Pontic Greek genocide

Pontic Greek genocide
Part of the Greek genocide
Pontus, a region in present day Turkey along the southern Black Sea coastline. Here hundreds of thousands of civilian Pontians, who had lived in the region since deep antiquity, were exterminated by two successive Turkish governments.
LocationPontus region – northeastern Anatolia
Date1914–1923
TargetPontic Greeks
Attack type
Genocide, mass murder, death marches, ethnic cleansing, mass deportation, labour battalions
Deaths350,000–360,000[1][2][3]
PerpetratorsYoung Turks, Turkish National Movement
MotiveAnti-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]

  1. ^ a b c d IAGS' Resolution (16 December 2007):

    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.
  2. ^ a b c United Nations document (another link, the 5th document) E/CN.4/1998/NGO/24 (WRITTEN STATEMENT /SUBMITTED BY THE INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR THE RIGHTS AND LIBERATION OF PEOPLES, dated 1998-02-24):

    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"
  3. ^ a b c
    • Basso 2016, pp. 5–29: "The Pontic Greek caravans were subjected to levels of brutality that match what was done to the Armenians, well documented by a number of penetrating studies of the genocide. The Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa and Çetes subjected the Pontic Greeks to physical, mental and sexual abuse, and humiliation during the displacements. When the escorts desired, they beat victims, sometimes committing massacres though direct killings. The caravans were directed across the Turkish heartlands and death was nearly guaranteed. The perpetrators used very few escorts to direct the caravans south, a vital element of this genocide since the wartime restrictions on personnel and materiel placed strains on the forces available for killing operations. From 1916 to 1918 and 1919–1923, the Pontic Greeks were destroyed by these death caravans through the harsh Turkish heartland and eventually the Syrian Desert. A correlation in the Ottoman Genocide of Christian Minorities is that killing processes were instituted against Christian minority populations in connection with oncoming invasion efforts of Entente campaigns (the Russian invasion from the North and the British Mesopotamian front in the South). The presence of war fronts may have been a precipitating factor in the decision to kill potential revolutionary or Christian populations who could have been 'liberated' by other Christians invading, as perceived by the Turks. In all, 353,000 Pontic Greeks were killed and the other 347,000 were deported to Greece. After genocide, forced conversions and population cleansing, Turkey was almost entirely homogenized and no longer had major Christian minority populations within its borders."
    • Bartrop 2017, p. 140: "An ethnically Greek population traditionally living in the Pontus region in north-eastern Turkey, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, the Pontic Greeks maintained a continuous presence in the area for three millennia. Between 1914 and 1923 they suffered innumerable cruelties at the hands of Ottoman Turks, during which an estimated 353,000 died, many – like the Armenians and the Assyrians – on forced marches through Anatolia and the Syrian desert."
    • Totten & Bartrop 2007, p. 337: "The Pontic (sometimes Pontian) Greek genocide is the term to the massacres and deportations perpetrated against ethnic Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire at the hands of the Young Turk government between 1914 and 1923 ... An estimated three hundred fifty-three thousand Pontic Greeks died, many on forced marches through Anatolia and the Syrian desert, just like the Armenians. Those who survived were exiled from Turkey."
    • Jones 2010, p. 163: "Approximately 353,000 Pontian Greeks are believed to be among the Christian minorities slaughtered between 1914 and 1923. The Turks began targeting the millennia-old community along the Black Sea coast as early as 1916. Their extermination therefore long predated the renewal killings and persecutions of the post-World War One, accompanying the Greek invasion of Anatolia."
    • Merrill 2004, p. 124: "Kemal's army had driven one and a half million Greeks from the Pontus, killing 360,000 in the process."
  4. ^ a b
    • Meichanetsidis 2015, pp. 104–173: "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."
    • Hofmann 2018: "During the last decade of Ottoman rule in 1912–1922, under two nationalist regimes – the so-called Young Turks (Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti), since 1919 the Kemalists – at least three million indigenous Christians (Greek Orthodox, Armenians and Syrians of different denominations) were murdered by forced labor, massacres and death marches".
  5. ^ Wood, Michael (2005). In Search of Myths & Heroes: Exploring Four Epic Legends of the World. University of California Press. p. 109. ISBN 0520247248. 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.
  6. ^ Damousi, Joy (12 November 2015). Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants After World War II and the Greek Civil War. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781316453766. 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.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :18 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).