203-611: The Greek genocide ( Greek : Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων , romanized : Genoktonía ton Ellínon ), which included the Pontic genocide , was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia , which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) – including the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923) – on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It
406-465: A Turkish and Muslim middle class and build a statist national economy controlled by Muslim Turks. The campaign to Turkify the economy began in June 1914 with a law that obliged many non-Muslim merchants to hire Muslims. Following the deportations, the businesses of the victims were taken over by Muslims who were often incompetent, leading to economic difficulties. The genocide had catastrophic effects on
609-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
812-561: A cheap and efficient method, but it caused widespread pollution downstream. So many bodies floated down the Tigris and Euphrates that they sometimes blocked the rivers and needed to be cleared with explosives. Other rotting corpses became stuck to the riverbanks, and still others traveled as far as the Persian Gulf . The rivers remained polluted long after the massacres, causing epidemics downstream. Tens of thousands of Armenians died along
1015-694: A dilemma: If they obeyed, the Armenians expected to be killed, but if they refused, it would provide a pretext for massacres. Armenians fortified themselves in Van and repelled the Ottoman attack that began on 20 April. During the siege, Armenians in surrounding villages were massacred at Djevdet's orders. Russian forces captured Van on 18 May, finding 55,000 corpses in the province—about half its prewar Armenian population. Djevdet's forces proceeded to Bitlis and attacked Armenian and Assyrian/Syriac villages;
1218-734: A distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns. — Talaat Pasha in Berliner Tageblatt , 4 May 1916 During World War I, the CUP—whose central goal was to preserve the Ottoman Empire—came to identify Armenian civilians as an existential threat. CUP leaders held Armenians—including women and children—collectively guilty for betraying
1421-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
1624-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
1827-404: A few weeks, until there were very few survivors. This strategy physically weakened the Armenians and spread disease, so much that some camps were shut down in late 1915 due to the threat of disease spreading to the Ottoman military. In late 1915, the camps around Aleppo were liquidated and the survivors were forced to march to Ras al-Ayn ; the camps around Ras al-Ayn were closed in early 1916 and
2030-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
2233-870: A growing, exclusionary Turkish nationalism in the Young Turk movement, the ARF decided to ally with the CUP in December 1907. In 1908, the CUP came to power in the Young Turk Revolution , which began with a string of CUP assassinations of leading officials in Macedonia . Abdul Hamid was forced to reinstate the 1876 constitution and restore the Ottoman parliament , which was celebrated by Ottomans of all ethnicities and religions. Security improved in parts of
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#17327652780282436-490: A population exchange had been negotiated earlier, in 1913–1914, between Ottoman and Greek officials during the first stage of the Greek genocide but had been interrupted by the onset of World War I. In December 1924, The New York Times reported that 400 tonnes of human bones consigned to manufacturers were transported from Mudania to Marseille , which might be the remains of massacred victims in Asia Minor. In 1955,
2639-718: A program which had come into effect in 1914, was a precursor to the atrocities perpetrated by both the Greek and Turkish armies during the Greco-Turkish War , a conflict which followed the Greek landing at Smyrna in May 1919 and continued until the retaking of Smyrna by the Turks and the Great Fire of Smyrna in September 1922. Rudolph Rummel estimated the death toll of the fire at 100,000 Greeks and Armenians, who perished in
2842-656: A resolution recognising the Ottoman campaign against its Christian minorities, including the Greeks, as genocide. Some other organisations have also passed resolutions recognising the Ottoman campaign against these Christian minorities as genocide, as have the national legislatures of Greece , Cyprus , the United States , Sweden , Armenia , the Netherlands , Germany , Austria and the Czech Republic . At
3045-702: A result of state policy and stated that "humanity, civilizations are shuddering, and forever will shudder, in face of this tragedy". The postwar Ottoman government held the Ottoman Special Military Tribunal , by which it sought to pin the Armenian genocide onto the CUP leadership while exonerating the Ottoman Empire as a whole, therefore avoiding partition by the Allies . The court ruled that "the crime of mass murder" of Armenians
3248-603: A result of the Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent separate peace with the Central Powers , the Russian army withdrew and Ottoman forces advanced into eastern Anatolia. The First Republic of Armenia was proclaimed in May 1918, at which time 50 percent of its population were refugees and 60 percent of its territory was under Ottoman occupation. Ottoman troops withdrew from parts of Armenia following
3451-467: A series of transit camps were set up to control the flow of victims to the killing site at the nearby Kemah gorge. Thousands of Armenians were killed near Lake Hazar , pushed by paramilitaries off the cliffs. More than 500,000 Armenians passed through the Firincilar plain south of Malatya , one of the deadliest areas during the genocide. Arriving convoys, having passed through the plain to approach
3654-583: A similar ending of the Turkish ethnic presence in much of Greece. According to the Greek census of 1928, 1,104,216 Ottoman Greeks had reached Greece. It is impossible to know exactly how many Greek inhabitants of Turkey died between 1914 and 1923, and how many ethnic Greeks of Anatolia were expelled to Greece or fled to the Soviet Union . Some of the survivors and expelled took refuge in the neighboring Russian Empire (later, Soviet Union ). Similar plans for
