SORROWFUL SHORES: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912-1923

By Ryan Gingeras

During the decade leading up to the rise of Mustafa Kemal, virtually every town and village throughout Anatolia was wracked by inter-communal violence. Looking closely at a corner of territory immediately south of the old Ottoman capital of Istanbul, Gingeras traces the evolution of various communities of native Christians and immigrant Muslims against the backdrop of the Balkan Wars, the First World War, the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish War of Independence, and the Greek occupation of the region. Gingeras demonstrates how violence was organized at the local level. Arguing against the prevailing view of the conflict as a war between monolithic ethnic groups driven by fanaticism and ancient hatreds, he reveals instead the culpability of several competing states in successive waves of bloodshed.

Oxford University Press (2009)