by Benny Morris
cleansing between January and June 1914, between 100,000 and 200,000
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Greeks from coastal areas were uprooted. Most fled to Greece in order to es-
cape the Turks’ coordinated campaign of harassment. A small number were
forcibly transferred to other parts of the empire.
It is unclear whether the CUP viewed Greek removal as a trial run for
the subsequent destruction of the Armenians. But, in pushing out Greeks,
the Turkish authorities prob ably learned techniques of abuse that proved
useful when the Armenians’ time came. The government also learned that
the Western powers would look on without physically intervening to save
fellow Christians.
Still the pro cesses of Greek removal and Armenian destruction were quite
diff er ent. While Armenians were subject to a carefully planned and bru-
tally executed campaign of extermination, the Greek removal was, at least
early on, carried out by the relatively benign means of boycott and intimida-
tion. Officials sought to pressure Greeks to leave “voluntarily,” by making
their lives miserable. But if the means differed, the goal in each case was
ethnic cleansing.
The Greek policy was an outgrowth of the po liti cal situation in the Balkans,
but not a necessary one: Turkish authorities took advantage of the influx of
muhacirs displaced from the Balkan Wars in order to justify expelling
Greeks and at times used these muhacirs as the agents of expulsion. In the
wake of the Balkan Wars, the Ottomans resettled about 500,000–600,000
Muslim refugees in their diminished domains.29 This included “very con-
siderable” numbers from Salonica, which had been annexed by Greece.
“They arrive in Turkey with the memory of their slaughtered friends and
relations fresh in their minds,” the British consul in Salonica wrote. “They
remember their own sufferings” and find “themselves without means or re-
sources.” The Ottomans placed many of these refugees in the homes Greeks
left behind. Notably, these Muslims had not been expelled; their emigra-
tion, according to Western diplomats, was not “actively support[ed]” by the
Greek authorities.30
The muhacirs saw “no wrong in falling on the Greek Christians of Turkey
and meting out to them the same treatment that they themselves have received
from the Greek Christians of Macedonia,” and in this they enjoyed the backing
of the CUP. From its first days in power, the party had resolved to rid the
empire of its Greek prob lem. As Hakki Bey, a CUP man and Ottoman
The Young Turk s
Ambassador to Rome, put it in 1909, compared to the Turk, “the Greek be-
longed to a totally diff er ent order of morality. . . . Anything which promoted
the ambitions and interests of his country down to the assassination of those
who stood in his way, partook of the nature of virtue. . . . The new regime in
Turkey was determined to stamp out this internal cancer.”31 The Turks were
particularly annoyed by the economic and demographic flourishing of
Greeks in Aydın vilayet, centered on Smyrna.
To the British consul in Edirne, the goal of Ottoman policy was unam-
biguous: to make the vilayet’s population “as far as pos si ble purely Moslem.”
Under lying that goal, he recognized a twofold purpose: to nullify “on ethno-
logical grounds” neighboring states’ potential claims to the territory of the
vilayet and to secure “lines of communication” in any future military operations
by substituting “friendly” Muslims for “hostile” Christians. Thus, beginning
early 1914, the government carried out an insidious program of intimidation
aimed at many aspects of daily life. For instance, authorities gave Turks seed
and agricultural implements, while denying them to Greeks. The govern-
ment also demanded that Greeks billet muhacirs in their homes. The au-
thorities ramped up the pressure by levying special taxes against Greeks and
forcing them to pay extra fees in support of the Ottoman Fleet Fund, a CUP-
founded organ ization that raised money to buy and build new warships for
the imperial navy. The campaign paid immediate dividends. By March 1914
the consul estimated the number of Greek emigrants “considerably exceeds”
20,000.32
Greek removal was both a government effort and a popu lar affair; ordi-
nary Ottoman Muslims joined in. Harassment was systematic, carried out
in large part by gangs of Rumelian and Caucasian refugees “financed and
run by the state.”33 The authorities designed their campaign to appear
locally authored, relying on regional governors and CUP secretaries, and
the Special Organ ization, to do much of the on- the- ground planning and
preparation.34 But Celâl Bayar— who in 1914 was CUP secretary in Smyrna
and later the third president of Turkey— confirmed in his memoirs that the
central CUP and the Ministry of War jointly planned to displace non-
Muslims in the Aegean region and developed together the methods used “to
