Greek genocide

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Greek genocide
Part of
Eastern Thrace
Attack type
Deportation, genocide, death marches, others
Deaths300,000–900,000[2][3] (see casualties section below)
PerpetratorsOttoman Empire, Turkish National Movement
TrialsOttoman Special Military Tribunal
MotiveAnti-Greek sentiment, Turkification, Anti-Eastern Orthodox sentiment
Greek genocide
Background
Malta Tribunals

The Greek genocide

Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments.[15] Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period.[16] Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece (adding over a quarter to the prior population of Greece).[17] Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire
.

By late 1922, most of the Greeks of

Assyrians and Armenians, and some scholars and organizations have recognized these events as part of the same genocidal policy.[19][7][20][6][21]

The Allies of World War I condemned the Ottoman government–sponsored massacres. In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution recognising the Ottoman campaign against its Christian minorities, including the Greeks, as genocide.[7] Some other organisations have also passed resolutions recognising the Ottoman campaign against these Christian minorities as genocide, as have the national legislatures of Greece,[22][23][5] Cyprus,[24] the United States,[25][26][27][28] Sweden,[29][30] Armenia,[31] the Netherlands,[32][33] Germany,[34][35] Austria[36][37] and the Czech Republic.[38][39][40]

Background

At the outbreak of World War I, Asia Minor was ethnically diverse, its population included Turks and Azeris, as well as groups that had inhabited the region prior to the Ottoman conquest, including Pontic Greeks, Caucasus Greeks, Cappadocian Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Zazas, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians, Jews, and Laz people.

Among the causes of the Turkish campaign against the Greek-speaking Christian population was a fear that they would welcome liberation by the Ottoman Empire's enemies, and a belief among some Turks that to form a modern country in the era of nationalism it was necessary to purge from their territories all minorities who could threaten the integrity of an ethnically based Turkish nation.[41][42][page needed]

According to a German military attaché, the Ottoman minister of war Ismail Enver had declared in October 1915 that he wanted to "solve the Greek problem during the war … in the same way he believe[d] he solved the Armenian problem", referring to the Armenian genocide.[43] Germany and the Ottoman Empire were allies immediately before, and during World War I. By 31 January 1917, the Chancellor of Germany Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, reported that:

The indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The strategy implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them to death, hunger, and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks.

— Chancellor of Germany in 1917, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century[44]

Origin of the Greek minority

Areas with Anatolian Greeks in 1910. Demotic Greek speakers in yellow. Pontic Greek in orange. Cappadocian Greek in green with individual towns indicated.[45] Shaded regions do not indicate that Greek-speakers were a majority.

The Greek presence in

Sampsounta, Sinope and Heraclea Pontica.[48]

During the

Greek Orthodox Christianity after the East–West Schism with the Catholics in 1054) and spoke Greek as their first language.[citation needed
]

The resultant Greek culture in Asia Minor flourished during a millennium of rule (4th century – 15th century AD) under the mainly Greek-speaking

Basilios Bessarion
(1403–1472).

Thus, when the

Turkic peoples began their late medieval conquest of Asia Minor, Byzantine Greek citizens were the largest group of inhabitants there.[48] Even after the Turkic conquests of the interior, the mountainous Black Sea coast of Asia Minor remained the heart of a populous Greek Christian state, the Empire of Trebizond, until its eventual conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1461, a year after the Ottomans conquered the area of Europe which is now the Greek mainland. Over the next four centuries the Greek natives of Asia Minor gradually became a minority in these lands under the now dominant Turkic culture.[52]

Events

Balkan Wars to World War I

Total population figures for the Ottoman Greeks of Anatolia[53]
Greek census (1910–1912) Ottoman census (1914) Soteriades (1918)[54]
Hüdavendigâr
(Prousa)
262,319 184,424 278,421
Konya
(Ikonio)
74,539 65,054 66,895
Trabzon
(Trebizond)
298,183 260,313 353,533
Ankara
(Angora)
85,242 77,530 66,194
Aydin
495,936 319,079 622,810
Kastamonu
24,349 26,104 24,937
Sivas
74,632 75,324 99,376
İzmit (Nicomedia) 52,742 40,048 73,134
Biga (Dardanelles) 31,165 8,541 32,830
Total 1,399,107 1,056,357 1,618,130

Beginning in the spring of 1913, the Ottomans implemented a programme of expulsions and forcible migrations, focusing on Greeks of the Aegean region and eastern Thrace, whose presence in these areas was deemed a threat to national security.

Talat Pasha headed a visit in Thrace in April 1914 and later in the Aegean to investigate reports and try to soothe bilateral tension with Greece. While claiming that he had no involvement or knowledge of these events, Talat met with Kuşçubaşı Eşref, head of the "cleansing" operation in the Aegean littoral, during his tour and advised him to be cautious not to be "visible".[58] Also, after 1913 there were organized boycotts against the Greeks, initiated by the Ottoman Interior Ministry who asked the empire's provinces to start them.[59] The British ambassador in Constantinople at that time described the boycott as a direct result of the Committee of Union and Progress and that "Committee emissaries are everywhere instigating the people", adding that every person, Greek or Muslim, who entered a non-Muslim shop was beaten.[60]

One of the worst attacks of this campaign took place in

Labour Battalions in which hundreds of thousands died.[66] These conscripts, after being sent hundreds of miles into the interior of Anatolia, were employed in road-making, building, tunnel excavating and other field work; but their numbers were heavily reduced through privations and ill-treatment and through outright massacre by their Ottoman guards.[67]

Phocaea in flames, during the massacre perpetrated by Turkish irregulars in June 1914

Following similar accords made with Bulgaria and Serbia, the Ottoman Empire signed a small voluntary population exchange agreement with Greece on 14 November 1913.[68] Another such agreement was signed 1 July 1914 for the exchange of some "Turks" (that is, Muslims) of Greece for some Greeks of Aydin and Western Thrace, after the Ottomans had forced these Greeks from their homes in response to the Greek annexation of several islands.[69][70] The swap was never completed due to the eruption of World War I.[69] While discussions for population exchanges were still conducted, Special Organization units attacked Greek villages forcing their inhabitants to abandon their homes for Greece, being replaced with Muslim refugees.[71]

The forceful expulsion of Christians of western Anatolia, especially Ottoman Greeks, has many similarities with

Nazım Bey and Mehmed Reshid, played a role; Special Organization units and labour battalions were involved; and a dual plan was implemented combining unofficial violence and the cover of state population policy.[72] This policy of persecution and ethnic cleansing was expanded to other parts of the Ottoman Empire, including Greek communities in Pontus, Cappadocia, and Cilicia.[73]

World War I

Hellenism in Near East during and after World War I, showing some of the areas (Western Anatolia and Eastern Thrace) where the Greek population was concentrated. The Pontic region is not shown.

