The Smyrna massacre involved lynching, arson, and mass evacuation of Christians

Evidence

When Turkish troops re-captured Smyrna on the western Anatolian coast from the Greeks in September 1922, the Greek archbishop was lynched at the instigation of the Turkish commandant in the town, Nurettin Pasha, after which the Christian quarters of the town were burned down, and perhaps 213,000 Christians evacuated by the Allies. The future Turkish president Mustafa Kemal subsequently criticised Nurettin for trying to claim sole credit for ‘the patriotic effort of all members of the army to expel non-Muslims from western Anatolia’. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1046

Categorization

• SEED: The Mustafa Kemal quote framing genocide as ‘patriotic effort’ is a stark illustration of how exterminators reframe crimes as collective virtues — an essay angle on the normative vocabulary of ethnic cleansing.