The Day of Remembrance of Pontic Hellenism by the Turks was officially recognized in 1994 by law from the Parliament and since then May 19th has been honored as Remembrance Day.
On May 19, 1919, during the Asia Minor Campaign, Kemal Atatürk landed in Samsun in Pontus and initiated the second and harshest phase of the Genocide of the Pontic Hellenes, which took place in the context of the Turkish Liberation Struggle against the Westerners (British, French, Italians, Greeks), who occupied the territories of Asia Minor. From 200.000 to 350.000 are the Pontic Hellenes, who were exterminated by the Young Turks during the period 1916-1923, in a total of approximately 750.000.
In early 1991, the PASOK parliamentary group unanimously accepted a proposal by its chairman Andreas Papandreou, following a letter from the movement's Pontian MPs, to submit a bill for the official recognition by Parliament of the Pontian genocide and the establishment of May 19 as the "Day of Remembrance of the Pontian Genocide". Thus, on April 1, 1992, 22 PASOK MPs submitted the relevant bill, which was never put forward for discussion by the Mitsotakis government.
After PASOK took power in October 1993, the bill was resubmitted to Parliament on 9 December 1993 and was unanimously passed by the body on 24 February 1994. Law 2193/94, published on 11 March 1994 in the Government Gazette (Sheet 32 A'), establishes 19 May as the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks.
Who were the Pontians?
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Pontians maintained a presence in Asia Minor that now counted thousands of years of history. Passing through ancient Greece, the Roman era, Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire, the Pontians did not bow down in the face of any difficulty. Surrounded by Muslims and many other ethnicities, the Pontians managed to maintain their national consciousness, resulting in them always being a "headache" for the Ottoman Turks in this particular region.
Although they did not surpass the other ethnic groups in population, constituting approximately 40% of the region, their activities made them dominant in the social and economic life of this place. Concentrated mostly in urban centers, the Pontians in 1896 numbered approximately 265.000 souls, within just 15 years they had reached 330.000, while at the beginning of the 20th century they had exceeded 700.000!
While in 1860 there were only 100 schools in the entire Pontus, in 1919 they were estimated to exceed 1.400, among them the famous Tutoring School of Trebizond. How is it that printing houses, clubs, theaters, newspapers and everything that confirms the high intellectual level of a society are missing? They were not missing. Samsun, Trebizond and the other historical cities had almost nothing to envy from the social and cultural life of many free European cities.
The Genocide
The process of extermination of the Greek populations of Pontus is historically distinguished into three consecutive phases: from the beginning of World War I to the occupation of Trebizond by the Russian army (1914-1916), the second ends with the end of World War I (1916-1918) and the last is completed with the implementation of the Pact for the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey (1918-1923).
Phase A and B
The wave of mass persecutions began in Pontus in the form of deportations in 1915. The deportations continued unabated even at the time when Russian troops entered Trebizond in early 1916. Particularly under the pretext that the Pontians supported the Russian movements, a large number of residents from the regions of Sinope and Kerasounta were deported to the hinterland of Asia Minor. There were also forced conversions to Islam of female populations.
According to estimates by the bishop of Trebizond, the number of victims of these policies amounted to approximately 100.000 during that period. Protests by Austrian and American diplomats against the Ottoman government did not cease.
Phase 3
Following the capitulation of Russia and the withdrawal of the Russian army from the region, persecutions intensified in the region. With the arrival of Kemal Ataturk in May 1919, in the region and the rise of his movement, the action of irregular groups (Chetniks) against the Christian populations intensified.
On May 29, Kemal assigned the notorious chet, Topal Osman, the operation to carry out mass extermination operations against the local population. In this context, the massacres and deportations of Greeks in Samsun and 394 villages in the region inhabited by Greek populations took place. Relevant reports have been recorded by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as by the American ambassador Henry Morgenthau.
Between February and August 1920, the burning of Bafra and the mass extermination of the 6.000 Greeks who had rushed to find protection in the churches of the area took place. In total, of the 25.000 Greeks living in the areas of Bafra and Aazam, 90% were murdered, while of the rest, most were displaced to the interior of Asia Minor.
The prominent and intellectual figures were arrested and sentenced to death by the so-called "Courts of Independence" in Amasya, in September 1921. At the same time, there were forced detachments of young girls and boys from their families, who were given to the harems of wealthy Turks.
The numbers are shocking. In an Asia Minor where not even 10.000.000 people lived, approximately 353.000 Pontians were exterminated in the period 1916-1923. The Turks, with the looting, the burning of villages, the hangings and the displacements that followed, managed to alter the ethnological character of the Greek regions.
Ultimately, after almost a decade of oppression, more than 400.000 uprooted people arrived in caravans in the major cities of Greece during the population exchange, leaving behind a 3.000-year-old culture, ancestral lands, churches, tombs and schools.
The concentration camps and the Pontic guerrilla
The "Amelé Tamburou" plan, devised by German officers, aimed to exterminate all men who were not enlisted in the Turkish army. The labor battalions put the men to work in quarries, mines and road construction under literally exterminating conditions. Result? Few managed to survive. Most succumbed to hunger, disease and hardship.
But the Pontians could not leave such a thing as it was. Over time, thousands of men decided to take refuge as rebels in the high and inaccessible mountains of the region in order to oppose the Turks with minimal means. The Armenians did the same, but by 1916 the Turks had faced this danger. How? With the Armenian Genocide.
Now the field for Mustafa Kemal was clear. However, the Pontians were not an easy opponent, resulting in the rebels achieving decisive blows to the organized nationalist army, while since 1919 they had high hopes for the creation of the Pontic Armenian state and the presence of the Greek army in Asia Minor.
The guerrillas were mainly organized in small groups of 15 to 30 people to make it easier to move and maintain the men. As we read in the History of the Greek Nation by Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos-National Geographic, it is estimated that around 1921 the Pontic guerrillas in total numbered over 12.000 men.
A large number of unruly, hard-nosed patriotic fighters in the rear of Kemal's army, for the time, which unfortunately was never utilized by the Greek staffs.
However, the short-lived Pontic Armenian state and the minimal assistance from Greek governments allowed Kemal to proceed with the "final solution".
While until recently the Greeks in the region had the assistance of the Russians, everything changed once the Bolsheviks came to power, who openly helped the Turks by every means. The Germans followed suit, supplying Kemal's hordes with war material and all kinds of supplies.
Throughout the Greek army's stay in the hinterland of Anatolia, Kemal kept the Greeks busy with guerrilla attacks, while at the same time he had the ability to massacre entire villages in Pontus. It is noteworthy that by the time of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, approximately 200.000 Pontians had lost their lives, while according to other historians the number may exceed 350.000!
The Pontians searched for new homelands. Thus, they fled to southern Russia but also to mother Greece with the exchange of populations, starting a new life while giving a significant population boost to the land of Macedonia.
Mother Greece, with a significant delay, finally recognized this black moment in history on February 24, 1994, with the Greek Parliament voting unanimously to declare May 19 as Remembrance Day for the Genocide of Pontic Hellenism.
Source: newsbomb
