The Pontic Greek genocide, or the Pontic genocide (), was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the indigenous Greek community in the Pontus region (the northeast of modern Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire during World War I and its aftermath.
The Pontic Greeks had a continuous presence in the Pontus region from at least 700 BC, over 2,500 years ago. Following the Ottoman conquest of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, the area came under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The rise of Turkish nationalism at the beginning of 20th century dramatically increased anti-Greek sentiment within the Ottoman Empire. The genocide began in 1914 by the Committee of Union and Progress regime, which was led by the Three Pashas, and, after a short interwar pause in 1918–1919, continued into 1923 by the Kemalist regime which was led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
Although resisted by a thriving Greek guerrilla movement, both Turkish nationalist movements succeeded in massacring the Pontians and deporting them to the interior regions of Anatolia. This resulted in approximately 350,000 deathsabout half of the pre-genocide Pontic population.IAGS' Resolution (16 December 2007):
Resolution on genocides committed by the Ottoman Empire WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides; WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority populations during and following the First World War is usually depicted as a genocide against Armenians alone, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire; BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution.United Nations document (another link, the 5th document) E/CN.4/1998/NGO/24 (WRITTEN STATEMENT /SUBMITTED BY THE INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR THE RIGHTS AND LIBERATION OF PEOPLES, dated 1998-02-24): The number of Pontians in the beginning of the twentieth century may be estimated at about 750,000. The process of their elimination goes from 1916 to 1923...In 1916, shortly after the completion of the genocide of the Armenians, the elimination process of the Pontians, started. The methods were the same: massacres, atrocities, massive rapes, abduction of women and children, forcible conversions to Islam, death-marches into arid regions, in inhuman conditions of hunger, thirst and disease meant for full extinction. These measures were called "deportation" by the authorities and were supposedly taken for security reasons. These facts are related by survivors and by many foreign witnesses confirming the deliberate destruction of the Pontian minority as such... The elimination of the Pontians was carried on after World War I, in fact systematically after 1919. The event which is considered as the starting point of a new stage of the final uprooting is the arrival of Mustafa Kemal at Samsun on 19 May 1919. Indeed, operations of mass killings, persecution, "deportation" for elimination, were resumed on a large scale in 1919. Some acts of self-defence or resistance were repressed severely by the Turkish army. Scores of villages were burnt after looting. Churches and houses were plundered. A number of churches were demolished. This preplanned destruction over 6–7 years after 1916, of about 50 per cent of the Pontians constituted a genocide under the United Nations criteria (Article II of the Convention on genocide, paragraphs (a), (b), (c), (d), (e)). From 1916 to 1923, about 350,000 Pontians disappeared through massacres, persecution and death-marches"
The genocide ended with the deportation of the survivors to Greece during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. The Pontic genocide is part of the wider Greek genocide, but it is often covered separately because of the geographic isolation of Pontus and several political and historical features.
Background
From 700 BC, Pontic Greeks lived close to the southern coast of the Black Sea in the Pontus region. They had a strong culture with many important Greek philosophers and authors. In the 11th century, the Turks started moving to central Anatolia, which is now Turkey, and to the Pontus region. Under the Byzantine Empire (395–1453), the two groups coexisted peacefully with each other. Following the incorporation of the Pontus region into the Ottoman Empire, Pontic Greeks remained a predominantly Christian community within the empire's millet system. They were treated unequally relative to other ethnic groups because they were a Christian minority. Many Christian Greeks had better education and higher economic positions in the empire, much to the dismay of Ottoman officials. Religion was viewed as a sign of loyalty in the Ottoman Empire, but most Pontics refused to convert to Islam in spite of Ottoman pressure. Subsequently, they were consistently viewed as a threat to the nation. Many Pontic Greeks were active in commerce, education and maritime trade, although their social and economic circumstances varied considerably across regions and periods. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ottoman authorities increasingly viewed some Pontic Greek organisations with suspicion amid rising nationalist movements and conflicts in the empire.
