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TURKEY : THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

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PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN SMYRNA DISTRICT

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    The violent and inflammatory articles in the Turkish newspapers, above referred to, appeared unexpectedly and without any cause. They were so evidently "inspired" by the authorities, that it seems a wonder that even ignorant Turks did not understand this. Cheap lithographs were also got up, executed in the clumsiest and most primitive manner—evidently local productions. They represented Greeks cutting up Turkish babies or ripping open pregnant Moslem women, and various purely imaginary scenes, founded on no actual events or even accusations elsewhere made. These were hung in the mosques and schools. This campaign bore immediate fruit and set the Turk to killing, a not very difficult thing to do.

    A series of sporadic murders began at Smyrna as at Saloniki, the list in each morning’s paper numbering from twelve to twenty. Peasants going into their vineyards to work were shot down from behind trees and rocks by the Turks. One peculiarly atrocious case comes to mind: Two young men, who had recently finished their studies in a high-grade school, went out to a vineyard to pass the night in the coula (house in the country). During the night they were called to the door and chopped down with axes. Finally the Rayas, to the number of several hundred thousand, were all driven off from their farms or out of their villages. Some were deported into the interior, but many managed to escape by means of caiques to the neighboring islands, whence they spread over Greece. A few thousand Turks destroyed the region, which the Greeks were developing and rendering fertile, from Pergamus clear down the coast to Lidja. I went over the whole region and took photographs of the ruined farmhouses and villages. Goats had been turned into flourishing, carefully tended vineyards and acres of roots had been dug up for fuel.

    Most of the Christian houses in Asia Minor are built of a wooden framework, which serves as an earthquake proof skeleton for the walls of stone and mortar. The Turks pulled the houses down by laying a timber across the inside of the window—or doorframe—to which a team of buffaloes or oxen was hitched. A Turk would reside in one of the houses with his wife, or with his goats and cattle, and thus tear down a circle of houses about him. When the radius became too great for convenience, he moved into the center of another cluster of houses. The object of destroying the houses was to get the wooden timbers for firewood.

    Both at this time and during the progress of the Great War, the Rayas were drafted into the army where they were treated as slaves. They were not given guns, but were employed to dig trenches and do similar work, and as they were furnished neither food, clothing nor shelter, large numbers of them perished of hunger and exposure.

    The beginning of the work on the "Great Turkish Library" at Smyrna was peculiarly interesting as a revelation of the mentality of the race. Christians were used for the labor, the taskmasters, of course, being Turks armed with whips. When I called the attention of Rahmi Bey, the governor-general, one day to the fact that there were not sufficient books existing in his native tongue to justify the construction of so great an edifice, he replied:

    "The first thing is to have a building. If we have a building the books will necessarily appear to fill it, and even if they don’t, we are going to translate all the German books into Turkish."

    The structure was never finished, and consequently the books have not been written.

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