by Benny Morris
conceal.” But in other ways, “pains had been taken . . . to remove anything in
the way of evidence.” For example, deportees were removed from towns he was
about to visit.309 An American missionary, Jeannie Jillson, told visiting Amer-
ican naval officers about one attempted cover-up. The story began with a
handful of Armenian men and women deported from Bursa to Mudanya. The
Turks executed the men. An American identified as “Captain Coocher” pho-
tographed the bodies. The Turks then attempted to confiscate the photos. A
man carry ing Coocher’s mailbag was then arrested in Mudanya but managed
to escape and return the mailbag to Coocher.310
In 1922 the Turks began to evict “all orphans over the age of fifteen” from
the missionary orphanages. This meant that young girls were “thrown into
the streets and either face[d] starvation, or a return to their former position
of slaves to Turks. . . . Many of the boys would[,] . . . to get a living[,] have to work for Turks and eventually become Moslems,” a missionary wrote.311
The Turks also brutally mistreated the Greek soldiers they took as pris-
oners of war. The facts of the situation emerged mainly after PoWs were
exchanged in 1923 once the Greco- Turkish hostilities concluded. An inter-
national commission— consisting of Swedish, Swiss, British, French, Italian,
and Greek officers— questioned soldiers returned from captivity. Their de-
positions were more or less identical. Turkish troops often murdered sur-
rendering Greeks, peasants attacked and often robbed them of clothing,
and guards murdered stragglers. Sometimes the prisoners’ genitals were cut
off and stuffed in their mouths. Officers were often taken aside and executed,
as were prisoners with Anatolian or Thracian accents, whom the Turks re-
garded as traitors. PoWs were routinely subjected to hard labor; “our guards
whipped us with zest,” one testified. All were ill- fed, and many died of dis-
ease. Bodies were not buried but instead thrown into ditches. Turkish
troops often extracted gold fillings and sometimes killed prisoners in the
pro cess.312 One Greek officer later wrote that Turkish civilians “bought”
Greek PoWs for five or fifty piastres, “according to rank,” and then threw
them off cliffs and shot at them as they fell. The officer complained that, in the West, there was a “conspiracy of silence” about Turkish “barbarity.”313
According to the international commission, some 54,000 Greek soldiers
went missing during the war. Of these, 20,000 were massacred by Turkish
mobs on the way to prison camps. Of the 32,000 that the Turks admitted
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
taking prisoner, more than half died in captivity. Of more than 2,000 officers
captured, only 750 were alive in summer 1923.314
The Destruction of Smyrna
Smyrna was burned to the ground by Muslim conquerors in 1084 and 1130,
and in 1402 Tamerlane razed it once more. He slaughtered many of its Chris-
tian inhabitants, in line with the Prophet Mohammed’s instruction, “When
you encounter a nonbeliever, strike his neck.”315 It would burn again in 1922,
immediately after the Nationalists retook the city from the Greek army.
In the aftermath of World War I, and for de cades preceding, Smyrna was
the largest city in western Anatolia and Turkey’s main commercial center on
the Aegean. According to the general man ag er’s office of the Ottoman Railway,
in early 1921 Smyrna had a population of 411,000, dominated by Greeks
(205,000) and Turks (161,000). There were also 15,000 Armenians and
30,000 Jews, not to mention thousands of expatriate Italians, British, French,
and Americans.316 It was a city known for its cosmopolitanism and had not
been a site of significant anti- Armenian vio lence during the war.
Yet ethnic tension was hardly unknown in Smyrna, and, following the
signing of the 1918 armistice, the Greek and Turkish communities were on
edge. Both were arming, and violent incidents between Muslim muhacirs and
returning Greeks were becoming routine. In December 1918 Muslims re-
sponded to a Greek demonstration in nearby Sokia (Söke) by murdering
twelve Greeks. In Pirgi (Chios) Turks murdered the Greek mudir.317 The fol-
lowing February or early March, there was a series of clashes near Sokia after
Turks humiliated a Greek- refugee couple. “They were stripped and paraded
through the village [of Yerenda], the woman riding a horse and the man tied to
its tail.”318
The Turks learned of the Greek landing the day before it happened. Gough-
Calthorpe informed Aydın’s vali, Rahmi Bey, that the Greeks would be oc-
cupying the area on the basis of Article 7 of the armistice agreement. The aim
was to secure law and order, but Lloyd George also hoped to preempt a threat-
ened Italian occupation of the city, pursuant to the Anglo- French promise
embodied in the 1917 Saint Jean de Maurienne Agreement.319 On May 15,
1919, The Greek flotilla was escorted into Smyrna by Allied warships, which
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
also sent ashore small contingents to guard their consulates.320 The local
Turkish commander, General Ali Hadir Pasha, ordered his troops not to re-
sist. They complied, remaining in barracks, as three regiments of Greek troops
occupied the city and its environs.
Local Christians cheered the invaders, while Turks looked on glumly.