According to a newspaper of the time, in November 1914, Turkish troops destroyed Christian properties and murdered several Christians at

Turkish-Russian front.[75] This change of policy was due to a German demand for the persecution of Ottoman Greeks to stop, after Eleftherios Venizelos had made this a condition of Greece's neutrality when speaking to the German ambassador in Athens. Venizelos also threatened to undertake a similar campaign against Muslims that were living in Greece if Ottoman policy did not change.[76] While the Ottoman government tried to implement this change in policy, it was unsuccessful and attacks, even murders, continued to occur unpunished by local officials in the provinces, despite repeated instructions in cables sent from the central administration.[77] Arbitrary violence and extortion of money intensified later, providing ammunition for the Venizelists arguing that Greece should join the Entente.[78]

In July 1915 the Greek chargé d'affaires claimed that the deportations "can not be any other issue than an annihilation war against the Greek nation in Turkey and as measures hereof they have been implementing forced conversions to Islam, in obvious aim to, that if after the end of the war there again would be a question of European intervention for the protection of the Christians, there will be as few of them left as possible."[79] According to George W. Rendel of the British Foreign Office, by 1918 "over 500,000 Greeks were deported of whom comparatively few survived".[80] In his memoirs, the United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire between 1913 and 1916 wrote "Everywhere the Greeks were gathered in groups and, under the so-called protection of Turkish gendarmes, they were transported, the larger part on foot, into the interior. Just how many were scattered in this fashion is not definitely known, the estimates varying anywhere from 200,000 up to 1,000,000."[81]

Despite the shift of policy, the practice of evacuating Greek settlements and relocating the inhabitants was continued, albeit on a limited scale. Relocation was targeted at specific regions that were considered militarily vulnerable, not the whole of the Greek population. As a 1919 Patriarchate account records, the evacuation of many villages was accompanied with looting and murders, while many died as a result of not having been given the time to make the necessary provisions or of being relocated to uninhabitable places.[82]

Lincoln Daily Star
, 19 October 1917

State policy towards Ottoman Greeks changed again in the fall of 1916. With Entente forces occupying

death marches, looting, torture and massacre against the civilian population.[86] Germanos Karavangelis, the bishop of Samsun, reported to the Patriarchate that thirty thousands had been deported to the Ankara region and the convoys of the deportees had been attacked, with many being killed. Talat Pasha ordered an investigation for the looting and destruction of Greek villages by bandits.[87] Later in 1917 instructions were sent to authorize military officials with the control of the operation and to broaden its scope, now including persons from cities in the coastal region. However, in certain areas Greek populations remained undeported.[88]

Greek deportees were sent to live in Greek villages in the inner provinces or, in some case, villages where Armenians were living before being deported. Greek villages evacuated during the war due to military concerns were then resettled with Muslim immigrants and refugees.[89] According to cables sent to the provinces during this time, abandoned movable and non-movable Greek property was not to be liquidated, as that of the Armenians, but "preserved".[90]

On 14 January 1917 Cossva Anckarsvärd, Sweden's Ambassador to Constantinople, sent a dispatch regarding the decision to deport the Ottoman Greeks:

What above all appears as an unnecessary cruelty is that the deportation is not limited to the men alone, but is extended likewise to women and children. This is supposedly done in order to much easier be able to confiscate the property of the deported.[91]

According to Rendel, atrocities such as

Rafet Bey was active in the genocide of the Greeks and in November 1916, Austrian consul in Samsun, Kwiatkowski, reported that he said to him "We must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians ... today I sent squads to the interior to kill every Greek on sight".[92]

Pontic Greeks responded by forming insurgent groups, which carried weapons salvaged from the battlefields of the Caucasus Campaign of World War I or directly supplied by the Russian army. In 1920, the insurgents reached their peak in regard to manpower numbering 18,000 men.

Ozakom delegates agreed to create a unified army composed of ethnically homogeneous units, Greeks were allotted a division consisting of three regiments. The Greek Caucasus Division was thus formed out of ethnic Greeks serving in Russian units stationed in the Caucasus and raw recruits from among the local population including former insurgents.[94] The division took part in numerous engagements against the Ottoman army as well as Muslim and Armenian irregulars, safeguarding the withdrawal of Greek refugees into the Russian held Caucasus, before being disbanded in the aftermath of the Treaty of Poti.[95]

Greco-Turkish War

Kayakoy (Livisi), southwestern Anatolia, once a Greek-inhabited settlement.[96] According to local tradition, Muslims refused to repopulate the place because "it was infested with the ghosts of Livisians massacred in 1915".[97]

After the Ottoman Empire capitulated on 30 October 1918, it came under the de jure control of the victorious Entente Powers. However, the latter failed to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice,

Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk).[98]

In an October 1920 report a British officer describes the aftermath of the massacres at İznik in north-western Anatolia in which he estimated that at least 100 decomposed mutilated bodies of men, women and children were present in and around a large cave about 300 yards outside the city walls.[80]

The systematic massacre and deportation of Greeks in Asia Minor, a program which had come into effect in 1914, was a precursor to the atrocities perpetrated by both the Greek and Turkish armies during the

Norman M. Naimark "more realistic estimates range between 10,000 to 15,000" for the casualties of the Great Fire of Smyrna. Some 150,000 to 200,000 Greeks were expelled after the fire, while about 30,000 able-bodied Greek and Armenian men were deported to the interior of Asia Minor, most of whom were executed on the way or died under brutal conditions.[104] George W. Rendel of the British Foreign Office noted the massacres and deportations of Greeks during the Greco-Turkish War.[80] According to estimates by Rudolph Rummel, between 213,000 and 368,000 Anatolian Greeks were killed between 1919 and 1922.[101] There were also massacres of Turks carried out by the Hellenic troops during the occupation of western Anatolia from May 1919 to September 1922.[102]

For the massacres that occurred during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, British historian Arnold J. Toynbee wrote that it was the Greek landings that created the Turkish National Movement led by Mustafa Kemal:[105] "The Greeks of 'Pontus' and the Turks of the Greek occupied territories, were in some degree victims of Mr. Venizelos's and Mr. Lloyd George's original miscalculations at Paris."

Relief efforts

Red Cross
in Smyrna. Translation: "Elderly and children were not spared".

