Talk:Smyrna

The Smyrna catastrophe

• The Greek version: "In the year 1922 nearly every house or building belonging to Greeks or symbolising the Greek presence in the city was razed by Turks. All the Greeks from the entire Asia Minor were forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in Greece. Many died in the attempt. Greek accounts at the time describe how many Greeks, fleeing from the burning city, tried to climb on the British ships, but the sailors prevented them by cutting their hands."
• The Turkish version (from User:128.10.8.57: "In the year 1922, when Turks recaptured the city from Greeks, the withdrawing Greek forces gave the city under fire, which lasted several days. As the conflicts between Greeks and Turks living together in most parts of Greece and Turkey continued afterwards, Turkish and Greek governments reached on an agreement to exchange their Greek and Turkish minorities, many people had to leave their homes, leading to tragedies on both sides. The Greek population of Smyrna mostly disappeared after this exchange."

Can Wikipedians come up with a neutral accurate description of what happened at Smyrna in 1922, neither inflammatory nor apologist? Neither of these versions is up to Wikipedia standards. Wetman 01:01, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

And what's the deal with the reference to Hitler at the end?Gwimpey 22:41, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

(Yep. Out with it! --Wetman 21:28, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC))

The last part of the article (starting with the claims that 150,000 out of 300,000 Smyrnians were Greek in 1908 – Catholic

Encyclopedia is not exactly an objective source when it comes to information about the Ottomans, and going on with the

burning of Smyrna section out of a Greek history textbook) is an absolute disaster and has no factual accuracy whatsoever. Also,

why the hell does the article link to "foreign relations of Greece" for more information on the modern city? The only thing

missing in this article is the claim that Turks are a barbarian tribe filled with bloodlust for poor greek peasants. A factually

accurate way of describing the Smyrna events would be along the lines of Greeks invading western Anatolia after the Ottomans'

collapse following WWI and the treaties that followed, Greek soldiers doing what soldiers normally do on occupied lands,

Turkish army defeating the Greek army, both armies probably setting hostile civilian residences afire, Greek army being

sent home in ships. Just a standard disclaimer, I am a Turk, born and raised in Izmir. My grandmother from my father's

side is Greek, and her family had witnessed the "burning of smyrna" and she told me many stories about it. None of it

ever sounded like this article to me, she was rather precise in describing the Greeks as the aggressors. --67.171.71.40 10:50, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, my grandmother was five years old when having to leave Smyrna, and even if one does not want to rely on her memories alone, the parts of her family that also did manage to escape on different routes out of the burning city to Thessaloniki were of older age at the time and told my mother and aunt basically the same things as my grandmother (I only got to know my grandmother, rest of the survivors from back then had died as I reached an age in which I would ask things – I was born 1977).

They all had no particular reason for being great Greek nationalists: My family from the Greek side has always been quite internationalistic, and they use to dispise right-wing people, especially Greeks, and were oppositional under the rule of the fascistoid dictators from 1967–1974, and my grandmother voted for the mostly anti-nationalistic Communist Party of Greece until she died.

But according to them all, the city WAS conquered in a barbaric, blood-lusty manner, and they had some quite shocking graphic details to tell... I do not know what happened, I was not there, but keeping in mind that my grandmother had always had a good relationship to Turks and Muslims in Thessaloniki and that she did communicate with them so much that she learned to speak Turkish pretty well (in Thessaloniki, that is! Because in Smyrna most talking had been done in Greek, as she recalled it!) I have no strong reason to believe they lied! But as with many controversial aspects of nationalistic wars in the near-east and the balcanian area (is it called so in English? I'm a native German speaker, forgive me) of the 20th century, this statement of hers – and mine – will be just another piece of the puzzle, I guess, and many of these pieces will be harder and harder to verify as time passes on because the eye-witnesses die out (like my grandmother already has last year).

However, how could the Greek army be really considered being the "aggressor" when they occupied a city whose streets were laid out with flowers to greet them at their arrival and whose mainly spoken language seems to having been Greek? Maybe the army went further on into the back land, being a true occupational and repressive force to the muslims there, but one has to keep in mind that at least in Smyrna they did not have to fear anything and that these areas at the coast had been populated by Greeks since the development of the Greek alphabet – so at least for Smyrna you could not really call the Greek army being the "aggressor".

Anyway, if anyone wishes to talk to me, I'm at the de.wikipedia.org, and my user name there is marilyn.hanson (being a guy, though ;-)), so feel free to drop me some lines if you want to. — 134.100.99.186 22:26, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) de:marilyn.hanson

Agressors?