Bristol called the occupation “a great crime,” but it enjoyed the overwhelming
support of the vilayet’s Greeks, who had been actively persecuted since
1914.321 The Turks, for their part, feared Greek revenge. Horton feared they
were unwilling to accept their “former slaves” as masters.322 The two groups
“loathe each other,” he said.323 With the occupation of Smyrna, in Churchill’s
later description, Greece had “gained the Empire of her dreams,” but it was to
end in tragedy.324
After the orderly Greek disembarkation, a shot or two rang out; who
fired is unclear. The Greek troops, accompanied by local irregulars, occu-
pied the konak and fired on the barracks. The Turks surrendered. Smyrna’s
officials, including the vali, were removed from their offices, robbed, and de-
tained after suffering jeers and beatings from the crowds. About thirty were
murdered.325 Disarmed troops and officials were then marched to the quay
and put on a steamer, where they were held, with little food or water, for two
to three days before being released. The takeover was accompanied by the
pillage of Turkish shops and houses. Turkish officers were de- fezzed and
beaten and some Turkish shop keep ers and bystanders were killed. The vali
later claimed that some women were raped.326 One local recalled that he
saw about a dozen Turks killed “or kicked into the sea and shot.”327
Toynbee conjectured that at least 200 Turks had been murdered, most or
all by Greek civilians.328
The Greek army eventually restored calm on orders from Gough-
Calthorpe.329 “ Orders were given that all stolen property . . . be returned . . .
or those found in possession . . . would be shot.”330 By mid- August the Greeks
had tried and convicted seventy- four people
for crimes in Smyrna on May
15–16: forty- eight Greeks, thirteen Turks, twelve Armenians, and a Jew.
Three, all Greeks, were condemned to death.331 Local Greeks were unhappy
with these mea sures. In the weeks after the crackdown, Greek villa gers raided
their Turkish neighbors in the Smyrna countryside, stole cattle, and, here and
there, committed murder.332
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
Some Anatolian Greeks volunteered as irregulars, joining the invading Greek army.
Meanwhile, Greek forces were pushing inland. At Nazili, occupied on
June 3, Greek troops exposed “certain parts of their body to the Turkish
women.” According to the Turkish authorities, a Turk who complained was
shot. The Turks further charged that the Greeks systematically searched for
arms, stole belongings, and killed house holders. Near Nazili the Greeks re-
portedly killed forty Turkish hostages. Villages in the area suffered greatly as
they changed hands between warring parties. Over the summer Nazili expe-
rienced heavy shelling. According to the Turks, 200 Muslim girls were raped
and then murdered there, while other villages were torched.333
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
The Turks also accused the Greek army of levelling Aydın town and mas-
sacring civilians there. But the story was more complicated. When Turkish
irregulars retook the town in July, armed locals joined in, firing from rooftops
and win dows at the retreating Greeks. In retaliation, they set fire to the Turkish quarter. The Turks then torched the Greek quarter and massacred the remaining inhabitants. Even Toynbee refused to sugarcoat what the Turks did
to Greek noncombatants: “ Women and children were hunted like rats from
house to house, and civilians . . . were slaughtered in batches— shot or knifed
or hurled over a cliff. . . . Many of the women . . . were violated.”334 The retreating Greek units refused to allow Greek locals to leave with them; they were
subsequently deported to the interior by the Turks. The Turks took thousands
of Greeks hostage in Denizli and Nazili, threatening them with massacre if
more Muslims were killed.335
Nonetheless Constantinople complained to the Allies, submitting a de-
tailed summary of Turkish casualties for investigation. According to the com-
plaint, in “the City of Smyrna and the Surrounding Districts,” 675 Muslims
were massacred and 34 were “lost,” while 13 girls were “ violated.” In Men-
emen kaza 929 Muslims were massacred. In Manisa kaza forty- three Muslims
were killed and eleven girls violated. In Aydın kaza “a few thousand were mas-
sacred, a few thousand wounded and the rest lashed.” More vaguely, the
Turks spoke of “several thousands” more massacred on “vari ous roads . . .
