by Benny Morris
the following days, Eu ro pean and American nationals, chaperoned by contin-
gents of their marines and officials, were ferried to their gunboats offshore.
Starting on September 6, the Greek army embarked on ships from Smyrna,
Çeşme, and Vurla. On the eve ning of September 8 the last Greek warship
steamed out of Smyrna. Stergiadis preferred to leave for exile in France aboard
on HMS Iron Duke. He never set foot in Turkey or Greece again.352
Smyrna’s Turks feared massacre, but the evacuation passed smoothly.
There was no vio lence despite the authorities’ apparently “indiscriminate”
arming of the Christian population and despite Christian threats “openly
shouted in all corners of the town.”353
Turkish Occupation and Massacre
The advance guard of the Turkish army, the 1st Cavalry Division, entered
Smyrna at eleven o’clock in the morning, September 9. They were on
horse back at a light trot, swords drawn and four abreast. They encountered
no opposition. “They were a hard, dusty, seasoned looking bunch of men,”
an American officer recorded. “Their uniforms were dirty but their equip-
ment, rifles and sabres were clean.”354 They were “greeted by large throngs
of all people on the quay, and resembled more a parade, rather than a victo-
rious entrance to a conquered city.”355 Thousands of Greeks and Armenians
fled to churches, schools, and consulates for safety, and hundreds congregated
on barges moored in the harbor.356 At the dockside “the cafes and stores were
open and well patronized with calm looking people taking their morning coffee
and reading the papers.”357 Two officers, a Greek and a Turk, rode down
the quay together and tried to reassure the inhabitants.358
At one point a bomb, or bombs, were thrown at the cavalcade, apparently
by Armenians. Several Turks were injured. One or two shots rang out.359 U.S.
Vice- Consul E. C. Hole remarked that the Turkish column was so disciplined
that it didn’t even retaliate. But in the inner streets and alleys, local Turks
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
descended into what one observer called “hooliganism.”360 As many as 150
Armenians were murdered, and Turkish soldiers, who began to deploy around
town, raped many Armenian women.361 Turks fired at a Greek church,
killing several Christians.362 An American naval captain described what he
saw that day:
On my after noon round the . . . killing was apparent. On nearly every
street were lying bodies of men of all ages . . . most of whose wounds were
from . . . close ranged shots . . . in the face or in the back. There
were no uniformed Turks in these shooting parties. . . . The Armenian
quarter being infested with Turks in civilian clothes with rifles and
shotguns, . . . [the Turks would] halt a man, rifle his pockets while two
held him and then . . . they fired. I saw three killings. . . . As day pro-
gressed the shooting became more frequent[,] likewise [the] dead.363
That night Turks began looting the Armenian quarter and “killing the in-
habitants.”364 The Turkish commanders promised Western representatives
they would restrain their people and on September 10 proclaimed that
“anyone who killed a Christian would be executed.” Some Turkish officers
tried to maintain order.365 But with the arrival that day of the 8th Infantry
Division, robbery and looting by troops and locals multiplied. One missionary
wrote that as the column of infantrymen passed her house in the suburb of
Paradise (Cennet Çeşme), “we saw groups of five or six drop out of line, break
into all the houses on the corner, come out laden with all they could carry and
drop back into the marching column.” The Turkish guards assigned to the
missionary International College even “robbed our little old grocer.”366
Lieutenant Commander H. E. Knauss of the U.S. Navy drove south to
Paradise that day and recorded: “En route we passed many dead on streets. . . .
The smaller shops were being looted. Invariably, the owner was lying dead. . . .
An old woman about seventy years old was still kneeling but dead and later
another old woman was lying dead in [a] ditch. . . . In an enclosure, several
small Turkish boys were throwing stones at a man shot through the head and
evidently not quite dead.” Knauss later toured the Armenian quarter “and
found many new bodies along streets that were not there on my morning
inspection.” Looting was widespread, “by irregulars, regular civilians and
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
brigands. There were no Turkish officers seen.” He witnessed “four people
killed in cold blood.”367
In Smyrna’s suburbs, “many Greek houses were in flames, and the corpses
of men, and some women, also were frequently seen.” In the harbor Turkish
tugs pulled in the barges filled with fleeing Christians, and the men aged eigh-
teen to forty- five were “taken off and marched in companies to the konak.”
