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| Date | 24 June 1921 |
|---|---|
| Location | Izmit, Turkey |
| Participants | (main)Greek army, (insubordinate role)Circassian mercenaries |
| Deaths | <300 |
The Izmit massacre ocurred in the town of Izmit, Turkey on 24 June 1921 during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). On that day more than 300 Turkish inhabitants were killed by the retreating Greek army. The town was also looted and partly burned. Arnold J. Toynbee, then a reporter of the Manchester Guardian travelled to the town shortly after the Greek retreat and documented the events. The British parliament discussed the Greek retreat and possible atrocities on 29 June 1921.
Background
Izmit (ancient Nicomedia) is a coastal town in north western Anatolia close to Istanbul. In the 19th century it had a mixed population of Turks, Jews, Greeks and Armenians and as of 1920, the British reported that the city had a population of about 13,000. The Ottoman empire had joined and lost World War I and its territory was began to be partitioned between the victorious Allied countries. The Greek landing at Smyrna in May 1919 resulted in the growth of the Turkish nationalist movement. Eventually war broke out between the Greek and Turkish nationalist armies. Izmit was occupied by Greek troops during the war for some time. First it was occupied by the UK in July 6, 1920 then the British left it to Greece in October 27, 1920. Izmit was re-taken by the Turks on June 28, 1921. During these times inter communal violence broke out between the Turks and Greeks in areas surrounding Izmit.
The account of Toynbee
Toynbee, his wife and a representative of the allied high commissioners were sailing on a boat towards Izmit, when they saw the retreating Greek army on land rapidly setting fire to the surrounding villages and the town of Karamürsel while evacuating through this area. Most of the local Christians fled together with the Greek army. Toynbee landed 35 hours after the Greek evacuvation at Izmit and found the town looted and partly burned.
Before the Greeks retreated they had forced Turkish peasants to transport the possession of the Christians with their ox carts, at the shore the ox were slaughtered to ship their meat more easily, the Turkish carters were then shot, Toynbee saw the corpses of the carters floating among the offal, and among them one or two corpses of Turkish women. The mosques of Izmit had been robbed, defiled, pigs were slaughtered in the Pertev Paşa Mosque and the Turkish shops had been looted, the Christian shops were prevented by chalking a cross upon them.
According to Toynbee a general massacre of the Turkish population had been prevented by the French liaison officer stationed at Izmit, who started patrolling the streets in company with the commander of a French destroyer as soon as the killing began. Several thousands of Turkish refugees were sheltered at the college of the French Assumptionists. But at Friday the 24th June, three and a half days before the Greek evacuation, the male inhabitants of the two Turkish quarters of Baghcheshmé (Bağçeşme) and Tepekhané (Tabakhane), in the highest part of the town, away from the sea, had been dragged to the cemetery and shot there in groups, more than 300 Turks had been executed. Toynbee claimed that the Turkish troops who occupied Izmit behaved well to the very few remaining Christians and did not plunder their shops to retaliate. However most of Christians had already fled and almost none would return back thereby losing their non movable property. According to Toynbee, Circassians in Greek service had played a subordinate role in the atrocities at Izmit.
See also
Sources
- ^ Toynbee, Arnold Joseph (1922). The Western question in Greece and Turkey. General Books LLC. p. 287-297-298-299. ISBN 9781152112612.
- Lieberman, Benjamin (2013). Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 126. ISBN 9781442230385. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
"In late June the Greek military gathered forces for the offensive by moving troops out of Ismid, leaving a looted city in flames. News of the Greek pullout caused panic among Armenian and Greek refugees who had found safe haven in Ismid.
- "GREECE AND TURKEY". http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1921/jun/29/greece-and-turkey. British Parliament/ HANSARD.
but according to information received this morning the town of Ismid was evacuated by the Greek forces on the evening of 27th June. It is further reported that the town is in flames and that great panic prevails in the district. Numbers of Armenians and neutral Turks are fleeing towards Constantinople. Having regard to the general confusion, there appears to be considerable danger of massacres, and Mr. Rattigan, in concurrence with the Allied High Commissioners, is taking all possible steps to prevent such outrages by one side or the other.
{{cite web}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help); External link in|website=|url=(help) - Prothero, G.W. (1920). Anatolia. London: H.M. Stationery Office.
