Your Greek Friends Stand Beside You!

[1.5 million]

Panos - I utterly fail to understand your position. Are you claiming that Greece was somehow in a position to stop the whloesale ethnic cleansing and killings of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks of the Aegena region of Anatolia that did occur (prior to WWI) - that is documented and admited to by various Turks - in memoirs as well as Ottoman parlimentary findings/declearations? These killings and ethnic cleansing absolutly did occur - and the greeks were unable to do anything about it. Likewise during WWI the Greeks of the Black Sea region were subject to the exact same type of barbarism - in what clearly can only be seen as deliberate Genocide - as the Armenians of Anatolia were subjected to. These are not idle claims but highly documented reports. I find your positions on these events as well as your mischaracterization of the (Turkish caused) horror of Smyrna to be - lets just say - disturbing.

[notjustarmenian]

Panos,
I've just started reading a book titled "Twice a Stranger" by Bruce Clark about the mass expulsions of 1923, have you read this?

The author places the death toll of Armenians as at least 600,000 [page 9] and at most 800,000, the death toll of Greeks at 300,000 and fails to acknowledge the plight of the Assyrian Christians completely but states that 2.5 million Turks were killed in what was a "mutual slaughter" [page 13]. Revisionist propaganda that closely follows the denialist works of Justin McCarthy and Standford Shaw.

This book attempts to play down and minimize the sheer magnitude of the 1914-1923 Genocide of the Ottoman Christians as nothing more than a romanticized hardship where the Anatolian Christians suffered a plight tragically equal to that of their fellow Turkish co-citizens. The author achieves this by avoiding a crucial five year period and its events, namely 1914-1919.

Let it be known that the Turkish army did not enter Smyrna on the 19th of September as the author claims but on the 9th of September [page 24]. This book is riddled with historical errors but perhaps this is not too surprising since the author lacks the credentials of a historian.

AVOID!

[Panos26]

IGNORANT!!!

Go read the transcripts of the Turkish Court-Martial of 1919! Go look at the documents of the Relief Committee for Greeks of Asia Minor! Go look at the archives!

Check out the link: http://www.greek-genocide.org/press.html AND http://www.greek-genocide.org/books.html

Stanley Hopkins, American employee of the Near East Relief, 16/11/1921:
“… the Greeks of Anatolia are suffering the same or worse fate than did the Armenians in the massacres of the Great War. The deportation of the Greeks is not limited to the Black Sea Coast but is being carried out throughout the whole of the country governed by the Nationalists. Greek villages are deported entire, the few Turkish or Armenian inhabitants are forced to leave, and the villages are burned. The purpose is unquestionably to destroy all Greeks in that territory and to leave Turkey for the Turks. These deportations are, of course, accompanied by cruelties of every form just as was true in the case of the Armenian deportations five and six years ago.”

F.D. Yowell, Director of the Harpoot Unit, Near East Relief, 5/5/1922:
“Conditions of Greek minorities are even worse than those of the Armenians. Sufferings of the Greeks deported from districts behind the battlefront are terrible and still continue. These deportees begun to reach Harpoot before my arrival last October. Of thirty thousand Greek refugees who left Sivas, five thousand died on the way before reaching Harpoot. One American relief worker saw and counted fifteen hundred bodies on the road east of Harpoot... Two thirds of the Greek deportees are women and children. All along the route where these deportees have travelled Turks are permitted to visit refugee group and select women and girls whom they desire for any purpose. These deportations are still in progress, and if American aid is now withdrawn all will perish. Their whole route today strewn with bodies of their dead, which are consumed by dogs, wolves, vultures. The Turks make no effort to burry these dead and the deportees are not permitted to do so. The chief causes of death are starvation, dysentery, typhus. Turkish authorities frankly state that is their deliberate intention to exterminate the Greeks, and all their actions supports this statements. At present fresh deportations and outrages are starting in all parts of Asia Minor from northern seaports to the south eastern district.”

Turkish professor Taner Akcam in a televised interview aired in 2005 stated:
"The salvation of the Turkish nation was only to get rid of the Christians from Anatolia and they developed plans at the beginning of 1913 and they implemented these plans first in Western Anatolia against the Greeks."

Johannes Lepsius, Germany missionary, 31/7/1915:
“The anti-Armenian and the anti-Greek persecutions were two stages of one and the same programme on the annihilation of the Christian element in Turkey.”

Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, House of Commons:
“… tens of thousands of (Greek) men, women and Children were expelled and dying. It was a clearly a deliberate extermination. ‘Extermination' is not my word. It is the word being used by the American mission.”

Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to Turkey, in 1918 writes:
“The Turks adopted almost identically the same procedure against the Greeks as that which they had adopted against the Armenians.”

In an article titled the "Uprooting of Greeks in Turkey", which appeared in the New York Times on the 21st of January 1923 regarding the Treaty of Lausanne, Professor Silas Bent, American journalist, author and lecturer, wrote:
"Before the World War there were three millions of Greeks in Turkish territory; a million of them were killed or dispersed in 1915; a million and a half of them, since 1915, have been killed or dispersed (dispersal being the more merciless method of driving them to arid plateaus where they died lingeringly from starvation), and the events at Smyrna were still fresh before the minds of the delegates. What assurances could there be against further massacres and forcible deportations if these helpless and peaceable folk were left at the mercy of the Turk?"

