The Pontic Greek Genocide

To remember does not mean stirring up hatred within or without. Hatred destroys what was good and pure in the past and the present. It simply means to embrace what is ours' 

                           Thea Halo, author of "Not Even My Name"

The Turkish Government reacted sharply to the recent dedication of the  Pontic Hellenism Genocide monument which was opened recently in Thessaloniki to  mark the genocide's anniversary.  Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Namik Tan said that " so-called Pontic genocide"  lacks historical and scientific evidence. “We suggest that Greek authorities and scholars evaluate the historical events objectively instead of using such expressions that can damage relations between our two countries,” said Tan. “We want to again reiterate that this step, which became a fodder for feeble arguments, isn’t in line with the spirit of the cooperation and dialogue we’re trying to develop.” 

May 19th marked the 87th anniversary of the Pontian genocide that occurred in present day Turkey.  Between 1916 and 1923 over 300,000 Pontic Greeks living in along the Black Sea coast and Asia Minor were systematically exiled or killed along with one and a half million Armenians and 700,000 Assyrians Christians.    The Pontic people lived in Turkey from ancient times for over 3000 years and are descendants of Greek colonists who arrived there long before the ancestors of present day Turks. The Turks, under the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, pursued a deliberate policy of "Turkey for the Turks."  It was adopted against the backdrop of the Greek occupation of parts of Asia Minor as spelled out in the Treaty of Versailles.  Its purpose was to rid Turkey of its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian Christians. The resulting Greek-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and the defeat of the Greek Army sounded the death knell for Christian minorities in Turkey. The process began with Christian owned businesses being boycotted, leading to bankruptcies and confiscation of property.  Eventually intellectuals and community leaders were rounded up and executed. One of the methods used in the elimination of the Greek population was the "labor battalions."  In them, mostly young and stronger people were captured and forced to do exhausting slave labor by the Turkish State, in order to reconstruct areas destroyed during the war. Some were sent to concentration camps and amongst the survivors was the well known writer, Elias Venezis, who later described his experiences in his book  "Number  31328." Thousands died of exhaustion, starvation and dehydration on forced marches.  This effective method was used by the Turks  to force the weaker population, including women and children, to walk for hundreds of kilometers until they died. This was known as the "Light Death."   

These tragic events were recorded by American, as well as the German and Austrian diplomats of the time.  Unlike Germany which has taken responsibility for its sins committed in World War II, Turkey still refuses to even admit that these events occurred, let alone apologize for the genocide and ethnic cleansing it inflicted on a helpless population. Not only were the people expunged from Turkey, so too were any traces of their existence. Admitting guilt would entail casting a shadow on Kemal Ataturk.  Ataturk is revered and represents the heart and soul of the modern Turkish ethos of who they are as a nation. The present Turkish government has gone to extraordinary lengths to quash any attempt to publicize these events throughout the world, including keeping their own people ignorant of their history. To do so would require a reexamination of the very foundation on which the modern Turkish State is built.  As a Friend of mine was fond of saying: "Folks it ain't gonna happen." Interestingly, the Kurds, fellow Muslims were active participants and abetted this genocide but now find themselves in a reversal of roles.  They have become the target of draconian assimilationist policies designed to suppress their identity and language.

If you would like to learn more, read Thea Halo's book: "Not Even My Name" about her mother's own odyssey and survival during the Pontic genocide. It is a powerful reminder of a history that cannot and should not be erased from human memory.  The following are excerpts from a recent interview. Her words say it much better than I can:

"The sad thing is that they lost so much, because the Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians had so much culture there. They brought so much vibrancy to the country that was lost. They were wonderful artisans, intellectuals, teachers, musicians. At the time, there were Europeans who were saying "What in the world will Turkey do without the Christians?" After all, it was the Christians who were the intellectuals and business people, who had the education to help Turkey progress into the 20th century. When Turkey got rid of the Christian populations, they set themselves back, way-way back. The general Turkish population was not well educated at that time, because the Turkish government didn't bother to educate them the way the Christian
missionaries educated the Christian populations. For the most part, the government wouldn't allow Muslims to attend the Christian schools, for fear of conversion, so most Turks of the time remained peasants and farmers. Consequently, the Turks did themselves a great disservice, because the removal of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians left a great vacuum in Turkey...... Almost every ancient culture has this attachment to the land. What else is there without a place to call home? When I stood on that land, for the first time in my life I could actually feel my ancestors, my grandparents. They became real to me for the first time. They were as much a
part of that land as the trees, the rocks, the grasses. Their blood and sweat is mingled with the earth for thousands of years. How can one walk away from that without feeling that a part of oneself is somehow left behind, somehow missing, like an amputated leg or arm that continues sending out sensations to the brain, even though it's gone? Just the other day my mother said to me, "you know, when you are born in a country, there is a part of you that always feels that that country is your true home."

Read the entire interview.

The Pontic plight, just like the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Greek-Turkish War of 1919-1922, are periods of modern Greek History that speak to who we are as Greeks, no matter where we live.  Those that do not  know what history teaches us are doomed to repeat it

Lest we forget.

Comments

[Ted Laskaris]

"Lest we forget." Stavros, thank you for publishing this piece. As a descendant of Pontic Greeks, who lost everything including several members of the immediate family to Ottoman Turkish genocide, I say "Never Forget" and I personally will never forgive.

The Greek government has been mushy, to say the least, in pushing for international recognition of the Pontic Greeks plight. This is not surprising; official Greece these days has an aversion to anything that touches upon the immense sufferings of the Greek Nation.

Getting into bed with Turkey on the EU bid remains the worst insult to all our dead, including our latest, Group Captain Eliakis. With the current crop of "politicians" at the helm, I see little hope of things changing. Our only avenue is to lobby and protest at the grass roots level, and expose the Greek government's reluctance to recognize our history and the immense sacrifices of our ancestors.

[Aritomachos Ops]

Hello, here are two videos on the Pontian and other Hellenic Genocides.

http://www.kryphoscholio.com/istoria/hellenicgenocide_el.html

http://www.kryphoscholio.com/istoria/hellenicgenocide_en.html

[John Anagnostis]

Stavros,

You have done some wonderful work with this blog. I don't know if I told you but my mother came from Smyrna with my grandmother's family.
There is another book called "1822" that is good reading.

[Jim Agoritsas]

Great Blog....you have put alot of thought and effort and should be commended for offering 'something of substance'

jim and Julie Agoritsas

[Jean Shawn]

You are so sad.

Out of nowhere, after decades of silence, the false issue of 'hellenic genocide' is brought up by the Greeks. Tell me, you didn't get 'inspired' by the Armenian diaspora and the false armenian genocide allegations, did you? Why don't you mention the 2 MILLION Turks killed by the Greeks and its allies during the war? Ashamed?

As long as you Greeks and the Turks don't realize that Turkey and Greece should be one of the 'best-friend' nations in this world, culturally, economically and geologically, both countries' futures are doomed with failure.

Instead of sending warplanes over to Turkish airspace (or Greek airspace?), accusing them of a falsified genocide, supporting PKK terrorism in Turkey, you should start embracing them. I've travelled to both countries and it is sad to see that no Turk talks badly about Greece, but 75% of greek people hate Turks.

[Stavros]

Jean, its not about hatred its about remembrance. Just because folks like you don't remember or even care, doesn't mean folks like me have to forget. My family lived in Turkey for many years, I was born there and we were never taught to hate Turks. As a matter of fact, Greeks are much more tolerant of the Turks in their midst. Read the post entitled "A Tale of Two Communities." I gather from your tone and your level of historical accuracy that you are neither willing to learn or listen.
The Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocides are well documented as is the current repression of Kurds in Turkey. The Turkish government does its very best to keep the historical record closed to its own people and to the world. Many Turks of good conscience have been prosecuted by the State for speaking out and telling the truth. I suggest you open your mind and at least read Thea Halo's book. Greeks would love to have good relations with their neighbor. What they are not willing to do is cower. It's rather hard to get along when you live next to an expanionist, aggressive, repressive country run by the military under the guise of a democracy. If Turkey wants to be a Western nation and an ally, it should start to act like one.

[demonax]

What a scandalous calumny on the great peace-adoring Greek people, who love the whole of humanity and trees and flowers and everything wholesome and cute to claim they killed 2 MILLION turks.
Anyone who knows anything about history knows these 2 MILLION turks died in a mass suicide pact.
There is another theory I was taught at Greek school – that it was a mass outbreak of food poisoning that caused 2 MILLION turks to die, but I think this is an outrageous slur on turkish cuisine and turkish chefs – who we all know are unsurpassed geniuses who saved humanity with their stuffed aubergines (eggplants) and I don't believe it. Mass suicide, definitely.

[Jean Shawn]

Stavros,

You're either a really nice person, or you're very naive, or you are politically inclined and motivated against Turkey. Anyone who knows a bit about history between the two nations and the recent developments between the two countries would laugh at your comments saying: "Greeks are much more tolerant of the Turks in their midst. Greeks would love to have good relations with their neighbor".

