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Crossing the Aegean
Crossing the Aegean episodes
- The Epilogue of A Transnational Podcast: Crossing the Aegean Through StorytellingWelcome to the final episode of “Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move.” It’s been an incredible journey through 14 episodes, and today, as we wrap up the series, we’d like to offer a reflection on everything we’ve explored and share what we’ve learned along the way.
In this episode, all those who have had a hand in making of the series will tell their stories of making a transnationaş podcast in English, Greek and Turkish: Christina Karvouni, Deniz Uludağ, Noémi Lévy-Aksu, Mert Koçak, Merve Bakdur, Ozan Mirkan Balpetek, Thanos Skourtas, Christina Karvouni, Deniz Uludağ, Noémi Lévy-Aksu, Mert Koçak, Merve Bakdur, Ozan Mirkan Balpetek, Thanos Skourtas, Varvara Christaki and Vicky Aggelidou and Vicky Aggelidou.
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Crossing the Aegean has been a labor of love, and we hope it has sparked reflection on the enduring impact of migration and memory. We encourage you to continue the conversation—whether through sharing your own stories or reflecting on the ones we’ve heard throughout this series. Thank you for listening, and until next time!23 min - “We Are All Migrants Somehow”: Musical Communities of the Exchange and the Node of MytiliniWelcome to the new episode of our podcast series "Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move," where we continue to dive into the musical cartography of the Aegean. In this episode, Maria Seitanidou guides us into the musical communities of Northern Greece, Macedonia, Pontus, and Aegean. Maria Seitanidou is a local musician based in Mytilene, Lesvos, and a primary school teacher. She organizes and teaches traditional singing and dancing, and she also orchestrates traditional choirs.
Maria took us into a journey of music that started for her when she was a child in her hometown, Veria, and the influence of the Pontus communities in the region, followed by her arrival to Lesvos and meeting a community of musicians which she describes as “an entry to a dream”. We talked with her about the role of music in the life of mobile communities, how music travels, and the attempt of a network of musicians in recent years to rebuild and rediscover the music of the larger Aegean geography.
Linking it with migration, Maria talked about how multilingual singing enabled her to understand the “other”, allowing her to discover similarities to celebrate between people. As she describes her connection to Turkey as a Greek, she also mentions how often she witnesses similar feelings among people in Turkey towards Greece.
This episode’s interview was conducted in Greek by Christina Karvouni from Community Peacemaker Teams. Ozan Mirkan Balpetek summarized and interpreted Maria’s remarks in English, and Merve Bakdur from Memory Center provided the same in Turkish.19 min - Sounds of Migration: Music, Memory, and Identity in the AegeanWelcome to the new episode of our podcast series "Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move," where we explore the historical and contemporary dimensions of migration in the Aegean. In this episode, we continue our exploration of the deep connection between forced migration, memory, and music with our guest, Stelios Moraïtis, a French-Greek PhD student in Social Anthropology.
Stelios is a member of the Migrations and Society Research Unit (URMIS) at the University of Côte d’Azur. He conducted fieldwork for a year and a half in Greece and Turkey, focusing on music and migration. He also completed a Master’s thesis in History, examining the governance of Greek refugees at the end of the Greek-Turkish War and during the population exchange.
In this episode, Stelios discusses how music followed the path of exile. He explains how displaced populations, particularly those from Asia Minor, used music to preserve their cultural heritage, maintain connections to their lost homelands, and forge new cultural identities in their host countries. As refugees fled from Asia Minor to Greece, they brought with them a rich diversity of musical traditions, instruments like the lyra, qanun, and oud, as well as musical systems such as makams. They also introduced rhythms like the hasapiko, zeibekiko, and karsilamas.
Finally, Stelios highlights the Aegean as a vibrant, intercultural space where tradition remains alive and dynamic. Musicians from diverse backgrounds continue to interact, blending their memories, heritage, and personal experiences into their music. The creativity of the people in this region is deeply rooted in their relationship with tradition and memory, as they transform and give new meanings to their cultural practices.
