Empire: World History - 42. The Fiery End of the Ottoman Empire

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

The Greeks are retreating to Smyrna in the face of Ataturk’s victory. The city, once one of the jewels of the Ottoman kingdom, is set to face devastation hitherto unknown. William and Anita are once again joined by Giles Milton as they discuss the catastrophe that occurred in Smyrna in 1922 and the central role this played in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. To hear Giles' podcast - Cover Up: Ministry of Secrets - on the great unsolved Cold War mystery of Lionel 'Buster' Crabb, follow this link: https://listen.sonymusic-podcasts.link/p-nDsNzN 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 podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. It's now getting to such epic proportions. I'm going to have to call the United Nations. This is just now, this is just, this is just, this is.

to say conflict zone now is what this is becoming. You've just got to get used to the full sort of. But we're also on twice this week. You had practice at this two days ago. I don't understand how this, I don't understand how you forget your name in two days. I don't understand. Luckily, we both remember the name of our special, special guest.

Extra special. Part two of this series is Giles Milton. Hello, Charles Milton. Hello, Charles. You know, one thing that we didn't talk about last time before, we get into the meat of why you're here with us on Empire. You have a podcast. How does a bit about your podcast? I do. An eight-part narrative podcast. It investigates one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Cold War. It's the spring of 1956 and a world-famous diver goes missing,

a spy and he disappears without trace and he has never seen again. What happened to him? There are dozens of theories about what might have happened. But what's extraordinary is the government to this day is covering up the truth. They put a hundred-year embargo on what happened to this diver, and we want to know why. And we discover a story. It involves MI6, the CIA, the KGB,

and the royal family. Their royal family is always the royal family. It's a hundred-year embargo. Prince Andrew's in there somewhere. So we follow the story of what happened in 1956 and the story of who is blocking this story now. And I have to say, we crack it in episode eight.

we will reveal, oh. Is it Mountbatten? Is it about Batten? For God's sake. Can I just, for God's sake and for the love of all that is holy, don't tell him, because he doesn't do suspense. He doesn't do drama. He doesn't do discretion.

Do not tell him the ending. Well, I'm hooked. I think it's about Batten. William, William. Anyway, it's called Ministry of Secrets. Ministry of Secrets. Thank you. You've got one listener already with me.

William, can you remind everybody why we split into two this week? This is such an important part of the author. So the final episode of the narrative that we have been telling of the Ottoman Empire from the beginning with the Seljuk Turks breaking into Anatolia in the 11th century reaches its climax in this episode because we've seen the great Greek invasion of Anatolia coming through Smyrna in 1990, 1920. They've headed right into the interior of Anatolia. but it is their fate to meet the greatest of all Turkish generals and leaders Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, who has held the line near Ankara.

And when we ended the episode last time, he has just defeated the Greeks. And there is now a headlong Greek retreat back to Smyrna. Giles, tell us about that. The Greeks, as you say, have been totally vanquished on the battlefield. And they now have to get back to Smyrna as quickly as they possibly can. They've lost everything. They've got no supplies. They've got no food. They've got very little water. And so they make a headlong dash of hundreds of miles back to what they think is going to be the safety of the Greek city of Smyrna. In their wake, it's not just a defeated Greek army,

of course. It's all the little Greek communities scattered across Anatolia, villages, small towns, all of them see what's happening. And they think we've got to get out as well. So you have this a huge army, defeated army in retreat, but at the same time, you have thousands of families, men, women, and children fleeing with whatever they can carry in their handcuts. And we should say that this is the pattern that we've been following now over several episodes of this unraveling of this incredibly mixed tapestry that the Ottoman Empire was. In village after village, town after town, right across Anatolia through the Balkans, You have these mixed communities, Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews, Armenians, who have been living together in some sort of pluralistic equilibrium for hundreds of years.

But now, with the birth of nationalism, with the First World War, and with the aftermath of this Greek invasion, the fabric, that interwoven quilt is unraveling. The different threads are being pulled apart. And it's no longer okay just to be a Greek villager sitting in the middle of Anatolia. in the farm or the village that you've been farming since ancient, Hellenistic times. Suddenly, you are a member of an enemy nation and you're no longer welcome. And there's sort of, you know, this parade behind the retreating Greek army is making its way to Smyrna. And as if they expect that Smyrna is going to be a haven, we ought to look at what Smyrna is doing at this time. Because even in the spring, Smyrna finds its economy is completely crashed.