As the Greek ex-PM Costas Simitis nicely explained in his speech yesterday (please go ahead and read it in full), all Greece and the Greek-Cypriots want these days is to take full advantage of Turkey's EU membership talks. As the Greeks are fully aware, if Turkey backs-out or is forced-out of the EU membership talks, it will be very tough for Greece to achieve its ultimate goals of making the Aegean Sea a private Greek sea, and making the Greek-Cypriots the (politically and economically) dominant ethnicity on the island.

And to call Turkey a 'an expanionist, aggressive, repressive country'. What exactly is 'expanionist' about Turkey? I'd like to remind you that Greece was 'saved' from its own repressive and military dictatorship (that lead the coup against President of Cyprus Makarios II in 74) by Turkey's intervention on Cyprus in 1974.

But as with much of everything else, Greece and the Greek-Cypriots managed to rewrite history and showed themselves as the victims of the 1974 intervention. No one ever mentions the atrocities carried out by the Greeks against the Turkish Cypriots before the 1974 invasion. How did that happen Stavros?

If you're really about the unity of the two nations, why don't you write about the atrocities carried out by the Greeks and Greek-Cypriots against the Turks in your blog as a new post? Why not be impartial for a change? Why not post about the PKK terrorism support by the Greek government? I mean, you should know by now that several dozen PKK terrorist were caught by Greek passports on them right? Or the CIA reports that indicate that PKK receives training in CIA? Do I have to point you to the sources?

Let's be true to the truth for a change.

Regards,

[Stavros]

Jean, Welcome back.

I wish Greeks and Turks could just hold hands and sing Kumbaya, alas I fear that until Turks make long lasting and significant changes in their so-called democracy, that will be quite difficult. Let's review the record.
The Turkish minority in Greece has grown and prospered, it is represented in Parliament. The Greek minority in Turkey is almost non-existent. Case closed.

Cyprus, a island where 80% of the population is Greek, was invaded by Turkey which occupied almost half the island and populated the occupied lands with Turkish settlers from the Mainland. I'd say that has an "expansionist" ring to it.

With hundreds of GREEK islands in the Aegean, it is a "Greek lake." Greece does not need anyone's approval to make it so.

As for the dominant ethnicity in Cyprus it has always been the Greek majority. That majority lived peacefully side by side with the Turks until Great Britain and Turkey started meddling in Cypriot affairs.

Turkey has been a sponsor of State terrorism aginst Kurds, Greeks, Turks Greek and Turkish Cypriots. It sponsored the Turkish Resistance Organization in Cyprus which targeted Turks as well as Greeks. The Turkish government terrorized its own citizens of Greek origin in 1955 in Istanbul during the riots it engineered. Most recently the Turkish Army Chief of Land Forces, General Yasar Buyukanit, was implicated by a Turkish prosecutor in the direction of terrorist activities against the Kurdish minority.

Turkey's expansionism is not a figment of my imagination.

In fact, Turkey has always planned the invasion in Cyprus and the "taksim" (partition) of the island, prior to 1974. In 1939, soon after the annexation of Hatay, a predominantly Syrian city, Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey stated: "The turn of Cyprus has not yet come".

In 1956 the Turkish-Cypriot leader F. Kutchuck submitted on a map taksim proposals dividing Cyprus to North and South. The 1974 Turkish invasion deviated from the 1956 plan only in minor details. Turkish-Cypriot leader Denktash himself said: "Even if the Turkish-Cypriots did not exist, Turkey would not have left Cyprus to Greece."

As for the PKK, it is a direct result of Turkish policies designed to repress and disrupt the creation of a Kurdish national home. Its existence is unrelated to any Greek assistance it may have received in the past. It is a terrorist organization whose actions I abhor and unfortunately it has gotten support from leftist elements in Greece as well as Europe. Perhaps Turkey needs to reassess its approach to its indigenous people.

Lastly, Jean I surmise that you are neither Greek or Turkish, probably British or European. If that is the case, be careful what you wish for. When Europe accepts Turkey into the EU, as you and Costas Simitis so fervently pray for, then Europe will own Turkey's significant problems.

[demonax]

Excellent riposte, Stavros. You hit the nail right on the head.
I can never take the arguments of the Turks seriously.
To paraphrase Castoriadis, the Turks suffer from unbelievable self-mythologisation, presenting themselves as history's eternal victims when all the evidence points to the opposite; to the Turks being responsible for some of the most barbaric deeds known to mankind.
Dostoevsky refers to the Turks as 'savage beasts' and: 'This nation, steeped in lies and villainy, that denies the atrocities it has committed.'
The Russian said this in 1877. Since then, there's been the genocide of the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Pontic Greeks, the Greeks of Asia Minor, Constantinople, Imvros, Tenedos, the invasion and occupation of Cyprus and so on. Atrocity after atrocity, all of which the Turks steadfastly deny.
Whether the Turks accept their tendency to barbarism and show penitence and a willingness to become civilised is entirely up to them. I don't care. Let them continue with their absurd theories in which, by some extraordinary interpretation of history, they are the real victims. My main concern is that Greece continues to recognise what sort of creature it has on its doorstep and never lets its guard down.

[Kosta]

Jean,

I am not sure if you are serious or not as you seem to be rather uninformed about the real history of this region.

For starters, let's throw away ALL sources of genocide by Greeks and Armenians (though to disregard those sources is like disregarding sources like Elie Weisel on the Jewish Holocaust).

Let's start with the following sources.
Ambassador Morgenthau's story by Henry Morgenthau (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419105728/sr=8-1/qid=1150775550/ref=sr_1_1/002-6183987-5872008?%5Fencoding=UTF8)

Now one argument used by the Turks was that Morgenthau did not travel to eastern Turkey where the genocides took place. This is true. However, in addition to the conversations he had with members of the Ottoman government, he also did receive reports from American consulates stationed in different parts of the Ottoman Empire where the eradication of the Christian minorities took place.

Another excellent source is George Horton's "The Blight of Asia: An Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and the Culpability of Certain Great Powers; With the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna".
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/190365615X/qid=1150775701/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-6183987-5872008?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

One thing that makes this source so particularly powerful is that Mr. Horton would not accept testimony from any Greek or Armenian for events he did not witness himself.

Lastly, I would like to offer you a source from a Turkish author. Please see Taner Akcam's "From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1842775278/qid=1150775934/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/002-6183987-5872008?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

You mention Cyprus and refer to the communal violence. Let's be fair however. It was the Turkish community that started the violence in 1958. The Greeks at that point where struggling for independence against the British. With regards to the reasons for the invasion of 1974, I would recommend a book from a pair of British authors: Brendan O'Malley's and Ian Craig's "The Cyprus Conspiracy: America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1860647375/sr=8-1/qid=1150776270/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6183987-5872008?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Read this book and you will better understand why Cyprus was so strategically important at the time in which the Soviets surpassed the United States in nuclear strike capabilities.

I would also recommend Christopher Hitchens' "Cyprus" as well which is difficult to find these days.

May I ask you, do you believe Armin Wegner's photographs on the Armenian genocide are all fakes?

As far as Greece and the Greeks on Cyprus using the EU talks for their own "advantage" / ensuring their security, is that all that unreasonable? Does the fact that the so called government of the occupied region of Cyprus is only recognized by the country that invaded the island seem at all strange to you?

With regards to the treatment of Greeks in Turkey vs. the treatment of Turks in Greece, I would like to point out this entry from a Turkish blog: http://istanbul.metblogs.com/archives/2005/09/smashing_the_me_1.phtml.

Can you provide any references to similar events in Greece against the Turkish minority?

What difference has there been between the growth of the respective minority populations in each country? Which has shrunk and which has grown?

Also, if you are serious about debating this topic, please provide some reputable sources.

Kosta

[Stavros]

Kosta, Well done and thanks for the links.

[Jean Shawn]

First of all, for us to participate in a meaningful discussion (and, in general, for Greeks to participate in negotiations with Turkey), you people need to stop writing and saying stuff like:

"...the Turks being responsible for some of the most barbaric deeds known to mankind.
...'savage beasts'... Whether the Turks accept their tendency to barbarism... Greece continues to recognise what sort of creature it has on its doorstep and never lets its guard down."

This kind of talk just shows the unwillingness of the Greek people to engage in discussions with Turkey. It is this kind of language and aggresiveness that weakens the Greek side of the arguments, because lets face it, the entire Europe knows that the Greeks are extremely prejiduced against Turkey. One reason that UK isn't as keen on interfering on the Greek-Turkish relations anymore is that Greece and Greek-Cypriots are very aggressive, un-cooperative and downright unreasonable when it comes to their dealings with Turkey and the Northern Cyprus. The Greek side can argue that they have 'all the reason and right' to be aggressive, but remember that so can Turks, therefore this kind of behaviour would then put a dent to what you're trying to achieve here.

