by Benny Morris
violated.” Greek men were deported inland from both Giresun and Samsun
“at the order of Mustapha Kemal.”129
That summer British and Nationalist troops clashed for the first time.
The precipitating event came in April, when the Şeyhülislam issued a fatwa
declaring Kemal and his associates rebels against the caliph.130 The Con-
stantinople government, supported by the British troop presence, then
moved against the Nationalists in the Izmit Peninsula.131 The Nationalists
responded with a proclamation, couched in religious language, attacking
the British, Greeks, French, and Italians: “They wish to convert the
mosques of Fatih and Aya [Hagia] Sofia into churches, and to drive the
Moslems from Constantinople . . . and to give Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Sivas
and Harput to the Armenians. . . .
May God preserve the
people of
Mahomet.”132 The Nationalist press portrayed the British as “determined
enemies of Islam . . . trying to subjugate the Islamic world.”133 On June 15
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
words gave way to action, as Nationalist troops attacked British outposts on
the Izmit Peninsula.134 The British responded with fire from sea and air,
causing heavy Turkish losses and eventual retreat.135 To the south, though,
Nationalists took rebellious Turkish villages. In some cases, the villa gers fled
to neighboring Christian villages and towns for shelter. The Armenian Patri-
archate reported that in one village, Pazarköy, the Nationalists had forced
Turkish women and girls “to dance all naked, then they violated and mur-
dered them.”136
British intelligence noted “a deci ded change” in Nationalist policy toward
the Christian population, against the backdrop of the Greek army’s major
summer offensive. According to an American witness, when the Greek army
marched into Bursa on July 8, the troops and Bursa Greeks displayed “per-
fectly wonderful self- control” toward the town’s Turkish inhabitants, “espe-
cially when you think what they have to remember of wrongs done them and
their families.”137 Nonetheless Ankara resolved to destroy “non- Muslim vil-
lages as a reprisal for the destruction of Muslim villages in the occupied
areas.”138
One outcome of the growing Nationalist anger appears to have been a se-
ries of massacres by Turkish regulars and irregulars in the Izmit Peninsula.139
At Fulacık, in June, the Turks “hanged 400 of the inhabitants.” Soon after,
some 600 were killed in Geyve and its vicinity.140 In what is likely an exag-
geration, a native of Geyve- Etchme (Eşme) related that on July 11, 7,300
Armenians and Greeks in Geyve- Ortaköy were pushed into a church and
burned alive. He added that, the day before, the Turkish authorities, using de-
ceit, had transferred to Etchme the inhabitants of neighboring villages, tied
the men together, then massacred them at the Kara- Tchai (Karaçay) pass.
Women were also murdered. Villa gers who fled to the mountains were hunted
down and killed. The villa gers of Pamucak, after offering re sis tance, were piled into the church and massacred. Muslims carried off the women and girls.141
Although some of the allegations may have been exaggerated, there are per-
fectly credible reports of atrocities. Clearly, thousands of villa gers were forced to flee to Izmit.142 And the depredations described at Geyve are in keeping
with what is known from other sites, qualitatively if not quantitatively.
For instance, at Akhisar, occupied by the Nationalists on July 1, 1920, the
men were tied in twos and marched to the well of Yeghise, then cut to pieces
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
with swords. The following day, Akhisar’s women and children were taken
to a silk factory and massacred. Altogether some 350 Armenians and a handful
of Greeks were killed. Muhacirs then occupied the empty houses. Five “beau-
tiful” Armenian girls were spared, as was an eight- year- old who screamed
she wanted to embrace Islam.143 According to one report, though, the children
were later slaughtered in the vegetable gardens of Geyve.144
In İznik there were massacres on August 27 and at the end of September,
before the town came under Greek control.145 A British officer later toured
the ruins. Outside town he saw a cave filled with “at least 100 . . . burnt and
mangled bodies,” including of women and children. “All . . . apparently had
first had their hands and feet cut off, after that they were either burnt alive in the cave or had their throats cut.”146 The Greek High Commission put the
total massacred at İznik at 600.147
On September 9, at Kütahya, the Turks arrested ninety- two Greek nota-
bles. The next day, “all males over 15 years of age were deported,” and the
Turks pillaged the town.148 According to Athens, the convoys were sent to
Sivri- Hisar, Bey- Bazar, Haimaki, Ankara, and Eskşehir. Only girls and boys
remained in Kütahya, where they were abused by Kemalist officers.149 The
American vice consul in Smyrna wrote of the Kütahya Turks’ “hideous, cal-
culating cruelty.”150 Some Kütahya Armenian and Greek “ women [ were being]
kept by the Kemalists,” others, apparently, had “perished through hunger and
