Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the Greek Army occupied Izmir, but the Greek expedition towards central Anatolia turned into a disaster for both that country and for the local Greeks of Turkey. The Turkish Army retook possession of Izmir on 9 September 1922, effectively ending the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) in the field. Part of the Greek population of the city was forced to seek refuge in the nearby Greek islands together with the departing Greek troops, while the rest remained following the ensuing 1923 agreement for the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, which was a part of the Lausanne Treaty. The war, and especially its events specific to Izmir, like the fire that broke out on 13 September 1922, one of the greatest disasters Izmir ever experienced, influence the psyches of the two nations to this day with claim and counter-claim as to how actual events unfurled. The Greeks accuse the Turks of a number of atrocities against the Greek and Armenian communities in Izmir, following their recapture of the city on 9 September 1922 and the slaughter of as many as 100,000 Armenian and Greek Christians throughout the city, an accusation the Turks reject.