The burning of Smyrna destroyed much of the port city of Smyrna (modern İzmir, Turkey) in September 1922. The fire started on 13 September 1922Horton, George. The Blight of Asia. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926; repr. London: Gomidas Institute, 2003, p. 96. and was largely extinguished on 22 September. It began four days after the Turkish military captured the city on 9 September, effectively ending the Greco-Turkish War, more than three years after the Greek landing of troops at Smyrna. Greek and Armenian deaths resulting from the fire and the ensuing massacres were in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

The fire completely destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters of the city; the Muslim and Jewish quarters escaped damage. The Western European quarter, home to Italian, French, British, and American residents, was also destroyed.

Approximately 80,000 to 400,000 Greek and Armenian refugees crammed the waterfront to escape from the fire. They were forced to remain there under harsh conditions for nearly two weeks. Turkish troops and irregulars had started committing massacres and atrocities against the Greek and Armenian population in the city before the outbreak of the fire. Many women were raped. Tens of thousands of Greek and Armenian men were subsequently deported into "labour battalions" in the interior of Anatolia, where most of them died in harsh conditions.

Despite differing accounts and eyewitness reports concerning the responsibility for the fire, there is an international historical consensus that Turkish nationalists were responsible for igniting and spreading the fire, as well as for the systematic destruction and atrocities committed during it.Sources: Although a few, Turkish or pro-Turkish, sources hold that the Greeks or Armenians started the fire, most contemporary sources and modern scholars attribute it to Turkish soldiers setting fire to Greek and Armenian homes, churches and businesses to eradicate the last traces of Christian presence in Anatolia. Testimonies from Western eyewitnesseslist of them here were printed in many Western newspapers.i.e. The Daily Telegraph 19 September 1922: The martyrdom of Smyrna and eastern Christendom; a file of overwhelming evidence, denouncing the misdeeds of the Turks in Asia Minor and showing their responsibility for the horrors of Smyrna Incendiaries at work – Destruction of christian quarters]Reuters: Manchester Guardian:

The event is considered one of the most catastrophic urban fires in history, as well as an act of genocide and a war crime; it is considered the "symbolic end" of the Greek genocide, and still remains a source of tension between Greece and Turkey. Winston Churchill called it an "infernal orgy" and stated that: "For a deliberately planned and methodically executed atrocity, Smyrna must...find few parallels in the history of human crime".

Background The ratio of the Christian population to the Muslim population remains a matter of dispute, but the city was both a multicultural and cosmopolitan center until September 1922. Different sources claim either Greeks or Turks as constituting the majority in the city. According to Katherine Elizabeth Flemming, in 1919–1922 the Greeks in Smyrna numbered 150,000, forming just under half of the population, outnumbering the Turks by a ratio of two to one.Fleming Katherine Elizabeth. Greece: A Jewish History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 81. . Alongside Turks and Greeks, there were sizeable Armenian, Jewish, and Levantine communities in the city. According to Trudy Ring, before World War I the Greeks alone numbered 130,000 out of a population of 250,000, excluding Armenians and other Christians.Ring Trudy, Salkin Robert M., La Boda Sharon. International Dictionary of Historic Places: Southern Europe . Taylor & Francis, 1995. , p. 351: "By then, İzmir had nearly as many Christian European inhabitants as Turkish: the European makeup was mostly Greek, with sizable Italian, Armenian, British, French, and Jewish communities. Since the city had a non-Moslem majority (before World War I, Greeks alone numbered 130,000 out of a population of about 250,000), the Ottoman ruling class referred to it as "Infidel Smyrna" (Gavur İzmir) where, it was said, "heathens" enjoyed one of the most cultured lifestyles in the Mediterranean."

According to the Ottoman census of 1906/7, there were 341,436 Muslims, 193,280 Greek Orthodox Christians, 12,273 Armenian Gregorian Christians, 24,633 Jews, and 55,952 foreigners, for a combined total of to 630,124 people in İzmir sanjak (13 Kazas including the central Kaza);Kemal Karpat (1985), Ottoman Population, 1830–1914, Demographic and Social Characteristics , The University of Wisconsin Press, p. 162-163 the updated figures for 1914 gave 100,356 Muslims, 73,676 Greek Orthodox Christians, 10,061 Armenian Gregorians, 813 Armenian Catholics, 24,069 Jews for the central kaza of İzmir.Salâhi R. Sonyel, Minorities and the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, Ankara: TTK, 1993, p. 351; Gaston Gaillard, The Turks and Europe, London, 1921, p. 199.Kemal Karpat (1985), Ottoman Population, 1830–1914, Demographic and Social Characteristics , The University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 174–175 Ottoman censuses generally underestimated Christians and overestimated non-Christians.

According to the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time, Henry Morgenthau, more than half of Smyrna's population was Greek.Morgenthau Henry. Ambassador Morgenthau's Story Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918, p. 32. The American consul general in Smyrna at the time, George Horton, wrote that before the fire there were 400,000 people living in the city of Smyrna, of whom 165,000 were Turks, 150,000 were Greeks, 25,000 were Jews, 25,000 were Armenians, and 20,000 were foreigners—10,000 Italians, 3,000 French, 2,000 British, and 300 Americans.Horton, The Blight of Asia Most of the Greeks and Armenians were Christians.

