Greeks in 1919 and the burning of Smyrna

[Prokomenos]

I had written this article on my web site HellenicLife.net which I dont have it up and running at this time. Im doing a whole new lay out on it but regardless I did some interesting readings on this subject mostly involving the events surround 1919 and the Greeks in Smyrna. What I did was read a few sources and put down parts of the books some in my own words and some in the names of the authors.

[Prokomenos]

The Greeks In Turkey

The Beginning

The year of 1922 in Smyrna , Turkey was a nightmare for the ethnic Greeks who inhabited those lands for a thousands of years before the Turk came to existence or even set foot on that land. Also Armenians were a big population as well who had lived on the land for a thousand years. Smyrna was considered the land of Greek legends. Some even speculated that it was the land in which Homer was born, and one of the main reasons why he wrote the Odyssey. Above all Smyrna back then was a city of wealth, and under Byzantine rule it was a gateway between the east and the west and was also considered the most beautiful city in Asia. In 1084 the Seljuk Turks invaded and destroyed the city, turning it to ruins. In the year of 1402 Tamerlaine slaughtered the inhabitants and set fire to the buildings. In the cover of night while the inhabitants were asleep, his men found a way through the city's walls. The supposedly defenders of Smyrna, the Knights of Saint John fled like cowards and boarded their ships, while the inhabitants panicked not knowing what to do. Tamerlaine ordered over a thousand prisoners beheaded and with their skulls created a monument to his honor. After twenty two years the Ottoman Turks were in control of the city. Eventually the Turks which means as a term which means lowly, conquered much more land and as it progressed it reached the borders of the west. Many Byzantine Greeks left and went towards the west fearing for their lives, and for forceful conversion to Islam. But eventually Turks came to occupy most of Greece as well many European countries particularly in the Balkans.

The Christians who lived under the Ottoman occupation consisted of farmers, merchants and professional men, while the Muslims were nothing more but ruthless warriors and basically ran the , civil service and the government. The Ottomans realized that without the Christians their empire would eventually collapse. After the fall of all Constantinople the Turks pillaged the city for three days, eventually killing many of the inhabitants of the city. Pillaging and murdering of all the city and most of their inhabitations is customary in Islam. Further more the Christians were prevented of leaving and gave the Christians Patriarchs full autonomy for the internal affairs of all Christians.

All the non-Muslims were referred to as sheep and most commonly infidels which followers of Islam still consider all non-Muslims till this day. Also all the Christians were controlled by the invaders to demonstrate their inferiority. Before the nineteenth century the Christians under Turkish rule were horrible. Their houses could not be of equal as a Muslim house. They were only allowed to build on lower land and also were not allowed to decorate their houses either. They were not allowed to ride horses. Their clothing had to be plain and mad out of dark material so they can be separated from Muslims. They were not allowed to build new churches, they had to pay higher taxes which was basically making them poor. The unbelievers (Christians) had to give up their sons to the Sultan which were brainwashed, converted to Islam and then became Sultan's personal bodyguard that were called janissaries.

In 1912 the Greeks, Serbians and the Bulgars united and drove the Turks off their lands. To the Turks it proved that co existence between Christians and Muslims was impossible. Turkey was pretty much neutral during the beginning of World War One. The Turkish government was split between pro German and pro British. They were mostly for the Brits though for financial reasons. The Brits were building two battleships for the Turkish navy. When the time that war was almost a guarantee, Winston Churchill did not allow the two ships to be send to Turkey for fear that if the Turks would side with Germany, they would obviously be used to attack the British. The Turks were humiliated by this act so they automatically sided with Germany. Obviously this posed as a major threat to Britain so something had to be done.

The Death Marches

On the 18 of March in 1915, the British tried to attack the Dardanelles and then quit the offensive. The Australians and New Zealand divisions were annihilated at Gallipoli, which signaled future terror against the Greeks and Armenians living in Turkey. Now the Turks had the freedom to do as they pleased which meant serious danger for the Greek and Armenian Christians living in Turkey. The night of April 24 in 1918 the Turkish police in Constantinople grabbed around 600 hundred well respected Armenian citizens from their beds arrested them and send them to prison. After that incident , the Turks very quickly were seizing leaders of very Armenian community after that they would torture them and then eventually kill them. Armenians that were serving in the Turkish army basically as laborers and nothing else, were all taken aside and slaughtered. Once all the Armenian leaders and men were slaughtered the Turks started their so called campaign of deportation like they had done in 1913 to the Greeks of Thrace, which they had killed many Greeks by starvation and exposure to the hot sun.

By 1915 the Turks wanted to quickly eliminate the Armenians they decided they had to do it by hand. On the death marches ( the real name for the Turkish deportation scheme) Muslims were scattered through out the routes and were told to murder Greeks and Armenians freely. Many of the Armenians that fled joined the Russian army, and the Turks used that to their advantage so they can justify the senseless murders that they had or were planning on inflicting to the Armenians specifically. But in all reality the Armenians were fully justified for joining the Russian army what else were they to do, that was the only way they were going to be able to avenge the murder of their women, children and men. Greeks and Armenians were powerless in those regions. According to Morgenthau the first six months of the death marches a number of around 1,200,000 million consisting mostly of Armenians and a few women, children and elderly were put on the death marches. Most of the males between the ages of twelve and sixty were murdered because they were considered capable of fighting. They were marched south of Anatolia, through no mans land considered rugged and extremely hot, consisting of mountains and the Syrian desert. During the march Turkish villagers and peasants robbed them of their few valuables that they possessed. The also grabbed young women and did as they felt like with them and murdered many of the men that were left. Also the Kurds took part in these events and were also well known for the cold blooded murder specifically of the males.

