Greek genocide

The historical Pontus region

New York Times headlines which observes that the entire Christian population of Trabzon was "wiped out". More relevant headlines

Ethnic groups in the Balkans and Asia Minor as of early 20th Century (William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, 1911).

Pontic Greek Genocide is a controversial term used to refer to the fate of Pontic Greeks during and in the aftermath of World War I. Other terms used are Pontic tragedy, Pontic annihilation, and the Turkish atrocities in Pontos and Asia Minor.

These terms are used to refer to the persecutions, massacres, expulsions, and death marches of Pontian Greek populations in the historical region of Pontus, the southeastern Black Sea provinces of the Ottoman Empire, during the early 20th century by the Young Turk administration. It has been argued that killings continued during the Turkish national movement led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk which was organized to fight against the Greek invasion of western Anatolia.

According to various sources the direct or indirect death toll of Greeks in Anatolia ranges from 300,000 to 360,000 men, women and children. The official recognition of the events is limited, and whether these incidents constitute a genocide is under debate between Greece and Turkey. A Turkish Foreign Minister maintains, however, that by calling these acts "genocide", the Greek government "sustains the traditional Greek policy of distorting history..."

Background

According to a German military attaché, Ismail Enver, the Ottoman Turkish minister of war 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." British historian Arnold J. Toynbee noted that it was the Greek landings that created the Turkish Nationalist Movement led by Mustafa Kemal and it is almost certain that if the Greeks had never landed at Smyrna, the consequent atrocities on the Turkish side would not have occurred. Toynbee added: "...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."

Casualties

The death toll according to various sources ranges from 300,000 to 360,000 Anatolian Greeks.

According to the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, between 1916 and 1923, up to 350,000 Greek Pontians were killed in massacres, persecution and death marches. Merrill D. Peterson cites the death toll of 360,000 for the Greeks of Pontus. According to G.K. Valavanis, "The loss of human life among the Pontian Greeks, since the Great War (World War I) until March of 1924, can be estimated at 353,238, as a result of murders, hangings, and from hunger, disease, and other hardships."

R. J. Rummel defines these incidents as genocide and democide (a term he himself coined for such events), and calculates the death toll to 347,000. He uses 14 third party academic sources and cross-references the figure by means of two methods: By adding all individual killings, and by estimating the population deficit of the Anatolian Greeks that were recorded in the Ottoman censi versus those that remained to be exchanged in the aftermath. It has been argued, however, that his broader use of the term to other irrelevant incidents constitutes an exaggeration.

Hannibal Travis, Assistant Professor of Law at Florida International University, wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal that:

The Turks extended their policy of exterminating the Christians of the [Ottoman Empire] to the Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, and Lebanese.... According to an Associated Press report, of 500,000 Greeks deported from Thrace, in Asia Minor, an estimated 250,000, or half, died of disease and torture. Starting in 1910, the Ottoman Turks made about one million Greeks homeless and deported hundreds of thousands; as many as 300,000 Greeks died of hunger, disease, and the cold as a result. In the 1920s, the Turkish nationalists massacred about 200,000 more Christians, mostly Greeks, in cities such as Smyrna. Greek men became victims of murder, torture, and starvation; Greek women suffered all this and also became slaves in Muslim households; Greek children wandered the streets as orphans ‘‘half-naked and begging for bread’’; and millions of dollars’ worth of Greek property passed into Muslim hands.

One of the alleged methods used in the systematic elimination of the Greek population was the Labour Battalions (Turkish: Amele Taburları, Greek: Τάγματα Εργασίας Tagmata Ergasias). In them, mostly young and healthy people were forced to work by the Ottoman Administration during the First World War and the Turkish Government after the creation of the Turkish Republic. The well-known writer-novelist Elias Venezis later described the situation in his work the Number 31328 (Το Νούμερο 31328). An academic research on Labour Battalions by Sabancı University Associate Professor Leyla Neyzi, based on the diaries of Yaşar Paker, a Sephardic Jew who was enrolled in these battalions himself, does not point to nor hint at acts of a genocidal nature.

