1914 Greek deportations

Forcible expulsion of Ottoman Greeks December 2023 thumb|upright=1.2|Çetes (Turkish/Muslim bandits) parading with loot in Phocaea (modern-day Foça, Turkey) on 13 June 1914. In the background are Greek refugees and burning buildings.Dalègre Joëlle Félix Sartiaux et Phocée, Eski Foça, Παλαιά Φώκια Cahiers balkaniques 2012 40 1–11 10.4000/ceb.874 https://journals.openedition.org/ceb/874 fr 0290-7402 free The 1914 Greek deportations was the forcible expulsion of around 150,000 to 300,000 Ottoman Greeks from Eastern Thrace and the Aegean coast of Anatolia by the Committee of Union and Progress that culminated in May and June 1914. The deportations almost caused war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire and were an important precursor to the Armenian genocide. Background In the aftermath of the 1909 Greek annexation of Crete, the Ottoman boycott movement began to form, initially targeting citizens of Greece but also affecting Ottoman Greeks with Greek citizenship as well as eventually all Ottoman Greeks. Violence and looting were soon reported. Ozil 2020 104–105 The aim of the boycott was to make it impossible for Greeks to live in Anatolia, Ozil 2020 111 as well as to displace Christians from the economy to create a national economy dominated by Muslim Turks. This new economic class was perceived to be more loyal to the state, not just because of its ethnoreligious characteristics but because it owed its place to the removal of the competition by the state. Many Ottoman Greeks were economically ruined by the boycott but they were reluctant to leave.Bjørnlund 2008 45–46 Some left temporarily and returned when the boycott died down. Ozil 2020 111 In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars the boycott continued to intensify and was directly organized by the ruling party, Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).Akçam 2012 83 Historian Matthias Bjørnlund sees the Greek deportation as "an extension of the policy of economic and cultural boycott".Bjørnlund 2008 50 The 1912 First Balkan War resulted in the loss of almost all of the empire's European territorySuny 2015 184–185 and the mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans;Kieser 2018 167 around 350,000 to 400,000 Muslims fled to the Ottoman Empire between 1912 and the Ottoman entry into World War I.Pezo 2017 70 Ottoman Muslim society was incensed by the atrocities committed against Balkan Muslims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment and leading to a desire for revenge.Suny 2015 185, 363 Contemporary historian Arnold Toynbee, in The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (1922), emphasizes the similarities of the expulsion of Ottoman Greeks to that of Balkan Muslims, stating: "the Balkan War[s] had two harvests of victims: first, the Rumili Turks on the one side, and... the Anatolian Greeks on the other".Akçam 2012 95 During the First Balkan War Greece also seized the Greek-populated islands of Chios, Lesvos, and Limnos near the Anatolian coast.Frank Matthew James Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe 2017 Oxford University Press 978-0-19-963944-1 35 https://books.google.com/books?id=X-M-DgAAQBAJ&pg=PA35 en A territorial dispute over the northern Aegean islands of Chios, Lesbos, and Lemnos, seized by Greece during the First Balkan War and still claimed by the Ottoman Empire, propelled a naval race between the two states. The European powers allowed Greece to keep the islands despite Ottoman protests that they threatened the mainland, as they were located adjacent to areas where many Ottoman Greeks lived.Suny 2015 211 In January 1913, the CUP launched another coup, installed a one-party state, and strictly repressed all real or perceived internal enemies.Suny 2015 189–190Kieser 2018 133–134, 136, 138, 172 After the 1913 coup, the CUP escalated anti-Greek and anti-Armenian violence and pursued a policy of changing the demographic balance of border areas by resettling Muslim immigrants while coercing Christians to leave;Kaligian 2017 95, 98–99 immigrants were promised property that had belonged to Christians.Kaligian 2017 97 As a consequence of the war, Muslim/Turkish nationalism became the strongest ideological current in the remaining Ottoman Empire.Pezo 2017 72 The deportations of Greeks were "informed by [this] radically exclusionist political ideology".Bjørnlund 2008 50 Another concern was the concentration of a population whose loyalty was doubted by the CUP in a strategically important location.Göçek 2015 208 Eastern Thrace When parts of Eastern Thrace were reoccupied by the Ottoman Empire during the Second Balkan War in mid-1913, local Greeks as well as Armenians were subjected to looting and intimidation especially in Malkara and Rodosto. Beginning in March 1914, Special Organization units began to systematically attack Greek villages, conscripting the men into labor battalions and forcing other residents to leave; Greek-owned