I am not ignorant mate.I know this stories from a very young age.I do question the numbers and more over i question Greece's attitude since she still hasnt ever raised a genocide issue officially against Turkey.I am pretty sure Greece knows much more thus we dont raise an issue like that.Probably she knows what we also did to the Turks.

[notjustarmenian]

I am not ignorant mate.I know this stories from a very young age.I do question the numbers and more over i question Greece's attitude since she still hasnt ever raised a genocide issue officially against Turkey.I am pretty sure Greece knows much more thus we dont raise an issue like that.Probably she knows what we also did to the Turks.

To claim the burning of Smyrna was the work of the Greeks is very ignorant. You might like to start reading Turkish works by Turkish professors, Turkish eyewitnesses and Turkish academics on the burning of Smyrna. If you like I can suggest some titles? The Greek army left Smyrna on the 8th. The Turks entered on the 9th and the fire was set on the 13th. Don't distort history.

The Greek government and their foreign policy has no connection with whether events constitute genocide or not.

I would suggest you look at archival material.

You talk about statistics: Go look at Turkish statistics for the Greek population in Asia Minor prior to the population exchange and then look at Turkish statistics for the numbers transfered in the population exchange of 1923. You will see well over a million Greeks have literally disappeared according to Turkish statistics.

Educate yourself or if you chose to continue with this nonsensical distortion of history then provide sources to validate your ridiculous claims!

[Steph]

. This book is riddled with historical errors but perhaps this is not too surprising since the author lacks the credentials of a historian.

AVOID!

Revisionist propoganda is too harsh for this particular man, in my humble view.


I believed this book dealt with the mass population expulsions between turkey and Greece during 1923, needless to say the earlier periods you mention were mentioned briefly purely to give some kind of context to the events of 1923.

The author definitely researched his subject whilst not really researching adjacent and pertinent events ie. the Genocides of Armenians and Assyrians.

The misplacing of a date, 9th to 19th, whilst elementary for an historian is perhaps forgivable for the author of a book whose most interesting contents are the verbal memories of deportees from both Christian and islamic groups.
Crass mistakes for an historian but then history, as we know, is not an exact science, perish the thought that one should be classed one!

[Steph]

I do question the numbers and more over i question Greece's attitude since she still hasnt ever raised a genocide issue officially against Turkey.I am pretty sure Greece knows much more thus we dont raise an issue like that.Probably she knows what we also did to the Turks.

I imagine the Greek governments since 1923 have decided, for reasons perhaps linked to stability in the region, not to pursue the Genocide against turkey.
Greece was not in a position to negotiate through strength for many years, perhaps even now, and faced with the power in the Balkans probably decided to be like dad and keep mum!

[notjustarmenian]

I imagine the Greek governments since 1923 have decided, for reasons perhaps linked to stability in the region, not to pursue the Genocide against turkey.
Greece was not in a position to negotiate through strength for many years, perhaps even now, and faced with the power in the Balkans probably decided to be like dad and keep mum!

The word "Genocide" did not exist in 1923. However, as early as January of 1947 it became clear that the massacres of Greeks by Turkey could be punishable as genocide. The Greek Government has passed two governmental decrees on the genocide of the Greeks in Asia Minor; both were passed unanimously and the first decree was passed two years before they passed a resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide.

On the other hand, Greece has adamantly pursued the role of an appeaser in order to reap benefits that would otherwise be unavailable. In any case, whatever the position of the Greek Foreign Ministry, the documentation in international archives abundantly prove the genocidal campaign implemented and systematically perpetrated against the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire.

[notjustarmenian]

Revisionist propoganda is too harsh for this particular man, in my humble view.


I believed this book dealt with the mass population expulsions between turkey and Greece during 1923, needless to say the earlier periods you mention were mentioned briefly purely to give some kind of context to the events of 1923.

The author definitely researched his subject whilst not really researching adjacent and pertinent events ie. the Genocides of Armenians and Assyrians.

The misplacing of a date, 9th to 19th, whilst elementary for an historian is perhaps forgivable for the author of a book whose most interesting contents are the verbal memories of deportees from both Christian and islamic groups.
Crass mistakes for an historian but then history, as we know, is not an exact science, perish the thought that one should be classed one!

The date of the Turkish entry is merely one example of a historical inaccuracy. Personally, any work that refers to the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocide as a "mutual slaughter" is revisionist propaganda. Besides the inaccuracies, the author has been very selective in his sources in order to portray such an image. I do not think this work can be taken seriously.

[Steph]

The word "Genocide" did not exist in 1923.

REALLY?????

[Steph]

The date of the Turkish entry is merely one example of a historical inaccuracy. Personally, any work that refers to the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocide as a "mutual slaughter" is revisionist propaganda. Besides the inaccuracies, the author has been very selective in his sources in order to portray such an image. I do not think this work can be taken seriously.

This work is not about the Armenian Genocide but about population deportations. I think it covers this subject in a precise and unbiases manner.
If this makes the author a revisionist, and me I suppose, we can both expect visits in the night from mono-brow thugs, eek!