Please accept the fact that Greek were never and still aren't 'snow white' when it comes to their dealings with Turks. You cannot convince anyone in Europe that the Cyprus problem started because Turks are 'savage beasts' and they are expansionists and they just wanted to invade the island in 1974. The Cyprus problem started because of the Greek side and snowballed from there onwards by any account of history. Could it be sponsored by CIA? Maybe. Could it be the work of other foreign intelligence and secret services? Certainly so. That doesn't change the fact that, in 1963, the Turkish Cypriots were ousted by force from all arms of the new Republic (which was formed just 3 years ago) by Greeks, illegally, against the founding agreements of the Republic, the Constitution and all international laws and agreements. Then followed the atrocities against the Turks by the nationalist Greek-Cypriots and then you know the rest of the story. I find it unbelievable when the Greek-Cypriot side claims that the first blood was shed by the Turkish side, when the Turkish side was outnumbered by about 5-to-1 with no arms and no military and no physical support from Turkey at that time.

Finally, please keep in mind that a lot of people's look at the Cyprus problem has changed two years ago where the Turkish side of the island voted a 'YES' to the UN led 'Annan plan', while the Greek-Cypriot side voted an overwhelming, screaming NO. You can't continue to fool all the people, all the time. Greece and Greek-Cypriots already lost credibility in Europe by proving beyond any doubt that they are not ready to enter into an arrangement with the Turkish side of the island. The UN Secretary-General summarized it very nicely to the Security Council two years ago: (S/2004/437): “If the Greek Cypriots are ready to share power and prosperity with the Turkish Cypriots in a federal structure based on political equality, this needs to be demonstrated, not just by word, but by action” (para.86)

I will be back in a few days to ask all of you a very important question, which no Greek friend of mine ever managed answer successfully.

Sincerely,

[Stavros]

Jean, "Us people" would appreciate "you people" not telling us people why we need to be more understanding when you people have so little of it. If the UK isn't keen on dealing with Greeks or Greek Cypriots I daresay they literally cringe at the thought of a second rate has been power like Britain sticking her nose where it has never belonged. Britain should bear at least some of the reponsibilty for the mess in Cyprus which is largely its own creation.

As for the Anan Plan, here's why it was dead on arrival:
* The Plan did not include a settlement regarding the repatriation of Turkish settlers living on Greek Cypriot owned land in the 'Northern Cyprus', while after 19 years, the possibility of abolishing the derogation of 5% of Greeks and Turkish citizens who could settle in Cyprus, is obvious, and the danger of a permanent mass settling of Cyprus by Turkey is visible.
* The Plan did not deal in full with the demilitarisation of the de facto 'TRNC', and Greek Cypriots felt they had no reason to believe Turkish promises concerning the withdrawal of troops.
* Many Greek Cypriots interpreted the Right of Return policy as to be seriously flawed, meaning only 20% of Greek Cypriot refugees would be able to return over a time frame of 25 years, whereas Turkish Cypriots would have had full right of return.
* Turkish Cypriots would have gained all the basic demands it made, from the first day of the implementation of the solution. To be exact, 24 hours after the holding of the referendum. In contrast, everything that the Greek Cypriots were aspiring to achieve, would have postponed without guarantees and depend upon the good will of Turkey to fulfil the obligations it undertakes. They are also subject to the precondition that all would have gone well.
* The return of the Turkish occupied land will take place in the period between three and a half months and three and a half years from the moment the solution is signed with no guarantees whatsoever that this shall be implemented. The Cypriot-Greek proposal of placing these areas under the control of the UN Peace Keeping Force and not the Turkish army has been rejected.
* The Plan did not address the issue of the British Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) on the island, although parts of the SBAs would be transferred to the governments of the two consituent states.
* The functional weaknesses of the Plan endanger, inter alia, the smooth activity and participation of Cyprus, with one voice, in the European Union. While the Greek Cypriots have with many sacrifices achieved Cyprus accession to the European Union, the Greek Cypriots could very easily be led to the neutralization of the accession until the adoption of all necessary federal and regional legal measures or the loss of the benefits of the accession or the facing of obstacles in Cyprus participation in the Economic and Monetary Union and other European institutions.
* The Economy of Cyprus would have been separate with the plan. There will be no common monetary, fiscal policy and no investments by Greek Cypriot businesses shall be allowed in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state.

FYI, Greek Cypriots don't have to kowtow to every UN proposal just because Kofi Anan put his name on it nor do they have to continue to give in to Turkish threats and demands. BTW, if I were a Turkish Cypriot, I too would want to be part of a United Cyprus and not a Turkish colony.

PS I must congratulate you. You are a great apologist for Turkey. Unfortunately, not a very good historian. Ever think of moving to the Turkish occupied area in Cyprus? I hear Brits like you can get former Greek Cypriot properties at bargain basement prices.

[demonax]

To have meaningful discussion with Turks requires that they accept their frequent decline into savagery. The Germans and Japanese have had to go through a process of reeducation, remorselessly examining their culture and national psychology to try and expunge those elements that may have prompted them to commit some of the worst crimes known to mankind; yet the Turks are unwilling, unable, to subject their culture, history, state, to such scrutiny, showing not only how little they are imbued with a democratic consciousness but also how little they can be trusted.

Of course, you are right, Stavros; Annan was a disgusting plan that would have legitimised the invasion and partitioning of Cyprus. Truly one of the most contemptible pieces of diplomacy in recent history (see Christopher Hitchens, 'Cyprus Betrayed' at: http://www.hitchensweb.com.

As for:
"In 1963, the Turkish Cypriots were ousted by force from all arms of the new Republic by Greeks. Then followed the atrocities against the Turks by the nationalist Greek-Cypriots. The Turkish side was outnumbered by about 5-to-1 with no arms and no military and no physical support from Turkey at that time."

this is a perfect example of Turkish self-mythologising which turns the truth on its head. From (at least) 1958, Turkish nationalists on the island – backed by Ankara with money, materiel and manpower and with the tacit support of the British – had been engaged in a violent campaign that often targeted Greek Cypriots – for example, the Gunyeli massacre – but had as its main aim the forcing of Turkish Cypriots to end all forms of cooperation and coexistence with Greek Cypriots, the physical separation of Turkish from Greek Cypriots and the setting up of a parallel state in preparation for partition – 'partition or death' being the adopted slogan of Turkish extremists on the island. What happened in 1963, far from being a Greek-engineered effort to exclude the Turks from the Cyprus Republic, was an outbreak of open rebellion by the Turkish Cypriots in pursuit of their strategy to end the unitary state and create the conditions for partition. (See Costas Yennaris, From the East: Conflict and Partition in Cyprus, http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904027067/qid%3D1150856924/202-1956109-5892628).

That there was fighting between Greeks and Turks on the island in the 1960s is undeniable, but to present the Turks as helpless victims is absurd. They did their fair share of bombing and killing. Their gangs of fanatics and psychopaths were just as ruthless as their Greek equivalents. Nevertheless, however nasty the fighting was in the 1960s, three things must be remembered.
1. It was small scale and cannot, for example, be compared to the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Most Greek and Turkish Cypriots continued their lives unaffected by the troubles. In fact, following independence, the island enjoyed unprecedented social and economic development.
2. From 1967 till the Turkish invasion, intercommunal fighting had died down and negotiations between the Greeks and the Turkish minority – between Denktash and Clerides – aimed at arriving at a more equitable and sustainable constitution than the one imposed in 1960 were reaching a conclusion.
3. Full-scale atrocities – massacre, rape, looting, ethnic cleansing – only arrived on the island with the Turkish army in 1974 and the victims of this were the Greek Cypriots.

As for the question you propose to ask, please don't ask it. All you've done so far is present us with the same old Turkish lies and propaganda. What do you think? That we've never heard them before and that you're somehow going to convince us of the righteousness of your case? The Turks are barbarians not just because of what they do and what they've done but also because of how they seek to justify or deny their actions. Turkish contempt for truth and history, their total failure to even countenance the legitimacy of alternative narratives, their inability to show remorse or repentance – which, admittedly, may be an Islamic and not just a national trait – shows what a threat this 'savage beast' (to quote Dostoevsky again, the writer who has revealed and shaped the modern Western imagination more than any other, so knows what he's talking about) poses not only to Greece but to the entire Western way of doing and being.

[Kosta]

Jean,

You disappoint me. With all due respect, I was hoping for some fact based arguments rather than your Turkic ramblings.

I could go on with regards to the appeasement of your government towards the Turks. Would the fact that BP is the major stakeholder in the BTC pipeline?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan_Pipeline

I'm afraid you are dealing with a number of people here who are intimately knowledgeable on the history and current events of this region. There are plenty of non-Greek and Armenian sources that back up the facts we've provided. Please read Taner Akcem's book. It is a heavy read, but excellent.

Would you like to try again?

Kosta

[demonax]

Being a rather serious type, I'm not easily prone to full-blooded laughter but this piece in today's Turkish Daily News had me in stitches (http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=46764).
I found the bit about "we teach our children about respect and love" particularly funny. I guess we had the Turks wrong all along: they're just a bunch of misunderstood flower children.

[Stavros]

I especially liked the Orthodox Church as the daggar pointed at Turkey's neck meme. Cute.

[Kosta]

Demonax,

Thanks for the link! That is real keeper! I shouldn't be laughing as it is so delusional, but I am.

