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CHAPTER 10 – CONCLUSION 
299 
The case seems fully to justify Renan: “On aime en proportion des sacrifices qu’on a 
consentis, des maux qu’on a soufferts.” (One loves in proportion to the sacrifices to 
which one has agreed, to the wrongs one has suffered). The general public in both 
countries is mostly unaware even to this day of the atrocities committed by “its” side. 
It is somewhat different with the writers. I have to admit to being shocked by Yakup 
Kadri’s words on the sack of İzmir. Venezis at least could dedicate his book to “my 
tormented mother and all the mothers of the world” and could acknowledge crimes 
committed by the Greeks and the occasional kindness from a Turk. Myrivilis was 
strongly anti-war in general. To their credit Galateia, the first wife of Kazantzakis, 
refused to sign a protest against Turkish atrocities in Anatolia and Kazantzakis 
himself commended her for refusing because the dishonourable conduct of the 
Greeks was equal to that of the Turks.
2
. One can concede that a universalist outlook 
was easier for these writers: their war was not the foundation myth of a new nation, 
they were on the losing side and they were out of sympathy with the government of 
their country at the time most of the atrocities took place.
We have found as well that each nation’s narrative is not just a story about the past; 
writers used it, as can be illustrated in the work of Yakup Kadri and Venezis, to 
speak to their own times. But again there is a difference. Venezis’s book could speak 
to a repeated sense of victimhood, reinforced by the sufferings under the German 
occupation but it did not have wider implications. We have seen that by contrast, 
2
Doulis, 143 

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CHAPTER 10 – CONCLUSION 
300 
Yakup Kadri, both used and inverted the tropes of the Kurtuluş to express doubt and 
anxiety about the challenge of modernisation and westernisation.
These works continue to be popular and to inform the perception of the real events of 
the war and its aftermath in their respective countries. Fortunately there are some 
recent signs that the public in each country may have the opportunity to see the other 
side as the other side sees itself. A first translation of the whole of 
Number 31328
has 
been published in Turkish
3
. The Kurtuluş literature still awaits its Greek translation.
3
Venezis 2015. It is noted in the introduction (5-11) that the work is the first from an index of banned 
books to be translated and is characterised as one of the most dangerous. 

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