Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (35 page)

The tension increased as dusk fell and the behaviour of the Turkish irregulars became increasingly menacing. The Pittakis family of Cordelio were about to sit down to their evening dinner when they heard the sound of breaking glass, followed by distant screams of women and children. A few minutes later, the same noises were repeated, only this time much closer. ‘My wife fainted,’ wrote Pittakis senior, ‘my children clung to me in tears and the peasant families I had taken in . . . knelt down and invoked the protection of God.’ They spent the rest of the night listening to the neighbouring houses being broken into and pillaged.

The only explanation as to why they escaped the same fate was that the quick-thinking Pittakis, aware that Italy had been supplying weapons to Mustafa Kemal’s army, hung a large Italian tricolour outside his house.

Violence was by now beginning to break out in the centre of the city as well. The Reverend Abraham Hartunian, an Armenian priest, was about to eat his evening meal when the trouble began. ‘My wife was preparing lentil soup for supper. The table was set. I offered the blessing and we were about to sup. Suddenly, there was a scream in the house next to ours, Our neighbours had been attacked. The chettes were threatening them with death unless they gave money. Our neighbours were pleading, saying, “We have none!”’

The Hartunians decided not to await the arrival of the
chettes
. Slipping out of their house, they headed straight to the American Collegiate Institute, where they were given sanctuary.

On board the USS
Lawrence
, Captain Arthur Hepburn was writing up his diary for the day. ‘Funny thing,’ he wrote, ‘the terror is in the air and quite palpable when it begins to grow.’ He snapped shut his notebook and turned to write a report of the day’s proceedings for his boss, Admiral Mark Bristol. The admiral was given a very different version of events. ‘At this hour, 11.50 p.m., everything is quiet [and] peaceful . . .’ he wrote. ‘I must say that the Turks deserve a high mark for their efficiency, good discipline and high military standards.’

It was just what Bristol wanted to hear.

Sunday, 10 September 1922

T
he Christian population of Smyrna was accustomed to being awoken on Sunday morning by the ringing of church bells. But on this particular Sunday – for the first time in centuries – the dawn was eerily silent. It was an ominous sign for the thousands of Armenians who had taken refuge in the prelacy building. They feared that the day of reckoning was nigh.

Hovekim Uregian was one of many who had passed a sleepless night. Throughout the early hours, Turkish soldiers had been heard taking up positions around the prelacy compound, ‘shouting threats and firing guns, running around like packs of wolves, stopping every Christian passer-by, asking for his money and valuables’. Uregian also heard screams at regular intervals during the night, ‘and the soul-tearing quality of these screams left little doubt as to the fate of the victims’.

As first light approached, he placed a mirror against the corner windows of the building in order to get a clearer view of what was taking place outside. ‘And we watched in horror what I can only describe as a real picture of hell.’ Turkish troops could be seen rampaging through the Armenian quarter, breaking into private homes, looting, raping and killing. ‘Groups of regular or irregular Turkish troops would knock on a door and proceed to break it down. Any young girls found inside would be brought out and taken to some shop nearby or across the street by two or three soldiers. Screams would follow and occasionally a gunshot.’

Other eyewitnesses would later confirm that the violence in the streets around the Armenians prelacy had been every bit as ugly as Uregian claimed, yet it had remained confined to the Armenian quarter. Elsewhere in the city the night had passed relatively peacefully. Garabed Hatcherian and his family had spent the evening with the Atamians at their house on the seafront and been unaware of any disturbances. After eating breakfast on Sunday morning, Hatcherian and two other guests set off on foot to check on their homes. It was only when they met a group of Armenian youths that they learned that the Armenian quarter had been badly looted.

Hatcherian’s companions chose to go on farther, but Garabed himself – still dressed as a Turk – was keen to discover the extent of the damage and decided to continue alone. At one point he was stopped by Turkish soldiers and asked for directions to the city barracks. Hatcherian pointed the men towards Armenian Boulevard Reshidiyah, only to be told that the area around this street was ‘a bloody hell’.

He pressed on towards his house, fearing that he would find it looted. Yet although the lock was jammed due to repeated attempts to break it down during the night, the building had not been entered. Unable to get inside, Garabed continued down the street in order to make contact with his neighbours. ‘I knock a few times at the door of Levon Arakelian; there is no answer. The Illuminator Street is deserted. In front of Miss D. Kasparian’s house, I see a large amount of dried blood.’

Hatcherian noted that the streets were empty, eerily silent and scattered with broken glass. ‘Without flinching, I proceed to the Armenian Grand Boulevard. First, I see the house of the Balikjians, where the doors are broken and the furniture is a jumbled mess in the courtyard. The doors of the houses on the Grand Boulevard have been broken one by one and there are traces of blood all over. The stores, too, have been broken into and looted.’

As he turned a corner and made his way deeper into the Armenian quarter, he was stopped in his tracks by Turkish troops in the process of ransacking a house. They looked him up and down and, assuming him to be Turkish, continued with their looting. Deciding not to chance his luck by remaining any longer, Hatcherian headed straight back to the safety of the Atamians’ house.

The Armenian families who had taken refuge inside the prelacy feared that sooner or later they were likely to meet with the same fate as those who had chosen to remain in their houses. As the morning wore on and there was no sign of the violence abating, the men began discussing how best to defend the building if and when it came under attack.

