Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (22 page)

Yet it soon became clear that the carpet seller was proving an effective force in uniting the disparate elements in central Turkey. After several weeks in Havza, he made his way to the conservative Muslim town of Amasya, where he met his comrades-in-arms: Ali Fuat, Rauf Orbay and Refet Bele. Together, they plotted resistance, discussed tactics and wrote the famous Amasya Circular. This asserted that the sultan’s administration in Constantinople was incapable of governing, since the city was under Allied control. It called upon the numerous defence organisations established in the wake of the Smyrna occupation to be co-ordinated into one central body. And it convoked a congress to be held in the eastern city of Sivas, preceded by a smaller gathering at Erzurum.

Emboldened by this document, Kemal delivered a rousing speech to the citizens of Amasya. ‘We must pull on our peasant shoes,’ he told them. ‘We must withdraw to the mountains, we must defend the country to the last rock. If it is the will of God that we be defeated, we must set fire to all our homes, to all our property; we must lay the country in ruins and leave it an empty desert.’

Kemal next made his way to Erzurum, where Colonel Rawlinson was still engaged in his forlorn search for weaponry. When the English colonel sought an early interview with Kemal, he was struck by the Turk’s professionalism. ‘He has read much and travelled widely,’ he wrote, ‘and is thoroughly competent to give a considered opinion on all subjects of general interest.’

Rawlinson warned his superiors in London that Kemal was a Turkish thoroughbred who was fired by patriotism. He also did his best to counter the received wisdom that Kemal was dissolute. ‘Many scurrilous reports have been circulated from time to time with regard to his private life,’ he wrote, ‘but I have never observed the slightest foundation for them.’

Rawlinson was correct in highlighting Kemal’s dynamism, yet his portrait once again failed to capture the essence of the man. A more insightful sketch comes from the pen of Halide Edib, who was soon to become one of Kemal’s closest associates. She found much to admire in him while also recognising that he had serious defects of character. ‘He was by turns cynical, suspicious, unscrupulous and satanically shrewd,’ she wrote. ‘He bullied, he indulged in cheap, street corner heroics.’ He was, she said, a master at adapting his tone to his audience. ‘One moment he could pass as the perfect demagogue – a second George Washington – and the next moment fall into some Napoleonic attitude.’

She added that whilst he was often surrounded by men who were his superior in intellect ‘and far above him in both culture and refinement’, yet Kemal had one unique quality that set him apart from his peers. ‘Though he excelled them in neither refinement nor originality,’ she wrote, ‘not one of them could possibly cope with his vitality. Whatever their qualities, they were made on a more or less normal scale. In terms of vitality, he wasn’t. And it was this alone that made him the dominant figure.’

Within six weeks of the Greek army landing in Smyrna, Kemal’s activities in central Anatolia were causing serious alarm in Constantinople. Matters came to a head when the British High Commission decided to strip him of his position as army inspector and recall him to the capital. To this end, they sent a telegram, demanding his immediate return.

Kemal’s reply was unambiguous. He refused to obey the order, declaring that he was now serving ‘the forces of the nation’. At the same time, he instructed all Turkish military officials to stop co-operating with the British arms inspectors and proposed co-ordinated action against any further actions on the part of the ‘enemy’. This was a direct challenge to the British, who sent a second telegram, repeating their demand that he return to Constantinople.

Kemal’s close associates urged him to resign his post in order to avoid the stigma of being stripped of his command. Kemal uncharacteristically hesitated. ‘It is a fool’s belief that people like their leaders only with ideals,’ he told them. ‘They want them dressed in the pomp of power and invested with the insignia of their office.’ This was true enough, but by the second week of July his dismissal from the army had become an inevitability. Kemal reluctantly took heed of his colleagues and sent a telegram to Constantinople, submitting his resignation. It crossed with an incoming telegram that stripped him of his rank.

He remained deeply concerned that his authority would be fatally undermined by his resignation, especially in the wilds of Anatolia where military rank counted for so much. But his doubts were soon quelled by his powerful comrade-in-arms, Kiazim Karabekir, who offered to serve under Kemal’s leadership. ‘I’ve come to pay my respects on behalf of all the officers and men under my command,’ he said. ‘You remain our respected commander just as you’ve been until now. I’ve brought a car and an escort of cavalry, as befits a corps commander. Pasha, we’re all at your service.’