Dr. Wilfred Post, an NER worker, wrote, “We saw a number of recently killed
men strewn along the quay. We heard many shots in the direction of the konak,
and were afterwards told that a considerable number of these unfortunate men
had been executed.”368 According to one witness, the Turks set alight one of
the barges killing hundreds.369
One of those murdered on September 10 was Bishop Chrysostomos. He
had been summoned to the konak to meet the new military governor, 1st Army
Commander Nureddin Pasha. The general reportedly spat on the bishop’s out-
stretched hand and handed him over to a waiting mob, who cut off his beard,
gouged out his eyes, and cut off his ears, nose, and hands before finishing him
off.370 His body was then dragged through the streets and hacked to pieces by
“the infuriated rabble.”371 Nureddin, “a forceful, ambitious, xenophobic and
cruel soldier,” had during the world war been military commandant in Ionia,
possibly responsible for the expulsion of Greeks from the coast.372
That same day, Mustafa Kemal arrived in Smyrna for a conference with
Nureddin. That eve ning Turkish commanders discussed “the deportation of
the Armenians.”373 Kemal may have attended and “authorized pillage,” which
that night went “from bad to worse.”374 The conclave’s decisions were trans-
lated into action the following morning, September 11. Turkish soldiers cor-
doned off the Armenian quarter and began “a systematic hunt.” Turkish troops
moved from house to house, flushing out and robbing inhabitants and raping
women. A large number of Christian men were shot, and women and children
were then “herded together and marched away.”375 One Turkish witness re-
called, “Almost every night the Greek men were being taken in groups past
our doorstep, with their hands tied. . . . They were taken up to the mountains
and shot.”376 In the eve ning the troops were ordered to use cold steel rather
than live fire, apparently to avoid attention.377
According to one Eu ro pean, who left town on September 14 after Turks
had murdered his mother and caused the suicide of his two sisters, hundreds
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
&nbs
p; of Armenians were murdered in St. Stephano Church, some of them burnt
alive.378 NER’s William Peet wrote that he was told by an eyewitness that the
Armenians “ were hunted like rabbits.”379 Knauss described a rape- murder of
a fifteen- year- old girl witnessed by one of his men: “The Turks had taken
[her] from her father and mother into an alley. Her shrieks were plainly
heard, then the Turks returned and one of them wiped a bloody knife on the
mother’s forearm, then led them down the street.”380 Armenians that day
“ were gathered together by groups of 100, marched to the konak . . . and put
to death.”381 Other groups of Armenians and Greeks were “marched out of
the city to face firing squads.”382 Horton reported that Americans had seen
“nine cartloads of dead bodies” being taken away near the konak.383 Horton
was deeply affected. An Armenian witness described him as “the saddest
man” in Smyrna.384
Post, of NER, and other leading Americans— Jaquith, vice- consul Maynard
Barnes, Lieutenat A. S. Merrill, Major C. Claflin Davis of the American Red
Cross, and Arthur Japy Hepburn, Bristol’s naval chief of staff— met with
Nureddin that after noon. Echoing Bristol’s thinking, Hepburn said “the best
solution” was a return of the refugees to their homes with a guarantee of safety.
Nureddin dismissed this as “out of the question.”385 Post later described the
meeting as “far from satisfactory.” The pasha was in a “fanatical and cynical
mood” and said “that what ever the troops in Smyrna might do, was as nothing
[compared] to what the Greeks had done in the interior.” He “emphatically
said that the Turks had no further use for the Christian population.”386 “Bring
ships and take them out of the country. It is the only solution,” Hepburn re-
ported Nureddin as saying.387 According to Davis, Nureddin had in mind not
only the refugees in Smyrna but all the Christians of Anatolia. Davis cabled
Bristol that eve ning: “Believe this is final decision [of the] Nationalist
Government as solution of race prob lem.”388 The American officers, again
reflecting Bristol’s views, made clear that they cared about the safety of
American nationals but were not interested in the fate of the Ottoman Chris-
tians. They pressed Western journalists to report that the Turks were be-
having appropriately toward Smyrna’s population.389
That day or the next, Kemal, at a meeting with Barnes and Lieutenant Com-
mander Halsey Powell, the se nior U.S. naval officer in situ, echoed Nureddin’s
position. “Each individual Turk and each individual Greek are now enemies,”
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
he said. “In the past it was the rule . . . that the Turk and the Greek lived to-
gether in peace and in friendship. But this has all been changed by the Greek
occupation and by the irregularities committed during this occupation, and
later during the evacuation of the Greek army. The situation now demands that
the Greeks and the Armenians leave Anatolia.”390
At his meeting with the Americans, Nureddin had assured them that he
would issue a proclamation to restore order. The order was duly issued, but
the looting and murder continued. Post recorded:
Almost every street was blocked by a mass of debris from the looted
houses . . . and there were numerous corpses. . . . Not one Armenian
house in five had escaped. . . . On looking more closely at the houses
I saw written in chalk, in Turkish characters, on a number of them . . . the
words “Jewish house”— evidently a warning to the looters to re spect
non- Christian property, and a clear indication that the destruction had
been carefully and systematically planned. Here and there young girls
were being led away by the soldiers.