Kosta

[Jean Shawn]

There are so many things to write about your replies, I don't even know where to start.

I guess today I shall start with your 'book recommendation', the one that was authored by 'Taner Akcam'.

You really should research your sources before 'recommending' them to other people. Here's a FACT for you: Taner Akcam is a convicted TERRORIST. Please read on.

Akcam was a strong leftist. His radicalism intensified while he studied at the Middle East Technical University in the early 1970s. Akcam moved from student activism into political terrorism by joining the THKP-C (Turkish People's Liberation Party-Front) in 1972--a terrorist organization that was implicated in the assassinations and killings of numerous far-right militants, Turkish security officials, and American and NATO military personnel. In the mid-1970s, Akcam became a leading member of DEV-YOL and the editor of its periodical Devrimci Genclik Dergisi (Revolutionary Youth Magazine). It might be recalled that DEV-YOL was one of the two principal leftist terrorist organizations (the other being DEV-SOL) that played a major role in the bloody escalation of political violence in Turkey during the 1970s. In the bizarre ideological divisions among the leftist groups that proliferated on the Turkish political scene at the time, DEV-YOL was known as following a "pro-Soviet" line in terms of its international loyalties. DEV-YOL's bloody terrorist activities, which claimed hundreds of fatalities and a large number of serious injuries, included assassinations, armed attacks, bombings, and bank robberies. The group also achieved notoriety when it set up a so-called "liberated zone" in the town of Fatsa on the Black Sea coast where DEV-YOL militants established their control for several months before being routed by the security forces.

During this period of heightened terrorism, Akcam was an active participant in the planning of assassinations and armed attacks against the targets chosen by DEV-YOL. He was in the inner leadership circle of the terrorist organization and worked as the right-hand man of its leader Oguzhan Muftuoglu. In addition, as the editor of DEV-YOL's magazine, he wrote numerous articles exhorting DEV-YOL militants to engage in violence to bring down "the oligarchy", to punish "the fascists", and to get rid of "American imperialism". By the mid-1970s, as political violence between the far-left and ultra-nationalist groups escalated, Akcam had become one of the leading "theoreticians" of leftist terrorism and violence in Turkey.

Taner Akcam was arrested in 1976. After a trial that lasted several months he was sentenced to eight years and nine months for his role in fomenting terrorism and political violence. However, Akcam did not stay in jail for long: in a spectacular incident that made the headlines in the Turkish press, he escaped from a prison in Ankara along with four other convicted terrorists in March 1977. After hiding in Turkey for several months, he managed to find his way to Germany where he asked--and received--political asylum.

Akcam who is affiliated with a German research center and claims a doctorate in history, has become the darling of the Armenian diaspora activists (and apparently the Greeks) in US and in Europe. He has been invited to the United States several times--all expenses paid by Armenian organizations--to give talks and participate in conferences. Currently, he is a "visiting scholar" at the Armenian Research Center (ARC) at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The ARC serves as one of main mouthpieces of anti-Turkey Armenian propaganda in the U.S. Its Director, Dennis Papazian, is a well-known professional falsifier of history who has consistently denied that Armenians were involved in the deaths of thousands of Turks in Eastern Anatolia during World War I.

Moreover, Akcam, at one time, was going hand-in-hand with one of the worst terrorist organizations in the world, the PKK and its past leader, chief terrorist Abdullah Ocalan. Ocalan and Akcam now openly speak about this relationship, as evidenced by the Jan 2002 interview of Akcam in a Turkish daily newspaper. They both admit to working together in 73-75 as part of THKP-C, as TERRORIST THAT KILL INNOCENT CIVILIANS!

So next time you cite a source, please do make sure that it is legit. If we all start reading the books and studying the idealogies of TERRORISTS, the world will not be a better place. Don't you agree? How would you feel if people go around and recommend books of Greece's worst criminals in history?

Sincerely,

[Bettsy Stewart]

--------
So next time you cite a source, please do make sure that it is legit. If we all start reading the books and studying the idealogies of TERRORISTS, the world will not be a better place. Don't you agree? How would you feel if people go around and recommend books of Greece's worst criminals in history?
------------

OK, so along these lines. Jean [Claude van] Shawn, we should definatley never adhere to the words of the butcher Kemal Ataturk. Not only should we not cite "terrorists" (your "proof" is off by the way), we should likewise not cite genocidal maniacs that happend to be leaders.

Then again, Turks seem to glorify genocidal leaders. The eros for Ataturk is only one example. The fact that "Mein Kampf" was recentley a best seller in Turkey is another example of the Turkish lust for leaders that love genocide.

We Hellenes and philHellenes know what the Turk is all about. 1974 is only one example of the most recent Turkish barbarism against the poor Hellenic souls of Cyprus. NEVER FORGET, that Demirel claimed that the Cypriot coup was an internal Greek affair, and did not seek Turkish assistance immediatley. Only after he got his ear tugged by the Turkish government did he allow Turkish forces to land.

What do you think of Speros Vryonis? His books on Turkey are AMAZING!!!

[Stavros]

Jean, The world according to right wing military dictadorships and their propaganda machine is not exactly a reliable source if you know what I mean. BTW, if this guy is so dangerous why didn't they throw him in jail during his last visit to Turkey?

Sociologist and historian Taner Akçam studied at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. He was a faculty member of Administrative Sciences, Department of Political Economy. He received his Bachelor of Administrative Sciences in 1976. He stayed at the university as a Master's student and assistant in the same department for some time. In 1976 he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment as the editor-in-chief of a political journal. Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. (What is a prisoner of conscience?
A "prisoner of conscience" is someone imprisoned solely for the peaceful expression of their beliefs. The term was coined by Amnesty International's founder, civil rights lawyer Peter Benenson.) A year later, he escaped to Germany, where he received political asylum.He has been living in the Federal Republic of Germany since early 1978 as a political refugee. He continued his political actvities and in 1988 started working for the Hamburg Institute for Social Research on the history of violence and torture in Turkey. He earned his Doctorate Degree at The University of Hannover in 1995. The topic was called Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide on the Background of Military Tribunals in Istanbul between 1919 and 1922. Currently he belongs to the scientific staff of the Hamburg Foundation to promote science and culture, working at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. Today, Akcam is currently a Visiting Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota.

While researching the late Ottoman Empire and early Republic, especially the history of political violence and torture in Turkey, he became interested in the Armenian Genocide. In 1995 he received his doctorate from the University of Hanover with a dissertation on The Turkish National Movement and the Armenian Genocide Against the Background of the Military Tribunals in Istanbul Between 1919 and 1922. Prof. Akcam is the author of ten books and numerous articles in Turkish, German, English and other languages.

The following is a direct quote:

"Turkish nationalism arose as a reaction to the experience of constant humiliations. Turkish national sentiment constantly suffered from the effects of an inferiority complex. Various factors played a role in this. Critical, however, was the fact that the Turks not only were continuously humiliated and loathed, but they were conscious of this humiliation. The Turkish political elite had clear ideas as to what people thought of the Turks, and this knowledge became an important determining factor for their actions. One of the consequences was a strong "sense of being misunderstood" and a fear of being isolated. A nation that was humiliated in this way in the past and is also conscious of that experience, will try to prove its own greatness and importance. As Elias noted:

The established feeling of inferiority ... and the resentment, the sensitivity to the humiliation, often connected with it was countered [and compensated] with the preoccupation with its own greatness and power.

The result is a penchant for power."

Maybe Jean is right, this guy is dangerous and no amount of defamation is going to shut him up.

[Stavros]

Betsy, Spiros is good. Read Mechanism of Catastrophe. A Link is provided.

[Kosta]

Jean,

At this point, I do not believe you are British, at least not by blood. You are Turkish, are you not? The reason I ask is the intensity in which you spew Turkish propaganda.

Do you think I do not know the history of Mr. Akcam? Even in the beginning of his book he mentions being a political activist and jailed.

Now if you look here: http://library.nps.navy.mil/home/tgp/devrimi.htm, you will see that the terrorist began in the 80's, long after Mr. Akcam was in prison and escaped. This is a classic example of Turkish revisionist history.

You should note that I provided an impartial source, or really one more partial towards Turkey.

Would you like to try again?

Kosta

[Jean Shawn]

Hello,

The more I write in this blog and receive more replies, the more I realize a full-fledged peace between Greece and Turkey is a looooong time away.

I told you, several days ago that, for us to have a meaningful discussion (and for the two nations to march towards peace), you should stop your insulting comments. You're acting like 16 year olds in a fist fight, still calling Turks 'savage beasts', calling their national hero Ataturk a butcher, and admitting the fact that Taner Akcam is/was a terrorist but still acknowleding him, just because his views are against Turkey, and, perhaps this is the worst of all, speaking words that bring upon us the worst hatred of all times, religios hatred, by saying '...their inability to show remorse or repentance – which, admittedly, may be an Islamic and not just a national trait...'.

So now we'll hate all Muslims because you're a racist?