This episode’s interview was conducted in English by Ozan Mirkan Balpetek. Mert Koçak summarized and interpreted Stelios’s remarks in Turkish, and our friends from Community Peacemaker Teams provided the same in Greek.35 min - "Maybe Only the Walls Know Now": Listening to Migration's Memory through MusicWelcome to the new episode of our podcast series “Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move.” In this episode, we continue to explore the impact of the Population Exchange on collective memory through music. The forced migration of 1923 displaced thousands of people from their homes, leaving behind not only material losses but also intergenerational trauma. During this process, music became both a means of expressing the suffering of the displaced and a tool for preserving and reconstructing their identities. We will also share some examples of music from Imbros and the wider Aegean region.
Our guest today is Ezgi Ceylan. Ezgi graduated from Boğaziçi University’s Department of Translation and Interpreting (Translation Studies) and earned her MA in Comparative Literature from Istanbul Bilgi University. After two years as a lecturer at Beykent University, she began working as an English teacher. She has a keen interest in folk music and actively performs. Ezgi is also engaged in memory studies, multilingual music, and ecological agriculture. Currently residing in Imbros, she has been performing multilingual music for many years and has a wide repertoire that includes Greek, Kurdish, Armenian, Arabic, and Ladino.
Don’t forget to follow Ezgi’s YouTube channel, where she performs multilingual songs, as well as her music initiative “Duvarlar Bile Biliyor” (“Even The Walls Know”).
In this episode, Ezgi shares in detail her first encounter with the musical culture of Imbros and the impact of the music she encountered on collective memory. She explains how her visits to the villages of Imbros, the migration stories she witnessed, and the traces she found in abandoned houses have influenced her performances. She also highlights the bonds formed with local musicians such as Timoleon Çaknis and the efforts to preserve the music of Imbros through album projects. Throughout the conversation, she critically examines the deep pain and struggle for identity embedded in the songs from the exchange period. The discussion also touches on how rebetiko music reflects the hardships faced by migrants, including loss of identity and social exclusion. Finally, Ezgi treats the audience to songs from both rebetiko and Imbros, showcasing the unifying role of music in preserving memory.24 min - Stories from the Inheritors of the Exchange IV: From Thrace to Macedonia and GreeceWelcome back to ‘Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move’, where we explore the historical and contemporary trajectory of migration across the Aegean. In this episode, we explore the memory of the Population Exchange through the perspectives of those with relatives who were part of the exchange. We focus on what it means to carry the legacy of the Exchange in one's lineage and how it influences people’s understanding of migration today. Additionally, we discuss how the Exchange has shaped the heterogeneous identities in the nations of Turkey and Greece.
Today, Christina Karvouni is with us. She studied sociology, social anthropology, and history, and holds a master’s degree in gender studies, where she focused on the effects of the Moria migrant detention center on the lives of women in Moria Village, Lesvos. She currently works with Community Peacemaker Teams in Lesvos, concentrating on the criminalization of migrants and detention centers. Christina has been involved in our podcast series since the beginning, and you may recognize her voice from our Greek recordings.Christina shares the story of how her family’s maternal side migrated from Tekirdağ (Redestos) to Macedonia and then Greece, while her paternal side is part of the Arvanite community in Greece, whose existence predates the Exchange. She reflects on how these two distinct groups have influenced modern Greek national identity. Through her personal experiences, she describes the place of migrants in the lives of settled communities, the social dynamics created by encounters between these groups, and how assimilation policies are applied to minorities and migrants in Greece. She also shares her impressions of the “invisible borders” still drawn through debates such as “Which Thrace, which Macedonia?”
This episode’s interview was conducted in English by Ozan Mirkan Balpetek. Mert Koçak summarized and interpreted Christina’s remarks in Turkish, and our friends from Community Peacemaker Teams provided the same in Greek.26 min - Stories from the Inheritors of the Exchange III: “All the Food is Spicy!”Welcome back to 'Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move,' where we embark on an exploration of the historical and contemporary trajectory of migration across the Aegean. In this episode, once again we will delve into the Exchange, its aftermath, and its memory today by hearing from individuals who have or had relatives involved in the Exchange. We aim to understand and analyze what it means to carry the legacy of the Exchange in one's lineage and how it influences people’s way of relating to migration today.
