by zan » Fri Nov 24, 2006 10:28 pm
Any way, back to the subject in hand...............
Enlargement of the Occupation and more Atrocities
The Greeks made it clear from the first day that they had come, not far a temporary occupation, but a permanent annexation of Western Anatolia into a greater Greece encompassing both shores of the Aegean, thus bringing nearer the Megali Idea and the restoration of the departed glories of the Greek Christian Empire of Byzantium.8 A strong foundation was necessary for the establishment of lasting rule over the occupied land. Therefore, the Greeks commenced to penetrate into the interior of Anatolia.
During the advance of the Greek Army, the Greek soldiers and the local Greeks, who were incited by the Greek officers and clergy, committed innumerable atrocities against the Turks. The atrocities took the form of mass destruction in some towns. In particular, incidents during the first two months of the Greek military occupation were dreadful in the towns of Menemen and Aydin. These events were confirmed by the official reports of Turkish, British and Italian commissioners.
A Special Commission of Judicial Inquiry, established following the atrocity reports, reached Menemen on 17 June 1919. The Commission was composed of Turkish administrative and military officers, the British officers, Captain Charns and Lieutenant Lorimer, and medical delegates from the British and Italian consulates in Izmir. They presented a report to the commanders of the Allied Powers in Izmir. Some of the horrible details that were stated in this report are as follows:
...From the unanimous declaration of (persons) questioned separately by the Commission, it stands out clearly that the Mussulman population of Menemen gave a perfectly correct reception to the Hellenic occupying corps and that far from provoking them to the excesses, which would have been reprehensible in any case, it remained absolutely calm and tranquil. The Greek commandant's allegation regarding the shots fired on the Hellenic soldiers was denied upon oath by all the witnesses without exception. The non-existence of Greeks wounded, either civilian or military, as against a thousand Turkish victims, confirms the veracity of the evidence. The massacre, the destruction and the extortion committed at Menemen by the Hellenic soldiers and the native Greeks can only be imputed to a vile spirit of vengeance and cupidity...
...All sorts of people, women, girls, children down to babies, more than a thousand persons, were basely assassinated. During the few hours of its stay at Menemen, the Commission was able to draw up a list, which though incomplete, contains the names of more than five hundred unfortunate victims. The Hellenic agent, having opposed a thorough investigation, and the exhumation of the hundreds of corpses buried clandestinely by the Hellenic military authorities, the identity of the victims could not be established on the spot the same day...
... The Greeks, to hide the proof of their guilt, wanted to destroy the corpses. But the number of the latter being too great, for lack of time they piled them by tens into hastily dug trenches, insufficiently covered with earth...The massacres were not confined to the town. They extended also to the surroundings, to the fields, the mills, the farms where another thousand victims may be counted. All the buildings outside the town, as well as several hundreds of houses in the town itself, were pillaged, sacked or destroyed.5
The situation in Aydin was no different. Sukru Bey, the commander of the Turkish forces in the region, communicated the sequence of the atrocities to the commander of the Italian contingents if Cine, to be forwarded to the representative of Italy, the United States, Britain and France. Sukru Bey, in his letter of 1 July, revealed the terrifying results of the Greek occupation and begged immediate relief:
The Greeks who have occupied Aydin and the surrounding region have begun after a short period of calm, to practice with unheard savagery the policy of extermination of the Turkish element, with the object of being able to claim and annex these countries...The massacres, the abominable offences, the burning of whole villages and of Turkish quarters, all these crimes perpetrated by the Greeks constitute a disgrace in our era of civilisation. To have been victims of such odious acts, what faults could possibly have been committed by these women, children and poor, innocent people who were only going about their own business. They have been fired upon with bombs, rifles and machine guns. They have been cast into burning houses and burnt alive...Turkish travellers were taken out of the trains, the women and the young girls were violated before the eyes of their husbands and parents...
...I beg you to be so good as to inform the Great Powers of the Entente that we pray them in the name of humanity to restore calm and order to this country by putting an end to the ignoble regime of Greek adventurers and by withdrawing the Hellenic forces of occupation.5
However, the Great Powers, so called champions of humanity, were as inhuman and disgraceful as the Greeks as nothing has been done to stop the Greek atrocities.
The victims of these massacres were not only the Turks or the Muslims in general. The Greeks targeted everything and everyone that was not Greek. In Nazilli, between 19 and 20 June, 16 Jews were slaughtered besides hundreds of Turks. The Jewish houses and synagogues were set on fire as well as the Turkish houses and mosques.5 Such anti-Semitic acts were first practised in Izmir on 15 May. Some Greek soldiers plundered a number of Jewish shops during the incidents occurring that day. However, the British and French authorities warned and the Greek officers sentenced them. Within the interior of Anatolia, far from the Allies' eyes, the Greek army and the local Greeks did not differentiate between Muslim and Jewish targets.
