The Greek resistance during the Greek genocide took part mostly in the Pontus region, where self-defense militia were formed to defend the local population from Turkish massacres during the Greek genocide.
The most notable local leaders were Anton Pasha, and Efkleidis Kourtidis, among others. The Pontic Greek resistance, in particular, is considered one of the most successful resistances in genocide history, as it was never militarily defeated or fully crushed by the regular Kemalist army.
Resistance in Pontus The Pontic Greeks made up the bulk of the genocide (see: Pontic Greek genocide) and the bulwark of the resistance. They lacked state protection and, as such, formed organized self-defense militia, similar to the defensive actions of Armenians and Assyrians during their respective genocides, primarily to protect civilian populations under systematic attack. They organized themselves in Bafra, Samsun, Amasya, Tokat, Erbaa and Santa. Prelude In the lead-up to World War I, Greek men from the ages of 19 to 45 were forcefully conscripted to the Ottoman Army. However, instead of being included in the regular army that would be trained in weaponry and deployed in the field, they were assigned to labour battalions, with the goal of exhausting them with 18-hour workdays with inadequate food and protection from the elements so they could not mount a much-feared resistance movement. The Ottomans began forcibly conscripting Pontic Greek men into labour battalions, where they died in large numbers, with the death rate reaching over 90%.
A British intelligence officer held hostage by the Turks estimated that "The life of a Greek in a labor gang is generally about two months". As such, the Young Turk regime solved two "problems" at once; they could move military material and do so by killing Pontic Greek men by indirect means, such as 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.
Overture of the resistance (1914–1915) Many Pontic Greek men successfully escaped or evaded these battalions, fleeing to the mountains. There, they formed resistance and self-defense groups to defend themselves and their people. The Turks actually caused the problem which they originally sought to prevent, marking the start of the Greek resistance in 1914.
In September 1915, the families of these escapees were deported from Pontus. This led to the rise of the resistance under .
Crescendo of the resistance (1916–1921)
After 1916, when Ottoman forces began targeted destruction of Greek villages in Western Pontus, the resistance became more organized. Anthopoulos successfully created one of the earliest organized guerrilla bands in Sivas (Sebasteia), in July 1916, gathering around 10,000 volunteers and preparing for a revolt. Amasya was reported as ready to revolt as well.
In September 1916, Anthopoulos alongside 80 guerrillas moved through Turkish villages, and began killing known genocide perpetrators and burning their houses. This ultimately ended in a clash with Ottoman military forces near Ordu (Kotyora), after which Anthopoulos retreated with nine men to Russian-held Trabzon on 18 October.
In April 1917 a large force of the Turkish army was sent by Refet Bele Pasha and commanded by Mehmet Ali encircled the monastery of the Theotokos near the village of Otkaya (Otkayada), on the west side of Mount Neltes (). There, a cave called "Cave of the Virgin Mary" was located, where 600–650 unarmed men, women and children were hiding, protected by 60 armed guerrillas. Turkish villagers informed the army of this hiding place, which was afterwards surrounded by 350 gendarmes under Dalip Çavuş. The guerrillas, however, successfully repelled all Turkish attacks for about a week, after which a regular army regiment equipped with artillery was brought in. After two further days of fighting, the defenders were running out of ammunition and the artillery had widened the cave entrance. Seeing that the situation was hopeless, the guerrillas raised a white flag and committed collective suicide, in hopes that the Turks spare the civilians. However, when the Turks entered the cave, they proceeded to rape the young girls and women, shoot the children, and behead the men. Only 83 of them survived the ordeal.
After the October Revolution in 1917, the Russian Army left Pontus. Under Chrysanthus, Pontic Greek villagers picked up the weapons left by the Russians. This led to the first clashes between armed Greek villages and Turkish irregulars. In December 1917, the Greek residents of Santa organized themselves militarily after attacks on Greek villages.
In 1918, after the Ottoman defeat in World War I, the guerrillas did not disarm and continued their resistance, despite British demands to surrender their weapons.
Mustafa Kemal's landing in Samsun in 19 May 1919 led to the final and most brutal phase of the genocide.
On the forefeast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, Bishop of Zile Euthymios Agritellis gathered some thousands of guerrillas outside of the small town of Çağşur (Esençay), under the command of . The guerrillas attacked the town and captured it, killing 2,000 Turkish soldiers, gendarmes and çetes in the process.
In February/March 1920, Greek reserve lieutenant Chrysostomos Karaiskos went to Samsun (Amisos) in order to organize the guerrillas in the countryside. He went to Zile, in Tokat, and saw the guerrilla leaders were basically running the city and openly operated there. He observed band leaders entering and leaving the archbishopric openly, with Agritellis holding power over the region.
