Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
73 
violence where the distinction between banditry and irregular warfare became 
largely blurred
164
. The situation in the coastal areas was complicated by rival claims 
on property by the Greeks who possessed it before 1914 and the Turks who came 
into possession afterwards: about 120,000 Greek refugees are thought to have 
returned but over 200,000 Turks became refugees from the occupied zone
165
. 
Irregulars were put to work by the regular armies. Both sides resorted to wholesale 
ethnic cleansing in the north west: the Turks in the İzmit area and the Greeks in the 
Gemlik-Yalova peninsula
166
. Aiming to avert the emergence of a fifth column, the 
Turks perpetrated atrocities on a substantial scale in the Black Sea region
167
. After 
Sakarya the retreating Greek army burned villages
168
; the rout after Afyon turned 
into a rampage of devastation, rape and killing which swept not only through 
villages but also substantial towns like Uşak, Alaşehir, Manisa and Kasaba
169
. The 
Greek population got off no better: after the Turkish advance there was an orgy of 
killing, mostly but not entirely by irregulars, in many locations in the coastal region, 
not only İzmir
170
. The death toll continued after the end of open hostilities among the 
able-bodied males detained in the labour battalions. 
164
Set out in The Report of the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry on the Greek Occupation of Smyrna and 
Adjacent Territories (available at 
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv09/d3
 (accessed 4 
February 2018)). 
165
Toynbee, 167-169 
166
Toynbee, 275-289; 292-319, who refers to 
Reports of the Atrocities in the Districts of Yalova and Guemlek 
and in the İzmit Peninsula
. Cmd 1478. HMSO 1921 (available online at 
https://archive.org/details/reportsonatrocit00interich
 (accessed 4 February 2018)). 
167
Toynbee, 289-90; Gawrych, 133-134; Mango, 329-330 
168
Gawrych, 172 
169
Llewellyn Smith, 296-298; Mango, 343 
170
For a selection of refugee testimony Tenekidis, 25, 70, 71, 96, 100, 140, 143, 145, 229, 236, 238, 245, 247, 
257, 263, 338, 344 

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