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The objective of this study is to understand in what ways the emigrants, who have settled down in Guzelyurt county of Aksaray after the population exchange enforced by the Lausanne Convention, adjusted to the region. The main techniques used in data collection for this study are participant observation and in-depth interviewing.
This study surveyed the facts preventing the emigrants to have social relations with inhabitants of the region they settled down in and the factors which abolish these handicaps after the forced migration. Thus, the study focuses on variables such as spatial length and difference, demographic alteration, traditional differences and establishment of kinship relations. Some factors like traditional discrepancies, two different living spaces and the fact that emigrants had a greater population than the inhabitants after the population exchange prevented the emigrants to have social interactions for a long period. Later on, because the emigrants migrated outside the county, population advantage turned in favor of the inhabitants. This situation forced the emigrants to assemble into the dominant population.
Cultural interaction is a mutual process. However, acculturation process does not always take place mutually creating equal terms for both sides. Considering the issue from this point of view, it can be assumed that the emigrants are on the more changing side of the equilibrium.
One other point to take into account is that the traditions and customs of these two different societies are quite alike today. On the other hand, this cultural conformity can easily be decomposed into a competitive atmosphere of economics and politics. The current economic and political domain has been donating itself as a legal ground for both sides to express the othering attitudes they have been bearing towards each other.