THE MIRACLE
A True Story
Go to the initial page.

Young Turks.

   "On 19th May, 1919, only three weeks after the arrival of the Greek army in Smyrna, Kemal Atatürk landed in Samsun and declared the Struggle for National Liberation. You know, I could never understand from whom Kemal was going to liberate Asia Minor. From the Greeks, who had lived there for centuries? Even now, after 500 years of destruction, the whole region of Asia Minor is Greek to the core ..... Or did he perhaps want to liberate the area from the Armenians, the Pontians, the Kurds and the other people who were natives of Asia Minor? No, this was no 'Struggle for National Liberation': it was clearly a war of expansion aimed at hanging on to the regions they had conquered and wiping out the populations that lived there.

   "When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, Lenin didn't have a friend in the world. The first person to reach agreement with him was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. So, unfortunately, Lenin helped the Turks. On the one hand the wily Kemal gained two million golden rubles, four thousand horses and all the Russian ammunition in the Pontus, and on the other he succeeded in making the Allies terrified that he might enter into close collaboration with the Bolsheviks. In other words, he killed two birds with one stone.

   "The result was not long in manifesting itself. The French were the first to fear an alliance between Russia and Turkey and agreed with Atatürk to stage a mock battle in which they would be defeated by the Turks at Antioch. It was widely reported that the Turkish army had been resurrected and had defeated the French army, which consisted at that time not of French soldiers but of natives from France's West African colonies, such as Morocco and Senegal. France agreed to withdraw and hand over all its heavy weapons to Kemal Ataturk.

   "As far as the Allies were concerned, Greece was not a country to be reckoned with. It was quite obvious from the outset that the Italians were not at all happy about Greece's presence in Asia Minor. As for the British - they were all hollow words and empty promises. The Turks, meanwhile, were accepting aid from one allied power in order to harm another -exactly as they do today! The fight soon turned into a very unequal affair.

   "On 9th September, 1922 the Turks invaded Smyrna and spent the next five days in a frenzy of destruction, conflagration and slaughter. Over 150,000 Greeks were massacred by the Young Turks when Kemal entered Smyrna. Between 1914 and 1922 they killed 323,000 Greeks in the Pontus region and more than 400,000 living on the Asia Minor coast.

   "After the Smyrna debacle, Venizelos was called back from exile and returned to leadership to try to salvage what he could from the desperate situation. In January, 1923 an agreement on the exchange of populations was signed: 1,300,000 Christians, i. e. Greeks living in Asia Minor, were to be exchanged for 480,000 Muslims living in Greece. The agreement was incorporated into the Treaty of Lausanne, under the terms of which 120,000 Christians (out of a total of 315,000 who lived in Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos), offset by 80,000 Muslims in Western Thrace, were exempted from the population exchange. So the Turks succeeded in getting rid of the non-Muslim population 'by all possible means', as Talat had instructed.

   "A month after the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, the Armenians were attacked by Kemal's Young Turks. The attack ended on 2nd December, 1920 with a fresh massacre and by Turkey's annexing half of Armenia.

   "Next it was the turn of the Kurds, but they proved to


89 and 90


Leonidas Koumakis
THE MIRACLE
A True Story


If you prefer a hard copy of the book, please send an email to
HEC-Books@hec.greece.org



Previous Page | Initial Page | Site Map | Next Page (91st of 204)


© For Internet 2001 HEC and Leonidas Koumakis. Updated on 19 June 2001.