The Young Turk Revolution greatly affected the Pontic Greeks living in Anatolia. One of the political goals of the Young Turk movement was to "Turkify" the Ottoman Empire. Their goal was to unite the Turkish people through religion, history and culture.Adar, Sinem. "Understanding the Religion-Politics Nexus in Turkey. Continuities and Ruptures." Exploring Islam beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism: Sociological Approaches. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 2021. pp. 213–231. Ottoman officials feared that Christian minorities, like the Pontic Greeks, would cause instability in the empire after rebellions staged by the Pontus Greeks in the Black Sea Region emerged. As a result, a violent campaign of genocide began in an attempt to remove non-Muslim minorities from the region, including Pontic Greeks.
In the time between 1914 and 1923, about 353,000 Pontic Greeks were killed and 1.5 million were expelled. Various methods of genocide were used and there were two main phases: CUP and Kemalist.
In their book, The Thirty-Year Genocide, Israeli historians Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi argue that the massacres were primarily religiously motivated, and allege that Mustafa Kemal himself incited these religious mobs against Christians, including the Pontic Greeks.
First phase (1914–1918) The first repressions of Greeks in 1913–1914 barely reached the Pontus region, as they were mostly directed towards Western Anatolia. Mass deportations in the region began in 1915 in Western Pontus and part of Eastern, which Russian army had not captured yet.
The Ottoman government brutally persecuted the Pontic Greek community, but did not plan a full-scale extermination similar to the Armenian genocide due to multiple factors. The Greeks had a nation-state, unlike the Armenians, so the Committee of Union and Progress did not want to provoke Athens (which were neutral until 1916) into siding with the Entente. Greece also had a Muslim minority and could start a similar campaign toward it.
With this in mind, Unionists followed the tactic of "white massacres": deportations and forced labor.G. W. Rendel (20 March 1922), Memorandum by Mr. Rendel on Turkish Massacres and Persecutions of Minorities since the Armistice, British Foreign Office, archived from the original on 16 April 2022, retrieved 26 November 2017.
Pontic Greek men (aged 18–48) were forcibly conscripted into labor battalions and died in large numbers, sometimes over 90 percent. "The life of a Greek in a labor gang is generally about two months", a British intelligence officer held hostage by the Turks in the eastern vilayets estimated. In this way, the CUP regime solved two problems at once; they could move military material and do so by killing Pontic men by indirect means (working them to death). The extermination of fighting-age males was central to the genocidal plans, as it eliminated a significant portion of the population capable of resistance.
Beginning in the countryside and later in urban areas, the Turks raided Pontic Greek homesteads and initiated the deportation process. Victims were marched in caravans, where they usually experienced death rates of 80–90 percent. These caravans were subjected to brutal treatment, well documented by a number of penetrating studies of the genocide. When the escorts desired, they abused victims, sometimes committing massacres through direct killings.
Deportations involved chiefly women and children as, by early 1915, most adult men had been mobilized in labor battalions.
In January 1916, the Russians launched a major offensive. As the result, they broke through the Ottoman defences and by April captured a huge area of Eastern Pontus, including Rize and Trabzon. During the retreat, Kamil Pasha ordered the deportation of Greek villagers. It was conducted in winter, when temperature was close to zero, so many froze on the road. During spring and summer, the authorities continued deportations, which affected dozens of villages in Trabzon vilayet. Some Greeks fled to surrounding forests and mountains. Many women were rounded up and taken to Vazelon Monastery, where Turks "first violated them, and then put them to death".
The government countered Western protests by claiming that the deportations were undertaken for "military reasons" and complaining about interference in its "internal affairs". However, in many regions that were very far from the frontline, Greeks were persecuted as well. For example, residents of the Ünye area were expelled in December 1915. The Greek population of Inebolu and its surrounding villagesCide, Patheri, Atsidono, Karaca, Askordassiwas deported in June 1916.
German Consul M. Kuckhoff telegraphed on July 16, 1916 from Samsun: "The entire Greek population of Sinope and the coastal region of the district of Kastanomu has been exiled (...) In Turkish the terms deportation and extermination have the same meaning, because in most cases those who are not killed fall victim to disease or starvation."
In a special cable the New York Times of August 21, 1916 reported that Turkish authorities in the Black Sea regions "are rounding up civilians in a considerable number of villages and sending them off in batches to concentration camps in the interior. This means practically a sentence to death, for in large numbers they are forced to go afoot, absolutely without food. En route these pitiful caravans are attacked by Turks, who rob them of whatever they have in their possession, unhappy mothers being deprived of their children. The deportations are on a considerable scale".