In 1917 a relief organization by the name of the

Near East Relief in distributing aid to Ottoman Greeks in Thrace and Asia Minor. The organisation disbanded in the summer of 1921 but Greek relief work was continued by other aid organisations.[106]

Contemporary accounts

German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, as well as the 1922 memorandum compiled by British diplomat

Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim and Richard von Kühlmann, the German vice-consul in Samsun Kuchhoff, Austria's ambassador Pallavicini and Samsun consul Ernst von Kwiatkowski, and the Italian unofficial agent in Angora Signor Tuozzi. Other quotes are from clergymen and activists, including the German missionary Johannes Lepsius, and Stanley Hopkins of the Near East Relief. Germany and Austria-Hungary were allied to the Ottoman Empire in World War I.[clarification needed
]

Smyrna, 1922. Translation: "No children were allowed to live".

The accounts describe systematic massacres, rapes and burnings of Greek villages, and attribute intent to Ottoman officials, including the Ottoman Prime Minister

Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha.[80][107]

Additionally,

villages, destruction of Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries, drafts for "Labor Brigades", looting, terrorism and other "atrocities" for Greek, Armenian and also for British and American citizens and government officials.[108][109] Australian press also had some coverage of the events.[110]

United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, accused the "Turkish government" of a campaign of "outrageous terrorizing, cruel torturing, driving of women into harems, debauchery of innocent girls, the sale of many of them at 80 cents each, the murdering of hundreds of thousands and the deportation to and starvation in the desert of other hundreds of thousands, [and] the destruction of hundreds of villages and many cities", all part of "the willful execution" of a "scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek and Syrian Christians of Turkey".[111] However, months prior to the First World War, 100,000 Greeks were deported to Greek islands or the interior which Morgenthau stated, "for the larger part these were bona-fide deportations; that is, the Greek inhabitants were actually removed to new places and were not subjected to wholesale massacre. It was probably the reason that the civilized world did not protest against these deportations".[112]

US Consul-General George Horton, whose account has been criticised by scholars as anti-Turkish,[113][114][115] claimed, "One of the cleverest statements circulated by the Turkish propagandists is to the effect that the massacred Christians were as bad as their executioners, that it was '50–50'." On this issue he comments: "Had the Greeks, after the massacres in the Pontus and at Smyrna, massacred all the Turks in Greece, the record would have been 50–50—almost." As an eye-witness, he also praises Greeks for their "conduct ... toward the thousands of Turks residing in Greece, while the ferocious massacres were going on", which, according to his opinion, was "one of the most inspiring and beautiful chapters in all that country's history".[116][117]

Even the US admiral Arthur L. Bristol, who advised foreign journalists to avoid publishing about the persecution of the Greeks, in his conversations and letters stated the harsh conditions for Armenians and Greeks. He even tried to stop the deportation of the Greeks from Samsun.[118]

Casualties

Fire of Smyrna. According to different estimates some 10.000,[119] to 100,000[103]
Greeks and Armenians were killed in the fire and accompanying massacres.
Smyrna citizens trying to reach the Allied ships during the Smyrna fire, 1922. The photo had been taken from the launch boat of a US battleship.

According to Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi in The Thirty-Year Genocide, as a result of Ottoman and Turkish state policy, "several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks had died. Either they were murdered outright or were the intentional victims of hunger, disease, and exposure."[120]

For the whole of the period between 1914 and 1922 and for the whole of Anatolia, there are academic estimates of death toll ranging from 289,000 to 750,000. The figure of 750,000 is suggested by political scientist

Rudolph Rummel compiled various figures from several studies to estimate lower and higher bounds for the death toll between 1914 and 1923. He estimates that 84,000 Greeks were exterminated from 1914 to 1918, and 264,000 from 1919 to 1922. The total number reaching 347,000.[122] Historian Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou writes that "loss of life among Anatolian Greeks during the WWI period and its aftermath was approximately 735,370".[123] Erik Sjöberg states that "[a]ctivists tend to inflate the overall total of Ottoman Greek deaths" over what he considers "the cautious estimates between 300,000 to 700,000".[2]

Some contemporary sources claimed different death tolls. The Greek government collected figures together with the Patriarchate to claim that a total of one million people were massacred.

Aydin, criticised the ethnic cleansing of the previous government and reported that 550,000 Greeks had been killed in the coastal regions of Anatolia (including the Black Sea coast) and Aegean Islands during the deportations.[126]

According to various sources the Greek death toll in the Pontus region of Anatolia ranges from 300,000 to 360,000.[127] Merrill D. Peterson cites the death toll of 360,000 for the Greeks of Pontus.[128] According to George K. Valavanis, "The loss of human life among the Pontian Greeks, since the Great War (World War I) until March 1924, can be estimated at 353,000, as a result of murders, hangings, and from punishment, disease, and other hardships."[129] Valavanis derived this figure from the 1922 record of the Central Pontian Council in Athens based on the Black Book of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, to which he adds "50,000 new martyrs", which "came to be included in the register by spring 1924".[130]

Aftermath

Article 142 of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, prepared after the first World War, called the wartime Turkish regime "terrorist" and contained provisions "to repair so far as possible the wrongs inflicted on individuals in the course of the massacres perpetrated in Turkey during the war."[131] The Treaty of Sèvres was never ratified by the Turkish government and ultimately was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne. That treaty was accompanied by a "Declaration of Amnesty", without containing any provision in respect to punishment of war crimes.[132]

In 1923, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey resulted in a near-complete ending of the Greek ethnic presence in Turkey and a similar ending of the Turkish ethnic presence in much of Greece. According to the Greek census of 1928, 1,104,216 Ottoman Greeks had reached Greece.[133] It is impossible to know exactly how many Greek inhabitants of Turkey died between 1914 and 1923, and how many ethnic Greeks of Anatolia were expelled to Greece or fled to the Soviet Union.[134] Some of the survivors and expelled took refuge in the neighboring Russian Empire (later, Soviet Union).[citation needed] Similar plans for a population exchange had been negotiated earlier, in 1913–1914, between Ottoman and Greek officials during the first stage of the Greek genocide but had been interrupted by the onset of World War I.[18][135]

In December 1924,

Mudania to Marseille, which might be the remains of massacred victims in Asia Minor.[136]

In 1955, the

Istanbul Pogrom caused most of the remaining Greek inhabitants of Istanbul to flee the country. Historian Alfred-Maurice de Zayas identifies the pogrom as a crime against humanity and he states that the flight and migration of Greeks afterwards corresponds to the "intent to destroy in whole or in part" criteria of the Genocide Convention.[137]

Genocide recognition

Terminology

Euthymios of Zelon (died in prison and posthumously hanged), Ambrosios
of Moschonisia (buried alive).