As I read this blog and other blogs you guys are participating in, I realize more and more that you're just full of it. Stavros a few days ago said 'its not about hatred, its about rememberance'. You're peace-loving, wanna-be-friends-with-Turkey people? Bullshit. Here's a comment from 'demonax' on Phylaxblog (http://phylaxblog.com/?p=46)

"One Armenian told me, when I introduced myself as a Greek from Cyprus, that ‘we have the same enemy’ – which is always a good reason to form a friendship – while I remember another telling me that: ‘From the moment we [Armenians] are born, we are taught that it is our duty to kill Turks.’ Excellent sentiments indeed."

Excellent sentiments indeed? You should be ashamed. The world is better without people like you that teach, sponsor and incite hatred.

Please remember, you (Greeks and Turks) will NEVER see peaceful days if you keep thinking, writing and teaching with this mentality. You keep saying the Turks should take a look at themselves, their history and admit their flaws? What about you? In many ways, you're much worse than the Turks. For the love of God, please ADMIT the fact that you have a lot to improve on before you can bad-mouth Turks; as I said before, you're no 'snow-white'.

This past week, I've never used a word that insulted either the Greeks, Greek-Cypriots, or Turks, on the other hand 90% of your posts contain profanity or hatred. So I think you should understand that I've got nothing more to say to you until you demonstrate that you are willing to have a calm, coherent and intelligent discussion.

Until then, have a nice day.

Sincerely,

[Kosta]

Jean,

That is correct. Peace with Turkey is a long ways off. First, they must admit the atrocities that have been committed in the previous century, if they are to be a civilized society. Second, they must stop their irredentist claims (a Turkish general recently stated that they need to stretch their borders to the Adriatic). Third, they must remove their forces from Cyprus and refugees from BOTH sides must be able to return to their homes that were lost in 1974.

It is Turkey that is the aggressor, not Greece. Can anyone remotely sane believe that Greece could ever conduct an offensive campaign against Turkey? Do you have any idea how much larger the population of Turkey is to Greece? Turkey is also the third largest recipient of military hardware from the United States (Israel is first, Egypt second, and Greece fifth).

As far as Taner Akcam, none of us label him a terrorist. If an organization in which he was a member turns to terrorist tactics after he is gone, that simply is not a reflection upon him.

Remember that Amnesty International labelled him a prisoner of conscience, a far cry from a terrorist. Or do you disagree with that. Can you present ANY evidence that prior to Mr. Akcam incarceration that any organizations in which he was involved conducted terrorist acts? Based upon the link I provided earlier, I don't think you will be successful.

I have been quite calm and coherent with you, presenting you with arguments in an intelligent manner backed by facts. You on the other hand have responded immaturely with nothing but propoganda.

What exactly do you think Greeks need to admit anyway? We do keep voting for corrupt politicians. We are loud when we play tavli. Sometimes we are clumsy and break plates. What more should we admit?

For your criticism of Demonax, did you note he's a Greek from Cyprus? Do you know anything of his family's history? If his family has suffered atrocities at the hands of the Turks, you do you think he should be ashamed for harboring resentment? If yes, what kind of sheltered life have you lived? You then truly fail to have any understanding of the history of the Balkans and Near East.

So would you like to try again? Will you ever produce any sorts of facts or will you continue to spew propaganda towards us? If the latter, do not waste your time as we've all heard it before and are informed enough to tear those statements with facts based in reality.

And yes, Ataturk was a butcher. The facts support this. As far as "being friends with Turks", I have friends who are Turkish and not brainwashed by their country's propoganda to know of the genocides of the Christian minorities that took place in the last century. As far as the deniers of those genocides, I want nothing to do with them. I just want them to leave my country alone. End of story.

Kosta

[Ted Laskaris]

This past week, I've never used a word that insulted either the Greeks, Greek-Cypriots, or Turks, on the other hand 90% of your posts contain profanity or hatred. So I think you should understand that I've got nothing more to say to you until you demonstrate that you are willing to have a calm, coherent and intelligent discussion.

This is the long-tested way these days when you argue in favor of peace-loving, non-expansionist, deeply civilized, fully democratic countries, which reject personality cults centered on a certified genocidal founder like Kemal: accuse those who have been on the receiving end of this country's "civilization" of "profanity" and "hatred."

I have long abandoned trying to find common ground with Turks and Turkey lovers. Arguing with them is tantamount with trying to talk to Nazis about their Final Solution and other such population control projects during WWII. I once I asked a bull-necked Turkish military officer during a diplomatic reception what is exactly that Turkey wants in the Aegean (he thought I was Greek American friendly to the Turanian Empire). Well, he said, nothing more than "what is due to Turkey." And what that might be, I asked further? Well, he replied, look there's a sea full of islands begging to be populated "by a strong race" .... and, anyway, the Ottoman legacy "is alive and must be honored." Hence, I said, there's little hope for Crete, Greek Macedonia and Thrace, Epirus, and much of Thessaly. Yes, he said, that is correct. "You see," he added, "Greeks do not understand what it is to think like a great power. We in Turkey do."

A country which made genocide an integral part of its national strategy has no grounds to demand respect from others.

The Turks, even in their vilest propaganda moments, have found it untenable to accuse Greece of systematic slaughter and ethnic persecution -- because there's none in this country's modern history. There have been many excesses by the modern Greek state against "minorities," but we have yet to run into "evidence" of Kemal-like policies of cleansing the Nation of its unwanted appendages. I laugh every time I read on Turkish Web sites how Greeks are eternally guilty of putting to the sword the Turkish population of Tripoli (Tripolitza), some 10,000 strong, at the opening of the Greek Revolution in 1821. The same sites are silent on what Ibrahim Pasha, the chosen Egyptian general of the Sultan, unleashed upon the Peloponnese in order to quell the rebellion; by the time of the Battle of Navarino, which sent the Turks to the bottom of the sea, the entire peninsula had been depopulated to such a degree that its future as a habitable piece of territory was in serious question.

Relations with Turkey cannot and won't improve until the Turks understand that theirs is very little to claim -- if anything.

Their sea borders have been arranged by international treaty (Lausanne) and their "strategic interests" must, by necessity, be harnessed to realities. Abandoning threats and military harassment of their neighbors are basic requirements of a civilized existence. I think that Turkey has no room to change in any meaningful way though. Changing -- as in dropping the Kemalist mummified construct and the politics of genocidal force -- would mean disintegration. We will only be rid of Turkey through catastrophic dissolution, i.e. war and defeat and mass popular unrest. It took Germany two world wars to become a working republic. Let's hope the scale of conflict that is required in order to disassemble the Kemalo-Islamo-fascist state would be smaller.

[demonax]

My own personal contempt for Turks is based on a number of factors, which include: being a Cypriot; being a Greek; being a European; being a rational human being who detests lying barbarians.
My admiration for the sentiments of the Armenians I encountered derives from my belief that the Turks are a mortal threat to Greece and that Greeks need to adopt measures – both practical and psychological – to deal with the danger.
These psychological measures should include unashamedly identifying the enemy and inculcating in the population the necessary loathing so that, when it comes to having to defend the country, there will be no doubt about the righteousness of the cause and no compunction for the enemy.
The innate hostility of Armenians to Turks is an 'excellent sentiment' because, above all, it is pragmatic, it is good common sense. Spurious efforts to improve 'ties' with Turkey, to create 'friendship' – when the reality, as Ted – and the facts on the ground – clearly demonstrate, is that the Turks are committed to attacking Greece and seizing our territory – undermines the resolve of the Greek people, lulls them into a false sense of security, harms the morale of the armed forces and the martial spirit more generally.
One of the reasons, I believe, why Greece failed to prosecute the war in Asia Minor to a successful conclusion was that the Greek civil authorities in Smyrna pussyfooted around with the Turks in its midst – in order not to offend the hypocritically squeamish British, overseeing our liberation efforts. Of course, the Turks had no such qualms attending to populations it deemed hostile to its interests.
In war, in struggles for national survival, the point is to win, not to be a chivalrous loser.

On the point about Islam and Christianity: I think it is fair to say that Christianity, with its emphasis on remorse and repentance, is constantly directing its adherents towards admitting error and the legitimacy of the 'other'. It seems to me that Islamic ideology admits no error and its attitude towards the 'other' is not to understand or appreciate it but to wipe it out.
The Turks are barbarians, therefore, because they are Turks and because they are Muslims; their tendency to savagery results from a lethal concoction of ethnicity and religion.
This is not prejudice but a search for the truth, a quest to find out why the Turks are such unsurpassed barbarians. Greeks have been trying to figure out barbarians for 3,000 years. I'd like to think I'm (humbly) following in this tradition.

[Hermes]

I really do not feel worthy to add anything more except its great to know that Greeks can argue logically with recourse to facts rather than reverting to hyperbole and propaganda. Bravo.

[Anestis]

Mark Mazower on another Genocide that Turkey denies. My, they've been busy.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n03/mazo01_.html

Of course it is not surprising that Turks hold such fantastic views. Recently they were also found to believe that the 9/11 attack was not perpetrated by Arab Muslims.

http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=253

Oh, and according to the above they also hate Christians. And Westerners. And Jews. And they have little faith in democracy.
But they are otherwise a very tolerant and democratic people. And they are so *tired* of being the victims of *racism*. Pity the Turk for he is much maligned.

