by Benny Morris
remaining Turkey respectively.” 605
But while Sèvres was a dead letter, the idea of exchange was not. Many
observers, from a variety of po liti cal persuasions, felt it was a worthwhile
endeavor. Arnold Toynbee, who sympathized with the Turkish National-
ists, grudgingly approved.606 The missionary William Peet, who tended to
sympathize with the Christians, thought that, to assure a lasting peace, it
was necessary that the minorities emigrate each to “the area controlled by
people of their own race.” 607 The great powers agreed. Nansen, the League
of Nations High commissioner for refugees, thought that to “unmix the
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
populations . . . will tend to secure the true pacification of the Near
East.” 608 For his part, Rendel dispensed with politic language. He knew the
prob lem was principally Turkey’s be hav ior toward its Greeks. “We are no
longer able to obtain any effective protection for the Greek minorities in
Turkey, and the Kemalists are adopting a policy of violent xenophobia which
makes them eager to expel or other wise eliminate all non- Turkish ele ments,”
he wrote in November 1922. “It is therefore an urgent matter to provide for
the departure of the remaining Greek minorities from Anatolia.” Rendel
hoped this would include detained army- age men, prisoners of war, and
“Islamized” Christian women and children in Turkish homes.609
The British ambassador in Athens, Francis Lindley, had proposed the ex-
change idea afresh in February 1922.610 But Venizelos was troubled by the pro-
spective demographic asymmetry. There were only 200,000 Turks in
Greece, he said in mid-October, but there were 800,000–900,000 Greeks in
Eastern Thrace and Constantinople. A one- for- one exchange would leave
hundreds of thousands of Greeks in Turkey. That would be no solution to
the minorities prob lem.611 Others believed the population figures were less
divergent, though, and the numbers were changing radically in the last
months of 1922, as hundreds of thousands of Greeks fled Turkey or were ex-
pelled. In November 1922 the British Legation in Athens estimated that
about 500,000 Muslims lived in Greece.612 That same month Rendel esti-
mated that 500,000–600,000 Greeks remained in Asia Minor, most of them
detained army- aged men and young women and children.613
Formal consideration of an exchange began in late 1922, during the Laus-
anne negotiations and hard on the heels of the exodus from Smyrna. The Al-
lied high commissioners discussed the idea with Nansen. Both the Greek
and Turkish governments “seemed to agree . . . in princi ple,” Rumbold said.
From the beginning the Turks wanted “all Greeks” to leave, from Constanti-
nople as well as Anatolia. French High Commissioner Maurice Pellé objected
that Greece couldn’t accommodate so many arrivals.614 The high commis-
sioners and Nansen agreed to call on the two governments to set up a joint
commission, with League of Nations representatives, to iron out the details.615
When Nansen met the Nationalists’ Hamid Bey in Constantinople on
October 31, 1922, that city’s Greeks remained the major sticking point.
The Turks still sought a “compulsory exchange of whole of Mussulman
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
inhabitants now living in Greece, Macedonia and islands etc. for total Greek
population in Turkish dominions including Constantinople.” 616 Greece still
wanted Constantinople’s Greeks exempted.617 Nansen submitted a seventeen-
article draft treaty, which omitted Constantinople’s Greeks from the terms
of exchange.618 The Turks turned it down and the negotiation collapsed. If
there was to be an exchange agreement, it would have to be within the wider
framework of Lausanne, which would enable the kind of horse- trading nec-
essary to reach a deal.619
There were areas of complication aside from the fate of Constantinople
Greeks. One concerned the potential transferees themselves: not all wanted
to move, in spite of the persecution they had experienced. There were many
Muslims in Greece, some of them Greek- speaking, who wanted to stay. The
largest concentration was in Macedonia. Toward the end of 1922, as Turkish
pressure on Anatolia’s Greeks mounted and the idea of compulsory exchange
took hold, the Greeks began to pressure Macedonia’s Muslims to leave. The
government billeted refugees in Muslim villages, requisitioned houses, ex-
tracted money and goods from Muslims for refugee upkeep, and used troops
to aggressively disarm Muslims. Occasionally there were beatings and rapes.
“The great majority of the Turkish- speaking Moslems now wish to go,” an
American observer reported.620 But beyond Macedonia were many Turks who
refused to decamp.621 In Crete, Muslim landowners wished to stay (while
working class Turks were eager to leave).622 At the same time, many Greek
refugees, after months of exile and harsh conditions, wanted to return to Asia
Minor come what may. In January 1923 refugees demonstrated in Athens
against the prospective agreement, which would see them permanently reset-
tled in Greece.623 One Westerner reported from a refugee camp in Greece,
“All are longing to return to Asia Minor, which they regard as their country. . . .