businesses were confiscated and given to Muslims.Kaligian 2017 96–97Akçam 2012 69 The aim was to persuade or, failing that, force Greeks to leave, by preventing them from accessing their farmland, levying disproportionately high taxation, confiscation, forcible conscription, and murders.Akçam 2012 68 The Ottoman government specifically controlled which enterprises should fire Christian workers and paid the passage of all emigrants to Greece.Akçam 2012 76–77 Some Greeks still live in East Thrace in Turkey, descended from the people and families who converted to Islam in order to stay and avoid being deported to Greece.https://www.academia.edu/37801566 The first talks of a Greek-Turkish population exchange in 1914 and the political and military reasons behind it, Uluslararası Mübadele Sempozyumu Bildirileri, 30.1-1.2.2017, Kemal Arı (ed.), Tekirdağ 2017. PhD Georgios Limantzakis www.academia.edu Western Anatolia Danish consul Alfred van der Zee believed that due to the relatively low population density in the area, it would have been possible to resettle Muslim refugees without expelling the Greek population.Bjørnlund 2008 45 Special Organization leader Eşref Sencer Kuşçubaşı said that the population movement was organized by the state, and that in February 1914 Enver Pasha had insisted on doing away with the non-Muslim population due to its perceived disloyalty—such an action was deemed necessary to preserve the empire. Russian consul Andrew D. Kalmykow wrote that Talat Bey (later Talat Pasha) told him "the Greeks cannot remain. They are forced to leave. They must go."Bjørnlund 2008 47 Halil Menteşe stated that "Talât Bey suggested that the country be cleansed of those elements that were seen as capable of betraying the state".Kaligian 2017 97 thumb|Ottoman Greek women forced to leave Phocaea, 13 June 1914 Attacks on Greeks began in March and April 1913, as attested by many complaints sent by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the Ottoman authorities of looting, seizure of property, arbitrary arrest, and expulsion.Akçam 2012 69–70 The government closely observed the process, collecting information on the villages to be cleared and planning the resettlement of Muslims there. However, it maintained plausible deniability by employing a dual-track system—sending incriminating orders through unofficial channels—and denying responsibility for the ensuing attacks.Akçam 2012 71 The government ordered that empty villages be guarded to prevent looting so that the property of the Greeks could be allocated to the intended recipients, Muslim immigrants to be resettled there.Akçam 2012 72–73 One of the most severe attacks in Western Anatolia was the massacre of Phocaea beginning 12 June; several thousand Greeks were forced to flee after the systematic destruction and plundering of their town by bashi-bazouk irregulars.Bjørnlund 2008 47 Prior to this attack many Greeks from around Çakmaklı, Aliağa had fled to Phocaea while others emigrated to Partheni.Erol 2016 164 Those from inland areas such as Kozbeyli, Gerenköy, and Söğütcük came under threat and also fled to Phocaea.Erol 2016 164 This concentration of refugees, exceeding the capacity of the harbor, led to the village being surrounded and higher intensity violence occurring than elsewhere in Western Anatolia.Erol 2016 165–167 The American Consulate in Salonica estimated that some five hundred to six hundred people had been killed in the broader area around Smyrna.Akçam 2012 84–85 In some cases the violent anti-Greek campaigns were directly coordinated with the landing of Muslim refugees, who were tasked with driving out the Greek population and taking over their properties.Bjørnlund 2008 47–48 Tens of thousands of Greeks escaped to the nearby Aegean islands, often in the same boats that had brought Muslim refugees.Göçek 2015 209 For the most part the Greeks did not engage in armed resistance, but in Saraköy some Greeks defended themselves until they ran out of ammunition and were killed; only a few were able to escape to nearby Menemen, too large of a town for the irregulars to attack.Bjørnlund 2008 48Suny 2015 211 The later Turkish president Celal Bayar coordinated the expulsion.Göçek 2015 208 The local economy and standard of living declined significantly, as most of the immigrants were peasants who lacked the skills to cultivate local crops and much property was looted or destroyed by them.Göçek 2015 209 International politics On 29 September 1913, 14 October 1913, and 14 November 1913, the Ottoman Empire concluded agreements on voluntary population exchange with Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece respectively.Akçam 2012 64–65 Based on negotiations in May between Eleftherios Venizelos and Galip Kemali Bey tr Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu, an agreement was signed on 1 July 1914 "On the mutual, voluntary exchange of Turks in Macedonia for Greeks in the provinces of Eastern Thrace and Macedonia". This agreement