In my paper, I shall present the findings of my PhD project, in which I have examined the events that followed the so-called population exchange of 1923-25 between Greece and Turkey. In the course, of it, about 1.5 million Orthodox Christians from Turkey and 0.5 million Muslims from Greece were forced to leave their homelands and start anew in a country they had, in most cases, never seen before. The “exchange” was agreed upon as part of a peace treaty between the Greek and Turkish governments at the Lausanne conference in 1922. This treaty stated that all refugees, including those who had already left, should be compensated for the property and possessions they were  forced to leave behind. This principle looked simple on paper but, for various reasons, failed completely in both countries. In my project, I have studied the processes of permanent settlement, property distribution and compensation in the district of Izmir between 1924 and 1930, contextualizing them within the broader issues of citizenship and belonging in the young Turkish nation-state. Based on petitions to the central government written by both newcomers and locals, documents from the settlement agencies, newspaper articles, and autobiographical texts, I have traced the politics surrounding the distribution of formerly Christian property to exchangees. My paper will provide a close reading of several of those petitions, focusing on the strategies of legitimization that refugees employed in order to receive (or keep) the property that they desired. More particularly, I shall show how refugees discussed the relationship between financial interests of the state and their own right to compensation.