THE MIRACLE
A True Story |
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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
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