3857-543: A somewhat protected, but subordinate, place in Ottoman society. Large-scale massacres of Armenians had occurred in the 1890s and 1909 . The Ottoman Empire suffered a series of military defeats and territorial losses—especially during the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars —leading to fear among CUP leaders that the Armenians would seek independence. During their invasion of Russian and Persian territory in 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians. Ottoman leaders took isolated instances of Armenian resistance as evidence of
4060-623: A subordinate but protected place in society. Sharia law encoded Islamic superiority but guaranteed property rights and freedom of worship to non-Muslims ( dhimmis ) in exchange for a special tax . On the eve of World War I in 1914, around two million Armenians lived in Ottoman territory, mostly in Anatolia, a region with a total population of 15–17.5 million. According to the Armenian Patriarchate 's estimates for 1913–1914, there were 2,925 Armenian towns and villages in
4263-552: A systematic policy to reduce the Armenian population of these areas. This policy lasted until World War I. These conditions led to a substantial decline in the population of the Armenian highlands; 300,000 Armenians left the empire, and others moved to towns. Some Armenians joined revolutionary political parties , of which the most influential was the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), founded in 1890. These parties primarily sought reform within
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#17327652780284466-412: A systematic state policy involving the bureaucracy, police, judiciary, and clergy, was a major structural component of the genocide. An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Armenians were Islamized, and it is estimated that as many as two million Turkish citizens in the early 21st century may have at least one Armenian grandparent . Some Armenians were allowed to convert to Islam and evade deportation, but
4669-568: A threat to national security. The Ottoman government adopted a "dual-track mechanism", whereby official government acts were accompanied by unofficial covert, extralegal, but state-sponsored acts of terror under the protective umbrella of state policies, thereby allowing the Ottoman government to deny responsibility for and prior knowledge of this campaign of intimidation, emptying Christian villages. The involvement in certain cases of local military and civil functionaries in planning and executing anti-Greek violence and looting led ambassadors of Greece and
4872-499: A unified army composed of ethnically homogeneous units, Greeks were allotted a division consisting of three regiments. The Greek Caucasus Division was thus formed out of ethnic Greeks serving in Russian units stationed in the Caucasus and raw recruits from among the local population including former insurgents. The division took part in numerous engagements against the Ottoman army as well as Muslim and Armenian irregulars, safeguarding
5075-423: A widespread rebellion, though no such rebellion existed. Mass deportation was intended to permanently forestall the possibility of Armenian autonomy or independence. On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and leaders from Constantinople . At the orders of Talaat Pasha , an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches to
5278-450: Is also a position of some Greek mainstream historians; according to Aristide Caratzas this is due to a number of factors, "which range from governmental reticence to criticize Turkey to spilling over into the academic world, to ideological currents promoting a diffuse internationalism cultivated by a network of NGOs, often supported by western governments and western interests". Others, such as Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, argue that
5481-742: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
5684-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
5887-588: Is extended likewise to women and children. This is supposedly done in order to much easier be able to confiscate the property of the deported. According to Rendel, atrocities such as deportations involving death marches, starvation in labour camps etc. were referred to as "white massacres". Ottoman official Rafet Bey was active in the genocide of the Greeks and in November 1916, Austrian consul in Samsun , Kwiatkowski, reported that he said to him "We must finish off
6090-466: Is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki ,
6293-402: Is not definitely known, the estimates varying anywhere from 200,000 up to 1,000,000." Despite the shift of policy, the practice of evacuating Greek settlements and relocating the inhabitants was continued, albeit on a limited scale. Relocation was targeted at specific regions that were considered militarily vulnerable, not the whole of the Greek population. As a 1919 Patriarchate account records,
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6496-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
6699-833: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide
6902-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
7105-520: The Armenian genocide . IAGS President Gregory Stanton urged the Turkish government to finally acknowledge the three genocides: "The history of these genocides is clear, and there is no more excuse for the current Turkish government, which did not itself commit the crimes, to deny the facts." Drafted by Canadian scholar Adam Jones , the resolution was adopted on 1 December 2007 with the support of 83% of all voting IAGS members. Several scholars researching
7308-674: The Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from
7511-560: The Black Book of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, to which he adds "50,000 new martyrs", which "came to be included in the register by spring 1924". Article 142 of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres , prepared after the first World War, called the wartime Turkish regime "terrorist" and contained provisions "to repair so far as possible the wrongs inflicted on individuals in the course of the massacres perpetrated in Turkey during
7714-616: The Black Sea as the "Euxinos Pontos" or "hospitable sea" and starting in the eighth century BC they began navigating its shores and settling along its Anatolian coast. The most notable Greek cities of the Black Sea were Trebizond , Sampsounta , Sinope and Heraclea Pontica . During the Hellenistic period (334 BC – 1st century BC), which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great , Greek culture and language began to dominate even
7917-624: The Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are
8120-627: The Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of
8323-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
