Phocaea 1914

A few weeks before the beginning of WWI a series of violent attacks took place in hundreds of towns and villages along the Aegean coast of Turkey, in what was then the Ottoman Empire.

The perpetrators were gangs of irregular bandits armed with government-issued Martini rifles.

Their targets were the Greek Orthodox citizens of the Empire.

Among the towns sacked were the ports of Old Phocaea and New Phocaea. Their entire Greek population fled as refugees.

They came back five years later, when the Ottomans were defeated in World War I and the Kingdom of Greece was sent to occupy a chunk of Western Turkey.

But the Turks revolted. And after a bloody three-year-war against Greece, they drove Greek troops out of the Empire and, along with them, 1.8 million Ottoman Greek subjects abandoned their homes for the second time or died during the war.

Today there’s a little more than 2000 Greeks left in Turkey. Most former majority-Greek towns have a very vague sense of their once multicultural, multi-religious past.

The refugees who came to Greece built thousands of communities all over the country. Two of them were named, tellingly, Old and New Phocaea (Palaia and Nea Fokaia).

This documentary is about how it all began in Phocaea, back in June 1914. And about how people –Greeks and Turks– remember these events and try to heal the transgenerational wounds they created.

PHOCAEA 1914

An interactive documentary about the 1914 forced displacement of the Greek population of Phocaea,
a port town on the Aegean coast of the late Ottoman Empire.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Find out what happened and why, and locate the events within a larger historical timeline.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Hear historians speak of the constant wars, violent ethnic rivalries, boycott policies, and secret societies that characterized the late Ottoman Empire.

THE PAST

Access testimonies from visitors and residents of Phocaea and surrounding villages, who were eye-witnesses to the events of June 1914.

THE PRESENT

Access recent interviews with the descendants of Greek Phocaean refugees in Greece, as well as Turkish residents of Eski and Yeni Foça, today.

RESEARCH

Listen to featured historians speak about oral history, trauma, memory, and national narratives; and find more about their own research in archives and around the world.

You have moved to the Present

You have moved to Research

You have moved to

Historical Background

You have moved to

What Happened?

You have moved to the Past

You have moved to Eski Foça

You have moved to Yeni Foça

WHAT HAPPENED?

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

THE PAST

THE PRESENT

RESEARCH