The Turkish apologists claimed that these atrocities were done by radical tribesmen, but the ambassador Morgenthau showed that these atrocities where planned by the government and where carried out delibrately. As a matter of fact the orders that were sent on telegrams were kept on record.

3 September 1915: We recommend that the operations which we have ordered you to make shall
first be carried out on the men of the said people, and that you shall subject the women and children to them also.

Minister of the Interior Talaat

15 September: It was first communicated to you that the Government, by order of the Jemiet, had decide to destroy completely all Armnians living in Turkey. Those who oppose this order and decision cannot remain on the official staff of the Empire. An end must by put to their existence, however criminal the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to age, or sex, or to conscientious scrupel.

Minister of the Interior Talaat

Because of this policy over one million Armenians were dead. The deportations took place in every village, town and city in Turkey, except Smyrna Constantinople, because there were too many foreigners living their and it would be very hard for the Turks to hide the death marches their. Talaat had admitted himself that these atrocities had nothing to do with the war. In general this is just to show how the Christians being Greeks or Armenians suffered at the hands of Turkish rule.

[Prokomenos]

The Plan of the Allies

In January 1915 the Greeks were offered by England and France so called land on the Asia Minor coast with Russian approval. Also it was rumored that Constantinople would be given back to the Greeks , but England and France in secret were negotiating to give the city to Russia instead. The prime minister of Greece, Eleftherios
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Venizelos had agreed that Constantinople should be internationalized. Venizelos wanted to join forces with the Allies , he was sure that they would win, and Greece would regain all her territory that her ancestors had inhabited in Asia Minor. King Constantine wanted nothing to do with the war. Venizelos in September of 1916 formed a revolutionary government in Crete and later in November joined the war with the allies against the Central Powers including Bulgaria. After that he worked with the Allies to stage a coup in Athens.


Incidents were supposedly created to embarrass King Constantine. Both the French and the British wanted to topple the Constantine government, and they both didn't trust each other when it came down to Venizelos so they tried to minimize it. Italy didn't trust England or France and wanted to keep Constantine on the thrown as opposed to Venizelos. France and Britain got the ok to pass their troops through Greece. They then put the pressure on Constantine to surrender the Greek artillery, debomobilization of certain forces, control of police and railroads, and the right to occupy which ever points were of strategic value to them. But their final goal was for Constantine to resign which eventually happened on June 30 1917 and Venizelos returned to Athens Greece and took control.

Venizelos was under the assumption that by joining the British and the French, the Greeks would be allowed to retake Smyrna, and save its Greek population from Turkish rule. The Italians were offered the east coast of Turkey to them in 1915 by France and Britain. That obviously brought the Italians into the war. The Allies confirmed the bargain with Italy and defined the area which also included Smyrna, under the agreement made in April 1917 of St. Jean de Maurienne. The Italians saw Greece as Britain's vassal, the Greek claims as a British ruse to block the Italian influence in the Near East, especially because Lloyd George showed a distinct partiality for Venizelos. The British forces in the Ottoman territories were decreasing rapidly, the Turks were preparing to fight as they had not fought before, to avoid the consequences of their defeat.

In Turkey the Sultans army had turned into anarchy. By the end of the war five hundred thousand men had deserted. They formed outlaw bands and roamed the interior and they started to control villages. A promising leader for the Turks was thirty eight year old man by the name of Mustafa Kemal, considered a hero by the Turks in the war. Kemal was waiting for his chance to take over the Turkish government and to create a new Nationalist regime. Meanwhile the Italians were convinced that the British would favor the Greek claims in Turkey. The High Commissioner in Constantinople Count Sforza , participated in secret meetings with potential Turkish rebels who they hoped would defy the Allies. Sforza's plan was that through Turkish journalists and other intermediaries , he could encourage Kemal's plans for a militant nationalist movement. Sferza offered Kemal arms as well as moral support, and at a meeting even offered Italian protection. About a year after the British became su****ious. The Italians denied that such a thing had happen, but the British did not buy it.

In early spring of 1919 , when chaos was happening in the north east and on the Black sea in Turkey, Kemal's chance finally arrived. The Greeks had a large population in that area. Even though their where reports of the Turks attacking Christians in those areas, and despise the fear of widespread massacre, the Allies were unwilling to intervene. They did not want to be bothered with such matters and left it to the Turkish government, whose only effectual leadership at that time consisted of a number of Kemal sympathizers. Kemal was chosen as the man to limit Kiazim's authority, but in order for him to do that he would have to control of over ten provinces. When a few Allied personnel decided that Kemal was obviously not the right candidate for Turkish leadership, Kemal was already on his way to the north east. The Allied powers were not convinced that Italians obviously had something to do with it.

Italian claims were disturbing the peace at the Peace Conference back in Paris. The Adriatic port city had been promised to Italy under the secret Treaty of London signed in 1915 by Britain, France, Italy and Russia. The Americans had a say in what was going on. Their reaction was that the Americans were ready to fight for their position that if Trieste went to Italy, Yugoslavia was entitled to Fiume. The Italians were enraged so they walked out of the peace conference. On the 24 April United State president Wilson appealed to the public opinion by releasing his views on Fiume to the press and publicizing the Conference the next day. By the time they returned, the Italians moves in Turkey had advanced enormous mischief.
On the 12 of March an Italian battle ship entered the harbor of the Turkish controlled Mediterranean seaport of Adalia. Three hundred Italian sailors embarked and occupied Adalia. Five days later these detachments were replaced by Italian bersaglieri (marines) from the island of Rhodes. The Italian diplomats had not even left Paris when word came that the Italian forces were moving up the coastline toward Smyrna, occupying town after town along the way. The three allied powers England, France and the United States were frustrated at the Italians. Seven Italian warships were anchored in Smyrna, and as the Italian forces advanced, the prospect of their occupying that city appeared imminent. The British and French did not want to send troops to ward off the Italians, and the U.S. refused, explaining that they were not at war with Turkey. Obviously the only alternative was to authorize the Greeks entrance to Smyrna.

