September 1922. The Greek army that marched deep into Anatolia has broken and is running for the sea. Turkish cavalry ride into Smyrna. Days later fire takes the Armenian and Greek quarters, and a vast crowd is pressed against the waterfront with the flames behind it and Allied warships in the harbour, watching.
Why then
The Ottoman Empire lost the war and signed most of itself away at Sèvres in 1920. Greece, encouraged by Lloyd George, landed at Smyrna in 1919, dreaming of a greater Greece. Mustafa Kemal built a new army and a new state in Ankara around refusing that treaty.
What they wanted
Kemal wants an Anatolia for Turks, ruled from Ankara. Athens claims the Ionian coast, Greek since Homer's day. London, which encouraged Athens, now wants out. The people on the quay need a boat.
What changed
At Lausanne in 1923 the victors of 1918 recognise a Turkish state, and Greece and Turkey agree to exchange their minorities by religion: some 1.2 million Orthodox Christians out of Turkey, some 400,000 Muslims out of Greece. Diplomats sign it as a solution. Others will copy it.
Still argued
Who set the fire is still argued in Athens and Ankara; most independent accounts point to Turkish troops. Whether the exchange was a crime or a cruel peace is the deeper argument.