Greek genocide

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

The archive document of 1914 Census of the Ottoman Empire. Total population (sum of all millets) was 20,975,345 and the Greek population before the Balkan wars were 2,833,370 (1909 census) was dropped to 1,792,206 (due to lost of lands to Greece) in 1914 census; published also by Stanford J. Shaw.

During World War I and its aftermath (1914-1923), the government of the Ottoman Empire instigated a violent campaign against the Greek population of the Empire. The campaign included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, and summary expulsions. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Some of the survivors and expelled, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire. However, after the end of the 1919-22 Greco-Turkish War most of the Greeks migrated or were transferred to Greece under the terms of the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

The government of Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, maintains that the large-scale campaign was triggered by the perception that the Greek population was sympathetic to the enemies of the Ottoman state. The Allies of World War I took a different view, condemning the Ottoman government-sponsored massacres as crimes against humanity. More recently, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution in 2007 affirming that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire, including the Greeks, was genocide. Some other organisations have also passed resolutions recognising the campaign as a genocide, as have the parliaments of Greece and Cyprus.

Prelude

Main article: Ottoman Greeks

Anatolia or Asia Minor is a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a geographic region bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, Greater Syria (Upper Mesopotamia) to the southeast and Transcaucasia and the Iranian plateau to the east.

Among the causes for the Turkish campaign against the Greek population was a fear that the population would aid the Ottoman Empire's enemies, and a belief among some Turks that to become a modern nation state it was necessary to purge from the territories of the state those national groups who could threaten the integrity of a modern Turkish nation state.

According to a German military attaché, the Ottoman Turkish 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."

Events

In the summer of 1914 the Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa), assisted by government and army officials, conscripted Greek men of military age from Thrace and western Anatolia into labor battalions in which hundreds of thousands died. Sent hundreds of miles into the Interior of Anatolia, these conscripts were employed in road-making, building, tunnel excavating and other field work but their numbers were heavily reduced through either privations and ill-treatment or by outright massacre by their Turkish guards. This program of forced conscription later expanded to other regions of the Empire including Pontus.

Conscription of Greek men was supplemented by massacres and by deportations involving death marches of the general population. Greek villages and towns would be surrounded by Turks and their inhabitants massacred. Such was the story in Phocaea (Greek: Φώκαια), a town in western Anatolia twenty-five miles northwest of Smyrna, on 12 June 1914 where the slain bodies of men, women and children were thrown down a well.

In July 1915 the Greek chargé d’affaires explained 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." According to George W. Rendel of the British Foreign Office, " ... over 500,000 Greeks were deported of whom comparatively few survived."

Methods of destruction which caused death indirectly - such as deportations involving death marches, starvation in labour camps, concentration camps etc. - were referred to as "white massacres".

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 Hellenic and Turkish armies during the Greco-Turkish War, a conflict which followed the Hellenic occupation of Smyrna in May 1919 and continued until the Great Fire of Smyrna in September 1922. Limited Massacres of Turks were also carried out by the Hellenic troops during their mandate over a region of western Anatolia in May 1919 through to September 1922.

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: "...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

In 1917 a relief organisation by the name of the Relief Committee for Greeks of Asia Minor was formed in response to the deportations and massacres of Greeks in Turkey. The committee worked in cooperation with 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.

Contemporary accounts

See also: Contemporary press headlines on atrocities affecting the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)

German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, as well as the 1922 memorandum compiled by George W. Rendel on "Turkish Massacres and Persecutions", 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 Richard von Kühlmann, the German vice-consul in Samsoun Kuchhoff, Austria's ambassador Pallavicini and Samsoun consul Ernst von Kwiatkowski, and the Italian unofficial agent in Angora Signor Tuozzi. Other quotes are from clergymen and activists, notably the German missionary Johannes Lepsius, and Stanley Hopkins of the Near East Relief. It must be noted that Germany and Austria-Hungary were allies of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

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, Rafet Bey, 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.

Henry Morgenthau, the 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."

United States Consul-General George 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."

Casualties

According to various sources the Greek death toll in the Pontus region of Anatolia ranges from 300,000 to 360,000. Estimates for the death toll of Anatolian Greeks as a whole are significantly higher.

According to the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, between 1916 and 1923, up to 350,000 Greek Pontians were reportedly killed in massacres, persecution and death marches. Merrill D. Peterson cites the death toll of 360,000 for the Greeks of Pontus. 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."

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." In his book The Killing Trap, Manus I. Mildrasky estimates that approximately 480,000 Anatolian Greeks died during the aforementioned period.

Aftermath

File:Greekrefugeemap.png

Density map showing the dispersion of Greek refugees within Greece (Richard Clogg)

File:Mapofgreecerefugeesettlements-1926.JPG

1926 League of Nations map showing settlements of the Greek refugees

Article 142 of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, prepared after the first World War, called the 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." 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.

