by Benny Morris
by the Ottoman Greeks resulting in the establishment of a Pontine state on
the Black Sea. During the ensuing Greco- Turkish war, the Turks regarded
the Greeks throughout Anatolia— but especially those in the Pontus and near
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
the shifting front lines—as potential fifth columnists who would aid the Greek
army thrusting eastward from Smyrna.
Greeks had lived along the northern shore of Asia Minor, or Pont- Euxin,
“from the time of the Argonauts, Herodotus, and Xenophon and the Ten
Thousand.”2 They claimed that, between Rize, or even Batumi, and a point
west of Sinop, they numbered some two million. Western diplomats thought
the real number was more like 450,000.3 The Turks feared, or said they feared,
that the Pontic Greeks would attack their armies in the rear, even as they en-
gaged in the west and east with a variety of Christian enemies. The Turks also
spoke of a pos si ble amphibious landing by the army of the Kingdom of Greece
on the shores of the Black Sea, which the local Greeks would assist.4 But these
well- publicized fears were either highly inflated or entirely manufactured. Even Justin McCarthy, a historian sympathetic to the Turkish narrative, writes,
“With . . . the benefit of hindsight . . . there was no real danger of local Greeks participating in a Greek invasion.” Not only were the Greeks “incapable of
landing in force on the Black Sea coast,” but “the ‘Pontus Republic’ revolu-
tionaries were never a potent po liti cal or military force and would have been
better dealt with by police than by deportation.”5
The official Turkish narrative sounds very diff er ent. In a 1927 speech,
Mustafa Kemal explained what had tran spired, in terms that exonerated the
Turks without admitting what they had done:
Prepared morally by the propaganda of the [nationalist society] “Ethniki
Hetairia” and the American institutions at Mersifun, and encouraged
materially by the foreign countries who supplied them with arms, the
mass of the Greeks . . . began to cast amorous glances in the direction
of an in de pen dent Pontic State. Led by this idea, the Greeks or ga nized
a general revolt, seized the mountain heights and began to carry on a
regular programme under the leadership of Yermanos [Germanos
Karavangelis], the Greek Metropolitan of Amasia, Samsoon and the sur-
rounding country.6
Kapancızade Hamit Bey, a mutesarrif of Samsun, later wrote that Greek ships
had moved into the Black Sea, Greek brigands were busy preparing for an am-
phibious landing, and the Greek population, more impertinent with every
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
passing day, was looking forward to a new, Smyrna- like assault.7 Bristol con-
curred: “The Greek Government endeavored to or ga nize a po liti cal movement
among the [Ottoman] Greeks . . . with the hope of eventually establishing
Greek sovereignty in a so- called Pontic state.” 8
But the reality was different. The Pontic movement seems to have had little
traction before 1919 and not much afterward. A minuscule Pontus Society
was founded in 1904 at the American College in Merzifon, and some Or-
thodox priests, such Damianos and Germanos in Samsun, supported sepa-
ratism.9 A British officer later described Germanos as “quite intolerant,” with
unlimited “ambitions as a Hellenist.”10 In his 1927 speech, Kemal said that
new Greek associations, such as Mawrimira, were “forming bands, organ izing
meetings and making propaganda.” Another organ ization, called Pontus,
“worked openly and successfully” toward Greek in de pen dence, Kemal as-
serted.11 Ali Fuat Cebesoy, Kemal’s chief of staff, recounted in his memoirs
that some of the Greek returnees, assisted by the British, had even established
a “deportation court” (tehcir mahkemesi), presumably to try Turks involved in the war time deportations, suggesting Greek intent to take over the Pontus.12
During World War I, Greek armed bands— composed chiefly of youngsters
avoiding the draft— occasionally attacked Turkish villa gers and gendarmes.
The Turks charged that they were being armed and reinforced from Rus sia.13
And in December 1918 it was reported that some Greeks in Batumi had an-
nounced the formation of a Pontic government in exile. If true, nothing came
of it.
The perceptive British Foreign Office official George Rendel, no friend of
the Turks, wrote in 1922 that “ there is no doubt that the Greek ecclesiastical
authorities in Constantinople had fostered a Greek national movement in [the
Pontus], and that the hope of liberation from Turkish rule . . . encouraged the
ill- informed Greek population . . . to take a renewed and dangerous interest in
politics.”14 But, in fact, all this separatist hubbub had resulted, after the war, in
“almost no acts of overt rebellion” and very little anti- Turk terrorism.15 In real ity, most Ottoman Greeks, in the Pontus as elsewhere in Anatolia, remained unmoved by ethnic- nationalist appeals. Or, as an American diplomat who toured
the major Pontic cities in summer 1919 reported, “many of the most influential
and rational Greeks . . . in Trebizond view this policy [of separatism] with dis-
favor.” The local Greek Archbishop, Chrysanthonos, was also opposed.16
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
Why the Ottoman Greeks by and large distanced themselves from the pan-
Hellenic national message, and certainly failed to act on it, is unclear. Per-
haps it was a matter of poorly developed po liti cal consciousness; perhaps it
was due to the centuries- long tradition of submissiveness to Islamic hegemony.
In the immediate postwar years, many Ottoman Greeks also feared massacre—
as had just befallen the Armenians—or economic harm, should they choose
the path of rebellion. And demographic realities as suredly contributed: the
Turks predominated in the Pontus, as in Anatolia in general— and the Pontic
Greeks knew it, what ever their spokesmen sometimes said.
To be sure, the Greek landing at Smyrna gave supporters of Pontic sepa-
ratism a boost. In late May 1919, Kemal, having just arrived in Samsun, in-
formed Constantinople that since the Armistice “forty guerrilla” bands, “in an
or ga nized program,” were killing Turks in order to “establish a Pontus state.”
The Greek bands were allegedly trying to massacre and drive out the Muslim
population and recruit Greeks in Rus sia in order to create a Greek majority in
the Pontus.17 It is pos si ble that many Turks believed these allegations.
The Greco-Turkish War, 1919–1922
Black Sea
Pontus
Edirne
6/25/1920
Tekirdağ
Istanbul
Izmit
N
S ak
Bandirma
Canakkale
Bursa
a
Inonu
rya
7/2/1920
Aegean
7/9/1920
1/9–11/1921
Balikesir
3/26–31/1921
6/30/1920
Ankara
Sea
Eskişehir
7/19/1921
Ayvalik
Kutahya
5/29/1919
Pola
tli
7/17/1921
Kale Grotto
Greek retreat 8–9/1922
8/17/1921
Afyonkarahisar
Alaşehir Usak
Smyrna 6/22/1920 8/29/1920
3/28/1921
5/15/1919
7/11/1921
Cay Akşehir
Mae ander
Konya
Aydın
Isparta
6/27–7/4/1921
Italian Z
one
(until 1921)
Antalya
Greece
Italy
Straits Zone (British control)
Major battle
0
100
200
300
KM
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
The alleged threat of Pontine separatism was only one factor affecting
Turkish policy toward Anatolian Greeks in 1919–1923. Another was actual
Greek be hav ior. Here and there Ottoman Greeks joined the invading army at
Smyrna, and some, under army auspices or in de pen dently, formed brigand
bands that harassed Turkish peasants in the Greek zone of occupation. In the
background, looming above all, was the invasion itself and the Greek army’s
eastward thrusts, which seemingly threatened Ankara. The Greek army also
occasionally threatened to turn northward and take Constantinople, a move
the British repeatedly vetoed.
These ele ments all coalesced in Turkish justifications for the ethnic-
religious cleansing of the Ottoman Greeks that unfolded.
Prelude: The War (1914–1918)
As we have seen, the Turks had already ethnically cleansed much of the Ionian
coast in the months before World War I, and during the war itself uprooted as
many as 550,000 Greeks. One observer commented that “comparatively few
of [them] survived.”18 Most were deported inland, for what the Turks called
“military reasons”; some were expelled or fled to Greece or Rus sia.19 But the
CUP leadership never adopted a policy of genocide or even of comprehensive
ethnic cleansing vis- à- vis the Ottoman Greeks. Certainly the Young Turk brass
wanted, under cover of the fog of war, to cleanse Asia Minor of all its Chris-
tians. But considerations of public opinion, abroad and possibly also at home,
weighed against. While it had been pos si ble to portray the Armenians as
rebels, the Greeks clearly were not rising up. And there were practical prob-
lems: an Anatolian Greek genocide might trigger intervention by the Kingdom
of Greece in the war. (The Greeks only entered the war, on the Allied side, in
summer 1917.) The Turks may also have feared that killing Greeks would
result in tit- for- tat vio lence against Muslims in Greece.20 Thus the war was
characterized by a telling dichotomy: while Armenians were forbidden to
leave the country— and thereby effectively consigned to death— Greeks were
encouraged to depart, with state assistance.
But alongside was real persecution of the Ottoman Greeks, orchestrated
by Constantinople. In areas where there were Ottoman Greek concentrations,
government officials went from mosque to mosque stirring up the Muslims.
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
For example, Yusuf Ziya Effendi and Talât Bey of Makri, in southwestern Asia
Minor, toured seventy- odd nearby villages announcing, “The hour of the lib-
eration of the sacred soil of our country from the unbelievers has arrived.” The
authorities enjoined villa gers neither to repay debts to unbelievers nor to buy
from or sell to Christians. “Chase away from the villages all the unbelievers
[but] without massacring them,” Yusuf Ziya and Talât Bey declared. “Their
property and . . . houses . . . belong to you, and you may divide them among
yourselves.”21
Locals responded by carry ing out orders “in the most horrible way.” The
villa gers fled to Makri and Livissi (Kayaköy). On the way they were robbed,
and some were murdered. “ Women were violated, and their underclothes and
shoes were taken away.” The two heavi ly Greek towns were then blockaded.
