Originally published in GPN, Genocide Prevention Now, Special Issue 5, Winter 2011

The following is the homepage of www.greek-genocide.org.

During the years 1914-1923, whilst the attention of the international community focused on the turmoil and aftermath of the First World War, the indigenous Greek minority of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey’s predecessor, was subjected to a centrally-organized, premeditated and systematic policy of annihilation. This genocide, orchestrated to ensure an irreversible end to the collective existence of Turkey’s Greek population, was perpetrated by two consecutive governments; the Committee for Union and Progress, better known as the Young Turks, and the nationalist Kemalists led by Mustafa Kemal “Atatürk”. A lethal combination of internal deportations involving death marches and massacres conducted throughout Ottoman Turkey resulted in the death of one million Ottoman Greeks.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization of the world’s foremost experts on genocide, have affirmed the Ottoman Greek Genocide.

Near East Relief on Ottoman Greeks
This article is the official account of the Near East Relief organization on the Greeks and their genocide: “The story of Armenian suffering in Turkey is paralleled, with certain modifications by the experiences of the Greeks, of whom there were 5,000,000 under Turkish domination at the beginning of the war.”

1,500,000 Massacred or Deported by Turks Dr. William C. King’s article titled “1,500,000 Greek Christians Massacred or Deported by Turks” and published in King’s Complete History of the World War (1922) covers the genocidal experiences of Ottoman Greeks up to 1918.

Perpetrators of the Ottoman Greek Genocide This page details some of the key architects and arch-perpetrators of the Ottoman Greek Genocide from the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) and the Kemalist periods. After the Great War, many of these men were tried and found guilty by Turkish Court Martial in Constantinople.

Massacre of the Greeks in Turkey This article, titled “Massacre of the Greeks in Turkey: Story of the Tragic Fate of Hundreds of Thousands of Christian Noncombatants in the Levant”, was written by the special correspondent of The London Morning Post stationed in Constantinople on 5 December 1918.

Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story Henry Morgenthau (1856-1946) was United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire between 1913 and 1916. He witnessed the Ottoman entry into World War I and the genocide of the Empire’s Armenian, Aramaean/Assyrian and Greek population. “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story” was published.

Treaty of Sevres The Treaty of Sèvres was the peace treaty that the Allies and the Ottoman Empire signed on 10 August 1920 in Sèvres, France. Articles of the treaty relevant to the Greek Genocide are presented here.

Mass Grave Discovered in Samsun, Turkey In March 2008
A mass grave of Greeks was discovered in Yazılar, a village in Samsun’s Tekkeköy district, northern Anatolia. The discovery was made during the reconstruction of a primary school wall which had recently collapsed as a result of a land slide.  It was then that residents of Yazılar discovered human remains; at first a number of jaw, spine, arm and leg bones but soon after some five or six human skeletons were discovered in one grave alone arousing suspicion that it was in fact a mass burial site.  

Nikos Mastoropoulos Nikos Mastoropoulos, a painter of Pontic Greek descent, was born and raised in Moscow but died at the age of 55 in 2003. Mastoropoulos was greatly influenced by the tragic plight of the Greeks of Anatolia and Thrace and produced a selection of paintings on the Greek Genocide which magnificently capture the despair and torment experienced by the victims of the Genocide.

Armenian Genocide The Armenian Genocide (Greek: η Γενοκτονία των Αρμενίων, Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı) Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı) is a term which refers to the systematic state-organized policy of physical annihilation perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey, against its indigenous Armenian civilian population between 1915 and 1923.

Mustafa Kemal: 1926 Los Angeles Examiner
In an interview with Swiss journalist Emile Hilderbrand, published on Sunday 1 August 1926 in the Los Angeles Examiner under the title “Kemal Promises More Hangings of Political Antagonists in Turkey”, Mustafa Kemal states: “These left-overs from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule.”

In an interview with Swiss journalist Emile Hilderbrand, published on Sunday 1 August 1926 in the under the title “Kemal Promises More Hangings of Political Antagonists in Turkey”, Mustafa Kemal states: “These left-overs from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule.”

Patriarchate Figures on the Deportation of Ottoman Greeks Figures published in 1919 by the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople record the deportation of 774,235 Ottoman Greeks into the Turkish Interior. The data does not reflect the total number of Greeks deported since the records end in 1918 and therefore does not include deportations conducted during the period 1919-1923.

Source: Greek-genocide.org, Greek Genocide 1914-23, http://www.greek-genocide.org/index1.html