At the Peace Conference which was held in 1919 Greece put forward a claim to the Smyrna area, assigned it was understood to Italy by the Agreement of St. Jean de Maurienne (April 17, I9I7)—an agreement which remained unratified owing to Russian objections. M. Venizelos argued on the Greek claim before the Council of Ten on Feb. 1919. The final decision of the Council of Three, authorising the Greeks to occupy Smyrna, was taken apparently without the knowledge of the Italians, who had withdrawn temporarily from the conference, or of the American expert advisers to President Wilson. The occupation was in theory an Allied occupation, but was generally taken to mean acceptance of the Greek claims. Greek troops occupied Smyrna on May 15, 1919. The first entry of the Greeks was marked by atrocities against the Turkish population.
Under the Treaty of Sevres, Aug. so, 192o, it was stipulated that the town of Smyrna and the Ionian hinterland were to be under Greek administration for five years. The Greek ,claim was based on ethnographical grounds. Reliable racial statistics for the area were not available, but an American computation of gave the total population as 1,057,000, including 509,000 Turks, 470,000 Greeks and 78,000 others.
Turkish forces under Mustafa Kemal and the Greeks were soon engaged in hostilities, in which at first the Greeks were successful.
Mustafa Kemal, however, continued to consolidate his position in Turkey, while the fall of Venizelos (Nov. 192o) and the return of King Constantine to Greece (see GREECE) weakened the sym pathies which Greece had enjoyed in Great Britain, her chief sup porter among the Allied Powers. Negotiations at the London and Paris conferences (1921 and 1922) having failed, the Kemalists drove back the Greek army, which with many thousands of Greek refugees from all parts of Asia Minor embarked hurriedly and left Smyrna, which the Turks entered on Sept. 9, 1922. Under the Treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923) Smyrna and the surrounding zone reverted under full Turkish sovereignty.
Meanwhile, the town and district had suffered frightfully under the atrocities of both belligerents, and these sufferings culminated when, a few days after the Turkish entry into the town, fire broke out in the Armenian quarter. Only the wretched Turkish quarter on Mount Pagus was untouched, and more than three fifths of the city was destroyed, including all the banks, business houses and consulates in the European quarter on the quay. The loss of life was impossible to compute. In April 1928 Smyrna again suffered serious damage by earthquake.