Modern Turkey was founded at the end of World War I. But before that, ethnic Greeks and Turks had lived together for many centuries in what is now Turkey. At the close of World War I, a treaty sent a million Christian residents of Trebizond and its surroundings to Greece, a country that many of them had never even visited. A half a million Muslim Turks went in the other direction. Recently, some of the descendents of the Pontic Greeks who were deported from their homes in 1923 returned to Trebizond. Tom de Waal hears their stories and listens to their music.

Every August, people of Pontic descent from across the globe come back to the Soumela Monastery just outside the ancient city of Trebizond in northeast Turkey, to celebrate the feast of the Virgin. Politically, relations between Greece and Turkey have improved in recent years. And more and more Pontic Greeks are returning to their ancestral home for this annual ceremony.

Photographs by Eleftherios Kostans, Staff Photographer at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA. Kostans has been documenting global Pontian culture for some 15 years. His project, a personal journey documenting his own background, aims to provide identity to a culture in transition and show how it has survived across three continents, regardless of borders and faith. His work is featured in greater detail here.