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Greeks Land In Smyrna

Lloyd George proposed that the Council let the Greeks invade Smyrna in the name of the Allies. A few months before, the French were opposed to fighting the Bolshevik troops in Odessa, the Allies sent Greek troops to take care of the matter. A few months before , when the French refused to send troops to fight the Bolshevik troops, the Allies decided to send the Greeks to take care of the matter, which they did. On April 12, Venizelos presented to the Council, a letter accompanying document protesting the Greek treatment by the Turks in Smyrna. The Allies had now what they needed, a reason for the Greeks to occupy Smyrna. Venizelos was surprised on how fast he got the go ahead for Smyrna, but he decided to follow their orders.

At eight o'clock on the morning of 5 May 1919, a British destroyer led six Greek transport ships, and the Greek battleship Kilkis into the Smyrna harbor. The majority of the population in Smyrna were cheering with joy at the arrival of the Greeks. The Greeks were celebrating as well as the Armenians. The Turks that were present at the site were not amused at all. The patriarch Chrysostomos blessed the Greek troops, and a Greek company performed a national dance. The troops then preceded toward the government house followed by the crowd of civilians. When the Greek army were approaching the Turkish barracks, where their was over few hundred thousand Turkish soldiers and officers. A shot rang out from the Turks which quickly the Greeks returned on them. A number of Greek and Armenian civilians joined by rounding up Turks and then took their frustrations out on them. Turkish soldiers were marched out of the government barracks and some were likewise attacked.

Meanwhile in the outlying Turkish villages, sweet revenge was in the air. The Greeks and Armenians decided to settle old scores with the Turks by doing on to them what was done to them. A Turkish general Ali Nadir Pasha, the commander of the Turkish army corps approached the Greek steamer, and was indignant about the violence directed at his men, and reported that they had around forty fatalities. He was outraged at the fact that the Greek soldiers were screaming " Long live Greece, long live Venizelos". The Americans at the scene were distressed at the violence but eventually relieved when the Greek authorities controlled the scene. Consul Horton wrote: " What is very evident to me is that the acts of savagery and violence committed by the Greeks immediately after their landing are so natural that they could have been foreseen by anyone familiar with human nature. These people have been driven from their homes, their relatives had been murdered, their women violated, very probably in the army of occupation there were many who had either resided in Asia Minor or who had relatives or friends here." The spread violence in the neighboring districts, Horton noted,"Was committed by Greek who had been horse whipped, whose daughters had been raped, and who until that had no recourse whatever but to endure." Joining in praise for those Greek community leaders who immediately went about counselling restraint and order in the villages, Horton noted : " That it could be so restored was nothing less than a miracle when one considers the persecutions which the Greeks had so recently suffered."

In a matter of three days of the Greek occupation, the Greek command had forced restitution of a large portion of stolen property, offered payment of one thousand Turkish gold pounds to the vali in recompense for his temporary confinement and had rounded up and tried fifty four individuals mostly Greeks, who were involved in the violence. These individuals were tried and sentenced in a military court, three were put to death, four of them to hard labor for life, and the rest to hard labor from two to twenty years. Unfortunately this convinced the Allies as if they didn't know that the Greeks admitted they were guilty. The Turks meanwhile were outraged at the Greek occupation. The Turks were hoping that English might intervene and come to rule them which they would not mind. But they did not want to be ruled by the Greeks who for over 500 years were considered inferior by the Turks. The Sultan was said to be in tears and a state of shock. Most of all the Turks feared revenge by the Greeks. Still the nerve for the Turks to actually complain, what did they expect after 500 years of oppressing Christian minorities in their own homelands did they expect a different reaction? Besides the numbers that the Turks lost was not even a quarter compared to the Christian minorities ( Greeks, Armenians) that were lost throughout Turkish occupation.

During the war the Allies were concerned with controlling the Greeks than the Turks. As they were giving Venizelos the approval for the landings, because the council did not draw out how much land the Greeks were going to get. Eventually the council decided that the Greeks can only have 3 kilometers within the city. Venizelos was pleading with the Supreme Council to allow the Greek forces to extend the zone so that his they might repel Turkish attacks upon the Greeks. After signing the agreement with the Italians Venizelos continued to stress the issue that the Turkish attacks were happening on the Italian controlled territories and with considerable support and arm from the Italians. The council denied Venizelos the expansion. As politics were shown, the Greeks were considered the accused and the Italians as the judges. The Greeks were not allowed to hear the charges brought against them, and pressure from Lloyd George caused the Commission's report to be suppressed. In the Turkish press they writing that the Greeks landing in Smyrna was unjustified because the Commission had uncovered no evidence of the Greeks being persecuted there. The evidence did exist but there was a lot of doubt if the Commission even bothered to uncover it. It was a well devised plan drawn out by the British, the French and all those who participated in the Commission so this way the commission would be off the hook and saddled the Greeks with the blame for having landed at all.

