The "Purge of the Greeks" from Nasserite Egypt: Myths and Realities by ALEXANDER KAZAMIAS As it was still under way in the mid-1960s, the exodus of the Greek community from Egypt began to be interpreted as the out- come of president Nasser's nationalist turn after the Suez War of 1956 and his Egyptianisation Laws of January 1957. This view became established with Manolis Yalourakis's historical work H Alywczor Tow EA.A.4vom [The Greeks' Egypt) (1967: 215-16) and was later reproduced in other accounts, like Timos Malanos's autobio- graphical A vapvijaEtc ev6s A W ayberavo6 [Memoirs of an Alexan- drian} (1971: 367-68), Ilios Yannakakis's Alexandrie 1860-1960 (1992: 71) and Floresca Karanassou's chapter in the edited volume The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century (1999: 43). More recently, the former editor-in-chief of the Greek daily Kathimerini, Andonis Karkayannis described the Greek exodus from Egypt as a case of "ethnic cleansing" (Kathimerini, 5.11.2006), while the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, having mixed up its dates and facts, states in its website that 'the sizeable Greek community in Egypt f. . .3 began to decline in the early 1950s (as a result of Pres- ident Nasser's nationalisation programme)' (Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs Website: 18.10.2008). 1 Alongside this view, a second, revisionist, approach has been adopted by historians such as Nikos Psyroukis and Efthymios Souloyannis, journalists like Dinos Koutsoumis and Sophianos DR ALEXANDER KAZAMIAS is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Coventry Uni- versity. He has written several articles and book chapters on Greek for- eign policy, Greek nationalism and the history of Egypt's Greek community. In 2005 he was Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton Uni- versity, where he carried out much of the work relating to the present article. 13