Empire: World History - 41. The Rise of Ataturk

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

The First World War is over. There is unrest across Anatolia, exacerbated by the Greek invasion coming through Smyrna. Turkish forces are swelling to fight back against the Greeks, and at their head... Mustafa Kemal. Otherwise known as Ataturk. Join William and Anita this week as they are twice joined by Giles Milton to discuss the events of Smyrna in 1922 and the rise of Ataturk. LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Duremple. Was that the pause creeping back? That was the pause. That was the pause. That was the pause. Why?

It's just, you know, you need a little bit of a build-up to begin the show. That's how it works. It sounds like the whiff of Napthelene. You've had it in mothballs and just waiting to produce it when I'm lulled into a sense of security. When you weren't expecting it, exactly. Okay. Anyway, look, this week we're going to have two episodes, and they're going to focus on the city of Smyrna.

This is because in of itself, it's a really important story. It's a story that you almost certainly don't know. but this is also a cross-rozen history. It tells the story of the Greek-Turk-Turk, the rise of Ataturk, and it will explain the Turkish Republic that we have today. This story, in a sense, rounds off the story that we've been telling in the whole of this series. We started with the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia in the 12th century. We've taken you through the conquest of Constantinople,

the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into the Balkans, the high point of Lepanto and the siege of Vienna, and then this slow contraction, the extraordinary events of the First World War, the heroic defense at Gallipoli, but the horrific massacres of the Armenians. And this is really the end of the story. What happens after the First World War ends, after the Allies have taken Constantinople and are beginning to divide up the spoils. And this is a story which is crucial to understanding Turkey today, but a story which almost no one, I think, outside Turkey and Greece really know.

And it has great parallels with the stories that we're more familiar with in Britain about partition. Yeah, I mean, the resonance is, bang on. I mean, some of the accounts could have been straight out of the split in Punjab, to be honest with you. Neighbors turning on neighbors, distrust on a state scale. To delve into this topic, we have just such a brilliant guest this week. Giles Milton is the best-selling author of Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922. Yes, you heard me right. His name is Milton.

The book is called Paradise Lost. How many years were you waiting for that dream to come true, Giles? How many years? Oh, yes. My children loved that when they saw it, yeah. I had to say that I managed to review that book and read the whole thing and not make that connection. William! Seriously!

Oh my God, one of the most learned people I know. I feel that ready-buck glow now. I feel something you didn't. I feel very stupid for not noticing that. I have to tell you a story that when my oldest daughter was at primary school when this came out, her teacher said, Madeline Milton, are you any relation to the great Milton, the writer, the great writer Milton? And she said, yes, the author of Paradise Lost. And she said, yes, that's my dad.

Oh, wonderful. Oh, wonderful. See me after school, Madeline. Look, not only have you produced this really, I mean, the word, I suppose, difficult, epic, uncomfortable read that is the story of Smyrna. But gripping and extraordinary. Yeah, I know, really. I mean, we've both been swept off our feet, honestly, by your book. But you also do have a new podcast called Cover Up, Ministry of Secrets, and you dig into the great Cold War mystery of Lionel Buster Crab in that.

his disappearance. So you're a man who's used to digging for truth. And we should say that, you know, truth is, again, one of those things that will be debated after this podcast, just as it was contentious when we covered the Armenian massacre. There are two sides to this story which simply do not overlap, do they, Giles? That's absolutely true. And particularly in this story, if you go and ask a Greek, what they think of the story, they'll tell you one side of the argument. If you ask a Turk, they'll tell you a completely different story. This is a history that divides people, Greeks and Turks, but not only, you know, you look at the British and the American role in all of this, not a glorious role. So it's very controversial history. And, well,

for reasons, perhaps we can get into, there was a particular community I focused on in the city of Smyrna, who tended to be impartial. They didn't take sides in what was taking place. And I found them to be perhaps the most reliable witnesses to guide me through this very, very contentious period of history. Right. Well, let's start with the absolute basics here. And you're right. We will get into the Levantime community that I think you're referring to and all the other

sources that you use, because as a journalist, I'm just fascinated with how you find in the midst of the maelstrom, something that sounds like the truth. Where is Smyrna? Would people know where to find it today? Well, you'd have a struggle finding it on a map today. because it is no longer called Smyrna. It is the city of Izmir. It's on the west coast of Turkey, on the Aegean shores of Turkey. It's a modern, vibrant, rich, western-leaning city, rather ugly, it has to be said, for reasons which will become apparent in the course of this episode,

because, of course, the city was going to be destroyed in 1922. So this is a city, it's got industries in it, it's got businesses in it, it's a very wealthy city, And it's completely different from the city that existed in the first part of the 20th century. It's a completely Turkish city, whereas once upon a time, it was a very, very cosmopolitan city filled with numerous different nationalities. And rather crucially, it backs right into the water. I mean, it has always been the case. And Willie's written some beautiful things, Willie, about its sort of ancient history.