The Commission condemned the Greeks for 'showing all the manifestations of an annexation', as opposed to an occupation, was manifested, and it went on to concede, that if the Greeks were permitted to occupy the area they had to be allowed to 'annex' the territory and the Greek commandant given 'freedom of action vis a vis Turkish forces'. When they found it necessary to charge the Greeks guilty of instigating violence, like two instances, the Commission did not hesitate to say so. When it involved the Greeks, like three instances, the writers were careful not to blame the Turks but place it on 'hatred which existed for centuries between Turks and Greeks'. The Greeks on their part when they first landed and violence did spread they acknowledged the guilt and punished those responsible.
The individuals who were responsible for the reports, Admiral Mark L. Bristol and his chief intelligence officer, had evidently expended considerable effort in wording the conclusions, and the Admiral was so pleased with the results that he urged the United States Secretary of State to give them wide publicity, 'to insure accurate information to our people and not information colored by European interpretation of the true facts'. Three days after the Greek landing at Smyrna he had already made up his mind in Constantinople. " The actions of the Greeks came as no surprise to the people in this country who know the character of the Greeks", he had noted in his diary of 18 May 1919. In a letter to a naval colleague he was even more explicit:" To me it is a calamity to let the Greeks have anything in this part of the world. The Greek is about the worse race in the Near East."

[Prokomenos]

American Involvement In Turkey

The United States got involved with the war in Turkey for industrial and technological reasons. In 1919 , encouraged a strong Chamber of Commerce, the State Department had adopted an aggressive policy on behalf of American business. The effect in certain quarters was prodigious, as the official history of the Standard Oil Company testified: " For years American businessmen had practiced their dollar diplomacy" . In the year of 1919 that marked the end of this period. The jackpot in the east was to be immense for those who would be able to get in good with the Turks. In fact the United States Chamber of Commerce for the Levant announced:" The opportunities for the expansion of American interests in the Near East are practically unlimited." Admirals Bristol's efforts, as American High Commissioner at Constatinople and ranking United States diplomat in Turkey, were directed at maintaining his country's beneficiant reputation among the Turks. One of the first things that they proposed was to convince missionary and relief personnel in turkey that it was the better part of wisdom and Christian charity to extend alms to the Turks as well as to their victims, during this they completely disregarded the suffering Greek and Armenian minorities. Bristol wrote that the Europeans were going to try to get a division of the spoils, and then force us into taking the mandate for the so called Armenia. This would give the United States a territory desolate, without natural resources like oil, and no railroad communication or real seaports. Bristol also adopted benevolent outlook: " It is a task worthy of America to stand up for the big idea of cleaning up the whole of the Ottoman Empire by once and forever destroying all European influences and concessions and , therefore, European intrigue in this unfortunate country, and then giving all these people good government." With his business contacts he was more direct about the United States involvement in Turkey:" It (Turkey) is practically a virgin field for American business and American financial exploitation. The Turks want us, the Americans, because they believe we have no political string tied to our operations."

Since American businessmen were not real crazy about investing in Turkey's future, Bristol spend a amount of time trying to convince differently. He fought for one hundred percent American investment in Turkey, and one hundred percent American personnel. He was definitely opposed to the Greek influence in Turkey because England had already been favored by the Greek government. Bristol was also aware that the Greek occupation was a British conspiracy so they can extend their influence in the Near East, he did not want that to happen. Even thought America was not a hundred percent committed , he aired his opinion about the Near Eastern populations. " The Armenians are a race like the Jews, they have little or no national spirit and have poor moral character." He also claimed that as people he was prejudice against most. " I am holding no brief for any race in the Near East. I believe that if the Turk, the Greek, the Armenian, the Jew or even the Syrian, were shaken up in a bag you would not be able to tell which would come out first, but the best candidate would be the Turk. I have not so much hope for these other races. The Armenians and Greeks, have many flaws and deficiencies of character that do not fit them for self government. The Turk has some individual traits of character that are so far superior to those of other races that one is led to sympathize with the Turks even though you never forget the bad traits of his character that are illustrated by the acts committed against subjugated races." The Admiral tried to convince the Turks that if they did not changer their attitude and actions upon the Christian subjects it would be hard to change the American people's minds about the Turks. But in later time the American government would make sure that articles that claim that the Turks committed atrocities on Greeks and Armenians would be called a lie. Although their were many American soldiers and civilians who were at Smyrna were disgusted by the Turks it would not matter the government had decided that everything had to be hidden in order to portray the Turk as friendly and a great people with respect for all non Muslim minorities.

Bristol made sure that he would have a discussion with journalists and writers. He had a discussion about race with Kenneth Roberts, and congratulated Arnold Toynbee for preaching one thing all the time, and that is that not one of the Eastern nationalities is civilized in the Western sense. He constantly made it clear to newspaper reporters on which individuals not to talk to about the events that are going on in Turkey. He explained to writers that they should visit areas where, during the fighting the Greeks were inflicting damage on the Turks. He had great influence and was a well known respected individual in the U.S. Americans knew that they couldn't get far past Constatinople without the High Commissioner's approval, and the High Commissioner always made sure to protect America's interests. In order to travel throughout the region they need a pass, and in most case the traveling they did was through an American destroyer.

In Smyrna foreign businessmen, including the British, were furious about the Greeks being control of those areas. The city was to considered to them a city of foreigners and that is how it should remain. The liquor and tobacco interests were American, as well as the oil depots on the north end of the shore. The British and French owned the railway lines that went from north and east from the city. The British were also in control of the Power and lighting, the waterworks were owned by the Belgians. Also the British had a good hand on the carpet, grain, mineral, and dried fruit businesses. An agent of a foreign company made it clear to Consol Horton: " In Greece proper you see few foreign companies working. Send the Greeks away from here and leave us to exploit the Turks."


The Greeks had more influential opposition on the continent. French financiers, even though they weren't crazy about the Italian expansion, held sixty per cent of Turkey's prewar debt and eventually noticed that the Turks could more easily repay the debt . The French bankers were displeased as well, with the prospect that the contemplated peace treaty would internationalize control over the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway. They owned a thirty per cent share in the line when it was still under German control, and didn't see why they should be able to dominate the works. In the international aspect of control as British control, these French magnates favored a strong a independent Turkey that could call its terms with their help. They knew the Greeks were not crazy about foreign investors in their country and as a people were very hard to convince otherwise.

Curzon had not approved in sending the Greeks to Smyrna, but he considered England committed and was essentially behind Lloyd George's policy. He was especially insistent that in the peace settlement the Turks yield Constantinople to some sort of international control. Most of the British military were on Montagu's side. There were as Churchill said, " the pro Turkish inclinations of the British military mind". There was also the rampant opinion that Greece could not conquer the tide of increased Turkish resistance, for the military men saw better than anyone that the Greeks were very much on their own.
The Turkish rebels were meanwhile receiving some surprisingly deferential visitors from countries on whose behalf the Greeks were supposed to be operating against them. Traffic was heavy at Erzerum, where the rebelious Kiazim Karabekir was convening a Congress in July 1919 on behalf of his friend Kemal. The delegates had scarcely accepted a Declaration of Principles that would soon become the Turkish National Pact, and elected Mustafa Kemal as President, when a telegram arrived from Constatinople ordering Kiazim to arrest Kemal on charges of disobeying orders.

Colonel A. Rawlinson of the British army had a conversation with Kiazim which he greatly admired. After the conversation the Colonel returned to London, where he tried, we are told, as unsuccessfully as had Admiral Cal Thorpe, a signer of the original armistice, to " awaken the British government to the future potentialities of the Nationalist movement.

Americans were also assisting the rebels. At the Congress of Siva's which Mustafa Kemal convened in September 1919 to set up the de facto Nationalist government, Louis Browne, an American newspaperman, appeared as the private emissary of Mr. Crane of the famous King Crane commission. Kemal's chief propagandist, a Turkish lady named Halide Edib, was herself close to both Crane and Admiral Bristol, and it was she who had suggested Browne's visit. Her idea, as communicated to Kemal, was that an American mandate over the whole of Turkey might be in the least harmful solution.

A week after the Congress of Siva's had adjourned, U.S. Major General James G. Harbord arrived to visit the rebel stronghold in the course of his mission to investigate the possibilities for an American mandate over Armenia. To Harbord, Kemal insisted that the Turks would resist anything more than a slight exercise of authority. Harbord, after reminding Kemal of Turkey's record in dealing with its minorities, said that a nation could hardly be expected to take on the responsibility of a mandate without the corresponding authority. According to Kemal's biographer, Lord Kinross, the Turkish leader engaged in a metaphorical pantomime that converted Harbord to his side. He jerked apart a string of prayer beads then proceeded to gather them from the floor, illustrating his intent to draw the pieces of his country together, to save it from its various enemies, to make of it an independent and civilized state.

While the rebel chieftain was impressing his visitors, Vizier Damad Ferid, Turkey's legal representative, was pleading his country's case before the Peace Conference in Paris and being summarily dismissed. The Vizier expressed regret at Turkey's crimes, which he admitted had, during the last war, "been such as to make the conscience of mankind shudder with horror forever." The former regime was, however, now properly discredited, he said. In rejecting this apology the Council unconsciously gave a clue to a more pragmatic attitude when it stated that Turkey could not evade the consequences of having entrusted here affair into the hands of men who, utterly devoid principle or pity, could not even command success. In the political arena failure is , ultimately, the worst crime of all.

French forces began replacing the British in the south eastern portions of Turkey in November 1919, and shortly afterwards Kemal received an impressive visitor in the person of Georges Picot, the former French High Commissioner. Picot, allegedly without his government's blessing, announced himself as representing France and asked for Kemal's co-operation in Cilice. Kemal's reply in Kin Ross's words were, that unless the French show that they had no designs against Turks in Cilicia they would fight to defend their independence, seems to have impressed Picot as a positive attitude. Soon afterwards, the French began to show signs of sympathy for Kemal's movement.

French political manoeuvres became murkier as the new year , 1920, dawned and Millerand, with the backing of French financiers, replaced Clemenceau as Premier. The British had by then withdrawn the last of their forces from south eastern Turkey (Cilicia) and the French reluctantly taken charge of this area. With their hand full in Syria, the French had little energy to spare in Cilicia. Here, Armenians who had escaped the 1915 genocide had been induced to return to their homes under promises of French protection. In order to limit the need for French forces, the French now armed an Armenian legion along the lines of their Foreign Legion in North Africa. Oblivious of the fact that the Turks, who could not countenance Greeks in control, would be even less willing to tolerate Armenian policemen, the French corralled the willing Armenians into service.

Late in January 1920, band of Turkish guerrillas attacked the Marsh a town with a large Armenian population, and set a pattern for the region. They set fire to the houses, shot at the inhabitants as they fled into the streets, and burned alive thousands who sought refuge in schools and churches. From his office in Constatinople Bristol tried as best he could to counteract on the scene reports. Although driven to admit that there was some truth in them, Bristol maintained that the eyewitness reports were exaggerated and unreliable," In the outlying districts of Marash murders of Armenians are steadily going on, but I dont believe that these are systematic or in the from of massacre," he cabled the State Department, displaying his penchant for semantic distinctions.

In some towns entire French garrisons were wiped out along with the Armenians. In others as in Marash, orders were secretly given to the French to evacuate in the dead of night. Armenians who figured out what was happening followed the French army, but the Turks annihilated thousands more, and others perished from exposure in the snowbound mountains. Meanwhile French agents were negotiating with Kemal, although these meetings were not out in the public until a year later, and passing French arms along to support his cause. Kemal was also receiving arms from the Italians, who had been behind him from the beginning, and they also helped the Turks pass the arms through Allied checkpoints. While the left was helping was helping Kemal the right was denying the Sultan help to crush Kemal and his forces. The British proceeded to withdraw the last of their remaining troops from Samsun and Eskishehir in western Anatolia. This action, left the rim of the western plateau in Kemal's hands.