This is now a place that doesn't work anymore. This is absolutely correct. So they're fleeing to a city. They're fleeing to a Greek city, these villages, these refugees is what they've become. But as William says, a lot of these have lived here for centuries. They don't feel very Greek. And in many cases, they don't even speak Greek. And they're going to end up heading first to a Greek city,

and then they're going to end up in mainland Greece for the rest of their lives. So a very difficult situation. And as you say, in the city of Smyrna itself, that everyone is keeping one eye on what's taking place outside and realizing that something has gone disastrously wrong. The economy, as you say, has crashed. But there's a bizarre sense of keeping the show on the road. The restaurants stay open. The bars are still happening. There are still suarez taking place. You know, the opera is still functioning. The theatre is still going. So it's almost like the city is in denial of the absolute crisis that is about to

face it. And there's one important reason why everyone in Smyrna feels vaguely secure. And that is because when they look out into the Bay of Smyrna, they see 21 Allied battleships who they know, for sure, they think, are going to protect them. There's a nice quote here in Philip Mansel's wonderful book on Levant describing Smyrna at this time. And he said there were 500 cafes, 13 cinemas, and many ragtime bars. Young women wore dresses. be two inches below the knee. Heavens, what a place it is. As for the girls, oh Lord, wrote a British officer to his wife. So the sensation that everything is going on, the deck chairs of the Titanic's are still very much in place, even as this catastrophe unravels. At what point do the

refugees actually start making it into Smyrna itself? And what happens as a result, that sort of delicate balance that even now, you know, with the ragtime bars playing on bravely, even though they might be a little bit worried about what's behind them, if not, you know, the frigates in front of them. What happens when they arrive in Smyrna? So on the outskirts of Smyrna, I mentioned the Levantine suburb of Bournebat. And this is the first place where the defeated Greek army will be seen by the inhabitants of Bournebat. And one of those inhabitants is a venerable old spinster named Hortense Woods. And she looks out of her window on the 6th of September, 2022, and she sees the very first

defeated troops, this rabble walking along the road heading into Smyrna. they've lost their weaponry, they're shoeless, they just look vanquished, defeat it. They've got defeat written all over them. But she doesn't think much of it. She just thinks, oh, well, you know, a battle's taken place, they've lost it. She's very happy. She's going to stay in her house. And all the others in Bournemat in this extraordinary community of wealthy Levantines,

they just think, well, you know, we'll sit it out and see what happens. They're not too concerned at this point. So when does that begin to turn, Charles? when do they suddenly realize that things are actually more serious than they think? So the soldiers, they move into Smyrna and the Greek warships that are in the Bay of Smyrna start to take off those troops. And this rings alarm bells, I think, among many of the inhabitants of Smyrna. And on the 7th of September, the day after Hortensewood seized those first defeated troops,

the Greek administration of the city, packs up, locks up the doors of its administration buildings, and heads out of town. And there's no suggestion that they're going to dig trenches, they're going to defend Smyrna, there's literally no attempt at. Nothing at all, no. The Greeks in the town are looking at this with some alarm, because gradually, over the next few days, the city starts to pack up. It starts to sort of cease to function, if you like, the city administration.

This is like descriptions of Kabul last year. I've got friends who were in Kabul, Afghan friends, who described the British embassy and these other embassies, which they'd always thought would be there, one by one closing, as the Taliban approach. This feeling. And just leaving, yes. And having a means to leave, but that is not available to the people.

To ordinary people. To ordinary people. So that's, sorry, the seventh. So you're talking about the seventh when the doors are locked and people are padlocking. On the eighth, this is the day when the British nationals

and the American nationals start to be taken off by those British and American warships in the bay. So gradually, the Western allies are thinking, we should take our people out of here. And they also land a very small number

of troops to protect their interests in the city. So the Americans, for example, run the big standard oil company in Smyrna. So they post troops around that. They also have an American Institute, Collegiate Institute, which they run, they have the YMCA. So buildings like that, and they're vast consulate as well, these all get protected by troops. It's worth noting that the cinema is still playing its film every, it's still screening its film every night, which happens to be a film called The Tango of Death. which given what is about to happen is hideously appropriate. By the end of the day, there are 50,000 troops on the quayside.