This is a place where humanity pushes right to the... edge, if you like. There's a key side. There has always been a key side. And within that space, you know, where the key ends, humanity starts. William, you know about the ancient roots of this place, too, don't you? Yes. In the sense, Smyrna is not unique at all. Smyrna is part of a lost Levantine world on the edge of the Ottoman Empire facing the Mediterranean, looking towards Europe often, are these series of cities which for centuries were incredibly mixed and incredibly cosmopolitan. Alexandria in Egypt, Constantinople itself, the capital, to a certain extent, Antioch and Takia. But Smyrna, at the beginning of the 20th century, was one of the most mixed

and most ethnically diverse cities of all. Give us a picture of it, Giles, say it the turn of the century. So, yeah, it was a wonderfully cosmopolitan city. As Anita said, you have this long keyside, this beautiful long, sort of two-mile keyside. And if you were to walk along there in sort of Edwardian times, you'd see embassies, you'd see grand hotels, European-style hotels, you'd see gentlemen's clubs, there's banks, there's insurance companies. You'll see the very latest motor cars imported from America and Europe alongside herds of camels from the interior of Anatolia, bringing in the carpets and figs that's, for, for which Sparna was famous. And to a certain extent, nowhere for those cars to drive at the beginning of the 20th century, the roads sort of are perfect in Smyrna, but sort of don't go out into the Anatonian Hitler. Absolutely true. This is a little island. We must not forget the Bay of Smyrd or the harbour.

There were ships coming in from everywhere in the world. This was an extraordinary, vibrant, bustling city. And it's home to, you know, so many different nationalities. One thing, you said it's not unique there, but it was unique in one respect that this was the only majority Christian city in this part of the world. Huh, interesting. By the Turks, it was always known as infidel Smyrna. The greatest Christian population there was the Greeks. The Greeks numbered about a third of a million in the city.

There were Armenians. There were large numbers of Europeans. There were Jews there, of course, as well. And there were Turks who numbered about 190,000. And then there was one other community, the American community, who came to, discovered a city that they found so open-minded, so tolerant that when they settled in their own little area of the city, they named it Paradise. They felt they'd arrived in Paradise. Hence, the title of my book, which is not gratuitous. There is a reason for it. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad. Although I would have given you the gratuity, to be honest with you. But I've seen some, it almost feels like sort of travel adverts from, you know, the early 1900s, which depict it almost like the Monte Carlo of, you know, Anatolia. It is a place, it's a playground

for those who have the money to come and visit and spend and enjoy life. When you talk about the different communities that are there, do they intermingle, do they intermarry or are they in quarters, are they in different sections of the city? They do live in separate quarters, as is often the case in the Arab world. But this was, I found very fascinating when I was researching the book to discover that there's a huge interplay between the different communities. You know, I wrote this book in 2008, and I was researching it before that, and there were still people alive who remembered Smyrna before 1922. And I remember one chap I interviewed Alfred Symes. He was 97 when I interviewed him, sharp as anything. And he told me stories of, you know, Christmas, when everyone would come out,

all the different nationalities would come out into the streets and they'd sing each other's carols or Christmas songs, they'd exchange their festive foods with each other. There were football teams where Greeks and Turks played alongside each other. There were all sorts of social activities. There were drinking clubs. So yes, it really was, and this was what made it so unique, was a city where these communities intermingled. Just one quote from the Greek consul who said, in no city in the world, did East and West

mingle in quite so spectacular a fashion. Now, one family who you write about in your book very movingly and who one of your main sources, bizarrely were the family I actually first stayed with when I very, very first went to Istanbul as a 19-year-old, the Wittles, who are this something not then that unusual, an English family who'd made their home for many hundreds of years in the Ottoman Empire, founded the Osmanli, the Ottoman Bank, and Smyrna was the, their base. So this was the last community that we haven't mentioned yet is the Levantine community. As you say, families like the Whittles, the Giroes, the La Fontaine's, the Alibertes. These were

families, or rather they were dynasties. They'd moved to Smyrna, often 250 years previously. And they had amassed absolutely enormous fortunes in the city. They dealt in everything. Shipping, insurance, banking, trading carpets, in figs, everything. Figs is interesting. In one of our previous episodes, we were talking about the Levant Company and the unlikely fact that fortunes were made in Tudor times exporting dried fruits, raisins and figs. And the whittles were still doing this at the beginning of the 20th century, and the English family still making fortunes from dried fruit. It's extraordinary. Anyway, and these dynasties, they tended to live in a suburb just outside Smyrna called Bournabat, and they built these palatial houses. and the families of several hundred people in them.