The British now began to fear that the capital would fall into Nationalist hands, and that such a coup would leave them with no bargaining position at all. On March 16 1920, General Milne of the British forces, acting in the name of the Allies but without dawn, took over all public buildings and telegraph offices, and established a belated censorship of the press. A large number of Turkish Nationalists in the city were deported to Malta. Kemal immediately arrested the handful of British officers left in the interior, among them Colonel Rawlinson, who had returned to Erzerum. The Italians joined in the occupation, after it was initiated, but passed along Kemal's vigorous protests to their colleagues. Soon after this the Sultan reappointed Damad Ferid as Vizier and dissolved the Parliament. The Sultan's forces than began what turned out to be a desultory effort to put down the Nationalist forces.

In May 1920 Venizelos disclosed the terms of the impending treaty that would set the Allies peace terms with Turkey. Venizelos had undoubtedly disclosed it to hearten his countrymen, but in view of all that had transpired since the Armistice, the treaty was an astonishing document, produced by men who seemed hermetically sealed from reality. It gave the Smyrna are to the Greeks. It established a free Armenia and an autonomous Kurdistan. It partitioned Anatolia into French and Italian zones, maintained the Capitulations, and reduced the Turkish army to a token force under Allied supervision. It provided for international control of the Baghdad railway, the Dardanelles, and the Russian port city of Batum. These last two provisions, according to some historians, provided the stimulus that turned Russia irrevocably toward Kemal, or at any rate hardened her resolve on his behalf, for under these terms Russia's southern flank was exposed to the attacks of any state that might be at war with her. The Italians were displeased with the treaty because it gave so much to Greece that they felt for some strange reason was rightfully belonged to them,( in all actuality those lands were Greek from ancient times which the Romans later conquered and then lost to the Turks). The treaty of Serves was only taken seriously by the Greeks the Armenians, and some but by no means all of the British.

The word of the treaty made the Turks which furious to the point that thousands more joined in the Nationalist cause. In Angora, newspapers far from the censor's eye warned France and Italy to stop the games and join the side of Kemal or the worst for them. Kemal responded by attacking British forces within the Dardanelles zone at Ismit. Once again when the powers did not want to commit they contacted Venizelos. He assured the them that he could guarantee that within a few weeks he would sweep the Kemalists from the zone of the Straits, both in Europe and in Asia, and remove from the minds of the Supreme Council all further anxiety regarding the Turkish Nationalist movement.

In the face of opposition from their military advisers, the members of the Council once again bowed to Venizelos optimism. Greek forces immediately moved north from the Smyrna region and , to almost everyone's astonishment, routed the Turks at the first blow. Within weeks the Greek had occupied Bursa, surrounded and defeated the Nationalists in Eastern Thrace, and occupied Adrianople. "Greece had saved the Allied positions once again both in Asiatic and European Turkey" Nicolson wrote. " It remained to deal with Kemal himself."Lloyd George was ecstatic: " They are beaten and fleeing with their forces towards Mecca." After that, Kemal retreated to the fastness of Angora to lick his wounds, organize his forces, rout rebellion within his ranks, and dispose of the feeble assaults from the Sultan's armies. In the autumn, although he felt ready for the Greeks, they again routed him and advanced to the strategic railways lines connecting Constatinople with Konya.

The last turn of affairs proved too much for the French and Italians. They insisted that the Greek advance be restrained, and enjoined the Supreme Council to order the Greek army to stop in its tracks. French, British and Italian forces rode out to confront the Greeks, halting them at a position far more precarious, strategically, than the one they had abandoned in order to rush to the Allies rescue in June. At the eleventh hour Kemal and his recruits wee thus rescued from destruction, Nicolson has noted. In the ensuing months the major Powers began, one by one, to desert Greece in earnest. The Powers used Greece to their advantage and when they realized that Greeks were taking to much and interfered with their interest they did decided time to turn the tide of war on Greece.
Having already turned over her southern territory to Turkey, Soviet Russia was the first.

The Treaty of Servres incited her to side openly with the insurgent Turks. The Nationalist cause became a people's fight against foreign capitalist domination. In December 1920, after a two month drive, the Nationalists succeeded in liquidating the fledgling Armenian Republic in Caucasian, which the Allies were pledged to support and expand under the terms of the Sevres treaty, but to which they in fact gave no assistance whatever, the Soviets thereupon took over the tiny remaining province of Yerevan and signed a treaty of friendship and peace with Turkey. After this, Soviet aid came freely to Kemal. The Soviet Turkish pact gave the Nationalists still another bargaining point, one their propagandists exploited all the way. The Turks threatened that they were what was stopping the Bolsheviks from spreading, Now they said that were going to let the germ spread to the west. The Soviets were not fooled though, they new that the Nationalists were not Communists. The British cabinet immediately send agents of the Secret Service to Anatolia to sound out the Nationalists on peace terms. At this juncture, political events in Greece provided an excellent excuse for withdrawing the last pretence of Allied backing from the Greeks.

[Prokomenos]

Greece Betrayed

During the time that Venizelos was missing from Greece, the country had fallen into chaos by late summer of 1920. Many riots broke out in Athens, a deputy was assassinated, supposedly by a Venizelist , and so he decided to return to Greece. He was in Paris two days after the Sevres treaty was signed, as he was standing their two Greeks fired fourteen shots at him. Venizelos was slightly wounded because he was wearing a bulletproof vest, but when he arrived in Athens he was in poor physical condition. He found the problems with the city way out of proportion. Many of his men where tired from being away for so long, as well as Venizelos himself. Sevres treaty did not do nothing for the Greeks and the country, and his subordinates were abusing his authority while he was gone. On 25 October while all this was happening King Alexander died by a bite from his pet monkey. The King's brother Paul , who had been living in exile with his father , King Constatine, was offered the throne but refused on the grounds that since his father had never abdicated, the offer was illegal. After November's elections, Venizelos lost and King Constatine was brought back to the throne.

