30 Temmuz 2019 Salı

TNT POW Reports: Turks in Greek Hands (1920-1923)/Part XXVII-A

//Ed. Note: Faik Kemal, an Edremit lawyer who was 
imprisoned and tortured in Edremit before being sent to
Liosia prison camp in Athens, wrote a very detailed
account of his experiences - essentially, a unique
historical record of both Edremit's Greek occupation and 
POW life at Liosia.  Kemal's account is surpassed only
by that of Muzaffer the pharmacist, which will follow
in the coming days.//

Ä°lgili resim
          Greek troops arriving in Izmir on 5 May 1919.



A Lawyer’s Noteworthy Revelations:

I was in the Liosia prison camp in Athens, Greece, from 8 September 
1922 until 29 February 1923.  Prior to suffering in captivity, when the 
soiled boots of the Greeks brought filth to our pure homeland, I was 
arrested in Edremit for the third time on 13 April 1922 as part of a 
definite plan against the intellectuals of Edremit, filled with bloody 
torture and seizure.  I feel the need, with your permission, to relate 
some of these events.

It was exactly two years ago today, on Thursday, 13 April 1922, at 
about three-thirty, Turkish time, when while I was in my office I 
was arrested by a Gendarmerie officer and brought to my home, 
where there was a team of 16 Gendarmerie soldiers under the 
command of an officer.  They made a very thorough seach, after 
which I was held for hours in the Gendarmerie post.  Next, I was 
brought to a make-shift prison they had established in a school, 
located in the upper market area.   

At the door was a sergeant  and his squad.  The door was opened and I
was put in as the jail’s first prisoner and in solitary confinement, as well.  
Subsequently, Fehmi Bey, the director of Reji (tobacco monopoly) was 
brought in and put into another room.  Contact between us was forbidden.  
That night Karagözzade Ali Bey, a merchant, was added, making three 
of the former classrooms home to the three of us.  The following day by 
brother Abidin, who is presently the Küçüktepe director, was brought in 
and by the end of the week there were 11 prisoners.  Abiddin was put 
into Karagözzade Ali Bey’s room and I shared a room with Fehmi Bey
but we were still allowed only very limited contact, as our singular 
captivity and persecution continued with full ferocity.    

Ä°lgili resim
     Edremit is about 150 kilometers directly north of Izmir.

They accused me of collecting money and inciting the youth of the 
sports club, where I was the chairman, to rebellion and a massacre of 
the Christians on Easter.  They characterized pharmacist Muzaffer 
Sürreya Bey as the ringleader of this committee and subjected him 
to torture for 38 days, along with Cevdet Bey, Midilli Hasan Efendi 
and Balıkesirli Necati Efendi.  The level of these inhumane atrocities 
was extraordinary.  During this time, my solitary confinement continued 
and my persecution went on with full violence.   They were trying to 
destroy the intellectuals of Edremit with false claims about what we 
had bravely written and said.  

Meanwhile, my son-in-law İsmail Bey communicated the news of our 
torture with the help of secret couriers to Çanakkale and Istanbul, 
redoubling efforts to make official appeals on our behalf.  In any event,
despite the horrific torture visited upon him, Muzaffer Bey, with the 
fortitude of a true Turk, did not deviate an inch from his resolve to keep 
our affairs secret.  The other prisoners were similarly tortured but did 
not break, withholding any and all evidence and signals about our work.  

The interrogations ended completely in the third month but our 
confinement continued and the prohibition on contact between us was 
enforced in a vile and vicious manner until the last moment of our 
incarceration.   This degradation inflicted on the spirit of Edremit was 
the work of a Greek supporter and Moslem currently in Athens named 
Sirac Mehmed Bey, a person of bad character, together with others who 
are no doubt walking around right in front of our eyes, intent on 
implementing this definite program to annihilate Turkish intellectuals.  

When our imprisonment ended in Edremit we heard with great distress 
and discouragement that they planned to send us to Athens with the 
connivance of the district chief of Hanya on Crete, who arranged for 
the appointment of Çerkes Vehbi Bey to be the district chief of Edremit.  
We were brought to Izmir on the eve of the holiday for trial at the 
general staff there, at the same time that our army was bravely launching 
its attack to reclaim the motherland.  

greek big idea ile ilgili görsel sonucu
                                  The Greek "Big Idea".

We were in Izmir on 4-5-6 September,  as the Greek authorities became 
ever more nervous about their own predicament.  The insults and death 
threats hurled at us were indescribable.  We were paraded through the 
streets of Izmir in handcuffs.  Finally, on 6 September, we were boarded 
onto a Japanese ship and transported to Piraeus.  On Friday, 8 September, 
we went from Piraeus to Athens, where we were kept in a monastery-
type building (Monastiraki Prison) for a few hours, before being sent to 
Liosia prisoner camp, and subjected to both death threats and robbery.  

The mugging inflicted on us wasn’t seen even during the brigandage of 
the Middle Ages.  We were charged 50 francs each to hire a vehicle to 
take us to Liosia and of the 1,000 francs they collected, we saw with our 
own eyes that they put 950 francs in their own pockets.  During our 
seven months in captivity, we were subjected to atrocities every hour of 
every day and we saw our friends die from the blows they received.  
A Gendarmerie cavalryman going to Athens along the road that passes 
in front of our prison turned his revolver on me but he instead wounded 
Emin from Tekirdağ.  A week later, a soldier on a train passing by our 
camp fired his gun at me.  There was this constant threat of death and 
torture.   

As for food, we were only able to sustain ourselves with the money our 
families sent to us.  In the course of my entire captivity I never once put 
a morsel of Greek food down my throat.


//END of PART XXVII-A//

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