Battle of Aydın

The Greek High Commissioner Aristidis Stergiadis, who had arrived in Smyrna on 21 May, authorised on 23 May the troops commanded by Colonel Nikolaos Zafeiriou to issue orders for the occupation of Aydın, Manisa and Turgutlu. The subject of the size of the territory to be occupied by Greek forces were to be governed by uncertainty until 2 June, when Commodore Maurice FitzMaurice from the Royal Navy was appointed to determine the limits of the occupation zone.

The principal source on the fighting and the massacres remains the Report of the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry of October 1919. This report was ordered by the Paris Peace Conference acting on a July 1919 letter by the Ottoman sheikh ul-Islam and prepared by four generals of the Allied powers following their on-the-spot checks and presented to the Conference in October. In Aydın, the Inter-Allied Inquiry Commission had held several meetings for a week in early September 1919, in the city of Aydın self, in Çine in the Italian zone, to hear the statements of Turkish refugees from Aydın, and in Nazilli in the zone occupied by the forces of the Turkish national movement, where it interrogated refugees, including Greek refugees, also from Aydın.

The group of efe led by Yörük Ali during the battle

The warfare around Aydın started by an ambush on 27 June of a Greek patrol by irregular Turkish forces led by Yörük Ali Efe at Malgaç train station, south of Aydın.

According to the Inter-Allied Inquiry Commission's report, in the course of reconnaissance patrols around Aydın, some of the villages were burned down by Greek detachments. They were repulsed in Malgaç and the efe pursued the troops till the outskirts of the city of Aydın.

On 28 June, the attackers began to use 105-mm guns. Some of the fires that broke out in the quarter of Cuma, one of Aydın's Turkish quarters, in the morning of 29 June started during this engagement. Other fires also broke out in this quarter at various isolated points. A large number of Turkish men, women and children who were trying to leave the burning quarter were killed for no reason by the Greek soldiers, who were guarding all the exits that led from this quarter to the northern part of the town. The report observes that there was no doubt that the Greek Command and troops ran amok. The Greeks evacuated the town in the night of 29 June and early hours of 30 June after having committed numerous attacks and other crimes. A large number of Greek civilians hoping to escape by accompanying the troops as they retreated were prevented from doing so by the Command.

A subsequent fire in the Greek quarter was started by Turkish gangs under their leader Yöruk Ali, once they took control of the city. The gangs entered the quarter in the morning of 30 June and burnt it down after having looted the houses, killing the occupants. Irrespective of age or sex, a number of Greek inhabitants encountered by the gangs as they roamed through the town were ruthlessly killed. Around 2000 or 3000 inhabitants were robbed but not killed. They had managed to take refuge in the French convent before the gangs arrived, after which they sought the protection of Colonel Şefik Bey, Commander of the small Ottoman Division present in the city.

The Greek troops, with the help of reinforcements sent by General Konstantinos Nider, headed by lieutenant Colonel Stavrianopoulos recaptured Aydın on 4 July. The reoccupation of Aydın was ordered by the Greek High Command in spite of the express orders of the representative of the Entente. The Greek authorities acted on orders received from Venizelos in Paris on 2 July. These orders prevented the representative of the Entente from intervening in the matter. Once in Aydın, they set fire to the Turkish quarter situated in the western part of the town, where there were also some Greek factories.

According to the Inter-Allied Inquiry Commission report, all the fires that were started between 29 June and 4 July most probably had destroyed two thirds of the city of Aydın, which had a population of 20,000, including some 8000 Greeks.

Most of the villages situated along the railway track between Balacık and Aydın were also destroyed by fires started in the course of the military operations that took place in the region. The occupation of the vilayet of Aydın by the Greek forces had caused significant material losses to crops and property, some attributable to looting, theft and the destruction of livestock. Considerable losses were also suffered due to the burning of houses, villages and the town of Aydın.

Before the Greek army returned to Aydın, most of the Turkish population had already left the town and surrounding area, with the Turkish soldiers, in order to take refuge in the Italian zone or in the Nazilli-Denizli region, where they remained till the end of the war.

On the other hand, the Greek population of the town was either massacred by the Turks (the dead bodies founded by the Greek army after the retake of the town), or taken to captivity in the interior of Anatolia.[3]

Colonel Georgios Kondylis with his regiment took orders to hunt the Turkish and did so by passing the Meander river and entering the Italian zone.

The city of Aydın remained in ruins until it was re-captured by the Turkish army on 7 September 1922, at the end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922).