| QUOTE ("Falih Rifki Atay") |
AFTER THE VICTORY Because I have decided to write the truth about what I know, I will quote a page from the notes I made at that time: The looters too helped the fire expand. One of the things I regret the most [is]; an officer who went to loot a photograph’s shop left pictures he had taken during the entire offensive wars at the hotel, [leading to] the burning and loss of these historical documents. Why were we burning Izmir? Were we fearing that we wouldn’t be rid of the minorities [the non-Muslim communities in Turkey] if we left the mansions, hotels and casinos [cafés, bars etc.] to stand? At the time of the 1st World War, when Armenians were deported, we burnt down any and every habitable neighbourhood and quarter of cities and towns in Anatolia with the same fear. There is no thing which will not come from this driest of dry [in e.g. purest of pure] feelings of [wishes of] destruction. In this there is also the effect of a sense of inferiority complex. It was surely in our fate not to be [a place] resembling a piece of Europe in every corner, as if (sic) being Christian or foreigner. If there had been another war [and] if we’d been defeated; would leaving Izmir in ruin be sufficient in protecting the city’s Turkishness? If it hadn’t been for Nureddin Pasha, whom I came to know as a dark fanatic, raging demogogue, I don’t believe the continuation of this tragedy would have been possible till the end. Nureddin Pasha was without any doubt strengthened by the feelings of rancor and revenge harboured by the arriving officers and people who had witnessed the ruins of Turkish towns burnt down to coal by the Greeks and the crying and agitated populace of these, [even] before [the time of] Afyon. Likewise, after the victory at Izmir, a Nureddin Pasha issue will arise (sic). This man, with the smallest share in the victory, as soon as he entered Izmir, printed a personal card reading "Besieger of Küt-al-Amara, winner of the Afyon war and conqueror of İzmir." And the first man he met [in e.g. held a meeting with] in Izmir was the mufti [or “mullah”]. Nureddin Pasha left a declaration for himself [saying]: at his death a mosque the size of Kordon [quarter in Izmir] and his tomb were to be built. The Conqueror was to be buried in this tomb. The Mufti, was little after going to present this bearded and majestic [in e.g. grand] leader to the whole of Turkey’s religious fanatics in through [one of] his booklet[s]. And when he went from Izmir to Izmit, at the time of his meeting with commanding officers: - I came again, said the man not commenting [in e.g. giving oppinion] on the war: - I came prepared to walk over Mesta-Karasu, [but] I’ve been held here, he was to say. Atay, Falih Rifki. Cankaya (1969) p. 325. Turkish original: ZAFER SONRASI 325 Bildiklerimin doğrusunu yazmaya karar verdiğim için o zamanki notlarımdan bir sayfayı buraya aktarmak istiyorum: «Yağmacılar da ateşin büyümesine yardım ettiler. En çok esef ettiğim şeylerden biri. bir fotoğrafçı dükkânıni yağmaya giden subay, bütün taarruz harbleri boyunca çekmiş olduğu filmleri otelde bıraktığı için. bu tarihi vesikaların yanıp gitmesi olmuştur. İzmir'i niçin yakıyorduk? Kordon konaklan, oteller ve gazinolar kalırsa, azınlıklardan kurtulamıyacagımızdan mı korkuyorduk? Birinci Dünya Harbinde Ermeniler tehcir olunduğu vakit. Anadolu şehir ve kasabalarının oturulabilir ne kadar mahalle ve semtleri varsa, gene bu korku ile yakmıştık. Bu kuru kuruya tahripçilik hissinden gelme bir şey değildir. Bunda bir aşağılık duygusunun da etkisi var. Bir Avrupa parçasına benzeyen her köşe. sanki hıristiyan veya yabancı olmak, mutlak bizim olmamak kaderinde idi. Bir harb daha olsa da yenilmiş olsak, izmir'i arsalar halinde bırakmış olmak, şehrin Türklüğünü korumaya kâfi gelecek miydi? Koyu bir mutaassıp, öfkelendirici bir demagog olarak tanımış olduğum Nureddin Paşa olmasaydı, bu facianın sonuna kadar devam etmiyeceğini sanıyorum. Nureddin Paşa, tâ Afyon'dan beri Yunanlıların yakıp kül ettiği Türk kasabalarının enkazını ve ağlayıp çırpınan halkını görerek gelen subayların ve neferlerin affetmez hınç ve intikam hislerinden de şüphesiz kuvvet almakta idi.» Nitekim İzmir zaferinin hemen arkasından bir Nureddin Paşa meselesi çıkacaktır. Zaferin bu en küçük hisseli adamı izmir'e girer girmez şöyle bir vizita kartı bastırmıştı: «Küt-ül-Amare muha-sırı, Afyon ve Dumlupınar muharebeleri gaalibi, İzmir fâtihi Nureddin Paşa.>> Izmir'de ilk buluştuğu adam da müftü idi. Nureddin Paşa kendisine bir vasiyetname bırakıyordu: ölünce Kordon bo-yuna bir camii, bir de türbesi yapılacaktı. Fâtih bu türbeye gömülecekti. Müftü, bir risalesi ile. biraz sonra irticaın bu sakallı ve azametli liderini bütün Türkiye yobazlarına takdim ettirmek üzere idi. İzmir'den İzmit'e gittiği zaman da, Çay'da komutanlara danışıldığı zaman: — Yeni geldim, diye taarruz hakkında oy vermiyen bu adam : — Ben Mesta-Karasu üstüne yürümek için hazırlanmıştım, beni burada tuttular, diyecekti. *** Yakup Kadri, ben ve Asım Us, Bornova'da bir İngiliz evine yerleştik. Bornova karargâhların bulunduğu yer olduğu İçin. her gün |
another source
| QUOTE ("Marjorie Housepian Dobkin") |