or thrown [in]to the sea.”336
The Allies established a commission of inquiry chaired by Bristol, which
also included three generals, British, French and Italian. They spent August–
October 1919 questioning Allied officers, Turks, and Greeks. Overall, the
commission endorsed the Turkish version of events but also found fault with
the Turks. “The Greek command tolerated the actions of the armed Greek
civilians [in Smyrna] who, on the pretext of helping the Greek troops, freely
pillaged and committed all sorts of excesses,” according to the report. But the
report also charged the Turks with massacring “some Greek families” in
Nazili. The commissions accused the Greeks of “numerous outrages and
crimes” during the evacuation of Aydın, where the Turks, led by one Yuruk
Ali, were charged with torching the Greek quarter. They “pitilessly shot down
a great number of Greeks.” The commission affirmed the Turkish charge of a
Greek massacre in Menemen but said that it wasn’t or ga nized by the Greek
command and was a result of panic. A separate French investigation concluded
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
that 200 Turks had been murdered there.337 The commission made no
mention of some 3,000 Aydın Greeks— men, women, and children—allegedly
murdered, nor of 800 women and children deported inland. “Now Aidin is a
vast cemetery,” the Greek Patriarchate lamented.338
The commission concluded that responsibility for the Greek atrocities lay
chiefly with the Greek army. The Turks were held partially responsible for
what happened in Smyrna city because the local authorities had failed to pre-
vent criminals escaping from prison and taking up arms before the Greek
army arrived. Importantly, the Greek army had advanced beyond the sanjak
of Smyrna, to Aydın, Manisa, and Kasaba, outside the remit of the Allied au-
thorization. The Greek invasion, mounted ostensibly to maintain order, turned
into a “conquest and crusade,” the report said. The commission ruled that
the annexation by Greece of the areas occupied would be “contrary to the
princi ple proclaiming the re spect for nationalities” and proposed that the
Greek army be replaced by Allied troops.339
Although the report blamed mutual “religious hatred” for persecution on
both sides, it was hardly impartial. Bristol had already reached his conclusion
months before the investigation. In May 1919 he wrote that the Greeks’
be hav ior was “disgraceful,” that “they murdered Turks . . . [and] forced”
captured Turkish troops “to sing out ‘Long live Venizelos’ in the Greek lan-
guage. They killed some of these soldiers [and] . . . killed people and looted
houses and shops in the surrounding villages.”340 The report was never pub-
lished, but it certainly affected Allied officials’ attitudes during the following months.
During the next three years the Greek zone of occupation was relatively
tranquil. Indeed, Horton thought that Smyrna— under newly appointed Greek
high commissioner Aristeidis Stergiadis, a highly efficient, principled, but
temperamental administrator— was “better governed than I have ever seen it,
prob ably better than ever in its history. . . . Stergiadis and his aides are making a great and honest effort to see justice done to Turks . . . and the conduct of
Greek gendarmes . . . throughout the occupied region is worthy to [ sic] all praise.”341
The Greek administrators did their best to maintain law, order, and justice.
They shunned a policy of expulsion, as might have been expected from a
vengeful occupier. Indeed, many local Greeks pressed for expulsions, but the
authorities held firm. The new administration did, however, resettle in the area
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
about 100,000 Greek refugees ejected from Asia Minor during or before the
war.342 This entailed the eviction of many Muslims squatting in Greek homes
and lands. There was a good deal of vio lence as well. Roving Turkish brigand
bands and rebellious villa gers per sis tently attacked Greek villa gers, gendarmes, and troops behind the lines while the Turkish and Greek armies faced off to
the east. This often led to Greek reprisals, sometimes culminating in small
massacres and torching of Turkish villages.343
The three years of Greek rule ended with the Turkish reconquest of Smyrna
in September 1922. The restoration of Turkish control brought massacre and
mass deportation, the destruction of much of the c
ity, and the complete ex-
odus of the remaining Christians of Anatolia. Western residents, diplomats,
naval officers, and missionaries witnessed much of what happened in Smyrna
and recorded in diaries, letters, and memoranda what they had seen or been
told by others.
The crisis began with the defeat of the Greek army at Afyon Karahisar in
the last week of August. The army broke and fled to the coast, funneling mainly
into Smyrna, Ionia’s largest port. On their way westward, Greek soldiers
torched Turkish villages, leaving behind scorched earth. “Inhabitants who
failed to escape were slaughtered,” the British vice- consul reported.344 In some places, it was reported, the Greeks “collected Moslems in mosques to which
they subsequently set fire.”345
The retreating army pulled in its wake a “helter- skelter rush of the bulk of
the Christian population” from the hinterland.346 Some left on orders from
Greek officials. But most simply feared massacre. Chrysostomos, the Greek
Orthodox bishop of Smyrna, had warmly welcomed the Greek landing back
in May 1919 as fulfilling “the desire of centuries.” But he now believed that
“the Greeks will be delivered to . . . destruction. Hundreds of thousands . . .
will perish.”347 Refugees began pouring into Smyrna on September 3. Within
two days its streets were “filled with carts, wagons, vehicles of all kinds that
could carry anything— all loaded with goods and fleeing families . . . trying to
get to steamers. The quay . . . was packed with baggage and people.”348 They
also arrived on trains, the carriages so crowded “that the dead bodies were
passed out at stations on their way.”349
The se nior British officer in Smyrna, Admiral Osmond de Beauvoir Brock,
described the Greek troops passing through on their way to the harbor as an
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
“undisciplined rabble.” But they behaved themselves, contrary to expecta-
tions. Perhaps, Brock suggested, they were too “weary, footsore and dispirited”
to act out.350 Greek administrators “neatly” packed up their rec ords and be-
longings and left. Chrysostomos wrote Venizelos, “Hellenism in Asia Minor,
the Greek state and the entire Greek nation are descending now to a hell.”351 In
