Knowledge of Diversity: Towards a More Differentiated Set of ‘Greek’ Perceptions of ‘Turks’ Rene ´ e Hirschon Oral accounts reveal the close interaction of Christians and Muslims in late Ottoman times, reflecting a past more complex than that presented in nationalist historiographies. This article examines the memories of refugees from Asia Minor, whose everyday contact with their Muslim and other neighbours imbued them with a developed sense of diversity, and provides evidence of widespread mutual accommodation in the last phase of the Ottoman Empire. This is attested by independent corroborative evidence and is not simply attributable to sheer nostalgia. In the victims’ accounts, memories of peaceful coexistence are juxtaposed with painful recollections from the war. The Asia Minor experience suggests that contact and collaborative activity provide a better basis for understanding than separation and segregation. Keywords: Christian– Muslim Relations; Greek–Turkish Population Exchange; Refugees; Oral and Official History; Peaceful Coexistence In this article, I wish to demonstrate a highly differentiated set of perceptions regarding Turks as they are represented in the experience of the Mikrasia ´tes, Orthodox Christians who were expelled to Greece from Turkey in 1923 under the terms of the Lausanne Convention (see Hirschon 2003). In doing so, the article will touch on several issues. It aims to put on record the perceptions of these people who had direct and often close contact with their Muslim neighbours in the late stages of the Ottoman Empire, and whose voices otherwise might remain silent. In this sense it has an element of ‘salvage ethnography’. In this, it has recourse to a body of oral history in which attitudes are expressed that challenge the received views propagated in the official teaching of history in the Greek state. In contrast to nationalist historiography with its negative stereotypical picture of Greek–Turkish (Christian–Muslim) relations, these oral accounts reveal how varied and nuanced were perceptions of the ‘Other’ and of the ‘Turk’ in this section of Greek society. Despite the fact that in ISSN 1360-8746 (print)/ISSN 1743-9612 (online) q 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13608740500470323 South European Society & Politics Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2006, pp. 61–78