Alaçam Exchange Museum

Alaçam Exchange Museum is a thematic ethnographic museum located in the Alaçam district of Samsun and holds the distinction of being Türkiye’s first exchange museum. It was established to display artifacts reflecting the lives, cultural heritage, and migration experience of the exchangees who arrived in Anatolia as a result of the Turkish-Greek Population Exchange, implemented through an additional protocol to the Treaty of Lausanne.

Alaçam Exchange Museum (Republic of Türkiye Samsun Governorship)

Foundation and Historical Background

The building of the Alaçam Exchange Museum was constructed in the last quarter of the 19th century as a primary school and later served as a public building for various purposes. In 2010, it was restored by the Samsun Provincial Special Administration and converted into a museum. It opened to the public on 16 April 2012, and its official opening ceremony took place on 18 September 2012 with the participation of the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Ertuğrul Günay. The museum’s founding is rooted in the Turkish-Greek Population Exchange, which was carried out through an additional protocol appended to the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923. According to this protocol, Turks living in Greece outside Istanbul and Western Thrace and Greeks living in Türkiye were subjected to compulsory migration. Approximately 1.25 million Orthodox Greeks were relocated to Greece, while approximately 500,000 Muslim Turks were resettled in Anatolia. This process, recognized as the first official compulsory migration in history, saw 44,255 migrants arrive in Samsun between 31 December 1923 and July 1924. Some were settled in the districts of Alaçam, Tekkeköy, Bafra, Ondokuzmayıs, Çarşamba, and Terme, while others were transported by land and rail to inland regions such as Tokat, Amasya, Çorum, Sivas, Yozgat, and Niğde. The Alaçam Exchange Museum is the first exchange museum to preserve the material and spiritual traces of this historic migration.

Architectural Features

The museum building is a single-story structure with a broken roof covered in Marseille tiles.

• On the ground floor: Administrative units, restrooms, storage, and documentation sections are located. The documentation section contains publications on the exchange and the district’s history, as well as photo albums from the exchange period.
• On the second floor: The exhibition section displays the artifacts. In the arrangement area, visitors are greeted by the additional protocol of the Treaty of Lausanne dated 30 January 1923 and the quote by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: “The exchangees are the sacred memories of lost lands.”

Exhibited Artifacts

The museum displays various ethnographic artifacts reflecting the daily life and cultural heritage of the exchangees:

• Clothing: Women’s garments including bindallı, bridal dresses, three-skirt outfits, cepken, şalvar, and bridal headscarves; men’s clothing. Most of these items were prepared as dowries and decorated using handcraft techniques such as chain stitch, wire breaking, and wire wrapping.
• Textile products: Belts, sashes, peşgir cloths, wool and linen weavings.
• Household items: Chests, kitchen utensils, professional tools.
• Documents and visuals: Photographs taken during the migration, travel documents (passports), and documents related to the War of Independence.
• Donated artifacts: Personal use items donated by first-generation exchangees to the museum.

Alaçam Exchange Museum (Samsun Metropolitan Municipality)

Visit Information

The Alaçam Exchange Museum is open to visitors from Monday to Sunday, except on Mondays, between 08.00 and 17.00.