Hits: 1114
The Greek Genocide (or Ottoman Greek Genocide) refers to the systematic extermination of the native Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire before, during and after World War I (1914-1923). It was instigated by successive governments of the Ottoman Empire; the Committee of Union and Progress Party (C.U.P), and the Turkish Nationalist Movement of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It included massacres, forced deportations and death marches, summary expulsions, boycotts, rape, forced conversion to Islam, conscription into labor battalions, arbitrary executions, and destruction of Christian Orthodox cultural, historical and religious monuments. According to various sources, approximately 1 million Ottoman Greeks perished during this period.
The first phase of the Greek Genocide commenced in the Spring of 1914 in Eastern Thrace and western Anatolia when Turks were ordered to boycott Greek businesses. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks from these regions were also deported during this period. With the outbreak of the Great War in July of 1914, all Ottoman Greek men aged between 21-45 years were conscripted into forced labor (or concentration) camps. Most of these men were to perish under appalling conditions after being forced to work around the clock with little food or water. These camps also served as a means to break up and disarm Greek communities, thus bringing about their eventual destruction.
In 1915, under the guidance of German military personnel, the C.U.P ordered the deportation of Greek communities in the Dardanelles and Gallipolli region under the pretext of military necessity. These Greeks were not permitted to take anything with them. Goods in their shops were later sold by Ottoman authorities. Entire communities living along the western coastline of Asia Minor were deported to the interior or to Muslim villages where they were forced to choose between Islam or death. Homes in villages that were not burnt were seized by free-booters of neighboring communities. In some instances, Greeks were forced to sign declarations saying they were leaving of their own free will. In most cases, before deportations took place, Ottoman gendarmes (police) and çetes (armed irregulars) seized money and valuables from communities, committed massacres and burnt churches and schools. In the region of Pontus, Greek communities were deported during the peak of winter when fatalities could be at their highest. Stories of lethal injections, bodies being towed out to sea and dumped, as well as mass killings of Greeks in churches was also witnessed.
According to the Chairman of the Greek Relief Committee Frank W. Jackson, by 1917 some 700,000-800,000 Greeks were deported mainly from the coastal regions to the interior of Turkey. The death toll from these deportations was high. With the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in WW1, prominent leaders of the C.U.P Party were given death sentences during Ottoman Courts-Martial for their role in organizing the massacre of Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians during the war. But the post-war formation of the Turkish Nationalist movement under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk interrupted the proceedings to bring the perpetrators to justice. Instead, the Kemalist Nationalists continued the C.U.P policy of massacring and deporting Greeks, and resulted in the burning of the city of Smyrna (today Izmir) to the ground and the expulsion of all remaining Greeks from Turkey. All able-bodied Greek males were refused exit from Turkey and were sent to the interior where most perished in slave labor camps or were massacred.
Remembrance:
The following are the days of remembrance for the Greek Genocide. Greeks have preferred to remember the genocide based on region: September 14 (Asia Minor as a whole), May 19 (Pontus region) and April 6 (Eastern Thrace).
Source: Greek Genocide Resource Center
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!
Donate to Support Us
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
READ MORE!
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.Save
READ MORE
Serbs: Basic factsEthnic location: Central and western part of the Balkan Peninsula (South-East Europe)Population: 10.2 million (1.8 million Serbs live outside their ethnic location)Language: SerbianReligion: Eastern Orthodox Christians1 Introduction Serbs belong to the Southslavonic group of Indo-European peoples. As their tradition, culture, language, beliefs, and customs show, the ethnogenesis of Serbs goes far back into the past. Serbian ancestors, Protoslavs and Old Serbs, were described in the 5th century BC by Herodotus, under the names of Neuri and Budini, living north of the Danube in the region between Dniepar and north-eastern Carpathian Mountains.The first mention of the name “Serbs” appears ...
READ MORE
The historical and political precedents for the creation of a greater Sqiperia or Greater Albania was set during World War II when the Kosovo and Metohija regions along with territory Southwest of lake Skutari from Montenegro and the western region of Southern Serbia, or Juzna Srbija (now part of Macedonia), were annexed to Albania by the Axis powers led by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, under a plan devised by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler to dismember and to destroy the Serbian Nation and people, which the Germans and Italians perceived as the main threat to the Axiss powers and ...
