by Benny Morris
among hostile inhabitants.35 Muhacirs sometimes appeared in the villages
before their Greek inhabitants were even deported. The muhacirs were
known to stone houses while shouting “be gone, or we shall kill you, you
swine of infidels.”36 The deportations were often carried out with brutality,
and deportees died of hunger and exposure.37 In June– September the depor-
tations were extended to western Bursa vilayet.38 There were also deporta-
tions from the Ephesus area and from eastern Trabzon vilayet.39 Thousands
found refuge in the forests of Arghyropolis and near Ardache, in the diocese
of Chaldi.40
The government countered Western protests by claiming that the depor-
tations were “from military zones” and undertaken for “military reasons.”41
Diplomats were fobbed off with promises of amelioration and investigation.
The Turks also complained that outside protests constituted meddling in their
internal affairs. Even allies were castigated for “interference.” “You ought to
know that the Germans have no right to interfere in . . . our internal affairs,”
Enver told the Greek Patriarch in July 1915 after he sought German
intercession.42
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
The harsh nature of the deportations inland persuaded Morgenthau that
they were not governed only, or even primarily, by military considerations.
“The Turks want to wipe [the Greeks] out partly from envy and partly from
fear of their superior talents,” he wrote.43 But he added that these deporta-
tions were “on a lesser scale” than those of the Armenians and had “stopped
short at direct loss of life.”44
The deportations continued through 1915, affecting areas far from stra-
tegic coastlines. In August– October 1915, much of Edirne vilayet was cleared
of Greeks, even if they lived far from the straits in places such as Kırklareli
and Uzunköprü. The Greeks and Armenians of Eskişehir were deported, most
likely in August.45 Occasional killings were a routine part of the pro cess but
there were also full- scale massacres.46 At Demotika (Dimoteicho), near Edirne
city, Turks and Bulgarians killed some 400 Greeks.47 Some Greek deportees
were sent to Malgara and resettled in the homes of deported Armenians.48
Villa gers in the Ünye (Ounia) area, along the southern shore of the Black
Sea, were deported in December. According to the Greek Patriarchate,
Turkish troops murdered batches of Greek men, and “the nice- looking women
and girls . . . were raped and dishonored.” In spring 1916 the Turks deported
more than 3,000 Greeks from the Alexandretta- Antakya area eastward to Idlib,
Manbij, and Al- Bab.49
Some deportations were linked to the shifting tides of war. On January 10,
1916, the Rus sians launched a major offensive in eastern Anatolia. They cap-
tured Erzurum and Muş on February 16, Bitlis on March 3, and Trabzon on
April 18. Each time the front receded, the regional Ottoman commander,
Kamil Pasha, ordered the deportation of Greek villa gers immediately behind
his lines. They were ejected into midwinter temperatures around zero centi-
grade and some froze along the road. “We must suffer, so must you,” Kamil
said.50
That spring and summer, the Turks deported the inhabitants of dozens of
Trabzon vilayet villages. Hundreds fled to surrounding forests and mountains.
A Greek report tells of twenty- six women and girls who, “to avoid dishonor,”
threw themselves into a river near the village of Gephira. Elsewhere in Trabzon
vilayet, the Turks rounded up Greek women and took them to Vazelon Mon-
astery, where they “first violated them, and then put them to death. Many men
were also murdered.”51 The Greek population of Inebolu (Ineboli) and its
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
surrounding villages— Cide, Patheri, Atsidono, Karaca, Askordassi— was
deported in June.52
Most Trabzon Christians were deported inland. But some— from the village
of Ardache, for example— were pushed toward newly occupied Rus sian areas.
As the Ottoman army withdrew, Turkish villa gers fell back with them. They
behaved, the Greek Patriarchate said, “like locusts” destroying “every thing” in
their path. A Greek metropolitan described a raid by Osman Aga—an agent of
Trabzon vali Cemal Azmi, and himself destined for infamy—on the village of
Prossori as the army was in its retreat. “They plundered the houses, raped
the women, murdered four young Greeks, and beat the parish priest to death.