diverse disease.”151 In the Meander Valley, southeast of Smyrna, Nationalists
massacred and deported several Greek communities. On September 10, they
slaughtered “most” remaining Christian males in Denizli. “ Every kind of sav-
agery was exercised on women, children,” locals reported. The Kemalists de-
ported the remaining Christians to Eyerdir, where refugees from Aydın and
Nazlı had already been concentrated.152 In the Constantinople area, too, Greek
villages were raided, and men were killed and women raped. In two villages
at Yeniköy, 150 people were killed on June 28. Fifteen more were killed at
Arvanitohori on July 14.153
By the time Kemal’s forces reached Konya and Cappadocia in September,
no one doubted what would come next. Greek community leaders appealed
to the British. “Our populations,” they wrote, “find themselves totally at the
mercy of . . . Kemal. It is impossible to describe the terror, tortures, ordeals
and exactions perpetrated in that ‘hunt for Christians’ or ga nized in our poor
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
country. Mass hangings are the order of the day. . . . Soon . . . nothing will be left but ashes and the silence of death.”154
The most murderous Turks received the greatest rewards. In October
Osman Aga went to Ankara for a meeting with Kemal; he left with a new job,
as governor general of the coastal area from Inebolu to Hoppa. Kemal and
Osman may not have had precisely the same priorities— the Nationalists were
driven by po liti cal fervor and religious hatred, and Osman primarily by
the desire to pillage. But Kemal knew how to get the worst out of his
subordinates.155
By November rumor had it that the Nationalists had ordered “a general de-
portation of Greeks from the Pontus.”156 It is not clear whether any such
order had in fact been given, but the signs were certainly there. Even as the
ethnic- cleansing campaign slowed down in winter, the T
urks took advantage
of worsening conditions to score key blows against the weakening Greeks.
Early 1921 saw continued pressure for mass conscription of able- bodied
Greeks.157 They were destined for labor battalions, which, “in real ity,” a mis-
sionary wrote, meant they would “starve or freeze to death.” Maintaining a
façade of legalism, in line with Ottoman traditions, the Turks routinely em-
ployed deceit. By law anyone younger than twenty was ineligible for conscrip-
tion. So, in an effort to force more and younger Greeks into the jaws of labor
ser vice, the authorities forged birth certificates designating orphans “one to
four years older than their real age.”158
While the Greco- Turkish war served as background to the widespread, if
occasionally haphazard, massacre and deportation of Greeks, a string of
remainder Armenian communities was also destroyed. Sometimes the
Armenians were specifically targeted, but more often they were swept up in-
cidentally in the anti- Greek campaign. During 1919–1923 Greeks predomi-
nated in towns and villages with mixed Christian populations, if only because
the Armenians had largely been disposed of during the war. Thus in Au-
gust 1920, for example, Nationalist bands in Bolu massacred the Armenian
population alongside eighty Greeks. The killing may have been instigated
by Mufti Abdullah Chukri (Şükrü), a Muslim preacher from Devrek who had
preached in Bolu’s marketplace a few days earlier. “Holding a sword in his
hand,” he had urged listeners to destroy “the profaners of the holy Moslem
religion.”159
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
Throughout 1920 the Nationalists—in public and in conversation with
outsiders— denied any genocidal purpose. In September, long after the excuse
had lost all credibility, Kemal told an American missionary, Annie Allen, that
the deportations were taking place “only on the frontiers”— that is, only for
military reasons— and that the Nationalists “had no intention of a general de-
portation of their Christian subjects.” The “three races, Turks, Armenians
and Greeks, would live together in orderly” fashion, he said, and “hate would
soon die.”160
1921– Early 1922
The deportations and massacres tapered off in late autumn 1920, though
there was an expulsion of Hellenic Greeks from Samsun at the end of the
year.161 Ethnic cleansing resumed with a vengeance in spring 1921 and en-
compassed all the territory under Nationalist control, not merely communi-
ties near the front lines. Jackson believed the campaign was being “carried
out with all of the consequential results that occurred” during the Armenian
deportations “in 1915–1916.”162 “The persecutions of 1921 were on a
larger scale and more atrocious than those of 1920,” a British government
analysist concluded.163
The systematic operations of spring 1921 focused again on Pontic Ottoman
Greeks. In February the Nationalist Interior Minister Fethi Bey had visited
the region and then urged Kemal to authorize “more expeditious and larger
scale [deportations] than hitherto.”164 Kemal apparently needed little persua-
sion. American officers visiting Samsun in early spring reported signs of “a
definite [Nationalist] policy to exterminate the Greeks.”
