Book Presentation on the Genocide of the Christians of Asia Minor
Mr. Shirinian emphasized that the new book Genocide in the Ottoman Empire is the latest tangible effort towards advancing an integrated study of the three genocides. While the era is generally known for the Armenian Genocide, it was actually the Greeks of Eastern Thrace who were targeted for destruction first, beginning in 1912 [...]
On Sunday September 24, 2017, the Pan-Pontian Federation of USA and Canada in collaboration with another 15 organizations celebrated the publication of the new book “Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923”, at the Hellenic Cultural Center in Astoria. The book consists of academic papers presented at the 2013 Academic Conference that the Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center (AMPHRC) organized at the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Illinois.
The event featured a keynote presentation by the editor of the book and noted historian Mr. George Shirinian. Mr. Shirinian is the Executive Director of the Zoryan Institute, an international institute that studies the Armenian genocide— and a long standing friend and supporter of the Center. The book presentation was followed by questions from the audience, and discussion coordinated by Kostas Tsilfidis, president of the PanPontian Federation and a board member of the AMPHRC.
Mr. Shirinian took pains to show that we gain much better understanding of what happened to Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians – before, during, and at the aftermath of WWI— if we study the events as ‘Ottoman genocides’, thus signaling the fact that there was a single orchestrated effort by Turkish regimes (Ottoman and Kemalist) to destroy all non-Muslim, Christian people in what is now the modern state of Turkey. The genocides of the three ethnic groups—Armenians, Assyrian, and Greeks—consisted in systematic violence against them, boycotts, deportations, and massacres.
Mr. Shirinian emphasized that “We study our history with the vision to better understand ourselves, to help explain what our people have gone through to the rest of the world, and to be able to pass on our historical and cultural legacy to the next generation, so that they understand profoundly what it means to be Greek or Armenian.” He continued that it was not the Christianity of the ethnic groups alone that was the culprit for the genocides. It was also the tension between the Muslim ruling elite and the prosperous non-Muslims, which were better able to benefit from commerce with Europeans and technological and other economical advances of the time. Such tension is also found in the Nazi rhetoric against the Jews of Germany. Just like during the Nazi era, the non-Muslims of the Ottoman empire were the targets of envy, resentment, suspicion, hostility, and eventually, extreme violence. Nearly a century of reforms in the Ottoman empire in the 19th century leading up to the genocides failed, because the Muslim Turks, the “ruling nation,” were incapable of accepting non-Muslim, non-Turk fellow citizens as their equals.
Mr. Shirinian emphasized that the new book Genocide in the Ottoman Empire is the latest tangible effort towards advancing an integrated study of the three genocides. While the era is generally known for the Armenian Genocide, it was actually the Greeks of Eastern Thrace who were targeted for destruction first, beginning in 1912. In order to solidify Turkish claims to this territory during the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman government deported and expelled some 332,000 Greeks. This deportation was done without warning and in intentionally brutal ways. Approximately 15,690 Greeks were massacred in Eastern Thrace in 1912 and 1913, and about half the deportees to Central Anatolia perished. Meanwhile, Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks had been conscripted into the Ottoman army, but being distrusted, were disarmed and formed into labour battalions, where they were put to work under the harshest conditions, clearly designed to lead to their deaths. Eventually, all the Armenian soldiers were murdered outright, with similar fates for the Greeks and Assyrians. Mass killings, deportations, and exile applied, likewise, to all three ethnic groups.
The fate of the three peoples was closely intertwined, and their experiences were nearly identical. Today, the continuing persecutions of Christian and other minority populations by the Islamic state in the middle east and Africa, and the massive human rights violations currently observed in those regions— that target, again, Christians— makes the study of the Ottoman genocides as contemporary and urgent as ever. By studying the first genocides of the 21st century in that region, we gain insight into the conditions that produce violence and draw lessons for public policy about how to prevent such tragic events from re-occurring.
Ultimately, the study of the Ottoman genocides is a step to restore historical memory, and defend human dignity.
Later Mr. George Mavropoulos (Founder and President of AMPHRC’s) presented in a quick overview the activities and the main objectives of the Center:
– Conduct original research
– Organize public lectures, seminars and conferences, educational programs
– Reprint old historical books –no longer available
– Publish books, journals and other forms of media
– Translate and publish historical books
– Collect historical and archival material
– Provide scholarships to younger scholars to specialize in the field of history
– The next years 2009 and 2010 two more Academic Conferences were organized and the original research papers were published in 2012.
In January of 2013 the Research Center was founded as a non-for-profit organization to carry on the vision, mission and goals set in 2008. The same year the Research Center with the support of the Pan-Pontian Federation organized the first International Academic Conference with the Armenian and Assyrian communities of Chicago. In 2015 again the second International Academic Conference was organized and presented in New York sponsored by the Pan-Pontian Federation of USA and Canada.
