by Benny Morris
Konya, Şile, Akşehir, Ilğin, Karaman, and Ereğli. It appears that only bank and
railway employees were exempted.232 Armenians, too, were deported from
Konya and Afyon- Karahisar.233
Amid “scenes of confusion, panic and terror” the Christians of Izmit—
21,000 Greeks and 9,000 Armenians— escaped as the Turks advanced on the
town at the end of June.234 Thousands of farm animals, driven to Izmit by
Greeks from surrounding villages, ended up dead on the shoreline: “exposed
to the blazing sun and without food,” they drank sea- water.235 The towns-
people feared massacre and fled, by sea, to Volo, Tekirdağ, Constantinople,
and the Aegean islands.236 In Bursa missionaries reportedly found eight
hundred Greek and Armenian girls aged ten to sixteen who were raped and
then “stamped by [the Turks] on the forehead with burning iron as a sign of
their dishonor.”237
While some Western observers viewed the Turkish campaign in Izmit as
“retaliation” for Greek atrocities that spring in the Yalova- Izmit area, others, prob ably most, framed it differently: “The Turks are carry ing out the extreme
Moslem doctrine of the book or the sword” that is, conversion or death, “and
are pursuing a definite policy of clearing their territories of all Christian pop-
ulations.”238 It is pos si ble that both views were to some degree correct, the
Greek atrocities explaining the timing of the Turkish atrocities, while ideology
provided a popu lar justification for the campaign.
As with the destruction of the Armenians during the Great War, the expul-
sion and murder of the Anatolian Greeks was in part driven by the enticing
vision of plunder. The state, local officials, and the victims’ Turkish neighbors
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
all had much to gain. In the short term, Turks benefited from appropriated
houses, lands, and house hold goods. In the long term, they replaced urban
Greek and Armenian craftsmen, traders, and professionals. In some cases,
local authorities even forged letters purporting to be from deportees asking
their remaining relatives for funds.239
In addition to securing economic gain, the Turks had opportunities to carry
out economic destruction, harming their enemies. The Greek villages of the
Pontine coast traditionally produced “most of the higher grades of tobacco
in Asia Minor.” Their ruination did serious harm to U.S. tobacco firms. The
Samsun deportations, in par tic u lar, deprived tobacco companies of their “ex-
pert sorters.” The U.S. High Commission remonstrated with the authori-
ties.240 Bristol’s aide, Lieutenant Dunn, told Youssouf Kemal that even if “the
deportations were justified in princi ple as a military mea sure” the tobacco
workers were not involved in any kind of revolutionary organ izing. The for-
eign minister agreed to end deportation of the sorters, which he claimed was
a mistake caused by local officials’ exaggerated zeal, and to retrieve those al-
ready deported.241 Dunn still considered Youssouf Kemal “spy and sedition
mad.”242
Youssouf Kemal also told Dunn that Ankara had not ordered deportations
of women. Yet, in February 1922, when a journalist inquiring about deporta-
tions asked him, “What are the women and children guilty of ?” he replied,
“The military command . . . has . . . judged [it] necessary to deport them, so
that they do not interfere with military operations.” After all, he said, “ There are many spies among the Christians, and this is the main cause of the deportations.”243 Youssouf Kemal might also have been worried about armed Greeks
banding together in the mountains. A British observer put their number at
20,000–30,000.244
A British government analyst estimated that “well over 35,000 Greeks”
were deported from the Pontus in 1921. The balance of the deportees had
been “massacred . . . in circumstances of utmost barbarity.”245 Jackson thought
the prob lem even worse: he reported in late March 1922 that American mis-
sionaries arriving in Aleppo from Harput said that “at least 75,000 Greeks”
had been deported in the previous months from the Pontus, of whom only
“20,000” had survived. The authorities had taken care to launch the depor-
tations “in the face of blizzards,” often “outraged” the women, and prevented
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
food from reaching them.246 Of the 720 majority- Greek villages in the Pontus,
420 had been “burnt or destroyed, the men killed or deported, and the women
removed” and the other 300 partially destroyed, only the men deported.247
Western and Japa nese diplomats protested to no effect. In July Bristol thought
that he had succeeded in getting the deportations suspended, but the facts
demonstrate other wise.248 Rumbold recognized that protests “only provoke
counter accusations” from the Turks in “an almost insolent tone.”249
The campaign largely died down in the winter, as bad weather threatened
escorting gendarmes.250 But even then, the deportation and killing continued,
as the Turks worked to clear out Pontic women and children who had escaped
cleansings of 1921. A January 1922 case is illustrative. After the government
had proclaimed an amnesty allowing women to return home, a group of about
a thousand women who had taken refuge in the mountains made their way
back to Samsun. They were “ill, in starving condition and mere living skele-
tons”; the “majority . . . were very badly wounded,” some having lost arms
or legs. Eight- to- ten died daily. Officials promised that they would be “ free of molestation,” but soon “the whole band was deported to the interior.”251 A
British official suggested that the Turks had only allowed women and children
a temporary reprieve in hopes that male brigands in the hills would “come out
of hiding” to join them.252 One woman actually spared was the mutesarrif of
Samsun’s alleged “Greek mistress.”253 Elsewhere, on February 15, 200–300
brigands headed by Osman rode into Ordu, a village largely emptied of men
but left “with a lot of Turkish [ sic: Greek?] women.” According to a survivor, Osman and his raiders had come “to carry off the plunder.” The brigands
torched all except two houses, into which about 170 women and children,
and a handful of men, were herded. The houses were then set alight. Fifteen
or so young girls were taken aside and “subjected to the most horrible treat-
ment that night, and all butchered the next day.” However, it was rumored that
five or six girls were in fact spared “for the harem of the Pasha.” Nine neigh-
boring villages received the same treatment.254
The deportations of 1921 were preceded and accompanied by what a
British diplomat described as “ wholesale executions” of Greek notables.