Troops are pouring in by this stage. At first it's a few dozen, then it's a few hundred, and then it's a few thousand. They congregate on the key side, and they are taken off by Greek naval vessels. The really big drama, I suppose, the turning point is on the 9th of September, and this is where Smyonauts really have their first frisson of. absolute fear because this is the day where the Turkish cavalry march into town. And there's this remarkable scene. I've read so many eyewitness accounts of people that the city falls silent as these cavalry marches along these smartly dressed cavalry officers in their black feces,

their curved swords, unsheed, which are holding in the air. And they march in absolute silence. And there's a real sense of total terror of what's going to happen. I mean, I often try to imagine what this must be like. You know, if you're a mum with kids or you're just an, you know, an ordinary person and you're watching this happen and you're watching these ships and everybody who is deemed to be a value has gone and you're left. What are you left to? In fact, you know what's really extraordinary? I'm sure you've seen this, Charles. I don't know, William, whether you have. There is Pathay footage available of this entire period. So there is one bit that I've played over again and I got a bit obsessive of looking at the

footage because you know, you cannot believe that this stuff is so recent that it's televised. But you've got this very grand car which purportedly has Ataturk in it. And they are driving up and down what looks like quite a grand street. And as you say, silence. There isn't violence. There's just silence as they go through. Another person who is there unexpectedly is the young Ernest Hemingway who's reporting for the Toronto Star.

What's he up to jump? Well, actually, Hemingway, we wrote a short story called On the key side of Smyrna or the key of Smyrna, but in fact, he was never in Smyrna. He was actually further north. Oh, Ernest. He was reporting for the Toronto Ska on the vast waves of refugees that were coming out of Anatolia and trying to get anywhere safe. However, he interviewed a number of people who were on the key of Smyrna, hence the

story that he wrote. But no, he wasn't there at the time. We said earlier that the town of Smyrna had been this fantastic haven for the Armenians in the First World War. I mean, it's been massacred, driven off into the interior, but Smyrna, they're protected. And now they are facing the Turks for the first time. What happens? The Armenians are terrified at this point. It's the 10th of September, and violence is beginning to spill into the streets. And the Armenians are the most worried of all because they know exactly what happened a few years earlier in 1915, and they're worried this is going to happen to them.

and sure enough, on that day, violence breaks out in their quarter. A lot of the Armenians gather in the Prilisi building, which is where they hope they'll find some sort of safety. But they've then received some pretty terrible news, is that a man called General Nureddin has been appointed governor of Smyrna. General Noredin is known to hate all ethnic minorities. He is a Turk for the Turks, and this signals very bad news indeed. One of the first things that General Nuredin does, He calls Metropolitan Chrysostom to his offices. And just to remind people, because we mentioned him in the last episode, this is a rather bombastic cleric who has, is a nationalist himself,

as a Greek nationalist, who has reveled quite a lot in the Greek takeover of Smyrna, who was told to sit down and be quiet by the governor, who is now vilified in Greece, ironically, because he knew this would cause trouble. So this is a bombast of a man himself. Exactly. And so he is called into General Nureddin's office. We don't know what happened, what he actually said. But then Chrysostom comes out onto the steps of the administration building.

And Nuruddin is said to have said to the crowd, do with him what you want. And they do. They stab him, they gouge his eyes out. He's killed in the most horrific fashion possible. And so this is really the public start of the atrocities and violence are now going to consume the city. Yeah, I mean, I heard that he didn't die. They took his eyes, they took his ears, they, you know, mutilated his face. But, you know, he lived for a bit longer than that.

Yes, and this was all watched on by a contingent of French guards, who happened to be in the air at the time, who described it in some, in vivid detail, but did absolutely nothing to intervene. And this is the point in which Mustafa Kamal sends a telegram to the League of Nations, saying the Turks had an excited spirit and therefore, not be responsible for any massacres. So things are not looking promising at this point. They had an excited spirit, but they also had gallon drums of gasoline, of petrol, which they now began bringing into the city. And they began storing it very close to the Armenian quarter.

And this was witnessed by a number of eyewitnesses. They also, and this is largely the irregular forces who are fighting alongside Kemal's Ataturk's regular army, they're coming into town, they are drunk and they begin committing appalling atrocities and rapes. Again, at this point, it's largely against the Armenian community. Of course, it has to be remembered very easy to attack and identify because the different nationalities of Smyrna tend to live in their own quarters. So all the Armenians are in one place. Yeah, and we should at this point again, and we touched on this in the first episode on Smyrna, there are two sides that have very different recollections of what happens. But you went to,

the Levantine community for a lot of the first-hand accounts because, in your words, they were not committed to either side. I mean, they were sort of in the middle. Just remind us of sources and the difficulty in getting eyewitness accounts that you trust. Yeah, well, when I wrote this book or researched this book, there was no archive for the Levantine community in Smyrna. So I literally had to track down and contact the various families who'd live there and asked, Do you have any letters? Do you have any diaries? What have you got from this time? And of course, I found that they had the most remarkable collection of personal memoranda that they handed over to me. So one of, I mentioned earlier, the venerable spinster Hortense Woods. She kept a daily diary,

a very detailed daily diary of everything that was unfolding in the city. And of course, her story became even more extraordinary because Ataturk chose her mansion as his headquarters. So she was sitting in one room and he was in the other and she was sort of noting down everything he was saying. So he's there while all of this is unraveling in rivers of blood around him. I mean, are these sort of the Levantine accounts that tell you that Greek prisoners of war were then forced out of their homes and forced to march through the city saying long live, Mustafa Kamar?