- ^ Ionian vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919-1922, Michael Llewellyn Smith, page 215, 1998
Notes from "The Western question in Greece and Turkey"
- On the 29th June 1921, my wife and I personally witnessed Greek troops in uniform committing arson without provocation along the south coast of the Gulf of Ismid. We were travelling up the Gulf towards Ismid in the Red Crescent S.S. Gul-i-Nihal, with a representative of the Allied High Commissioners on board, whose presence enabled us to pass the cordon of Greek warships. The Greek forces, which had evacuated the town of Ismid on the morning of the previous day, were retreating along the shore in the opposite direction—from east to west—towards Yalova and Gemlik. Our first intimation of their approach was the sudden appearance of two columns of smoke rising from the shore ahead of us. A little later, and a village burst into flames just as we came opposite to it, and at the same moment we saw that a column of Greek troops in uniform, coming from the east, had just arrived there. We were coasting only a few hundred yards from the shore, and could see the soldiers setting fire to the houses distinctly with the naked eye. Even the boats moored to the jetties were burning, down to the water-line. Later, as we looked astern, we saw new and larger columns of smoke rise from the little towns of Eregli and Karamursal, which had been intact a few hours before, when we had passed them. The head of the column had reached them and continued its operations. From our anchorage off Ismid that evening, we could see the fiery glow above Karamursal flickering far into the night. On the 1st and 2nd July we landed at Karamursal, Eregli and the skala of Deirmenderé, and walked up to inspect Deirmenderé itself. Everywhere the destruction had been malicious and systematic. Among the ruins of Karamursal we found two live human beings. One was an old Turkish woman named Khadija, who had been violated and beaten with rifle butts. The other was an exhausted Greek private named Andréas Masséras, belonging to the 10th Company, 16th Regiment, 11th Division. I afterwards got an account from him of what had occurred. During the retreat of the 29th June, he told me his regiment had been the rearguard—except for a detachment of Circassians only twenty or thirty men strong. The villages were all burning by the time that they reached them—a confirmation of our own observations at Ulashly Iskelesi, where we had seen the houses being set on fir by regular troops at the head of the column. At Eregli, Masséras had fallen out with sunstroke; the tail of the column passed him; he dragged himself on as far as Karamursal; collapsed there; and lay in the open till we picked him up. This again confirmed what we had seen for ourselves, that there had been no fighting during the retreat, and that the Turkish towns and villages had been burnt in cold blood, without provocation.
- I must, however, say something about the events which preceded the voluntary withdrawal of the Greek Army from the town of Ismid, at the end of June 1921. During the year that the Greek occupation of Ismid had lasted (July 1920 to June 1921), the war of extermination had gone to such lengths, and the local Greek civilians had compromised themselves so deeply by participation, that the entire native Christian population took its departure with the troops. Naturally they felt savage. Their brief ascendency had cost them their homes; they had had to leave their immovable property behind; and though they had had time for preparations and the Greek authorities had provided shipping, their prospects were forlorn. They vented their rage on their Turkish civilian neighbours, while they still had them in their power.
- One Turkish and Jewish quarter in the centre of the town had been set on fire, and the fire had only been extinguished after the Greeks’ departure by the exertions of the French Assumptionists (who have a College at Ismid, and covered themselves with honour on this occasion). Cattle had been penned into the burning quarter by the incendiaries in a frenzy of cruelty and had been burnt alive, and the smoking ruins were haunted by tortured, half-burnt cats.
- The villages east of Ismid were evacuated first, and the Turkish peasants with their ox-carts were commandeered to transport the departing Christians’ possessions. When we landed at Ismid about thirty-five hours after the completion of the evacuation, the streets leading to the jetties were heaped with the wrecks of these carts and the water littered with the offal of the oxen, which had been slaughtered on the quay in order that the flesh and the hides might more conveniently be shipped away. Corpses of Turkish carters—murdered in return of their services—were floating among the offal, and one or two corpses of Turkish women.
- The mosques had not only been robbed of their carpets and other furniture, but had been deliberately defiled. In the courtyard and even in the interior of the principal mosque, the Pertev Mehmed Jamy’sy, pigs had been slaughtered and left lying.
- In the town itself, the Turkish shops had been systematically looted—the Christian shops being protected against the destroying angel by the sign of the cross, chalked up on their shutters over the owner’s name.
- A general massacre had been prevented by the French liaison officer stationed at Ismid, who started patrolling the streets in company with the commander of a French destroyed as soon as the killing began.
- They (French Assumptionists) sheltered several thousand Turkish civilians on their premises until the Greeks left, and when I visited them they were giving asylum to the one or two Christian families that had not got away.
- But at 1 P.M. on Friday the 24th June, three and a half days before the Greek evacuation, the male inhabitants of the two Turkish quarters of Baghcheshmé and Tepekhané, in the highest part of the town, away from the sea, had been dragged out to the cemetery and shot in batches. On Wednesday the 29th I was present when two of the graves were opened, and ascertained for myself that the corpses were those of Moslems and that their arms had been pinioned behind their backs. There were thought to be about sixty corpses in that group of graves, and there were several others. In all, over 300 people were missing—a death-roll probably exceeding that at Smyrna on the 15th and 16th May 1919.
- The Turkish troops on their side consisted of three categories—regulars, volunteers, and local chettés. I had a glimpse of all three from the 29th June to the 2nd July 1921 at Ismid, and was impressed by their discipline. The chettés were undoubtedly under the Army’s control. The volunteers, who came like the regulars from distant parts, were properly organised units. The regulars themselves, in spite of their miscellaneous uniforms, were unmistakably fine soldiers. I saw them in circumstances of extreme provocation, but they stood the test. There had been no retaliation upon the churches for the state in which the Greeks had left the mosques; no wrecking of the deserted Greek and Armenian shops, though the sign of the cross still remained chalked on their shutters to distinguish them from the Turkish shops, which the Greeks, before they left, had systematically looted; no violence against the few native Christians who had remained, in revenge for the previous massacre of Turkish civilians.
- Their brief ascendency had cost them their homes; they had had to leave their immovable property behind; and though they had had time for preparations and the Greek authorities had provided shipping, their prospects were forlorn. They vented their rage on their Turkish civilian neighbours, while they still had them in their power.
- At the end of June 1921, a few weeks after that report was written, some of these Circassian mercenaries assisted the Greek chettés and regular troops at Ismid in the massacre of Turkish civilians, on the eve of the Greek evacuation of the town. But so far as I could discover, they played a subordinate part, and there is no warrant for making them the scape-goats for either this or any other Greek atrocity.