Dying in Asia Minor – The unknown story of the Greeks captured by the Turks in 1922

Source: ProtoThema English

In our article “Greek prisoners of the Turks: dying in Asia Minor (1919–1922)” on Sunday, 14/9/2025, we had promised to return to the sufferings of the Greek captives after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the atrocities of the Turks against them. That is what we are doing in today’s article.

How many were the Greek captives in Asia Minor?
As we mentioned in the article of 14/09/2025, at the beginning of 1922 the Greeks held prisoner by the Turks numbered only 324. In August of that same year, however, after the collapse of the front and the breach at Afyon Karahisar, the units of the I and II Army Corps, which had been united, split into two groups: one under Lieutenant General Nikolaos Trikoupis and one under Lieutenant General Athanasios Frangos. From Trikoupis’ group, in which was included the commander of the II Army Corps, Kimon Digenis, 190 officers (among them Trikoupis and Digenis) and 4,400 soldiers were captured.

Nikolaos Trikoupis in 1920

Decisive for the surrender of Trikoupis’ group were the two bloody battles (Chamourkioi–Ilbulak and Ali Veran), the exhaustion of the soldiers, and the complete lack of ammunition. A smaller column under Lieutenant General Dimitrios Dimaras and Colonel Periklis Kallidopoulos was cut off and lost its orientation while wandering in the dense forest of Murat Dag, where 84 officers, including Dimaras, and 1,600 soldiers were forced to surrender. From the units of the III Army Corps, in the northern sector of the front, the 11th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Nikolaos Kladas (4,500 men) was captured. Finally, from the forces of the Military Command of Odemision under Colonel Dimitrios Zegginis, 23 officers were captured, including Zegginis himself with his men, who instead of moving toward the Erythraean Peninsula, where ships were waiting for them, went toward Smyrna and fell into Turkish hands…

Greek officers Dimaras, Trikoupis, and Digenis in a prisoner camp at Kirşehir, the Byzantine Justinianopolis

But how many, in total, were the Greek captives in Asia Minor? The numbers, even those initially given by the Greek and Turkish sides, changed later. In November 1922 the Army Staff Service could not give the exact number of officers and soldiers captured. They estimated 30,000–35,000. The Greek consulate in Beirut considered the number almost double: 60,000. A few months later, the Ministry of War announced that from the original force of the Asia Minor Army, 2,521 officers and 54,000 soldiers were missing. However, it could not determine precisely how many of these were dead, missing, or prisoners…

Closing
In October 1922, the Turkish authorities spoke of 34,050 prisoners of war. After complaints and accusations about the extermination of Greek captives, the Turks artificially reduced their number to 17,000! More reliable data come from the repatriations of Greeks in 1923–1924. The Turks did not immediately register all Greek prisoners. As a result, when they later provided the relevant figures, thousands had already been exterminated. The unregistered prisoners of war were considered missing and therefore did not fall under the humanitarian law rules of the time regarding POWs.

Three Greek officers and a British colleague in Sardis, during the advance into Asia Minor

According to official figures, in October 1922 the captured Greek officers numbered 2,050. The official Greek authorities reported 2,541. By September 1923, 845 officers had been repatriated to Greece (among them 18 doctors). Two more returned on February 20, 1924, so the total number of repatriated Greek officers was 847, according to a document of the Mixed Population Exchange Commission. Thus, during captivity, 1,203 Greek officers died (according to the Turkish version) or 1,674 (according to the Greek version). The discrepancy (469 officers) has to do either with Greek officers killed during operations or executed in cold blood by the Turks a few months after their capture, before they were designated prisoners of war.

The discrepancy is even greater in the number of captive soldiers. The Turkish Ministry of War announced in October 1922 that the Greek prisoners were 32,000. At the same time, the Greek side spoke of 54,000! According to the report of the Population Exchange Commission established by the International Red Cross, by September 1923, 14,776 soldiers and 1,587 civilians had returned to Greece. For the latter, it is unclear whether they were Asia Minor civilian hostages or Greek soldiers of Asia Minor origin, whom the Turks did not recognize as soldiers, since they considered them Ottoman citizens who had betrayed their homeland.