The word genocide was coined in the early 1940s, the era of the

Holocaust, by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent. In his writings on genocide, Lemkin is known to have detailed the fate of Greeks in Turkey.[139]
In August 1946 the New York Times reported:

Genocide is no new phenomenon, nor has it been utterly ignored in the past. ... The massacres of Greeks and Armenians by the Turks prompted diplomatic action without punishment. If Professor Lemkin has his way genocide will be established as an international crime...[140]

The 1948

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly
in December 1948 and came into force in January 1951. It includes a legal definition of genocide. Before the creation of the term "genocide", the destruction of the Ottoman Greeks was known by Greeks as "the Massacre" (in Greek: η Σφαγή), "the Great Catastrophe" (η Μεγάλη Καταστροφή), or "the Great Tragedy" (η Μεγάλη Τραγωδία).[141] The Ottoman and Kemalist nationalist massacres of the Greeks in Anatolia, constituted genocide under the initial definition and international criminal application of the term, as in the international criminal tribunals authorized by the United Nations.[142]

Academic discussion

Matthaios Kofidis, former member of the Ottoman Parliament, was among the several notables of Pontus, hanged by an "Ad hoc Court of Turkish Independence" in Amasya, in 1921.[143]

In December 2007 the

Richard Hovannisian and Robert Melson, however stated that "the issue had to be further researched before a resolution was passed."[146]

Manus Midlarsky notes a disjunction between statements of genocidal intent against the Greeks by Ottoman officials and their actions, pointing to the containment of massacres in selected "sensitive" areas and the large numbers of Greek survivors at the end of the war. Because of cultural and political ties of the Ottoman Greeks with European powers, Midlarsky argues, genocide was "not a viable option for the Ottomans in their case."[44] Taner Akçam refers to contemporary accounts noting the difference in government treatment of Ottoman Greeks and Armenians during WW I and concludes that "despite the increasingly severe wartime policies, in particular for the period between late 1916 and the first months of 1917, the government's treatment of the Greeks – although comparable in some ways to the measures against the Armenians – differed in scope, intent, and motivation."[147]

Some historians, including Boris Barth [de], Michael Schwartz [de], and Andrekos Varnava argue that the persecution of Greeks was ethnic cleansing or deportation, but not genocide.[148][10] This is also a position of some Greek mainstream historians;[149][150] according to Aristide Caratzas this is due to a number of factors, "which range from governmental reticence to criticize Turkey to spilling over into the academic world, to ideological currents promoting a diffuse internationalism cultivated by a network of NGOs, often supported by western governments and western interests".[150] Others, such as Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, argue that the "genocidal quality of the murderous campaigns against Greeks" was "obvious".[6] The historians Samuel Totten and Paul R. Bartrop, who specialize on the history of genocides, also call it a genocide; so is Alexander Kitroeff.[150][151] Another scholar who considers it a genocide is Hannibal Travis; he also adds that the widespread attacks by the successive governments of Turkey, on the homes, places of worship, and heritage of minority communities since the 1930s, constitute cultural genocide as well.[142]

Dror Ze'evi and Benny Morris, authors of The Thirty-Year Genocide, write that:[152]

... the story of what happened in Turkey is much broader and deeper [than just the Armenian genocide]. It goes deeper, because it covers not just what occurred during World War I, but a series of giant ethno-religious massacres that lasted from the 1890s through the 1920s and beyond. It is broader, because it was not only Armenians who were persecuted and killed. Along with hundreds of thousands of Armenians ... a similar number of Greeks and Assyrians (or adherents of the Assyrian or Syriac churches) were slaughtered ... By our estimate, over the course of the 30-year period, between 1.5 and 2.5 million Christians from the three religious groups were either murdered or intentionally starved to death, or allowed to die of disease, and millions more were expelled from Turkey and lost everything. In addition, tens of thousands of Christians were forced to convert to Islam, and many thousands of Christian women and girls were raped, either by their Muslim neighbors or by members of the security forces. The Turks even opened markets where Christian girls were sold as sex slaves. These atrocities were committed by three very different, successive regimes: Sultan Abdülhamid II's authoritarian-Islamist regime; the government of the Committee of Union and Progress (the Young Turks) during World War I, under the leadership of Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha; and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's post-war secular nationalist regime.[excessive quote]

Political recognition

Monument in Argos, Greece for the Greek genocide and the Holocaust.

Following an initiative of MPs of the so-called "patriotic" wing of the ruling

Mustafa Kemal landed in Samsun in 1919) a day of commemoration,[22][154] (called Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day[23]) while the 1998 decree affirmed the genocide of Greeks in Asia Minor as a whole and designated 14 September a day of commemoration.[5] These laws were signed by the President of Greece but were not immediately ratified after political interventions. After leftist newspaper I Avgi initiated a campaign against the application of this law, the subject became subject of a political debate. The president of the left-ecologist Synaspismos party Nikos Konstantopoulos and historian Angelos Elefantis,[155] known for his books on the history of Greek communism, were two of the major figures of the political left who expressed their opposition to the decree. However, the non-parliamentary left-wing nationalist[156] intellectual and author George Karabelias bitterly criticized Elefantis and others opposing the recognition of genocide and called them "revisionist historians", accusing the Greek mainstream left of a "distorted ideological evolution". He said that for the Greek left 19 May is a "day of amnesia".[157]

In the late 2000s the Communist Party of Greece adopted the term "Genocide of the Pontic (Greeks)" (Γενοκτονία Ποντίων) in its official newspaper Rizospastis and participates in memorial events.[158][159][160]

The

Republic of Cyprus has also officially called the events "Greek Genocide in Pontus of Asia Minor".[24]

In response to the 1998 law, the Turkish government released a statement which claimed that describing the events as genocide was "without any historical basis". "We condemn and protest this resolution" a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said. "With this resolution the Greek Parliament, which in fact has to apologize to the Turkish people for the large-scale destruction and massacres Greece perpetrated in Anatolia, not only sustains the traditional Greek policy of distorting history, but it also displays that the expansionist Greek mentality is still alive," the statement added.[161]

On 11 March 2010,

Riksdag passed a motion recognising "as an act of genocide the killing of Armenians, Assyrians/Syriacs/Chaldeans and Pontic Greeks in 1915".[162]

On 14 May 2013, the government of New South Wales was submitted a genocide recognition motion by Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Party, which was later passed making it the fourth political entity to recognise the genocide.[163]

In March 2015, the

National Assembly of Armenia unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing both the Greek and Assyrian genocides.[164]

In April 2015, the States General of the Netherlands and the Austrian Parliament passed resolutions recognizing the Greek and Assyrian genocides.[165][166]

Reasons for limited recognition

Desecrated graves in the cemetery of Saint John Prodromos during the Smyrna massacres, September 1922

The United Nations, the European Parliament, and the Council of Europe have not made any related statements. According to Constantine Fotiadis, professor of Modern Greek History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, some of the reasons for the lack of wider recognition and delay in seeking acknowledgement of these events are as follows:[167][168]

  • In contrast to the Treaty of Sèvres, the superseding Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 dealt with these events by making no reference or mention, and thus sealed the end of the Asia Minor Catastrophe.
  • A subsequent peace treaty (Greco-Turkish Treaty of Friendship in June 1930) between Greece and Turkey. Greece made several concessions to settle all open issues between the two countries in return for peace in the region.
  • The
    Military junta
    and the political turmoil in Greece that followed, forced Greece to focus on its survival and other problems rather than seek recognition of these events.
  • The political environment of the Cold War, in which Turkey and Greece were supposed to be allies – facing one common Communist enemy – not adversaries or competitors.