In 1923, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey resulted in a near-complete elimination of the Greek ethnic presence in Turkey and a similar elimination of the Turkish ethnic presence in much of Greece. According to the Greek census of 1928, 1,104,216 Ottoman Greeks had reached Greece. 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.. Some of the survivors and expelled took refuge in the neighboring Russian Empire (later, Soviet Union).

Genocide recognition

Academic

In December 2007 the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), an organization of the world’s foremost experts on genocide, passed a resolution affirming that the 1914-1923 campaign against Ottoman Greeks constituted genocide. Employing the term "Greek Genocide", it affirmed that Ottoman Greeks were subject to genocide alongside other groups, namely Armenians and Assyrians. The resolution was adopted on 1 December 2007 and the press release issued by the organization on 16 December. The IAGS resolution was passed with an "overwhelming" majority. Among those who criticised the resolution were scholars who had researched and published on the Armenian Genocide, including Taner Akcam, Peter Balakian, Stephen Feinsten, Eric Weitz and Robert Melson, believing the resolution was not based on a scholarly process and would undermine the credibility of the organisation.

Since there are few contemporary scholarly works on the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire during this period, there is no consistent term used to describe their fate. Historians generally avoid usage of the term genocide, careful to prevent their magnification by comparison with those of 1915-16 (Armenian Genocide).. Mark Mazower, a historian whose research deals extensively with Greek history, states that the deportation of Greeks by the Ottomans were on a "relatively small scale and do not appear to have been designed to end in their victims' deaths. What was to happen with the Armenians was of a different order.". Nevertheless, as per the IAGS resolution, some scholars such as Niall Ferguson have drawn a comparison with the fate of the Armenians and believe the same terminology of genocide applies.

Seminars and courses in several western universities examine the events. These include the University of New Mexico the College of Charleston, the University of Michigan Dearborn and the University of New South Wales which has a dedicated research unit.

Political

The Greek Parliament has issued two resolutions on the fate of the Ottoman Greeks; the first in 1994 and the second in 1998. The resolutions were published in the Greek Government Gazette on 8 March 1994 and 13 October 1998 respectively. The 1994 resolution affirmed the genocide in the Pontus region of Asia Minor and designated 19 May a day of commemoration, while the 1998 resolution affirmed the genocide of Greeks in Asia Minor as a whole and designated 14 September a day of commemoration.. The Republic of Cyprus also officially recognizes the events as genocide.

In response to the 1998 law issued by the Greek Parliament, 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. The resolution passed by the Greek government also met opposition domestically. Interpreting the resolution as pertaining to the Greco-Turkish war period and believing it to be politically motivated, the late Greek historian Angelos Elefantis lambasted the Greek parliament for acting "like an idiot".

In their book With Intent to Destroy: Reflections on Genocide, Colin Tatz and Cohn Jatz argue that Turkey denies the genocide so not to jeopardize "its ninety-five-year-old dream of becoming the beacon of democracy in the Near East". 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

International community

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 19 May 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 addition, on 19 May 2004 an event commemorating the Pontian Greek victims of the Greek Genocide was held in Yerevan, Armenia and was attended by "Greek ambassador to Armenia, Antonios Vlavianos, other dignitaries, government officials and ordinary Armenians".

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

On 7 June 2006 Stephen Pound, member of the British House of Commons linked the case of the Ottoman Greeks with the Armenians and Assyrians claiming that "3.5 million of the historic Christian population of Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks then living in the Ottoman empire had been murdered—starved to death or slaughtered—or exiled by 1923."

In Serbia, an event commemorating the Pontian Greek victims of the Greek Genocide was held in the Chapel of the Belgrade Theology School in 1998.

Nongovernmental 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, Greeks and Assyrians in the late Ottoman Empire.

On 19 May 2007, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) issued a press release stating that the organization "joins with Pontian Greeks - and all Hellenes around the world - in commemorating 19 May, the international day of remembrance for the genocide initiated by the Ottoman Empire and continued by Kemalist Turkey against the historic Greek population of Pontus" and reaffirms its "determination to work together with all the victims of Turkey's atrocities to secure full recognition and justice for these crimes".

Reasons for limited recognition

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 University of Aristotle, some of the reasons for the lack of wider recognition and delay in seeking acknowledgment of these events are as follows:

• The Greek Genocide was overshadowed by a larger Armenian Genocide, a view also shared by the historian Mark Levene.
• 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 Second World War, the Civil War, 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.

Memorials

File:Pontic Greek Genocide Monument Salonica.jpg

Genocide Monument in Salonica

Memorials commemorating the plight of Ottoman Greeks have been erected throughout Greece, as well as in a number of other countries including Germany, Canada, the United States and, more recently, Australia. Greek Genocide memorials and the act of commemoration in Greece have been subject to study by Michel Bruneau. Memorials become a place of focus on days of commemoration.

