Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City

by Marjorie Housepian Dobkin

In September, 1922, Mustapha Kemal {Ataturk}, the victorious revolutionary ruler of Turkey, led his troops into Smyrna (now Izmir) a predominantly Christian city, as a flotilla of 27 Allied warships-- including three American destroyers-- looked on. The Turks soon proceeded to indulge in an orgy of pillage, rape and slaughter that the Western powers anxious to protect their oil and trade interests in Turkey, condoned by their silence and refusal to intervene. Turkish forces then set fire to the legendary city and totally destroyed it. There followed a massive cover-up by tacit agreement of the Western Allies who had defeated Turkey and Germany during World War I. By 1923 Smyrna's demise was all but expunged from historical memory.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Greece

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Marjorie Anais Housepian Dobkin was Professor Emerita in English at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York. Her books include the novel A Houseful of Love (a New York Times bestseller) and the history Smyrna 1922.

Housepian Dobkin was born to Armenian parents in New York City in 1922, two and a half months after her grandfather was killed by a Turkish soldier during the burning of Smyrna, from which her grandmother fled as a refugee. Dobkin attended Barnard College, graduating in 1944. She was both a professor of literature and writing as well as associate dean of studies at Barnard from 1957 until 1993.

She was awarded the Anania Shirakatsi prize of the Academy of Sciences of Soviet Armenia and was also the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Wilson College.

Reviews

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marjorie Housepian's The Smyrna Affair was the first major account of the Turkish destruction of Smyrna (Izmir) during the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. Housepian's book sketches the background of the massacre, showing the Ottoman Empire's slow decline from (relative) religious tolerance towards increasing oppression of its religious minorities, particularly Christians, under the twin engines of nationalism and foreign influence. By World War I, occasional massacres of Armenians and Greeks escalated into full-blown genocide. After the war, the Allies partition the Ottoman Empire but lack the political will to enforce it; enter Greece, whose ambitious Prime Minister Venizelos spies a chance to affect his "Ionian Vision" of a new Hellenic Empire. The Allies, particularly England's Lloyd George, encourage the Greeks to invade as a cost effective way to bring the Turks to heel - ignoring how their intervention ignites a nationalist uprising led by Mustafa Kemal. And Izmit, a major port city with a large Greek population and a vaunted history of tolerance, became Ground Zero for the war's atrocities. Housepian's book spares no grisly detail in recounting the Turkish destruction of the City: massacres, rapes, arson and looting are graphically described, with harrowing anecdotes that a reader finds hard to put out of mind. (Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, which fictionalizes the event in its early chapters, cites this book as a source; it's easy for readers to spot which details Eugenides culled from Housepian.) Housepian makes no bones about her anger at Kemal and the massacre's Turkish perpetrators, nor the Allied powers who encouraged Greece to invade the country, then abandoned them when things went south; then left Smyrna to its fate, with ships literally sitting offshore as the massacre unfolded. The book is hardly balanced, then (with little discussion of the Greek's own ethnic cleansing program in Asia Minor), but surely Housepian can be forgiven for not seeing both sides of a horrifying atrocity which the Turkish government still refuses to acknowledge. An angry, harrowing book that remains the standard English account of this incident.

[George Pepios · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed, well-rounded narration of the events leading up to, during and right after the destruction of Smyrna in 1922 and the ethnic cleansing and genocide committed against the Greek population. Full of eyewitness accounts, this book manages to restore the voice of the human victims who have been silenced by decades due to the international community’s selective amnesia regarding the Catastrophe.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative, but I would not recommend this book to anyone who doesn't already have extensive knowledge of the Greek/Armenian massacres/genocide perpetrated by Turkey in the late 1800's to the beginning of the 20th century.

[Theodoros Manolis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Υπέροχο!!!

[FrDrStel Muksuris · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best eyewitness accounts ever written, this book chronicles the events, politics, and major players of the notorious fire and pogrom in Smyrna in 1922 by Mustafa Kemal's Modern Turks, who mainly targeted the majority population of Greeks that lived and worked in the city. This excellent book serves as an authoritative study of this dark era in post-independence Greek history. As tragic certainly as the massacre of the Greek and minority populations by the Turks, was the non-engagement of the Allied forces that sided with Greece, all 21 warships that essentially remained in the harbor of this once-great Hellenic bastion and watched "helplessly" as one crime after another was perpetrated by the post-Ottoman reformers. The author, writing in a vivid style and making ample use of excellent, dependable sources, exercises great restraint and a fair amount of objectivity in telling a heart-wrenching story about the treachery exacted upon innocent civilians whose only crime was their ethnic origin in a land they inhabited for millennia and well before the Turkic peoples traveled westward and overtook Asia Minor at the end of the eleventh century A.D. A phenomenal but also emotional read.

[Strait Cook · Rating 2 out of 5]

When someone says that they have tried to include material from all perspectives, usually they didn't or did so sparingly, A work should just speak. Heavy on 'left righteousness,' anger and an irrational desire to melt the fire into 1915 claims. I didn't like the selective portrayal of the fire chief's testimony, I didn't like the referencing system, or lack thereof, I didn't like attempts to judge the past through a latter day's definitions and I didn't like the unqualified but awfully frequent use of the word 'systematic.' I'm glad I read it 2nd hand, I would be annoyed I have third of a story only. However, it was more readable than the book I tried to read but just couldn't immediately prior and for that it gets two rather than one star. I did finish it and don't think it doesn't have a place, but it is a perspective and anyone trying to read it needs to understand that.

[Markos Kyritsis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Απαγοητευτικα, τόσα πολλά νά πεις για ένα τόσο σημαντικό γεγονός της ιστορίας μας και μένει στην επιφάνεια.

[Ayseyılmaz]

OKUNAN: İZMİR 1922 BİR KENTİN YIKIMI BELGE YAYINLARI ŞUBAT 2012 BASKISI ÇEVİREN: ATTİLA TUYGAN

[Cicely · Rating 4 out of 5]

gripping, heart-breaking, maddening...still so relevant

[Keri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book.