Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (19 page)

Herbert Octavius realised that this would need outside support. He recommended that England, France or America should act as guarantors of the peace. His personal preference was England, ‘who alone and single-handed has defeated Turkey and brought her to her knees in a manner which no other nation could have done’.

Herbert Octavius’s document – together with letters from the other leading Levantines – began to have an effect on the peacemakers. By mid-April, the specialist committee was no longer convinced that Greek rule was a good idea. When Harold Nicolson and Arnold Toynbee sat down to draft an agreement over the division of spoils in western Anatolia, they suggested a U-turn on policy. ‘[We] propose to cut the Gordian knot,’ wrote Nicolson. ‘Let the Turks have Anatolia as their own. Give the Greeks European Turkey only.’

But at the very moment when Greece seemed to have lost the argument over Smyrna, the Italians unwittingly handed Venizelos his trump card. On 24 April, Orlando and his team – furious over the Allies’ refusal to grant them the Adriatic port of Fiume – stormed out of the conference. Just a few hours later, they packed their bags and left Paris. Lloyd George drew a renewed burst of energy from the crisis. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the fat is in the fire at last.’

Never were truer words spoken. Italy now took matters into her own hands, landing small bands of troops at various points on Turkey’s Aegean coastline in order to create an Italian sphere of influence around Smyrna. The first group of marines were sent ashore at Adalia. These were followed by more landings – at Makri and Marmaris – and this time the troops pushed inland. It was reported that Italian agents on the ground were collaborating with the Turks and encouraging them to resist any attempted Greek landing.

Soon, the conference received even worse news. President Wilson informed Lloyd George and Clemenceau that the Italians were sending warships to Smyrna itself. ‘The attitude of Italy is indubitably aggressive,’ he warned. ‘She is a menace to the peace.’ Clemenceau could not help making a sideswipe at the American president. ‘A fine start to the League of Nations!’ he chortled.

Later that evening, Harold Nicolson and Lloyd George discussed the growing crisis. Nicolson was aghast at the manoeuvring of the Italians. ‘By trying to steal a march on the Asia Minor coast,’ he wrote, ‘[they] have helped the Greeks more than they know.’

The crisis only deepened in the days that followed. On 5 May, Lloyd George was warned that the Italians would soon be fully installed in Anatolia. He proposed immediate action. ‘We should let the Greeks occupy Smyrna,’ he said. ‘There are massacres starting there and no-one to protect the Greek population.’

Clemenceau seemed inclined to agree. ‘Do you know how many ships Italy has off Smyrna at the moment?’ he asked. ‘She has seven.’

The crisis was discussed yet again on the following day and this time there was a real urgency to their deliberations. Orlando and Sonnino had announced their return to the peace conference, adding that they would be in Paris in time for the next day’s proceedings. If the three principal players were to take a quick decision about Smyrna, this would be their last opportunity.

They were in the middle of a lengthy discussion about the behaviour of Italy when an impatient Lloyd George broke into the conversation. For six long years he had supported Venizelos’s goal of a Greek empire in Asia Minor. Now, at last, he saw his chance to act.

‘My opinion,’ he announced, ‘is that we should tell Mr Venizelos to send troops to Smyrna. We will instruct our admirals to let the Greeks land wherever there is a threat of trouble or massacre.’

President Wilson thought for a moment before signalling his agreement. ‘Why not tell them to land as of now?’ he said. ‘Have you any objection to that?’

‘None,’ said Lloyd George.

‘Nor have I,’ added Clemenceau. ‘But should we warn the Italians?’

‘In my opinion,’ responded Lloyd George, ‘no.’

As soon as the three men had finished their luncheon, Lloyd George telephoned Venizelos and summoned him to the Quai d’Orsay. The British prime minister was concise. According to Venizelos’s diary entry, the exchange went as follows:

‘Do you have troops available?’

‘We do. For what purpose?’

‘President Wilson, M. Clemenceau and I decided today that you should occupy Smyrna.’

‘We are ready.’

When this news was taken to Britain’s Chief of Imperial Staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, he was horrified. ‘I asked Lloyd George if he realised that this was starting another war.’

The prime minister paused for a moment before brushing him aside. He had no time for self-doubt.

Blood on the Quayside

D
onald Whittall’s day began with a ritual that was familiar to all the Levantine men of Bournabat. As soon as it was light, he would wash, dress himself in suit and starched shirt and walk the 200 yards from his
fin-de-siècle
villa to the little railway station. Here, he would find a highly polished steam train awaiting him, as well as his uncle Herbert Octavius and all the other merchant princes of Bournabat.

‘The train was like a private club on wheels,’ wrote Eldon Giraud, one of Donald’s numerous cousins. ‘The guard . . . Ali Çavas, knew all his passengers intimately. The train would never leave in the morning unless all were present.’

Five minutes before the scheduled departure, Ali Çavas would give a series of blasts on the train’s whistle. ‘And you would see a sort of marathon headed by the Keyser family, most of whom were still dressing as they ran, and as soon as the last one entered the station, Ali Çavas would wave his green flag and the train would move off.’

Such slovenliness on the part of the Keyser family was frowned upon by Herbert Octavius. Indeed, even Donald, in his youth, had behaved in a manner that was unbefitting a Whittall. One day, he had secretly unhitched the last carriage of the train – the one that carried all the Whittalls – leaving them stranded in Bournabat station. He was subsequently known as Mad Donald.

There was a pleasing familiarity to the morning routine that even the high-spirited Donald came to appreciate. ‘Every one had his own private seat in his particular carriage,’ recalled Eldon. ‘This seat was sacred and God help any stranger who was unaware that he had taken Uncle Richard’s, Uncle Edward’s or Dr Denotowitz’s place.’ If such an outrage should occur, the Levantine grandees would summon Ali Çavas, ‘and the offender was ejected immediately in such a way that he often left the train at the first station’.