By the time of the meeting, the men had all been detained, and “multitudes
of women and children had been driven out of the Christian quarters of the
city.” Some hid in cellars for fear of marauding bands. “The stench from dead
bodies was everywhere . . . the filth in the schools, churches and other places
where refugees were . . . huddle[d] together was indescribable.”391
Thousands of refugees were concentrated in havens in the Armenian
quarter and on the waterfront: consulates, schools, relief institutions, and the
American Tobacco Com pany ware house. But these quickly became over-
crowded, forcing many to remain outside. Minnie Mills, an American mis-
sionary, observed men and women seeking entry into her building. Some, she
said, were killed “ under our win dows.”392
Already on September 10, the Turkish military had overrun the Greek Hos-
pital, “taken the patients out, and laid them in the street, saying that they
could look after themselves.”393 The looting, by civilians and soldiers, went
on for days. Nureddin told complaining Westerners that “the troops were
promised” a free hand.394 One missionary later wrote, “I did not know then
that a victorious army over here is allowed three days of looting.”395 Hepburn
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
commented that “it was apparent to every body that order could be restored
within two hours if the authorities” so deci ded.396
On September 11 Turkish troops and brigands occupied Paradise. They
looted houses and severely beat the Canadian president of International Col-
lege, Alexander MacLachlan, who was robbed of his coat, trousers, shoes,
watch, and gold ring. A Turkish officer saved him as he was about to be killed.397
MacLachlan, incidentally, was among the many Westerners in Smyrna
who in 1919 had protested in advance against the prospective Greek
occupation.398
On September 12, 1922, the second day of the systematic massacre, the
Turks behaved “more discreetly.”399 Or as Barnes put it, “bayonets and knives
had largely supplanted the rifle and revolver.” Again, the focus was on the Ar-
menians. “The Greek, relatively speaking, remained unmolested,” Barnes
reported. Perhaps the Turks were influenced by the presence of Greek and
Allied gunboats offshore, or maybe they worried that Allied intervention was
still a possibility, if a remote one. The Armenians enjoyed sympathy but, un-
like the Greeks, had no allies.
The killings continued for days, but on a reduced scale. Barnes witnessed
a particularly cruel murder on the morning of September 14:
I saw on the quay, circulating through the refugees in search of Arme-
nians, five groups of Turkish civilians armed with clubs then already cov-
ered in blood. One of these groups fell upon an Armenian and clubbed
him to death. The proceeding was brutal beyond belief. I do not believe
there was a bone unbroken in the body when it was dragged to the edge of
the quay and kicked into the sea. In this group were boys of no more
than twelve or thirteen . . . each with his club, participating . . . as heartily as did the more mature individuals. One of the men . . . explained that
the victim was an Armenian, and then he shrugged his shoulders.
Barnes was an evenhanded observer, in the sense that he did not perceive
criminality only on the part of Turks. “During these d
ays,” he wrote, refer-
ring to September 9–13, “the Armenians continued to throw bombs and to
snipe.”400 But no other eyewitnesses recalled this. E. M. Yantis, man ag er of
the Gary Tobacco Com pany in Smyrna, claimed later that the be hav ior of
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
Turkish regulars was generally impeccable, responsibility for the killings
lying with civilians and brigands.401 The weight of eyewitness testimony is
decidedly against him.
Among the “outstanding features of the Smyrna horror,” Horton wrote, was
“ wholesale violation of women and girls.” The charge is based on the find-
ings of M. C. Elliott, an American physician who examined “hundreds” of
girls during and after the massacre.402 Charles Dobson, a New Zealand pastor,
described gang rape by troops as “typical.” On September 13 or 14, aboard
the Bavarian in Smyrna Harbor, he met “a woman and her daughter, each of whom had been ravished by fifteen Turkish soldiers.” On September 12 he
had seen carts loaded with “bodies of women and babies and also of young
girls who had patently been violated before being killed.”403
Some analysts, such as Rendel, thought “the massacres . . . may be regarded
to a large extent as retaliation for the widespread destruction caused by the
Greek army in its disorderly retreat.”404 Mark Prentiss, an NER man and New
York Times correspondent, implied the same when he tele grammed that after the fall of Smyrna he travelled through territory evacuated by the Greeks and
found villages “sacked burned. Have interviewed many old men and boys
beaten shot stabbed and girls outraged by Greek soldiers.”405 But while there
is no doubt that Greeks committed crimes against Turks in the course of their
occupation and withdrawal, the Turkish be hav ior in Smyrna cannot be con-
sidered merely retaliatory. Turks, after all, had been massacring, raping, and
plundering Christians for de cades.
The Fire
When a large fire broke out in Smyrna on September 13, few were surprised.
In Turkey—as in many other places— scorched- earth tactics were a familiar
component of armed conflict. During World War I, Turks often accused Ar-
menians of “setting huge fires” in towns they were evacuating.406 In Au-