With these words, the nationalist movement was born.

Five days after the landing of Greek troops in Smyrna, an imposing and austere-looking gentleman could be seen alighting on the quayside. He was dressed in a grey suit, wore gold-rimmed spectacles and carried a long cane. At first glance, he might easily have been mistaken for a wealthy doctor or lawyer. Aristeidis Stergiadis was indeed a lawyer by training, but he had come to Smyrna as the newly appointed Greek governor.

Ahead of him lay an unenviable task. He was charged with restoring harmony to this shattered city and rebuilding links between the different nationalities. More than that, he had to prove to the Allies that Greece was capable of ruling the richest part of Asia Minor.

From the moment that people met Stergiadis, they realised that they were in the presence of someone extraordinary. He was a man of conviction and principle, whose underlying sense of fairness was underpinned by an adamantine core. He had been hand-picked for the job by Venizelos, a friend from the days when they were both revolutionaries in the mountains of Crete.

Stergiadis had specialised in Muslim law and gone on to make his name as an enlightened governor of Epirus. Here, he had achieved the remarkable success of shattering the power of the local brigands. At his first meeting with a particularly notorious group of outlaws, he was seized by one of them and held at gunpoint. His response was pure Stergiadis. Unfazed by the men’s threats to kill him, he launched a blistering verbal offensive that left the bandit quaking in his boots. ‘[He] overwhelmed the trickster with such a torrent of invective that between shame and astonishment, he lost his head and was immediately rushed into satisfactory terms of capitulation.’ So wrote the historian Arnold Toynbee, who met Stergiadis on many occasions and had an opportunity to study his leadership at close quarters.

Toynbee was initially startled by his odd mannerisms and method of governing. ‘He is highly strung – resourceful and courageous but capricious and hot-tempered,’ he wrote, ‘and his method of administration was to strike unexpectedly and hard, as if he were pleading a weak case or fighting a desperate duel.’ Yet he was most impressed by the way in which Stergiadis brought order to a city wracked by internecine strife. ‘He could hardly have had a worse start or performed a more brilliant acrobatic feat than to keep afloat as he did in such a sea of troubles.’

Stergiadis was a man who always imposed his will, whether dealing with brigands, generals or church hierarchs. His aloof manner raised people’s hackles within hours of arriving in the city. He declined all invitations to the tea dances and soirées in the Levantine villas of Bournabat, preferring the solitude of the governor’s palace. ‘[He] lived as a hermit,’ wrote Horton, ‘accepting no invitations and never appearing in society.’ Stergiadis told Horton that he intended ‘to accept no favours and to form no ties, so that he might administer equal justice to all, high and low alike’. The Levantines and Americans found him dour; he was very different from the genial, gin-drinking Rahmi Bey.

His idiosyncrasies caused particular offence to the Greeks serving under him. He always carried a cane, which he would use to beat subordinates who disagreed with his decisions. He liked to boast about how he intended to govern by the stick; he certainly had no intention of also offering a carrot.

Stergiadis had limited means and a perennial shortage of manpower, yet he quickly wrested control of a very precarious situation. A large part of his success was due to his unshakeable belief in his own ability. ‘The task we have undertaken in Asia Minor is not beyond our capabilities,’ he wrote, ‘and I am convinced that it will be completed.’ Yet he warned that it was unlikely ‘that we will complete it impeccably’.

The reason for this caveat was staring him in the face. The local Greek population was behaving in abominable fashion, lording it over the Turks as if they were triumphant conquerors. They displayed an equal hostility to Stergiadis and his team, whom they quickly learned to despise.

Stergiadis won few friends in the Greek community by ensuring that all involved in the bloodbath that followed the army’s landing were roundly punished. A court-martial was established, which began hearing cases against Greeks who had looted Turkish property. The first sentences were handed down almost immediately: three Greeks were given the death penalty for their part in the violence. ‘[They] were taken out to a square beside the railroad connecting Boudja and Smyrna,’ wrote George Horton, ‘and publicly shot and buried where their graves could be seen by all the people passing between that popular summer resort and the main city.’