In his book With Intent to Destroy: Reflections on Genocide, Colin Tatz argues that Turkey denies the genocide so as not to jeopardize "its ninety-five-year-old dream of becoming the beacon of democracy in the Near East".[169]

In their book Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society, Elizabeth Burns Coleman and Kevin White present a list of reasons explaining Turkey's inability to admit the genocides committed by the Young Turks, writing:[170]

Turkish denialism of the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians is official, riven, driven, constant, rampant, and increasing each year since the events of 1915 to 1922. It is state-funded, with special departments and units in overseas missions whose sole purpose is to dilute, counter, minimise, trivialise and relativise every reference to the events which encompassed a genocide of Armenians, Pontian Greeks and Assyrian Christians in Asia Minor.

They propose the following reasons for the denial of the genocides by Turkey:[170]

  • A suppression of guilt and shame that a warrior nation, a "beacon of democracy" as it saw itself in 1908 (and since), slaughtered several ethnic populations. Democracies, it is said, don't commit genocide; ergo, Turkey couldn't and didn't do so.
  • A cultural and social ethos of honour, a compelling and compulsive need to remove any blots on the national escutcheon.
  • A chronic fear that admission will lead to massive claims for reparation and restitution.
  • To overcome fears of social fragmentation in a society that is still very much a state in transition.
  • A "logical" belief that because the genocide was committed with impunity, so denial will also meet with neither opposition nor obloquy.
  • An inner knowledge that the juggernaut denial industry has a momentum of its own and can't be stopped even if they wanted it to stop.

Genocide as a model for future crimes

From the early 1920s Nazi Party publications in Germany tended to present Kemal Atatürk as role model under the title "The Führer" (advertisement of their official newspaper pictured)[171]

According to Stefan Ihrig, Kemal's "model" remained active for the

Third Reich until the end of World War II. Adolf Hitler had declared that he considered himself a "student" of Kemal, whom he referred to as his "star in the darkness", while the latter's contribution to the formation of National Socialist ideology is intensely apparent in Nazi literature.[172][173] Kemal and his new Turkey of 1923 constituted the archetype of the "perfect Führer" and of "good national practices" for Nazism.[174] The news media of the Third Reich emphasised the "Turkish model" and continuously praised the "benefits" of ethnic cleansing and genocide.[175] Hitler referred to Kemal as being of Germanic descent.[176]

Hitler's National Socialist Party, from its first steps, had used the methods of the Turkish state as a standard to draw inspiration from. The official Nazi newspaper

Völkisch Observer"), on its February 1921 issue, stressed with admiration in an article titled "The Role Model": "The German nation will one day have no other choice but to resort to Turkish methods as well."[177]

A Nazi publication of 1925 exalted the new Turkish state for its "cleansing" policy, which "threw the Greek element to the sea". The majority of writers of the Third Reich stressed that the double genocide (against Greeks and Armenians) was a prerequisite for the success of the new Turkey, the NSDAP claimed: "Only through the annihilation of the Greek and the Armenian tribes in Anatolia was the creation of a Turkish national state and the formation of an unflawed Turkish body of society within one state possible."[178]

Memorials

Wreaths after a commemoration ceremony in Stuttgart, Germany

Memorials commemorating the plight of Ottoman Greeks have been erected throughout Greece, as well as in a number of other countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and the United States.[179][180]

Literature

The Greek genocide is remembered in a number of modern works.

