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*On May 14, 1919 a fleet of British, American and French warships brought an entire Greek division into the harbour of Izmir. The landing was followed by a general slaughter of the Turkish population. Greek gangs roamed the streets looting and killing. As the Greek army pushed into Anatolia the local population was subjected to massacres, ravaging and raping.<ref>Shaw,Stanford J. Shaw, Ezel Kural ''"History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, Volume 2"'' Cambridge University Press 2002 pp.342</ref>
*On May 14, 1919 a fleet of British, American and French warships brought an entire Greek division into the harbour of Izmir. The landing was followed by a general slaughter of the Turkish population. Greek gangs roamed the streets looting and killing. As the Greek army pushed into Anatolia the local population was subjected to massacres, ravaging and raping.<ref>Shaw,Stanford J. Shaw, Ezel Kural ''"History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, Volume 2"'' Cambridge University Press 2002 pp.342</ref>
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As the Ottoman Turkish Empire entered a permanent phase of decline in the late 17th century it was engaged in a protracted state of conflict, losing territories both in Europe and the Caucasus. The victors were the Christian States the old Habsburg and Romanov Empires and the new nation-states of Greece, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. Rival European powers encouraged the development of nationalist ideologies among the Ottoman subjects in which the Muslims were portrayed as an ethnic “fifth column” leftover from a previous era that could not be integrated into the planned future states. The struggle to rid them selves of Ottomans became an important element of the self-identification of the Balkan Christians.
According to Mark Levene, the Victorian public in the 1870s paid much more attention to the massacres and expulsions of Christians than to massacres and expulsions of Muslims, even if on a greater scale. He further suggests that such massacres were even favored by some circles.
Mark Levene also argues that the dominant powers, by supporting "nation-statism" at the Congress of Berlin legitimized "the primary instrument of Balkan nation-building": ethnic cleansing.Hall points out that atrocities were committed by all sides during the Balkan conflicts. Deliberate terror was designed to instigate population movements out of particular territories. The aim of targeting the civilian population was to carve ethnically homogeneous countries.
The atrocities against Ottoman Muslims and their exodus to Anatolia in the course of emerging Balkan nation-states and advancing Russian armies had a significant impact on the Ottoman Empire. It is estimate that by 1920 one third of the population in Turkish territories probably constituted from refugees and their descendants. This resulted in a strong sense of injustice and of shared suffering and solidarity.
Background
Justin McCarty estimates that between 1821 and 1922 around five and a half million Muslims were driven out of Europe and five million more were killed or died of disease and starvation while fleeing. Cleansing occurred as a result of the Serbian and Greek independence in the 1820s and 1830s, the Russo-Turkish War 1877-1878, and culminating in the Balkan Wars 1912-1913. Mann describes these acts as “murderous ethnic cleansing on stupendous scale not previously seen in Europe” referring to the 1914 Carnegie Endowment report. It is estimated that at the turn of the 20th century there were 4,4 million Muslims living in the Balkan zone of Ottoman control. More than one million Muslims left the Balkans in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Between 1912 and 1926 nearly 2,9 million Muslims were either killed or forced to emigrate to Turkey. It is estimated that in the course of the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence 2,5 million Muslims died in Anatolia while hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived from former Ottoman territories and Russia.
Between 10,000 and 30,000 Turks were killed in Tripolitsa by Greek rebels in the summer of 1821, including the entire Jewish population of the city. Similar events as these occurred also elsewhere during the Greek Revolution resulting in the eradication and expulsion of virtually the entire Turkish population of the Morea. These acts ensured the ethnic homogenization of the area under the rule of the future modern Greek state.In 1830 the Muslims population in Morea is put at 300,000. In 1878 the Muslim inhabitants in Thessaly are estimate to be 150,000 and in 1897 the Muslims numbered 50,000 in Crete. By 1919 there were virtually no Muslims left in Morea and Thessaly and only 20,000 in Crete.
Russo-Turkish War 1877-1878
During the Russo-Turkish War a significant number of Turks were either killed, perished or became refugees. There are different estimates about the casualties of the war. Crampton describes an exodus of 130,000-150,000 expelled of which approximately half returned for an intermediary period encouraged by the Congress of Berlin. Hupchick and McCarthy point out that 260,000 perished and 500,000 became refugees. The Turkish scholars Karpat and Ipek argue that up to 300,000 were killed and 1 - 1,5 million were forced to emigrate.
