Antonis Kyriakakis: My need to research the Asia Minor Campaign has its roots in today

The Asia Minor Campaign is a two-plus year study of soldiers’ diaries. The world of calendars is a rich and unexplored treasure. Reading them, I entered directly into the momentum, the momentum of the historical moment͘ and that was what I was looking for. To understand who these people are and why they came all the way to Ankara fighting. And most importantly how they felt.

My need to research the Asia Minor Campaign has its roots in the present day. Why does this country today obstinately insist on the same pathologies of so many years? Why after 3 memoranda and so many sacrifices has absolutely nothing changed in my country? In response to these questions I started reading the history of Greece to understand who I am today and that’s how I came across the Asia Minor campaign and the diaries of the soldiers.

You see I’m referring to campaign not disaster, which is etched into the collective subconscious. The choice of disaster as a “headline” above the Asia Minor issue is not at all accidental. It’s a victimization option that we’ve been indoctrinated with almost forever. But the story is not exactly like that. Greece started the Asia Minor Campaign starting from Smyrna and reaching almost as far as Ankara. An incredible advance where the Hellenism of Asia Minor welcomed with incredible enthusiasm. The soldiers write Dionysian scenes in their diaries. With people dancing in the streets. Laying carpets for them to walk on, showering them with flowers, writing them poems, marrying them. For example, Misailidis mentions about Aidini in 1919:

“Entire flocks were groaning in the suvlan. And all the ovens baked the soldiers’ bread and sweets. All the houses open, with laid tables. Homeric contests between the inhabitants of Aydinium, who will host more. The barracks were flooded with flowers. When I asked a young lady who found so many flowers, she replied:

-Two years ago, when General Iman came here, the Turks ordered us to pave the streets with flowers. We did it with deep pain. We knew how where Lyman passed, grass grew for the Christians, because it preceded all the displacement of the Christians. And we cut our flowers and paved the streets for the black German-Turkish general to pass, and for us to pass him too, perhaps chased and exiled. Since then we replanted our flowers for today. If a frost happened to burn them, we would cut and style our hair, so that the Greek army, the liberator, would pass through.”

The Greeks have many victories on the battlefields a fact that few know about. I personally think that this concealment of the truth has a social impact on today. Because the winner of a war sometimes means the conqueror of the region. And who imagines a Greek conqueror, occupier? And yet:

“YOU DECLARE. Proclaiming Martial Law from the moment of the Occupation, it becomes known to the citizens that all shops will be closed in each case until further notice from 7 p.m. o’clock, the citizens will withdraw to their homes at 9 p.m. Anyone roaming beyond this time will be arrested by the patrols. Magnesia May 12/25, 1919 The Commander of the Army of Occupation Lt. Col. K. TSAKALOS”

And as one can imagine, every occupying army has its black pages. The Greek army has been accused of war crimes in this war. To Prince Andreas, the soldiers say in the diaries, that they gave him the nickname “Capsule Hut” because he did not leave a house that he did not burn down. Facts of course that we will never read in school books. Why; I am also looking for this answer.

So for me the show is a document that by carving it we discovered a very interesting dramaturgy. Triumph – Stagnation – Destruction. Through these 3 sections we see the course of 4 brotherly friends. The disembarkation in Smyrna, the Greek victories and the dreamy receptions of the Greek army from the villages of Asia Minor will make them feel like mythical heroes. But history will slowly change, since political and economic developments will negatively affect Greece on the battlefield as well. The fall of Venizelos, the change of almost all the officers in the middle of the campaign by the new Greek government, the first victories which look like defeats, with the trenches swallowing up thousands of their countrymen, will completely change the course of the campaign. They will be hungry, they will be thirsty, they will live the national division within their camp, they will betray and be betrayed, while Greece is in the absolute economic and political impasse. Finally they will witness the horrific disorderly retreat and the dream will turn into a nightmare. Through the soldiers who take part in the Asia Minor campaign, we follow the psychograph of Greece in 1922. An anti-war project that aims to shed light on the pathologies of Greek society that have remained firmly the same for 100 years!

Read also:

“The Dream of Ionia, The Asia Minor Campaign through the Diaries of Soldiers”, by Antonis Kyriakakis at the Choros Theater