‘We counted all the males and singled out all those who had some experience in using a gun,’ wrote Uregian. Many had come to the prelacy equipped with old rifles and pistols. These were now distributed, along with all the available ammunition. There were also a few old hand grenades to be used as a last resort. ‘We took positions in the nearest room above the door,’ ‘. . . and agreed that we would fire only if necessary; only if the Turks tried to break down the door.’

At about 11 a.m. there was a loud rap on the side door of the prelacy. It was a group of regular Turkish soldiers who shouted in English: ‘We have come to liberate and defend you; open the door.’

The men inside knew they had little option but to obey. While one of them went to find the key, the rest prepared their weapons ‘in case the game turned foul’.

It took some time to locate the key and Uregian could see that the troops outside were getting jumpy. Yet even he was not prepared for what happened next. Suddenly – and quite without warning – the Turkish officer barked an order and each of the soldiers hurled a hand grenade over the prelacy walls. There was a blinding flash of light as they detonated, followed by a deafening roar. ‘A grenade exploded somewhere near me and for a second I thought I was seeing stars,’ wrote Uregian. ‘A horse standing near me seemed to jump into the air and then fall flat on all fours. I touched my limbs to make sure I had not been hurt and [then] I jumped to run towards a corner to be safer.’

Uregian was one of the lucky ones. A comrade-in-arms who had been crouching down next to him had been hit by shrapnel and was bleeding, groaning in pain.

The Turks who had thrown the grenades took cover in the backstreets while other troops fired on the building. ‘A machine gun somewhere outside the walls was shattering all the high windows and hitting quite a number of my compatriots.’

After half an hour of constant gunfire, the shooting came to an abrupt end, although the women and children inside continued to scream and moan in the aftermath of the attack. Many had been maimed by flying debris and it took time to clean and dress the wounds of the injured. When this was finally done, the rubble was swept away and the building checked for any signs of structural damage. For the rest of the day, the prelacy was quiet. ‘Silence fell and people huddled together waiting for hostilities to start anew.’

The Turkish army had by now been in the city for more than twenty-four hours, yet there had been no sign of Mustafa Kemal. He was still at the town of Nif, some twenty-five miles from Smyrna, preparing to make his triumphal entry. Five cars, newly polished and decked with olive branches, were waiting to convey him and his entourage to the city.

At noon, Kemal left his battlefield headquarters, brushed down his uniform and stepped into the first car. This was the moment he had been awaiting for three long years.

The cortège entered Smyrna through the Turkish quarter, where the cavalry was awaiting Kemal’s arrival. ‘In a single lightning flash, two long lines of horsemen drew their swords,’ wrote Halide Edib, ‘and the sun gleamed on their steel as they galloped past us on either side.’ It was a magnificent spectacle. ‘The clash of steel and the beat of iron hoofs became deafening as we crossed the closed bazaars . . . Along the smooth marble pavement reeled the moving walls of men and steel, horses sliding and rising, and the steel curving like swift flashes of lightning in the sombre air of the arches.’

After stopping to acknowledge the exultant crowds, Kemal’s entourage headed straight to the Konak in order to discuss how to bring order to Smyrna. Kemal’s first act was to appoint General Noureddin as military governor of the city. It was a strange choice that would alarm many inhabitants. Noureddin was known to be a cruel and ruthlessly ambitious individual who harboured an intense hatred of foreigners.

Halide Edib joined Kemal’s generals shortly after their arrival at the Konak.

One of the first people to learn of Kemal’s arrival was the
Daily Mail
journalist, George Ward Price. He had already met the Turkish leader two years earlier at the Pera Palace Hotel in Constantinople; now, he hoped to get the scoop of his life. But Kemal refused to see anyone. After lengthy discussion with his advisors, he was whisked away to a house in Cordelio where he was due to spend the night. Several witnesses record that a Greek flag had been laid in front of the entrance to the house; Kemal refused to tread on it.

By mid-afternoon, the Turkish army was in control of both the streets and government of the city. General Noureddin’s first order was that everybody should go peacefully about his business. This went some way to calming people’s nerves and many prayed that the violence would now come to an end. They were unaware that Kemal had sent a telegram to the League of Nations, informing them that he took no responsibility for any breakdown in law and order. He warned that ‘on account of the excited spirit of the Turkish population, the Angora government would not be responsible for massacres.’

In the suburb of Paradise, many of the American residents had been shaken by the sight of several corpses lying in the road close to the American International College. This had also disturbed Dr MacLachlan and he asked one of the Greek priests taking refuge at the institute to bury them. Once this was promptly done, MacLachlan looked forward to a quiet lunch with his colleagues. His hopes were rudely shattered by a burst of gunfire. ‘Shortly after 12.30pm,’ he wrote, ‘and just as we were about to sit down to lunch, we were startled by the rattle of machine guns in our immediate neighbourhood.’

Everyone dived for cover under the tables and it was some time before MacLachlan dared to venture to the window in order to discover who was responsible for the shooting. He saw that a bank of Turkish machine-guns had been positioned some one hundred yards to the north-west of the institute. To the south – and the target of their guns – was a 6,000-strong battalion of Greek troops who were trying to reach the coast. ‘In the direction of Sevdekeui, great dust clouds betrayed the approach, along the main road leading from that village to Paradise, [of] a considerable body of troops.’

The Greek forces realised that the Turks had cut off their route to the sea and that they had little option but to fight their way out of the impasse. The Turks – scenting victory – were determined to stop them. For the next three hours, Dr MacLachlan and his staff were caught in a ferocious cross-fire between the rival armies.