On 15 May 1919, Donald boarded the train as usual. It left punctually and arrived exactly on time at its destination. As he strolled down Boulevard Aliotti towards his offices on the waterfront, he noticed a large crowd assembling on the quayside. Something momentous was about to take place – and Donald Whittall was to become an eyewitness to everything that followed.

The countdown to trouble had begun on the previous morning, when the British flagship,
Iron Duke
, had sailed into the harbour. On board was the British admiral, Sir Somerset Gough Calthorpe, who had come to meet Smyrna’s governor. He landed and, accompanied by his senior officers, made his way to the governor’s residence. After the customary courtesies, he informed Governor Izzet Bey that Allied forces were about to officially occupy his city.

Izzet Bey’s first question was to ask whether the Greek army would be taking part in the landings. He and his advisors blanched when they were informed that this would indeed be the case. ‘Though they must have realised before that this landing was contemplated,’ wrote Ian Smith, one of the British intelligence officers at the meeting, ‘the official communication of it was a severe shock.’ The governor felt betrayed by Britain and expressed his deep anxieties about his city being ‘handed over unprotected to the rule of a race whom they feared [and] who nourished a feeling of hatred for the Turks’.

George Horton, who had just returned to Smyrna after an absence of two years, was in agreement with Izzet Bey. He would later argue that this one bad decision set in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to catastrophe. ‘[It] ultimately caused the Greek disaster and the destruction of Smyrna,’ he wrote.

News that the city was to be occupied spread rapidly through the different quarters, causing patriotic delirium among Greeks and Armenians, and corresponding despair among Turks. The Levantine population was equally unhappy about the turn of events, fearing that the Greeks would be unable to keep the peace.

Having listened to the concerns of families like the Whittalls, Admiral Calthorpe ordered small detachments of Allied troops to enter the city and guard the European consulates, as well as the banks, post offices and shoreline forts. By early that afternoon, the operation was complete and the British congratulated themselves on their success. It boded well for the landing of the Greek army on the following morning.

Admiral Calthorpe was unaware that news of the intended Greek occupation had been met with such fury in the Turkish quarters of Smyrna. A group of Turkish agitators immediately established a Committee Against [Greek] Annexation, which called for protest meetings throughout the city. It also made use of Turkish-owned printing presses to spread the word throughout the Turkish quarter. Angry proclamations were posted on public buildings, urging people to demonstrate against the Greek occupation.

The city’s Turkish inhabitants were enjoined to assemble that evening on the steep hillside above the Jewish cemetery. ‘Flock there in your thousands,’ read one of the proclamations, ‘and show to the whole world your crushing superiority of numbers . . . On this occasion, there is no distinction between rich and poor, educated and illiterate – only an overwhelming mass repudiating Greek domination.’

This was to be the public side of the protest; there was also a secret side. Unbeknown to the Allies, the committee began transporting weapons and ammunition into the countryside around Smyrna. It was an ominous portent of things to come.

As dusk fell on the evening of 14 May, more and more Turks heeded the call to demonstrate against the imminent Greek landing. According to some eyewitnesses, as many as 50,000 men, women and children made their way onto the heights of Bachri-Baba. There was something of a carnival atmosphere surrounding their demonstration. They lit bonfires and banged drums in protest.

In the city itself, there were rather more sinister developments. At some point during the evening, several hundred convicts were allowed to escape from the Turkish Central Prison. This was a troubling development, particularly as the fugitive prisoners seemed to have had help from outside. Their escape almost certainly took place with the complicity of Major Carossini, the Italian head of Allied Prison Control, who was implacably opposed to the Greek annexation.

There was even more alarming news in the early hours of the morning. A Turkish military depot was looted and large numbers of Turks were reported to have been supplied with arms and ammunition. Allied intelligence agents picked up rumours of a planned resistance at the Quarantine, a building close to one of the intended debarkation points for Greek troops. There was even talk of Italians being actively involved in organising the resistance.

The Greek troops, who numbered some 13,000 men, spent the night in nervous excitement. The Smyrna-bound fleet had dropped anchor at nearby Mytilene island so that the soldiers could be briefed about the planned landings. The operation had been deemed so secret that most men had been told that they were being transported to Bessarabia in order to take part in military operations in the Ukraine. Only at the last minute did they learn that their goal was infinitely more exciting.

One of the senior Greek commanders, Colonel Nikolaos Zafiriou, was all too aware of the delicacy of the operation that he was about to lead. In his eve-of-battle address, he warned his men to temper their patriotism. ‘The enthusiasm filling our hearts is fully justified,’ he said, ‘but any improper manifestation of this enthusiasm will be entirely out of place.’ He informed them that Smyrna was by no means an exclusively Greek city – a surprise to many of the troops – and urged them to consider everyone as equals. ‘We must not forget that when we reach our destination, we shall meet Turks, Jews and Europeans of other denominations. Everybody should be treated in the same way.’

The Greek troops were awakened at dawn and told that the time for action was fast approaching. Much planning had gone into how to take control of the city without any blood being spilled. There were to be three separate landings: one regiment was to encircle the southern part of the city; another was to surround the north-eastern quarters; while a third regiment was to drive a wedge between the Greek and Turkish areas in order to prevent any ethnic clashes. It was a sensible plan that had every prospect of success. The shoreside forts were already in Allied hands and the Turkish troops were confined to their barracks.

In the city itself, the excitement was palpable. As Donald Whittall made his way to the family offices that morning, he saw thousands of Greeks spilling onto the seafront in order to welcome the Greek troops. Blue-and-white flags fluttered from every building on the quayside and the crowds were starting to shout, ‘Long live Venizelos!’ All were longing for the moment of liberation.