The Allies were not happy, they resented King Constatine because of his pro German sympathies during the war. " For the sake of Venizelos much had to be endured but for Constatine nothing, " Churchill had written. Lloyd George took a quick stand and stated that, the elections would not ruin the Anglo Greek relations. But a statement send by the Foreign Office to Athens stated that Britain, France and Italy did not wish to intervene in the interior affairs of Greece, but they find themselves constrained to declare publicly that the re establishment on the Greek throne of a sovereign whose attitude and disloyal conduct toward the Allies during the War has been for them a source of grave dangers and difficulties, and that it will create another unfavorable situation in the relations between Greece and the Allies. Britain, France, and Italy joined by the United States, further agreed that Greece would receive no financial support whatever. This effectively abrogated Allied loans extended during Venizelos's tenure that had not yet been paid.

Constatine still for some reason continued the war in Turkey, which no one really knows why given the situation. The people had overthrown Venizelos because of the war. Equally enigmatic is the attitude of those who condemn Venizelos for prolonging the fight despite Allied rebuffs, but who do not appear to question why his successor prolonged it in the face of outright opposition. Constatine's argument was that if the Greeks were to withdraw from the war right now, the Anatolian Christians living their would have to face the wrath of the Turks which was unthinkable. Also another rumor was that Constatine secretly received confidential hints from the British minister at Berne that British support of his return was contingent on his promising to continue Venizelos's policy. Lloyd George confirmed that notion, Churchill tells us, that " the great man is with us, and in his own way and in his own time and by his wizardry he will bring us the vital aid we need".

Obviously that did not prove to be right. In February 1921 the Supreme Council gave Kemal's Angora government as well as the Sultan an invitation to the London peace conference with the Greek. The Conference did not accomplish to end the hostilities but it enabled the French and Italians emissaries to push forward negotiations with Kemal's men. The treaty between the Italians and the Turks was ratified on 21 March 1921. The Turkish French deal leaked out in the spring, when a French deputy and former Propaganda Minister named Franklin Bouillon turned up in Angora, much to the consternation of the British.

The French denied that they signed a treaty with Kemal, but M. Franklin Bouillon signed one all the same with the Nationalist Minister for Foreign Affairs on 20 October 1921. In return for the French's promise to yield Turkey's French held territories to Kemal, the Nationalists promised France exploitation rights to the region's mineral resources, and investments priorities in Turkish banks, ports, waterways and railways. The Nationalists for awhile had been receiving French arms but now shells from heavy artillery and bombs from French planes began to hit Greek positions at a moment when Greece was on the verge of bankruptcy and her army destitute. And in the waiting room of the Paris Foreign Office, according to Churchill, " Two disconsolate suppliants" paced the floor, the Greek Prime Minister and the Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs. Their pleas were unavailing, " Not a gun, not a shell, nor a soldier, not a shilling was voted in support of the Greek enterprise."

After Venizelos's downfall and the return of King Constatine to Greece, the Supreme Council declared on 10 August 1921, that Greece and Turkey were engaged in a private war in which Britain, France, Italy, and Japan would remain now remain strictly neutral. What the neutrality meant was that the French and Italians could supply Kemal with war materials with impunity, while the Greeks were prevented from applying blockade rules the Allies themselves enforced when they were fighting with Turkey. Basically betrayal but what else was Greece to expect from money hungry countries who did not care about what was right but only cared about their financial needs. Christians betraying Christians to Muslims all for greed and power. But despite this advantage, Kemal's troops at Afyon Karahissar were forced to surrender that city to the Greeks. Even though the Greeks had all the odds against them, they somehow managed to still fight on with whatever spirit was left in them. Although in the end Greece eventually lost everything she had gained , what else was she to do since Turkey was receiving all this support from France, Italy, British and the United States, while Greece had no more Allies or any war materials or soldiers being send to her.

The Greek army of two hundred thousand men was in shambles in the Turkish interior. It had been at war with one or another country for ten years. Greece was bankrupt, with no Allied support. All her loans had been cancelled. The winter was severe, clothing and food was very scarce, all her equipment had decayed and her leadership demoralized. The men were left and isolated in a hostile land. " For upwards of nine months, the Turks waited and the Greeks endured," wrote Churchill.

[Prokomenos]

[center][font=Cornerstone][SIZE=4[color="Black"]]The end of the Greek War[/size]

In the spring of 1922 reports that the Nationalists and their friends had managed to suppress for over a year began to appear in English newspapers. They revealed still another death march in the interior. Greeks and Armenians were being marshaled out of towns and villages held by Kemalists in north western and central Anatolia and set on roads leading eastward through the mountains and toward the desert beyond Diyarbakir. Once again they were forcing men, women, and children, barely clothed and footless, to march at sword's point until they dropped dead. The local authorities permitted American relief workers to in some towns to supply bread, but the after the relief workers would leave the Turks would take back the bread. After the winter and the snows had melted, evidence alongside the roads lay with dead corpses row upon on row. For a year and a half the story was kept quiet. Directors of Near East Relief, who were now working closely with the State Department extracted from each relief worker a signed statement that he would reveal nothing of the deportations. There was nothing to prevent a man's publishing his evidence after he had left the organization nothing except, as it turned out, the reluctance of the American press to touch it.