I mean, is that the kind of thing that you get? Yeah. So I chose the Levantines as my principal eyewitnesses because in a sense they didn't mind who ran Smyrna, Turk or Greek, as long as they could continue to make their fortunes. So I regarded them as the most reliable witnesses. I have to say some of the Americans, also I found their eyewitness accounts to be particularly reliable, some of the nurses who worked there and some of the who worked in the various collegiate institutes run by the Americans in the city. Because again, they don't intervene. The Americans are sitting watching, for example,

Chrysostom be hacked to bits or indeed the Armenians, because the Armenian quarter is not far for the American consulate, and yet they do not intervene. They are forbidden from doing anything to save the Greeks or the Armenians. And it's sort of more cynical than that, actually, because remember earlier we mentioned 21 Allied warships in the Bay of Smyrna. Now, these warships could have done a great deal to help. But as crowds of refugees are beginning to gather on the quayside, 10,000, 30,000, 50,000, 150,000 by the 12th of September, there are 150,000 desperate people on the Keyside, screaming as they're being beaten and attacked by Turkish soldiers, in the Bay of Smyrna, on the warships, the naval officers are watching this, and they're appalled by the scenes that

are taking place, just a few hundred yards from where they are. The screams are so loud that the captain, the commander of the flagship orders the ship's band to play music to drown out the sound of the screaming. I can't bear it. I have to say, he then goes off to dinner with all his senior officers. This is Admiral Sir Osmond de Beauvoir Brock, who is having drinking fine wine and dining well while all this is taking place within eyesight. So, Jars, you tell the story at this point of this character Duncan Wallace, who sort of fulfills the inevitable role of the completely hopeless Brit blundering in. Go on. But desperately concerned about his family. So he thinks that if he dresses in full formal attire, this is probably the best way to get through the ranks of

Turkish irregulars, which duly happens. So, yes, And many of the grandest families have decided to remain, you know, brazen it out, remain in their houses while this is taking place. But even they, by the 12th and 13th of September where everything changes, even they realize the end has come. Right. And, you know, the kind of screaming that you're talking about, that these ships are now, you know, sort of playing band music to try and drown out.

I just, there are certain aspects of this to just make me viscerally feel sick. This is one of them. A very good friend, Christina Lamb, has written about rape being an instrument of war and still is an instrument of war. But you've got young girls, the age of 12, you've got some really unpleasant accounts and harrowing accounts of very young women being dragged off. Very difficult to read these accounts. And you have to choose with care what you're going to put in the book because they are graphic, unvarnished accounts of what happens when a drunken irregular army comes into town hellbent on revenge. And yeah, there are girls, I mean, you know,

when you have your own daughters as well, who are that sort of age, when I was writing this book, it sort of touches you inside. It's horrific what took place. Is it deliberate or is it just the blood is up? I mean, I want to know, is this allowed to take place because it is expedient to cleanse a city of a certain ethnicity? Or is it what happens, you know, sometimes in previous episodes we've done things where the bashy bazooks are out of control and they just do things that the Central High Command don't approve of and don't order them to do? I think you have this problem with any army that doesn't have a non-commissioned officers in its ranks. So you see that in the Russian army, what's taking place in Ukraine.

They don't have what all Western armies have is these officers who've worked their way up, who are used to fighting and instilling discipline in small platoon, small groups of men. So Ataturk's force coming into the city was largely composed of brigands and irregular forces who didn't have that local discipline, those locally based officers who were able to tell them not to do this. But Ataturk, who we've previously seen, can be, as atolle, an extremely generous victor and who is in many ways a sort of phenomenally heroic figure. He is not intervening at this point, is he? This is something that his supporters cannot point to as one of Ataturk's great moments. He's not saving the Armenians.

