continuing TNT series.//
The Second Battle of İnönü (23-31 March 1921)
The Statement of our
officer:
After the Second Battle of İnönü, I was taken prisoner along
with a
number of others from my company on 10 April 337 (1921). With me
was Second Lieutenant Turan Efendi of
the 16th Regiment. I was sent
via Izmir
to Lefke camp, from where, after 6 months, I was sent to
Corfu Island.
Corfu Island (A)
There were no military prisoners remaining on Corfu Island,
only
civilian prisoners. None of the military prisoners died during my time
as a
prisoner. As for the civilian prisoners,
though, 10-15 of them died
each day.
Since it was forbidden for military prisoners to have any
contact with
civilian prisoners, I don’t know the names of those who
died. After our army’s
victory, with the permission of the Greeks, two
of our officers were able to
collect enough money from among us to
provide a hot soup each day. These two officers, taking advantage of
the
more relaxed atmosphere, were also able to get a valid register list
of those
prisoners who died and those who are still alive. These two
fellows were Captain Hasan Tahsin
Efendi of Istanbul and Second
Lieutenant Mahmud Muhtar Efendi of Ödemiş. Captain Tahsin Efendi
has a document of
proof, with the Corfu Governor’s signature on it, of
the Governor’s confession
that the prisoners died of hunger.
Captain
Tahsin Efendi turned over this document to the government upon
our
return to Izmir. During captivity, personal and despotic treatment was
meted out to both we military prisoners and the poor civilian prisoners
continually. Beatings, confinement and
degradation were everyday
occurrences.
The civilian prisoners, in particular, were confined in
stone
fortresses. Their rooms were made of
marble. They had next to
nothing on
their bodies and those with undershorts and a shirt
considered themselves
lucky. They were all naked, enough to
make
one think of the Middle Ages. For
food the Greek government gave
them 100 ‘dirhem’ (one ‘dirhem’ is 1/400th of an
okka, which is 2.8 lbs.)
of bread and 30 ‘santim’ in Greek money. This was the lifestyle we had
while in Greece.
21 May 39 (1923)
4th Division 12th Regiment 6th Company
Second Lieutenant Sıddiki
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The statement of our officer:
First of all, since it is related to our arrest and
incarceration, we will
make propaganda in favor of Turkey and the National
Movement.
Above all, with the goal of
killing the ideal of a nation, the Greeks, in
addition to the policy of terror
that they implemented in our occupied
country, for the past two years they have
compiled a register and
prevented those named on this list from leaving the
country.
So every 24 hours they called
the roll. On 12 August 38 (1922), we
were concerned about whether or
not we would remain in the country.
But
in the early morning that day we were assembled at the Gendarmerie
Command and
we were transported to Izmir in custody.
In Izmir we
were deliverd to the Tepecik prisoner camp, where we stayed
for 12 days,
before being transported to Midilli Island. During the trip, we prisoners
had to sit one
on top of the other because there was so much military
material being carried
on our ship. Fortunately, it was a short
trip and
nothing untoward happened.
Midilli (Lesvos) Island (red dot)
We we going to shore at Midilli in barges, but the naval
captain from
the Midilli port authority who was in charge of the barges sat in
the spot
on the barge where people would board.
When prisoners would try to
board he would violently push them aside
like sacks and he aimed this
treatment, in particular, toward the civilian
prisoners, including the
corpulent members of the Moslem clergy, who he’d push
even more
forcefully for a laugh and to denigrate them. Most certainly, there was
not limit to their
abusive language. At the camp we set up
at a place
called Giradifu on Midilli, their first cruelty was to leave us
hungry.
When they would give 8 people one
bread they would take note of their
own nation’s refugees coming to Midilli and
resent us for taking some
of the resources.
Only reluctantly did they give us some little amounts
of bread.
In addition to keeping us hungry, for three days, thirsty
and under the hot
sun, they harassed us by making us march 20 kilometers with
goods and
tents on our backs. One day,
one of the prisoners ran away so
they
rounded up 30 civilian prisoners and us, as well, and asserted that we had
facilitated the escape. They demanded to
know where the fugitive was
within 30 minutes and they threatened to shoot us
if we didn’t provide
this information. Next,
they took all our money and put us in the
basement of the Midilli prison, which
was filled with all sorts of transport
materials. We were confined there for 10 days, after
which we left this
fetid place and in despair and duress we were transported to
Athens, where
we were put in the prisoner battalion.
We boarded the ship ‘Matiyus’ to go to Athens and were put
in the ship’s
hold, exceeding its capacity by 300 people. The hatches above us were
shut. To increase our thirstyness, in particular,
they didn’t give us any
water after we’d eaten the canned meat they gave us,
claiming they had
no water to give us.
The prisoners became agitated by the lack of water
and the Greek
officers and soldiers pulled out their revolvers to threaten
us. Finally, as the hold full of 800 people began
to go after one another,
they gave us 7 gas cans of water to appease both us
and themselves.
This situation continued for 3 days and 3 nights. Many people in the
hold where I was passed
out from thirst and were taken out on stretchers,
in the face of the fury
of the other prisoners. In Athens, we were left in
the open at Gudi, where there
were many covered cannon depots. While
there, a Greek cavalryman wanted to show off so he bragged to us that
around Uşak 500 retreating Turkish prisoners were put to the sword.
Only 140 of these Turks made it to Izmir and
another 150 prisoner
soldiers were kept in a number of villages around
Uşak. Later, when we
were sent to the Losya camp, where there were civilian prisoners, a
fellow named Hristo, a
sergeant who was drafted into the army while he
was teaching school, confirmed
the details of this horrific incident.
Despite the fact that the aforementioned camp had been there for a long
time, the prisoners were put under a
portable tent set up next to the
shacks where the Greek guards slept. Most of them were suffering from
dysentery
and tuberculosis. The camp doctor didn’t
care for the sick and
in order to trick those who were near death he would
register them in the
hospital. But
whenever a patient would die like this, the same thing
would happen the next
day and another ill Turk would die. And
another
horrific problem was itching disease.
In addition to the health threats
of living in filth like this, the prisoners
were beaten by the Greek soldiers
and tortured on pretexts to the point
that their heads were on the verge of
exploding and their arms and legs
on the verge of breaking. One day a Greek cavalryman fired his gun at a
place where the prisoners were gathered and we saw that one of the
prisoners was wounded from this. The injured man
was taken to the
hospital 3 days later but we don’t know what happened to him
because
we escaped at this time.
After escaping from the Losya POW camp in Athens, the
writer fled to Chios (Sakız) Island but was recaptured.
The Greeks tried to destroy the religion of the thousands of
Turkish sons
intheir hands. Because of
these totally inhumane actions we escaped
from Athens on 5 November 338 (1922),
along with 7 fellows from
Seferihisar. But we were recaptured unfortunately on Sakız Island.
After being beaten and thrown in the dungeons
of the prison there,
left hungry and uncared for, we were told by everyone from
the top
commander to the lowest private that we had escaped because we were
spies and that our punishment would be death by firing squad. They
scared us in this way each day, trying
to make us sick and die. But these
careless fellows didn’t reckon with the
Turk’s determination. They took
our money
and then gave it to us bit by bit. The
prison guard took the
money we gave him to let us have a little air. Some 1,500 franks that was
taken from us by
the Sakız central command was stolen. Subsequent
appeals we made on this matter
fruitless and we did not recover our
money.
In summary, the filth and torture we suffered cost the lives of
thousands of Turkish prisoners.
Halilzade Hüseyin
Fehmi
Veterinarian Captain Ekrem
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder