Ottoman Greek Genocide

Works Cited

http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/center-study-genocide-conflict-resolution-and-human-rights/genocide-ottoman-greeks-1914-1923

USING YOUR PRIOR KNOWLEGDGE AND/OR PERSONAL

EXPERIENCES PLEASE REFLECT ON WHAT THE TERM “GENOCIDE”

MEAN TO YOU? (EXTRA CREDIT)

Greek Genocide

LOOKING THROUGH THE EYES OF A MEMBER OF THE GENERAL POPULATION

• The Turks were well aware of the persecutions taking place in their own country, but did nothing to help
• they had been convinced by the CUP that the Greeks were threats and were traitorous, and believed that what was being done was in their best interest
• As in the case of the holocaust, many could have shielded Greeks from persecution
• Many greek children were rounded up and forcibly assimilated. May civilians could have helped these children still maintain their culture.
• Even after the countless deaths, the Greeks condoned the Turks behavior and did not do anything in retaliation after the signing of the Treaty of Luassane

LOOKING THROUGH THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE KILLED

• The Greeks who were living in Turkey at the time had been stranded there after the war
• They had planned to live in peace, but were instead forced to live in fear due to the fierce persecution that they faced
• The Turks had been humiliated by their loss, and so turned their anger towards the Greeks still residing in turkey
• They greeks were unfairly forced to live in worse conditions, fearing for their lives
• they were accused of being traitorous

THE WAY THEY WERE KILLING

Malini Nair,

Rachel Steinberg,

and Gina Montegna

Period 4

05/20/13

• The C.U.P began singling out all able-bodied Greek men, forcibly conscripting them into labor battalions which performed slave labor for the Turkish war effort.
• Greek villages were brutally plundered and terrorized under the pretext of internal security.
• Eventually most of the population was rounded up and forcibly deported to the interior.
• On September 13, a fire broke out amidst the chaos, spreading uncontrollably over the next two weeks. The Smyrna catastrophe took the lives of somewhere between 10,000 to 15,000 Greeks.

NON-KILLER’S PERSPECTIVE

• The victims were Ottoman Greeks who were living in Turkey even after the War of Independence in which the Greeks overthrew the Turks and established the modern Greek state
• After the war, many Greeks were left living in Turkey, and they faced bitter prosecution from the Turks, who now suffered from an increased sense of both nationalism and humiliation.

PEOPLE ALLEGEDLY COMMITTING THE GENOCIDE

• All of these people were killed by a group known as the Committee for the Union of Progress (CUP)
• This group consisted of regimes of the Young Turks and of Mustafa Kemal
• It was against the Ottoman Greeks, a culture full of rich art and many successes, those successes were taken away by the groups of people committing the genocide

TIMELINE (10 DATE MINIMUM)

• The killing of Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians began in 1924
• Greek communities began inhabiting Anatolia (Greek for “east”), otherwise referred to as the Asia Minor, since the 12th century BCE
• Turkish peoples migrated into Anatolia over the first millennium CE and by the 14th century had established the Ottoman Empire
• With the support of the Great Powers, the Greeks successfully overthrew Ottoman rule during their War of Independence from 1821 to 1830, thereby establishing the modern Greek state
• Under the banner of the Committee for the Union of Progress (CUP), the young Turk movement aiming to create a homogenous Turkish state after a coup d’état in 1913.
• The Balkan Wars (from October 1912 to July 1913) ultimately ended five centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans
• Turkish forces retook Smyrna in September 1922, instigating a massive anti-Greek pogrom.
• On September 13, a fire broke out amidst the chaos, spreading uncontrollably over the next two weeks. The Smyrna catastrophe took the lives of somewhere between 10,000 to 15,000 Greeks.
• Two months later, in November of 1922, diplomatic negotiations between the Kemalist regime and the Great Powers began in Switzerland
• The Treaty of Lausanne was signed in February 1923. The sovereign status of a Turkish nation state was thereby affirmed.
• Greek communities annually commemorate the genocide on September 14 in recognition of the Smyrna catastrophe.