continues with his detailed report about Greek atrocities,
up to the point where he himself is detained and tortured,
the gruesome details of which will appear in Part-C of this
series.//
Muzaffer Akpınar Library in Edremit today.
I feel it is my national duty to relate a number of
incidents that I
personally witnessed in our vicinity:
Bloody posts in cellars:
A young friend from the neighborhood was returning to his
home one
night at 8.30 o’clock when he was stopped by a Greek patrol. They said
to him “Don’t you recognize the law
of the Greek government? What
are you
doing on the street at this hour?” The
poor fellow wanted to say
in reply that the hour was still early, but instead
he was hit with rifle
butts and dragged screaming and moaning to the outpost,
where he was
stripped naked and, of course, his money, watch, ring and other
valuables
were taken from him. The threw
him in the cellar and beat him violently.
The poor fellow thought that perhaps an officer might intervene and have
him released and he persuaded one of the soldiers to summon the officer,
with
the promise of giving the soldier 10 lira the next day. Two hours
later the officer arrived. But with unbridled rashness, the officer said
threateningly “the Turks in this village still haven’t come to their
senses?”
He then proceeded to beat the
young man with a whip and his boots to the
point where the the blows
administered by the soldiers and gendarmes
were surpassed. The young man passed out and they left. The next day t
hey did the same thing all over
again. This went on for three day until
he
was released with a broken arm. Three
months later his situation
improved with continuous treatment.
Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) in Ergama village en route to Edremit.
8 February 1923.
An official named Nazım Bey named his child “Mustafa
Kemâl”. He
was picked up at the
coffeehouse before prayers that night and brought
to the outpost, where they
said to him “Don’t you know that Greece is
the master of not only Anatolia but
the entire world?! When will you
forget
the name M.K.?!” Then the atrocities
began. He was tied to a
post in the
basement and beaten. It got to the point
that he was ready to
disown his child but they would not relent. Every part of his body
swelled and he became
unrecognizable. They held him for a
couple of
days and then brought him to his home at night. A month later he was
seen at the market with
a much-changed visage, his head and eyes
bandaged, as he quivered while leaning
on a cane.
Should an Animal Made to Dance at the Market?
Another one of our youths was riding on a lovely animal
through the
market area when it got spooked by the sound of the carts
there. A
Greek officer who saw this
apprehended the youth and brought him
to the outpost, saying “Don’t you know
that a Turk cannot act haughtily
in a place where Greeks are?! Why are you having your animal dance
in the
market?!” The poor youth intended no
such thing, exerting all his
might to prevent the animal from falling and
causing an accident.
Despite saying
this, though, he was ignored and thrown in the cellar,
being beaten there until
morning. They put hot boiled eggs in his
armpits and he fainted immediately. His
armpits swelled and because
of damage to either his nerves or arteries he can
no longer use his arms.
The Greeks
entered homes with the fiendish pretext of searching for
weapons and inflicted
degradations on the people in the city and the
villages, having a detachment of
soldiers numerous enough to fill a
church beat them. A few people died and a
few others were crippled.
Since there
are not enough pages to chronicle the atrocities the Greeks
committed one by
one, and because it would take a committee days,
weeks and even months to
record all these Greek depredations, it must
suffice for me to write just a few
examples of Greek incidents of torture.
Türkmenoğlu Ahmed Ağa was killed on some pretext. Four people in
Hamdi Bey town, whose names I
do not know, were murdered, four in
Küçük Agunaya, and 5 in İnönü. An arm and a leg of Cebeci Ahmed Bey
were
broken by the filthy boot of a Greek officer.
Köreli Ali Bey was
hung by his feet for 6 hours from a plane tree in the
market and beaten
with bats all the while.
The local Christians served as guides for the
Greeks in regard to all
these incidents and engaged in a despicable
competition to join in the inflicting
of these tortures.
Hot
After touring all the villages one by one over the course of
a few months,
I was able to compile incidents such as 20 little girls
disappearing just
about every day, women’s honor being attacked in the presence
of their
family members, hot iron pressed on the faces of brides because of
greed
for their money. The men in the
vicinity of the towns and villages were
killed for any kind of reason or
pretext.
With the idea of establishing a government in Anatolia where
the
populace would be obedient to them, the Greeks implemented a daily
litany
of horrors but realized that this would not suffice to make the
people succumb
to Greekness. So the policy of destruction
became
all the more apparent and comprehensive, resulting in the arrest of any
youths, intellectuals and influentials they encountered. Three days
before this new policy was
implemented, the Greeks emptied the boys
school, on the pretext that it would
house their soldiers, but instead
turned it into a prison.
The arrests began on
Wednesday, 13 April 1922, and within 8 days
40 people were arrested from
Edremit and about 300 people were
rounded up from the villages. I was one of the 40. The populace,
already terrorized, was
frightened further by the arrests and closed
their shops, reluctant even to
come out of their homes to go to the
market or walk the streets. Only those wearing hats and caps
(non-
Moslems), and a few wearing the fez, were out and about.
Considering this quietude and sparcity to be
evidence of their success,
the Greeks neglected the other aspects of their
program and
concentrated on interrogations of notables by a random officer they
appointed. In these initial
interrogations, I was brought before this
despicable officer, whom this
fiendish and horrific hearth had created.
//END of PART XXVIII-B//
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