  • Not Even My Name by Thea Halo is the story of the survival, at age ten, of her mother Sano (Themia) Halo (original name Euthemia "Themia" Barytimidou, Pontic Greek: Ευθυμία Βαρυτιμίδου),[181][182] along the death march during the Greek genocide that annihilated her family. The title refers to Themia being renamed to Sano by an Arabic-speaking family who could not pronounce her Greek name, after they took her in as a servant during the Greek genocide.[183]
  • Amele Taburlari or Amele Taburu) only 23 survived. The title refers to the number assigned to Elias by the Turkish army during the death march. The book was made into a movie called 1922 by Nikos Koundouros in 1978, but was banned in Greece until 1982 because of pressure from the Turkish Foreign Ministry who complained that the film would ruin Greek-Turkish relations.[184][unreliable source?
    ]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^
    S2CID 154870709
    . The genocide was committed by two subsequent and chronologically, ideologically, and organically interrelated and interconnected dictatorial and chauvinist regimes: (1) the regime of the CUP, under the notorious triumvirate of the three pashas (Üç Paşalar), Talât, Enver, and Cemal, and (2) the rebel government at Samsun and Ankara, under the authority of the Grand National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi) and Kemal. Although the process had begun before the Balkan Wars, the final and most decisive period started immediately after WWI and ended with the almost total destruction of the Pontic Greeks
  2. ^ . Activists tend to inflate the overall total of Ottoman Greek deaths, from the cautious estimates between 300,000 to 700,000...
  3. ^ a b Jones 2010, p. 166: "An estimate of the Pontian Greek death toll at all stages of the anti-Christian genocide is about 350,000; for all the Greeks of the Ottoman realm taken together, the toll surely exceeded half a million, and may approach the 900,000 killed that a team of US researchers found in the early postwar period. Most surviving Greeks were expelled to Greece as part of the tumultuous 'population exchanges' that set the seal on a heavily 'Turkified' state."
  4. ^ AINA (2015a); AINA (2015b); Armenpress (2015)
  5. ^ a b c "Καθιέρωση της 14 Σεπτεμβρίου ως ημέρας εθνικής μνήμης της Γενοκτονίας των Ελλήνων της Μικράς Ασίας απο το Τουρκικό Κράτος". Act No. 2645/98 of 13 October 1998 (in Greek). Government Gazette of the Hellenic Republic. Archived from the original on 24 February 2016..
  6. ^
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  7. ^ a b c d "Resolution" (PDF). IAGS. 16 December 2007. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 April 2008. Retrieved 13 March 2015..
  8. ^ Γενοκτονία ή Εθνοκάθαρση τελικά (greek). On Alert (4 Νοεμβρίου 2015).
  9. ^ Ανδριανόπουλος, Ανδρέας. Γενοκτονία και Εθνοκάθαρση (greek). News24/7 (5 Νοεμβρίου 2015).
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  14. .
  15. .
  16. ^ Jones 2006, pp. 154–55.
  17. ISSN 0015-7120
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  18. ^ . The total number of Christians who fled to Greece was probably in the region of 1.2 million with the main wave occurring in 1922 before the signing of the convention. According to the official records of the Mixed Commission set up to monitor the movements, the "Greeks' who were transferred after 1923 numbered 189,916 and the number of Muslims expelled to Turkey was 355,635 [Ladas I932, 438–439; but using the same source Eddy 1931, 201 states that the post-1923 exchange involved 192,356 Greeks from Turkey and 354,647 Muslims from Greece].
  19. ^ Jones 2010, pp. 171–2: 'A resolution was placed before the IAGS membership to recognize the Greek and Assyrian/Chaldean components of the Ottoman genocide against Christians, alongside the Armenian strand of the genocide (which the IAGS has already formally acknowledged). The result, passed emphatically in December 2007 despite not inconsiderable opposition, was a resolution which I co-drafted, reading as follows:...'
  20. ^ "Genocide Resolution approved by Swedish Parliament", News (full text), AM, 24 September 2023, containing both the IAGS and the Swedish resolutions.
  21. .
  22. ^ a b "Η 19η Μαΐου, καθιερώνεται ως ημέρα μνήμης της γενοκτονίας των Ελλήνων του Πόντου". Act No. 2193/94 of 11 March 1994 (in Greek). Hellenic Parliament. Archived from the original on 25 February 2016..
  23. ^ a b Tsolakidou, Stella (18 May 2013). "May 19, Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day". Greek Reporter. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  24. ^ a b "Government Spokesman's written statement on the Greek Pontiac Genocide, yesterday". Republic of Cyprus Press and Information Office. Archived from the original on 16 December 2019. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
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  26. ^ "Text - S.Res.150 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that it is the policy of the United States to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance". 12 December 2019.
  27. ^ "House Passes Resolution Recognizing Armenian Genocide". The New York Times. 29 October 2021. Retrieved 12 February 2021.
  28. ^ "US House says Armenian mass killing was genocide". BBC News. 30 October 2019.
  29. ^ "Sweden to recognize Armenian genocide". thelocal.se. 2010. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
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  31. ^ Armenpress 2015.
  32. ^ "Dutch Parliament Recognizes Greek, Assyrian and Armenian Genocide". greekreporter.com. 2015. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
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  34. ^ "German Bundestag recognizes the Armenian Genocide". armradio.am. 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
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  37. ^ "Austrian Parliament Recognizes Armenian Genocide". MassisPost. 2015. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
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  41. ^ Bloxham 2005, p. 150.
  42. ^ Levene 1998.
  43. ^ Ferguson 2006, p. 180.
  44. ^ a b Midlarsky 2005, pp. 342–343.
  45. ^ Dawkins, R. M. Modern Greek in Asia Minor. A study of dialect of Silly, Cappadocia and Pharasa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1916 (online version)
  46. ^ Kelder, Jorrit (2004–2005). "The Chariots of Ahhiyawa". Dacia, Revue d'Archéologie et d'Histoire Ancienne (48–49): 151–160. The Madduwatta text represents the first textual evidence for Greek incursions on the Anatolian mainland... Mycenaeans settled there already during LH IIB (around 1450 BC; Niemeier, 1998, 142).
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  52. . The Ottoman state never sought to impose Turkish on subject peoples…Some ethno-religious groups, when outnumbered by Turks, did accept Turkish vernacular through a gradual process of acculturation. While the Greeks of the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace, and west Anatolian littoral continued to speak and write in Greek, The Greeks of Cappadocia (Karaman) spoke Turkish and wrote Turkish in Greek script. Similarly, a large majority of Armenians in the empire adopted Turkish as their vernacular and wrote Turkish in Armenian characters, all efforts to the contrary by the Mkhitarist order notwithstanding. The first novels published in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-nineteenth century were by Armenians and Cappadocian Greeks; they wrote them in Turkish, using the Armenian and Greek alphabets.
  53. ^
  54. Paris Peace conference
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  55. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 68 f.