‘encourage’ them to emigrate.”35 He recalled the motives behind the cam-
paign: “a war of salvation to liberate the Turkish nation,” to “Turkify the
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gavur,” and “to free Izmir’s economy from the anational, treacherous, and
malicious heads and hands.”36
Numerous Ottoman officials are known to have taken part in the campaign
of harassment, starting at the very top. “The Greeks . . . must go,” Talât told
Aydın vali Rahmi Bey at the beginning of the pro cess, according to the
Rus sian consul- general in Smyrna.37 Rahmi then instructed his sub- governors
“to force [out] the Greek population.”38 W.H. van der Zee, the dutch- born
Danish consul, reported more such instructions from Rahmi in March—
“semi- official orders to the sub- governors” of several small towns on the
coast “to force the Greek population . . . resident therein to evacuate.” As
with the Armenian massacres of the mid-1890s, the orders were phrased
vaguely, to allow official deniability. “No order of expulsion was decreed, but
the Turkish officials were to make use of tortuous and vexatious mea sures so
well- known to them,” van der Zee wrote. “Similar instructions were, I under-
stand, given by the Governors of the other maritime provinces.”39
Talȃt followed up in a May 14 cable to Rahmi, which is notable for
its Islamist appeal to underlings and its dissimulation with re spect to
motivations— both common rhetorical tactics in the mass deportations to
come. “It is urgent for po liti cal reasons that the Greek residents of the Asia
Minor coast be forced to evacuate their villages and be settled in the vilayets
of Erzurum and Chaldea,” Talȃt wrote. “Should they refuse . . . please give
oral instructions to brother Muslims, for the purpose of forcing the Greeks,
by every kind of actions, to be voluntarily expatriated.” 40 The Porte— not just
the CUP— was on board. According to Wangenheim, Grand Vizier Said
Halim Pasha told him that month that “he intends the cleansing of the entire
Asia Minor littoral from the Greeks, in order to replace them.” 41 The partner-
> ship between the sultan and the CUP was sometimes ambiguous; in discus-
sions with the sultan and parliament, Talȃt brazenly denied the existence of
the campaign and its orchestration by the government.42
As George Horton, the American consul- general in Smyrna, explained, the
government and the press worked together to make the campaign a success
by “appealing to fanat i cism and race hatred, and calling the Turks to rise
against the Greeks.” 43 Newspapers harped on Greek atrocities in Thrace,
Thessaly, Crete, and the Peloponnese. Typical was the article “Greek Sav-
agery,” which appeared in Tanin, the semi- official CUP mouthpiece, on
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March 9, 1914. “God knows what these poor [Muslim] people have suffered
since the Greek invasion” of Salonica, the paper intoned, referring to those
who stayed behind when the territory entered Greek hands. “Greek immi-
grants from the Caucasus and Western Thrace . . . have been invading the
houses of Mussulmans at night, and attacking their wives and daughters. . . .
Not a night passes on which their wives and daughters are not outraged and
their property is plundered. . . . The savagery of the Greeks . . . will not be forgotten . . . throughout the world of Islam.” An editorial in Tasvir- i- Efkâr on March 11 scolded Ottoman Greeks for complaining in parliament about
the boycott of Greek- owned businesses.44
The boycott was a major ele ment of the campaign and one of its first
manifestations, encompassing Trabzon and Samsun as early as January
1914. Although the boycott had relatively little impact in Constantinople, it
other wise spread widely.45 Greeks were considered a dominant, alien pres-
ence in the Ottoman economy, which made Greek- owned businesses a ripe
target. As the popu lar Turkish writer Ibrahim Hilmi warned after the Balkan
Wars, “The Greeks aim at their own lives. They pretend to be friends but
actually they are our most awful enemies. They are cunning, tricksters and
hypocrites in order to find their way in their commerce.” 46
In Ionia the boycott was strictly enforced. Muslim- owned restaurants
were prevented from buying meat from Greek butchers. Muslims picketed
Greek- owned shops, occasionally using vio lence to prevent customers en-
tering. In Manisa, the chief of police threatened “ every Mussulman dealing
with Christians.” In Aydın town, the mutesarrif told Muslim olive growers
not to sell to Christians. In mosques posters went up denouncing Greek
traders by name.47
In the interior east of Smyrna, Barnham found that “all semblance of
free commerce or equality is at an end.” Greeks were even prohibited from
wearing clothes with colors considered non- Ottoman.48 In late May G.
