Evacuation of Ayvalik

The deportation was organized by Imperial German Army General and chief military adviser to the Ottoman Empire, Liman von Sanders, and included death marches, looting, torture and massacre against the local civilian population.

[2] Persecution was intensified in 1914, when a total of about 154,000 ethnic Greeks living in the western part of the Ottoman Empire lost their homes.

With the outbreak of World War I and the participation of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers persecution against the local Greek element took a more violent and systematic form and affected a more extensive area, including also Pontus in northern Anatolia.

As soon he visited Ayvalik, von Sanders wondered out loud to the Ottoman officials:[8] Couldn't we just throw these infidels into the sea?Though there was some evidence that specific individuals were spying for the Triple Entente it was decided that the entire community should be deported.

[12] Moreover, the deportations were accompanied by looting and destruction of Greek churches, schools, hospitals and dwellings in the region as well as in nearby Bergama and Dikili.

The German Empire was afraid that such an operation would trigger the entry of Greece (then a neutral country) into World War I on the Allied side.

[16] During 1919–1922, when the region came temporarily under Greek control as part of the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres, only half of Ayvalik's initial population returned.