  56. ^ Akçam 2012, p. 71.
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  58. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 84 f.
  59. .
  60. .
  61. ^ Akçam 2012, p. 84.
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  63. ^ Matthias Bjørnlund. "The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification". In Schaller & Zimmerer (2009), pp. 34 ff.
  64. ^ a b A Multidimensional Analysis of the Events in Eski Foça (Παλαιά Φώκαια) on the period of Summer 1914-Emre Erol
  65. ^ Matthias Bjørnlund. "The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification". In Schaller & Zimmerer (2009), pp. 41 ff.
  66. ^ Hull 2005, p. 273.
  67. ^ King 1922, p. 437.
  68. ^ Akçam 2012, p. 65.
  69. ^ a b Akçam 2012, pp. 65–7.
  70. The Council on Foreign Relations
    . July 1926.
  71. ^ Akçam 2012, p. 69.
  72. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 94–96.
  73. ^ Speros Vryonis (2000). The Great Catastrophes: Asia Minor/Smyrna--September 1922; Constantinople-September 6–7, 1955. Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle. In effect this set off the beginning of the persecution of the Greek communities of Asia Minor, an event gradually spread from the Aegean Turkish coast, inland to Pontos and to Cappadocia and Cilicia in the south
  74. Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser
    . No. 12, 956. Queensland, Australia. 25 November 1914. p. 4. Retrieved 15 February 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
  75. ^ Akçam 2012, p. 97.
  76. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 99 f.
  77. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 100 f.
  78. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 102–4.
  79. ^ Avedian 2009, p. 40.
  80. ^ a b c d e f Rendel 1922.
  81. ^ Morgenthau 1919, p. 326.
  82. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 105 f.
  83. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 109 f.
  84. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 111.
  85. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 111 f.
  86. ^ Akçam 2004, p. 146.
  87. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 112.
  88. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 113.
  89. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 113–116.
  90. ^ Akçam 2012, pp. 116–119.
  91. ^ Avedian 2009, p. 47.
  92. ^ Midlarsky 2005, pp. 342–343: "Many (Greeks), however, were massacred by the Turks, especially at Smyrna (today's İzmir) as the Greek army withdrew at the end of their headlong retreat from central Anatolia at the end of the Greco-Turkish War. Especially poorly treated were the Pontic Greeks in eastern Anatolia on the Black Sea. In 1920, as the Greek army advanced, many were deported to the Mesopotamian desert as had been the Armenians before them. Nevertheless, approximately 1,200,000 Ottoman Greek refugees arrived in Greece at the end of the war. When one adds to the total the Greeks of Constantinople who, by agreement, were not forced to flee, then the total number comes closer to the 1,500,000 Greeks in Anatolia and Thrace. Here, a strong distinction between intention and action is found. According to the Austrian consul at Amisos, Kwiatkowski, in his November 30, 1916, report to foreign minister Baron Burian: 'on 26 November Rafet Bey told me: "we must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians..." on 28 November Rafet Bey told me: "today I sent squads to the interior to kill every Greek on sight." I fear for the elimination of the entire Greek population and a repeat of what occurred last year.' Or according to a January 31, 1917, report by Chancellor Hollweg of Austria: the indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The strategy implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them to death, hunger, and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks. Massacres most likely did take place at Amisos and other villages in Pontus. Yet given the large number of surviving Greeks, especially relative to the small number of Armenian survivors, the massacres apparently were restricted to Pontus, Smyrna, and selected other 'sensitive' regions."
  93. ^ Agtzidis 1992, pp. 164–165.
  94. ^ Georganopoulos 2010, pp. 227–232.
  95. ^ Georganopoulos 2010, pp. 245–247.
  96. .
  97. .
  98. ^ a b Hofmann, Tessa. "Yalova/Nicomedia 1920/1921. Massacres and Inter- Ethnic Conflict in a Failing State". Institut für Diaspora- und Genozidforschung: 3–5. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
  99. ^ Akçam, Taner (1996). Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die Türkische Nationalbewegung. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. p. 185.
  100. ^ Toynbee 1922, p. 270.
  101. ^ a b Rummel, R.J. (1997). "Chapter 5, Statistics of Turkey's Democide Estimates, Calculations, and Sources". Statistics of Democide. University of Hawai'i. Retrieved 4 October 2006.
  102. ^
    Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act
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  104. . Retrieved 3 June 2011.
  105. ^ Toynbee 1922, pp. 312–313.
  106. ^ Nikolaos Hlamides, "The Greek Relief Committee: America's Response to the Greek Genocide", Genocide Studies and Prevention 3, 3 (December 2008): 375–383.
  107. ^ a b "The Genocide and Its Aftermath". Archived from the original on 24 June 2009.
  108. ^ The New York Times Advanced search engine for article and headline archives (subscription necessary for viewing article content).[full citation needed]
  109. ^ Alexander Westwood and Darren O'Brien, Selected bylines and letters from The New York Times Archived 7 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2006
  110. ^ Kateb, Vahe Georges (2003). Australian Press Coverage of the Armenian Genocide 1915–1923, University of Wollongong, Graduate School of Journalism
  111. ^ "Morgenthau Calls for Check on Turks", The New York Times, p. 3, 5 September 1922
  112. ^ Morgenthau 1918, p. 201.
  113. S2CID 131159279
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  115. ^ Buzanski, Peter Michael (1960). Admiral Mark L. Bristol and Turkish-American Relations, 1919–1922. University of California, Berkeley. p. 176.
  116. ^ Horton 1926, p. 267.
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  118. .
  119. ^ Naimark, Norman M. Fires of hatred: ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Europe (2002), Harvard University Press, pp. 47–52.
  120. .
  121. ^ Jones 2010, pp. 150–51: "By the beginning of the First World War, a majority of the region's ethnic Greeks still lived in present-day Turkey, mostly in Thrace (the only remaining Ottoman territory in Europe, abutting the Greek border), and along the Aegean and Black Sea coasts. They would be targeted both prior to and alongside the Armenians of Anatolia and Assyrians of Anatolia and Mesopotamia ... The major populations of 'Anatolian Greeks' include those along the Aegean coast and in Cappadocia (central Anatolia), but not the Greeks of the Thrace region west of the Bosphorus ... A 'Christian genocide' framing acknowledges the historic claims of Assyrian and Greek peoples, and the movements now stirring for recognition and restitution among Greek and Assyrian diasporas. It also brings to light the quite staggering cumulative death toll among the various Christian groups targeted ... of the 1.5 million Greeks of Asia minor – Ionians, Pontians, and Cappadocians – approximately 750,000 were massacred and 750,000 exiled. Pontian deaths alone totaled 353,000."
  122. ^ Rummel, R.J. (1997). "Chapter 5, Statistics of Turkey's Democide Estimates, Calculations, and Sources". Statistics of Democide. University of Hawai'i. Table 5.1A, Table 5.1B, Table 10.2. Retrieved 15 April 2015.

