Expulsion of Cham Albanians

The expulsion of Cham Albanians from Greece was the forced migration and ethnic cleansing of thousands of Cham Albanians from settlements of Chameria in Thesprotia, Greece after the Second World War to Albania, at the hands of elements of the Greek Resistance: the National Republican Greek League (EDES) (1944) and EDES veteran resistance fighters (1945).Evergeti, Venetia; Hatziprokopiou, Panos and Nicolas Prevelakis Oxford University Press. The causes of the expulsion remain a matter of debate among historians.Document 89/57/45 PRO/FO 371/48094. Cited in: Sozos Ioannis; Baltsiotis, Lambros (2018) Οι Τσάμηδες στην Ήπειρο (1940 - 1944) Panteion University The estimated number of Cham Albanians expelled from Epirus mostly to Albania varies from 14,000 to 35,000.Mazower (1960), pp. 25–26.Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict. . p. 158

In the late Ottoman period, tensions between the Muslim Chams and the local Greek Orthodox Christian population emerged through communal conflicts. The Cham Albanians were originally Christian Orthodox by religion, but converted to Islam during the latter years of the Ottoman occupation. These tensions continued during the Balkan Wars, when the region, then under Ottoman rule, became part of Greece. Before and during the interwar period, the Muslim Chams were not integrated into the Greek state, which adopted policies that aimed to drive them out of their territory, led to tensions between them. Unlike the Christian Albanians of Greece, the Muslim Cham Albanians were seen by Greek nationalists as an immediate threat to the state. Meanwhile, fascist Italian propaganda initiated in 1939 an aggressive pro-Albanian campaign for the annexation of the Greek region and the creation of a Greater Albanian state.

At the beginning of World War II, when the Greek state announced its full mobilization prior to the Italian invasion, Cham Albanians were alienated further by it, and were treated as a hostile population and experienced discrimination and oppression, while their community leaders were exiled. Subsequently, a part of the Muslim Cham population collaborated with the Axis troops, with the degree being a matter of academic debate.M. Mazower (ed.), After The War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943–1960, Princeton University Press, 1960, , p. 25. "During World War II, the majority of Chams sided with the Axis forces..." They did so either by providing indirect support (guides, local connections, informants etc.) or by being recruited as Axis troops and armed irregulars. The latter cases were responsible for atrocities against the local Greek populace. Overall, the Muslim Chams were sympathetic to Axis forces during the war and benefited from the Axis occupation of Greece. These armed Cham collaborators displayed extreme cruelty toward the Greek population and indulged in massacres and lootings.Nachmani, Amikam (1990). International Intervention in the Greek Civil War - The UN Special Committee on the Balkans 1947-1952, New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 116. Armed Cham collaboration units actively participated in Nazi operations that resulted in the murder of more than 1,200 Greek villagers between July and September 1943, and, in January 1944, in the murder of 600 people on the Albanian side of the border. There were also moderate elements within the Muslim Cham community who opposed hatred of their Greek neighbors, including Albanian beys and religious leaders. A limited number of Muslim Chams enlisted in Albanian and Greek resistance units in the last stages of World War II.

Collaboration with the Axis fueled resentment by the Greek side and in the aftermath of World War II, despite the assurances of the EDES guerrillas, most of the Muslim Cham community fled, or were forced to flee, to Albania.Michalopoulos, Dimitris (1986). "The Moslems of Chamuria and the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey", Balkan Studies, pp. 303-313 The collaboration served as a justification for their expulsion that was also the outcome of Greek totalitarian regime's policy embedded in the prevailing nationalistic ideology of the interwar period. In the process between 200 and 300 Chams were massacred by EDES forces in various settlements between March and May 1945, while over 1,200 were murdered in total. Some Albanian sources increase this number to c. 2,000. However, atrocities were not encouraged by the EDES leadership and the British mission, but both were unable to prevent them. Generally, violent incidents against Muslim Cham civilians were severely limited because the EDES leadership managed to impose discipline on its subordinate members.Μαντά, Ελευθερία (2004). Οι Μουσουλμάνοι Τσάμηδες της Ηπείρου (1923-2000). Θεσσαλονίκη: ΙΜΧΑ. p. 179. Γκοτόβος, Αθανάσιος (2013). Ετερότητα και σύγκρουση: ταυτότητες στην κατοχική Θεσπρωτία και ο ρόλος της Μουσουλμανικής μειονότητας. Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων p.65 In 1945–1946, a special collaborator's court in Greece condemned a total of 2,109 Cham Albanians in absentia for collaboration with the Axis powers and war crimes. Several local Greek notables promised safe passage and offered to host all those Chams who would abandon the Nazi side. As such, a few hundred Muslim Chams stayed in Greece.