The research papers presented in 2013 were published in April of 2017 in a book titled “Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks 1913-1923.” The Research currently is working on the editing and publication of the research papers presented in 2015, the concise volume of The Genocide of Greeks in Pontos, and a Documentary on The Great Catastrophe and the Forgotten Genocide.
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.
Yet another scandal is exploding on the Internet. The administration of free encyclopedia Wikipedia removed an article by a Russian researcher, devoted to assessing the loss of US citizens as a result of the Great Depression of 1932-33. Outraged bloggers began mass distribution of articles in the Russian segment of the popular blogging service Live journal. The material led to heated debates, while the so-called historical flash mob continues.Russian researcher Boris Borisov touched a really hot topic in his material on the estimated number of victims of the American Great Depression, which in turn, apparently caused a very strong reaction ...
Global Research Editor’s NoteRatko Mladić has recently been convicted to life imprisonment by the the ICTY on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity while he was Chief Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.This detailed account first published in 1998 by former UN Military Observer Carlos Martino Branco casts doubts on the decision of the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) that “genocide was committed in Srebrenica in 1995.”“…Bosnia Serb forces carried out genocide against the Bosnian Muslims (…) .Those who devise and implement genocide seek to deprive humanity of the manifold ...
The term “security” is a very multifaceted one. But today’s geopolitical situation forces us to think about its military aspect above all.Our attention is completely absorbed by news about wars, conflicts, military exercises and increasing defence capabilities. An average European reader has no chances to skip this kind of news while looking through news feeds of popular media.Even planned further militarization of the European region and Russia pose the real threat today. A whole generation of European children is growing in the firm belief that the war is approaching. We destroy ourselves by our fears. We notice everything concerning military ...
Chris Deliso of Balkanalysis points out the latest travesty of the Western media: 59,000 stories on Auschwitz, three on Jasenovac. As if the third-largest death camp in Nazi-occupied Europe simply never existed. Franjo Tudjman certainly thought so, and it appears the current Croatian leadership shares his "historical" perspective.Contemporary German estimates of Serbs murdered by the Ustasha (in Jasenovac and elsewhere) ranged as high as 750,000. Wiesenthal center uses the number of 600,000. Serbian researchers have spoken of up to 700,000 victims. Modern revisionists, Croat and otherwise, talk of 30-100,000, at most. Among them is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which ...
The NATO military alliance is a world encompassing threat. It is now conducting various forms of hybrid warfare against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and most of Africa. They have destroyed directly or are largely responsible for the destruction of the socialist nations of the USSR, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and too many to name in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Destruction is the fate that each nation on earth can expect unless it pays homage and obeisance to these neo-feudal overlords who promise protection in return for national servitude, in return for the complete ...
The United States, Germany, Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom launched "Operation Jericho"Once again, the Obama administration has tried to force the change of a political regime that resists it. On February 12, an Academi (formerly Blackwater) plane disguised as an aircraft of the Venezuelan army was supposed to bomb the presidential palace and kill President Nicolas Maduro. The plotters had planned to place former MP María Corina Machado in power and have her immediately acclaimed by former Latin American presidents. President Obama had given a warning. In his new doctrine of Defence (National Security Strategy), he wrote: "We ...
The day commemorates lost lives of US servicemen and women sent to war for the wrong reasons – from the 18th century to today, notably America’s so-called War of Independence, its Civil War, WW I and II and all subsequent wars of choice.America’s only enemies in the past 70 years and throughout at least most of its history were and remain ones it invents.It could have been a model peaceful nation had it chosen a different path. Instead, its history reflects unbridled militarism, endless wars of choice, related violence and chaos, contempt for rule of law principles, along with unparalleled ...
Albin Kurti is on the verge of becoming the next Prime Minister of Kosovo after he and opposition chairman Isa Mustafa confirmed last week that the two rival political parties had made progress to create a coalition government. Mustafa said that Kurti can rightfully become the next Prime Minister if he can convince the three remaining parliamentarians, representing the Bosniak, Turkish and Roma minorities to enter a coalition – and it appears they will.What does the accession of Albin Kurti mean for the future of Kosovo?Kurti does not recognize the flag and anthem of Kosovo, as well as the Kosovar ...
Never has US intentions in Asia been so obvious. Attempts to portray America’s role in the region as constructive or necessary have been ongoing since the end of World War II, however, recently, with Asia able to begin determining its own destiny for itself, the tone from Washington has become increasingly curt and direct.US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s remarks during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore were all but a proclamation of US hegemony over Asia – a region of the planet quite literally an ocean away from Washington.In Reuters’ article, “U.S. flexes muscles as Asia worries about South China ...