Furthermore, between February–April 1924, 2,009 prisoners were repatriated, 350 of them soldiers and 1,659 civilian hostages. There were also some Greeks who managed to escape from the Turkish hellholes, fleeing to Syria and later returning to Greece. These were in total 90, who escaped in July 1923 (32 people), October 1923 (11 people), and December 1923 (47 people). In total, 90 Greek captives returned to Greece this way. Without tiring the reader with more numbers, we will mention only that, according to reports from the International Red Cross Commission and Greek sources, in 1923 and 1924, 847 officers and 15,214 soldiers were repatriated, including the 90 escapees.

In total, mortality among Greek prisoners of war, based on the Turks’ initial figures, was 53% overall, and among officers 58%! These percentages exceed any known POW mortality rate of World War I. One of the known cases is that of the British surrender to the Turks after their defeat at Kut-al-Amara, where mortality reached 35.7%. Finally, it should be noted that among those captured were many Asia Minor Greeks, who were executed immediately, and a few Bulgarian-speaking Greeks, who after their capture were transferred to Bulgaria. Closing, we should note that according to the Greek Army Directorate, the missing were 450 officers and 17,100 soldiers. However, there are reports of Greek soldiers returning from Asia Minor even as late as 1931, while some raise the total number of missing to 40,000.

Turkish atrocities against Greek captives: dying deep in Anatolia
After the Turkish counterattack of August 13, 1922, and while the Greek Army was retreating chaotically and disorganized, more than 34,000 Greek officers and soldiers who were captured or surrendered were led to concentration camps. This captivity can be divided into two periods. In the first, there were mass executions and brutalities by Turkish soldiers, murders and lynchings by Turkish civilians, mass deaths of captives from epidemics, disease, hardships, and shortages of food, water, etc. This period lasted at least 6–8 weeks and was directly linked to the long marches of captives toward the concentration camps where they would be held.

During this time, mortality rates among Greek prisoners of war were 30%–50%. Those who experienced it, as well as the International Committee established in 1923 by the Greek Red Cross, called it the “red death.” The next period, which lasted longer – for some captives from November 1922 until April 1924 – was linked to the slow extermination of the prisoners. It was called the “white death,” and mortality rates continued to be high.

The Greek wounded, who could not be left behind by their comrades in a safe place, were handed over to the Turkish military forces, who were obliged to provide immediate medical care and then transfer them to hospitals, concentration camps, or even help them repatriate. Unfortunately, most of the wounded were executed in cold blood by the Turks. Soldier Konstantinos Politis was one of the captives who returned to Greece in November 1924. In his book Asia Minor he describes shocking events:
“Outside, however, the corpses were many and many wounded moaned and asked for help. But how could you help them, in what way? Those who cried out, the Turks (soldiers) would thrust the knife into their throat and finish them.”

Those Greeks who were captured were not always certain to be transferred to concentration camps. Emmanouil Kelaïdis (later Air Marshal and Chief of the Air Force, to which he transferred upon returning to Greece) fought as a soldier in the 7th Infantry Regiment of the IV Division. According to him, in the area of Uts Serai:
“After the battle we came across the following horrific spectacle: 15–20 soldiers who had been captured prisoners had been lined up, naked, with their genitals cut off.”

In these atrocities, apart from Turkish soldiers, the tsétes (irregular Turkish bands) also participated, perhaps even to a greater degree, playing an important role in the Turkish victory.

Regarding the treatment of Greeks wounded, what Colonel Panagiotakos writes in his Report of Actions on Greek operations against the tsétes in April 1922 is of great interest:
“Thus, along almost the entire length of the gorge were corpses of our soldiers. All were unburied, completely stripped. Almost all bore inhuman mutilations, amputations of genitals, of the posterior part of the body, of hands, gouged-out eyes, knife and axe wounds, some had their two feet bound. Obviously, these, being wounded, were subjected to unspeakable tortures. In a basement of a house in the village of Soulia were found two of our soldiers’ corpses butchered. These probably lightly wounded, from the detachment of Sub-Lieutenant Kyrkidis, had taken refuge there to be saved and were butchered by the inhabitants. Also found were items of clothing of officers and soldiers taken from the looting of the dead.”
(GHQ Historical Service, *Asia Minor Campaign File 256 – A – 1, fol. 90–91).

After the disastrous battle of Ali Veran (17 August 1922), the Greek soldiers who were wounded and unable to follow their comrades as they advanced remained in the valley of the same name, where they were killed by the Turks. Dimitrios Karyofyllakis, originally from Eastern Thrace, wrote in his Memoirs of Captivity:

“Not a single wounded man escaped from the valley of Ali Veran into captivity.”