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8526-533: The East–West Schism with the Catholics in 1054) and spoke Greek as their first language. The resultant Greek culture in Asia Minor flourished during a millennium of rule (4th century – 15th century AD) under the mainly Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire . Those from Asia Minor constituted the bulk of the empire's Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians ; thus, many renowned Greek figures during late antiquity,
8729-760: The Great Powers and the Patriarchate to address complaints to the Sublime Porte . In protest to government inaction in the face of these attacks and to the so-called "Muslim boycott" of Greek products that had begun in 1913, the Patriarchate closed Greek churches and schools in June 1914. Responding to international and domestic pressure, Talat Pasha headed a visit in Thrace in April 1914 and later in
8932-486: The Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 , British historian Arnold J. Toynbee wrote that it was the Greek landings that created the Turkish National Movement led by Mustafa Kemal: "The Greeks of 'Pontus' and the Turks of the Greek occupied territories, were in some degree victims of Mr. Venizelos 's and Mr. Lloyd George 's original miscalculations at Paris." In 1917 a relief organization by the name of
9135-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
9338-537: The Istanbul Pogrom caused most of the remaining Greek inhabitants of Istanbul to flee the country. Historian Alfred-Maurice de Zayas identifies the pogrom as a crime against humanity and he states that the flight and migration of Greeks afterwards corresponds to the "intent to destroy in whole or in part" criteria of the Genocide Convention . The word genocide was coined in the early 1940s,
9541-614: The Kahta highlands, would have found gorges already filled with corpses from previous convoys. Many others were held in tributary valleys of the Tigris , Euphrates , or Murat and systematically executed by the Special Organization. Armenian men were often drowned by being tied together back-to-back before being thrown in the water, a method that was not used on women. Authorities viewed disposal of bodies through rivers as
9744-521: The Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard. The massacres killed most of the Armenians who had survived the camp system. The Ottoman Empire tried to prevent journalists and photographers from documenting the atrocities, threatening them with arrest. Nevertheless, substantiated reports of mass killings were widely covered in Western newspapers . On 24 May 1915,
9947-602: The Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of
10150-430: The Relief Committee for Greeks of Asia Minor was formed in response to the deportations and massacres of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. The committee worked in cooperation with the Near East Relief in distributing aid to Ottoman Greeks in Thrace and Asia Minor. The organisation disbanded in the summer of 1921 but Greek relief work was continued by other aid organisations. German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, as well as
10353-574: The Soviet occupation of Armenia prevented another genocide. The victorious nationalists subsequently declared the Republic of Turkey in 1923. CUP war criminals were granted immunity and later that year, the Treaty of Lausanne established Turkey's current borders and provided for the Greek population's expulsion . Its protection provisions for non-Muslim minorities had no enforcement mechanism and were disregarded in practice. Armenian survivors were left mainly in three locations. About 295,000 Armenians had fled to Russian-controlled territory during
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#173276527802810556-413: The Triple Entente (Russia, Britain, and France) formally condemned the Ottoman Empire for " crimes against humanity and civilization", and threatened to hold the perpetrators accountable. Witness testimony was published in books such as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (1916) and Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (1918), raising public awareness of the genocide. The German Empire
10759-412: The Turkic peoples began their late medieval conquest of Asia Minor, Byzantine Greek citizens were the largest group of inhabitants there. Even after the Turkic conquests of the interior, the mountainous Black Sea coast of Asia Minor remained the heart of a populous Greek Christian state, the Empire of Trebizond , until its eventual conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1461, a year after the Ottomans conquered
10962-429: The Turkish War of Independence after World War I, carried out by Turkish nationalists . This genocide put an end to more than two thousand years of Armenian civilization in eastern Anatolia . Together with the mass murder and expulsion of Assyrian/Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians, it enabled the creation of an ethnonationalist Turkish state, the Republic of Turkey . The Turkish government maintains that
11165-437: The fourth century CE , establishing the Armenian Apostolic Church . Following the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, two Islamic empires—the Ottoman Empire and the Iranian Safavid Empire —contested Western Armenia , which was permanently separated from Eastern Armenia (held by the Safavids) by the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab . The Ottoman Empire was multiethnic and multireligious, and its millet system offered non-Muslims
11368-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
11571-451: The "genocidal quality of the murderous campaigns against Greeks" was "obvious". The historians Samuel Totten and Paul R. Bartrop , who specialize on the history of genocides, also call it a genocide; so is Alexander Kitroeff. Another scholar who considers it a genocide is Hannibal Travis; he also adds that the widespread attacks by the successive governments of Turkey, on the homes, places of worship, and heritage of minority communities since
11774-482: The 1922 memorandum compiled by British diplomat George W. Rendel on "Turkish Massacres and Persecutions", provided evidence for series of systematic massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Greeks in Asia Minor. The quotes have been attributed to various diplomats, including the German ambassadors Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim and Richard von Kühlmann , the German vice-consul in Samsun Kuchhoff, Austria's ambassador Pallavicini and Samsun consul Ernst von Kwiatkowski, and