They were all intermarried, and they had done a great deal to sort of forge a city in their own image. That is to say, tolerant, cosmopolitan, rich and polyglot. So they intermarried with the rich Greeks, the wealthy Armenians, and were simply had amassed fortunes and helped create this city. Famously beautiful girls, every generation of travel. No, every generation of travel rights, if you read reports of Smyrna in the 16th, in the 70th, in the 18th, and in the 19th, even in the 20th century, report about the Smyrna girls. And there was one famous, I've got to get this in, there was a famous pre-apic Venet consul of Smyrna in, I think, the 17th century,

who lived on a diet of fruit, bread and water, and lived till he was aged 114 and fathered 126 children from his five wives and in numerous Smyanite mistresses. He sounds dreamy. He sounds dreamy. Lovely. Look, I mean, just sort of getting back to the cosmopolitan, from the pre-apic to the cosmopolitan. Look, I mean, what I was really charmed by, you know, and I'm pretty sure it's from your own book, but if you wanted a newspaper in Smyr, you could choose between 11 Greek, 7 Turkish, 5 Armenian, 4 French, 5 Hebrew, and a number that was shipped in from every capital in Europe, which to me, you know, with a journal head-on,

just tells you about the mix. What it doesn't tell you, though, is what the economic spread was. Because, you know, when we get to the catastrophe that we are leading to, are the seeds already there with the haves and have-nots? Are there certain communities within this mix that are poorer and looking up at these Levantine mansions and their dates and their girlfriends and whatever else is going on and thinking actually, why don't I have that? Why aren't I equal? And how do you even govern a place like that? I mean, how do you govern such a mixed area? Well, that's two, a very interesting, questions. Yes, there was very definitely a divide between rich and poor. The Levantines were absolutely at the top of the tree, vast fortunes, and as I say, palatial residences outside Smyrna. And then the poorest

community was always the Turkish community. And, you know, the Turkish quarter of the city was very picturesque. That's where your Beidecker's guide would tell you to go there, because you could see people, you know, Turks hammering way on copper pots and things like that. But it was definitely the poorish part of the city. However, having said that, the Levantimes were sort of old-style patrician families. So when things went wrong, they did do what they could economically to support the many, many hundreds and thousands of workers in their factories. But it was very much in that old-style economy that they sort of led the way. And it was their benevolence that would keep people going through the very dark periods. So, I mean, although some people would be grateful for that,

Others would read that as, why do I have to wait for a handout from you? I guess, I'm guessing. But also just, I mean, how do you govern? What was the government of a place that is as hotch-potchy as this? So this is really fascinating, because how do you govern, as you say, in the Ottoman Empire, a city which is overwhelmingly Greek. The governor of the city was a fabulously interesting individual called Rahmni Bey. He was the governor of the city. This is what in 1914, 1914, 19... Right through the First World War, right through all. almost up until 1922.

He was highly educated, spoke six or seven languages, came from Salonica, as did, of course, Mustafa Kemal, who would become Ataturk. He was grand, he was haughty, he was always seen walking through the streets in an Edwardian frock coat twirling a silver cane, and he loved the Levantine dinners. It was said he could hold any amount of strong liquor without showing the effects. And so he very much socialized with the Levantines and the wealthy Greeks, But at the same time, he was governing this complex mixture, this bubbling mixture of nationalities in his city.

It was not easy. He chose as his deputy, he always had a Greek as his deputy, to try and sort of balance this very delicate line he was treading in governing this city. And also he was being given orders from his masters in Constantinople with which he did not necessarily agree. notably in the First World War, he did not want Turkey to join on the side of Germany. Nor when the war got going, did he obey Talat Pasha's orders to massacre the Armenians? His Smyrna was a brief moment of sanctuary for the Armenians. You're absolutely right. In 1915, when these dreadful scenes were taking place right across Turkey, Armenians being marched off being massacred, being starved to death. Rakhmi Bey did everything he could have to be.

protect the Armenian community in the city. None were taken away. And it has to be say also, of course, Greeks from up and down the coastline were being deported into the interior at the same time. Rahmi Bey ensured that again in the city of Smyrna, the Greeks remained unscathed by this. So he was, he was, someone described him as being sort of a benevolent despot. He ran Smyrna rather like it was his own personal fiefdom, but happily he was a benevolent despot and so protected his communities. I mean, I like the sound of him. I do like the sound of him. But he may have protected the bodies of the people within his jurisdiction, but he can't save them during the First World War, can he, I suspect, from the propaganda that's sweeping around the rest of the Ottoman Empire. And we've talked about this before in the run up to the Armenian genocide, that, you know, if you're not Turkish, you're not to be trusted. You know, the Armenians, they are treacherous. The Greeks, they are treacherous. Any minute now, they may turn on you. And when you've got a Greek majority place like Smyrna, How does he manage to push out against the propaganda or can he not?

