Sunday we all visited the Greek ghost town of Kayakoy, 6 miles SW of Fethiye. This town had once been the thriving Greek town of Levissi but was abandoned in the Turkish-Greek population exchange in 1923 following the Turkish War of Independence. During World War I, the Ottomans had sided with Germany and the Central Powers. With the Allies� victory, the Ottoman Empire fell and parts of it were carved up. The Greeks, hoping to take back parts of the Byzantine Empire, occupied Izmir in May 1919 and pushed eastwards toward Ankara. This stirred Turkish nationalism, and a bitter war ensued between the Greeks and Turks from 1920 to 1922. Under General Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Turks finally pushed the Greeks out of Turkey in late 1922. Soon afterwards the Turkish Republic was born.
As part of the peace settlement, Greece and Turkey agreed to a population exchange. Around 1.25 million Ottoman Greeks and 450,000 Greek Muslims were exchanged. As there were more Greeks than Turks in the exchange, some Turkish Greek towns, like Levissi, became derelict. When this community left for the outer suburbs of Athens in 1923, it left behind 2 large churches, 14 chapels, 2 schools, and about 1000 houses. Remarkably, all of these houses had been constructed so that no house blocked the light and view of another. Now, looking down over the remnants of what had once been a thriving town was a poignant, unforgettable sight; the sadness these people must have felt leaving everything they had ever known. For centuries, the Greeks and Turks in this valley had lived together as neighbors and friends. Overnight, all had changed, and these people had become the silent casualties of war. |
