The Explorers' Club, № CMLXXVIII

Operation AXIOM: Between the Wars—The Greco-Turkish War, Part IV
13-22 September 1922: The Burning of Smyrna—After the flight of the Greek army (8 September) & the arrival of the Turkish army (9 September), a fire destroyed the city's Greek & Armenian quarters, but left the Turkish quarter untouched; Greek & Armenian women were raped en masse, with an Allied fleet at anchor in the harbor; as many as 125,000 Greeks & Armenians died by fire or violence.

Commentary: There is much disagreement about the precise ethnic composition of Smyrna (now İzmir) before what the Greeks mourn as the "Smyrna Catastrophe" & the Turks minimize as the "1922 İzmir Fire"—whether the city was majority Greek, equally Greek & Turkish, or majority Turkish—but there is no dispute that the city had an ancient & substantial Greek population. The Ottomans referred to the city as "gâvur İzmir" ("infidel Smyrna"). Not so after the fire. The Greek Orthodox metropolitan, Chrysostomos Kalafatis (today, Saint Chrysostomos of Smyrna), was hacked to death by a Turkish mob in front of French troops, who were ordered not to intervene. What few non-Turks remained after the fire were expelled during the 1923 "population exchange" (ethnic cleansing by any other name is just as vile) in which Christians were forced out of Anatolia & Muslims were forced out of Greece, with the approval & complicity of the victorious Allied Powers & their farcical League of Nations.

The Wayback Machine Tour of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)
№ DCLXXXIX: Greek landing at Smryna (Part I)
№ DCXC: The Turkish National Movement (Part II)
№ DCCLXI: The Greek Summer Offensive (Part III)
№ CMLXVI: The Treaty of Lausanne (Epilogue)

Commentary: We deeply regret the very incomplete job done of covering the Greco-Turkish War, including missing the Burning of Smyrna by an entire year. We had hoped to explore the war in greater detail, but were distracted by other topics & outside events. As ever, "The Explorers' Club" is not meant to be the final word on any subject, but an invitation to the reader to commence & expand her own explorations.

Lest we forget.