[Jason Koumas]

I would like to begin with the reverend acknowledgment of all those Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians and all other peoples who suffered through the tyranny of Turkish Imperial exploits - centuries of invasion, dictation, rape, murder and worst of all genocide and subsequent denial.
My family's experience concerns the assault and occupation of Famagusta, the apparent "Peace Operation, 1974". If Turkish Cypriots and Anatolian Turks call that peace, then God forbid an other war.
Three members of my family where among the "1616's" - those lost and never found - and two of my family were among the several thousand who were brutally and maliciously murdered.
In Germany there are laws to punish those scum guilty of twisted lies and evil misrepresentation and denial of the central and eastern European Jewish Genocide - that one of the darkest chapters in human history
never happened.

I must take this opportunity to commend Stavros for his earlier intelligently inspired and very well informed contributions.
Don't give up the fight for the truth.

[Anestis]

Actually lots of folks agree it was a genocide. That is not a fault of current Turks but their fault is in denying it still.

http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=17
The Holocaust in Comparative and Historical Perspective, R. J. Rummel, 1998, Idea a Journal of Social Issues Vol.3, no.2
These genocides not only involved the Holocaust and the killing of the Armenians, the best known of this century's genocides, but also the lesser known genocide of Gypsies by the Nazis and of Greeks by the Turks.

The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians: Donald Bloxhaml
p.150
The loss of the unwieldy Arab lands was not only accepted by the Kemalists hut perhaps even welcomed as Islamism receded further with the advance of a secular Turkic nationalism. The loss of parts of Anatolia and the rest of Thrace was an entirely different matter. The two present threats to Turkish territorial integrity—by the Greeks and the French—and the one potential threat—an Armenian state—reproduced the proximate CUP ‘rationale’ for the 1915—16 genocide, and the forthcoming violence was sometimes of the same order. To convinced nationalists the sort of settlement now envisaged was simple proof that they had always been correct about the relationship between predatory imperialists and their local co-religionists.

The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, By Manus I. Midlarsky
p.342
Many, however, were massacred by the Turks, especially at Smyrna (today’s Izmir) 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 and particularly in 1921, as the Greek army advanced, many were deported to the Mesopotamian desert as had been the Armenians before them.2° Nevertheless, approximately I,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 close to the 1,500,000 Greeks in Anatolia and Thrace enumerated in 1914.
Here, a strong disjunction between intention and action is found. According to the Austrian consul at Arnisos, Kwiatkowski, in his November 30, 1916, report to the foreign minister Baron Bunan: 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 Austna:

p.343
Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks. Massacres most likely did take place at Amisos and other villages in the Pontus. Yet given the large numbers of surviving Greeks, especially relative to the small number of Armenian survivors, the massacres were apparently restricted to the Pontus, Smyrna, and selected other "sensitive regions"

Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, Joel Beinin
p.47
From 1840 on, the relatively tolerant pattern of inter-communal relations was disrupted with increasingly violent consequences, reaching a crescendo with the ethnic cleansing of Armenians and Greeks from Anatolia in 1915—23.

Genocide, W. D. Rubinstein
p.42
While the major leaders and structure of the Nazi SS have been the subjects of innumerable works, no English-language work apparently exists on the Special Organisation, which chiefly existed to ‘solve’ the Armenian question. For the most part, the Ottoman leaders of the Turkish genocide remain faceless men.
After the Armenians it was the turn of the Greeks to be the victims of ‘ethnic cleansing’. The cleansing of the Greeks was to have begun earlier in November 1913 Greece and Turkey agreed to exchange hundreds of thousands of’ each other’s citizens. Implementation of this agreement was prevented by the outbreak of the war but, in 1914—15, the Turkish government deported vast numbers of Greeks from the coastal areas bordering the Aegean to the interior where they did back-breaking labour: many died, in an episode similar to that resembling. in some respects. the suffering of the Armenians. Why, then. did the Greeks in Turkey not suffer the full fate of the Armenians? Before the war the Greeks were even more powerful than the Armenians in the Turkish economy and infrastructure,
p.43
and ultra-nationalist hostility against the Greeks might have been expected to have been very strong. The reasons are not clear, hut probably centre in the fact that Greece remained neutral in the Great War until 29 June 1917, when it declared war against the Central Powers Previously, a major power struggle emerged between the Crock king (Constantine I. of German background), who was pro-German, and most of the country’s political elite, who favoured the Allies and were certainly anti-Turkish. The Ottoman government thus did not soc its Crooks as a threat in the same class as its Armenians, viewed as a Russian fifth column; pressure too, might have been exerted by Germany to keep Greece neutral. Greece certainly harboured very strong intentions to take over much of the Aegean area of Turkey, and in 1919, after the end of the war, Greece attacked Turkey and invaded western Anatolia. Between 1918 and 1922, a vast exchange of population took place between the two countries, one of the largest in European history up to that time. This built on the proposed 1914 exchange of population, interrupted by the war. It was driven by Turkish nationalists, bent on creating an ethnically pure Turkey but was acquiesced in by Greece, which feared a massacre of Greeks in western Anatolia following the defeat of its invasion forces in September 1922. The involuntarily exchanged populations were determined by religion rather than ethnicity or language, so that Greek Orthodox Turks and Muslim Greeks (there were some) were ‘exchanged’, in addition to those whose religion and ethnicity coincided. This exchange agreement was given official international recognition by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 which settled all the outstanding matters between Turkey, now headed by Mustafa Kemal Attaturk and the West much to Turkey’s advantage.

The Spectre of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective By Robert Gellately.
p.30
In other cases, race and religion have played important, intertwined roles. The Young Turk ideologue Yusuf Akçura asserted in 1904 that “the Turks within the Ottoman realms would unify quite tightly with both religious and racial bonds — more tightly than with just religious ones”. “The great majority of those Turks whose union is possible are Muslim. Islam could be an important element in the formation of a great Turkish nationality.” But because “the general trend of our era involves races,” for Islam “to perform this service in the unification of Turks it must change in a manner that accepts the emergence of nations within it... Therefore, it is only through the union of religions with race, and through religions as buttressing and even serving ethnic groups, that they can preserve their political and societal importance.” Akçura rejected multinational Ottomanism and argued that Pan-Islamism “would split into Turkish and non-Turkish components.” Looking to “a world of Turkishness:’ Akçura praised “the brotherhood born of race.” The Armenian genocide, which coincided with Turkish massacres of Greeks, can be portrayed in part as an attempt to eliminate Christian non-Turks from a newly defined Turkish Muslim nation, but the racial element is significant.

Death by Government, Rudolph J. Rummel
p.229
As mentioned, the Young Turks also committed genocide against the Greek in Turkey, but for fear of Greece they did so with much more restraint than they showed the Armenians. Beginning In the spring of 1914, the Turks terrorized West Anatolian Greek communities, driving Greeks from their homes, taking their property, and murdering many.49 They deported over 100,000 from the Mediterranean littoral to Greek Islands and the interior 50 and once World War I began, they deported possibly 100,000 more from the Black Sea and Sea of Marmora. Everywhere the Turks robbed Greeks of their possessions, raped young girls and took them into harems, kidnapped boys for Moslem households, and forced the remaining Greeks Into convoys, moving them away from coastal or strategically Important areas. In all, the Turks possibly expelled as many as 1 million Greeks from their ancestral homes 51 Although these deportations were hardly as brutal or as deadly as for the Armenian deportees, one estimate Is that during the war 240,000 to 300,000 north-eastern Greeks perished from hunger and exposure.52 Further, as with the Armenian soldiers in the army, the Turks Isolated Greek soldiers in labour battalions and treated them brutally; thousands died from starvation and severe winter cold.53
Those Greeks that survived terror, deportations, and the army, yet were unable to flee tile country to Greece, could only look forward to eventual extermination. As Count Wolff-Metternich, the German ambassador In Constantinople In 1918, reported, “the Young Turk pack of hounds” was preparing impatiently for the moment that Greece turned against Turkey at which time the Greeks would be destroyed like the Armenians. Fortunately for the Greeks, the

p.230
Young Turks lost the war before they could organize a Greek extermination. Nonetheless, as shown in table 10.2 they did manage to murder about 84,000 of their Greek citizens.
As totalled In table 10.1, these plus the Armenians and others that the Young Turks killed at home and abroad during and before the war, comprise a staggering murder of almost 1,900,0(X) men, women, and children. In Turkey alone, the Young Turks killed almost 9 percent of Turkey’s total population, for the most part in 1915. Virtually all these people were murdered because of their ethnicity. It was genocide.
This bloody regime ended in humiliating military defeat. By October 1918, Turkey’s situation on the war front had become militarily hopeless. Her army was disintegrating, military desertions were widespread, morale at home was abysmal, and the Allies had virtually defeated Germany in the west. One last defeat, this time by the Bulgarian army at Nablus, did it. The Young Turks could hold no more illusions; their regime collapsed.
Germany helped Talaat and Enver, among others, to escape and a new government under Sultan Muhammad VI took power. It appointed an Extraordinary Military Tribunal to investigate and document the Armenian massacres and found the Young Turks guilty of carrying out a policy of annihilation among other things (Raphael Lemkin had yet to invent the term genocide).

