Massacres during the Greek War of Independence Massacres during the Greek War of Independence There were numerous massacres during the Greek War of Independence perpetrated by both the Ottoman forces and the Greek revolutionaries. The war was characterized by a lack of respect for civilian life and prisoners of war on both sides of the conflict. Massacres of Greeks took place especially in Ionia, Crete, Constantinople, Macedonia and the Aegean islands, while Turkish, Albanian, Greeks, and Jewish populations identified with the Ottomans inhabiting the Peloponnese suffered massacres particularly where Greek forces were dominant. Settled Greek communities in the Aegean, Crete, Central and Southern Greece were wiped out,
Massacres during the Greek War of Independence the islands in the Aegean Sea, in the early years of the Greek revolt. According to historian William St. clair, one of the aims of the Greek revolutionaries was to embroil as many Greek communities as possible in their struggle. Their technique was ""to engineer some atrocity against the local Turkish population"", so that these different Greek communities would have to ally themselves with the revolutionaries fearing a retaliation from the Ottomans. In such a case, in March 1821, Greeks from the Samos island had landed in the Island Chios and attacked the Muslim population living in that island. The