11977-476: The 1930s, constitute cultural genocide as well. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of
12180-404: The ARF incite Russian Armenians to intervene on the Ottoman side. Instead, the delegates resolved that Armenians should fight for the countries of their citizenships. During its war preparations, the Ottoman government recruited thousands of prisoners to join the paramilitary Special Organization , which initially focused on stirring up revolts among Muslims behind Russian lines beginning before
12383-434: The Aegean to investigate reports and try to soothe bilateral tension with Greece. While claiming that he had no involvement or knowledge of these events, Talat met with Kuşçubaşı Eşref , head of the "cleansing" operation in the Aegean littoral, during his tour and advised him to be cautious not to be "visible". Also, after 1913 there were organized boycotts against the Greeks, initiated by the Ottoman Interior Ministry who asked
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#173276527802812586-500: The Anatolian hinterland of Greeks living in coastal areas, particularly the Black Sea region , close to the Turkish-Russian front . This change of policy was due to a German demand for the persecution of Ottoman Greeks to stop, after Eleftherios Venizelos had made this a condition of Greece's neutrality when speaking to the German ambassador in Athens. Venizelos also threatened to undertake a similar campaign against Muslims that were living in Greece if Ottoman policy did not change. While
12789-412: The Armenian genocide, such as Peter Balakian , Taner Akçam , Richard Hovannisian and Robert Melson , however stated that "the issue had to be further researched before a resolution was passed." Manus Midlarsky notes a disjunction between statements of genocidal intent against the Greeks by Ottoman officials and their actions, pointing to the containment of massacres in selected "sensitive" areas and
12992-416: The Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, eventually resulted in the murder of most of those arrested. The same day, Talaat banned all Armenian political organizations and ordered that the Armenians who had previously been removed from Cilicia be deported again, from central Anatolia—where they would likely have survived—to the Syrian Desert . We have been blamed for not making
13195-423: The Armenians , as observed by US ambassador Henry Morgenthau and historian Arnold Toynbee . In both cases, certain Ottoman officials, such as Şükrü Kaya , Nazım Bey and Mehmed Reshid , played a role; Special Organization units and labour battalions were involved; and a dual plan was implemented combining unofficial violence and the cover of state population policy. This policy of persecution and ethnic cleansing
13398-411: The Armenians had to be eliminated to save the empire. Massacres of Armenian men were occurring in the vicinity of Bashkale in Van vilayet from December 1914. ARF leaders attempted to keep the situation calm, warning that even justifiable self-defense could lead to escalation of killing. The governor, Djevdet Bey , ordered the Armenians of Van to hand over their arms on 18 April 1915, creating
13601-455: The Armenians with their Russian oppressors. Nomadic Kurds committed many atrocities during the genocide, but settled Kurds only rarely did so. Perpetrators had several motives, including ideology, revenge, desire for Armenian property, and careerism . To motivate perpetrators, state-appointed imams encouraged the killing of Armenians and killers were entitled to a third of Armenian movable property (another third went to local authorities and
13804-413: The British Foreign Office noted the massacres and deportations of Greeks during the Greco-Turkish War. According to estimates by Rudolph Rummel, between 213,000 and 368,000 Anatolian Greeks were killed between 1919 and 1922. There were also massacres of Turks carried out by the Hellenic troops during the occupation of western Anatolia from May 1919 to September 1922. For the massacres that occurred during
14007-419: The British Foreign Office, by 1918 "over 500,000 Greeks were deported of whom comparatively few survived". In his memoirs, the United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire between 1913 and 1916 wrote "Everywhere the Greeks were gathered in groups and, under the so-called protection of Turkish gendarmes, they were transported, the larger part on foot, into the interior. Just how many were scattered in this fashion
14210-430: The CUP in the perpetration of genocide. The Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants (IAMM) coordinated the deportation and the resettlement of Muslim immigrants in the vacant houses and lands. The IAMM, under the control of Talaat's Ministry of the Interior , and the Special Organization, which took orders directly from the CUP Central Committee, all closely coordinated their activities. A dual-track system
14413-534: The CUP's increasingly repressive governance. When news of the countercoup reached Adana , armed Muslims attacked the Armenian quarter and Armenians returned fire. Ottoman soldiers did not protect Armenians and instead armed the rioters. Between 20,000 and 25,000 people, mostly Armenians, were killed in Adana and nearby towns. Unlike the 1890s massacres, the events were not organized by the central government but instigated by local officials, intellectuals, and Islamic clerics, including CUP supporters in Adana. Although
14616-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
14819-512: The Greek chargé d'affaires claimed that the deportations "can not be any other issue than an annihilation war against the Greek nation in Turkey and as measures hereof they have been implementing forced conversions to Islam, in obvious aim to, that if after the end of the war there again would be a question of European intervention for the protection of the Christians, there will be as few of them left as possible." According to George W. Rendel of
15022-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
15225-460: The Greek problem during the war … in the same way he believe[d] he solved the Armenian problem", referring to the Armenian genocide . Germany and the Ottoman Empire were allies immediately before, and during World War I. By 31 January 1917, the Chancellor of Germany Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, reported that: The indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of
15428-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
15631-618: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