The officers quoted an American missionary to the effect that about 100
Greek villages south of Bafra had been destroyed in the course of a few days
beginning May 17. The villa gers were murdered and “the priests . . . cruci-
fied.” The Greeks in the area felt that now that the Turks had finished off the
Armenians, it was their turn. “The belief seems to exist that Osman Agha is
in charge of the cleaning up the district,” an American officer wrote, and “that
there is to be a massacre of all Greeks in Samsun.” Refugees from the coun-
tryside were flowing into Samsun, despite intermittent government efforts
to halt the pro cess. The Americans also got an inkling of discord within
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
Turkish ranks: the talk in the town was that the military wanted to extermi-
nate the Greeks, while the local civil authorities were opposed.165
As in previous episodes, authorities sympathetic to the Christians did what
they could, while being steamrolled by the government. Indeed, the character
of the Nationalist policy in 1921 was much like that of the CUP in 1915. The
Kemalists used the little evidence of dissidence they could muster— and a great
many falsifications—to justify “ wholesale deportations, continuous persecu-
tions, and frequent massacres.” The Turks first arrested the Greek notables
and then proceeded to deport the masses.166 There were, of course, differences
between 1921 and 1915, but they were inconsequential from the standpoint
of the victims. As an American missionary in Merzifon put it, “Unlike the Ar-
menian deportations of 1915, there usually was a definite destination for
these Greek deportees and there was no open and avowed policy of extermi-
nation, however much that may have been a sub- rosa policy of individuals,
local governments or the national government.”167
The campaign began in March. It may have been precipitated by the launch
of the large Greek spring offensive, which began on the 23rd. The leader of
the Turkish campaign was General Nureddin Pasha, a killer so ruthless that
in January 1922 he was brought up by his own government on charges for
“the mal- execution of his orders”—or so American diplomats were in-
formed.168 The Turks claimed that they were “eradicating rebellion,” Greeks
were massacring Turks, the Greek Black Sea fleet was periodically bom-
barding coastal towns, and Pontine Greeks had joined the Greek army.169
Western observers uniformly asserted that there was no Pontine “rebellion,”
either underway or in preparation.170 The most anyone could say was that “it
is prob ably true that Greeks in the Coast region were sympathetic with the
Hellenic Greek Government. Possibly in the early days after the Armistice,
some were even working towards union with the [Athens] government.”171
But the Nationalists saw, or claimed they saw, things differently. The by-
now pro- Turkish Arnold Toynbee, with mindless exaggeration, compared
Greek atrocities to “the C.U.P.’s extermination of the Armenians.” “The
Greeks,” he said, “are not diff er ent in kind from the Turks.” The Turkish
ethnic cleansing campaign was “partly a war mea sure, like and in essence not
more barbarous than our own [i.e., Britain’s] treatment of alien enemies, and
partly a reprisal for the uprooting of the Moslem population in Eu rope as a
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
result of the Balkan Wars.”172 The Turks maintained that the deportations
were also an effort to force Greek brigands to give up their arms.173
Turks and their defenders have also sought cover by pointing to the arrival
in the Black Sea in summer 1921 of a Greek naval squadron, which stopped
Turkish ships, took passengers prisoner, and later lightly shelled Inebolu. This
may indeed have hastened the deportation pro cess,
but it wasn’t the cause of
the campaign, which was launched weeks before.174 As Count Schmeccia of
the firm Lloyd Triestino in Samsun, and previously a representative of the
Italian High Commission, said, the Inebolu bombardment, which produced
no casualties, was merely a Turkish “excuse for the massacres.”175
In any event, much other evidence points to Ankara’s planning for that sum-
mer’s destruction of the Greek communities. An Armenian report refers to a
July 2 order from Ankara requiring deportation of all “adult male” Christians
“throughout the interior of Anatolia,” not merely in the Pontus.176 Another
report indicates that, two weeks later, Ankara ordered the “immediate depor-
tation of all Ottoman Greeks,” meaning women, children, and the el derly as
well.177 At the beginning of August, the mutessarif of Bafra told a visiting
American naval officer that the deportation “of all remaining Greeks, including
women and children, had been ordered by Angora.” That order was appar-
ently reinforced by another, from Nureddin Pasha, who instructed a local gov-
ernor “to proceed with all dispatch to carry out the orders which had been
given him or that he would shortly cease to be mutassarif.” The American
officer concluded that this was “part of an official plan which contemplates
extermination of the Greeks.”178 There may not have been an “open and
avowed policy of extermination,” but there was evidence of a “popu lar policy”
aiming at “Turkey for the Turks,” as one missionary put it.179
Be that as it may, the largescale massacres and deportations began already
in the spring, with the rural Greek communities. In the villages of the Black
Sea’s Düzce (Kurtsuyu) kaza, “many old men and women [ were] burnt
alive.”180 The Turks also attacked swaths of villages around Alaçam, Bafra, and
Çarşamba and in the interior as far as Havza and Vizirköpru. The Turks took
pains to make sure that there were no American witnesses. Missionaries were
not allowed out of Samsun, the regional missionary center. But survivors
reached the town and told their stories. American naval officers reported that
the campaign was “ under strict control of the military,” “directed by high