[Osman] then forced the peasants to sign a document certifying that the
murderers were Armenians.”53
Deportations from Trabzon to the Anatolian interior often resulted in rape
and death. Metropolitan Germanos later said, “A large number of women and
children were killed, the young girls outraged and immediately driven into the
interior. . . . These girls had to march thirty or forty days across snow- covered mountains and sleep by night in the open. . . . The majority, of course, died
on the road.”54
The Turks maintained the pretext of military justification even when they
were winning. When the tide of battle changed, and they reconquered
Trabzon vilayet, they continued expelling Greeks systematically.55 Greek
witnesses alleged that Refet Pasha, the military governor of the Samsun dis-
trict, burnt and depopulated dozens of villages between November 1916
and May 1917. During December 1916, the Turks deported notables from
Samsun, Bafra, Ordu, Tirebolu, Amasya, and Çarşamba and apparently
hanged 200 Greeks on charges of desertion.56 The villa gers of the Bafra
hinterland were sent “to wander from one village to another.” An American
naval officer noted that these deportees “ were not massacred [like] . . . the
Armenians” had been. Instead, the “killing of the Greeks was accom-
plished” through subterfuge. Pursuant to the deportation order, Greeks
were “undressed and placed in Turkish baths for several hours, presumably
to cleanse them so as to prevent any spread of disease. They were taken from
these hot baths and [marched] . . . in the dead of winter, with very little
clothing and generally without food.” Naked and freezing, they died of “ex-
posure, sickness or starvation.”57
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
In Samsun, deportation of notables was followed by mass removal on Jan-
uary 10, 11, and 13, 1917. The columns consisted mostly of women and
children, whose houses were subsequently plundered and torched or occu-
pied by muhacirs. Deportees who survived the journey were dispersed in
Turkish villages. But large numbers were not so lucky. A Greek diplomat de-
scribed the suffering that claimed their lives:
During the night, pregnant women, youths and old men seek refuge in
hovels so confined that they run the risk of suffocation. They have no
bread and no water. . . . They lie on the ground in the midst of unutter-
able filth. Many die on the road from chills. . . . All have to keep up the
march, in spite of every thing, at all cost; their warders see to this with
infinite zeal, cruel traces of which are left upon the shoulders of their vi
c-
tims. The dead are seldom buried.58
A postwar investigation by an American consul suggests that about 5,000
Greeks and a similar number of Armenians were eliminated from Samsun by
massacre, expulsion, and flight to the hills. Samsun Turks also endured heavy
losses during the war, in combat and from disease.59 There were also Greek
deportations from the Fatsa, Nikassar, and Çarşamba areas.60
In all, in late 1916– early 1917, tens of thousands of Greeks were marched
inland from the Pontus coastline along with a sprinkling of Armenians not de-
ported in 1915.61 Speaking of Bafra- area villages in par tic u lar, Metropolitan
Germanos told American officers that “the greatest cause” of the deportations
was “religion.” 62
Western Anatolia also witnessed deportations, beginning in spring 1917,
mostly from the Ionian coast. (The delay apparently was due to intercession
by General Liman and the German Foreign Ministry.) In March– April, weeks
before the Greeks entered the war, Ayvalık was emptied of Greeks. It had been
a major population center, home to 12,000–30,000 Greeks, according to
vari ous estimates. Convoys of 500 and 600 families departed daily for inland
Turkish villages. General Liman himself gave the order, though it may have
originated with Talât.63 A Greek official described one of the convoys: “The
sight is ghastly. Large and small living skeletons roam through the town, beg-
ging. The convoy, after marching for 42 days, is condemned to pursue its
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
journey for a long time yet. Its destination is Jeni- Sehir [Yenişehir] and Biledjik
[Bilecik]. . . . More than 180 died on the way . . . the women dropped their
newborn babes to keep up.” The Greeks strug gled with more than the con-
ditions. “Nothing can move” the Turkish escort, the official wrote. “Their
hearts are of iron.” 64
To the south, in the Aydın vilayet towns of Makri and Livissi, the Turks
conscripted some 3,000 Greeks for forced labor. Reportedly, just 500 survived
the war. The Turks also periodically arrested notables, exacted large sums for
their release, and then failed to keep up their end of the deal. In July 1916
many of the communities’ notables were imprisoned— “weeping and wailing
from pain and grief, beaten and blasphemed.” Some were deported to Den-
izli, and some of them died on the way. There were recurrent bouts of arrest
and deportation over the next two years. The prisoners were often given the
choice of conversion, but most refused. One of the refusers, a John Agioriti,
was beaten and tortured. “Nails were thrust into his body, his nails were pulled off, his nose and ears cut off, and fi nally his eyes were taken off.”
Persecution ratcheted up after the June 1917 Greek declaration of war.