15834-617: The Greek-speaking Christian population was a fear that they would welcome liberation by the Ottoman Empire's enemies, and a belief among some Turks that to form a modern country in the era of nationalism it was necessary to purge from their territories all minorities who could threaten the integrity of an ethnically based Turkish nation. According to a German military attaché, the Ottoman minister of war Ismail Enver had declared in October 1915 that he wanted to "solve
16037-581: The Greeks as we did with the Armenians ;... today I sent squads to the interior to kill every Greek on sight". Pontic Greeks responded by forming insurgent groups, which carried weapons salvaged from the battlefields of the Caucasus Campaign of World War I or directly supplied by the Russian army. In 1920, the insurgents reached their peak in regard to manpower numbering 18,000 men. On 15 November 1917, Ozakom delegates agreed to create
16240-549: The Greeks in Anatolia constituted genocide under the initial definition and international criminal application of the term, as in the international criminal tribunals authorized by the United Nations. In December 2007 the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) passed a resolution affirming that the 1914–23 campaign against Ottoman Greeks constituted genocide "qualitatively similar" to
16443-477: The Greeks, after the massacres in the Pontus and at Smyrna, massacred all the Turks in Greece, the record would have been 50–50—almost." As an eye-witness, he also praises Greeks for their "conduct ... toward the thousands of Turks residing in Greece, while the ferocious massacres were going on", which, according to his opinion, was "one of the most inspiring and beautiful chapters in all that country's history". Even
16646-519: The Hamidiye regiments in reserve. CUP leaders feared that these reforms, which were never implemented, could lead to partition and cited them as a reason for the elimination of the Armenian population in 1915. The 1912 First Balkan War resulted in the loss of almost all of the empire's European territory and the mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans. Ottoman Muslim society was incensed by
16849-717: The Italian unofficial agent in Angora Signor Tuozzi. Other quotes are from clergymen and activists, including the German missionary Johannes Lepsius , and Stanley Hopkins of the Near East Relief. Germany and Austria-Hungary were allied to the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The accounts describe systematic massacres, rapes and burnings of Greek villages, and attribute intent to Ottoman officials, including
17052-531: The Late Bronze Age (1450 BC). The Greek poet Homer lived in the region around 800 BC. The geographer Strabo referred to Smyrna as the first Greek city in Asia Minor, and numerous ancient Greek figures were natives of Anatolia, including the mathematician Thales of Miletus (7th century BC), the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (6th century BC), and the founder of Cynicism Diogenes of Sinope (4th century BC). Greeks referred to
17255-596: The Middle Ages, and the Renaissance came from Asia Minor, including Saint Nicholas (270–343 AD), rhetorician John Chrysostomos (349–407 AD), the architect of Hagia Sophia , Isidore of Miletus (6th century AD), several imperial dynasties, including the Phokas (10th century) and Komnenos (11th century), and Renaissance scholars George of Trebizond (1395–1472) and Basilios Bessarion (1403–1472). Thus, when
17458-439: The October 1918 Armistice of Mudros . From 1918 to 1920, Armenian militants committed revenge killings of thousands of Muslims, which have been cited as a retroactive excuse for genocide. In 1918, at least 200,000 people in Armenia, mostly refugees, died from starvation or disease, in part due to a Turkish blockade of food supplies and the deliberate destruction of crops in eastern Armenia by Turkish troops, both before and after
17661-534: The Ottoman Empire during the Second Balkan War in mid-1913, there was a campaign of looting and intimidation against Greeks and Armenians, forcing many to emigrate. Around 150,000 Greek Orthodox from the Aegean coast were forcibly deported in May and June 1914 by Muslim bandits , who were secretly backed by the CUP and sometimes joined by the regular army . Historian Matthias Bjørnlund states that
17864-512: The Ottoman Empire, of which 2,084 were in the Armenian highlands adjacent to the Russian border. Armenians were a minority in most places where they lived, alongside Turkish and Kurdish Muslim and Greek Orthodox Christian neighbors. According to the Patriarchate's figure, 215,131 Armenians lived in urban areas, especially Constantinople , Smyrna , and Eastern Thrace . Although most Ottoman Armenians were peasant farmers, they were overrepresented in commerce. As middleman minorities , despite
18067-665: The Ottoman Prime Minister Mahmud Sevket Pasha , Rafet Bey , Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha . Additionally, The New York Times and its correspondents made extensive references to the events, recording massacres, deportations, individual killings, rapes, burning of entire Greek villages , destruction of Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries , drafts for "Labor Brigades", looting, terrorism and other "atrocities" for Greek, Armenian and also for British and American citizens and government officials. Australian press also had some coverage of
18270-666: The Ottoman armies for the invasion of Russian territory, and tried to encircle the Russian Caucasus Army at the Battle of Sarikamish , fought from December 1914 to January 1915. Unprepared for the harsh winter conditions, his forces were routed, losing more than 60,000 men. The retreating Ottoman army destroyed dozens of Ottoman Armenian villages in Bitlis vilayet, massacring their inhabitants. Enver publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians who he claimed had actively sided with
18473-414: The Ottoman economy; Muslims were disadvantaged by the deportation of skilled professionals and entire districts fell into famine following their farmers' deportation. The Ottoman and Turkish governments passed a series of Abandoned Properties Laws to manage and redistribute property confiscated from Armenians. Although the laws maintained that the state was simply administering the properties on behalf of