Moreover, according to Albanian sources, an additional 2,500 Muslim Cham refugees lost their lives through starvation and epidemics on their way to Albania. After settling in the People's Republic of Albania and the ruling Party of Labour of Albania under Enver Hoxha did not treat them as victims, but took a very distrustful view towards them and proceeded with arrests and exiles. The Cham Albanians were labelled as "reactionaries", "murderers of the Greeks" and "collaborators of the occupation forces", and suffered a certain degree of persecution within Albania, because their elites were traditionally rich landlords, they had collaborated with the Axis forces and they had been involved in anti-communist activities.

Background

Ottoman period Albanian presence in the area of Chameria, in coastal parts of Epirus, is recorded since at least the 13th century. A Venetian document cites an Albanian population inhabiting the area opposite the island of Corfu in 1210, while the first appearance of Albanians within the Despotate of Epirus is recorded in Byzantine sources as nomads.Giakoumis, Konstantinos (2003), Fourteenth-century Albanian migration and the ‘relative autochthony’ of the Albanians in Epeiros. The case of Gjirokastër." Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. 27. (1). p. 176.Fine, John Van Antwerp. The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. University of Michigan Press, 1994, . The wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries between Russia and the Ottoman Empire negatively impacted the region. Increased conversions to Islam followed, often forced, such as those of 25 villages in 1739 which are located in current day Thesprotia prefecture.Giakoumis, Konstantinos (2010). "The Orthodox Church in Albania Under the Ottoman Rule 15th–19th Century." In Oliver Jens Schmitt (ed.). Religion und Kultur im albanischsprachigen Südosteuropa. Peter Lang. p. 85. During the Ottoman period members of the Cham community owned most large farmlands in the region.

There is no evidence that Albanian national ideologies had strong support among the local Muslims in the late Ottoman period. On the other hand, the local Orthodox Albanian speaking population, as well as the rest of the Orthodox community, remained Greek-oriented and identified themselves as Greeks. For the Greek state, however, the possibility of Orthodox Albanian speakers being recruited into the ranks of Albanian nationalists was a source of constant anxiety. However, despite efforts of state and national activists the local population was not nationalised in this period. Thus Kyrios Nitsos, a Greek educationalist in 1909 noted that local Orthodox Albanian speakers did not refer to themselves as Greek yet instead as Kaur which connoted Christian and did not find the term insulting, while Muslim Albanian speakers identified themselves as Muslims or Turks. In late Ottoman period within the Balkans the terms "Muslim" and "Turk" became synonymous and Albanians were conferred and received the term "Turk" while having preferences to distance themselves from ethnic Turks.Karpat, Kemal H. (2001). The politicization of Islam: reconstructing identity, state, faith, and community in the late Ottoman state. Oxford University Press. p. 342.

In the early 20th century Muslims constituted a little over one-third of the total population of Thesprotia, most of them were Albanian speakers. On the other hand, the Orthodox community, or the "Greeks", as known to contemporary Ottoman classification were Greek, Albanian and Aromanian speakers: In the highlands of Mourgana and Souli there were mostly Greek speakers, while in the lowlands of Margariti, Igoumenitsa and Paramithia Albanian speakers.

In January 1907 a secret agreement was signed between Ismail Qemali, a leader of the then Albanian national movement, and the Greek government which concerned the possibility of an alliance against the Ottoman Empire. According to this, the two sides agreed that the future Greek-Albanian boundary should be located on the Acroceraunian mountains, thus leaving Chameria to Greece.Kondis, Basil (1976). Greece and Albania, 1908–1914. pp. 33–34. Qemali's reasons for closer ties with Greece during this time was to thwart Bulgarian ambitions in the wider Balkans region and gain support for Albanian independence.Blumi, Isa (2013). Ottoman refugees, 1878–1939: Migration in a post-imperial world. A&C Black. p. 82; p. 195. The following years the Muslim Albanians of the sanjak of Preveza, especially the large landowners and the Ottoman state employees, were persecuting the Christian element in cooperation with the Ottomans. Moreover, the Ottomans continued to install an unknown number of Muslim Albanians in the sanjak as part of their resettlement policy.

Balkan Wars (1912–1913)