Though Ottoman Greek communities at this point were effectively unarmed
and shorn of fighting- age men, they still were depicted as a current rather than potential threat. Thus between November 1917 and April 1918, 1,300 Makri
and Livissi families were exiled to the interior. Boycotts prevented them selling much of anything before leaving, and they left behind their property to be confiscated. They were robbed along the way, and their dead and dying were left
by the wayside. The second batch, of 900 families, was treated even “worse,”
according to Gough- Calthorpe. Some women were taken by Turks. One Pe-
lagia Geron, it was reported, was “ violated at the beginning [and] is at pres ent living with the mudir” of Livissi, Hassan Bey. Some converted, including “the
daughter of Stefanos Kourti and Katina Voulgarou.” 65 Toward the end of the
war, in May– June 1918, the Turks deported inland the remaining inhabitants
of the Sea of Marmara islands. Many died on the roads. Their houses were
filled with Pomak muhacirs.66
One British estimate, from December 1917, held that 100,000 Ottoman
Greeks had been killed since the start of August.67 In late 1917 Talât estimated
that more than 93,000 Greeks had been deported to the interior and another
164,000 to Greece during the war.68 The Greek government maintained that
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
280,000 Ottoman Greeks had been deported in 1914, before the war, and
about 500,000 during the war.69 Of the latter, according to the Greek Cen-
tral Relief Commission, 197,399 had been expelled from Thrace.70 In sum,
it is likely that approximately half a million Ottoman Greeks were deported
during the Great War. Of these, certainly tens of thousands, and perhaps hun-
dreds of thousands, died.71
Postwar Greek Return
George Horton, the philo- Hellenic US consul- general in Smyrna, endorsed
the Ottoman Greek refugees’ postwar “right of return” to their homes on the
grounds that, “from the dawn of history, . . . they are the race best fitted to
develop the coast of Asia Minor. . . . The pres ent Turkish occupants have
made a hash of the pretty houses and villages and well cultivated vineyards
and farms.”72 Horton explained that the muhacirs settled along the Ionian
coast were mostly “mountaineers” from Macedonia “with little or no knowl-
edge of agriculture.” So they “stripped” Greeks’ farms “like locusts.”73
In November 1918, with the convening of the Paris peace conference, the
victorious powers agreed that surviving Greek deportees should be allowed
to return to their homes.74 “The majority died,” Webb wrote in January 1919,
“as it was intended by Turks and Germans that they should.” But the number
remaining made for a Greek- returnee prob lem “almost [of the] same mag-
nitude” as the Armenian. Webb calculated that there were “some 200,000”
survivors of the January– June 1914 deportations and 150,000–200,000 sur-
vivors from the “half a million” deported during the war.75
The British moved swiftly. In winter 1918 Webb put Commander C. E.
Heathcote- Smith in charge of Greek repatriation and sent him on a tour of
villages near Constantinople. The Turks, still in shock from defeat, collabo-
rated, or appeared to collaborate, instructing all governors to assist the return
and hand over orphans, whether homeless or taken by Muslim families.76
Governors were also ordered to restore churches, schools, and confiscated
property.77
The orders, however, were not always taken seriously or acted upon. For
example, when 200–300 Greek families returned to Büyükdere, they found
150 of their houses still occupied and the police “helping the Turkish
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
tenants to remain.” In Pyrgos village 200 Greeks were driven off while at-
tempting to regain their homes. Heathcote- Smith arrived a fortnight later
and, aided by Turkish officials, managed to resettle 120 families. But even
when Greeks were able to regain their homes, there were prob lems: their
houses were damaged, and they had outstanding bills to pay. Altogether,
Webb was not sanguine. “The Turkish authorities,” he wrote, “pursue a
policy of active obstruction feebly disguised by official assurances of their
good intentions.”78
There were notable successes, but rarely total ones. At Ayvalık 8,000–
; 12,000 Greeks returned, though only a “few families” made it back to ad-
joining Mosko Island, which Heathcote- Smith described as “now a perfect
desert.”79 A March 2, 1919, visit by Lieutenant Perring to the Marmara
Islands netted immediate results for the 2,900 or so Greek returnees, though
they constituted only a tenth of the islands’ prewar Greek population. Accom-
panied by Turkish officials, he secured the speedy restoration of homes, “in-
cluding furniture,” and even the liberation of “all Christian girls” from Muslim
house holds.80
The British could not solve every repatriation prob lem— not even close. But
returnees were still grateful. At Maltepe, on the northern shore of the Sea of
Marmara, Greek returnees demonstrated their appreciation for the British by
parading through the street, cheering, firing shots in the air, and waving a
Greek flag. Repatriation agents warned local priests to avoid such exhibitions,
as they would “excite the fanat i cism of the Turks, thus making our task of re-
patriation harder.” 81
As a rule, Turks resisted Greek repatriation, with or without British
assistance, especially in sites inundated by muhacirs. Around Smyrna, “no Greeks”
had returned by late February 1919, whereas, according to Turkish figures,
91,000 muhacirs had settled in the district since 1913, 22,000 of them in
empty Greek homes. The director of the Constantinople government’s
Turkish Refugee Department told Heathcote- Smith that “the Greeks could
not return,” as the Ottoman and Greek governments had reached a population-
exchange agreement in 1914. But this wasn’t the Greek government
position— and, in fact, no agreement had been reached in 1914. Indeed, the
Greeks invaded Smyrna in May 1919 in part with the aim of facilitating the
return of Ionian refugees.82
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
Further afield, where Britain’s writ was still weaker, the Turks were even
more obstructive. By late January 1919, between 10,000 and 40,000 Greeks
had returned to Samsun and Bafra, many living in makeshift “mud huts” and
in the street, as usurping Turks, “gypsies,” and Albanians, “with the conniv-