This week's guest is Vicky Aggelidou, a criminal lawyer currently working with the Legal Centre Lesvos, where she primarily focuses on the cases of criminalized migrants who are systematically jailed under the EU's smuggling laws. Both of Vicky’s grandparents were directly or indirectly affected by the Exchange, with some making several trips between today’s Greece and Turkey to reach their final destination. Vicky shares how present the Turkish language was in her life when she was young, how her memory often recalls the food and smells of her grandparents’ household, and what it means for her to see “history, unfortunately, repeating itself.”
This episode’s interview was conducted by Ozan Mirkan Balpetek in English. Merve Bakdur summarized and interpreted Vicky’s remarks in Turkish and our friends from Community Peacemaker Teams did the same in Greek.21 min - Different Profiteers, Same Migration Route: Migration Industries at the AegeanWelcome back to our podcast series, "Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move," where we discuss the historical and contemporary impacts of migration in the Aegean region. We continue to talk about the economic changes that the population exchange caused in the region. In the ninth episode, we will focus on how migration has developed into an industry, how this industry has grown over the years, and who has benefited from it.
This week's guest is Mert Koçak, who completed his PhD in 2023 in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University. Mert dedicated a significant part of their dissertation, titled “Migration Industries and the Transnational Governance of Queer Migration: The Bureaucratization of Sexuality and Gender in Turkey,” to examining the process through which civil society organizations became part of the migration industry.
Mert explains how a group of actors, by enabling, restricting, and controlling migration, came together to form the migration industry. To demonstrate how these actors have historically shaped migration, they highlight the role of intermediaries in the Trans-Atlantic migration from Europe to America in the 19th century. In the context of the Population Exchange, they provide detailed information about the actors who profited by facilitating the crossing of the Aegean and by seizing abandoned properties. Finally, they discuss the profit-making activities along the contemporary Aegean migration route, showing that while the actors or methods of making profits may have changed over time, the principle of profiting at the expense of migrants has remained the same.
The interview with Mert Koçak was conducted by Ozan Mirkan Balpetek, in both English and Turkish. Our friends from Community Peacemaker Teams also provided a summary and commentary in Greek.32 min - The Transformation of Urban Spaces During the Population Exchange: Migrant Neigbourhoods of MytiliniWelcome back to our podcast series, "Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move"! In our previous episode, before a brief hiatus, we discussed the Greeks of Istanbul and the narratives of those who migrated as well as those who remained. In the eighth episode, we will focus on how the exchange and the migrants rebuilt the urban geography and public space when they arrived in Greece, especially in Mitilini, the main town of Lesvos. Dimitra Glenti, our guest this week, studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens. She completed her PhD in Social Anthropology and History at the University of the Aegean in Lesvos in 2023. In her dissertation titled “Living on the Outskirts of the City: The Assembly and Transformation of Refugee Settlements in Lesvos,” Dimitra focuses on the formation and transformation of refugee settlements in Lesvos.
As a native of Lesvos, Dimitri tells the spatial history of Lesvos through the eyes of both a native and an academic researcher in this field. Her work examines the city's landscape before the population exchange, the impact of the newcomers on the public image, and the step-by-step evolution of this spatiality up to the 1970s. Dimitra tells us about the rise of migrant neighborhoods in Lesvos, their class backgrounds and gender roles, and moreover, how all these factors have spatially transformed Lesvos over the last century. As an islander, she takes a snapshot of urban memory, resistance, and spatiality in Lesvos in the light of the connections between the migrants who came to the island in 2015 and afterwards and the stories she heard from the exchanged population during her research.
Ozan Mirkan Balpetek interviewed Dimitra in English. He also summarized and commented on her episode in Turkish, while Community Peacemakers Teams did the same in Greek.27 min - Echoes of the Exchange: Greeks of Istanbul after 1923Welcome back to our podcast series "Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move"! We continue to talk about the population that were not part of the exchange, but were greatly affected by its nationalist spirit. Last episode we talked about the experiences of the Greeks of Imbros.
