Gunes Gokmen (CSDSI NES)
Armenian and Greek Legacy in Modern Turkish Development
(by Eren Arbatlı & Gunes Gokmen
NRU - Higher School of Economics & New Economic School)
Extended Abstract:
Mass deportations of Armenian minorities from their historical homelands in Asia Minor
during the World War I and the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923 were the
two major events of the early 20th century that permanently changed the ethno-religious
landscape of Anatolia. They, by and large, marked the end of a centuries-long
coexistence of the Muslim populations with the two biggest non-Muslim communities in
Anatolia. In addition to the lives lost and the suffering inflicted upon hundreds of
thousands of people, these events plausibly had an impact on subsequent socioeconomic life in the regions that were affected. In this paper, we empirically investigate
the potential legacy of the Armenian and Greek populations on regional development in
modern Turkey.
Compared to its Muslim subjects, the Greek and Armenian populations of the Ottoman
Empire were at a later stage in their economic modernization. They were, on average,
more educated, engaged in higher value-added sectors in trade, agriculture and
manufacturing, and owned greater wealth relative to their Muslim counterparts. For the
affected regions, the forced migrations of Greeks and Armenians implied an adverse
shock to human capital and brought about an involuntary transfer of wealth, land and
physical capital (lands, cattle, shops and plants) to the Muslim locals and the new
settlers. Exploiting sub-national variation in historical minority presence and various
proxies of economic development, our paper explores how much these economic
shocks mattered for regional development.
Preliminary findings suggest that locations with greater historical presence of Greek
minorities at the end of the 19th century are systematically more populous, exhibit
higher urbanization rates and have greater economic activity, as measured by nightime
light density in 2000. Higher historical Greek share is also associated with faster
population growth over 1990-2000. Regions with higher Armenian presence also had a
larger population size and were more urbanized than otherwise similar regions. The
former regions also exhibited a systematically higher level of economic activity, as
measured by light density. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that
Greeks and Armenians left behind a significant economic legacy which persisted for
several decades since their departure.
Various channels could be responsible for this legacy. Part of it could be directly
attributed to inter-group differences in the accumulation human capital and positive spillovers of knowledge and entrepreneurial skills. Another channel could be the
contribution of the productive assets, originally owned by non-Muslim minorities, to
future economic development at the regional level. Historical accounts suggest that the
minority capital that was transferred to the local elite migh have played an important role
during the emergence of a Muslim bourgeoisie and provided a foundation for the
creation of a modern national economy.
Our results uncover meaningful and significant correlations that are robust to various
historical and geographic measures. Surely, further research is needed to more
definitively rule out non-causal stories like self-selection of early Greek and Armenian
settlers into areas with more fertile land and greater access to trade routes, as well as
the role of regional variation in the damage caused by wars. The potential impact of
Muslim immigration from the Balkans and the mainland Greece into regions previously
occupied by non-Muslim minorities, while an interesting channel in its own right, should
also be accounted for, in order to evaluate the Armenian and Greek influence on current
development. In future research, we also aim to investigate the ways in which regional
variation in historical ethno-religious diversity mattered for contemporary cultural and
political attitudes.