Greek Evzones guards dressed in the traditional Pontic costume honored the victims of the Pontic Greek genocide in Athens on Pontic Genocide Remembrance Day, while Greek officials repeated the state’s demand for the genocide to become recognized by the international community.
The Greek parliament officially recognized the genocide in 1994 and declared May 19 as the national day of remembrance for the approximately 353,000 Pontic Greeks who were massacred by the Young Turks between 1916 and 1923.
Commemorating events were scheduled across Greece.
The importance of international recognition of the Pontic Greek genocide
“Today, a day of commemoration for the genocide of the Greeks of Pontus, we honor the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims who were exterminated or displaced from their ancestral homes 105 years ago, during [the rule of] the Ottoman Empire,” Katerina Sakellaropoulou, President of the Hellenic Republic, said in a statement.
“All peoples have an obligation to protect historical memory. In addition, the international community is obliged to recognize and condemn heinous crimes against humanity, in order to prevent such barbaric actions in the future,” she added.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote in a Facebook post that “some traumas may never heal, but the common debt that remains unchanged is to keep historical memory alive. Awareness should constantly fight against artificial oblivion, with our voice protesting loudly throughout time as it demands recognition. Until the international community recognizes the Genocide of Pontian Greeks officially as well.”
He added that May 19 comprises “a thunderous call of accountability,” stressing that “history’s lessons should be transformed into an impetus toward a better future.”
“That is why we do not rest. We continue the struggle. Nor do we forget, but we persist in our demands,” the Greek Premier concluded.
The Pontic Greek genocide
At the outbreak of World War I, there were many minorities that had been living in Asia Minor long before the creation of the Ottoman Empire, including Greeks, Pontic Greeks, Caucasus Greeks, Cappadocian Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Assyrians, Jews among others.
In one of the darkest chapters in Greece’s long history, the Pontic Genocide included an organized plan by the Young Turks to eliminate the indigenous Greek population of Anatolia. This included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, expulsions, executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments in the area.
The extermination of the Armenian population in 1915, officially recognized by more than 30 countries as the Armenian genocide, was the first atrocity that paved the way for the Greek genocide with its culmination in 1923 following the Burning of Smyrna.
In 2007, the Pontic Greek genocide was officially recognized by the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Subsequently, it was recognized by Sweden in 2010, the Netherlands, Austria, and Armenia in 2015.
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