The terrors of the Smyrna flames would appear to be short lived.” 624
Whereas Turkey opposed the repatriation of Greek refugees and de-
manded that the exchange be compulsory, the Allies and Greece hoped for a
voluntary exchange. Ultimately, the two sides met in the middle: exchange
would be compulsory, with some exceptions. Greeks could stay in Con-
stantinople if they wished, and Muslims in Western Thrace.625 On the matter
of compulsion, Curzon said, “All those who had studied the matter most
closely seemed to agree that the suffering entailed, great as it must be,
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
would be repaid by the advantages which would ultimately accrue to both
countries from a greater homogeneity of population and from the removal of
old and deep- rooted causes of quarrel.” 626 (Real ity took a path quite dif-
fer ent from the one envisioned in the population exchange. Today about
100,000 Muslims live in Western Thrace, while steady Turkish pressure has
reduced the Greek population of Constantinople to insignificance. In 1955
tens of thousands fled after a large- scale pogrom, and in 1964 the Turks ex-
pelled thousands of residents who held Greek passports. Today, Constanti-
nople’s Greek population numbers some 2,000.627)
The final agreement, an annex to the Lausanne Treaty known as the
Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, also
provided for the release and repatriation of able- bodied Greek detainees—
“hostages” and prisoners of war. And property lost on both sides would be
assessed and compensated to a degree. But the convention made no mention
of Greek women and children in Muslim homes.628 The accord was extremely
unpop u lar in Greece, partly because the country was already chockful of
refugees.629
Within days of signing, the Turks violated the language and spirit of the
agreement with “fresh deportations” from the Pontus in advance of the ex-
change’s implementation date. The Turks maintained that the Pontine Greeks
were leaving of their own accord.630 The Greeks countered by holding back
repatriation of civilian hostages and Turkish prisoners of war.631 The Turks
responded in kind.632 The Greeks then threatened to expel Muslims to make
room for the Greeks being expelled.633 Bizarrely, even at this late date Bristol
appeared to believe that the Turks would allow exiled Christians to return and
that they would want to. “By taking an oath of allegiance to the new Turkish
Government,” they might “reestablish themselves in the properties that they
had abandoned,” he wrote.634
The exchange convention was activated slowly. People were moving on
their own, but lack of funds, housing, and transport slowed the formal pro-
cess. Although implementation was officially set to begin on May 1, 1923, no
transfers took place until after the League of Nations Commission for the
Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations convened on October 8. Its
members anticipated that “some years” would pass before the convention’s
full execution.635
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
The first installment of the exchange, supervised by NER, took place in
October– November 1923. From Mitylene, 7,024 Muslims and their livestock
were ferried to Ayvalık. From the Pontus, 7,491 Greeks were shipped to
Greece. The embarkation at Samsun was rough- edged. There were police
searches and robberies on the quays, though the malefactors were eventually
arrested. In both Samsun and Trabzon, NER had to pay tolls for the quays
and quarantine— payments the Greeks did not exact from departing Turks.636
The ships to Greece were overcrowded.637 Morgenthau, now heading the in-
ternational Refugee Settlement Commission orchestrating aid for Greek trans-
ferees, described the arrival in Salonica of one boatload: “A more tragic sight
could scarcely be imagined. I saw 7,000 crowded in a ship that would have
been taxed to normal capacity with 2,000. They were packed like sardines . . . , a squirming writhing mass of human misery. They had been at sea for four
days. . . . There had been no food . . . ; there was no access to any toilet. . . .
They came ashore in rags, hungry, sick, covered with vermin, hollow- eyed,
exhaling the horrible odor of human filth— bowed with despair.” 638 For their
part, Turks coming from Mitylene complained of Greek “terrorism.” 639 Rendel
dismissed this as “propaganda.” 640
The Turks often mismanaged the absorption of their refugees. In Smyrna
“the immigrants are greeted on arrival with tea and cakes, speeches and flags,
and then sent up country very often to starve,” the British consul- general said.
Some Cretan Muslims, after reaching Smyrna, crossed over to Mitylene and
“implored to be admitted back into Greece even at the price of conversion to
Chris tian ity.” 641 In some places, Turks were unhappy with the resettlement
in their midst of Muslims from Macedonia or Crete. In place of “Turkey for
the Turks,” they raised the cry of “Anatolia for the Anatolians.” 642 In Greece,
too, where matters were better or ga nized, the immediate lot of the new trans-
ferees was not always happy. They arrived destitute, and Greece had few
resources with which to assist them.643
The Last Wave
By the end of 1923, Christians had been almost completely cleansed from
Anatolia. From a population of several million before the de cade of systematic
deportation and massacre, just a few tens of thousands remained, most of them
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
in its southeastern corner. A larger Christian concentration, in the hundreds of
thousands, remained in Constantinople. All were subjected to intimidation.
