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Pontic Greek (page)
Greek genocide
Factors leading up to genocide
- Ottoman society was divided into millets based on religion and ethnicity, with Sunni Muslim Turks as the ruling class.[1]
- Religious minorities (dhimmis) were forbidden from wearing certain types of clothing and certain colors of fabric, although these rules were frequently flaunted. They were also forbidden from building tall houses, new churches, and from ringing church bells.[2]
- Talaat, one of the rulers of the empire during the 1910s, described the Christian subjects as giaours ("We have made unsuccessful attempts to convert the Ghiaur into a loyal Osmanli...There can therefore be no question of equality, until we have succeeded in our task of ottomanizing the Empire.")[3]
- Christians were more highly educated than Muslims in Anatolia[4]
- Christians made up the majority of merchants, importers, moneylenders, and bankers; they developed a petit bourgeoisie that led to resentment by Muslim neighbors[5]
- The Tanzimat reforms, intended to provide all Ottomans with human rights and equality in the eyes of the law, caused further division among Muslims and Christians. Some Muslims felt that equality deprived them of their dominant role as the conquerors of Anatolia, e.g., Ahmed Cevdet Pasha.[6][7]
- continued warfare between Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century; the Megali Idea[8]
- CUP and Turkish ethnonationalism[9]
- Cretan question. Crete voted to join with Greece in 1908; Cretan officers and political leaders were required to swear fealty to the Greek king in 1910. Crete refused to allow the Ottoman Empire to appoint Muslim judges in Crete. In spring/summer 1910, there was an organized boycott of Greek businesses in Crete and the west coast of Turkey, especially Smyrna. Muslims in Smyrna threatened Greek business owners, telling them to close their shops and abjure their loyalty to Greece, beating them if they refused.[10]
- Turkish protestors in Constantinople called for war: “We want war, war, war, war;” “Down with Greece! Greeks bow your heads.” (In response to the First Balkan War). Armies on both sides of the conflict massacred civilians; massacres of Muslims by Christian armies further inflamed the Turks' animosity toward their Christian neighbors.[11]
- Boycotts continued in 1913 and 1914; Muslims who entered Christian-owned shops were beaten. The CUP organized the boycott. Those doing the beating were generally hired by the government for that purpose. The main goal was to destroy the Christian merchant class and replace it with a Turkish petit bourgeoisie.[12]
- In 1913: "Posters, placed in schools and mosques, called on Muslims to exterminate the Greeks. Turkish newspapers published violent and inflammatory articles arousing their readers to persecution and massacre. These articles were said to be obviously instigated by the authorities. Cheap and crude lithographs were also produced showing Greeks cutting up Turkish babies or ripping open pregnant Muslim women, and various purely imaginary scenes. These were effective in provoking violence against the Greeks of Asia Minor."[13]
- In 1913 and 1914, the Ottoman government began large-scale deportations of Greeks from their homes in Western Anatolia. Massacres followed in May and June 2014. Venizelos, the Greek PM, got wind of this and threatened to massacre Muslim civilians as revenge. Shirinian argues that these threats (and the fact that the Anatolian Greeks, unlike the Armenians and Assyrians, had a foreign power looking out for them) prevented a large-scale genocide early in the 1910s.[13]
- WWI began in Europe on June 28, 1914. The CUP conscripted all men into the armed forces on July 21. Greeks and Armenians, including teens and old men, were sent to labor battalions.[14]
- Deportations of Greeks resumed in 1916, under the guise that Greeks were aiding enemies of the Empire (namely Russia and Greece)[15]
- Greeks subject to house searches & seizure of weapons[16]
- minorities were viewed as seditious, a fifth column likely to ally with Europeans and betray the Empire[17]
Events
Later stages
- "Even before Kemal’s landing at Samsun [May 19, 1919], deadly bands of çetes (organized brigands), especially those led by Topal Osman, had been engaged in continuous shooting, plundering, and raping of the defenseless Greek villagers in the Pontus region. With Kemal’s support, they stepped up their campaign with the objective of clearing the Greeks from the region by massacring the Greek population in cities such as Trebizond, Amasya, Pafra, Merzifon, and many others. By the spring of 1922, the bulk of the Greek population in the Pontus region, which was far from the war zone, had been deported to the interior. Along the way, tens of thousands perished from exposure, starvation, and disease. The dead and dying were thrown into rivers and ditches."[18]
- Greece invaded Anatolia (Greek-Turkish war); Greek soldiers committed atrocities against Turkish civilians[18]
- To end the war and keep the peace, the Greek-Turkish population exchange occurred. The Turks had previously suggested a population exchange to get rid of their Greek minority.[19]
- "The argument that there was a mutually signed agreement for the population exchange ignores the fact that the Ankara government had already declared its intention that no Greek should remain on Turkish soil before the exchange was even discussed. The final killing and expulsion of the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire in 1920–24 was part of a series of hostile actions that began even before Turkey’s entry into World War I."[20]
Refugees
- The report of one refugee woman, Maria Birbili, from "Yargciler" (Yagcilar?), on going to a Greek village in search of work & lodging: "On the second of October we got to Crete, in Chanea. Somebody came there. He gathered us to pick olives in Paliochora. It took us two days and one night to reach there. We went up hill and down dale. Once we arrived at the village, he wanted to get us to sleep in a hen coop. I told him: ‘I do not go inside. Had I wanted to be captured I would have remained in Asia Minor.’ Then the president of the village council came and settled us in a cell. That was big enough. However, there was neither mattress nor quilt to lie down. A crowd gathered round us and eyed us with curiosity like being another race. [The crowd asked] Do you speak any Greek? Did you have any churches in your country?"[21]
- Female refugees were the majority of workers in textiles and custom clothes (made to measure) in 1930. Women had no right to strike or join unions, and they regularly received 1/2 to 1/3 of male wages. Refugee women were paid the worst in the textile and weaving industries.[21]
- Few refugees had working-age men to support them. At many ports, women, children, and the elderly made up 90% of the refugees, as men had been detained and forced into labor battalions.[21]
Saved citations
- Pontian ethnic ancestry, in addition to the original Greek colonists: Hellenized ancient Anatolians and migrants to the area,[22][23] Caucasian peoples,[24][25] Turks[26]
- History of ethnic/genetic diversity in the region[27]
- Pontian genetics: high prevalence of haplogroups L, G2, and J2;[28] similarity to Lazes and Armenians;[29] genetic diversity indicating history of mixture[30]
- Pontians are indigenous[31][32][33][34][35]