Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #387359 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

Customer Reviews

A moving and revealing history
A moving account of the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 that ended with the expulsion of the Greek and Armenian populations of Asia Minor. The book documents that the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 was not really a war between the Greeks and the Turks but a conflict between the British (using the Greeks as proxies) on one hand and the French and Italians on the other (using the Turks as proxies). The prize was the oil of what is now Iraq. (That country did not exist then; its area was still part of the Ottoman empire.) The author does an excellent job in documenting the role of the outsiders in stirring up trouble amongst the local populations. The competition between the Western European powers resulted in enormous suffering not only amongst the Greeks and Armenians but also amongst the Turks themselves.

Excellent source of firsthand Witnesses
I bought this book based on the fact that the SUNDAY TIMES of London deemed it the "Book of the Year" while THE NEW YORK TIMES called it one of the notable 100 books of they year. When it comes to judging a book's value, I'd trust them over any source with an axe to grind. Dobkin's book is not a history, per se, and unless it's a crime to be a writer and an Armenian, I think most readers will understand what a highly emotional issue this is for Armenians and Greeks (who would begrudge any ethnicity that bemoans the genocide of their forefathers?). What it all comes down to, and what absolutely can't be denied, is that the book contains first hand quotes, at length, from people who were actually there. Not only quotes from the victims, and the perpetrators, but also from those who seemingly have no stake in the matter, like US Sailors and servicemen. Dobkin names these people who agreed to give testimony, so this is not a case of anonymous sources. This is as real as you can get. It's sheer blindness to deny these voices.

Scholarly work....
The first thing I want to say about SMYRNA 1922 is that I am of neither Greek nor Turkish descent so I have no vested interest in the "truth". Secondly, I have an Armenian friend who once told me in a sad but offhand way as we were trading confidences over coffee, that her grandparents had been buried in the sand up to their necks and had their heads lopped off by Turkish soldiers. Thirdly, I had an occasion once where I met with a Turkish delegation as part of my job and listened to them for two hours while they talked about "Armenian lies." Two things struck me about this rather bizarre meeting: 1) Why did they care what I or anyone else in my agency thought about something that happened many years ago? 2) Why did they go on for two hours denying something no one had accused them of, at least no one in my office?

Marjorie Dobkin's insightful book is about the failure of the Great Powers, including the U.S., to facilitate a peaceful outcome in Anatolia in the period following WWI. SMYRNA covers the subsequent destruction of the city by the forces of Kemal Attaturk (although he apparently lay the blame for the massacre at his predecessor's door). Following the destruction of Smyrna, almost two million Greek and Armenian Christian refugees fled what is today Turkey and was then the Ottoman Empire.

At the Cannes film festival this year, "Ararat" has won all sorts of praise. The film by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) tells the story of the Armenian holocaust in 1922. I don't know if Dobkin's book is the basis of the film, but it certainly would make great background reading. I suspect 'Ararat' will become to the Armenians what 'Schindler's List' has become to the Jews. Since Turkey is apparently vowing to fight its distribution (New York Times, Arts, 6/7/02) it remains to be seen whether the film will make it to the states.

Dobkin has assembled a huge amount of information for her book and provides copious footnotes so you can check the sources. However, many of the U.S. sailors and other eyewitnesses have died since the first edition was published about 30 years ago. Following the initial publication, Dobkin became aware of much more material, and she incorporated much of the new material in the book. Dobkin writes well--like an excellent investigative reporter, which she very well may be. Earnest Hemingway covered the disaster as a Toronto news reporter, and Dobkin's writing is comparable his, as well as being very scholarly.

I've spent most of my life reading about genocide and inhumanity in one form or another, but SMYRNA has to be one of the most harrowing tales I've ever read. Think Dachau. Think Auschwitz. Think the worst. To bad CNN wasn't filming, although believe it or not someone did film the event--and Dobkin obtained a photo of the quay lined with over 200,000 people which is shown on the cover of the book. Smyrna makes Kosovo look like a picnic.