In Constantinople, where Turkey had reluctantly agreed that Greeks would
enjoy residence and security, well- to-do Greeks were “subjected to a per sis-
tent form of blackmail. The majority of Greeks pay up. The blackmail usually
takes the form of subscriptions to schools, etc. which do not exist. . . . No one dares to complain. . . . The poorer class of Greek, the small shop keeper, is
usually turned out of his shop and a Turk installed in his place.” Off the coast,
“the majority of shop keep ers on the islands . . . have been arrested and taken
to Ismid. Fourteen Armenians, including a doctor, were taken from Maltepe
to Ismid and hanged for treason. All the Greeks who cannot pay the military
ser vice exemption tax are escaping as fast as pos si ble. It seems quite plain
here that every thing is being done to drive the Greeks away.” 644
On occasion intimidation took a spontaneous form. On October 6, 1923,
the day Turkish troops took over Constantinople from the Allied occupation,
a Turkish mob rushed Taksim Square, tearing down awnings in blue and
white, the colors of the Greek flag. “All Greek signs” were removed. The
Turkish public was taking a vigilante approach to the enforcement of new reg-
ulations requiring that “all notices and signs in a foreign language” be re-
moved from Constantinople. In addition, “quite frequently some Turk would
knock a hat from a civilian’s head and tramp on it. Many women were insulted.”
But by and large, the police curtailed vio lence.645
In Anatolia the remaining Christian pockets faced more direct intimida-
tion, ending in expulsion. In early 1924 the authorities launched a general
round-up aimed at clearing the Urfa, Mardin, and Diyarbekir districts. This
was to be “the last clean sweep of Christians from the Ottoman domin-
ions,” according to the British consul in Aleppo. “So much for the minority
provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne,” Rendel wrote.646
The pro cess was, by now, entirely familiar. In March the Turks imposed
severe restrictions on Christians, mostly Assyrians, in the Diyarbekir- Mardin
area.647 Perhaps hoping to intimidate Christians into flight, the Turks also
floated the idea that Armenians would no longer be allowed to live east of a
line between Samsun and Lefke and that Greeks would be barred from reset-
tling outside Constantinople in the future, which the exchange agreement did
not stipulate.648 British diplomats wrote that Turks were engaged in “secret
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
terrorism and victimization” and were seizing all Christian buildings and en-
dowments in eastern Turkey.649
Other tried- and- true methods included boycotts and murder. In February
or March 1924, five Armenians were killed in Urfa. During the subsequent
deportations, Armenians were allowed to take only “the clothes they stand
in.” 650 In September it was reported that “no native Christians remain in Sam-
soun.” The lone church ser vice on Sundays was performed by a Catholic
priest, with only foreigners attending.651 A British official travelling in southern Turkey that month reported seeing 2,000 Greek and Armenian refugees living
in cattle trucks at Yenice in “the most filthy conditions.” They had almost no
food and were left to eat melon rinds. At Mersin the official saw a camp with
some ten-
thousand Christian refugees, plagued by disease, consuming water
“unfit to drink.” They were prob ably awaiting shipment to Greece within the
framework of the exchange agreement.652
During September– October 1924 the exchange pro cess experienced a
snag. The trou ble was compulsory transfer to Greece of those the Turks
deemed nonresident Greeks in Constantinople. The Turks did not consider
them “established residents” (établis), because they were not included in the Constantinople Civil Registers before October 30, 1918. Perhaps a hundred-thousand of the city’s Greeks were so registered, leaving thousands open to
deportation according to the Turkish definitions.653 Acting unilaterally, the
Turks on October 18 rounded up 4,500 “exchangeables” and interned them
at Balıkli. “One pro cession,” the London Times reported, “was headed by a baker’s boy, still white with flour and holding a loaf. In another convoy was a
child suffering from smallpox who was dragged in a bed.” 654 Before the
League of Nations ruled on the matter, the Turks shipped out more than
3,000 Constantinople Greeks.655
Other wise the exchange proceeded smoothly. In December Greece re-
ported that about 150,000 Greeks had moved to Greece between October 7
and the end of November under the terms of the agreement. Another 28,000
“non- exchangeables,” as defined by Greece, left for Greece between
October 7, 1923, and November 30, 1924. These joined the more than 1.2
million who had left for Greece since August 26, 1922. By mid-1926 about
189,000 Greeks had moved from Turkey to Greece and 355,000 Muslims,
mostly Turks, from Greece to Turkey under the agreement.656
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
Greeks Kill Turks
All Western observers agreed that Turkish atrocities against Greeks during
1919–1923 were “on a very much greater scale than those committed by the
Greeks.” 657 But there were, to be sure, several series of Greek atrocities.
Starting with the May 1919 invasion of Smyrna, Greek irregulars and the
Greek army deported Turkish villa gers and townspeople, looted and torched
villages, and occasionally murdered and raped. The atrocities occurred in
waves, usually linked to Greek military advances or retreats, and to Turkish
