Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (10 page)

House guests in Bournabat in the summer of 1914 noticed little outward change in the cool interiors of the Levantine villas. Life continued its unhurried pace, seemingly untouched by the outside world, yet the dinner-table conversations had lost the gaiety and sparkle of previous years. Families like the Whittalls and Girauds were deeply concerned. While they continued to fix one eye on their gardens and hothouses, they fixed the other on the deepening international crisis.

The Whittalls were kept informed of events by the British consul, Clifford Heathcote-Smith. He saw no immediate reason for the Levantines of Smyrna to panic although he did foresee difficulties for the British expatriate community. On the day after Britain’s declaration of war against Germany, he summoned all of his country’s nationals to an emergency meeting in the flower garden of the consulate. He warned everyone that they might have to leave Turkey at short notice, but reassured them that any evacuation would be orderly.

One who attended the meeting was Alexander MacLachlan, director of the American International College in Paradise, who held a British passport. ‘There was great excitement,’ he wrote. ‘Our government had declared war on Germany and our patriotism was deeply stirred.’ Unlike the Levantines, the British in Smyrna viewed with mounting enthusiasm the prospect of mounting an attack on Germany. Many thought that such a conflict was long overdue.

Clifford Heathcote-Smith asked MacLachlan to address the meeting and he readily agreed. ‘[I] made an appeal to the youth present to offer their services to their country. Calling for a show of hands, some eighteen British lads at once volunteered.’ Among them were MacLachlan’s two sons, who were to spend the next four years fighting with distinction in France, Egypt and Greece.

The offspring of the Levantine families displayed less willingness to volunteer immediately, preferring to bide their time and see how events evolved. The first dramatic warning bell came just a few weeks after the meeting at the consulate. In September, Ottoman ministers announced the abolition of the Capitulations – the trading privileges that had enabled the Levantines to amass such fortunes.

These privileges, negotiated between the Levantine and European communities and the sultan, had given them significant advantages over local merchants. They included the right to transport and sell goods free of any excise duty. In return, the dynasties were expected to offer tacit political support to the sultan’s government. Now, after more than 330 years – and in a single stroke – families like the Whittalls were deprived of the benefits they had enjoyed for so long.

The news provoked a strange reaction in Smyrna. For years, the Levantine community had been accorded the greatest respect by the different nationalities in the city. They were the city’s biggest employers and thousands of families depended upon them for their continued prosperity. Yet the loss of these concessions was greeted with ‘undisguised contentment’ in the poorer Turkish quarters of Smyrna. Few paused to consider the fact that financially penalising the Levantine merchant princes in such a sudden fashion would have catastrophic consequences for Smyrna’s booming economy. Nor did they consider the many benefits that the Levantines had brought to Smyrna. By the summer of 1914, the city’s exports were more than double those of Constantinople and had increased in such dramatic fashion that even the Levantines themselves were beginning to marvel at their Midas touch.

The abolition of the Capitulations was a heavy blow that threatened to drain their very lifeblood. But there was even worse news on the way. On the orders of government ministers in Constantinople, the Turkish military authorities began requisitioning supplies ‘in a manner that becomes increasingly thorough and increasingly objectionable’. Heathcote-Smith found himself facing a torrent of complaints from the Levantine magnates and factory owners – men who had always been scrupulous in adhering to Ottoman laws. Now, those very laws had been summarily swept away in a smash-and-grab raid on anything that could be considered useful for the future Ottoman war effort.

No one was taken by surprise when war on Turkey was finally declared, yet it was still a huge shock and had an electrifying effect on the city of Smyrna. Years later, people could still recall with absolute clarity where they were and what they were doing. Mary Giraud, then a young girl of just five or six years old, was with her mother in the family’s summer house on Long Island. They first realised that something was seriously wrong when they observed the Turks closing the narrow entrance to Smyrna’s harbour. Mary’s mother, Ruth, guessed what must have happened and suddenly panicked. Her husband, on business in Smyrna, would now be unable to return to Long Island in the
Helen May
. The only possible way for them to leave was to use the little rowing boat pulled up on the beach below the house.

Ruth had no intention of remaining on the island. She gathered up all her children, seated them in the rowing boat and braced herself for a long and tiring journey of several miles across to the mainland. ‘We must have rowed all that day,’ recalled Mary many years later, ‘reaching Vourla [the closest port] at night.’ They then had to get back to Smyrna in order to rejoin the wider family and discuss what should be their next move. ‘I have uncomfortable and claustrophobic memories of riding in an overflowing bus full of jostling hysterical people in the dead of night.’ The family was eventually reunited with an anxious Edmund in the early hours; he confirmed to his wife that Turkey was now at war with Britain, France and Russia. The Giraud family – still French nationals after many decades in Turkey – suddenly learned that they were enemy aliens.

They were not the only ones to find themselves in a most delicate position. The Whittalls, Woods and Patersons, along with all the other Levantine dynasties, discovered that they had divided loyalties. Although they had clung to their original nationalities and were proud of their roots, they still considered Turkey to be their true home. To abandon their villas in Bournabat and return to England, France or Italy seemed unthinkable. Yet to remain on enemy soil appeared reckless and foolhardy, especially as they all had large numbers of young children.

Once war had been declared, the Levantines were seen as fair game by ministers in Constantinople. After raiding their offices and warehouses, the military authorities impounded their yachts, yawls and steam cruisers. Herbert Octavius’s motor cruiser,
Nacoochie
, was seized and stripped of all her parts. So, too, was Edmund Giraud’s beloved
Helen May
. Everything of value was removed and she was then left to rot on the foreshore.