he's not doing anything to stop the massacres which are happening around him. And the Amiens who've escaped massacres up to now are finished off at this point. Yeah, because it suits his purpose if all the other ethnic nationalities in Smyrna are driven out. And then he will have his perfect Turkish city. So he has absolutely no interest in trying to save all these desperate nationalities. So there are people now, I mean, they've seen enough in the city to now congregate at the key side. and they are basically standing there with their arms outstretched to these warships from allied troops and saying, help us, help us take us away. Not one lifeboat sent, not one ship. And what is stopping them,

what is stopping them from doing that? I mean, apart from, you know, they've been ordered not to, and I know that those people who are manning those ships feel very differently. Does this all really come down to something as boring as oil at the end of the day? Well, I think that they were under orders, the senior commanders of the British and the French and the American fleets shipworships in the bay. They were under orders to do nothing because the governments of those countries were already looking at striking deals with the clearly victorious Ataturk. And they didn't want to be seen to be helping the Greeks and Armenians. I think it is a deeply cynical move. The commander of the American fleet, Admiral Mark Bristol, was overtly pro-Turkish.

And he took along, he had with him two journalists who he instructed. on what they were allowed to report and what tone they should be taking in their articles. So, yeah, I think it was deeply cynical. And as you say, in these first days, they did absolutely nothing. By the 13th of September, there are 700,000 desperate refugees on the key side. And they're looking to the Allied warships to save them, and the Allied warships are doing nothing. And is it oil? I mean, I said, is it as boring as oil? But is this because of future deals that, you know, the so-called Western powers might be able to do with that? I think oil is a very large part of it. But more generally trade, I think, you know, they want to strike

deals with the victor. They don't want to be seen to be dealing with the vanquished. Charles, you mentioned earlier that there is petroleum being brought into the city actively, and it's being stored near the Armenian quarter. This is actually something you've researched yourself, and this is an important new detail that's come out of your work in the archives. What happens with that petroleum? So this is the great sort of question that hangs. over Smyrna is who set fire to the city, who torched it. And it's highly controversial. As we said, ask a Greek, well, you know, they'll tell you one thing, Arctur, they'll tell you another. So I looked at a lot of the source material I could find eyewitness accounts. And it seems to me, without a shadow of a doubt,

that the Turkish forces, both regular and irregular, started dowsing buildings with petroleum. They started in the Armenian quarter. I have this extraordinary account from Miss Minnie Mills, who was a teacher in Smyrna, who worked at the American Collegiate Institute, who describes watching Turkish soldiers, poor petrol, going up and down streets, pouring petrol onto the buildings. And these were then set, they were then set on fire. One very important detail happened on the evening of the 12th of September, just before the fires started.

The wind shifted direction completely, 180-degree turn in the direction of the wind. This meant, I mean, to, if you're cynical, or maybe, you know, this is what happened, that if you set fire to the city, once the winder changed, the entire city would be consumed with the exception of the Turkish quarter. Charles, explain to me, though, why this is in the interests of Ataturk. I can understand him wanting to drive out a minority, but he doesn't have to set the place on fire to do that. He can just drive them into the sea or march them into the interior. Why does he destroy what is the second most prosperous, the economic hub other than Istanbul of the entire Anatolian region?

First, it's not clear how much he's in charge of the irregular forces inside the city. They're generally under the control of Nuredin, who is not quite so enlightened and open-minded as Ataturk. But I think you also have to consider what these troops have been through. They've been through absolute hell fighting their way across. Anatolia, they are a rabble, they've experienced extreme violence and atrocities. I think there's just, it comes a point which, you know, we see today in Ukraine, there's a, where just atrocity becomes an article of war. And I think it may be as simple as that. I'm not sure there was any grand scheme to burn down the entire city of Smyrna, but it just, events just span out of control, I

think. But if petroleum is brought in, that's definitely a conscious, active mechanism of war. That's for sure. There was certainly there were large elements within the Turkish army who simply wanted to destroy the place. As I said, we said in the first episode, Smyrna had always been infidel Smyrna. It had always been a blot on the Turkish coastline. Even Ataturk himself, who'd visited the city, I think before the First World War, had described his distaste at seeing a city full of Greeks. So there was no love for the city of Smyrna. Well, at this point, let's take a break. And when we come back, let's find out what the rest of the world knows and thinks about what's going on here. Welcome back. Now, we were talking

about the horror that is unfolding in Smyrna itself. And I was always interested to know what the world knew about this. Turns out they knew everything. I looked through the Guardian archives and I just came up with this from the 15th of September 1922 from their correspondent. A telegram received this afternoon from Smyrna reports terrible fire has broken out in the city. The Greek and Armenian quarters have been destroyed. The fire is spreading to other areas. The inhabitants are in a state of panic. Italian ships in the port are endeavouring to take off members of the Italian colony.

Smyrna almost completely destroyed. And also, you know, what's weird is that Pate have footage. So there is somebody on a ship. Have you seen this stuff, Giles? There's someone on a ship watching the city burn and taking footage of it. And you can see it in real time. What really struck me as startling was the little captions that went along. You know, with Pathet, you have the full page of graphics.

And when you have this shot across the bay of all of these ships doing nothing, the caption comes up, Britain's watchdogs, majestic in their silent guard of the Dardanelles, are instantly ready. For what? They do nothing. For how long do they do nothing? It is extraordinary when you see not only. the footage, but even if you just Google search the images of the fire of Smyrna, it is on an

unimaginable scale. This was a vast city and the entire thing is on fire. And you just see this thick sort of mass of black smoke, which is hanging over the city, flames hundreds of feet high, shooting up into the sky. And the journalists you mention, of course, they're not inside Smyrna. They're on the warships reporting from a safe distance of several hundred yards. So all their reports are at a distance without any account of what's really taking place, the violence, the atrocities, the rapes that are still taking place amidst this inferno that's going on. Giles, you have one or two stories, however, of heroic acts of humanitarian aid. You have a wonderful character, Aza Jennings. Aza Jennings is one of the most bizarre and curious characters

in this sort of whole sorry affair, really. Acer Jennings was a small squat, rather wimpy American member of the YMCA in Smyrna. He'd never really achieved anything in his life. He looked a bit like a sort of a little frog with these big bulging eyes and round glasses. But he is really horrified by what's taking place. He's horrified that the American warships and Allied warships in the Bay are doing nothing to help anyone. And so he decides to make a stand.

it's going to be the great moment of his life. And he establishes what he calls the American Relief Organization, which consists of one person, and that's him. And he, through extraordinary set of circumstances, manages to contact the Greek government and says, I am the head of the American Relief Organization. There are lots of Greek ships in and around the Bay of Smyrna, and I want to commandeer those and use them to rescue the Greeks of Smyrna. And to his astonishment, the Greek government says, oh, okay. And so thus begins, Acer Jennings' great rescue mission. And again, I just want people to know this man, because he is an unusual man. First of all, he has the guts, the sheer guts to face down the irregulars. And even before he's contacted these

Greek ships, said pregnant women and orphans are coming in here. And I don't care what you say and what you're going to do to me, you're not coming anywhere close. And he knows what's been going on around him. But he is not this statuesque sort of marvel hero. This is a man who has a man who has curvature of the spine. He's small. He's tiny. He's shorter than me and I'm tiny. He's five foot tall. I mean, just tell us more about this mildly spoken man who says, not on my watch. Yeah, who never achieved anything in his life. And he commenters these ships. He's given command of a fleet of sort of 12 or 15 huge great ships. He comments at the time, he said, as he's made commander, he said, hitherto, all I knew about ships was how to be sick in them.

And he now finds himself as head of one of the greatest humanitarian rescue missions of the early 20th century. And to his credit, he rescues many, many tens of thousands of people, plucks them from the Kievsmyrna, transfers them onto these warships or ships, and then takes them off to the safety of the Greek islands off the shore. So this is a sort of Dunkirk situation where you have troops now at the quayside waiting to be taken off. thanks to Aza, they're beginning to be taken off. But behind is not the Nazis coming for them, but this incredible fire. If they stay on the key side, they're going to be rusted. You're absolutely right. Behind them is a wall of fire described vividly by some of the journalists.

As I mentioned earlier, hundreds of feet high flames towering up into the sky. And at the same time, the Turkish forces are rounding up any Greek men of fighting age who are going to be then deported into the interior. And most of them will, never be seen again. Can I just read a quote to you from one tourist? I mean, I think this sums it up what they're facing. Oran Raber, who says, he's arrived as a tourist, he's arrived in a few days earlier. Very bad timing, O'an. But he says, there was a choice of three kinds of death, the fire behind, the Turks waiting in the side streets, the ocean in front. I love this guy. He's sort of backpacker turns up in the kind of biggest humanitarian catastrophe of the period.

And there's one quote that I feel very poignant is George Horton, the American Consul, who's now on the safety of an American warship in the Bay of Smyrna and appalled at how little the Allied forces have done to bring off any of these refugees onto their warships. He just looks at what he's seeing and he says, one of the keenest impressions I brought away with me from Smyrna was a feeling of shame that I belong to the human race. Yeah, I mean, when Aza Jennings' boats start carrying people back to the Greek ships, do the other ships actually break with the protocol that they've been set and are shamed into also taking people back? Because I've seen again on this cafe footage, you know, the bay filled with little boats. So you've used the right word, they're shamed into doing it, because after a few days of watching incredibly harrowing scenes

taking place within, you know, eyesight of the officers and the men on board these vessels. It's the men on the vessels, these warships, who insist that something has to be done. And this is where they begin to launch their lifeboats from the ships and row across the harbour and begin to pluck off some of the women and children on the quayside. But it was too little too late, and they certainly didn't have the capacity to bring off anything like the number that our rather wimpy hero, Aisa Jennings, is managing to do with his, you know, large Greek ships. Don't you be talking smack about Asa Jennings?