18676-534: The Ottoman government tried to implement this change in policy, it was unsuccessful and attacks, even murders, continued to occur unpunished by local officials in the provinces, despite repeated instructions in cables sent from the central administration. Arbitrary violence and extortion of money intensified later, providing ammunition for the Venizelists arguing that Greece should join the Entente . In July 1915
18879-420: The Patriarchate to claim that a total of one million people were massacred. A team of American researchers found in the early postwar period that the total number of Greeks killed may approach 900,000 people. Edward Hale Bierstadt, writing in 1924, stated that "According to official testimony, the Turks since 1914 have slaughtered in cold blood 1,500,000 Armenians, and 500,000 Greeks, men women and children, without
19082-1062: The Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and came into force in January 1951. It includes a legal definition of genocide. Before the creation of the term "genocide", the destruction of the Ottoman Greeks was known by Greeks as "the Massacre" (in Greek: η Σφαγή ), "the Great Catastrophe" ( η Μεγάλη Καταστροφή ), or "the Great Tragedy" ( η Μεγάλη Τραγωδία ). The Ottoman and Kemalist nationalist massacres of
19285-480: The Russians, a theory that became a consensus among CUP leaders. Reports of local incidents such as weapons caches, severed telegraph lines, and occasional killings confirmed preexisting beliefs about Armenian treachery and fueled paranoia among CUP leaders that a coordinated Armenian conspiracy was plotting against the empire. Discounting contrary reports that most Armenians were loyal, the CUP leaders decided that
19488-460: The Special Organization, and those farther away also involved local militias, bandits, gendarmes, or Kurdish tribes depending on the area. Within the area controlled by the Third Army , which held eastern Anatolia, the army was only involved in genocidal atrocities in the vilayets of Van, Erzerum, and Bitlis. Many perpetrators came from the Caucasus ( Chechens and Circassians), who identified
19691-621: The Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robbery, rape , and massacres. In the Syrian Desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps . In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of the year. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. Massacres and ethnic cleansing of Armenian survivors continued through
19894-623: The US admiral Arthur L. Bristol , who advised foreign journalists to avoid publishing about the persecution of the Greeks, in his conversations and letters stated the harsh conditions for Armenians and Greeks. He even tried to stop the deportation of the Greeks from Samsun. According to Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi in The Thirty-Year Genocide , as a result of Ottoman and Turkish state policy, "several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks had died. Either they were murdered outright or were
20097-408: The absent Armenians, there was no provision to return them to the owners—it was presumed that they had ceased to exist. Historians Taner Akçam and Ümit Kurt argue that "The Republic of Turkey and its legal system were built, in a sense, on the seizure of Armenian cultural, social, and economic wealth, and on the removal of the Armenian presence." The proceeds from the sale of confiscated property
20300-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
20503-581: The age range of conscription. Unlike the earlier massacres of Ottoman Armenians, in 1915 Armenians were not usually killed in their villages, to avoid destruction of property or unauthorized looting. Instead, the men were usually separated from the rest of the deportees during the first few days and executed. Few resisted, believing it would put their families in greater danger. Boys above the age of twelve (sometimes fifteen) were treated as adult men. Execution sites were chosen for proximity to major roads and for rugged terrain, lakes, wells, or cisterns to facilitate
20706-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
20909-547: The area around Konya in central Anatolia. In late March or early April, the CUP Central Committee decided on the large-scale removal of Armenians from areas near the front lines. During the night of 23–24 April 1915 hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire . This order from Talaat, intended to eliminate
21112-515: The area of Europe which is now the Greek mainland. Over the next four centuries the Greek natives of Asia Minor gradually became a minority in these lands under the now dominant Turkic culture. Beginning in the spring of 1913, the Ottomans implemented a programme of expulsions and forcible migrations, focusing on Greeks of the Aegean region and eastern Thrace, whose presence in these areas was deemed
21315-467: The armistice. Armenians organized a coordinated effort known as vorpahavak ( lit. ' the gathering of orphans ' ) that reclaimed thousands of kidnapped and islamized Armenian women and children. Armenian leaders abandoned traditional patrilineality to classify children born to Armenian women and their Muslim captors as Armenian. An orphanage in Alexandropol held 25,000 orphans,
21518-578: The army , but many soldiers of all ethnicities and religions deserted due to difficult conditions and concern for their families. At least 10 percent of Ottoman Armenians were mobilized, leaving their communities bereft of fighting-age men and therefore largely unable to organize armed resistance to deportation in 1915. During the Ottoman invasion of Russian and Persian territory , the Special Organization massacred local Armenians and Assyrian/Syriac Christians . Beginning in November 1914, provincial governors of Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum sent many telegrams to
21721-552: The atrocities committed against Balkan Muslims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment and leading to a desire for revenge. Blame for the loss was assigned to all Christians, including the Ottoman Armenians, many of whom had fought on the Ottoman side. The Balkan Wars put an end to the Ottomanist movement for pluralism and coexistence; instead, the CUP turned to an increasingly radical Turkish nationalism to preserve
21924-521: The beginning of 1916 some 500,000 deportees were alive in Syria and Mesopotamia. Afraid that surviving Armenians might return home after the war, Talaat Pasha ordered a second wave of massacres in February 1916. Another wave of deportations targeted Armenians remaining in Anatolia. More than 200,000 Armenians were killed between March and October 1916, often in remote areas near Deir ez-Zor and on parts of