The Turkish-speaking Karyofyllakis was himself captured, escaped execution four times, and survived thanks to a Turkish sergeant. The latter had learned that his own brother, who had been captured, was in Greece under very good living conditions. Wanting to “do a good deed” for a Greek, he spared Karyofyllakis by declaring him a “Turkish wounded.” Thus Karyofyllakis survived and became a witness to many Turkish crimes. He saw, among other horrors, the tragic end of the wounded of the IX Division who had been abandoned in its field hospitals.

The Turks, after killing them, threw them into a ravine. Karyofyllakis writes vividly:

“They had dragged me close to a ravine that was filled with our wounded (afterwards, of course) who had been killed. They had slaughtered them all and thrown them into the ravine, and they were dragging me too, to throw me in—dead or even alive. Among the corpses of the slain, faint groans could still be heard.”

Later, while hospitalized with Turkish wounded, Karyofyllakis witnessed more massacres of Greeks, this time carried out by ordinary civilians:

“I froze. I saw them bring in three of our wounded, and lined up was the village youth, armed with axes and knives. I understood what was about to happen and closed my eyes from the horror. They turned them into mince. They struck with such fury that I cannot describe it.”
(D. Karyofyllakis, Memoirs of Captivity, p. 25).

Doctor Petros Apostolidis from Zagori (1896–1988), who was captured by the Turks at Afyon Karahisar and for a year (repatriated in 1923) served as a physician for Greek wounded in various concentration camps, wrote in his book What I Remember:

“In that damned ravine (Ali Veran, or the ravine of Chalkioi), inside the medical trucks, they said, there were 4,000 wounded. Trucks and wounded all stayed there, as well as all the wounded from the battle and bombardment! What became of them? Some captives later heard from Turks that, after we had left, they gathered them all in a streambed, doused them with gasoline, and burned them alive. Is it true? I cannot know. I cannot know, but I cannot rule it out either, given the fanaticism and savagery they had. The fact remains that they killed them all. How? Only God knows. In any case, in the whole year I spent as a doctor of captives—not in one place, but moving from Philadelphia (Alaşehir) to Afyon Karahisar—I did not encounter a single one of them.”

Similar testimonies were given to the Asia Minor Operations Investigative Committee by officers who were repatriated. Indicatively, Lieutenant (Artillery) Dimitrios Svarnas, captured with General Trikoupis’ group, testified that those wounded at Ali Veran were massacred by Turkish villagers:

“… even more inhumanly, hundreds of wounded were abandoned, who were slaughtered by the villagers, although all the pack animals of the field artillery and other units would have been more than enough to transport them.”
(Army Historical Directorate, Asia Minor Campaign, file 361-G-2, fol. 51).

Reserve doctor G. Andreou of the XI Division, who after his capture remained at Mudanya to treat both Greek and Turkish wounded, testified:

“… the wounded transferred from the Mudanya station to Bursa were plundered and many were killed along the way.”

Some testimonies raised the number of executed even higher:

“From what I perceived and what I heard, after the ceasefire and during the capture of the (XI) Division, about 1,500 of our soldiers were slaughtered.”
(Army Historical Directorate, Asia Minor Campaign, file 361-G-2, fol. 97).

Finally, reserve doctor Periklis Zikas of the same Division testified that when, the day after its surrender, he went to the battlefield to collect wounded, he found not a single one alive, while most of the dead bore bayonet wounds…

Epilogue
What the Greek military captives suffered in Asia Minor is beyond belief. Beyond what we have already mentioned, there were dismemberments with saws, live burials, mass hangings, mutilations with butcher knives, hacking to pieces inside stables, amputations, and even—horrifically—the consumption of the flesh of Greeks by Turkish villagers at the meat market of Magnesia (16 November 1922). There were also rapes, lethal injections, the washing of captives in bathhouses at 50°C and then exposing them to subzero temperatures on the Anatolian plateau, and more.

Sadly, no Greek government in the following years ever demanded explanations or further information, and all were content with the Turks’ assurances that the 96 captives who arrived in Greece in early 1924 were the last ones…

Source:
Nikos S. Kanellopoulos – Nikos F. Tompros, The Tragic History of the Greek Prisoners in Asia Minor, 1919–1924, Minoas Editions, 2024.

Special thanks to Minoas Editions for their valuable assistance.

The original article: https://en.protothema.gr/2025/09/21/dying-in-asia-minor-the-unknown-story-of-the-greeks-captured-by-the-turks-in-1922/ belongs to ProtoThema English .