The final insult was reserved for Edmund’s father, Frédéric Giraud. A keen sportsman and friend of the sultan, he had long been granted the honour of shooting on the land surrounding Gellat Lake – territory that belonged to the Civil List. This was a great privilege, for Gellat was rich in duck, woodcock and partridge as well as wood pigeon and quail. Now that war had been declared, the honour was peremptorily withdrawn. Neither Frédéric, nor any of his friends, was allowed to shoot in the hills above Smyrna.

The awkward situation that had overtaken the Levantine families was mirrored by that of many others in Smyrna. This great city was a statistical anomaly: at least two-thirds of its population were either active supporters of the Allied cause or, at the very least, sympathisers. Among them was the city governor himself, Rahmi Bey. Ever since the Young Turk revolution of 1908 and his subsequent appointment as governor of Smyrna, he had found himself increasingly disenchanted with central government in Constantinople. The triumvirate in control had once been his confidants. Now, the relationship was severely undermined by their decision to enter the war on the German side.

‘[Rahmi Bey] is one of those more intelligent Turks who thinks that war with France and England is a piece of folly in which Turkey is sure to lose,’ noted George Horton. Rahmi mistrusted all the German military officers whom Enver Pasha had invited to Turkey, and he had a particular aversion to the pompous Liman von Sanders. Although Rahmi tried to remain impartial in public, Horton had no doubts as to what he really thought. ‘In reality,’ he wrote, ‘he cordially detested the Germans, whose officers were often overbearing and rude to him.’ In a country now swarming with the German military, Rahmi felt as uncomfortable as many of the inhabitants of Smyrna.

Edmund Giraud also mistrusted the German officers. He had come into contact with one of their fact-finding missions some months earlier and had noticed with alarm the thoroughness with which they were surveying the coastline that surrounded the city. They had made a particularly meticulous study of the non-Turkish communities living in and around the bay of Smyrna.

Now, as Edmund cast his mind back to the evacuation of Long Island, he became increasingly convinced that the German mission had deliberately provoked the violence. Indeed, he felt sure that the Germans had encouraged the Turkish irregulars to land on the island and so terrify its inhabitants that they were left with little option but to flee. ‘There is not much doubt that the existence of so many Greek villages on the coast commanding the entrance of the gulf was not well looked upon,’ he wrote. Although he never managed to find hard evidence to support his suspicions, they certainly seemed plausible in the light of Germany’s active involvement in the Turkish war effort.

While the Giraud family agonised over their next move, the Greeks of Smyrna found themselves overtaken by events. The central government was fearful of this potential fifth column – an enemy within – and had no qualms about rekindling the hatred that had ignited the coastline just a few months earlier. The ruling Committee of Union and Progress began printing flyers that blamed the economically successful Greeks for all of Turkey’s woes. ‘Greece is the enemy of our religion, our history, our honour, our patrimony and – above all – our very existence,’ read one. ‘You must buy nothing from a Greek or from anyone who looks Greek . . . it is in this way that we shall save the honour of our patrimony and our religion.’

These Turkish news-sheets, printed secretly in Smyrna, soon began to inflame an already tense situation. George Horton was appalled by the stream of vitriol being produced by the homespun printing presses that were operating without licence from the governor’s office. ‘Cheap lithographs were got up,’ he wrote, ‘executed in the clumsiest and most primitive manner, evidently local productions. They represented Greeks cutting up Turkish babies or ripping open pregnant Moslem women and various purely imaginary scenes, founded on no actual events.’

Such propaganda quickly had an effect. ‘A series of sporadic murders began at Smyrna . . . the list in each morning’s papers numbering from twelve to twenty.’ The situation was even worse in the rich farmland that surrounded the city. ‘Peasants going into their vineyards to work were shot down from behind trees and rocks by the Turks.’

Rahmi Bey grew increasingly impatient with the policies being promoted by Constantinople and began preparations to regain his authority over a city that wished to have no part in Enver Pasha’s war. His determination to remain aloof from the conflict, coupled with his friendship with the Levantine families, encouraged many of them to remain in the city. Herbert Octavius considered all his options before declaring his intention of staying in Smyrna. His brother, Edward, followed suit. He had no desire to close his factories and lay off his workers; he preferred to chance his luck in the only place he knew as home. One by one, the Levantine families of Bournabat and elsewhere elected to remain in Smyrna.

One of the reasons for their staying was highlighted by Henry Morgenthau. ‘The great majority had never set foot in England,’ he wrote. ‘Their retention of their European citizenship is almost their only contact with the nation from which they have sprung.’ They were also fearful of what might happen to their businesses in their absence. Besides, there seemed little reason to act precipitately. Many were already predicting that the war would be over by Christmas.

Smyrna’s foreign consuls were given rather less freedom to decide their future. All of the consulates – with the exception of Germany, Austro-Hungary and America – were closed by order of the government. Their staffs were ordered to leave on the first available vessel.

It was a particularly heavy blow for Clifford Heathcote-Smith, who had grown to love the city that had been his home for six years. At the end of October, he took a last wistful stroll along Smyrna’s quayside and said his private farewells. He felt as if the city had reached a milestone in its history and wondered whether he was witnessing the end of an era. The majority of the city’s population was on the Allied side: ‘it is probable that they, rather than the Turks, will suffer,’ he wrote.

Heathcote-Smith believed that Smyrna would be unable to avoid becoming embroiled in a war that was not of her choosing. And in the process it was even more unlikely that this enchanting, glittering city would ever be quite the same again.

Rahmi’s Double Game