People died for lack of food. Some tried to flee. Two brothers were caught,
tied together, and thrown into a fire. The younger resisted and broke his
bonds, but “the rascals” cut off his hands and feet and threw him back into
the flames. The brothers’ fin gers were brought to Makri for identification.
“Their poor mother lost her senses and is now wandering in the mountains
in search of her sons,” it was reported. In the village of Trimil, Turkish troops
raped six women in a night- long “orgy.” When one of their husbands com-
plained, “he was submitted to sodomy—by order of the superior officer.” In
another incident, near Kestop, villa gers raped two women for eight days. One
of them later died.22 Procope, the Greek Orthodox metropolitan of Konya,
wrote in February 1915, “It is no exaggeration to say that the sufferings of
the Christians here surpass those of the Hebrews in Egypt.”23
After Turkey entered the war, Constantinople’s policy toward its Greeks
remained ambivalent. On the one hand, the government feared fifth colum-
nists and consistently deported Greeks from the coastal areas inland or ex-
pelled them from the country altogether. Here and there, the authorities also
uprooted Greeks from inland towns and villages. Community leaders were
imprisoned or exiled. But generally the Turks refrained from massacre, partly
because they feared Ottoman Greek rebellion and potential persecution by
Greece of its Muslim inhabitants.24 The Turks insisted that “ there was no per-
secution of Greeks” but admitted that villa gers had been removed inland for
“military reasons.”25
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
Many of the Greek deportations involved chiefly women and children as,
by early 1915, most army- age Greek men had been mobilized in Ottoman
labor battalions or had fled their homes to avoid conscription. Indeed, an
Ottoman law from summer 1915 provided for the exile of “families of de-
serters.” Draft dodging and desertion were widespread. In Edirne vilayet,
with 60,000 Greeks in September 1915, there was hardly a family without
members who had fled the country.
The deserters, of course, had a case. In the labor battalions Greeks suffered
severe, routinely lethal, privations. The Greek consul- general in Konya observed
the “unhappy men . . . sent . . . into the interior” to build roads, maintain tunnels, and till fields. “Unpaid, badly nourished and ill- clad, exposed . . . to the burning sun of Baghdad or the intense cold of the Caucasus, struck down
by disease . . . they die in the thousands,” he wrote. “I have seen these
wretched men in the hospitals of Konia stretched upon their beds or on the
ground, living skeletons, longing for death.” Most got what they desired.
“The cemetery,” the consul- general found, “is already filled with the tombs
of men serving in the labor battalions. . . . In[to] each grave not a single body, but four, five, and sometimes six corpses have been flung, like so many
dogs.”26 According to a postwar Greek report, out of some 3,000 labor con-
scripts from Ayvalık, only twenty- three survived. Another report noted a death
held hostage by the Turks in the eastern vilayets estimated.28
Depredation was not restricted to the labor battalions. On March 8, 1915,
Turkish police in Constantinople deported some 200 Greek community
leaders, intellectuals, clergy, and businessmen, foreshadowing the next month’s
roundup of the capital’s Armenian elite. Both episodes had the same purpose:
to decapitate a community.29
The eviction of Greeks from the Dardanelles had already begun in Oc-
tober 1914, before Turkey entered the war. It started with the inhabitants of
Krithia. The deportation moved into full gear after the Allies began their naval
push into the Dardanelles in February 1915. Greek villa gers from both sides
of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus were driven inland. The Turks appar-
ently also expelled as many as 5,000 Jews living along the Straits.30 In some
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
sites the empty houses were quickly filled with Bosnian muhacirs.31 Military
concerns, without doubt, played a part. But hovering in the background were
nationalism and religion, which explains why many deportees were scattered
among inland Turkish Muslim, rather than Greek, villages. In the villages, they
were pressed to convert.
By the summer the Turks had cleared the Greeks (and Armenians) from
most of the islands of the Sea of Marmara and its coasts. The Austro- Hungarian
ambassador in Constantinople, Johann von Pallavicini, believed the removals
stemmed from a desire to annihilate the empire’s Christians.32 Many of the
deportations were ordered by General Liman von Sanders, who orchestrated
the defense of the Gallipoli peninsula.33 His orders were carried out with
excessive zeal and came to include much of the Ionian coastline. “More
compassion is shown here to dogs than to the Christian refugees,” the Metro-
politan of Gallipoli, Constantinos, wrote. Some, deported via Bandırma,
were “kicked into the [train] wagons in asphyxiating numbers.” In many
cases, the deportees were shifted “from place to place” a number of times.34
Many were given two hours’ notice to leave and were dispersed in “groups of
five, ten or twenty families” in Turkish villages, where they lived in poverty
