Deportations of Greeks in Asia Minor

The Scotsman, May 23rd 1917, page 8.

DEPORTATIONS OF GREEKS IN ASIA MINOR
[FROM THE PRESS ASSOCIATION SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT]
SALONIKA, May 21.- - An official telegram from Samos received by the Greek Provisional Government states that information supplied by Greek refugees from Asia Minor, who have arrived in the islands, show that the deportations of Greek inhabitants on the coast of the mainland have been carried out in a manner even more inhuman than the Belgian deportations. The flourishing town of Aivali was surrounded by Bashi Bazuks under the command of German and Turkish officers, who threatened the townsfolk with massacre in the event of their disobeying orders. All the men were arrested and beaten and imprisoned in military depots, while the women and children were taken to the outskirts of the town, subjected to the worst treatment, and subsequently forced to march for 24 hours to a railway station. From there some were taken to the interior by railway. Three hundred Hellenic subjects at Aivali, who, owing to the intervention of the Greek Royalist Consul, were allowed to remain in the town, preferred to share the fate of their compatriots under Turkish subjection rather than remain among the Turkish irregulars.
The wholesale persecution of Greeks, which began in 1914, has thus continued, accompanied by all kinds of horrors. The news of these tragic events has produced a most painful impression in Greek Liberal circles, which attribute them to the fatal policy pursued by the Royalist Government in Athens, which on two occasions declined to participate in any action against Turkey for the liberation of Greeks under Turkish rule.