Another thesis is that the Pontic Greek genocide was carried out by forcing the weaker population, including elderly, handicapped, women and children, to walk for hundreds of kilometres towards the east until they died.

All indirect ways of inflicting death (food boycott, deportations, deaths by starvation in labour camps, concentration camps etc.) were known as so-called "white massacres".

Aftermath

In 1923, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey resulted in a near-complete elimination of the Greek ethnic presence in Anatolia and a similar elimination of the Turkish ethnic presence in much of Greece. It is impossible to know exactly how many Greek inhabitants of Pontus, Smyrna and rest of Asia Minor died from 1916 to 1923, and how many ethnic Greeks of Anatolia were deported to Greece or fled to the Soviet Union. According to G.W. Rendel, " ... over 500,000 Greeks were deported of whom comparatively few survived." Edward Hale Bierstadt states that " According to official testimony, the Turks since 1914 have slaughtered in cold blood 1,500,000 Armenians, and 500,000 Greeks, men women and children, without the slightest provocation". Based on the information provided by Manus I. Mildrasky, in his book "The Killing Trap", pages 342, and 377, it is estimated that approximately 480,000 Anatolian Greeks died during the aforementioned period.

Ambassador Morgenthau 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." Consul-General Horton reports that "[o]ne 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 clarifies that "[h]ad 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."

The survivors and the expelled took refuge mostly in the nearby Russian Empire (later, Soviet Union). The few Pontic Greeks who had remained in Pontus until the end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) were exchanged in the frame of the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations in 1922-1923.

Recognition

The Treaty of Sevres in combination with the Allied Note of 1919, aimed in bringing to justice persons that had committed on Turkish territory crimes against Turkish citizens of Greek and Armenian ethnicity. This was considered as an example of the later definition of "crimes against humanity" as later defined in the 1945 Charter. The Treaty of Sevres was not ratified, but was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne, which was accompanied by a "Declaration of Amnesty", without containing any provision in respect to punishment of war crimes.

Greece and Cyprus

The incidents which occurred during that period were officially described as genocide by the Greek Parliament in 1994, through an initiative centered largely around former PASOK Central Committee member, Michalis Charalambidis (described by one Greek source as the ringleader of the recognition of the genocide of Greeks of Pontos), and the date of 19 May was instituted as the official date of commemoration. A letter was submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by the "International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples" to request its recognition in 1998. On September 21, 2001, the Greek government declared the 14th of September as "the day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Hellenes of the Asia Minor by the Turkish state". Cyprus also officially recognizes the events as genocide.

Turkey

Turkey maintains that the incidents referred to cannot be considered to be of a genocidal nature. Ankara declared that 'genocide' of the Greek minority by the Turkish state did not have any historical basis, after of resolution the Greek Parliament about Pontus Greek Genocide. "We condemn and protest this resolution" a 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. The choice by Greece of 19 May as the date of commemoration, a national holiday in Turkey as the anniversary of 19 May 1919 when Mustafa Kemal Pasha set foot in Samsun to initiate the Turkish War of Independence, is viewed in Turkey as futile provocation by some Greek politicians. Upon the opening in May 2006 of two commemorative monuments in Thessaloniki, the social-democrat mayor of İzmir, Aziz Kocaoğlu, announced on 12 May 2006 that they were suspending the signing (expected in June 2006) of a sister city agreement between İzmir (Smyrna) and Thessaloniki.

Colin Tatz and Cohn Jatz, argue that Turkey denies those incidents in an attempt to fulfill her national dreams:

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.

International

The incidents are also recognized as genocide in some states of the USA. The states of South Carolina, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Illinois have passed resolutions recognizing it. In addition, George E. Pataki, governor of the New York State issued a proclamation designating May 19, 2002 as Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day, although since states within the United States do not have foreign-policy authority those statements are not legally binding on a federal US level.