It's a very difficult situation, particularly when you have the Western allies, the victorious Western allies, are very much listening to what the Prime Minister of Greece, Venezuela, wants to do to Turkey, the land he wants to claim back with all, you know, all his focus is on the city of Smyrna, that, you know, this increases attentions markedly and creates a very difficult situation for Rahmibir. We should say that there are actually more Greeks in Smyrna than there are in Athens at this period of history. Absolutely. I mean, Athens is a rather, really, rather a small provincial city at the time. Absolutely. This was the most powerful Greek city in the world. And partly because it's so incredibly successful and so rich and so much money is being made there, many Greeks leave independent Greece and travel to Smyr, choosing to live in Ottoman lands,

partly just to make money, because Smyr's prosperous and Athens simply isn't. Absolutely. And they know they're going to be protected by Rakhmi Bay. It should be said, while I was researching this book, I found track down Rahmi Bay's daughter-in-law, who lived in – it was like stepping back 80 or 90 years. in time, she still lived in this crumbling Ottoman mansion where her father-in-law had once lived. The place was falling to pieces. In Izmir? Yeah, in the centre of the city. It was redolent of another era.

There were great oriental carpets everywhere. There was an old pistol on the coffee table. Fantastic. And she smoked cigarettes for an ivory cigarette holder. She told me stories of her father-in-law, speaking in this impeccable French. A very wonderful character. And just, I mean, the kind of price the family paid for his forward thinking, what we would call forward thinking, to try and maintain the peace to push out against the kind of ethnic tensions that were bubbling up everywhere around him. He paid a price. Isn't it true that his son is kidnapped as a result of this? Yeah. I mean, the hinterland around Smyrna was very dangerous. It was full of brigands. This has been a long-running problem going on for decades and centuries even. again, when I researched the book, I met one of the only Levantine families still left in the city, and they're still there, to this day, the Giraud family, who still live in their palatial residence.

And I interviewed the elderly matriarch of the family. He was in her 90s, Gwyneth Giroux, and she remembers her her her Briggins coming down from the hills and having running gun battles in their botanical gardens. And it was these brigands, you're right, that at one point captured the sun. of Rahmibay and took him hostage and demanded a ransom. So these were dangerous times. So let's just pause a second. So the First World War comes to a close. The Ottomans are defeated. The Allies land on Constantinople. We're waiting for now, I suppose, for the Versailles Peace Conference. What's going on in Smyrna through all this? These people have somehow survived the First World War, even though Gallipoli is going on just down the road. There are still Rigoletto taking place,

in the Opera House, and you have a wonderful picture in your book of all these gents in black tie watching Rigoletto, even as Gallipoli is going on just five bays along the Mediterranean. It is extraordinary that Rahmi Bey managed to keep this city on the rails throughout the First World War. Smyr was virtually untouched by everything, the catastrophe that was unfolding all around the city. So quite remarkable. But I wonder if we need to go wind forwards to the Paris Peace Conference, where Vendiselaus will really play an absolutely major role. But before we do the role, tell me about the man. I mean, you did such a beautiful pen portrait at Rehemi Bay. I'd like to know what was he all about. What did he look like? What was his

manner? Tell me more about him. He was the star performer at the Paris Peace Conference. He was highly charismatic, engaging. He had great stories from his past. He'd helped clear the Turks out of Crete with his partisans fighting in the mountains. He would tell stories of having his shotgun lying across his lap and reading the Times, you know. Great, just cracking stories, very engaging, spoke terrible English, but didn't care. He spoke it anyway, you know, telling these stories of his life. And so he comes to the Paris Peace Conference on a charm offensive. He is absolutely determined to get what he wants. And what he wants? Well, the clue is in his name, Venezueless' first name is Eleftherios, and that means the Liberator.

He had helped liberate Crete from the Turks. That's actually his name. That's what he's actually born. He's actually called that, exactly. And now he's looking at a far greater prize. He wants to liberate the huge numbers of Greeks who have lived for centuries in what is now Turkey, in Asia Minor. These, of course, are the remnants communities of the old Byzantine Empire.

They've been there for centuries. Many of them have lost touch with their Greek roots, but they are ethnically Greek. And Venezuela has this idea of creating a greater Greece. His Megali idea, his big idea, is to try and reunite all these disparate Greek communities in Asia Minor into a greater Greece. And this is the idea. Not only does he bring this to the Paris Peace Conference, but he's brought Greece into the First World War on the side of the Western Allies precisely because he thinks, when we win the war and when peace comes, this is going to be my reward. And so this is what he brings to Paris.

And you know what I'm learning through doing Empire is that so much of the cataclysmic parts of history happen in the parlours of men who get on with each other. And one thing that's very important here, as you say, you know, Venezuela is this huge physically and personality-wise creature. And he charms Lloyd George, who is the British Prime Minister. He likes him. And therefore, perhaps, does that give Venice? Carlos sort of carte blanche to do more than he would with another prime minister.

And as we discovered in our episode on the Balfour Declaration, Lloyd George doesn't like Muslims. So he's already predisposed very heavily to give Venezuela what he wants. I mean, it's really interesting when you see who is there. The key players, you know, you've got Lloyd George, you've got Clemenceau, you've got Wilson. Now, American President Woodrow Wilson, now these men have been brought up on classical literature, the classics, they're steeped in the classics. And Venezuela-Lost does a very clever thing.