Sometimes the Nationalists tried notables in kangaroo- court proceedings—
so- called In de pen dence Tribunals, against whose judgements there was no
appeal. One report holds that about 250 Greeks were hanged in Amasya in
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
September 1921; another source puts the number at 168. Among them was
the Metropolitan of Samsun, Platon. The Turks extracted his gold teeth.255
; In Ordu 190 “prominent Greeks” were reportedly hanged.256 In Tokat, ten
were executed.257 Seventy- nine were condemned to death in Samsun, “hanged
naked and in batches, all the condemned having to undergo the terrible or-
deal of standing by and witnessing the executions until their own turn arrived.”
In one case, a father and son were reportedly given the option of deciding
which of them would go first.258 Seven priests from Alaçam, Bafra, and their
environs were crucified in the marketplace of Gözköy, according to the Greek
Patriarch in Constantinople.259 Another priest was reportedly crucified in
Topedjik. The Nationalists treated Christian clergy with par tic u lar brutality.
Many were murdered; others were exiled or imprisoned, including a number
of Greek and Armenian prelates.260
At times in 1921, the Kemalists exploited Muslim rebellions to persecute
Christians. For example, when Kurds near Dersim attempted to resist Nation-
alist forces, the Turks accused Christian villa gers in Kizik, Bazar- Selen, and
Inönü of “connivance.” The Nationalists imprisoned the Christian men and
deported the women to Mamuret- ül- Aziz. Most of the men were subsequently
killed.261
In early spring 1922 the Turks renewed the mass deportations with the aim
of definitively solving the Greek prob lem as quickly as pos si ble. As Rumbold
put it in February, “Many people in Anatolia and at Constantinople consid-
ered that history had intended that the old Ottoman Empire composed of so
many heterogeneous ele ments should dis appear. Nationalists accepted this
fact. A new Turkey had arisen which repudiated bad traditions of [the] former
Ottoman Empire.”262 But the perpetrators did not want to be too blatant. They
set in motion a variety of conflicting mea sures and issued contradictory state-
ments about their intentions, leaving Western observers at least briefly con-
fused about what was happening.263 Sometimes Christians were ordered to
stay put or return to towns or relocate within a given town. But mostly people
were deported or massacred.
On April 10 or 11, a reported 1,324 Greeks, “mostly women and
children . . . [with] a few old men,” were deported from Samsun. Near East
Relief took on twenty- seven orphans and attempted to provide aid to those
departing, but some of the exiles “ were said to be so weak they could not walk
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
A Greek refugee.
out to the truck for their bread. A few of the worst cases were sent out in carts.”
The rest walked.264 Another 1,462 Greek women and children, many of them
recently arrived from the mountains, were deported inland on April 15. “The
deportation was conducted in a quiet and orderly manner,” according to a wit-
ness, but the wife of a Turkish officer later reported that Greeks had been
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
“marched into the hills near Kavak and murdered.”265 In Mamuret- ül- Aziz
vilayet many Christians were forced to convert.266
By May Rumbold was reporting that fresh “outrages are starting in all parts
of Asia Minor from northern sea ports to southeastern districts.” Citing Mark
Ward, the Near East Relief director in Harput, he explained that the Turks, were
“accelerating their activities in this re spect before [a] peace settlement” was
reached with the Allies. “The Turks appear to be working on a deliberate plan
to get rid of minorities.” The Turks would collect Greeks from Samsun and
Trabzon in Amasya and then march them “via Tokat and Sivas as far as Cae-
sarea [Kayseri], and then back again until they are eventually sent through
Harput to the east. In this manner a large number of deportees die on the road
from hardships and exposure. The Turks can say that they did not actually kill
these refugees, but a comparison may be instituted with the way in which the
Turks formerly got rid of dogs at Constantinople by landing them on an island
where they died of hunger and thirst.” According to Rumbold, Turkish officials
told Ward that “in 1915 Turks had not made a clean job of massacres . . . next
time Turks would take care to do their work thoroughly.”267
Trabzon and its hinterland were a focus of the new deportations. In 1921
the deportation plans had been suspended there because of protests by local
notables.268 At one point the Trabzon Turks had collected hundreds of Chris-
tian boys aged eleven to fourteen and imprisoned them “in a filthy dungeon
underground” from which they were to be sent to an “internment camp” near
Cevizlik. But prominent Cevizlik Turks came to Trabzon to protest against
the “unparalleled inhumanity” at the camp. They were “beaten and sent away,”
but Trabzon’s mayor was said to have done what he could to “protect little
boys,” and the vali also reportedly “opposed . . . massacres and persecutions.”