Armenia mentions the "Greek Genocide", its commemoration, and a death toll of 600,000 Greeks in Anatolia, in its first report to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of the Council of Europe.

In Australia, the issue has been raised in the Parliament of Victoria on May 4 2006, by the Minister for Justice Jenny Mikakos.

On June 2006 Stephen Pound, member of the British House of Commons linked the case of the Pontian Greeks with the Armenian Genocide.

Non Governmental Organizations

In Germany, organizations such as Verein der Völkermordgegner e.V (i.e. "Union against Genocide") or the initiative Mit einer Stimme sprechen (i.e. "Speaking with One Voice") aim at the official recognition of the genocide of Christian minorities, such as Armenians, Pontian Greeks and Assyrians in the late Ottoman Empire.

Reasons for limited recognition

The United Nations, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars have not made any relative reference. According to Constantine Fotiades, professor of Modern Greek History at the University of Western Macedonia, Greece, some of the reasons for the lack of wider recognition and delay in seeking acknowledgement of these events, are as follows:

• The Pontian Greek Genocide was overshadowed by the much larger Armenian Genocide which preceded it.
• The 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 Second World War, the Civil War, and political turmoil in Greece, that followed, forced Greece to focus on its survival and other problems rather than seek recognition of these events.

One other reason for the lack of recognition of these events can be found in the following statement " It is necessary to refer to these Pre-Armistice persecutions, since there is now a strong tendency to minimize or overlook them, and to regard those that followed the armistice as isolated incidents provoked by the Greek Landing at Smyrna and the general Turkish Policy of the Allies."

Academic views

Samuel Totten and Steven L. Jacobs, attempt to compare these "experiences" to the Holocaust:

One begins with (attempted) comprehension of the motives, intent, scale, implementation, and operation of the Holocaust. To understand it is necessary to look at similar phenomena, and so one attempts an unravelling of the Armenian, Pontian Greek, Rwandan, Burundian, and Aboriginal experiences.

The Consul and Consul-General of the United States in the Near East for 30 years, George Horton, describes many massacres of Pontian Greeks by the Turkish troops, while he illustrates intention in the chain of command to the extent of fabricated propaganda of purely imaginary scenes of Greeks slaughtering innocent Turkish civilians. He does not use the word "genocide" to describe the horrible events, since the term had not been coined until 1943, while he wrote his book in 1926. However, he usually places the Greeks before the Armenians in his descriptions, while suggests that "[t]his part of the story would not be complete if I passed over in silence the systematic extermination, and the satiating of all the lowest passions of man or beast which characterize Turkish massacres of the Greeks and Armenians of the Pontus." He, therefore, chooses to describe the events as:

"systematic extermination" or "...annihilation... ...in a persistent campaign of massacre... ...of the flourishing communities of Greek civilization... ...in the Black Sea".

Horton also starts his book with an eschatological association to the events by quoting a part of the Revelation of John:

What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

(Revelation 1:11, KJV)

Henry I Morgenthau, the American Ambassador at Constantinople from 1913 to 1916, in his Story describes the events as follows:

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. These caravans suffered great privations, but they were not submitted to general massacre as were the Armenians, and this is probably the reason why the outside world has not heard so much about them. The Turks showed them this greater consideration not from any motive of pity. The Greeks, unlike the Armenians, had a government which was vitally interested in their welfare. At this time there was a general apprehension among the Teutonic Allies that Greece would enter the war on the side of the Entente, and a wholesale massacre of Greeks in Asia Minor would unquestionably have produced such a state of mind in Greece that its pro-German king would have been unable longer to keep his country out of the war. It was only a matter of state policy, therefore, that saved these Greek subjects of Turkey from all the horrors that befell the Armenians. But their sufferings are still terrible, and constitute another chapter in the long story of crimes for which civilization will hold the Turk responsible.