Instead of talking about the great Byzantine heritage of Asia Minor, this is where the great patristic fathers of the Byzantine church came from this place. St. Polycarp came from Seine. Polycarp. He is the saint of Svira. Why are you getting so excited about Polycar? I don't know about Polycar. Tell me about Polycar.

You don't know about Saint Polycar. No, I don't. I mean, he sounds like a fish meets a filler. What is Polycarp? He's an early Christian, he's an early Christian martyr who is the great, great Stainter, whose church is still there to this day. Indeed. And in fact, when I mentioned the cultural interchange between all these people in Smyrna,

it's fascinating to find the Wittel family calling their sons Polykart Whittle, you know, which is quite extraordinary. But anyway, to go back to Venezuela, he comes to the Paris Peace Conference. So instead of mentioning people like St. Polycarp and the great Byzantine father, the fathers of the church. He knows this will have zero interest for Lloyd George and George Clemenceau and other leaders. He goes on about this is the centre of classical Greece. This is where classical Greece was born. This is where Homer was brought up, isn't it? Homer comes from Smirna. Exactly. So he does this, makes this sort of great appeal. And it has to be said, the Italians get

rather annoyed at this and they think, hold on a minute, we want a slice of Turkey as well. And they start saying this was the home of the Roman Empire, you know, as justification. for having a slice of turkey. But Venezuela also he brings along postcards of Greece and such, handing them out to people. He's just such a fantastic raconteur. He plays a masterful game. And he really wooes the important figures at the conference. You always wonder how these conferences really work,

where these great men, because they were always men at the time, got together. How did they actually divide up the spoils? How does it all work? And there's this wonderful account where Venezuela, pulls out a map of Asia Minor and Lloyd George looks at it and he says, well, he thinks it's a demographic map and he thinks all the green areas are Greek. So he says, well, you can have that bit, that bit, that bit, and that bit. Until someone points out to Lloyd George, actually, it's a topographical map and those are actually forests.

I mean, honestly, the lack of map knowledge, again, throws me back to the stuff that we did on partition, where people who just don't understand what they're looking at are drawing lines on things they don't understand. But also, like our episode on the Belford Declaration, this is also a bunch of people who have no particular fondness for the actual kind of basic indigenous inhabitants, in many cases haven't even visited the area, and they're busy parceling it out. And today, of course, we assume that this is Turkey, because we see it on the map, we're grown up with the idea of Turkey being there in Anatolia. But in the 1920s, these great men, as you call them, are actively dividing up Anatolia, often with no view to giving any space to the Turks, just like the

Kurds got left out. There's every reason to think that the Turks going to be... What do they assume would happen to the Turks or just nobody care? I mean, if they're going to parcel up and give away all the land, is there any thought given to what the Turks would do? No, I think genuinely they don't really care. They want to... Venice is their star turn and they they're going to give him what he wants. And this is very important because although, as I said earlier, Smyrna has a majority Greek population. Up and down the coastline, yes, there were scattered communities of Greeks, sometimes quite large communities, but they were not in the majority.

And someone did point this out in Paris to say, isn't this a problem? And Venezuela, he was so clever at manipulating things. He said, well, hold on a minute. The Greek islands up and down the coast, which were Greek, obviously Greek dominated, he said they obviously form part of the same regional area. and by including those islands in his plan, suddenly the whole area of the coastline is Greek majority. So it was things like that that he did, sort of clever, manipulative, and convinced the great men who didn't need that much convincing, to be honest. I'm looking at a picture of him now, and he does look like the man you want to spend the evening with in the pub.

I mean, I completely understand, sort of a vuncular, clever, tweedy. So look, he's given permission. And so the Greeks then do land in Smyrna. And that is almost, it's almost as soon as they land, things start going somewhere to hell. What is the scale of the landings and what date are we talking? So this is in the spring of 1919. Finally, the peacemakers in Paris say give the go ahead. The green light to Venezuela, you can go and take occupy Smyrna, take control of Smyrna.

So he sends in a fleet of ships as about 20,000 Greek troops are going to land in the city. Now, word of this gets out in Smyrna beforehand, and of course, amongst the Greek community, this is the moment they'd be waiting for all their lives. They pour out into the streets. They pour out onto the quayside. There are Greek flags flying from every building. They're folk dancing. They're singing. It's just the most incredible moment. Conversely, in the Turkish side of the city, this is the worst possible thing that could happen to them. This is, this is all. This is awful. This is worse than the Western allies, the Bretts, the Americans, the Italians coming into the city. This is the Greeks. And so there are massive tensions on the day that they arrive.

Now, the Greek troops are under the strictest possible orders to behave with discipline, to behave with tact. And they land in an orderly fashion. They've been told they're going to seal off districts of the city to make sure there's no violence whatsoever. Unfortunately, things go wrong as inevitably they were probably going to, from the minute they land. There's jubilation, the troops start dancing, there's music playing, and the worst thing of all that happens is the great hierarch of the Orthodox Church in Smyrna. Metropolitan Chrysostovim. Exactly. Who is a fiery Greek patriot and nationalist. He comes down and blesses the troops in this sort of extravagant a gesture and then encourages them to go off marching down the quayside. And this is where it's a lot of. It's a lot of it.

going to end in disaster. Well, because of course, everything that the Ottomans have been saying, you know, that the Greeks are the enemy within, they're just waiting. You know, they're watching it being played out with music. It's almost like a mama's play. You know, they are reenacting all the very worst propaganda. So what happens next? A shot is fired.

