From: KELLY@SUVM.SYR.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: A Pattern of Barbarism
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 01:42:30 EDT

  'Greek Atrocities in the Vilayet of Smyrna (May to July 1919), Inedited
  Documents and Evidence of English and French Officers,' Published by
  The Permanent Bureau of the Turkish Congress at Lausanne, Lausanne,
  Imprimerie Petter, Giesser & Held, Caroline, 5 (1919).

  Excerpts from the Introduction (pages 1-6):

  <<The Hellenic authorities with the profound experience that
  characterises them in the oppression and extermination of the
  allogeneous peoples who have fallen into their clutches, began,
  immediately after the occupation, to put into force again their
  former ignoble system which met with such success in the Morea,
  in Thessaly, in Epire, in Crete and recently also in Macedonia.
  It consists first of all in pouring a flood of professional bandits,
  of criminals of whom Greece more than any other country possesses
  the monopoly, into every corner of ground where a Hellenic soldier
  has set foot. The native Greek scoundrels are always ready to lend
  them a helping hand and an acute period of atrocious tyranny begins
  at once. While the famous agency of Athens, by a profusion of lies
  and slanders, of false accounts of Turkish atrocities, diverts
  attention and throws a thick veil over the crimes of its andartes
  and palikares, the latter more and more excited by the newspapers,
  assured of impunity, do not shrink from any infamy. Turkish villages
  burning, violations, massacres perpetrated upon peaceful Turkish
  inhabitants become the order of the day. The unfortunate population,
  persecuted, terrified, has no longer the courage to withstand such a
  regime; in a body they leave their homes, their villages, their crops,
  abondoning their fortune, their possessions, everything to save their
  lives and their honour. All these poor ruined folk, often bereaved of
  their dearest ones, are stranded miserably in the nonoccupied parts of
  the mother-country. Everywhere in Turkey one meets poor Mouhadjirs
  (emigrants), Cretes, Moreans, Macedonians, Epiriens, Thessalonians
  and others, uprooted, in quest of aid or protection, and whose tragic
  fate and account of their misfortunes stir the indignation of the
  most blase'.

  The visible persecutions, the systematic atrocities only cease to
  give place to the subtle exactions of the administrative authorities.
  Wise oppression, learned despotism, aiming methodically as Elysee Reclus,
  the eminent French geographer says, at the degradation of the allogenes,
  is applied with a veritable art. All that is not Greek is in fact outlawed.
  No opportunity is lost of making them feel the spurred heel of the
  oppressor. Even in the courts of justice which invariably decide against
  all who are not Greek! This little people, imbued with great unrealisable
  ambitions is of a ferocious fanaticism, an incredible cruelty, a crafti-
  ness, an unparalleled perfidiousness towards those who have the misfortune
  to fall under its dominion.

  Such is the system of government applied to the allogenes in the XXth
  century, in the civilised Hellenic Kingdom; such is the people that
  aspires to rule in the East over millions of populations of another
  race, of another religion than its own. To give over a country to
  Greece is to doom its inhabitants to torture to depopulate it, to
  condemn it to moral and material ruin.

  It was thus they had acted in Morea which had three hundred thousand
  Mussulman [Muslim] inhabitants in 1830, in Thessaly which numbered
  a hundred and fifty thousand in 1878, in Crete which possessed 50,000
  Turkish habitants in 1897. In the Morea and in Thessaly to-day there
  no longer exists a single Turkish soul. In Crete scarcely 20,000 Turks
  have been able to survive the painful calvary of twenty years of Greek
  oppression. In a short time none will be left. Macedonia, under the
  Greek heel, has lost in a few years the two thirds of its best sons.
  As for Epire...if the stones of this poor country drowned in her blood,
  could be made to speak, one would be ashamed of being a man since the
  authors of these abominable crimes consider themselves also as such!

  The Greek occupation with all its attendant horrors and crimes has
  fallen also on the vilayet of Smyrna.

  Detachments of regulars and bands of Greek comitadjis have terrorised
  and given over to fire and sword these paradisaical regions which the
  Turkish regime has left free from all incursion during five centuries.
  One of the rare Ottoman provinces on whose soil no fighting has been
  witnessed for five hundred years, has just been the theatre of a hideous
  invasion which in a few days reduced it to the likeness of the perpetual
  battlefields of Macedonia; they have transformed this marvellous country
  into a vast desert. Nearly 50,000 Turks have perished there in the most
  frightful torments, whilst 300,000 other fugitives wander about without
  food, without medicaments, without shelter and without resource all round
  the zone of Greek occupation which has become a hell for the Mussulmans.

  At Smyrna itself in the great port of the Aegean Sea, under the very eyes
  of indignant foreigners, no infamy has been spared to the Turkish
  population. The reports that we have published today throw sufficient
  light on the baseness of these adventurers. But two parts of this
  province where the crimes become of a truly revolting magnitude are
  Menemen and Aidin.

  Almost the whole Turkish population of Menemen were massacred without
  any provocation, without any motive which even the existence of
  disturbances could justify. As to the tragedy of Aidin, it exceeds
  in horror all that can be imagined.

  Nero, in setting fire to Rome, had not condemned the population to be
  burnt alive in their dwellings. That is however what the Greeks did
  at Aidin. From Smyrna as far as Nazilli all the towns, villages,
  hamlets are nothing but a heap of ruins and ashes. Most of them
  scarcely hide amongst their still smoking wreckage, the carbonised
  corpses, the bleeding remains of thousands of poor innocent Turks,
  of women, of children, of old men sacrificed to the ferocity of the
  Hellenic hordes. From all this devastated region, formerly one of the
  most prosperous, a cry of frightful distress arises to-day.

  ...

  Nothing can compare with this pitiless and bloody hounding down of
  the Turk, which from the admission of English, French and Italian
  witnesses characterises the Greek occupation and the systematic
  destruction of our dear province.

  Women of the high Greek society, elegant ladies of Smyrna have given
  proof of a Kaffirlike bestiality taking delight, even taking part with
  songs and laughter in the most abject mutilations.

  But bloodshed is never forgiven and justice works out her ends.

  Under whatever regime we may live our dead will always have a hold
  over Hellenism.>>

Nejat