Fire of Manisa

Background

Manisa is a historic town in Western Anatolia beneath the north side of Mount Sipylus that became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. During Ottoman rule the town was governed by several princes (called Şehzade) and so is also known as a "town of the princes" (Şehzadeler şehri). Many examples of Ottoman architecture were built over the next few centuries, such as the Muradiye Mosque, designed by the famous architect Mimar Sinan in 1586, and built for Murad III who was a governor of the town.

By the 19th century Manisa was among the largest towns in the Aegean region of Anatolia and its population before the fire is estimated to have been between 35,000 and 50,000. Manisa had a religiously and ethnically diverse population made up of Muslims, Christians and Jews but Turkish Muslims were the largest group. During the 19th century there was an increase in other groups, most notably Greeks. In 1865 the population was estimated by the British at 40,000 with minorities of 5,000 Greeks, 2,000 Armenians and 2,000 Jews. In 1898 the population was estimated by the Ottoman linguist Sami Bey at 36,252 of which 21,000 were Muslims, 10,400 Greeks, and 2,000 Armenians.

After World War I, Greece, supported by the Allied Powers, decided that the area known as the "Smyrna territory" would be occupied and could later be incorporated into Greece. In accordance with this plan, Greek forces (with Allied support) landed in Smyrna on 15 May 1919 and the town was occupied on 26 May without armed opposition. During the occupation which lasted more than three years, there were complaints by the local Turks of bad treatment. During the Greco-Turkish War that followed the Greek invasion, atrocities were committed by both Turks and Greeks.

Fire

A Turkish offensive started in August 1922 and the Greek army retreated towards Smyrna and the Aegean coast. During their retreat they practiced a scorched earth policy, burning towns and villages and committing atrocities along the way. Towns to the east of Manisa, such as Alaşehir and Salihli were burned. Several days before the actual fire in Manisa, rumors were going around that the town would be burned. Turkish sources claim that the Greek and Armenian population got permission to leave from the Greek army and had already evacuated the area. Other sources confirm that the Christians fled before the Turkish advance. The Turkish sources claim that the local Turks and Muslims were ordered to stay in their houses which most did until the day on which the fire started.

The burning of the town was carefully managed by the Greek army, and fires were started at multiple places by specially organized groups. According to Turkish sources a significant number of the arsonists were local Greeks and Armenians. During the night of Tuesday 5 September and the morning of 6 September, fires were started in the commercial Çarşı district (while looted was taking place) and at various other sites. Many people left their houses and fled to safety in the mountains and hills. During this chaos some people were killed by the Greeks or burnt to death. The population hid in the mountains for several days. Meanwhile, the Turkish army continued its rapid advance and, after some fighting with remaining Greek troops, they took control of the remains of the town on 8 September. By then most of the town had been destroyed.

Gülfem Kaatçılar İrem, witnessed the fire as a little girl and remembers when she fled to the hills with her family:

After escaping the militia towards dawn, we climbed up a dry stream bed to hide in the hills. As we climbed, the city was burning, and we were lit by its light and warmed by its heat. It burned for three days and three nights. I saw the windowpanes of houses explode like bombs. Sacks of grapes stuck together, bubbling like jam. Dead cows and horses, balloons with their legs in the air. Ancient trees keeled over, their roots burning like logs. I did not forget these things. The heat, the hunger, the fear, the smell. After three days we saw the dust rise in the valley below. Turkish soldiers on horseback; we thought they were Greeks come to kill us in the hills. I remember three soldiers carrying green and red flags. People kissed the hooves of their horses, crying “Our saviors have come.”

Aftermath

The town was almost entirely rebuilt according to a modern plan by a Turkish architect named Cemalettin. The town is believed to have lost many buildings and objects of historical significance, but a small area around the two imperial Ottoman mosques were saved from destruction. Today the town has grown again and had reached 309,050 inhabitants in 2012.

Damage

The Turkish government set up a commission called Tetkik-i Mezalim or Tetkik-i Fecayi Heyeti “the atrocity committee” to research and document the events and atrocities. Turkish author Halide Edip saw the town after the fire, as did Henry Franklin-Bouillon, the French government representative, who declared that out of 11,000 houses in the city of Magnesia (Manisa) only 1,000 remained. Patrick Kinross wrote, "Out of the eighteen thousand buildings in the historic holy city of Manisa, only five hundred remained." The total economic damage was estimated to be more than fifty million lira (in contemporary value). Some of the captured Greek soldiers were employed in the reconstruction, such as in the rebuilding of the destroyed Karaköy mosque.

Loder Park, who toured much of the devastated area immediately after the Greek evacuation, described the situation he had seen as follows:

Manisa ... almost completely wiped out by fire ... 10,300 houses, 15 mosques, 2 baths, 2,278 shops, 19 hotels, 26 villas ... [destroyed]..."
"1. The destruction of the interior cities visited by our party was carried out by Greeks."

"3. The burning of these cities was not desultory, nor intermittent, nor accidental, but well planned and thoroughly organized."
"4. There were many instances of physical violence, most of which was deliberate and wanton. Without complete figures, which were impossible to obtain, it may safely be surmised that 'atrocities' committed by retiring Greeks numbered well into thousands in the four cities under consideration. These consisted of all three of the usual type of such atrocities, namely murder, torture and rape."

Victims

The total number of victims during the fire is not known. Turkish sources estimate that 3,500 died in the fires and 855 were shot. A comparison can be made with several nearby towns which were also burned by the retreating Greeks. There were estimated to be 3,000 victims in Alaşehir and 1,000 in Turgutlu. The number that were wounded is also unknown. Turkish sources state that three hundred girls were raped and abducted by the Greeks. Many rape victims were thought to have remained silent out of fear or shame. A number of Greeks troops were captured, some of them were lynched by the Turkish women they had raped.

The Greek retreat was accompanied by looting and other people lost their possessions in the fires, and lived for some time among the ruins of their homes or crowded together in the surviving buildings.

In Turkish literature

The Turkish journalist Falih Rıfkı Atay wrote:

We were going through corpses which had not start rotting yet and still smoldering fires. We stared helplessly to Manisa the city of our ancestors and whose ashes were blown off. The Greeks had perpetrated an extermination in their retreat. The surviving buildings and people were the one which they had not find time to lay their hands on. We saw the remains of a slaughter which only one nation had to survive. The Greeks had want to turn Western Anatolia into a uninhabitable desert for the Turks...

The Turkish poet İlhan Berk was a small child living in the Deveciler neighborhood at the time of the fire and fled to the mountains with his family. His older sister burned to death in their house. He wrote that he could never forget the flight to the mountains and wrote of other childhood memories of the events in his work Uzun Bir Adam. The historian Kamil Su, also witnessed the fire as a 13-year-old living in the Alaybey neighborhood. On the morning of September 6 he fled with his family to the mountains. When he returned to his neighborhood he found corpses in the streets and most buildings razed to their foundations, only the walls of the historic Aydın mosque were still standing; the corpse of an unknown man lay in the street in front of where Su's house had stood. He later wrote Manisa ve Yöresinde İşgal Acıları, a book about the Greek occupation and the fire. The Turkish painter Cemal Tollu who witnessed the fire while serving in the Turkish army as a cavalryman produced a painting in 1968, the "Manisa Yangını" (Fire of Manisa).