See also

• Academic quotes on the Greek genocide
• Armenian Genocide
• Assyrian Genocide
• Genocide denial
• Greek refugees
• Istanbul Pogrom
• Human rights in Turkey
• Megali Idea
• Pan-Turkism
• Republic of Pontus
• Topal Osman

References

• Ascherson, Neal (1995). Black Sea, New York: Hill and Wang, ISBN 0-8090-3043-8.
• Bassioun, M. Cherif (1999). Crimes Against Humanity in International Criminal Law, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, ISBN 90-411-1222-7.
• Bierstadt, Edward Hale (1924). The Great Betrayal; A Survey of the Near East Problem, New York: R. M. McBride & Co.
• Bloxham, Donald (2005). The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ferguson, Niall (2006). The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, New York: Penguin Press, ISBN 1-5942-0100-5.
• Ferguson, Niall (2006). The War of the World: Twentieth-century Conflict And the Descent of the West, Penguin Press.
• Fotiadis, Constantinos Emm. (2004 ed.). The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks: Volume 13, Thessaloniki: Herodotus.
• Horton, George (1926). The Blight of Asia. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company.
• Hull, Isabel V. (2005). Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Hulse, Carl (2007). U.S. and Turkey Thwart Armenian Genocide Bill, New York Times, 26 October 2007
• Jatz, Colin (2003). With Intent to Destroy: Reflections on Genocide. Essex: Verso. ISBN 1859845509.
• King, Charles (2005). The Black Sea: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press
• King, William C. (1922). King's Complete History of the World War: Visualizing the Great Conflict in all Theaters of Action 1914-1918, The History Associates, Massachusetts.
• Koromila, Marianna (2002). The Greeks and the Black Sea, Panorama Cultural Society.
• Levene, Mark (1998). Creating a Modern "Zone of Genocide": The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878–1923, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 12, Number 3 Winter 1998, pp. 393-433. (abstract).
• Lieberman, Benjamin (2006). Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe, Ivan R. Dee.
• Mildrasky, Manus I. (2005). The Killing Trap, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Morgenthau, Henry (1918). Morgenthau's Story, Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company.
• Naimark, Norman M. (2001). Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
• Peterson, Merrill D. (2004). Starving Armenians: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press
• Rendel, G. W. (20 March 1922). Foreign Office Memorandum on Turkish Massacres and Persecutions of Minorities since the Armistice
• Rummel, R. J. "Statistics of Democide". Chapter 5, Statistics Of Turkey's Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
• Staff "Massacre of Greeks Charged to the Turks",The Atlanta Constitution, 17 June 1914.
• Stanford J. Shaw, Ezel Kural Shaw. "History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey", Cambridge University.
• Taner, Akcam (2006). A Shameful Act
• Halo, Thea (2001). Not Even My Name, New York: Picador USA.
• Totten, Samuel (2002). Pioneers of Genocide Studies (Clt). New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765801515. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Toynbee, Arnold J. (1922). The Western question in Greece and Turkey: a study in the contact of civilisations, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Valavanis, G.K. (1925). Contemporary General History of Pontus (Σύγχρονος Γενική Ιστορία του Πόντου), Athens.

Further reading

Books

• Akcam, Taner. From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide, New York: Zed Books, 2004.
• Andreadis, George, Tamama: The Missing Girl of Pontos, Athens: Gordios, 1993.
• Barton, James L. The Near East Relief, 1915-1930, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943.
• Compton, Carl C. The Morning Cometh, New Rochelle, N.Y.: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1986.
• Karayinnides, Ioannis. Ο γολγοθάς του Πόντου [The Golgotha of Pontus], Salonica: 1978.
• Henry Morgenthau, Sr.. The Murder of a Nation, New York: Armenian General Benevolent Union of America, 1974, 1918.
• —. I Was Sent to Athens, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co, 1929.
• —. An International Drama, London: Jarrolds Ltd., 1930
• 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 Greeks)
• Housepian Dobkin, Marjorie. Smyrna 1922: the Destruction of a City, New York, NY: Newmark Press, 1998.
• 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: Oxford University Press, American branch, 1919.
• Pavlides, Ioannis. [Pages of History of Pontus and Asia Minor], Salonica, Greece, 1980.
• 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.

Articles

• Bjornlund, Matthias, "The 1914 cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a case of violent Turkification", Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 10, Issue 1, March 2008, pp. 41-58.
• Hlamides, Nikolaos, "The Greek Relief Committee: America’s Response to the Greek Genocide", Genocide Studies and Prevention, Volume 3, Issue 3, December 2008, pp. 375-383.
• Vryonis, Speros, "Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor", The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies (ed. Hovannisian, Richard), New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 2007, pp. 275-290.

Internet Resources

• Greek Genocide 1914-23
• The Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
• The Greek Genocide:1914-1923: Pontus, Asia Minor, Thrace