Horton added that the fact that the overwhelming majority of those convicted were Greeks ‘contributed no little to the unpopularity of the governor-general among the native Christian population’.

The new governor was determined to establish courts of law that were scrupulously fair. At times, he even appeared to favour the Turks. Toynbee was witness to several occasions when Stergiadis showed ‘spectacular acts of partiality towards Turks, when Turks and Greeks were in conflict’. And when the Allied commissioners sent an inspector to investigate complaints about biased Greek government, he concluded that the Turks under Stergiardis ‘enjoyed such good care and protection which they could have never dreamed of’.

One of the governor’s master strokes was to retain all the Turkish functionaries who had served before the Greek landing, raising their salaries as an inducement for them to remain at their posts. He also informed the Armenian and Jewish communities that he expected them to play a significant role in the governing of Smyrna, since his aim was to create a multiracial administration that reflected the city’s demographic.

Among the many thorns in his side were the local church leaders, whose fiery and uncompromising sermons helped to fan the flames of resentment. Few irritated him more than Metropolitan Chrysostom, who had greeted and blessed the Greek soldiers on their arrival at Smyrna. Stergiadis found his rousing nationalism most distasteful and vowed to rein him in. An opportunity soon presented itself. He was attending a church service at which Chrysostom gave a sermon that quickly strayed into political territory. George Horton, who was also at the service, recalled how Stergiadis stood up in front of the entire congregation and stopped the metropolitan in mid-flow. He shouted out, ‘But I told you I didn’t want any of this.’

Chrysostom was stunned; no one had ever spoken to him before in such a fashion. ‘[He] flushed, choked and breaking off his discourse abruptly, ended with, “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.”’

On another occasion, Stergiadis visited a country village in which the local priest had refused to say prayers over the body of a dead child because the mother could not afford the fee. When Stergiadis was presented to the mayor and priest, ‘[he] slapped the latter soundly in the face, saying: “Wretch! I don’t want to know you. You are a disgrace to the Greek nation.”’

The local villagers were aghast. ‘But this isn’t the same priest, Excellency,’ they told him. ‘This is a good man. We sent the other away.’

Many men would have blushed with embarrassment, but not Stergiadis. ‘“Give him a hundred drachmas for his poor,” said His Excellency to his secretary, and thus the incident was closed.’

His treatment of the church leaders, coupled with his absolute impartiality, earned Stergiadis the undying hatred of many local Greeks. They had thought their hour had come, yet they now found themselves ruled by a governor whose sympathies seemed to lie with the Turks. One Greek businessman made the extraordinary assertion that Stergiadis’s goal was to ‘terrorise the Greeks of Smyrna and Anatolia, persecute them, martyr them, do them harm and turn every circumstance to the profit of the Turks, Levantines, foreigners and Jews’.

Such sentiments must have brought a rare smile to Stergiadis’s face; they sent a signal to the outside world that he was ruling his fiefdom with complete justice. This, after all, was what Venizelos had ordered him to do, aware that the Megali Idea itself was on trial. ‘The territorial extent of our rule will depend on the impartiality of our administration and our strong defence of the rights of the minorities,’ he wrote. Venizelos, who was in the process of negotiating a far larger empire in Asia Minor, knew that he would succeed only ‘[if] we are not even subconsciously inclined to avenge our sufferings at the hands of the Turks . . . and that we know how to treat them because we are the carriers of a higher civilisation’.

The stability brought about by Stergiadis’s administration encouraged a flood of Europeans to return to Smyrna. Merchants, consuls, intelligence officers and prominent locals – people who had exiled themselves during the war – now poured back into the city.

As Smyrna’s foreign population swelled to its pre-war level, the
grands magasins
found themselves achieving unprecedented profits. Traders hastily restocked their shelves with imported foreign goods, aware that there were a large number of Europeans with a great deal of money to spend. Elsewhere in Anatolia, brigandage and unrest were causing absolute chaos, but in Smyrna, Stergiadis had reversed a desperate situation. As the economy began to boom, so the city’s clubs and brasseries found themselves doing a lively trade.