CHAPTER XIV Auxilium Deus ipse negavit. Even God refused his aid. The Greek historian Christobulus, referring to an adverse wind preceding the fall of Constantinople For several days there had been signs in the Armenian quarter that the Turks were preparing a conflagration. "Today (Monday, September 11) I saw with my own eyes the Turks taking bombs, gunpowder, kerosene and everything necessary to start fires, in wagon-fulls here and there through the streets," the Reverend Hartunian had recorded in his diary. That same day Anita Chakerian, a young teacher at the Institute, saw the Turkish guards dragging into the building large sacks, which they deposited in various corners. They were bringing rice and potatoes, the men said, because they knew the people were hungry and would soon have nothing left to eat. The sacks were not to be opened until the bread was exhausted. Such unexpected generosity led one of the sailors to investigate; the bags held gunpowder and dynamite. On Tuesday night, wagons bearing gasoline drums again moved through the deserted streets around the College. 141 Just after midnight on Tuesday the wind shifted its direction away from the Moslem quarter and a gusty breeze began blowing toward the harbor. A rash of fires broke out within an hour. At 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Mabel Kalfa, a Greek nurse at the Collegiate Institute, saw three fires in the neighborhood. At 4:00 a.m. fires in a small wooden hut adjoining the College wall and on a veranda near the school were put out by firemen. At noon on Wednesday a sailor beckoned Mabel Kalfa and Miss Mills to the window in the dining room. "Look there," he said. "The Turks are setting the fires!" The women could see three Turkish officers silhouetted in the window of a photographer's shop opposite the school. Moments after the men emerged, flames poured from the roof and the windows. "Like all the other buildings this was burning from the inside," said the nurse. The soldiers moved on to the Khan, a Turkish hotel with a series of shops beneath. Their departure signaled an explosion and another fire. Said Miss Mills: "I could plainly see the Turks carrying tins of petroleum into the houses, from which, in each instance, fire burst forth immediately afterward. There was not an Armenian in sight, the only persons visible being the Turkish soldiers of the regular army, in smart uniforms." Two stone houses with iron shutters were fired next, then the baker's shop. By three o'clock in the afternoon, one entire street was ablaze. Because the wind was carrying sparks toward the school's laundry rooms, the sailors set some of the refugees to spreading rugs on the rooftops and organized a bucket brigade to wet them down. The Turkish guards ordered the refugees to come down. "I told them to stay where they were and not to be afraid," Nurse Kalfa reported. "But then a Turkish officer came and told them he would shoot them if they did not come down. He said it was forbidden to go on the roof. As our men were anxious to save the school, and as we had refugees in the laundry rooms, they did not listen to the officer. At that, he fired a shot into the air and we told them to come down." The Smyrna fire brigade had been working steadily for fourteen hours by this time. A mixed company of Turks and Greeks (the Greek firemen had taken their families to the fire station for safety on Saturday), it was organized and supported by the London insurance firms which underwrote the properties in Smyrna. Fires were not unusual in that city but this, Sergeant Tchor-badjis soon decided, was an epidemic. Between midnight on 142 Greek servant. His priceless books, paintings, and classical objects, the collection of a lifetime, were left behind. The spectacle along the waterfront haunted Melvin Johnson for the rest of his life. "When we left it was just getting dusk," he remembers. "As we were pulling out I'll never forget the screams. As far as we could go you could hear 'em screaming and hollering, and the fire was going on . . . most pitiful thing you ever saw in your life. In your life. Could never hear nothing like it any other place in the world, I don't think. And the city was set in a—a kind of a hill, and the fire was on back coming this way toward the ship. That was the only way the people could go, toward the waterfront. A lot of 'em were jumping in, committing suicide. It was a sight all right." The Simpson lifted anchor at 7:45 p.m. Horton, too, was on deck, watching the flames bearing relentlessly down on a human wall nearly two miles long. Banks of smoke rose so high that days afterward travelers on the Sea of Marmara, one hundred and forty miles away, mistook the spectacle for an immense mountain range. The glow and flame of the burning city were plainly visible for fifty miles, according to passengers on the Simpson. Among them was reporter John Clayton, whose la-*test*-('") dispatch was at that moment on Chicago newsstands: "After forty-eight hours of Turkish occupation the population has begun to realize there is not going to be any massacre. Remembering the horrors of the Greek occupation in 1919, when more than four thousand Moslems were butchered, the Christian population has been clamoring for protection." Clayton's article referred to a little looting and a few victims of private feuds ("Turks, Greeks, and Armenians"), but announced that "the discipline and order of the Turks was excellent." But now Clayton was pounding a new epic on his portable typewriter, without mincing words: "Except for the squalid Turkish quarter, Smyrna has ceased to exist. The problem of the minorities is here solved for all time. No doubt remains as to the origin of the fire. . . . The torch was applied by Turkish regular soldiers." Clayton had a scoop. His story, sent from Athens at dawn, was the first to reach print. Constantine Brown's dispatch in the Chicago Daily News was to be no less frank: "A crime which will brand the Turks forever was committed yesterday when Turkish soldiery, after finishing pillaging, set this city on fire." George Horton thought that only the destruction of Carthage by 153 Source: Dobkin, Marjorie Housepian. The Smyrna Affair. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1971) pp. 141-2, 153. |
as churchill said, "you can either fool a lot of people for a long time or many people for a short period of time, but never many people for long time"!
sh!t started to hit the fan now for brainwashed turks...
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are appropriate. 
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