The Genocide Turkey Erased From History: The Greek Genocide

Описание: Play War Thunder now with my link, and get a massive, free bonus pack including vehicles, boosters, and more for new & returning players that haven’t played for at least six months: https://playwt.link/adayinhistory

Greeks had lived in Asia Minor for over two thousand years, but that history came to a bloody end thanks to the genocide committed against them by the Ottoman and Turkish governments.

Alongside the Armenians and Assyrians, the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire faced a wave of deportation, dehumanization, and destruction during and after the First World War which are remembered as some of the bloodiest genocides of the 20th century.

Today on A Day In History, we look at how the Greek population of modern-day Turkey was all but exterminated. This is the third part of our series looking at Ottoman genocides, so check out our earlier videos on the Armenian and Assyrian genocides to see a full picture of the unspeakable crimes committed in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

Sparks of a Genocide

The Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian Genocides were similar in many ways, but the defining feature of their victims was obvious: Christianity. These three minorities represented the vast majority of Christians who lived under the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

Political events also put the empire’s Greeks in a vulnerable position. Greece has secured independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1823. It was a deep wound to Ottoman pride, made even worse by the continual decay of Ottoman power ever since. As resentment against the new Greek nation simmered, it filtered down and fell upon the Greek minority too.

The sparks of genocide began smouldering as early as 1908 with the Young Turk revolution. The Young Turks were a hyper-nationalist faction who believed in an ethnically Turkish Muslim Empire. Their policy of ‘Turkification’ left no room for non-Turks or non-Muslims and soon every ethnic minority in the empire was in their crosshairs.

In these last years of Ottoman power in Europe, Ottoman authorities harassed ethnic Greeks to encourage them to relocate to Greece itself. Episodes of violence broke out in areas like Thessaloniki and Macedonia, where ethnic Greek leaders were known to disappear, or where the bodies of Greek farmers would be found in the wilderness, left behind by Ottoman authorities, but such violence was intermittent and not yet systemic.

#greekgenocide #history #armeniangenocide #turkey

Sources:
Vasileios Th. Meichanetsidis, ‘The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, 1912-1923’,
Genocide Studies International, Vol 9.1, (2015)
Taner Akcam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and the Ethnic
Cleansing of the Ottoman Empire, (2012)
Erik Sjoberg, The Making of the Greek Genocide: Contested Memories of the Ottoman Greek
Catastrophe, (2017)
George N. Shirinian (ed.), Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks,
1912-1923, (2017)
Kostas Faltaits, (translated by Ellene S. Phufas Jousma and Aris Tsilfidis), The Genocide of the Greeks in
Turkey: Survivor Testimonies From the Nicomedia (Izmit) Massacres of 1920-1921, (2016)

Copyright © 2023 A Day In History. All rights reserved.

DISCLAIMER: All materials in these videos are used for entertainment purposes and fall within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. If you are, or represent, the copyright owner of materials used in this video, and have an issue with the use of said material, please send an email to [email protected]