Issa Jennings is one of my most favorite characters in history. So the fire is burning. There are some people being taken off. The scene, again, is the amount of journalism across all of this is just startling to me. You know, the footage of the children, these wide-eyed terrified children on decks, not knowing where their families are, not knowing what's to become of them. What is the aim? What are people going to do with the refugees?

What is to become of them? Well, that's a very good question. And I think that's the question that everyone was asking at the time. What the hell do we do with these hundreds of thousands of people? And remember, we mentioned Ernest Hemingway earlier. He's in Anatolia still watching even vaster numbers of refugees coming out. Where are they going to go? Well, a lot of them eventually will end up in Greece.

And in Crete, if you go to Crete today, there's still the villages that they call the Turks. And of course, they're not Turks, they're Greeks. but they're Greeks who lived in Anatolia and they're still quite distinct from the local Cretans and occasionally there are burnings and fields go up in flames and so on even to this day

because the local Cretans regard them as Turks Yes and forever after these refugees were always looked at as second class citizens by Greeks and so you have the famous quarter in Athens which is called New Smyrna which is where a lot of them settled

but they were never accepted A lot of them didn't speak Greek, or they spoke a very bizarre dialect of Greek when they came there. They simply were not looked upon us Greeks. A number of them, a large number went to America. And it was very interesting. When my book came out in America, I did a book tour there. And, you know, both of you probably know when you do a book tour of America, you tend to go East Coast. And if you're lucky, they'll send you to the West Coast as well.

They sent me, as well as those places, off to Ohio. I went to Akron, Ohio, and did a talk there. And my audience was entirely composed of descendants of spaniots who were fascinated by the story because they knew absolutely nothing about it because their grandparents had had such painful experiences that they had refused ever to say anything about it. This is the partition. This is the Holocaust. This is the Armenian genocide.

In all these horrific stories, no one will talk about it for two generations. Echoes on echoes. And you know, actually, there are two places I found in America because I was entertained by your book tour story. but there is a Smyrna in Tennessee and there's a new Smyrna Beach in Florida. And, Jiles, tell us the sort of numbers that we're talking about. How many killed? How many rescued? What's the scale of the horror here?

It's so hard to get any accurate figures. I mean, tens of thousands were killed, many hundreds of thousands of refugees were eventually plucked off the quayside. But it's so disputed. And there are no accurate records. It was simply a great human. humanitarian catastrophe. The US Emergency Committee, I've got figures here, made a rough estimate,

and these can't be taken at all as final, but they say about 100,000 killed and 160,000 deported to the interior. Another estimate is 190,000 dead. So by any scale, this is a major humanitarian catastrophe. And of course, we should say that it's going to get a lot worse, because in 1923, We have the Treaty of Lozanne, which puts into legal form the exchange of populations. And this is the formal expulsion of one and a half million ethnic Greeks from Turkey and the expulsion of 400,000 ethnic Turks from Greece, this massive exchange of populations, which will uproot families who've lived in villages for centuries. That's the only life they know.

They find themselves kicked out, taking with them, you know, their, wife, their children, and a few pots and pans, and having to make new lives in a country that is not very welcoming. And when you go to Turkey today, all along that coast, you find these Greek villages which were flourishing large, populous, prosperous places, making olive oil, making a living part of the fig business, and they're completely empty. They're left in many cases as they were in 1922. You could walk in tomorrow. You could walk in tomorrow. into one of these villages and repopulate them if the will was there. And I find it extraordinary how quickly centuries of history can be sort of just ripped up.

This all happened within the space of a few months, you know, that this all came to a terrible end. And that great civilisation was no more. And what's so extraordinary to me also is the way this happens not just in Anatolia and Turkey itself, but you know, you have the same thing happening with all the old mosques and the Turkish ethnic Turkish settlements in Greece. Many of them are destroyed afterwards, and there are pictures of many, many fine Ottoman mosques which are no longer there in Turkey.

