[1] The fire was started and organized by the retreating Hellenic Army[2][4][6] during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, and as a result 90 percent of the buildings in the town were destroyed.

[7][8] The number of victims in the town and adjacent region was estimated to be several thousand by US Consul James Loder Park.

[3][5] Manisa is a historic town in Western Anatolia beneath the north side of Mount Sipylus that became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.

In accordance with this plan, Greek forces (with Allied support) landed in Smyrna on 15 May 1919 and the town was occupied on 26 May without armed opposition.

[16] The Turkish sources claim that the local Turks and Muslims were ordered to stay in their houses,[3] which most did until the day the fire was started.

The burning of the town was carefully managed by the Greek army,[4] and fires were started at multiple places by specially organized groups.

"[18]This witness testimony is also verified with the testimony of General Fahrettin Altay, the commander of the 5th Cavalry Army Corps, the Army Corps to save the remaining buildings and people of Manisa from fire on 8 September:[19] On the night of SEPTEMBER 7, we saw from afar with sadness that MANISA was burned and when we arrived there on September 8th, the people of Manisa, who fled from the fire to the mountains, came down from the mountains in heaps and began to hug us among the ashes.

I gave the order to "ADVANCE TO IZMIR WITH HASTE the next morning".The town is believed to have lost many buildings and objects of historical significance, but a small area around the two imperial Ottoman mosques was saved from destruction.

[3] The Turkish author Halide Edip saw the town after the fire, as did Henry Franklin-Bouillon, the French government representative, who declared that out of 11,000 houses in the city of Magnesia (Manisa) only 1,000 remained.

[20] Patrick Kinross wrote, "Out of the eighteen thousand buildings in the historic holy city of Manisa, only five hundred remained.

[3]During the Lausanne negotiations the Turkish delegation stated that 9,084 buildings in the Sanjak of Manisa, outside the city, town centres were burned by the Greek Army.

[21] Loder Park, who toured much of the devastated area immediately after the Greek evacuation, described the situation he had seen as follows:[4] Manisa ... almost completely wiped out by fire ... 10,300 houses, 15 mosques, 2 baths, 2,278 shops, 19 hotels, 26 villas ... [destroyed]...""1.

Without complete figures, which were impossible to obtain, it may safely be surmised that 'atrocities' committed by retiring Greeks numbered well into thousands in the four cities under consideration.

[22] The Greek retreat was accompanied by looting and other people lost their possessions in the fires[23] and lived for some time among the ruins of their homes or crowded together in the surviving buildings.

[25] The Turkish poet İlhan Berk was a small child living in the Deveciler neighborhood at the time of the fire and fled to the mountains with his family.

[3] He later wrote Manisa ve Yöresinde İşgal Acıları, a book about the Greek occupation and the fire.