Geopolitics is an approach to politics that stresses the features imposed on foreign policy by geographical location, environment, and natural resources. Geopolitics as a discipline contributes to the emphasis on continuity in contemporary political realism. The focal idea of geopolitics is that those who control the Eurasian landmass (Heartland) dominate global politics. Regarding this idea, Ukraine has always been a significant part of Heartland. Therefore, many great powers have been fighting to impose their control over the territory of contemporary Ukraine (or part of it) from the Middle Ages up to today (for instance, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden, Vikings, Ottoman ...
George Mauropoulos, "The Forgotten Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor", AHIF Policy Journal, American Hellenic Institute Foundation, Inc., Vol. 8, Spring 2017, pp. 3Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & 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.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in 1949 on the pretext of “containing Soviet influence”, has almost doubled in size within the past two decades alone. In 1998, NATO comprised 16 member states, but with repeated expansions up to Russia’s very borders, it now contains almost 30 countries.Though seldom mentioned in mainstream discourse, NATO is a US-dominated organization, whose orders are issued from Washington and customarily obeyed. The US is by far the largest contributor to the alliance, spending more than all other member nations put together.One of the critical reasons behind NATO’s formation almost 70 years ago, was ...
North from Nazareth’s city limits, a mile or so as the crow flies, is an agricultural community by the name of Tzipori – Hebrew for “bird.” It is a place I visit regularly, often alongside groups of activists wanting to learn more about the political situation of the Palestinian minority living in Israel.Tzipori helps to shed light on the core historic, legal and administrative principles underpinning a Jewish state, ones that reveal it to be firmly in a tradition of non-democratic political systems that can best be described as apartheid in nature.More than a decade ago, former U.S. president Jimmy ...
One of the most ingenious propaganda weapons ever developed is that the powerful nations of the West—led by the United States—have a moral responsibility to use military force to protect the rights of people being repressed by their governments. This “responsibility to protect” (R2P) always had a dubious legal standing, but its moral justification also required a psychological and historical disengagement from the bloody reality of the 500-hundred-year history of U.S. and European colonialism, slavery, genocide and torture that created the “West.”This violent, lawless Pan-European colonial/capitalist project continues today under the hegemony of the U.S. empire. This then begs the ...
At least from the very academic viewpoint, war is a condition of armed conflict between at least two sides (but, in fact, states). There are, historically, several types of warfare as conventional warfare, civil war, lightning war (blitzkrieg in German), total war, hegemonic war, liberation war, war on terrorism, etc. However, according to the used warfare technique, there is, for instance, little war (guerrilla war in Spanish) or according to the (counter)balance of warfare sides, there is asymmetric war as an example.Asymmetric warfare exists in the case when two sides of combat forces (two states, two blocs, a state vs. ...
Only one example of traditional Western liberal democracy's support of the notorious war criminals, bandits, and gangsters: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.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save
Former President Bill Clinton continues to be feted around the world as a progressive champion of human rights. However, a European Union task force last week confirmed that the ruthless cabal he empowered by bombing Serbia in 1999 has committed atrocities that include murdering individuals to extract and sell their kidneys, livers and other body parts.Clint Williamson, the chief prosecutor of a special European Union task force, declared that senior members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had engaged in “unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions in camps in Kosovo and Albania, sexual violence, forced displacements of individuals from ...
As he launches his new TV series offering a critical view of US overseas exploits, the film director tells MEE he didn’t always see it that way.American controversies are Oliver Stone’s forte.The Hollywood movie director has turned his cameras on the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Vietnam War and the 9/11 attacks.But, when researching his television series, The Untold History of the United States, it was American exploits in the Middle East that left him with the most lasting impression, he told Middle East Eye on Wednesday.“When I studied the untold history, one thing that really hit me hard was ...
Protesters have called for all statues of the former imperial ruler to be removed in recognition of his massacres in the Congo. As 10,000 people took to the streets of Brussels on Sunday (7 June) to protest as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was one landmark which drew their ire more than any other: the equestrian statue of King Leopold II outside Belgium’s royal palace.“Murderer!” the protesters cried as they climbed the statue and waved the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Had the statue been flimsy enough to pull down they would have done it, just as fellow BLM protesters toppled ...
It is quite apparent to everyone that, at present, the socio-economic and political situation in the United States is far from stable and society increasingly polarized. In fact, even members of the current US military and political elite admit this in their public speeches. Hence, President Joe Biden and his team have been trying hard to unite the nation and guide it in a less divisive direction.Since the relationship between the United States and Russia has taken a turn for the worse in recent years, it is quite clear to the author that, nowadays, the US administration has been seeking ...
Mr. Shirinian took pains to show that we gain much better understanding of what happened to Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians – before, during, and at the aftermath of WWI— if we study the events as ‘Ottoman genocides’, thus signaling the fact that there was a single orchestrated effort by Turkish regimes (Ottoman and Kemalist) to destroy all non-Muslim, Christian people in what is now the modern state of Turkey. The genocides of the three ethnic groups—Armenians, Assyrian, and Greeks—consisted in systematic violence against them, boycotts, deportations, and massacres.