Mark Levene in his Creating a Modern "Zone of Genocide": The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923, suggests that:

In the last hundred years, four Eastern Anatolian groups—Armenians, Kurds, Assyrians, and Greeks—have fallen victim to state-sponsored attempts by the Ottoman authorities or their Turkish or Iraqi successors to eradicate them" ... "By ridding themselves of the Armenians, Greeks, or any other group that stood in their way, Turkish nationalists were attempting to prove how they could clarify, purify, and ultimately unify a polity and society so that it could succeed on its own, albeit Western-orientated terms. This, of course, was the ultimate paradox: the CUP committed genocide in order to transform the residual empire into a streamlined, homogeneous nation-state on the European model."

He also states:

Unlike the Armenian case, in each of these other instances the scope, scale and intensity of the killings was limited, though this does not rule out comparison.

He clarifies:

The persistence of genocide or near-genocidal incidents from the 1890s through the 1990s, committed by Ottoman and successor Turkish and Iraqi states against Armenian, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek communities in Eastern Anatolia, is striking.

and...

... I have concentrated here [on the genocidal sequence affecting Armenians and Kurds only], though my approach would be pertinent to the Pontic Greek and Assyrian cases.

Norman M. Naimark, describes the events as "ethnic cleansing" in his book Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe.

Benjamin Lieberman, in his "Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe", states:

For CUP's leaders, attacking the country's Greeks was a means to purify the core regions of Turkey. Talaat Pasha made clear that this was his intent.

and...

As the war continued, the Turkish campaign against the Greek civilians expanded to include the Pontic Greeks who lived on the Black Sea. The road to persecution here was quite similar to that elsewhere on the war's eastern fronts. Military threats and setbacks - in this case defeats by Russia - convinced Turkey's leaders to begin a campaign against a civilian population accused of treason.

He also states that:

Subject to state-sponsored terror despite their status as Ottoman subjects, during World War I Turkey's Greeks experienced persecution just short of full-scale ethnic cleansing.

Charles King, in his "The Black Sea: A History" states:

... the massacre of Armenians and other Christians in eastern Anatolia in the 1890s; ...and then the organized killing and deportation of Armenians, Greeks, and others in the Ottoman empire from 1915 to the early 1920s.

Harry Psomiades, professor emeritus of political science at Queens College the City University of New York, refers to these events as the genocide "of the 275,000 Pontian souls who where slaughtered outright or were victims of the 'white death' of disease and starvation - a result of the routine process of deportations, slave labor, and the killings and death marches."

Constantine Fotiades, professor of Modern Greek History at the University of Western Macedonia, Greece, author of a monumental work (16 volumes) on the "Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus" chronicles the events of the Genocide from 1916 to 1923. His research is based on documents from primary sources, e.g., international organizations, immigrant unions and newspapers, but most importantly from the government files of the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, the United Kingdon, the Vatican, the Society of Nations, and Greece, published both in translation and in their original languages.

Seminars and courses in western universities still examine the events.

Eyewitness accounts and press headlines

Main articles: List of eyewitness accounts related to the Pontic Greek Genocide and List of press headlines relevant to the Pontic Greek Genocide

German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, as well as The Memorandum by Mr. G.W. Rendel on Turkish Massacres and Persecutions of Minorities since the Armistice, have provided evidence for series of systematic massacres of the Greeks in Asia Minor. The quotes have been attributed to various diplomats, notably the German Ambassadors Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim and Mr. Kuhlman, German consul in Amissos Herr Kuchhoff, Austro-Hungarians Ambassador Pallavicini and consul in Amissos Herr Kwiatkowski, Sir P. Cox, and the Italian unofficial agent in Angora Signor Tuozzi. Other quotes are from clergymen and activists, notably the German Father J. Lepsius, and Mr. Hopkins of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East. It must be noted that Germany and Austria-Hungary were allies of the Ottoman Empire in WWI.

The accounts describe systematic massacres, rapes and burnings of Greek villages, and attribute intent to Turkish officials, namely the Turkish Prime Minister Mahmud Sevket Pasha, Refet Bele (tr:Refet Bele), Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha.