Massacres against Turks and Muslims during the Balkan Wars in the hands of Bulgarians, Greeks and Armenians are described in detail in the 1912 Carnegie Endowment report. Hupchick estimates that nearly 1,5 million Muslims died and 400,000 became refugees as a result of the Balkan Wars.
On May 14, 1919 a fleet of British, American and French warships brought an entire Greek division into the harbour of Izmir. The landing was followed by a general slaughter of the Turkish population. Greek gangs roamed the streets looting and killing. As the Greek army pushed into Anatolia the local population was subjected to massacres, ravaging and raping.
McCarthy, Justin (1995). Death and exile: the ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922. Darwin Press. p. 359. ISBN0-87850-094-4.
Publications
Anatolia 1915:Turks Died, Too, by Justin McCarthy, University of Louisville, Published in the Boston Globe, April 25, 1998
Greek Atrocities in the Vilayet of Smyrna (May to July 1919), Published by The Permanent Bureau of the Turkish Congress at Lausanne 1919
RUSSIAN ATROCITIES IN ASIA AND EUROPE DURING THE MONTHS OF JUNE, JULY, AND AUGUST 1877, CONSTANTINOPLE PRINTED BY A. H. BOYAJIAN 1877, a publication by the Ottoman Government of a collection of various official and private telegrams
The Armenian Atrocities to the Turks in Kars:The Mass Grave Excavation of Kalo/Derecik
Village, by Şenol Kantarcı, Yrd. Doç. Dr., Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, Atatürk İlkeleri ve İnkılâp Tarihi Bölüm
Başkanı
References
Mann, Michael “The dark side of democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing” Cambridge University Press 2005, pp.112-113
Carmichael, Cathie,. "Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans" Routledge 2002, pp.21-22
Levene, Mark., "Genocide in the Age of the Nation State" 2005 pp.225-226
Hall, Richard C., "The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913: prelude to the First World War" Routledge 2002, pp.136-137
Hale, William M., "Turkish foreign policy, 1774-2000" Frank Cass Publishers 2002, pp.16-17
McCarthy, Justin “Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922” Princeton: Darwin Press 1995, pp.335-340
Mann, Michael “The dark side of democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing” Cambridge University Press 2005, pp.113
Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (Washington, DC: The Endowment, 1914)
Cornis-Pope, Marcel Neubauer, John "History of the literary cultures of East-Central Europe" 2004 pp.21
Todorova, Maria., "Imagining the Balkans" Oxford University Press 2009, pp.175
Cornis-Pope, Marcel Neubauer, John "History of the literary cultures of East-Central Europe" 2004 pp.21
Shissler, Ada Holland., "Between two empires" 2003 pp.22
William St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence, 2008, p.45
McCarthy, Justin "Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922" Princeton:Darwin Press 1995
Cité par Hercules Millas, "History Textbooks in Greece and Turkey", History Workshop, n°31, 1991.
W. Alison Phillips, "The War of Greek Independence", 1821 to 1833, p. 61.
Zarinebaf, Fariba., Bennet, John., Davis, Jack L., "A historical and economic geography of Ottoman Greece" The America School of Classical Studies, Athens 2005 pp.162-171
Greek Atrocities in the Vilayet of Smyrna (May to July 1919)Published by
The Permanent Bureau of the Turkish Congress at Lausanne, 1919 pp.5
Dennis P. Hupchick, The Balkans:From Constantinople to Communism, 2002, p.265
McCarthy, J., "Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922", Princeton: Darwin Press 1995, p.64, p.85
Karpat, Kemal H. "Studies on Ottoman social and political history: selected articles and essays" 2004 pp.764
Nedim Ipek, 1994, Turkish Migration from the Balkans to Anatolia, pp. 40-41
Carnegie Report, Macedonian Muslims during the Balkan Wars,1912
Hupchick, 2002, pp.321
Shaw,Stanford J. Shaw, Ezel Kural "History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, Volume 2" Cambridge University Press 2002 pp.342
Turkey