was never ratified.Akçam 2012 66Pezo 2017 74 The Ottoman government moved ahead with its expulsions of Christian citizens without waiting for international agreements or negotiations to proceed.Akçam 2012 78–79 The Ottoman authorities tried to maintain secrecy around the operation, and the responsibility of the CUP for organizing the campaign, in order to stave off international outrage.Bjørnlund 2008 48 Akçam states that "Maximum effort was expended to create the impression that none of these actions by agents of the CUP were ever connected to the state."Akçam 2012 xxiv Emigrants had to sign papers asserting that they left voluntarily and willing their property to Ottoman institutions.Akçam 2012 92 Foreign consuls, contrary to Ottoman denials, reported that the campaign of terror and expulsion was systematic and coordinated by the Ottoman government, noting that in some cases official gendarmes conducted the attacks.Akçam 2012 80 The Ottoman Embassy in Paris reported that information about the anti-Greek campaign was harming the empire in European public opinion, and suggested that the attacks be stopped at once if the reports were true.Akçam 2012 82 The Ottoman authorities tried to leverage the threat of ethnic cleansing to pressure Greece to renounce its claims to the islands that it seized during the Second Balkan War.Kaligian 2017 97 Many observers believed at the time that persecution would lead to war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire.Bjørnlund 2008 48 Venizelos stated that Greece would remain neutral in the upcoming World War I if Ottoman Greeks were not deported and the Ottoman Empire did not attack Greek islands in the Aegean. The CUP agreed to this and ceased their ethnic cleansing campaign.Suny 2015 212 On 2 November 1914, Talat announced the official end of the policy, as he had come to an understanding with Germany, which did not want Greece to join the Entente. This cable stated that no further attacks on Greeks would be tolerated.Akçam 2012 74–75 A committee of inquiry into the events would be established and headed by Talat Bey, which members from several foreign embassies.Akçam Taner A Shameful Act 2007 978-0-8050-8665-2 New York, NY 105 After Greece joined the Entente during the war, the deportations resumed, these being organized by general Liman von Sanders. Total number of people deported The total number of Greeks expelled from the Ottoman Empire is not known with certainty. Historian Taner Akçam estimates it at "roughly three hundred thousand",Akçam 2012 63 while Bjørnlund writes that "some 150–200,000 Ottoman Greeks" left either forcibly or after being threatened with violence.Bjørnlund 2008 42, 48 Vasileios Meichanetsidis estimates that at least 115,000 people were deported from Eastern Thrace to Greece, 85,000 from Eastern Thrace to central Anatolia, and another 150,000 from western Anatolia to Greece.Meichanetsidis 2015 122 Connection to the Armenian genocide In his memoirs, United States ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. states that "the Turks had expelled the Greeks so successfully that they had decided to apply the same method to all the other races in the empire".Akçam 2012 94 On 6 July 1914, Ottoman Greek deputy Emmanouil Emmanouilidis raised the matter of the deportation in the Ottoman Parliament. Talat explained that the Muslim migrants were resettled in the depopulated villages because they would have died if sent to the deserts of Syria and Iraq—exactly where he sent Armenian deportees a year later.Kieser 2018 179–180Suny 2015 213 Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser writes that the success achieved by "the CUP men of action... exceeded all expectations" and they "could savor a crushing victory achieved in a secret war along domestic ethnoreligious lines".Kieser 2018 178 Bjørnlund states that the perceived "success" of the Greek deportation "meant that even more radical measures could be seen as not only possible, but as yet another extension of a policy of social engineering through Turkification".Bjørnlund 2008 51 Historian Tessa Hofmann argues that "the deportations in Eastern Thrace appear as the prototype of all subsequent deportations of Christians".Meichanetsidis 2015 122 Many of the same CUP operatives, including Şükrü Kaya, Nâzım Bey, and Mehmed Reshid, were involved in both persecutions.Bjørnlund 2008 51Akçam 2012 94–95 Akçam describes the Greek deportation as "a trial run for the Armenian genocide".Kaligian 2017 104Akçam 2012 94 He notes that both operations were "ostensibly under the legal umbrella of Ottoman population policy", yet "an unofficial plan was implemented by a shadow organization that attacked and terrorized the Ottoman Christians".Akçam 2012 95 Bjørnlund states that "the official reactions to the 1914 events point toward aspects of" Armenian genocide denial as developed by the CUP and continuing into the present day: "the claim that the government, when it came to killings and