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The Hellenic Genocide

The Hellenic (Greek) Genocide was the systematic torture, massacre and ethnic cleansing of several million Hellenes (Greeks) perpetrated by the Turks in Asia Minor, Constantinople (now called Istanbul by the Turks), Eastern Thrace, Imvros, Tenedos, Macedonia, Cappadocia and Pontos.

Most of the victims were massacred between 1895 and 1955. The present estimate is that some 2,000,000 Greek children, men and women of all ages were killed during that period.

The Hellenic Genocide is commemorated on May 19 and September 14.

Index

The Turkish Conquest of Europe and Asia-Minor

The 8th Century

The land of Asia Minor was an area where for 3000 years Greek civilisation flourished. In the 8th century, the Oguz Turks, a nomadic hunter-gatherer people moved westward from their homeland in Mongolia, and settled in what is today West Turkestan.

The Seljuks, a sect of the Oguz Turks, moved further in the direction of Persia and today's Iraq, where they served as mercernaries for the caliphs of Baghdad.

From this encounter with the advanced Persian and Arab civilisations, they enriched their poor vocabulary, adopted the Arabic script and became muslims retaining simultaneously their warring nomad characteristics.

The 11th Century

The Seljuk king, Alp Arslan (1063-1072), unified the various Seljuk factions, invaded Armenia, and sacked its capital of Ani in 1064. After that he and his armies invaded Byzantium and following the critical battle at Manzikert (1071) where the Byzantines were defeated, the Seljuks occupied a large part of the Asia Minor provinces of Byzantium. Previous to the invasion, there was not a single Turk living in these provinces.

In this foreign, for the Turks land there were thus established a number of Seljuk controlled emirates.

After a short period of time the Byzantines and the Crusaders dissolved nearly all of these emirates, except one whose capital was Iconium. This had been named as the Sultanate of Roum in other words the land of the Romans, as was the official title of the Greek Byzantine Empire, which was a continuation and succession of the Eastern Roman Empire.

The 12th to 19th Century

The raids by Genghis Khan's (1167-1227) Mongols forced another Turkish tribe, led by Suleyman-Shah, to abandon Turkistan and to head towards the west. This group tried to settle in Eastern Asia Minor, but the Armenians and Kurds ousted them. In an attempt to cross the Euphrates river, their leader was drowned and buried there, which ever since has been known as "Turk-mezari", or the "tomb of the Turk" A title which is indicative of how alien the Turks were in these areas.

The tribe then moved toward the Sultanate of Roum where it settled often assuming the role of border-guards. Suleyman's grandson, Osman, (1259-1326), took over the title of Sultan from the Seljuks and he gave his name to the Turkish people : The Ottomans.

The leaders of the Osmanlis quickly realized that since they comprised a minority of conquerors it would be difficult for them to control the occupied lands, and simultaneously to pursue further conquests without taking certain "special measures".

Thus, they decided to adopt and apply harsh methods previously unknown to the whole world. Methods which were never repeated again by another nation on earth. The primary measures taken were as follows :

They declared their state a warrior or "Gazi" state. In other words, a state that was bound to declare holy war (Jihad) against the non-believers. This way, they were able to bring together all kinds of adventurers, who were willing to fight either for ideological reasons, or for just the spoils of the war.

They adopted the inhumane measure of forcibly recruiting young Christian children. In other words, they forcibly took male children of the enslaved Christian families (mainly Greeks. and later also Armenians Bulgarians, Albanians and Serbs), and brought them up in special camps They conditioned them to become fanatic Turks and relentless killers to their own people. These children would grow up to believe that their father was the Sultan and that if they were to die in battle they would go to heaven. Thus, because of this New Army, or Janissaries, (Yeni-ceri in turkish) the Turks continued to pursue their conquests.

They slaughtered systematically millions of Asia Minor's inhabitants, in order to change the ethnic character of the land. It has been estimated that during the seven centuries of Turkish presence in Asia Minor several millions of Greeks, at least two-three million Armenians and hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Syrians, but also Serbs, and Bulgarians in Europe, were systematically massacred. In the 20th century alone, it has been estimated that approximately 1,5 million Armenians and more than one million Greeks were exterminated.

