Snapshots of Life in Old İzmir with 100 Photographs
ON THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF İZMİR’S LIBERATION
After the Ottomans surrendered at the end of World War I and signed the Armistice of Mudros on October 31, 1918, Greek forces occupied İzmir on May 15, 1919. The Turkish Army under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, took İzmir back on September 9, 1922, after a two-year war, followed by a fire which destroyed half the city. The fire was the end of an era. In the years following the
declaration of the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923, “Cosmopolitan Smyrna” destroyed by the fire has risen from its ashes as “Turkish İzmir”. The war that finished the most cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire also
created the modern state of Türkiye out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire. Reconstruction of İzmir after the Great Fire of September 1922 was an important part of the nation-building process after the War of Independence.
İzmir now is a completely different city than what it was a century ago. The İzmir of 1922 has vanished entirely and another has taken its place. As we tell the story of old İzmir, we seek our past in our own memory, but we do forget, indeed. As Necati Cumalı describes in his poem “İthaf “ (dedication):
“The tears, the wishes for happiness,
now secret Stories of centuries told to us are secret
Whatever known as Old İzmir by one and all
is the broken-down narrative the elders tell.”
https://www.turkishnews.com/tr/content/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/fotograflarla-izmir.pdf
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