    "Not only did the Turks murder Armenians, but Greeks as well. Estimates of this are far fewer (lines 201 to 203), but we do have assessments of those deported (lines 193 to 197) from which to calculate the possible toll (line 198). The actual percentages from which I make this calculation reflect the relevant historical bits and pieces in the sources. Combining this calculation and the sum of the estimates (line 204) suggest a likely genocide of 84,000 Greeks."

    "In the table I next list partial estimates (lines 367 to 374) for the genocide of the Greek. There is one calculation of Turkey's Anatolian (Asia Minor) Greek population deficit during 1912 to 1922, taking into account emigration and deportation from Turkey (line 378). Subtracting from this the WWI Greek genocide I calculated from previous totals (line 379), I get the range of post-WWI losses shown (line 380). This then provides an alternative to the sum of the specific mortality estimates (line 381). From these alternative ranges I calculated a final Greek genocide for this period in the usual way (line 382). Most probably, the Nationalists Turks murdered 264,000 Greeks;"

  123. ^ Hatzidimitriou 2005, p. 2.
  124. ^ Jones 2010, p. 150.
  125. ^ Bierstadt 1924, p. 67.
  126. .
  127. ^ Jones 2010, p. 166: "An estimate of the Pontian Greek death toll at all stages of the anti-Christian genocide is about 350,000; for all the Greeks of the Ottoman realm taken together, the toll surely exceeded half a million, and may approach the 900,000 killed that a team of US researchers found in the early postwar period. Most surviving Greeks were expelled to Greece as part of the tumultuous 'population exchanges' that set the seal on a heavily 'Turkified' state."
  128. ^ Peterson 2004, p. 124.
  129. ^ Valavanis 1925, p. 24.
  130. ^ Fotiadis, Konstantinos (2015). The Genocide of the Pontian Greeks. Thessaloniki: K. & M. Antonis Stamoulis Publications. pp. 61–62.
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  138. ^ Vryonis, Speros (2000). The great catastrophes: Asia Minor/Smyrna--September 1922; Constantinople—September 6&7, 1955 : a lecture. Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle. p. 5. It is remarkable to what degree the Orthodox hierarchs and clergy shared the fate of the people and were martyred. According to statistics of the church, of the 459 bishops, metropolitans and clergy of the metropolitanate of Smyrna, some 347 were murdered in an atrocious manner.
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  143. .
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  146. ^ Erik Sjöberg, Battlefields of Memory: The Macedonian Conflict and Greek Historical Culture, Umeå Studies in History and Education 6 (Umeå University|series, 2011), p. 170
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  149. . Meanwhile, despite the predictable Turkish efforts to discredit it, Greek mainstream historians, educators and influential commentators oppose this claim as founded upon "ahistorical and anti-scientific opinion".
  150. ^ . There is also an institutional split, with those disputing the usefulness of the term genocide belonging to the mainstream of the historical profession in Greece. As its title suggests, this volume falls clearly on the side of those who wish to affirm that genocide was committed against the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire between 1912 and 1922. The publisher, Aristide Caratzas, summarizes the purpose of this book in a prefatory note: "The efforts to eliminate the Greeks, the Armenians and the Assyrians, peoples whose biological presence in that geographic space goes back millennia before recorded history, are integral to the process that led to the creation of what became the modern Turkish Republic. The predatory methods used, and indeed what may be called a policy of effective physical elimination of populations, as well as of the cultural traces of their presence in areas they inhabited, bespeak of planning at the highest levels of government and its systematic implementation." Further on he adds, "Greek scholars, with some significant exceptions, have been less active in researching the subject of the violent elimination of the Greek presence in Asia Minor and eastern Thrace, which spanned three millennia. The avoidance of the subject of the genocide by many mainline academics in Greece is a convergence of factors, which range from governmental reticence to criticize Turkey to spilling over into the academic world, to ideological currents promoting a diffuse internationalism cultivated by a network of NGOs, often supported by western governments and western interests." Then he concludes: "This volume represents a kind of scholarly opening statement to an international audience on the subject of the extermination or expulsion of Ottoman Greeks, as part of the genocide of the Christians of Asia Minor." (pp. ix-x) Thus, this book has a dual purpose, to present information that highlights the extent of the massacres suffered by the Greeks, and to argue that the massacres qualify as a genocide and, also, to implicitly criticize those who do not agree with this perspective.
  151. .
  152. ^ Ze'evi, Dror; Morris, Benny (4 November 2021). "Then Came the Chance the Turks Have Been Waiting For: To Get Rid of Christians Once and for All". Haaretz.
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  157. ^ George Karabelias (2010). "Ardin.gr" Καταστροφή ή Γενοκτονία [Catastrophe or Genocide?]. Άρδην [Arden] (in Greek) (38–39). Και εάν η Κυβέρνηση για λόγους πολιτικής σκοπιμότητας θα αποσύρει το Π.Δ., η Αριστερά θα αναλάβει, όπως πάντα, να προσφέρει τα ιδεολογικά όπλα του πολέμου. Ο Άγγελος Ελεφάντης θα γράψει στο ίδιο τεύχος των Νέων πως δεν υπάρχει κανένας λόγος να αναγορεύσομε την 14 Σεπτεμβρίου του 1922 ούτε καν σε ημέρα εθνικής μνήμης. [And while the Government for the sake of political expediency withdraws the Presidential Decree, the Left undertakes, as always, to offer the ideological weapons for this war. Angelos Elefantis writes in the same page of the NEA newspaper (Feb. 24, 2001) that there is no reason to proclaim the 14th of September of 1922 not even to a day of national memory.]
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  167. ^ Fotiadis 2004: As summarized by Theophanis Malkidis in his presentation of the 14th volume of Fodiadis' work on the Greek Genocide.
  168. ^ "Η γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων του Πόντου και η γενοκτονίας της μνήμης – Ιστορική αναδρομή και εκτιμήσεις". Έμβολος. 11 May 2016.
  169. . Retrieved 8 June 2013. Turkey, still struggling to achieve its ninety-five-year-old dream of becoming the beacon of democracy in the Near East, does everything possible to deny its genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks.
  170. ^ .
  171. .
  172. . Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  173. .
  174. ^ Ihrig, 2014, p. 145: "Atatürk and the New Turkey were constant reference points for the Nazis as part of their own biography, as an example of the perfect Führer story, and as examples of völkisch "good practice" in a variety of aspects"
  175. ^ Ihrig, 2014, p. 207: "The vast discussion of the Turkish role model and the New Turkey in the Third Reich media and publications means that the Third Reich had, at least implicitly, continually highlighted the "benefits" of "ethnic cleansing" and genocide."
  176. .
  177. ^ Ihrig, 2014, p. 71: "Just a few days later, on December 16, 1920, the very day the paper was bought by the NSDAP, the Völkischer Beobachter did a complete turnaround and admiringly called Atatürk's movement "the Turkish nationalists." Now that it had become the official Nazi party paper, its general interpretation was to change fundamentally. On January 1, 1921, it featured the headline "Heroic Turkey."21 Barely a month later the paper featured an article with the headline "Turkey— The Role Model" (or "The Pioneer," Der Vorkämpfer). The Völkischer Beobachter exclaimed: "Today the Turks are the most youthful nation. The German nation will one day have no other choice but to resort to Turkish methods as well."
  178. ^ Ihrig, 2014, p. 183–184: "The minority problem in Anatolia was solved in a very simple fashion... "Only through the annihilation of the Greek and the Armenian tribes in Anatolia was the creation of a Turkish national state and the formation of an unflawed Turkish body of society within one state possible."
  179. ^ "Memorials", Greek Genocide Memorials, archived from the original on 6 October 2013, retrieved 18 September 2008
  180. ^ Greek Genocide Monuments, archived from the original on 17 August 2019, retrieved 4 July 2016
  181. ^ "Συνέντευξη: Η Σάνο Χάλο, η "Γιαγιά των Ποντίων", μέσα από τα μάτια της Θία Χάλο".
  182. ^ "Obituary: Sano Themia Halo (1909–2014)". 4 May 2014.
  183. ^ "A Few Words in Greek Tell of a Homeland Lost", Chris Hedges, The New York Times, 17 September 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/17/nyregion/a-few-words-in-greek-tell-of-a-homeland-lost.html
  184. ^ "The Number 31328: The Book of Slavery". Archived from the original on 24 September 2022.

Sources

Notes

  1. ^ Also known as ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Greeks.[8][9][10][11][12]

Bibliography

Contemporary accounts

Secondary sources

Further reading

Books

Articles

External links