However, he ultimately was “powerless,” according to Rumbold. “His
pre de ces sor tried” to halt the atrocities “and was removed.”269 By early
May 1922, Rumbold wrote, “the whole Greek male population from the age
of 15 upwards” was “being deported.”270 An American related that they
were being deported in groups of fifty every few days. “This will continue
until the entire Greek male population” is gone, he was told by a party un-
named in the available documentation.271
With the men gone, the women who remained were forced, at least for a
time, to become breadwinners. But there were no fields to work: either they
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
had been confiscated or were too dangerous to venture to. So they and their
children begged in the streets or worked as hamals (porters) and “perform[ed]
other duties” typically carried out by men.272 There was constant sexual pre-
dation. The missionary Ethel Thompson noticed that girls “disfigured their
faces with dye to hide their good looks.” The Turks “boasted openly of the
number of women they had taken.”273
Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons, who taught at Robert College and reported
for the Christian Science Monitor, left a striking description of Trabzon in May.
Almost all the Armenians were gone, he said. In 1919 the Turks began to
“slowly— yavaş yavaş”— deal with the Greeks. After the men were deported, Trabzon was left, in spring 1922, with “half a dozen priests and ten other
men and boys”; there was “not one doctor . . . [or] teacher.” It was left to
women to “eke out a living . . . digging ditches, acting as masons’ helpers,
and . . . [as] longshoremen in the port.” Gibbons also found that “a few
shops are run by Greek women.”
At this stage the Turks were “ going after the little boys”:
It used to be conscription that was invoked as an excuse to take the men.
When they got down to deporting the boys from 15 to 18, the Turks said
that it was to give them preliminary training. Now—as I write— they . . .
are seizing the boys from 11 to 14. The poor little kiddies are gathered
together like cattle, and driven through the streets to the Government
House, where they are put in a filthy dungeon. . . . If pre ce dent is fol-
lowed, these children will follow their elders to a barbed wire enclosure
in the vicinity of Cevizlik . . . where they will regrettably die of an
epidemic. . . . No food is given [ there].
Gibbons added that there were a great many “good Turks.” These include
Trabzon Mayor Hussein Effendi, and the vali, Ebou Beker Hakim Bey, both
of who opposed the persecution. “The Anatolian Turk is a fine fellow, who,
unless incited to it by an appeal to his fanat i cism, wouldn’t hurt a fly. But the great mass of Turks are unfortunately ignorant and indolent— and they can
be . . . — despite their instinctive kindliness and tolerance— worked upon to
do the most terrible things” when the “mob spirit is aroused.”274
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
It was just such a spirit that befell the Trabzon vilayet village of Cevizlik.
On its outskirts, two women witnessed seventeen men beheaded. Thereafter,
they related to Near East Relief, “The soldiers ran a bayonet through from
one ear to the other, a long stick was placed through each head, and then the
soldiers paraded before the officers with these heads. . . . These two women
also saw four girls from fifteen to eigh teen years of age taken by officers for
immoral purposes” and then “put to death.” In addition there were “three
children, nine, ten and twelve years of age killed before the[ir] eyes.”275
By June 1922 American missionaries were reporting from the Pontus that
all the villages were empty.276
Convoys
As bad as the situation became in the towns and villages of the Pontus, sources
indicate that most loss of life occurred on the road. As one missionary put it,
the Turks sought the same outcome for the Greeks as they had the Armenians
during the world war, but the Turks were “trusting to starvation and expo-
sure to do the work of the sword.”277
An estimated 70,000 Pontus deportees passed through Sivas, the women
and children “hungry, cold, sick, almost naked, vermin- covered.” According
to Theda Phelps, a missionary who witnessed the convoys, about 1,000–2,000
Christians arrived each week in such a state that “they little resembled human
beings.” The authorities allowed Near East Relief to open temporary shelters