22127-680: The camps to buy them from their parents. In the western Levant , governed by the Ottoman Fourth Army under Djemal Pasha, there were no concentration camps or large-scale massacres, rather Armenians were resettled and recruited to work for the war effort. They had to convert to Islam or face deportation to another area. The ability of the Armenians to adapt and survive was greater than the perpetrators expected. A loosely organized, Armenian-led resistance network based in Aleppo succeeded in helping many deportees, saving Armenian lives. At
22330-588: The central government pressing for more severe measures against the Armenians, both regionally and throughout the empire. These requests were endorsed by the central government already before 1915. Armenian civil servants were dismissed from their posts in late 1914 and early 1915. In February 1915, the CUP leaders decided to disarm Armenians serving in the army and transfer them to labor battalions . The Armenian soldiers in labor battalions were systematically executed, although many skilled workers were spared until 1916. Minister of War Enver Pasha took over command of
22533-463: The civilian population. Germanos Karavangelis , the bishop of Samsun, reported to the Patriarchate that thirty thousands had been deported to the Ankara region and the convoys of the deportees had been attacked, with many being killed. Talat Pasha ordered an investigation for the looting and destruction of Greek villages by bandits. Later in 1917 instructions were sent to authorize military officials with
22736-429: The concealment or disposal of corpses. The convoys would stop at a nearby transit camp, where the escorts would demand a ransom from the Armenians. Those unable to pay were murdered. Units of the Special Organization, often wearing gendarme uniforms, were stationed at the killing sites; escorting gendarmes often did not participate in killing. At least 150,000 Armenians passed through Erzindjan from June 1915, where
22939-481: The control of the operation and to broaden its scope, now including persons from cities in the coastal region. However, in certain areas Greek populations remained undeported. Greek deportees were sent to live in Greek villages in the inner provinces or, in some case, villages where Armenians were living before being deported. Greek villages evacuated during the war due to military concerns were then resettled with Muslim immigrants and refugees. According to cables sent to
23142-665: The death toll between 1914 and 1923. He estimates that 84,000 Greeks were exterminated from 1914 to 1918, and 264,000 from 1919 to 1922. The total number reaching 347,000. Historian Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou writes that "loss of life among Anatolian Greeks during the WWI period and its aftermath was approximately 735,370". Erik Sjöberg states that "[a]ctivists tend to inflate the overall total of Ottoman Greek deaths" over what he considers "the cautious estimates between 300,000 to 700,000". Some contemporary sources claimed different death tolls. The Greek government collected figures together with
23345-653: The death toll of 360,000 for the Greeks of Pontus. According to George K. Valavanis, "The loss of human life among the Pontian Greeks, since the Great War (World War I) until March 1924, can be estimated at 353,000, as a result of murders, hangings, and from punishment, disease, and other hardships." Valavanis derived this figure from the 1922 record of the Central Pontian Council in Athens based on
23548-715: The demographics of Anatolia. Armenian homes, businesses, and land were preferentially allocated to Muslims from outside the empire, nomads, and the estimated 800,000 (largely Kurdish) Ottoman subjects displaced because of the war with Russia. Resettled Muslims were spread out (typically limited to 10 percent in any area) among larger Turkish populations so that they would lose their distinctive characteristics, such as non-Turkish languages or nomadism. These migrants were exposed to harsh conditions and, in some cases, violence or restriction from leaving their new villages. The ethnic cleansing of Anatolia—the Armenian genocide, Assyrian genocide , and expulsion of Greeks after World War I—paved
23751-558: The deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be described as genocide . As of 2023, 34 countries have recognized the events as genocide , concurring with the academic consensus. The presence of Armenians in Anatolia has been documented since the sixth century BCE , about 1,500 years before the arrival of Turkmens under the Seljuk dynasty . The Kingdom of Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion in
23954-555: The deportation of all Armenians throughout the empire, even Adrianople , 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi) from the Russian front. Following the elimination of the Armenian population in eastern Anatolia, in August 1915, the Armenians of western Anatolia and European Turkey were targeted for deportation. Some areas with a very low Armenian population and some cities, including Constantinople, were partially spared. Overall, national, regional, and local levels of governance cooperated with
24157-416: The deportees, although some circumvented these prohibitions. Survivors testified that some Armenians refused aid as they believed it would only prolong their suffering. The guards raped female prisoners and also allowed Bedouins to raid the camps at night for looting and rape; some women were forced into marriage. Thousands of Armenian children were sold to childless Turks, Arabs, and Jews, who would come to
24360-544: The destruction of hundreds of villages and many cities", all part of "the willful execution" of a "scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek and Syrian Christians of Turkey". However, months prior to the First World War, 100,000 Greeks were deported to Greek islands or the interior which Morgenthau stated, "for the larger part these were bona-fide deportations; that is, the Greek inhabitants were actually removed to new places and were not subjected to wholesale massacre. It
24563-476: The diet of Armenian refugees, to raise money for humanitarian efforts. Between 1915 and 1930, Near East Relief raised $ 110 million ($ 2 billion adjusted for inflation) for refugees from the Ottoman Empire. Intentional, state-sponsored killing of Armenians mostly ceased by the end of January 1917, although sporadic massacres and starvation continued. Both contemporaries and later historians have estimated that around 1 million Armenians died during
