Forced displacement of religious and ethnic minority communities has been used as a political strategy for homogenizing the nation in the Turkish Republic in multiple episodes throughout the (almost) hundred years of its history. In this article, I will be focusing on the expulsions of Greeks in Turkey in 1964 as a case of overtly and decisively applied state policy that led to the largest wave of mass migration of the Christian Orthodox residents of Istanbul, otherwise known as Rum Polites. Through the cancelation of the resident permits of the holders of Greek citizenship, over 20,000 people, who lived for generations as an integral part of the Istanbulite society, were forced to leave their homeland within a few weeks, carrying with them only a few personal belongings. In addition to highlighting important historical dimensions of this traumatic event, the article will be based on ethnographic encounters with the Rum Polites in Athens, reflecting on their personal experiences of expulsion and ways of coping in the aftermath of their displacement. The stories of 1964 add yet another chapter to the dramatic history of how the Greeks and other non-Muslim minorities were excluded by state policies in the process of nation-making in Turkey, but they also contribute to our understanding of the multiplicity of untold stories of migration in the Middle East and beyond.