READ MORE
Author’s Introduction and UpdateFirst published by GR on June 14, 2014, updated August 2014, this article reveals how the US and its allies facilitated the incursion of Islamic State (ISIS) convoys into Iraq in June 2014 prior to the onset of the counter-terrorism bombing campaign launched by Obama in August 2014. It is worth recalling the history of the initial incursion of ISIS forces (Summer 2014) and the timeline extending from the occupation of Mosul in Summer of 2014 which was covertly supported by the US, to the “Liberation” of Mosul three years later which was also supported by the US and ...
READ MORE
Much is being written regarding the Charlie Hebdo issue in Paris, France. I do not condone any killing but at the same time I do not support issues that violate human rights, religious freedom or freedom of speech and thoughts. Using cartoons to condemn Divine thoughts and beliefs is utterly wrong because they fall under hate crimes and not under freedom of speech as we are lied about. The perpetrators of hate continue to be protected. Islam is under attack and its adherents, the Muslims, are being targeted through provocation. In a recent article Charlie Hebdo and Tsarnaev’s trial: Cui ...
READ MORE
“I’ll never live to see 9/11 justice,” says Stephen Lendman. The 9/11 attacks have changed the course of humanity, even so for sixteen years have not been minimally clarified but turned the world in a place full of fear and hate as the United States spreads its military bases all over the world, having 737 and more than 2,500,000 U.S. personnel serving across the planet.Stephen Lendman, one of the world’s most respected analysts, speaks with Pravda Report on the consequences of those attacks, and President Trump’s denial of his promises during the presidential campaign to investigate the day that has killed more than one million people ...
READ MORE
It was in 1916, in the midst of World War I, that Britain and France (pitted against the Germans, Austrians and Ottoman Turks) made their infamous Sykes-Picot agreement. In grand imperial style, they used this agreement to divide up the Middle East between them. It was a daring move, considering that the war was at a stalemate and the two allies did not know if they were going to win the struggle. Nonetheless, they went ahead with the agreement and in doing so made a number of decisions that continue to shape the region to this day.Besides bringing traditional European imperialism ...
READ MORE
Here it is, that time of year (the fourth Thursday in November) when we are all beseeched to consider “what we are thankful for.” This invitation to a mass cultural ritual targets everyone regardless of race, creed or sex (or these days, gender). The conformity of thought it reinforces does not discriminate among such superficial characteristics; it goes way deeper. The fundamentals (literally, the foundational elements) of the “American” mind are laid each year at this time.Those fundamentals hold that we are a strong, brave, resourceful people – whether by our evolved nature or by the grant of a deity ...
READ MORE
1. Kosovo is not ancient Albanian landIts very name comes from the Serbian word “kos,” meaning blackbird. Its Albanian name, “Kosova,” means nothing whatsoever.Kosovo was the heartland of medieval Serbian state and the site of the 1389 battle in which both the Serbian prince and the Ottoman sultan died, checking the Turkish expansion into the Balkans for almost 70 years. Ethnic Albanians were settled there by the Ottomans over the intervening centuries, and became a majority due to pogroms and persecution of Serbs – which began under Ottoman rule but continued under Austro-Hungarian occupation in WWI and German/Italian occupation in ...
READ MORE
At the age of 15 on a riverbank he was shot eight times just for being Serbian. He survived and a few days later during the religious holiday of Transfiguration he was out of his coma. But until now he has not received an answer to his question: who shot the children bathing in the river near the Kosovo village of Gorazdevac on August 13, 2003? In his interview to the Voice of Russia Bogdan Bukumiric tells a wonderful story of his rescue.“It is not so scary to die as to be buried alive” – this is the inscription on ...
READ MORE
The US has been threatening Iran for more than 20 years. Already during the Clinton administration, US Central Command (USCENTCOM) had formulated “in war theater plans” to invade both Iraq and Iran. This posting which includes selected articles from our archives was originally published by Global Research 12 years ago in May 2005. In the wake of the war on Iraq (2003), the Bush administration officially identified Iran and Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”. Bush’s National Security doctrine contained in the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a continuation of Clinton’s “strategy of ...