Pioneers of Genocide Studies, Samuel Totten, Steven L. Jacobs
p.207
POL 340 is alive and well a decade later. So is the Turkish Consul General, now complaining to the university administration that the Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies, which I direct, has (unfairly, unwisely?) allowed the Greek community to fund a research unit devoted to the genocide of the Pontiac Greeks by the Turks, after World War 1.

http://www.usip.org/library/topics/genocide.html
Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Formerly the Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies at Macquarie University, the institute is now affiliated with Shalom College at the University of New South Wales. The web site lists courses, publications and links on genocide. Includes a section on Comparative Genocide Bibliographies and the Armenian genocide.

http://www.aihgs.com/pontintr.htm

Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany By Isabel V. Hull
p.263
In the spring of 1915 Germany’s new Turkish ally began systematically murdering its Armenian population. The most radical reformers in the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) used the cover of war to deport” the Armenians from their homes in Anatolia. Special armed units Kurdish and other ethnic bands, and sometimes the regular army then slaughtered the defenceless refugees on their way to equally lethal concentration camps in the Syrian Desert. The genocide campaign continued through 1917 and picked up again in 1918, when Turkish troops entered the Caucasus. In the end, Anatolia’s three thousand-year-old.1.5—2 million-strong Armenian community was gone. That was the CUP’s goal—to build a nation-state around a homogenous Turkic-Islamic population, stripped of its Christians (Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians and some Syrians) and Jews. This genocide project killed at least eight hundred thousand Armenians, most likely a million or more.
p.271
None of the other officers had prior experience in Turkey, nor could they speak Turkish (or Armenian or Greek). They were completely dependent for information on their Turkish fellow officers. The Turkish interpretation of the treacherous Armenians and Greeks and of the requirements of “military necessity” became for many German officers simply facts that formed the basis of their own reckoning.
p.276
The other three documented examples we have of German officers advising deportation all occurred after the genocide was well underway. Bronsart ordered Armenian males working in forced labour brigades to be removed on 25 July ii and he advised Liman (who refused) to deport Greeks from the coast in August 1916M In October 1915 Lieutenant Colonel Böttrich appended his signature to a decree from the Turkish War Ministry for the deportation of 848 Armenian railroad workers from the Berlin- Baghdad railway. No other documents directly linking German officers to deportation have come to light.

Encyclopaedia of World Cultures - Page 141, David Levinson - Ethnology – 1996
p.141
In the genocide of various minority nationalities that followed, the Turks massacred over 350000 Greeks.

Outsiders: A History of European Minorities, Panikos Panayi
p.111
The Turkish state which emerged at the collapse of the Ottoman Empire contained several minorities within its interior, in an attempt to move towards a homogeneous population the Turkish state, which has passed through varying phases of dictatorship and democracy, has used any means possible, including genocide and deportation, to eliminate the Armenians, Greeks and Kurds remaining within Anatolia.

Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe By Norman M. Naimark
p.47
The Greek refugees understood their problem perfectly; the Turks would and did use the opportunity of their advance to the Aegean to rid western Anatolia of the native Greek inhabitants. The Hellenic Greek armies had performed much of the work for them in burning and destroying Greek homes and property. At the same time, Mustafa Kemal’s National Pact went one step further than the Ittihad in declaring Anatolia the homeland of the Turkish people, most emphatically not of the Greeks or Armenians. The Turkish counterattack, then, had all the characteristics of ethnic cleansing. The remaining Greeks were driven out or killed. There was a good deal of pillaging and rape, as the armies—and the accompanying Turkish bands of paramilitary chettes— cleaned out the towns and cities of western Anatolia. Some Greek prisoners of war survived the assault, were captured by regular army troops, and were sent to camps in the interior. The rest of the Greek population either fled in terror or were killed by chettes.

Encyclopaedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Dinah Shelton
p.303
At the end of the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-1922, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) at the head of the infant Turkish republic engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign against the country’s Greeks. The Lausanne Treaty of 1923 completed the process of the forcible transfer of the Greeks.

Human Rights - International Law - and the Armenian Genocide - Yerevan, 20 April 2005 - Paper by Alfred de Zayas, JD, PhD (Secretary-General, PEN International, Centre Suisse romande)
http://www.crag.org.uk/articles/article20.html

Thus the Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, who had suffered persecution and massacres in the nineteenth century, were subjected to genocide under the cover of the First World War, culminating in the murder of some 1.5 million Armenians , and the ethnic cleansing of the Greek and Assyrian communities of Anatolia. Already in 1915 the Turkish massacres against the Armenians were described by the British and French Governments as "crimes against humanity" Article 230 of the Treaty of Sèvres stipulated that the Turkish officials responsible for the massacres would be handed over to the Allies to be tried by an international criminal tribunal. Article 144 stipulated that the confiscated property should be returned.

The Genocide Convention of 1948 and other United Nations Conventions strengthen the claims of genocide victims, including the Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians of Asia Minor, the indigenous peoples of North and South America, and the many other "unsung victims" mentioned above. The Convention did not create their rights, since the Convention was only declarative -- not constitutive of the pre-existing law of nations. The Convention, however, sets up a mechanism that can be useful in the context of the Armenian Genocide

The Clash of Ideologies, David J. Jonsson
p.248
The Genocide of the Eastern Christians of Smyrna (1922)
Turkish army entered Smyrna on September 9. 1922 and soon thereafter the city went up in flames. A fire razed most of the Armenian quarter. It is estimated that 50,000 Christians were killed in the city during this period. No indigenous Christians remained in Smyrna after this holocaust that had deeply stained relations between the two peoples.
p.249
The burning of Smyrna and the massacring and scattering of its 300,000 Christian inhabitants is one of the greatest crimes of all times.

The Paths of History, Igor M. Diakonoff
p.276 (footnotes)
60. Most of the Armenians had already been massacred during the reign of the Sultan, in 1915—1916; Kemal attempted to continue the genocide of Armenians in Transcaucasia, and of Greeks on the coast of the Aegean. Especially heartrending and horribly bloody was the genocide of the Greeks in Smyrna (Turkish Izmir) where they had lived since the tenth century BC.

http://www.lawandpolitics.com/minnesota/Is-It-Still-Genocide-if-Your-Allies-Did-It/cef7381e-fe46-102a-aeb9-000e0c6dcf76.html
Taner Akcam interview
My central argument in A Shameful Act was that the Armenian Genocide was not an isolated act against Armenians but a part of a demographic policy enacted during World War I. It had two main components. One was against the Muslim non-Turkish population, who were redistributed, relocated and resettled among the Turkish population with the aim of assimilation. The second was against the Christian population, the Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians. The goal was to get the Christians out of Anatolia, what we now know as Turkey-to forcibly move them to Greece or Iran. Or, in the case of the Armenians, to eliminate them altogether.

In 1914, Anatolia was about 25 to 30 percent Christian. After the war it was 3 to 4 percent. The aim was to reduce the Christian population to no more than 5 or 10 percent so that they would have little sway in Turkey. Based on Ottoman documents we can prove this policy existed. The genocidal intent can be shown. What I began in A Shameful Act I will conclude in this book, based only on Ottoman documents.

Today, talking about the Genocide is considered a threat to national security. That is why they call us traitors. If they openly talk about the Genocide -- or what happened to the Greeks and the Kurds -- they think Turkey will be partitioned, even now.

if Turkey acknowledges the Greek problem, the massacres, the Greeks will want a part.

Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories:The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians: Hilmar Kaiser
p.38
Here Issawi echoed the surmise of earlier writers that Armenian economic success provoked violence in the Ottoman Empire. Thus, “economic provocation” was presented as a cause of the Armenian massacres of the 1890s and 1909, the Armenian Genocide, and the expulsion of Greeks from the modern Turkish state in the 1920s. Issawi did away with the distinction between victims and aggressors. The perpetrators of massacres and genocide, and the state itself, became the underdogs in a struggle” for what was rightfully theirs.

Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, George J Andreopoulos
p.111
Its ferocious repudiation of plural society resulted in a single society, as the destruction of the Armenians was followed by the expulsion of the Greek population of Asia Minor and the suppression of the non-Turkish Muslim elements to effect their turkification and assimilation. The method adopted to transform Ottoman plural

Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society, Elizabeth Burns Coleman, Kevin White
p.82
The French classical scholar, Pierre Vidal-Naguet, labelled denialists the assassins of memory’. In the case of the Jews, the denialists are not always the genocidaires. In the case of the Armenians, however, they are.

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.

