Pontic Greek genocide | |
---|---|
Part of Greek genocide | |
Location | Pontus region – northeastern Anatolia |
Date | 1914–1923 |
Target | Pontic Greeks |
Attack type | Genocide, mass murder, death marches, ethnic cleansing, mass deportation, labour battalions |
Deaths | 350,000–360,000[1][2][3] |
Perpetrators | Young Turks, Turkish National Movement |
Motive | Anti-Greek sentiment, Turkification, Anti-Eastern Orthodox sentiment |
The Pontic Greek genocide,[1] or the Pontic genocide (Greek: Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων του Πόντου), was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the indigenous Greek community in the Pontus region (the northeast of modern Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire during World War I and its aftermath.[1][2][3][4]
The Pontic Greeks had a continuous presence in the Pontus region from at least 700 BC, over 2,500 years ago. Following the Ottoman conquest of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, the area came under the control of the Ottoman Empire.[5] The rise of Turkish nationalism at the beginning of 20th century dramatically increased anti-Greek sentiment within the Ottoman Empire. The genocide began in 1914 by the Young Turk regime, which was led by the Three Pashas, and, after a short interwar pause in 1918–1919, continued until 1923 by the Kemalist regime which was led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Both nationalist movements massacred the Pontians and deported them to the interior regions of Anatolia. This resulted in approximately 350,000 deaths–about half of Pontic pre-genocide population.[1][2][3][4]
The genocide ended with the deportation of the survivors to Greece during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923.[6] The Pontic genocide is part of the wider Greek genocide, but it is often covered separately because of the geographic isolation of Pontus and several political and historical features.[7]
Resolution on genocides committed by the Ottoman Empire WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides; WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority populations during and following the First World War is usually depicted as a genocide against Armenians alone, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire; BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution.
The number of Pontians in the beginning of the twentieth century may be estimated at about 750,000. The process of their elimination goes from 1916 to 1923 ...In 1916, shortly after the completion of the genocide of the Armenians, the elimination process of the Pontians, started. The methods were the same: massacres, atrocities, massive rapes, abduction of women and children, forcible conversions to Islam, death-marches into arid regions, in inhuman conditions of hunger, thirst and disease meant for full extinction. These measures were called "deportation" by the authorities and were supposedly taken for security reasons. These facts are related by survivors and by many foreign witnesses confirming the deliberate destruction of the Pontian minority as such ... The elimination of the Pontians was carried on after World War I, in fact systematically after 1919. The event which is considered as the starting point of a new stage of the final uprooting is the arrival of Mustafa Kemal at Samsun on 19 May 1919. Indeed, operations of mass killings, persecution, "deportation" for elimination, were resumed on a large scale in 1919. Some acts of self-defence or resistance were repressed severely by the Turkish army. Scores of villages were burnt after looting. Churches and houses were plundered. A number of churches were demolished. This preplanned destruction over 6–7 years after 1916, of about 50 per cent of the Pontians constituted a genocide under the United Nations criteria (Article II of the Convention on genocide, paragraphs (a), (b), (c), (d), (e)). From 1916 to 1923, about 350,000 Pontians disappeared through massacres, persecution and death-marches"
THE PONTIC GREEKS In the valleys running down to the Black Sea shore around Trebizond, the Greek presence lasted from 700 BC until our own time. Only after the catastrophe of 1922, when the Greeks were expelled from Turkey, did most of them migrate to Greece, or into Georgia where many had started to go before the First World War when the first signs of burning were in the air. The Turks had entered central Anatolia (the Greek word for 'the east') in the eleventh century, and by 1400 it was entirely in their hands, though the jewel in the crown, Constantinople itself, wasn't taken till 1453. By then the Greek-speaking Christian population was in a minority, and even their church services were conducted partly in Greek, partly in Turkish. In Pontus, on the Black Sea coast, it was a different story. Here the Greeks were a very strong presence right up into modern times. Although they had been conquered in 1486, they were still the majority in the seventeenth century and many converted to Islam still spoke Greek. Even in the late twentieth century the authorities in Trebizond had to use interpreters to work with the Muslim Pontic-Greek speakers in the law courts, as the language was still spoken as their mother tongue. This region had a thriving oral culture into the last century and a thriving oral culture into the last century and a whole genre of ballads comes down from the Ancient Greeks.
The Pontic Greek genocide refers to the massacre and deportation inflicted against ethnic Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1923. The name originated from the Greek population living on the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea (in northern Turkey). In 1923, the Pontians who remained were expelled to Greece as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
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