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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 
13 
described with a particular emphasis on their backwardness but also emphasised is 
that this is due to the indifference of central government to their plight. There are 
also references to the refugees from the Balkan Wars and earlier conflicts, the 
muhacir
, but much fewer than one might expect given the numbers which had been 
pouring in Istanbul and Anatolia since the last Russo-Turkish war in 1877.
In the case of many nations particularly in the Balkans folk poetry and stories have 
attracted the attention of nationalists and constructors of national literatures. By 
contrast in Turkey such material, which was a little later quarried extensively for the 
purposes of the language reform with a view to providing a linguistically pure 
vocabulary for a Turkish nation in deliberate opposition to the Ottoman past, does 
not seem to make an important contribution to the creation of the Kurtuluş Edebiyatı 
possibly because of its lack of thematic relevance (no heroic battles against the 
Greeks). For the Kurtuluş Edebiyatı the national narrative was primarily based on the 
contemporary oppression of the Turkish people evidenced by the occupation of 
Istanbul, the landing of the Greeks in Izmir, the ensuing unfolding of events. These 
sufferings justify the resistance which in victory redeems the nation. Another 
possible consideration is that folk poetry would sit uneasily with a westernising and 
modernising ideology. 
The literary genres used were mostly novels and short stories, but also poetry in 
some case labelled 
destan
(epic), plays, essays, speeches, journalistic articles. 
Memoirs written at this first period saw the light of publication more recently and 
require research. 

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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 
14 
The Greek case is different in almost every way. Just as the events are known as the 
Asia Minor Disaster, Asia Minor, in Greek “Mikra Asia” with the ancient or 
katharevousa form of the adjective, being the originally learned but then customary 
Greek name for Anatolia (Anadolu in Turkish)
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, so the focus of the relevant literary 
works is the fate of the refugees before, during and after the war. Also, unlike the 
Turkish case, this literature was not produced by well established writers. Instead the 
authors, who wrote during the first decade after the war and described the war, the 
disaster which befell the Greek army, the sufferings of the Christian population and 
the final uprooting from their homeland, were in their majority from the main urban 
centres of Asia Minor, notably Izmir and Ayvali, present day Ayvalık and the 
offshore island of Mytilini. A significant feature which all these writers share though 
is that they are writing from first hand experience and were themselves the 
immediate victims of the war they described, unlike the Kurtuluş Edebiyatçılar. The 
most prominent names who wrote on the Asia Minor Disaster in the first period are 
Stratis Doukas (b. Moschonisi, Ayvali 1895 - d. Athens 1983), Elias Venezis (b. 
Ayvali 1904 - d. Athens 1973) and Photis Kontoglou (b. Ayvali 1895 – d. Athens 
1965) and Stratis Myrivilis (pen name of Efstathios Stamatopoulos, b.Sykamia, 
Mytilini 1892 - d. Αthens 1969)
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. Their impact in Greek literature varies. Myrivilis 
apart, the other three were not established authors in their native country but, having 
arrived in Greece in 1923, their literary careers developed in different ways. Elias 
Venezis not only became a prominent figure in Greek literature but has been 
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Balta, 52. Note, however, that ‘Anatoli’, the usual word for the East is used by Venezis, for one, to refer to 
Anatolia. 
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Beaton, 131-142 

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