Henry Wright, a British businessman operating in Asia Minor, worried that
Greeks in the interior were “pressed and suffering, and they will be obliged
at the end to expatriate as they are doing in Thracia.” 49 In Bursa, the Greek
Patriarchate reported, “Turks armed with clubs, and paid for the purpose,
scoured the marketplace, threatening and ordering the [Greek] shop keep ers
to close. . . . Peasants on their way to Broussa, for the sale of their products
there, were daily arrested and plundered.”50
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The boycott exemplified the cooperation between the Turkish public and
po liti cal elites in carry ing out the campaign. Barnham concluded that CUP
“emissaries are everywhere instigating the people.”51 Horton believed the CUP
was using the boycott not only to express “race hatred” and “religious preju-
dice” but also to “cement its power.”52 It was clear to Wright that the boycott
was “the initiative of the Young Turkish Government.”53 When British am-
bassador Louis du Pan Mallet wrote to the grand vizier that Turks, persuaded
by CUP agents, were working “to ruin and supplant Greek traders, etc. by
starting ‘Moslem’ shops and companies to which all true Mohammedans
should give their custom,” the grand vizier replied that “he was not encouraging
the boycott” but also “could not force Mussulmen to buy from Greeks, who
were thoroughly disliked throughout the Empire.”54
Alongside the boycott, the authorities employed stronger mea sures. Mus-
lims received arms, while Greeks were disarmed; Greek officials were dis-
missed from their posts, while key appointments were given to “fanatical”
Muslims.55 Volunteers armed by the government engaged in “a system of ter-
rorization” orchestrated by the vali, Haci Adil Bey, a friend of Talât’s. By
April the Greek Patriarchate was reporting that Greeks were being forcibly
deported from villages in Karası sanjak and from Balia, along the southern
shore of the Sea of Marmara.56 The decision to turn to outright vio lence may
have been taken in a series of secret meetings in May and June in which Talât,
Enver, and Celal participated.57
In some places the Turks dispensed entirely with the fiction of voluntary
emigration. The kaymakam of Ayvalık, an overwhelmingly Christian town
of 30,000, was not asking for anyone’s cooperation when he told the inhab-
itants, “This is no longer your country; if you don’t go today you will be
compelled to go tomorrow.”58 In late May, when villa gers from Yakaköy,
Gümeç, Kemerköy, Yenitsarohori, and Ayazmati fled to Ayvalık, they were
attacked on the way by “wild gangs of armed Turks, who stripped them of
their money and clothes, beat them, and violated four girls.”59 The Greeks
of Kato- Panaya ran for Chios, gunfire at their heels. Villages in the Çeşme
district, west of Smyrna, were almost entirely evacuated; Horton reported
some 23,000 Greeks “expelled.” Many Greeks, he wrote, were now living
“in the open air.” An agent of Singer Manufacturing Com pany reported,
“The villa gers of Christianochori were driven out at night, escaping in their
night apparel, leaving every thing behind.” In Zaganos the mudir directed
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an assault against Christians. Muhacirs were often accompanied by soldiers
and policemen, and some boats carry ing escapees found ered at sea.60
Re sis tance met with a firm hand. When a Greek assassinated the mayor of
Sevdiköy, soldiers responded with collective punishment. The wife of John
Malamatinis, an American citizen of Greek origin living in the town, described
soldiers with long whips riding “at breakneck speed through the village . . .
lash[ing] out right and left every time they spied a Greek.” The soldiers “in-
flicted painful injuries . . . on many women and girls” and “knock[ed] to the
ground little children whom they pass[ed].” Horton recognized the authori-
ties’ signature on the vio lence. “It is only when the Mussulmans are officially
incited against the Christians that they resort to brutality,” he wrote.61
The most serious outbreak of vio lence occurred at Foça (Phocia or
Focateyn), a fishing town of 8,000–9,000 Greeks and 400 Turks, just north
of Smyrna. There Turks murdered between fifty and a hundred townspeople,
raped women, and drove out the Greek population.62 According to a Greek
source, the attac
k was or ga nized by Turkish notables, including Talȃt Bey,
head of the gendarmerie in nearby Menemen. Foça’s mayor Hassan Bey al-
legedly participated in the killing.63
After Foça the Greek government threatened to intervene, and Western dip-
lomats lodged complaints.64 Constantinople took fright and made a series of
conciliatory gestures, such as inviting diplomats on placatory tours of the
coasts, chaperoned by Talât and Enver.65 Then, with the pan- European crisis
of July 1914, the spark that inflamed the Great War, the campaign was abruptly
ended. Perhaps the CUP no longer considered it effective, and no doubt the
government worried that Greece would join the Allied cause.66 After the war
the British Foreign Office estimated that, all told, 250,000 Greeks had been
uprooted before Turkey entered the conflict.67
The consequences of Greek removal extended beyond the lives disrupted
and destroyed. In November 1915, when the deportation and murder of the
Armenians was in full swing, Morgenthau wrote that Turkish “success in de-
porting . . . about 100,000–150,000 Greeks without any of the big nations . . .
then still at peace with them, seriously objecting, led them to the conclusion
that now, while four of the great Powers were fighting them . . . and the two
other great Powers were their allies, it was a great opportunity . . . to put into effect their long cherished plan of exterminating the Armenian race.” 68 In May
A More Turkish Empire
U.S. Ambassador in Constan-
tinople Henry Morgenthau,
who during World War I
tried to persuade Turkey’s
leaders to halt the massacre
of the Armenians. His
reports provide valuable
documentation of genocide.
of that year, when the Armenian campaign was just beginning, another se nior
American diplomat glossed over any distinction between the Greek and Arme-
nian cases, anticipating our own contention that both were part of a larger
proj ect of genocide. Of the CUP he wrote, “They have crushed the Turkish
opposition, they expelled the Greeks, and now is the Armenians’ turn.” 69
Blaming Armenians: War Losses, Disarmament,
and the Van “Rebellion”