persecution, had no control of local officials or of the designated killer gangs, and the attempts to apply damage control through cover-ups, shifting of blame, and propaganda".Bjørnlund 2008 49 Talat blamed all excesses on the local government of Rahmi Bey, while the Ottoman government claimed that only 1,000 Greeks had left, against the will of the authorities, and the "incidents" were caused equally by Greeks and rogue Ottoman elements.Bjørnlund 2008 49–50 Major deportations of Anatolian Greeks from the coast to the interior occurred during World War I from 1915 due to belief that they were a fifth column, although they were not subjected to systematic killing as were the Armenians.Ozil 2020 111–112Suny 2015 212–213 References 20em Sources yes Akçam Taner Taner Akçam The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire 2012 Princeton University Press 978-0-691-15333-9 The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire Bjørnlund Matthias Matthias Bjørnlund The 1914 cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a case of violent Turkification Journal of Genocide Research 2008 10 1 41–58 10.1080/14623520701850286 72975930 Çetinkaya Y. Dogan The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey 2014 Bloomsbury Publishing 978-1-78672-516-5 en Erol Emre The Ottoman Crisis in Western Anatolia: Turkey's Belle Epoque and the Transition to a Modern Nation State 2016 Bloomsbury Publishing 978-0-85772-820-3 en Göçek Fatma Müge Fatma Müge Göçek Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789–2009 Denial of Violence 2015 Oxford University Press 978-0-19-933420-9 en Kaligian Dikran Shirinian George N. Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923 2017 Berghahn Books 978-1-78533-433-7 en Convulsions at the End of Empire: Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Aegean 82–104 Kieser Hans-Lukas Hans-Lukas Kieser Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide 2018 Princeton University Press 978-1-4008-8963-1 en cite encyclopedia Kieser Hans-Lukas Pasha, Talat https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/pasha_talat 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War Meichanetsidis Vasileios Th. The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, 1913–1923: A Comprehensive Overview Genocide Studies International 2015 9 1 104–173 10.3138/gsi.9.1.06 154870709 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/690 Morris Benny Ze’evi Dror The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924 24 April 2019 Harvard University Press 978-0-674-91645-6 https://books.google.com/books?id=THSPDwAAQBAJ en Ayşe Ozil In the Towns of Western Anatolia at the Time of the Great War: Greek Responses to the Ottoman Boycott and the Forced Population Movement Not All Quiet on the Ottoman Fronts: Neglected Perspectives on a Global War, 1914-1918 101–118 2020 978-3-95650-778-6 Ergon-Verlag Pezo Edvin The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception to Historic Memory 2017 Springer 978-3-319-44642-4 en Violence, Forced Migration, and Population Policies Suny Ronald Grigor Ronald Grigor Suny "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian genocide They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else 2015 Princeton University Press 978-1-4008-6558-1 cite encyclopedia Suny Ronald Grigor Armenian Genocide https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/armenian_genocide 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War Further reading Dündar Fuat Fuat Dündar 1914'te Rumlar'ın sürülmesi, Yabancı inceleme heyeti gözlemleri ve Seyrek köyünün foto hikayesi Toplumsal Tarih 189 2010 82–86 Kontogiorgi Elisabeth Forced migration, repatriation, exodus : the case of Ganos-Chora and Myriophyto-Peristasis Orthodox communities in Eastern Thrace Balkan Studies 1994 35 1 15–45 https://ojs.lib.uom.gr/index.php/BalkanStudies/article/view/2500 en 2241-1674 Mourelos John The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the State-sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor, 1912-1922 and Its Aftermath: History, Law, Memory 2011 Aristide D. Caratzas 978-0-89241-615-8 en The 1914 persecutions of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire and the first attempt at an exchange of minorities between Greece and Turkey Mourelos Yannis G. The 1914 persecutions and the first attempt at an exchange of minorities between Greece and Turkey Balkan Studies 1985 26 2 389–413 https://ojs.lib.uom.gr/index.php/BalkanStudies/article/view/2092 en 2241-1674 Papadopoulos Alexander Persecutions of the Greeks in Turkey Before the European War 1919 Oxford University Press 978-1-298-04103-6 War College Series en https://archive.org/details/americanhellenic02unse Category:1914 in the Ottoman Empire Category:May 1914 in Europe Category:June 1914 in Europe Category:Ethnic cleansing in Europe Category:Ethnic cleansing in Asia Category:Greek genocide Category:Ottoman period in Anatolia Category:Greece–Ottoman Empire relations