Oh, well done. That's exactly what I was going to say. A shot is fired. I have read your book, Charles Milton. And to this day, no one knows who fired that crucial shot. Was it a Turk? Was it an Italian who were also very unhappy about the Greeks landing in Smyrna? We just don't know, but it was the signal for an almighty gun battle to break out,

largely between the Greeks on the key side and the Turks scattered around in various buildings on the seafront. And this was a disaster. It was absolute disaster. Numerous people were killed. There was all sorts of violence. There were revenge attacks. And specifically, the Turks are at the receiving end, because we're going to hear in the course of this episode a great deal of violence against the Greeks.

But at this point, the boot is on the Greek foot, and it's the Turks who are being dragged along the streets and lynched. Yes, and there are public lynchings taking place, horrific violence. Turks are being, wealthy Turks are being hunted down as well, tracked down by people to try to get revenge attacks on them. Just a day of absolute bloodshed. The landings could not have gone worse from Venezuela's point of view. And there's only one thing that stops it, and there's an almighty thunderstorm, which actually brings it to an end.

Divine intervention. Do we have any idea of how many people and who they were killed that day? It's very difficult to get any reliable figures. In fact, one of the consuls went around the morgues trying to count up bodies. But he said there were so many bits of bodies. It was very difficult to know how many. But it was probably certainly scores, probably hundreds. And as William says, overwhelmingly Turks, who are at the receiving end of this violence? So we don't know about the numbers, but we certainly do know what happens next. Join us after the break. Welcome back.

So just before the break, we were hearing of the degenerating situation in Smyrna, which of course has a knock-on domino effect. And before, you know, any time has passed at all, Anatolia feels like it's on the brink of exploding as a whole. And Turks are now looking to arm them. to protect themselves, because they're expecting this all-out conflict that the propaganda all throughout World War I has been telling them, it is here, the Greeks are going to get you, they are now going to drag you out of their beds, and there are reports coming from Smyrna,

which are spreading around, which confirm everybody's bias, armed and frightened people. They even have the Greek king turn up in 1920. King Constantine turns up in Smyrna, sort of representing the Greek state. You've touched on a very, very important point here, because we have to remember that Venezuela, to his shock and to many people's shock, lost the election. And in losing it, the opposition bring back King Constantine to power. This is potentially an absolute disaster for the Greeks. King Constantine is a loathed figure in the Western democracies. He's wanted to, he's wanted to side with Greece to side with Germany in the First World War. And all throughout the landings of the Greeks and the war that is to come, the Western allies, the Brits, notably in the

French, have been arming the Greek army, but giving them the latest weapons that are enabling them to conduct this war in Asia Minor. But as soon as Venezuela loses the election and King Constantine comes back to power, there's no one in the West that wants to carry on arming the Greek army if it's under the hated King Constantine. So this is a big moment. And indeed the French immediately swap, I think, and start arming the Turks at this point. And the Turks actually begin to get weapons, not just from the French, but from all over the place. Notably, the Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia, of course. Well, let's go back to sort of that moment when Anatole looks as though it's about to erupt.

And you've got, as I said, frightened people, scared people, arming themselves. This is at this point that Ataturk appears on a dais. Tell us, first of all, more about Ataturk. Because we've discussed him and what he does before in different podcasts. But I really still don't have a sense of the man, what he was like. what he looked like. Yeah, we last story was the hero of Gallipoli sitting on the heights, watching the Allied ships chug away in defeat. What's happened since then? Yeah, so Mustafa Kamal, as he was then, he would later become Ataturk, was one of the most

successful of the Ottoman generals in the First World War, as you say, Gallipoli, great success for him personally there. But also he'd had a very good war. And so the war comes to the end. And the question is, what is he going to do? He actually offers his service. to the British at one point, you know, and the British dismiss him. They say, there's going to be loads of these old Ottoman generals coming our way. You know, we've got no time for them. He eventually comes under the services of the Sultan in Constantinople, who sends him off to the east, to Anatolia, to try and quell the extraordinary unrest

that is taking place in the whole of the eastern Anatolia. He sends Ataturkis to go off there and to try and bring it under control. This coincides with the Greek landing in Smyrna, Ataturk does not do what he promised to do to the Sultan. He goes out there and decides to bring together his own band, his own sort of private army, if you like, to do battle with the Greeks. He has been galvanised by the Greek landings in Smyrna. Just before we get into the doings, though, I mean, I still, you know, again, we're talking about what he did. I don't know.