Moreover, according to various scholars, prior to the war, the city was a center of more Greeks than the ones who lived in Athens, the capital of Greece. The Ottomans of that era referred to the city as Infidel Smyrna (Gavur İzmir) due to the numerous Greeks and the large non-Muslim population.

Events

Entry of the Turkish Army

Greek troops evacuated Smyrna on the evening of Friday 8 September. The first elements of Mustafa Kemal's forces, a Turkish cavalry squadron, made its way into the city from the northern tip of the quay the following morning, establishing their headquarters at the main government building called Konak.Dobkin, Marjorie Housepian. Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971; 2nd ed. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1988, pp. 117–121. The Hellenic Army was in disarray and could not evacuate the city in an orderly manner, and fighting continued to the next day. According to the General of the 5th Cavalry Sidearmy Fahrettin Altay, on 10 September, Turkish forces belonging to the 2nd and the 3rd Cavalry regiments captured around 3,000 Greek soldiers, 50 Greek Officers, including a Brigadier Commander in the south of the city center who were retreating from Aydın. Lieutenant Ali Rıza Akıncı, the first Turkish officer to hoist the Turkish flag in the Turkish capture of Smyrna on 9 September, mentions in his memoirs that his unit of 13 cavalrymen was ambushed by a volley of fire from 30–40 rifles from the Tuzakoğlu factory after being saluted and congratulated by a French Marine platoon in the Halkapınar bridge. This volley fire killed 3 cavalrymen instantly and fatally wounded another. They were relieved by Captain Şerafettin and his two units which encircled the factory. Moreover, Captain Şerafettin, alongside Lieutenant Ali Rıza Akıncı were wounded by a grenade thrown by a Greek soldier in front of the Pasaport building. The lieutenant was wounded lightly from his nose and his leg, and his horse on its belly. The grenade thrower was also mentioned by George Horton as "some fool threw a bomb", and that the commander of this unit "received bloody cuts about the head". A monument was later erected on the spot these cavalrymen had fallen. Military command was first assumed by Mürsel Pasha, and then Nureddin Pasha, General of the Turkish First Army.

At the outset, the Turkish occupation of the city was orderly. Though the Armenian and Greek inhabitants viewed their entry with trepidation, they reasoned that the presence of the Allied fleet would discourage any violence against the Christian community. On the morning of 9 September, twenty-one Allied warships lay at anchor in Smyrna's harbor, including the British battleships HMS Iron Duke and King George V, along with their escort of cruisers and destroyers under the command of Admiral Osmond Brock; the American destroyers USS Litchfield, Simpson, and Lawrence (later joined by the Edsall); three French cruisers and two destroyers under the command of Admiral Dumesnil; and an Italian cruiser and destroyer.Dobkin. Smyrna 1922, p. 101.Milton. Paradise Lost, pp. 4–5. The British warships were intended to evacuate Smyrna's British nationals to Malta or Cyprus. As a precaution, sailors and marines from the Allied fleet were landed ashore to guard their respective diplomatic compounds and institutions with strict orders of maintaining neutrality in the event that violence would break out between the Turks and the Christians.See Dobkin, Smyrna 1922, passim.

On 9 September, order and discipline began to break down among the Turkish troops, who began systematically targeting the Armenian population, pillaging their shops, looting their homes, separating the men from the women and carrying away and sexually assaulting the latter.Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, p. 98.Dobkin. Smyrna 1922, pp. 120–167. The Greek Orthodox Metropolitan bishop, Chrysostomos, was tortured and hacked to death by a Turkish mob in full view of French soldiers, who were prevented from intervening by their commanding officer. When told of the news, Admiral Dumesnil plainly remarked, "He got what was coming to him."Dobkin. Smyrna 1922, pp. 133–134. Refuge was sought wherever possible, including Paradise, where the American quarter was located, and the European quarters. Some were able to take shelter at the American Collegiate Institute and other institutions, despite strenuous efforts to turn away those seeking help by the Americans and Europeans, who were anxious not to antagonize or harm their relations with the leaders of the Turkish National movement. An officer of the Dutch steamer Siantar which was at the city's port during that period reported an incident that he has heard, according to him after the Turkish troops had entered the city a large hotel which had Greek guests was set on fire, the Turks had placed a machine gun at the opposite of the hotel's entrance and opened fire when people were trying to exit the burning building. In addition, he said that the crew were not allowed to go offshore after dusk because thugs were roaming the city's streets and it was dangerous.

It is estimated that between 9 and 13 September, before the fire broke out, around 2,000 Greeks and Armenians had already died as a result of Turkish atrocities.

Burning

The first fire broke out in the late afternoon of 13 September, four days after Turkish nationalist forces had entered the city.Naimark. Fires of Hatred, p. 249. The blaze began in the Armenian quarter of the city (now the Basmane borough), and spread quickly due to the windy weather and the fact that no effort was made to put it out.Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p. 49. Author Giles Milton writes: