Özet:

In the continuation of the Armistice of Mudros, which was signed on October 30, 1918 between the Ottoman Empire and the Entente powers, one of the most important tasks facing the Istanbul Government was undoubtedly to ensure that the peace treaty to be signed would have lighter conditions. The prerequisite for the government to achieve this aim was the necessity of ensuring order and security in the country. However, following the decisions taken following the signing of the armistice (Articles 5 and 7), the non-Muslim elements, who were encouraged, started to engage in activities that disrupt the public order. These activities took place in the form of different events that disrupted the order in various cities, especially in the capital Istanbul. In this sense, one of the regions where public order incidents were most intense was İzmir and its districts. İzmir was the most important city of Western Anatolia in terms of both being a port city and being a strategically important crossroads that connects with other parts of Anatolia. For these reasons, Greece, which has its eye on İzmir, secretly supported the local Greeks after the armistice, which was working to disrupt the peace in the city. As a matter of fact, with the acceptance and implementation of the armistice, a process that threatened security and trust had begun. In the official or unofficial documents of the period, the most conspicuous word was “public order”; it had become the most popular notion of those days. The most important factor in this was that many disorganizing events such as theft, beating, wounding, prostitution, suicide, smuggling, murder were experienced intensely by the local Greeks before the occupation. Upon the disorder created by all these events in the city, the Greeks claimed rights in the city at the Paris Peace Conference on January 18, 1919, on the claim that the order in İzmir was broken and the lives, property and honor of non-Muslims, especially the local Greeks, were in danger. The main reason for demanding such a right is; It was the idea of realizing their big dream, which they called the Megali Idea. The embodiment of the aforementioned idea was realized at the conference itself, and upon the decision taken at the conference, the right of occupation was given to Greece in order to maintain order in the city. Having set foot in İzmir on May 15, 1919, Greece had come to maintain order in the city on behalf of the Entente forces. However, that would not be the case. The Greeks, who entered İzmir on May 15, 1919 and continued the occupation until September 9, 1922, would be one of the main factors disrupting the order, let alone trying to maintain order in the city together with the local Greeks. As a matter of fact, with the entry of the Turkish army into the city in 1922, they would flee, leaving a huge wreckage in the city. The phrase “As they have come, so they will go” by Mustafa Kemal Pasha should have been literally meant for Greece. Because Greece, which caused great destruction and disaster on the day they set foot in the city, left a great wreck and destruction behind while even fleeing. This study, which examines the public order and security events that took place in İzmir during the occupation period; it aims to make a scientific evaluation of what kind of events that disrupted the public order and caused security weakness in the city from the first days of the occupation of İzmir, and how these events were reflected in the official correspondence, memoirs and periodicals of that period.

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