Background
Paper on the Pontian Genocide
By Akis
Haralabopoulos akis@pronet.net.au
Pontus
means "sea" in Greek and is located in the south-eastern littoral of
the
Black Sea. Its connection with Hellenism stretches back to pre-historic
times
to the legends of Jason and the Argonauts quest for the Golden Fleece
and to
Heracles obtaining the Amazon Queen's girdle. The coastal region was
colonised
by the Ionians, especially the city of Miletus which founded Sinope
(785 BC),
Trapezunta (756 BC) and the numerous other cities along the coast
from
Heracleia to Discurias in the Caucasus. The Hinterland was gradually
Hellenised
and this was completed after Alexander's conquests. Its
contribution
to Hellenism in those 2800 years has been enormous: Diogenes
hailed
from Sinope and Strabo from Amaseia, it was here that Xenophon found a
safe
haven, that the great Comneni dynasty reigned, the home of Cardinal
Bessarion
and the Hypsilandis family; it was also the last Greek territory to
fall to
the Turks (in 1461). Many famous churches, monasteries and schools
are a
testament to the resilience of Hellenism. The Pontians are a distinct
Greek
people with their own dialect, dances, songs and theatre.
For the
Pontian Greeks all ended in tragedy in the years 1914-22. Of the
700,000
Greeks living in Pontus in 1914, 300,000 were killed as a result of
Turkish
government policy and the remainder became refugees. Three millenia of
the
Greek presence was wiped out by a deliberate policy of creating a Turkey
for the
Turks. The Pontian people were denied the right to exist, the right of
respect
for their national and cultural identity, and the right to remain on
land
they had lived on for countless generations.
The
turning point in the treatment of Greeks in Turkey was the alliance
between
Germany and the Sultan that commenced after the Treaty of Berlin
1878.
Germany regarded Anglo French protection of Christians as an obstacle
to its
interests and convinced the Turkish authorities that the Greeks were
working
for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Germany opened the Berlin
Academy
to Turkish military officers and General Gotz was appointed to
restructure
the Ottoman armed forces. The successful national movements in
the
Balkans posed a threat that the same would occur in Asia Minor. After the
Balkan
Wars the Young Turks decided that Asia Minor would be a homeland for
Turks
alone and that the Greeks and Armenians had to be eliminated. The
outbreak
of World War I made this possible and Germany willingly sacrificed
the
Christian minorities to achieve its aim in the Middle East. However, it
is the
German and Austrian diplomats reports that confirm that what took
place
was a systematic and deliberate extermination of the Christian
population.
Genocide. Not security or defence measures, not relocations of
population
(why forcibly relocate populations?) not war, not retaliation in
response
to the activities of Pontian guerillas or Russian invasion but
GENOCIDE.
Terrorism,
labour battalions, exiles, forced marches, rapes, hangings, fires,
murders,
planned, directed and executed by the Turkish authorities. This can
be
corroborated by the German and Austrian archives now made public:
24 July
1909 German Ambassador in Athens Wangenheim to Chancellor Bulow
quoting
Turkish Prime Minister Sefker Pasha: "The Turks have decided upon a
war of
extermination against their Christian subjects."
26 July
1909 Sefker Pasha visited Patriarch Ioakeim III and tells him: "we
will cut
off your heads, we will make you disappear. It is either you or us
who
will survive."
14 May
1914 Official document from Talaat Bey Minister of the Interior to
Prefect
of Smyrna: The Greeks, who are Ottoman subjects, and form the
majority
of inhabitants in your district, take advantage of the circumstances
in
order to provoke a revolutionary current, favourable to the intervention
of the
Great Powers. Consequently, it is urgently necessary that the Greeks
occupying
the coast-line of Asia Minor be compelled to evacuate their
villages
and install themselves in the vilayets of Erzerum and Chaldea. If
they
should refuse to be transported to the appointed places, kindly give
instructions
to our Moslem brothers, so that they shall induce the Greeks,
through
excesses of all sorts, to leave their native places of their own
accord.
Do not forget to obtain, in such cases, from the emigrants
certificates
stating that they leave their homes on their own initiative, so
that we
shall not have political complications ensuing from their
displacement.
31 July
1915 German priest J. Lepsius: "The anti-Greek and anti-Armenian
persecutions
are two phases of one programme - the extermination of the
Christian
element from Turkey.
16 July
1916 German Consul Kuchhoff from Amisos to Berlin: "The entire Greek
population
of Sinope and the coastal region of the county of Kastanome has
been
exiled. Exile and extermination in Turkish are the same, for whoever is
not
murdered, will die from hunger or illness."
30
November 1916 Austrian consul at Amisos Kwiatkowski to Austria Foreign
Minister
Baron Burian: "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" (meaning the Armenian genocide).
13
December 1916 German Ambassador Kuhlman to Chancellor Hollweg in Berlin:
"Consuls
Bergfeld in Samsun and Schede in Kerasun report of displacement of
local
population and murders. Prisoners are not kept. Villages reduced to
ashes.
Greek refugee families consisting mostly of women and children being
marched
from the coasts to Sebasteia. The need is great."
19
December 1916 Austrian Ambassador to Turkey Pallavicini to Vienna lists the
villages
in the region of Amisos that were being burnt to the ground and their
inhabitants
raped, murdered or dispersed.
20
January 1917 Austrian Ambassador Pallavicini: "the situation for the
displaced
is desperate. Death awaits them all. I spoke to the Grand Vizier and
told
him that it would be sad if the persecution of the Greek element took the
same
scope and dimension as the Armenia persecution. The Grand Vizier promised
that he
would influence Talaat Bey and Emver Pasha."
31
January 1917 Austrian Chancellor Hollweg's report: ". . . the indications
are
that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of the
state,
as they did earlier with the Armenians. The strategy implemented by
the
Turks is of displacing people to the interior without taking measures for
their
survival by exposing them to death, hunger and illness. The abandoned
homes
are then looted and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the
Armenians
is being repeated with the Greeks.
Thus,
by government decree 1,500,000 Armenians and 300,000 Pontian Greeks were
annihilated
through exile, starvation, cold, illness, slaughter, murder,
gallows,
axe, and fire. Those who survived fled never to return. The Pontians
now lie
scattered all over the world as a result of the genocide and their
unique
history, language (the dialect is a valuable link between ancient and
modern
Greek), and culture are endangered and face extinction.
A
double crime was committed - genocide and the uprooting of a people from
their
ancestral homelands of three millenia. The Christian nations were not
only
witnesses to this horrible and monstrous crime, which remains
unpunished,
but for reasons of political expediency and self interest have,
by
their silence, pardoned the criminal. The Ottoman and Kemalist Turks were
responsible
for the genocide of the Pontian people, the most heinous of all
crimes
according to international law. The international community must
recognise
this crime.
Produced
by the Hellenic Council of New South Wales May 1996