"How can they be agressors?". Let me explain. How come we call Hitler an agressor (among many other worse things) when he invaded central European countries in the name of releiving Germans living in those areas. Heck, the majority of Austrians were "really" laying flowers in front of his armies as you just described. Hey by the way did you know that except Smyrna and Ayvalik, everywhere the Greek army invaded (which encompasses an area maybe as big as today's whole Greece), Turks were the majority, and even when you included those two cities they were still the majority in Western Anatolia by a big margin? Did you know that the Greeks made up about only half the population in Smyrna around the time of the occupation, the rest being Armenians, Jews, Turks, and Italians and other westerners? But you choose to believe there were flowers everywhere the Greek army got. Well I also have grandparents who lived in the area during the Greek occupation, and guess what? Yep, right, they used to tell us the other stories that you weren't told of, and they are not pretty. Going back to the agressors, well turks were definetely the agressors for many times in their history and Greeks were the victims of many of those aggressions. However I do not dare to legitimize their acts by claiming that this was the norm of the era, or they were better overlords then the ones they replaced (which was true at times), or there were flowers laid when they arrived (which was really the case occasionally) or anything like that, but in this day and age, you are legitimizing an openly aggressive, autocratic act that in the end resulted in deaths of thousands and thousands of turks and greeks, stripped both countries of their ethnic minorities and caused a lot of pain that still aches on both sides of the Aegean sea and you are not even a native Greek speaker!!! How they manage to fill in the heads of people with such nationalistic crap and make them repeat those like parrots believing those are original thoughts is beyond me.

Hey by the way, didn't we hear about that laying flowers business a lot when they crashed a Saddam statue about two years ago?

Burning of Smyrna: another anonymous edit

Can anyone tell whether the use of "Turkish nationalist regime" is neutral. I have never heard of the word 'nationalist regime' used for the Mustafa Kemal's army.

The following new edit, which suppresses information formerly in the text, needs to be cafefully vetted by some responsible Wikipedian, preferably logged in, before it can be entered in place of the existing text. Perhaps there is some accuracy in each text. --Wetman 04:22, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :

At the end of the first world war the Greek Government was promised western anatolia, including Smyrna, as an award for forcing the Turkish government to sign the Treaty of Sevres through military presence in Turkey. As a result the Greek troops invaded Symrna and annexed western anatolia to Greece. However this move draw fierce opposition from Turks who were still the majority in the region but not in Smyrna itself. Soon the guerilla type resistance was united under the command of the nationalist turkish government of Kemal Atatürk in Ankara and the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 erupted.

At the end of Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, on September 9th 1922, Turkish troops recaptured Smyrna.

However just as the Turkish soldiers arrived, a big fire erupted and most of the old city burned to the ground. Both parties blamed each other for setting up the fire. Turks claim the Greeks burned down Symrna as well as many other Turkish towns as they retreated in order to slow down turkish advance, Greeks claim that it was an act of revenge by a turkish mob to set fire on Greek quarters of the city. This issue is still heatedly debated in the history books of both nations. As a result of the events at the end of the Greco-Turkish War many Greeks and other minority members of the city left. Soon after, the remaining Greeks also were sent to Greece as a result of the population exchange clause of the Treaty of Lausanne. Today vast majority of the inhabitants of the city are ethnically turkish. In modern Turkey, thanks to its ethnically mixed heritage and being an important commercial hub, Symrna is regarded as the most westernized city in Turkey.

Responses

To Wetman: I don't understand why the obviously biased previous version is kept instead of the version below. The first paragraph just recites the facts in every history book and other pages of wikipeida, if you just care to take a look at the article on Greco-Turkish War for example. The second paragraph is as neutral as possible, briefly citing claims of both sides. Really, why on earth would you prefer the "barbarian turks killed civilized greeks" version, I have no idea. What is below is probably not perfect but it is much better than what you re-post up there. (Anon.)

Let's actually quote some of those history books, folks. And add counter-quotes from opposing historians. All I personally know is the peripheral reference in David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, so I'm not competent to judge. --Wetman 21:28, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

NPOV?: The last sections of this article (Burning of Smyrna) are definitely not written from a neutral point of view, and represent the nationalist Greek account of what happened. I refrain from removing the whole section, however it is unacceptable that such bias is present in an article which should only be telling the story of a 4000 year old historic city (where I was born), and not some Greek rambling on how they failed to recapture the city and hate the Turks. The mere fact that "The Modern City" links to foreign relations of Greece is absurd. I propose that either the "Burning of Smyrna" section to be rewritten by an unbiased (I am not) party, or the current section be renamed "Burning of Smyrna: The Greek Account" and the Turkish perspective added in another section. Currently this article does not represent NPOV, and is not up to Wikipedia

standards. --Mrpdaemon 21:06, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

...but it can become so, nevertheless. --Wetman

== To Wetman 2 ==

If u feel you are incompetent to judge why insist on having this section of the article the way it is? Even you can't :claim that currently it is unbiased, and the version I provided states the claim of both sides and the facts I provide :are supoported in other articles of wikipedia. And I thought wikipedia was open to anyone to edit!!! By leaving the :article as it is you are not being impartial, nor are you serving the greater good of NPOV, but you are siding with one :party over the other. You should either replace the current version with a more neutral one or you should move the :current version to the discussion page as you did to my edit. I don't see why someone else's point of view should have :precedence over mine.

I am really troubled at the above commentator's attempt to portray this as "both sides." I am not Greek or Turkish but simply a (Ph.D) candidate on the interwar period. Indeed, there are "two sides" on the burning of Smyrna but they are not Greek and Turkish sides, it is a Turkish side and vs credentialed peer-reviewed historians using first-person primary data, footnotes, and serious scholarship.

