a port city on the Aegean Sea, who was taken prisoner by the
Greeks in April 1922 and sent to prison in Athens from Izmir
just before Turkish forces took the city on 9 September.
Faik Kemâl was held in the Lucia prison camp in Athens
until February 1923, when he returned to Turkey.
Faik Kemâl's POW report is one of a number of civilian
and military POW reports relating to Turkish POWs held
by Greece during the Turkish-Greek War of 1919-1923.
TNT is currently transcribing the reports and Faik Kemâl's
full report will be published at a later date.
Herewith an anecdote from Faik Kemâl's report. Although
the incident is undated, it probably occurred sometime after
King Constantine abdicated on 27 September 1922://
"At this point, I would like to offer a scene both tragic and comical,
unseen in any nation’s history. On the day after the day that the
revolutionary forces, which had dismissed King Constantine and the
parliamentarians, sent that famous airplane to terrorize Athens, there
was a rumor that revolutionary soldiers had arrived at Piraeus and were
headed for Athens via the Monastiraki hills.
So while those bold Athenian youths who had challenged the world
sought instead to now find a hole to crawl into, the officials and guards
at the Ministry of War, including even the bayonet-wielding soldiers at
the door, fled. As a result, for a few hours, the great Ministry of War
was in the hands of Turkish prisoners who had been brought there as
forced laborers to carry the Ministry’s files and registers.
Not seeing any Greek officials around, the heroic Turks, resisting the
urge to do their worst, closed all the doors of the Ministry offices, locked
the front door and returned to their prison camp with the Ministry keys in
their pockets. So for a while the Greek Ministry of War was literally in
the hands of Turkish prisoners, as the Greeks had figuratively committed
suicide."
Tumultuous Athens in 1922.
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