In May of 1922 a reporter by the name of Yowell, former director of the Near East Relief in Harput, came into the headlines of the London Times and caused a scene in both Britain and America. Admiral Bristol and Florence Billings, the Near East Relief agent at Constatinople, joined the Turkish press in branding it a lie, but Yowell's heartrending account was soon confirmed by others, among them Dr. Mark H. Ward, whose diary was publishe in Britain after American newspapers turned it down, and Chicago Tribune reporter John Clayton. Clayton's testimony did not appear in his newspaper, he sent a copy to the American consul in Aleppo, who passed it along to Bristol in Constatinople. Clayton had seen a good deal himself. He had also taken the trouble to find out where Yowell's successor, a man named Applegate, kept his official diary. He borrowed it overnight with no one the wiser, copied it, and returned the original to its place before dawn. It showed that Yowell if anything, had understated the case

Kemal kept insisting that Yowell's yowl was exaggerated propaganda calculated to enhance British political aims, and urged the Department to do everything within power to hold firm against any shift in American public opinion. The State Department warned Yowell against giving these facts to the public, on the ground that such propaganda would only hurt the Christian minorities. First secretary Allen Dulles from America tried to explain confidentially to the Admiral that the State Department was in a bind, its task would be simple if the reports could be declared untrue or even exaggerated, but the evidence, alas, was irrefutable and if the Armenians and Greeks were here and there retaliating against Turks they could scarcely be blamed. The Department's position was complicated by the fact that aroused American churchmen were joining the British government in pressing for an instigation of Kemalists atrocities committed against Christians. Although Bristol might insist that United States refuse to take part in such an inquiry, to decline was all the more difficult since the evidence came primarily from American sources. As Dulles explained, the Secretary of State wanted to avoid giving the impression that while the United States was willing to intervene actively to protect its commercial interests, it was not willing to move on behalf of the Christian minorities. Also the murders of American relief workers did not make the headlines and did not appear to have ruffled either the State Department or the relief agencies for whom the victims had been working

In the early summer of 1922 another Nationalist campaign was created this time to annihilate about one hundred thousand Greeks on the Black Sea coast, was well under way. The British press may been less reticent than the American about revealing the atrocities because Kemalist newspapers were coincidently conducting a virulent campaign against the British. By midsummer of 1922 the Turks were well rested and supplied with arms and artillery. The Greek leaders at the same time, realizing that their army was exhausted and ill equipped, and would not be able to survive another winter, devised a plan whereby they would amalgamate their forces and make a quick thrust for Constatinople. They knew that their occupation would be temporary now and they wanted nothing else but to asked to be withdraw. Their request for Allied co operation got no further than General Harington, the commander of the Allied military forces and an Englishmen Admiral Bristol admired. " You ofcourse have read of the Greeks attempting to take Constatinople. I think they would have done if if it hadn't been for General Harington, who acted on his own hook and blocked the game", Bristol wrote to a friend on August 31. " So thus the Allies, with Turkish gendarmes, are facing their own ally, the Greeks, on the Chataldja line. It is a ridiculous situation." Thanks to the General's initiative the last desperate gamble had failed, leaving the Greek position the weaker by two divisions.

In the greatest secrecy Kemal prepared to seize the moment. Beginning at the end of July, he went around the Turkish fronts on the pretext of attending a football match at one place, meeting with a British general at another. On 6 August he returned to Angora, and when he left again, on 13 August, only his closest associates knew that he was gone. In mid August Kemal and his generals had their plans co-ordinated. On their military maps were plotted the positions of all the Greek forces, regiment by regiment, division by division. By feinting attacks to the north and south of the Greek line at Afyon Karahissar, he weakened the main line and prepared to attack along a fifteen mile front. The order of the day for 26 August began: " Soldiers, your goal is the Mediterranean!" They struck at dawn taking the Greeks unaware and smashing their lines with such dispatch that the headquarters' troops, caught between the Turkish First and Second armies, never had a chance to fire their guns. The Turks annihilated five Greek divisions and captured fifty thousand prisoners. To the north, the Third Greek Corps fled toward Mudanya, where ships awaited them on the Sea of Marmara. There they were met by the French, who blocked their escape on the pretext that they were in a neutral zone. This was untrue, and the commanders of the two Greek regiments, who knew it managed to lead their men through the hills to Bandirma. The rest surrendered to the French, who them over to the Turks.

South of Afyon Karahissar, the Greek Commander in Chief, General Tricoupis, tried vainly to lead a counter attack and was captured by Turkish cavalrymen on September 2. The Greeks retreat had by then turned into a rout, and his men were already in flight. There was no longer any pretence of organization or command as demoralized Greek officers thought only of escape. Soldiers threw down their ammunition and pushed blindly toward the sea, gathering tens of thousand of Greek civilians in their wake to escape with them. Kemal had once declared to his followers: " If it is the will of Alah that we are defeated, we must set fire to all our homes, to all our property, we must lay the country in ruins an leave an empty desert." Now the defeated Greeks, in their panicked flight through a detested land, set the torch at their own villages, killed and maimed some of the Turkish inhabitants, and took to the roads. For one hundred miles, until they caught up with their enemy in the suburbs of Smyrna, the pursuing Turks came upon one smoldering town after another.

It was impossible for the Greek soldiers to have a chance of fighting considering the odds. The Turks had been properly supplied with arms by mostly the French and the Italians. The French refused the Greek soldiers and whatever civilians they had with them to enter any transports to leave. It was all pre planned for the Greek army to disintegrate so this way , they can not pose a threat to their ally the Turk. The Great Powers were not going to let an opportunity slip out of their hands of riches and oil. They didn't care whether the Christian Greeks or Armenians were going to die at the hands of the Turks it was not their concern at the time. A sad day for the Greeks and an other future atrocity for the Greeks and Armenians was yet to come.

[Prokomenos]