In the face of irrefutable evidence of genocide Turkey has created a massive industry of denialism. Its actions are spectacular, often bizarre, lacking any effort to distinguish between the serious and the silly. In the L930s, Turkish pressure was put on the American government and on Hollywood studios not

to proceed with an embryonic film based on Franz Werfel’s 1932 novel, Forty Days at Musa Daugh, which depicted Armenian resistance. In the present era, there has been heavy lobbying of the American Congress not to find a path to the two-thirds majority needed for a resolution recognising the genocide. Successful lobbying led to the removal of any reference to genocide in the Armenian entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Recently, there have been threats to sever diplomatic relations with France over the French declaration that there was such a genocide. In April 2001 the Turkish government somehow squeezed Shimon Peres, then Israeli foreign minister, to say in Ankara that ‘Armenian allegations of genocide are meaningless’ (Not even Israel’s geopolitical interests in a time of crisis can condone such a statement at worst, be could have said nothing.) There was a demand a few years ago to SBS television in Sydney that the station pulp its 25-year anniversary history book because it twice made passing reference to au event ‘that never happened’. Then there was an extraordinary visit by His Excellency the Ambassador to my office at Macquarie University in 1987 in which he sought to have me delete the Armenian segment of a new course on ‘The Politics of Genocide’.

What still motivates Turkey around the globe? We don’t know, but I suggest the following:
• 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.

The Sage Handbook of Nations And Nationalism. Gerard Delanty, Krishan Kumar
p.325
The term ‘auto-genocide’ (self- genocide) has hence been used to distinguish the extreme distortion of nationhood by dictators such as Pol Pot and Ataturk through a deep-reaching subversion of history. Exterminating one’s own people and culture apparently does not contrast with the restoration of ancient monuments like Angkor Vat (the largest temple in the world).
The most problematic case was, of course, that of Kemal Atatürk (Mustafa Kemal Pasha), who could only conceive development as utter, remorseless and complete Westernization (Atahaki and Zürcher 2004). This led him to the extreme paroxysm of banning key elements of popular Turkish culture, such as the fez or tarboosh, a hat common to most Ottoman Mediterranean lands, which he replaced with Western, particularly British, hats and suits — to the great benefit of Western textile industries.’ Rummel (1997: 233—6) calculates that 264,000 Greeks, 440,000 Armenians, as well as other minorities and countless Turks perished under his “reign of terror”

Reigns of Terror, Patricia Marchak
p.31
One of the objections to including political victims in the definition for genocide was that every state has political opponents, some of whom are armed subversives. Assuming it is legitimate to attempt to capture and disarm such persons, any definition that treats all political acts as genocide would not be accepted even by the most liberal democratic states. However, liberal democratic states are obliged to bring such individuals to trial and to produce evidence of illegal acts; a definition of poliricide that clearly states the absence of such protections would he necessary.

Politicide includes what might otherwise he categorized as “class crimes or crimes committed against individuals because they are, or are perceived to he, members of a class. A class would consist of families who share a position in the economic and social spectrum of the society. The measurements of positions are generally rather crude, such as owning/not owning land or industrial and commercial establishments; living in rural or urban regions; or being employed in manual versus non-manual labour. Because ethnic groups are often discriminated against and ranked within multi-ethnic societies, persons who fall into crude class categories may also share ethnic origins. Armenians and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Indians in Uganda, and Jews in much of Europe were disproportionately engaged in commerce: their ethnicity and occupational niches were so intertwined that crimes against the ethnic group and class were one and the same.

Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes, William Schabas
p.22
However, the Treaty of Sevres was never ratified, As Kay Holloway wrote, the failure of the signatories to bring the treaty into force ‘resulted in the abandonment of thousands of defenceless peoples Armenians and Greeks — to the fury of their persecutors, by engendering subsequent holocausts in which the few survivors of the 1915 Armenian massacres perished.” The Treaty of Sevres was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1 Q23 that included a ‘Declaration of Amnesty’ for all offence’s commited between 1 August 1914 and 20 November 1922.

Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide. Richard G. Hovannisian
p.35
The Armenians and Greeks were not the only non-Turkish minority to suffer during World War 1 and their fates may not be divorced from the broader context. Assyrian (especially Nestorian) Christians in western Persia. Diarbekir, Van, and Bidis provinces (particularly in their strongholds in the Hakkiari highlands) were massacred alongside Armenians in 1915 although they were not subject to the same systematic destruction as the Armenian communities.

America's Ethnic Politics, Joseph Slabey Roucek, Bernard Eisenberg
p.41
“To our amazement”, said the Orthodox Observer, the civilized world…looks on with indifference as the genocide of the Greeks in Turkey continues according to the preplanned schedule”.

Genocide against the Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian, Cypriot and Kurdish people, Stamatov Vurban, Bulgaria, Sofia Press Pug House

Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans: Nationalism and the Destruction of Tradition, Cathie Carmichael
p.2
The extermination of over 90 per cent of Poland’s Jews in early 1944, the Highland clearances in Scotland in the eighteenth century; the expulsion of ethnic Germans from post-war Czechoslovakia; the transportation of he Crimean Tartan in 1941; the slaughter of lzmir’s Greeks and Armenians in the early 1920s; and the exodus of Muslims from the Balkans after the mid-nineteenth century are only a few of the numerous instances of this kind of violence. Ethnic cleansing has become a broad term which covers all forms of ethnically inspired violence from murder, rape and torture to forceful removal of population.

In 1993, a United Nations Commission of experts reported to the Security Council that ethnic cleansing involved ‘the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation, in order to render that area ethnically homogeneous’? As Norman Nainiark has stated “ethnic cleansing bleeds into genocide”, suggesting a continuum between the phenomena, and at the present time ethnic cleansing is taking on ‘a juridical meaning through the war crimes courts in the Hague, just as genocide was defined by Article H of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of December 9, 1948’.’ As Ahmed Akbar has remarked, it has become a ‘metaphor for our tune” and ‘ethnic cleansing’ or similar constructions such as the ‘cleansing of terrain’ was certainly used in the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s and 1990s, drawing on older similar terms by nationalist writers and ideologues.

Athenian Adventure: With Alarums & Excursions, Clarence Pendleton Lee
p.110
“…had been its Greek populace, the Turks massacred as many Greeks there as possible, to so1ve that ethnological problem by genocide, a term a later and more delicate…”

Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism, Bruce Alan Masters
p.8
The principal ideological outcome was the emergence of ethnically based nationalisms among the empire’s diverse peoples with calamitous results the fate of the Armenians and Greeks of Anatolia

The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude. Seventh-Twentieth Century, Bat Yeor
p.468
In a letter to the president of the AIU, Nahum Effendi. Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire, explains that his attitude, described anti-Zionist “saved the Jews of Turkey and Palestine from the fate of the Armenians and Greeks See Esther Benbassa, Un Grand Rabbine Sepharade en politique 1892-1923 (Paris 1990), 234

The State: Critical Concepts, John A. Hall
p.356
Even among contestants geographically interspersed there must he some sense of community or some even balance of forces that makes wholesale expulsion or genocide impossible. The Turks are beginning to develop a set of democratic practices among themselves, but fifty years ago they did not deal democratically with Armenians or Greeks.

[GrM1]

WOW!
Jean Shawn, are you delusional or what? lol
I'm going to post one answer to ALL your posts...

*meh*
ok one more time
*meh*

I wonder WHY all these people went into the trouble to answer your delusional posts...
Get well soon - and look for the word BIAS in a dictionary, it will help you realize who you are and what you think of Greece :))

[Aris]

Pontic Greek Genocide? Did you make that term up yourself? Are you suggesting a genocide only occurred in Pontus? To my understanding, the Genocide was simply a Greek Genocide. Modern scholars are calling it a Greek Genocide too. Using any other name simply confuses people. Hopefully you will rename your article. Or perhaps you deny a genocide occurred in other parts of the Ottoman Empire where Greeks resided?

[Stavros]

Actually the Turkish authorities systematically killed Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks from all over the Black Sea coast (Pontus), Asia Minor and Anatolia. having run out of Christians they are now trying to eliminate the Kurds who also happen to be fellow Muslims and actually willingly aided the first genocide against Christians.

My post deals specifically with the Pontians. No attempt to downplay what happened to others. I write repeatedly about the plight of minorities in Turkey. If people get confused it is because their knowledge is so thread bare that they can't even find Turkey on a map. I invite you to further inform them by establishing a blog of your own.

[Anonymous]

I know this is a little late, but for all the apologists and denialists out there here is the question would there be so many minority groups claiming genocide and atrocity if they were all fabricating the events and how is it that turkey is now 80 million while armenia about 4 mil worldwide, greek 10 mill total, assyrian 2-3 mil total. who lies the victim or the perpatrator. words of Isreal Charney "denial is the last stage of genocide"

[Stavros]

It's never too late to discuss the issue of genocide nor should we ever forget.

[Ricky Gerontis]

If we can set aside the past for a moment, I NEED HELP - I am planning a trip this spring to Trabzon, Turkey; to try and find my ancestry (My Grandfather and Great-Grandparents). They were Pontic Greeks. I need someone in Trabzon (who speaks some english) to help me? Does anyone on this blog have a suggestion of how I can accomplish my goal?
Thank you for your consideration, Ricky

[Stavros]

Rick,

You shouldn't have a problem finding a guide who speaks English, try asking at the Hotel you are staying out or the local tourist bureau. Good Luck.