Was he fun? Was he quiet? Was he studious? Was he an ardent nationalist? you know, what makes Ataturk Ataturk? He was, I think one could say he was a people person. One of his close associates said there were plenty more brilliant than him, there were plenty more intellectual than him, but he had a thing with people. He could galvanise people. He could get people to do things. He inspired confidence. And it really, it seems there were a number of

nationalists knocking around who could have been leaders of this movement. But whatever I've read, all of them look to him as the natural leader of this band. He just inspired the confidence that they needed in a very desperate situation. Look, they looked like they were absolutely on the losing side. This Greek army was steamrolling its way out of Smyrna into the hinterland and pushing out and out and out. And so it needed someone extraordinarily charismatic and optimistic to lead this band. And Ataturk is fantastically good-looking.

he's a lady's man, he's a victorious general, and he leaves Constantinople, and this is the crucial moment that he flees to Ankara, which up to this point is nowhere. It's a small town in the back end of Anatolia, but this crucial moment is, in a sense, the Turks, to this day, look at this as the birth of the Republic and the beginnings of Ankara as a centre of government. You're absolutely right. I mean, this was like a small provincial market town at the time, but it had one great advantage, which was it was a long way from the Greek army in Smyrna. And so this was a place where Ataturk felt safe. This was a place where he could start to set up a political establishment to rival the

Sultan's set up in Constantinople. The Sultan was furious at what Kemal Haddan had the lead Muslim authorities issue of fatwa against Kemal Ataturk. Camel Atatatatouk then gets a leading Muslim hierarch to do exactly the same to issue of Fatwa against a Sultan. So you have two rival centres of power. You have the Sultan and his cronies supported by the Western Allies. In Constantinople. In Constantinople.

And you have Ataturk in this provincial market town miles from anywhere with his growing band of nationalists seeking two goals. One, expel the Greeks. Two, expel the Western allies and get rid of the Sultan. It's like a sort of future leader of Britain going to sort of Bakewell in Derbyshire or something and setting up a provincial government there. I think Bakewell is slightly less dusty than Ankara. I want to know really how the rest of the world, particularly Britain, is reacting to this rise of Atta. Because they are watching everything.

They are seeing everything. They've got reports coming back about this man who is managing to mobilize in a way that Constantinople can't. Just a quick aside, though, just before that, I'm always. struck by, do you remember when General Musharraf took power in Pakistan? He was, I remember covering the story, and he's doing a press conference, and he's got these two Pekingese dogs. He's at the airport, doesn't he? I can't remember where he was, but I remember very distinctly. He's got this Pekingese, and he's sort of stroking it. And he says very clearly, I want to be Ataturk for Pakistan. That's who I want

to be. Because the image, I mean, as you're saying, is, you know, one of a military man who can be for the people, not just for the army. And that's, that's, that's. That's in effect what you're saying, somebody whose inspiration goes beyond the rank and file to the people who are living in the villages around the Turkish equivalent of Bakewell. What happens when the Brits see this happening? Well, I think at first, the Brits don't take it seriously at all. They think there's absolutely no way that Ataturk's small band of, you know, brigands, very much an irregular army at this point.

There's absolutely no way they stand a chance against them. might of the Greek army, which, as we said, was being bankrolled and supplied by the Western powers. What's the size of the Greek army at this point? What sort of figures are we talking? Gosh, I don't know the exact figures. We're talking tens of thousands of soldiers who are beginning to push out from Smyrna. Now, there is an important point to be made here, is that originally the troops moved in to take the city of Smyrna and a small amount of land around it. But as they, in that hinterland around Smyrna, they kept getting attacked by. Turkish brigands. So they had to push out a little bit further to make a buffer zone around

the city. And they got attacked again. So they moved out a little bit further. And this was the problem for the Greeks is that to guarantee the security of Smyrna and the villages around it, they kept having to push out further and further and further. And every time they pushed out further, they got attacked by Turkish forces. And this posed a question, where's the frontier going to be. What is actually the goal? Where are you going to stop? And actually no one knew the answer to that question. And the British are sitting in Constantinople and really doing nothing to help at all. That's absolutely true, yeah. At this point, the fighting that's taking place is really between Greeks and Turks, and it's going to become increasingly dramatic over the months to

come. I mean, as they're pushing out and having to push out and pushing actually remarkably into the interior, I was really shocked at how far. they did go into the interior. Their supply lines are thinner. They are more vulnerable. They've got, you know, flanks which are completely exposed and more and more of them. Who is taking the decisions here that this is a good idea? Because it just seems like, you know, stupid 101. Yeah. And I think King Constantine has a lot to blame for this. He sees himself almost as a sort of divine leader. You know, Constantinople was founded by Constantine. And, it will be reconquered by a Constantine. So he has this grand vision. And it seems entirely unaware