The fact is Turkish troops burned Smyrna, massacred a huge number of Greeks and Armenians, who were the large majority, and the rest of the non-turkish population was forced to flee. Yes, one can find references to this in first person accounts of people with bias, including racist bias agains the Turks, but one can also find it a myriad of third party first person direct observation and academically sound histories by people with no bias, or even holding bias in favor of Turkey.

I think most telling is the asserion that the Catholic Encyclopedia would have overcounted Greeks. The Catholic Church at the time would have been inclined to under count Greeks. This was not a Christian vs Moslem census isse. The Italians were of course making their own claims. At this period Italy owned as colonies many of the islands across from Asia Minor. They were making direct claims on the mainland at this very period based on the number of Catholics.

Really more than anything else this is a lesson in the problems in historicity in Turkey. As late as 1996 Turkish historians have been JAILED for "slandering the state" when not towing the offical line concerning the Kurdish, Armenians and Greek populations in Asia Minor. I have been to quite a few academic conferences where Turkish historians will tell you the entire body of work used in Turkish universities is problematic.

In short a minority here are doing the equivelent of suggesting that both the Holocaust historians and the Holocaust deniers get equal space. Forget the morality of this, it is, from a historical point of view, without basis – or merit.

Holocaust Deniers

I am not aware of any definitive proof of burning of Smyrna being started by Turks, though I am not a specialist and I would not be surprized if that really is the accepted interpretation of events among most historians and even if it is in fact what really happened. I do not dispute that turkish mobs massacred greeks after the greek army left either. Although vague, I heard stories from my family members that hint things like that happened. Do they belong in an article about a historic city? (Neither Turks nor Greeks call the modern city Smyrna) Maybe... Does the last addition to the article by a Turk biased? Yes. Is the Turkish version of events true? No. Is the Greek version true? Very unlikely unless you are ready to accept turks are the wrath of God.

However, the commentator above has so authoritatively suggested that people who dispute the Greek version of events are akin to Holacaust deniers, I feel compelled to respond. Although it doesn't bother you that the article contains a graphic description of turkish atrocities against "civilized" and victimized greeks (turks are members of mobs at best, I presume), but not a single word about a foreign army invading a country without provocation does bother me. It also bothers me that, even if in your "objective" mind this piece of information may be irrelevant, to you appearently, it is also irrelevant that invading Greek army wasn't exactly there to protect turkish villagers and other non-civilized turks. Do I see you advocating an inclusion of a clause merely suggesting that in fact both sides killed a lot of innocent people in a war? Nope. But those of us who suggest that the turks were also subject to atrocities are Holocaust deniers. I guess that means there was a Greek Holocaust and no one touched a single turk. Just don't give me "third party first person accounts" crap, I may not know what each and every observer has said about what happened there but at least I read Dido Sotiriyu, whom I believe you would not dare to label turkish biased.

As a last note, I am very very troubled about this so called freedom of speech and "Holocaust deniers" thing. Well it is a little too convenient a label to use when someone dares to challenge the official version of events, don't you think? Of course real "Holocaust deniers" are very lowly life forms and mostly racist neo-Nazis, but do you really feel comfortable with someone being put to prison for disputing historic events? Sorry but I do not. That is not only because of my abstract love of "freedom of speech". Even though it may be the case that official version of events around Jewish Holocaust may be true to the iota, I still do not feel comfortable when a story goes unchallenged. I have seen so many "soooooo true" stories crumble with a little bit of research that I feel like there is something to hide in the official version that governments resort to a ban on freedom of speech. This is of course the case for all those "turkish historians" (should be intellectuals actually, I do not think it was only about history) who were imprisoned, there was some truth in what they said that cost them their freedom, nobody cares when you don't make sense. How do you feel as a historian about this? If you are OK with this, then why stop at Holocaust, or even at Turkish massacre of innocent Greeks? Would you advocate the creation of a list of "proven events that are illegal to dispute"? Maybe illegal is a little too strong, how about "indecent to dispute", so that the government does not imprison you like the Turkish Government did, but if you are an academician you lose your job? Fair enough?

Wasn't there a time when it was almost illegal in US to suggest that Japanese-Americans were presecuted during WWII? When did the Belgian government accept its crimes against humanity in Congo? What does it say in school books in UK about british role in atlantic slave trade? Massacres in India? The role of British government in creating an ultimately unstable middle east so that no one can dominate the petoleum fields, ensuring cheap fuel for west? It looks to me that those are just a few of the events which would be hard to discuss in public in the past but now nearly universally accepted as true, right?

How do you think people will read history of our times in 100 years? If you are a real historian this must be a part of your concerns. And if you are concerned about political atmosphere influencing the historical interpretation of events I really do not see how you can feel comfortable with labels like "Holocaust deniers", much less with finding the moral authority to label people who try to tell another version of a story which has nothing to do with Holocaust. To me, with your "holier than thou" attitude and with your quickness to label people you disagree with, you are no better than those government officials who imprison intellectuals. After all, they also would swear that their version of history is the only true one if they were here and they would also blurp out a list of evidence somehow mysteriously hard to get hold of to support their claims.