, four stories were awarded. The prizes of the winning story owners were distributed at the traditional "Exchange Dinner" night of the Lausanne Exchangees Foundation, held on January 30, 2009, to mark the 86th anniversary of the Exchange.

When the short story competition was announced, it was promised that a selection of the stories that won awards and received positive scores from the jury members would be delivered to readers in a book. Now we are proud to be able to keep this promise. This book contains 24 stories that were appreciated by the jury members. We have listed all the stories that we wanted to include in the book along with the award-winning stories in alphabetical order along with the author's biography.

We owe thanks to everyone who contributed to the creation of this book, especially our valuable jury members. We would especially like to express our endless thanks to our dear foundation trustee Canan Pak, who gave us great support by sponsoring the story competition awards and the book Exchange Stories.

Hoping that such studies become widespread in the field of literature, let us leave you with the bittersweet taste of the exchange stories…

Mufide Beijing
Editor of the book of exchange stories