Additionally, The New York Times and its correspondents have made extensive references to the events, recording massacres, deportations, individual killings, rapes, burning of entire Greek 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. The newspaper was awarded its first Pulitzer Prize in 1918 "for the most disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by an American newspaper -- complete and accurate coverage of the war". More media of the time reported the events with similar titles.

See also

• Armenian Genocide
• Assyrian Genocide
• Genocide denial
• Greek refugees
• Kemalist ideology
• Istanbul Pogrom
• Human rights in Turkey
• Pan-Turkism
• Republic of Pontus
• Topal Osman

Bibliography

• Barton, James L. (James Levi). The Near East Relief, 1915-1930. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943.
• Bierstadt, Edward Hale. The great betrayal; a survey of the near East problem. New York: R. M. McBride & company, 1924.
• Dobkin, Marjorie Housepian. Smyrna 1922: the destruction of a city. New York, NY: Newmark Press, 1998, c1988.
• Henry Morgenthau, Sr.. The murder of a nation. New York: Armenian General Benevolent Union of America, 1974, 1918.
• ---. Ambassador's Morgenthau story. Garden City, N.Y.: Page & Company, 1918
• ---. I was sent to Athens. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co, 1929.
• ---. An international drama. London: Jarrolds Ltd., 1930
• Murat, Jean De. The great extirpation of Hellenism and Christianity in Asia Minor: the historic and systematic deception of world opinion concerning the hideous Christianity’s uprooting of 1922. Miami, Fla.: [s.n.], (Athens [Greece]: A. Triantafillis) 1999.
• Oeconomos, Lysimachos. The martyrdom of Smyrna and eastern Christendom; a file of overwhelming evidence, denouncing the misdeeds of the Turks in Asia Minor and showing their responsibility for the horrors of Smyrna. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1922.
• Papadopoulos, Alexander. Persecutions of the Greeks in Turkey before the European War: on the basis of official documents. New York: Pub. by Oxford University Press, American branch, 1919.
• Tsirkinidis, Harry. At last we uprooted them…The Genocide of Greeks of Pontos, Thrace, and Asia Minor, through the French archives. Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis Bros, 1999.
• Ward, Mark H. The deportations in Asia Minor, 1921-1922. London: Anglo-Hellenic League, 1922.
• Andreadis, George, Tamama, The Missing Girl of Pontos. Athens: Gordios, 1993.
• Fotiadis, Constantinos Emm. (editor), The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks. Volume 13. Herodotus, 2004.
• Halo, Thea, Not Even My Name. New York: Picador USA, 2000.
• Horton, George, The blight of Asia: an account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with a true story of the buring of Smyrna. Indianopolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926.
• Statistics of Democide, Chapter 5, Statistics of Turkey's Democide - Estimates, Calculations and Sources, by R. J. Rummel
• Akcam, Taner. From Empire to Republic : Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide, Zed Books, September 4, 2004, pages 144-149.
• Pavlides, Ioannis. Pages of History of Pontus and Asia Minor. Salonica, Greece, 1980.
• Karayinnides, Ioannis. The Golgotha of Pontos. Salonica, Greece, 1978.
• Mildarsky, Manus I. The Killing Trap. 2005, Cambridge University Press
• Compton, Carl C. The Morning Cometh. 1986, Karatzas Publisher, New York

Further reading

• Hofmann, Tessa, ed. Verfolgung, Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Christen im Osmanischen Reich 1912-1922. Münster: LIT, 2004. ISBN 3-8258-7823-6. (pp. 177-221 on Pontian Greeks)

External links

• German and Austrian Ambassadors reports of that time starting from 1909
• State of New Jersey proclamation on 19th of May: www.angelfire.com/folk/pontian_net/News/NEW_JERSEY.htm
• State of South Carolina proclamations of recognition: www.angelfire.com/folk/pontian_net/News/proclomations.htm
• Information about the genocide on The Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
• Video: Demonstration for the recognition of the Pontian Genocide, 26 May 2006 in Stuttgart, Germany. One of the speakers is Tessa Hofmann