In this manner, the Turks managed to hold on to Asia Minor, a foreign land for them, where Greek civilisation had flourished for 2,000 years before the appearance of the Turks.

The Turks just destroyed this civilisation and unfortunately did not even try to take advantage of its accomplishments.

In two previous occasions the Greek people contributed in civilising their conquerors as was the case with the Romans and the Franks. One must possess a cultural identity to be able to absorb what is creative and good from other civilisations. Unfortunately, the conquering Turks lacked such an identity.

The Turks also failed to administer their subject peoples within the Ottoman Empire. There were no "laws" in the civilised sense of the word. The Sultan's word was the law in the capital and arbitrary rule of local representatives was the law in the provinces. The property, honour, and life of the conquered was completely at the mercy of the occasional Turkish official.

The only bond that kept the multiethnic empire together was the crude use of force-ultimately the butchery-of the rulers. Slaughter was the rule without concern for innocence or guilt.

Under these conditions the Turkish administration was truly detestable to all the subject people who suffered and patiently waited for each opportunity to throw off the Ottoman yoke.

The Turks failed to assimilate the various nationalities within their empire. They could not also administer them efficiently, not even control the economy because commerce and industry was left in the hands of the Greeks, Armenians and Jews, while the Turks kept busy with governing and simultaneously exploiting the profits while terrorizing the inhabitants.

For the enslaved people to be finally liberated from their rulers there took place a series of revolutions, which led to the establishment of independent states.

The Greek War of Independence

On 25th March 1821 the Greeks started to fight for their independence from the Ottomans, under the moto "Freedom or Death".

In 1822 in response to Chios extending its support to other Greeks the Turks took retribution on the population. By the end of the massacres – and within a period of just six months – approximately three quarters of the island's Orthodox population of 120,000 were killed, enslaved or died of disease. Of the survivors, almost all fled as refugees.

An estimated 20,000 were direct victims of the massacres. A further 45,000 were taken into slavery – of whom about half were redeemed and half died, neglected and in poverty throughout the Ottoman empire.

In Cyprus then Ottoman governor Kuchuk Mehmed executed 486 Christians who he accused of supporting the Greek War of independence and 20,000 Greek Christians were forced to flee the island in order to save their lives.

The Hellenic Genocide of Asia-Minor 1908-1922

In 1908 the Young Turk revolution forced the Sultan to grant a constitution to the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

In spite of the apparent liberalism of the formally bourgeois revolution which was spearheaded by the military without the participation of the people, there continued to develop additional centrifugal tendencies as they did in the times of the Sultan's despotism. For those nations still within the Empire whose fellow nationals had established independent states, e. g. the Greeks- it was natural for them to seek union with their free compatriots. Those peoples still within the Empire that had not attained separate statehood, e.g. the Armenians, and the Kurds, focused all their energies towards the attainment of self-determination and the establishment of autonomous national homelands.

The Young Turks sought to rid themselves of troublesome non Turkish ethnic groups so that they could build a homogeneous Turkish state and so they could avoid further mutilation of Turkish controlled territory in areas where non-Turks were in the majority, such as Eastern Thrace,

Western Asia Minor and Pontos, where the Greeks were in the majority, Eastern Asia Minor where the Armenians were in the majority and, Southeastern Asia Minor where the Kurds were in the majority.

Thus, the supposedly liberal and constitutionally oriented Young Turks returned to the usual Sultanic abrasiveness and brutality, which now became much more organised and systematic and assumed genocidal proportions.

The massacres were premeditated : It was decided that "the Ottomanisation of all Turkish citizens, which never succeeded through persuasion, had to be done by the force of arms",

This was stated in the London Times on the 3rd of October 1911 summarizing the proceedings of the Council of Union and Progress (The Young Turks).

At first, the persecutions took place against the Greeks, made under the pretext of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Persecution took the form of lootings, expulsions and murders. After the wars, persecution continued even more intensively, to the point where on the 25 of May 1914 the Ecumenical Patriarchate was forced to declare that the Orthodox Church was "under attack".

The Patriarchate, further, in a show of protest and mourning, suspended the activities of Greek churches and Greek schools throughout Turkey.

After the declaration of World War I, the Turks found the perfect opportunity to organize more effectively the massacres against ethnic minorities, so that they could finally transform their empire into a homogeneous nation-state.

Prominent officers of the Young Turks movement, while serving as members of the government, organized the expulsion of the inhabitants as well as the lootings and massacres that were perpetrated against them. Specifically, Talat Pasha, minister of the interior, was prominent as the master mind of the pogroms. However, the entire Turkish state administration participated in the organization and the execution of the extermination programme.

They began with the genocide of the Armenians, who did not possess a state which would rush to their aid and followed it up with mass expulsions and massacres of the Greeks. The victims of this period are over 2.5 million people of which 1.5 million were Armenians. In the Turkish Holocaust Chronological Index Chronological Index one can see detailed figures regarding the persecution of the Greeks of Asia Minor, Thrace and Pontos.

After the end of World War I, the Allies recognized that the property, honor and life of the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire could not be protected by the Turkish government.

They assigned to Greece the responsibility to administer Eastern Thrace and the Smyrna district. This arrangement was contained in the Treaty of Sevres. Simultaneously, there was established a separate and independent Pontian state.

The term 'Pontus' comes from the Greek word for coast, and was applied to the Greek civilization which had lived on the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea. It had been an area populated by ethnic Greek since at least the days of Alexander the Great, once forming a part of the Byzantine Empire, but ever since the Turkish invasion of Asia Minor they had suffered much under the Turks.

In 1920, Alexander Millerand, president of the Supreme Allied Council stated : "The Turkish government not only failed in its duty to protect its non-Turkish citizens from the looting, violence and murders, but there are many indications that the Turkish government itself was responsible for directing and organizing the most cruel attacks against the populations, which it was supposed to protect. For these reasons, the Allied powers have decided to liberate from the Turkish yoke all the lands where the majority of the people were non-Turks".

The Treaty of Sevres was signed by the Turkish government but Mustafa Kemal refused to recognize it.

After 40 long months of war, during which Kemal's forces secured considerable foreign assistance, the Greek military front in Anatolia collapsed.

The Turks reoccupied Asia Minor and entered Smyrna on September 8, 1922. In Smyrna, in the meantime, there was an influx of refugees from various parts of Asia Minor. And the conquering Turks set the city on fire and unleashed the last phase of the genocide against the Greeks and Armenians.

These were moments of unbelievable horror. The pier turned red by the blood of tlhe victims. The bishop of Smyrna Chrysostomos was publicly ridiculed and then slaughtered. Events were too horrible to even describe. The American Consul in Smyrna, George Horton, gives a detailed and objective picture of the chilling Turkish crimes in his book The Blight of Asia (Indianapolis : Bobb and Merryl, 1925).

The Treaty of Lausanne ended the Greek-Turkish war and imposed the unjust and mandatory exchange of 300,000 Turks from Greece for the 1,400,000 Greeks that survived the holocaust.

The Greek refugees of Asia Minor, without being consulted had to give up their ancestral homes to the Turks, after almost 4,000 years of glorious and productive history.

Through the unjust actions of massacre and persecution of Greeks and Armenians, the contemporary Turkish state was thus created. It was a state founded on crime, the state about which French prime minister George Clemanceau said on the 25th of June, 1919 : "We do not find even one example in Europe, Asia, or Africa, where the imposition of Turkish sovereignty had not been followed by a decline in material prosperity, and by the impoverishment of its culture. Also there does not exist one example where liberation from Turkish control was not followed by the advancement of material prosperity and an improvement of the cultural level. Whether dealing with Christians or Muslims, the Turk has managed to bring destruction wherever he conquered. The Turk has never been able to develop in peace that which he won through conquest".

On the 26th of November 1979, the New York Times wrote quite characteristically : "According to the most recent statistics, the Christian population in Turkey was diminished from 4,500,000 at the beginning of this century to just about 150,000. Of those, the Greeks are no more than 7,000 Yet, in 1923 they were as many as 1.2 million". (After the massacres of many hundreds of thousands).

The Pogroms in Constantinople

Under the terms of the agreement regarding the exchange of populations in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek population of Constantinople-a thriving community-and the muslim community residing in Western Thrace were exempted from the exchange process.

In the beginning of the 20th century there were 300,000 Greeks residing in Constantinople.

They had managed to survive there despite centuries of oppression and persecution under the Ottoman yoke. But the Turks were determined to expel all Greeks from their ancient home using all available means. Thus, the Turks systematically used the following measures in order to accomplish their objective :

a) In May 1941, large numbers of young men ranging in age from 18-38. were conscripted into the Turkish army from the Greek and Armenian communities The Turkish intention was to exterminate these young men through the well-known method of "forced-labour battalions". If this extermination plan was not successful it was due to protests from the Western allies and the defeat of the Germans in Stalingrad in December 1942. Seeing the tides of war shifting, the Turkish authorities permitted the discharge of these soldiers.

b) On 11 Noverriber 1942, the Turkish government passed a law regarding taxation of property of non-muslims, known as the VA RLIK VE RGISI. Through this !aw non-muslim citiizens had to submit, without the right to appeal, to the discretion and arbitrary judgment of the tax clerks. The tax clerks, in turn, were instructed to appraise property at amounts many times over the actual value of each property. Then, if the individual concerned was unable to make payments of the enormous tax share (quota), the property was seized and the unfortunate owners were exiled to ACKALE, in Anatolia.

As a result (of the use) of these harsh and inhuman measures, by 1955 only 25,000 people were left, rather than the 450,000 that should have been their number given a normal rate of growth in 35 years.

On the night of the 6th September 1955, and using the Cyprus situation as a pretext, the Turks dealt the coup-degrace to the remaining inhabitants. The whole story of this pogrom is as follows :

On Saturday the 3rd of September, 1955, the wife of the Turkish Consul in Thessaloniki asked for, and received, from a photographer in Thessaloniki supposedly for a keep-sake a series of photographs and films of the Turkish Consulate and the neighbouring home where Kemal Ataturk was born. The very next day she and her family left for Turkey.

At ten past midnight on the 6th of September,1955, in the garden of the Consulate, between the two buildings, dynamite exploded resulting in broken windows in both buildings. The Greek authorities rushed immediately to the scene. They established that two more explosive devices had been positioned in the Consulate yard and that within the building there was only one Turkish guard. In the investigation that followed it was determined that the explosives were placed there by the guard and his accomplice, a Turkish student at the Law School of the University of Thessaloniki, Oktai Egin Faik, who had brought the dynamite from Turkey a few days earlier.

On the 6th of September, Turkish newspapers using forged versions of the photos of the Turkish consul's wife and even before the explosion took place in Greece, depicted Kemal's birthplace as totally destroyed. By the evening, newspapers all over Turkey knew of the alleged destruction of Kemal's home setting off waves of anger among the Turkish populace.

The Turkish authorities then transported large groups of people in trains and military vehicles from Anatolia to Constantinople.

The attack by the angry mobs began at 5:50 PM on the 6th of September 1955 and ended at 02:00 AM on the 7th of September 1955. The police calmly assisted and even guided the mobs, in their relentless path of destruction.

At 00:20 AM on the 7th of September 1955 martial law was finally declared, at 02:00 AM curfew began and at 02:30 AM the authorities had restored a semblance of order.

Screaming slogans "Today your property, tomorrow your lives" the mobs had perpetrated terrible crimes. Those who guided them knew that by terrorizing the last Greek residents of Constantinople they would compel them to desert their homeland, once and for all. Simultaneously by destroying monuments which were proof of the glorious Greek past of Constantinople, they would eradicate even future reminders of the Greek presence.

The results of the vandalisms were :

§         the Theological School of Halki, the Marasleios School, The Monestary of Valoukli, the Zappeio School for Girls and many other sites, suffered great damage.

§         of the 83 Greek Orthodox churches in the <<Polis>> 59 were burned and most others suffered serious damage to the icons and ancient paintings of great value.

§         the tombs of Patriarchs were destroyed, Christian cemeteries and ossuaries were defiled ;

§         3,000 homes were looted and destroyed ;

§         4348 Greek stores were looted and destroyed ;

§         200 Greek women were raped ;

§         hundreds of Greeks were ill-treated or tortured, such as the old Bishop of Derkon Iakovos; the metropolitan of Ilioupolis Yennadios, whose beard was cut off and who was then dragged through the streets so that he would die shortly thereafter from ill-treatment; and Bishop Pamphilou Yennadios that was thrown into the burned ruins of Valoukli;

§         15 Greeks were murdered and among them a 90 year old monk at the Valoukli Monastery, Chrys. Mantas, who was burned alive. Many others in the monastery were seriously wounded.

After the pogrom a great portion of the Greek population left Constantinople to save their lives.

In 1964 12,000 Greeks who were protected by the Treaty of Lausanne were deported from the city by the Turkish government. They took with them three times their number in relatives and friends. Therefore, in the years 1964 to 1966, about 48,000 Greeks were forced to abandon their ancestral homes.

On the 20th of September,1975, in a special 35 page Survey section of the influential English magazine, The Economist, it was written : "Turkish charges that the Moslem population in Western Thrace is harried by the Greek authorities are gross exaggerations. In 1923 there were 300,000 Greeks living in Constantinople and 110,000 Turks living in Thrace. Today, there are 15,000 Greeks living in Istanbul and 120,000 Turks in Thrace. The Greeks ask, with some justification, which country has been putting the pressure on which minority". (Survey-15).

It is important for us to realize that today, 2005, only 2,000 Greeks still remain in Constantinople.

The Islands of Imvros And Tenedos

The Greek islands of Imvros and Tenedos were ceded to Turkey by the Treaty of Lauzanne (1923). These islands had been liberated from Ottoman control in 1912 by the Greek Navy. Under Article 14 of the Lausanne treaty, Turkey assumed the legal responsibility of ruling these islands with a special self-governing status, which was to be exercised by local authorities. Under these provisions order would be kept by a police force recruited from the local Greek population that would also have the responsibility of overseeing the Greek educational system.

Turkey followed here its usual tactic of never abiding by its international obligations. Numbers speak for themselves. In 1920 the islands of Imvros and Tenedos had a population of approximately 10,000 Greeks. Today only a few hundred Greeks remain. In order to accomplish this drastic result, the Turks took a number of measures :

They expropriated the best properties, without compensation, in order to deprive the residents of their means of survival.

Greeks who travelled abroad were not allowed to return and their property was confiscated.

They forbade the teaching of the Greek language.

Imvros was converted into a prison without walls for convicted Turkish fellons who terrorized the Greek residents.

Using such dreadful measures, the Turks managed to bring decay to the way of life of the Greek inhabitants.

The Turkish Invasion and Occupation of Cyprus

Cyprus has played a major part in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. The island's prehistory runs as far back as the beginning of the 6th millennium BC. Early in the 2nd millennium BC the Achaean-Greeks established city-kingdoms on the Mycenaean model and introduced the Greek language, the Greek religion and the Greek way of life.

The character of the island has always remained unchanged, in spite of the many conquerors it has known - Persians, Romans, Venetians etc.

In 1571 the island was conquered by the Ottomans. The Turkish occupation lasted until 1878, when the Turks ceded Cyprus to Britain.

British rule lasted until 1960, when the island was declared an independent state, under the London-Zurich agreements.

The 1960 Constitution of the Cyprus Republic proved unworkable in many of its provisions and this made impossible its smooth implementation. When in 1963 the President of the Republic proposed some amendments to facilitate the functioning of the state the Turkish community replied with rebellion; the Turkish Ministers withdrew from the Cabinet and the Turkish public servants ceased attending their offices. Ever since then the aim of the Turkish Cypriot leadership, acting on instructions from the Turkish Government, has been the partitioning of Cyprus and eventual annexation by Turkey, known as Taksim. Turkey's support for the partition of Cyprus through the forced displacement of populations was revealed in its demands during negotiations with the British over Cyprus independence, the Galo Plaza report of 1965, the Acheson partition plan and the Annan apartheid plan.

In July 1974 a coup was staged in Cyprus by the US controlled Greek military junta, then in power, for the overthrow of President Makarios and Turkey used this pretext to launch an invasion with a fully fledged army against defenceless Cyprus. The invasion was carried out in two stages in which the Turkish troops eventually occupied 40% of the island's territory, and has been called by the Turks themselves-without shame-Attila operation.

Ankara tried to justify the invasion as a peace operation aimed at establishing the constitutional order disturbed by the coup, but even after the restoration of such order and the return of President Makarios to the island in December 1974, the Turkish troops remained to back up the plans of Turkey to colonize Cyprus as a first step to annexation. Two hundred thousand Greek Cypriots, 40% of the total Greek Cypriot population, were forced to leave their homes in the occupied area and were turned into refugees. The few thousands of Greek Cypriots who remained in their homes after the completion of the invasion were gradually forced through intimidation methods to leave their homes and move to the south.

In utter disregard of repeated U.N. resolutions calling for the respect of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus as well as the withdrawal of all foreign troops from its territory and the adoption of all practical measures to promote the effective implementation of the relevant resolutions, Turkey is continuing the occupation of 40% of Cyprus territory.

This attitude of Turkey as well as the continuing violation of the fundamental human rights of the people of Cyprus has been condemned by international bodies, such as the U.N. General Assembly, the Non-aligned Movement, the Commonwealth and the Council of Europe. The recently declassified report of the latter's Commission of Human Rights is very revealing of the atrocities committed by the Turkish forces of occupation.

Recognition of the Hellenic Genocide

House Concurrent Resolution 148, September 9, 1997. Sponsored by: Congresswoman Maloney of NY and Congressman Sherman of California, together with Congressman Bilirakis of Florida.

Resolution of the State of New York; NY State Governor George E. Pataki Proclaims October 6th, 2002 as the 80th Anniversary of the Persecution of Greeks of Asia Minor PROCLAMATION 6-Oct-2002.

Proclamation by the Senate of the State of South Carolina, December 8, 2002 sponsored by Senator André Bauer 

Proclamation by Governor, Jim Hodges of South Carolina, December 8, 2002

Proclamation by Robert D. Coble, Mayor of Columbia SC, December 8, 2002

New Jersey Senate and General Assembly recognize the Pontian Genocide

Resolution by the Chief Executive Office, Vernon Jones of DeKalb County, Georgia, February 9, 2003

References and Links

George Horton; “The Blight of Asia”,  (Indianapolis: Bobb and Merryl, 1925)

Leonidas Koumakis; “The Miracle”, (1993)

Marjorie Housepian Dobkin; “Smyrna 1922 the Destruction of a City”

Henry Morgenthau Sr; “I was sent to Athens”

Edward Hale Bierstadt; "The Great Betrayal"

Thea Halo; “Not Even My Name", (May 2000 Picador USA/St. Martin's Press)

Speros Vryonis, Jr.; “The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul”, (2005)

Christos P. Ioannides; “In Turkey's image: The transformation of occupied Cyprus into a Turkish province”, (New Rochelle, NY: Caratzas, 1991)

Tessa Hofmann (HG); “Verfolgung, Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Christen im Osmanischen Reich 1912-1922”, (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004)

The New York Times; “The Asia Minor Holocaust of 1922” -

“The Hellenic Genocide”, by Roberto Lopes (with text available in English, Greek, German, French, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese)

“Statistics Of Turkey's Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources”, by By R.J. Rummel

“Hellenic Genocide collection of quotes from historical documents”

“The Turkish Crime of the Century based on a publication by: Asia Minor Refugees Coordination Committee”.

“The Massacres of Chios”, by Christopher Long

“Christian Genocide”, based on documents from newspapers, reports from diplomats

“Black September”

© 2001/2005 HEC and Argyros Argyrou. Updated on 30 July 2005.