Greek genocide
The Greek genocide[4][5][6][7][A 1] (Greek: Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων, romanized: Genoktonía ton Ellínon), which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity.[13] It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,[1] against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert,[14] expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments.[15] Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period.[16] Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece (adding over a quarter to the prior population of Greece).[17] Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.
Not to be confused with Greek Operation of the NKVD.Greek genocide
1913–1923[1]
Greek population, particularly from Pontus, Cappadocia, Ionia and Eastern Thrace
Deportation, genocide, death marches, others
300,000–900,000[2][3] (see casualties section below)
By late 1922, most of the Greeks of Asia Minor had either fled or had been killed.[18] Those remaining were transferred to Greece under the terms of the later 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, which formalized the exodus and barred the return of the refugees. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Armenians, and some scholars and organizations have recognized these events as part of the same genocidal policy.[19][7][20][6][21]
The Allies of World War I condemned the Ottoman government–sponsored massacres. In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution recognising the Ottoman campaign against its Christian minorities, including the Greeks, as genocide.[7] Some other organisations have also passed resolutions recognising the Ottoman campaign against these Christian minorities as genocide, as have the national legislatures of Greece,[22][23][5] Cyprus,[24] the United States,[25][26][27][28] Sweden,[29][30] Armenia,[31] the Netherlands,[32][33] Germany,[34][35] Austria[36][37] and the Czech Republic.[38][39][40]
Aftermath
Article 142 of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, prepared after the first World War, called the wartime Turkish regime "terrorist" and contained provisions "to repair so far as possible the wrongs inflicted on individuals in the course of the massacres perpetrated in Turkey during the war."[131] The Treaty of Sèvres was never ratified by the Turkish government and ultimately was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne. That treaty was accompanied by a "Declaration of Amnesty", without containing any provision in respect to punishment of war crimes.[132]
In 1923, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey resulted in a near-complete ending of the Greek ethnic presence in Turkey and a similar ending of the Turkish ethnic presence in much of Greece. According to the Greek census of 1928, 1,104,216 Ottoman Greeks had reached Greece.[133] It is impossible to know exactly how many Greek inhabitants of Turkey died between 1914 and 1923, and how many ethnic Greeks of Anatolia were expelled to Greece or fled to the Soviet Union.[134] Some of the survivors and expelled took refuge in the neighboring Russian Empire (later, Soviet Union). Similar plans for a population exchange had been negotiated earlier, in 1913–1914, between Ottoman and Greek officials during the first stage of the Greek genocide but had been interrupted by the onset of World War I.[18][135]
In December 1924, The New York Times reported that 400 tonnes of human bones consigned to manufacturers were transported from Mudania to Marseille, which might be the remains of massacred victims in Asia Minor.[136]
In 1955, the Istanbul Pogrom caused most of the remaining Greek inhabitants of Istanbul to flee the country. Historian Alfred-Maurice de Zayas identifies the pogrom as a crime against humanity and he states that the flight and migration of Greeks afterwards corresponds to the "intent to destroy in whole or in part" criteria of the Genocide Convention.[137]
The Greek genocide is remembered in a number of modern works.