Ditto, important Greek churches and Greek monuments all over Turkey. And you know the great rallying cry all along was Turkey for the Turks, and by 1923, that really was the case. The only remaining Greeks, and they were a very small community, with the last dwindling community left in the city of Constantinople. The fanariots, yeah.

which would ultimately be booted out as well in 195. And now, today there are a handful of Greeks of original descent who still live in the city. A few Armenians left in Caddicoy, a few Surian Christians living in the Turabdin. But otherwise it's what, it's a 95, 96% Turkish state today. But we should also acknowledge that, and this is important, that what was a catamination, for the Greeks and led to the end of the entire Hellenistic presence in Anatolia is a rebirth for Turkey. And that had Ataturk not stopped the Greek army, we might have seen exactly the same atrocities played out on Turkish peasants instead. Which they were, of course, as the Greek army

retreated from its great defeat in Central Anatolia, numerous and very less publicized atrocities were committed by those troops, which also fuelled the fury of the Turks when they entered into Smyrna. There was violence on every side. But I think you're absolutely right to point out, very importantly, that for the Turks, this was their great moment. This was the birth of modern Turkey. And yes, it happened in atrocious circumstances. But for them, this was their great victory. This is what so many of them had longed for for so long. And just as people like Lloyd George had no interest in what happened to the Palestinians. The English seemed to be completely oblivious to the claim the Turks had on this land, and had they been defeated by the Greek army, though may well have been

no modern state of Turkey at all. Lloyd George throughout this was, I think, blinkered. He was fanatically pro-Greek throughout this. And of course, we mustn't forget that this catastrophe ultimately brought down his government. Tell us about that, because he is forced into a complete diplomatic maelstrom by this. He has not counted on Ataturk fighting back. He's left completely exposed by this catastrophe. What happens to Lloyd George? Well, we still, at this point, we still have British forces up around Constantinople, French and Italians are there as well. And Ataturk is beginning to threaten them. He wants to move into Constantinople as well. The Italians and French have no intention of fighting Ataturk, and they quietly withdraw, leaving the British, looking slightly

foolish with Lloyd George wanting to carry on to hold on to the city until his advisers suggest that this is a very foolish maneuver indeed. And there's actually a face-off, isn't there at Cana-Cale? There's the two forces facing each other with barbed wire between them. And it never actually turns into a hot confrontation. But it could, it nearly does, exactly. So nearly goes into war, but happily know the British pullback. And at that point, Ataturk has got pretty much everything he once. He is the ultimate victor. This is the only time in history that Lord Curzon, who I think is the Foreign Secretary at this point, has ever recorded as bursting into tears at his own failure. So this whole world of Brits who thought they could remake the world, this is the beginning of a

whole situation where the world is no longer following their dictates. I think one of Curson's great dreams, as it was the great dream of many people, was to be able to walk into the great Church of Ayasafia and here a Christian mass taking place there. And it was not going to happen after that. But again, this is the great moment of triumph for Ataturk. Tell us what happens to Ataturk at this point. Well, this point is really, it's the great turning point in Turkish history. The Turkish Republic is born. Ataturk brings in all his reforms. He westernizes Turkey. He changes the alphabet. He bans the old Fez. It is a complete transformation. The old Ottoman system with all its idiosyncrasies, disappears overnight, and Ataturk is head of this new modern state.

Now, this is a series on Ottoman history, and this is the final hours of the Ottoman dynasty. In 2022, the decision is made by Ataturk and his men to do away with the caliphate. And the last Caliph, Abdul-Majid, is his palace, the Dormabatechay palace, is surrounding. in the middle of the night. And there's extraordinary records of the last Selimliq taking place on the 29th of February at a mosque outside the Dormabache. On the 3rd of March, the Grand National Assembly in Ankara abolishes the caliphate. Dormabatchi is surrounded by troops.

Abdul Majid was reading the Quran or by some accounts essays of Montaigne. I love that detail. Late at night when Adnan Bay and the prefect of police come to tell him, that he has to leave at dawn. His family and servants begin to weep. The freedom of the life in the West was offered as a consolation. His daughter, Dura Chava, who ends up in Hyderabad in India, the sole survivor who I've met of all these people, replies, I do not want that kind of freedom. And he's put very nicely, this final touch for the Ottoman dynasty, he's put onto the Orient Express, which I love. And he finds his way

to Nice. And a few years later, he's spotted by the correspondent of Time magazine, quote, he may be seen strolling with a mien of great dignity along the beach near Nice, attired in swimming trunks only carrying a large parasol. That's the last glimpse we have of the last Ottoman K-Lif at the end of this series on the Ottoman Empire. Giles Milton, thank you so very, very much for that fantastic double bill. And good luck with your podcast, which if this is anything to go by will be absolutely unmissable. Thank you very much for having me on.

Great pleasure. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arndon. And goodbye from me, William Droompool.