In this episode, we host Foti Benlisoy and turn our attention to the Greeks of Istanbul. Foti graduated from Istanbul University Faculty of Law. He conducted his graduate and doctoral studies in the history department of Boğaziçi University. He has been working with many publishing houses and journals as a translator and editor for a long time. He is one of the founders of Istos Publishing House. Mert Koçak conducted the interview with Foti in Turkish. Merve Bakdur summarized and commented on the episode in English and Community Peacemaker Teams in Greek.
Foti opens the discussion by explaining the reasons for the population erosion experienced by the Greeks of Istanbul. It is undeniable that major historical events such as the wealth tax in 1942, the September 6-7 events in 1955, the Greek Exile in 1964, and the invasion of Cyprus in 1974 played a role in the decline of the Greek population. However, Foti underlines that discriminatory practices in everyday life are just as important as these major events. Touching on the consequences of population erosion, Foti explains that Greeks lost their secular and national leaders in this process. After the population exchange, the process of non-religious institutions shaping politics during the Tanzimat period was interrupted and the Patriarchate regained its leadership status. Foti then discusses what it meant for Greeks to be Istanbulite and how they preserved this identity.15 min - Echoes of the Exchange: the Greeks of Imbros after 1923Welcome back to our podcast series, "Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move"! In previous episodes, we delved into the stories of those with family histories tied to the exchange. In this episode, we explore the impact on Imbros, a region whose population was not included in the exchange but was profoundly affected by its nationalist fervor.
Our guest for this episode is Stelyo Berber, a musician born in Imbros. After years spent in Athens and Istanbul, he returned to Imbros and now serves as a music teacher and principal at Aya Todori Greek Primary School. Simultaneously, he endeavors to preserve Greek cultural heritage through the Imbros Education and Culture Association. Stelyo was interviewed by Noémi Lévy-Aksu in Turkish. Ozan Mirkan Balpetek summarized and commented on the episode in English and Community Peacemaker Teams in Greek.
Given that the repercussions of the exchange extended beyond the displaced, we broaden our discussion to include areas and individuals indirectly affected. Stelyo sheds light on Imbros' past and present, where the Greek population declined following the exchange. Throughout the 20th century, ongoing migration stemmed largely from state policies and regional political circumstances. Stelyo discusses the challenges faced by departing or forcibly displaced Greeks from Imbros, along with the partial destruction of property and cultural heritage. He also explores how memories of Imbros are preserved and transmitted. Lastly, he shares the motivations, hopes, and concerns of those, like himself, who have returned to Imbros in recent years.23 min
About Crossing the Aegean
From the publisher's feed
Hafıza Merkezi and the Legal Centre Lesvos, in collaboration with Community Peacemaker Teams, have joined forces to envision a transnational Aegean that opposes xenophobia, racism, and anti-migrant…
rhetoric stemming from the concept of national borders.
Our podcast, “Crossing the Aegean,” delves into the 1923 Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, a landmark event that occurred a century ago.Throughout our podcast series, we’ll feature interviews with academics and activists specializing in the history of exchange, transnational migration, and critical refugee studies. Additionally, we’ll hear from individuals who recount their family’s history of forced migration, allowing them to shape and reconstruct their family narratives. We'll explore how they make sense of their families' forced migration experiences and how it influences their perspectives on refugeeness today. We publish our chapters in three languages: English, Greek and Turkish.
For your questions and comments, please contact us at [email protected].
Our podcast, “Crossing the Aegean,” delves into the 1923 Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, a landmark event that occurred a century ago.Throughout our podcast series, we’ll feature interviews with academics and activists specializing in the history of exchange, transnational migration, and critical refugee studies. Additionally, we’ll hear from individuals who recount their family’s history of forced migration, allowing them to shape and reconstruct their family narratives. We'll explore how they make sense of their families' forced migration experiences and how it influences their perspectives on refugeeness today. We publish our chapters in three languages: English, Greek and Turkish.
For your questions and comments, please contact us at [email protected].