that when you're marching hundreds of miles across parched landscape where there are no wells, there's no supplies, no food, nothing. And no friends. And no friends. This is probably quite a bad idea. And of course, what Ataturk does very brilliantly, as one should always do, I think, with an army that is much smaller than your opponent, he attacks the supply lines. He goes for soft targets. He blows up bridges in their way. He blows up fuel dumps. He takes out their food supplies. And so as the Greek army is going further and further east into increasingly hostile terrain, not just militarily, but hostile from a sort of geological point of view, geographical point of view, the Greek army finds itself in extreme difficulties. This is in Turkish history

a bit like what sort of the winter is to Russian history, just like Napoleon. is done in by the cold of the Russian winter, and then centuries later, Hitler is. In the same way, you have this history of invasions of Anatolia, notably the Crusaders in the 11th century, who just like this find themselves caught in the heat and the desert in the middle of Anatolia, and the Turks on horseback, mounted, cut off their supply lines. And this happens in the time of the First Crusade, but it also happens with this Greek advance. Ataturk has got his cavalry, regular cavalry, they're sweeping in, blowing things up, doing ambushes, cutting off supply lines, and then disappearing into the light.

So, I mean, all of this, all of this to protect Smyrna, and we've taken our eye off Smyrna, let's gaze back to Smyrna because there is a new governor in town. There is now a Greek governor, Rihimbe is gone. Who is running Smyrna and what is it like there for the people, the multicultural, multi-ethnic mix that they've got in that city still? Yeah, so Venezuela, Venezuela realizes immediately that the Valienselos, that the Vali the violence on day one of the landings is an absolute disaster. And something has to be done to rectify this.

And he brings in this governor, new governor, called Stergiadis, he's called. And he's a rather boring lawyer, balding, boring lawyer figure, who's totally impartial. He absolutely is going to run the city on equal terms for all the different nationalities. One of the first things he does to the great distaste of the Greek population is he tries and arrests and puts on trial any Greek he can find who's committed atrocities against the Turk. Other notable things he does.

At one point, he's in the Great Cathedral where Metropolitan Chrysostom is giving one of his fiery, nationalistic, pro-Greek sermons. And Sturgiardis stands up in the cathedral and shouts at the Metropolitan, tells him to stop. He said, I'm not having any of this in this city. It's really very brave. It's very brave to do that, isn't it? Very brave. very interesting character.

And what's extraordinary is, to this day, Sturgiardis in mainland Greece remains by and large a reviled figure. He's seen as having been pro-Turkish, which was not the case at all. He was simply trying to govern in an impossible situation, bring law and order to a city where all law and order had broken down. Yeah, and in the meantime, so the Brits are sort of sitting in Constantinople, they've taken control of Constantinople, and they have hoovered up.

people like Rahim Bey, who actually, you know, did a great job of keeping people safe from whatever background. I know, it's an extraordinary when you look at the English drinking their pink gins in the Peripalice Hotel, you know. And as you say, having the goul to arrest Rami Bay, who is on their side, you know, in a country which was against Britain, he was there in the city of Smyrna, you know, offering to side with the British. And yet they arrest him and lock him up. and actually it took a great effort on the part of the Levantine community, his old friends, to actually get him released eventually. So the Greeks pass on the armies march into the heart of Anatolia. They capture Eskishahir, a major railhead, and then they head towards anchor. And this is the point that Ataturk entrenches and decides he's not going to retreat any further. Yeah, the problem for the

Greeks is really the question is, what are we doing? Are we trying to establish a frontier, which we can then defend and keep all the land to the west of it? Or are we actually trying to wipe out this annoying Turkish nationalist Ataturk and destroy him forever? They take the decision, which is a bad one, which is to try and wipe out Ataturk and his nationalists. And as you say, they push eastwards crossing this immense desert-like territory. Any chance of arriving with surprise is a bit blown apart. When you're crossing a desert with tens of thousands of troops, you raise an awful long of dust. So the Turks, of course, know they're coming and they sit in wait. Having said that, and credit to the Greek army, they fight with extraordinary bravado and they win a number of battles

against the Turks at this time. But time is against them. Remember, the Western and allies have pulled the plug on military supplies. King Constantin is hated. He's not going to get anything more from the West. And so they're facing diminishing supplies in an unhealthy climate. in a terrible topography. And Atatuck, he's almost sitting back and waiting, knowing that they're going to run out of food, of water, choosing his moment with great care when he can pounce and deliver the final blow. So Atatuck is entrenched waiting for the Greeks to come, and they do come. They move forward, but their supply lines are cut, and there's this moment of sort of, in the sense, everything is in the balance, and then the Greeks are defeated.

Ataturk chooses his moment with care. He waits for the Greeks to be worn down, to have no supplies, to run out of munitions. Meanwhile, he's receiving a lot of munitions from various countries, including a lot from Soviet Russia, who are taking a great interest in what's taking place. And as you say, he waits, he waits, and then he strikes, and he strikes hard, and he attacks with all his men, and he achieves a fantastic victory over the Greek army. This is a great turning point in the struggle for Asia Minor. Yeah, turning point is absolutely right. Things are about to change and change dramatically. Join us on Thursday to find out what happens. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnden. And goodbye from me, William Drimple.