In the summer of the same year, the elite Pontic Greek captains fortified themselves in the Topçam Mountain, a prominent peak located within the inland section of the Pontic Mountains, and for seven years, the Turks, using regular troops, were unable to capture this strategically important region of Pontus.
In May 1921, Topal Osman, one of the main perpetrators of the Pontic Greek genocide, was ordered to attack the guerrillas around Samsun, but repeatedly avoided the strongest guerrilla positions. It was noted that the Greek fighters were causing "serious problems" for Osman's forces. Osman was known for avoiding Greek fighters and, instead, choosing to attack Greek civilians. During the Samsun deportations in June 1921, approximately 600 guerrillas under leaders including Istyl Aga, Anastas Aga, Garafytos, Uzunfyto, Hatzikosti and Pantel Aga successfully protected some civilians who had taken refuge in the mountains, but failed to stop the deportations entirely.
After the Kemalist occupation of Santa in September 1921, approximately 300 women and children fled into the mountains. Around 100 guerrillas under Efkleidis Kourtidis sheltered and defended them at the Magara cave, where they were attacked by forces under Süleyman Kalfa, who demanded their surrender. Dimitrios Tsirip, Kourtidis' deputy, refused and was shot in the head. Seeing that his deputy had been killed, Kourtidis devised a plan: ten guerrillas each had a semi-automatic pistol with ten cartridges. When fired together, the pistols sounded as though a machine gun were firing. Kourtidis ordered the men to fire all ten pistols simultaneously in order to create the impression of a machine-gun attack and frighten the attackers into retreating.At the same time, two handmade grenades were thrown, intensifying the effect. Believing that they were under machine-gun fire, the Turkish force fled from the cave, allowing the guerrillas and the unarmed civilians to escape.
Finale of the resistance (1922–1924) By early 1922, Pontic Greek civilians hiding in the mountains and protected by the guerrillas, who numbered up to 50,000, had begun dying due to food shortages. Meanwhile, the Turkish nationalists recognized that they could not crush the guerrillas, having difficulty bringing troops from other areas to Pontus, and instead decided to concentrate their forces against the Greek Army. With both sides recognizing the severity of their respective situations, the guerrillas of Topçam accepted a favorable ceasefire with the Turkish nationalists in March 1922. Under the terms of the ceasefire, the Turks agreed to provide food for the starving women and children, as well as for the guerrillas.
However, hostilities didn't stop entirely. In May 1922, the guerrillas achieved a victory in the Seventh Battle of Dazli, repelling a massive Turkish force which had been sent to attack the village.
After the Great Offensive in August 1922, the Turks broke the treaty and atrocities began anew in and near Topçam. Turkish forces came in the area with 40,000 soldiers in October 1922 and began burning villages and hunting down guerrillas and civilians. However, in 19 October 1922, governor Liva Pasha decided to give amnesty to the guerrillas, in hopes they surrender. Having been betrayed before, the Greeks refused to give up their weapons. In December 1922, guerrillas succeeded in protecting 5,000 families in the mountains.
By 1923, when the vast majority of unarmed civilians had been finally evacuated in the port of Samsun, the guerrillas rented Turkish boats and sailed to Romania, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. From there, they went to Greece on their own initiative. A few pockets of resistance remained, particularly in Santa. In January 1923, the guerrillas of Santa refused to leave and took to arms. After another amnesty and safety guarantees from both the Turkish and Greek governments, the vast majority of the last guerrillas, including Efkleidis Kourtidis, left in February 1924 as part of the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
The twilight of the resistance was finally written in December 1924. The final guerrilla, Eleni Çavuş ( Sergeant Eleni), a woman who had led a Pontic Greek guerrilla group since 1918, was surrounded by Turkish government forces in a cave in the , near Bafra. Refusing to surrender, she fought for several days, eventually getting killed after exhausting her ammunition.
Strength Most estimates give the number of Pontic Greek fighters at around 18,000 in their peak, divided in 300 teams, each commanded by one local leader. In a 24 January 1920 letter, two Pontic Greek notables, Christos Kalandides and Konstantinos Kansiz, wrote to the Hellenic Army General Staff that they could amass a total of 20,000 men. Subsequently, in a 24 June 1920 letter to Eleftherios Venizelos, during the Greek Summer Offensive, they also mentioned other Christians, such as the Lazes and the remaining Armenians, but also Muslims, such as the Circassians, the Alevis (also referred to as "Qizilbash") and others, all of whom they considered sympathetic to Greeks, as ready to take up arms against the Turks as well, since they, too, had been and were being oppressed.
According to Mustafa Kemal in Nutuk, the resistance began with 6,000–7,000 guerrillas and reached an estimated peak strength of 25,000 fighters, although his peak number is considered inflated and dubious. According to historian and political scientist Racho Donef, the "figure of 25,000 freedom fighters" was later manipulated by Turkish historiography, which turned it into "25,000 gangs" instead.
Weaknesses