24766-412: The eastern provinces after 1908 and the CUP took steps to reform the local gendarmerie , although tensions remained high. Despite an agreement to reverse the land usurpation of the previous decades in the 1910 Salonica Accord between the ARF and the CUP, the latter made no efforts to carry this out. In early 1909 an unsuccessful countercoup was launched by conservatives and some liberals who opposed
24969-571: The emergence of the Armenian question in international diplomacy as Armenians were for the first time used by the Great Powers to interfere in Ottoman politics. Although Armenians had been called the "loyal millet" in contrast to Greeks and others who had previously challenged Ottoman rule, the authorities began to perceive Armenians as a threat after 1878. In 1891, Abdul Hamid created the Hamidiye regiments from Kurdish tribes, allowing them to act with impunity against Armenians. From 1895 to 1896
25172-491: The empire and found only limited support from Ottoman Armenians. Russia's decisive victory in the 1877–1878 war forced the Ottoman Empire to cede parts of eastern Anatolia, the Balkans , and Cyprus . Under international pressure at the 1878 Congress of Berlin , the Ottoman government agreed to carry out reforms and guarantee the physical safety of its Armenian subjects, but there was no enforcement mechanism; conditions continued to worsen. The Congress of Berlin marked
25375-437: The empire as the Balkans had. In January 1913, the CUP launched another coup , installed a one-party state , and strictly repressed all real or perceived internal enemies. After the coup, the CUP shifted the demography of border areas by resettling Balkan Muslim refugees while coercing Christians to emigrate; immigrants were promised property that had belonged to Christians. When parts of Eastern Thrace were reoccupied by
25578-788: The empire officially entered the war. On 29 October 1914, the empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers by launching a surprise attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea . Many Russian Armenians were enthusiastic about the war, but Ottoman Armenians were more ambivalent, afraid that supporting Russia would bring retaliation. Organization of Armenian volunteer units by Russian Armenians, later joined by some Ottoman Armenian deserters, further increased Ottoman suspicions against their Armenian population. Wartime requisitions were often corrupt and arbitrary, and disproportionately targeted Greeks and Armenians. Armenian leaders urged young men to accept conscription into
25781-511: The empire saw widespread massacres ; at least 100,000 Armenians were killed primarily by Ottoman soldiers and mobs let loose by the authorities. Many Armenian villages were forcibly converted to Islam. The Ottoman state bore ultimate responsibility for the killings, whose purpose was violently restoring the previous social order in which Christians would unquestioningly accept Muslim supremacy, and forcing Armenians to emigrate, thereby decreasing their numbers. Abdul Hamid's despotism prompted
25984-419: The empire's eastern provinces. Ottoman records show the government aimed to reduce Armenians to no more than five percent of the local population in the sources of deportation and ten percent in the destination areas. This goal could not be accomplished without mass murder. The deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims in their lands was part of a broader project intended to permanently restructure
26187-529: The empire's provinces to start them. The British ambassador in Constantinople at that time described the boycott as a direct result of the Committee of Union and Progress and that " Committee emissaries are everywhere instigating the people ", adding that every person, Greek or Muslim, who entered a non-Muslim shop was beaten. One of the worst attacks of this campaign took place in Phocaea (Greek: Φώκαια), on
26390-618: The empire, a belief that was crucial to deciding on genocide in early 1915. At the same time, the war provided an opportunity to enact what Talaat called the "definitive solution to the Armenian Question". The CUP wrongly believed that the Russian Empire sought to annex eastern Anatolia, and ordered the genocide in large part to prevent this eventuality. The genocide was intended to permanently eliminate any possibility that Armenians could achieve autonomy or independence in
26593-485: The empire. CUP leaders such as Talaat and Enver Pasha came to blame non-Muslim population concentrations in strategic areas for many of the empire's problems, concluding by mid-1914 that they were internal tumors to be excised. Of these, Ottoman Armenians were considered the most dangerous, because CUP leaders feared that their homeland in Anatolia—claimed as the last refuge of the Turkish nation—would break away from
26796-556: The era of the Holocaust , by Raphael Lemkin , a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent. In his writings on genocide, Lemkin detailed the fate of Greeks in Turkey. In August 1946 The New York Times reported: Genocide is no new phenomenon, nor has it been utterly ignored in the past. ... The massacres of Greeks and Armenians by the Turks prompted diplomatic action without punishment. If Professor Lemkin has his way genocide will be established as an international crime ... The 1948 Convention on
26999-428: The evacuation of many villages was accompanied with looting and murders, while many died as a result of not having been given the time to make the necessary provisions or of being relocated to uninhabitable places. State policy towards Ottoman Greeks changed again in the fall of 1916. With Entente forces occupying Lesbos , Chios and Samos since spring, the Russians advancing in Anatolia and Greece expected to enter
27202-429: The events. Henry Morgenthau , the United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, accused the "Turkish government" of a campaign of "outrageous terrorizing, cruel torturing, driving of women into harems, debauchery of innocent girls, the sale of many of them at 80 cents each, the murdering of hundreds of thousands and the deportation to and starvation in the desert of other hundreds of thousands, [and]
27405-432: The exodus and barred the return of the refugees. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Armenians , and some scholars and organizations have recognized these events as part of the same genocidal policy . The Allies of World War I condemned the Ottoman government–sponsored massacres. In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed
27608-487: The fire and accompanying massacres. According to Norman M. Naimark "more realistic estimates range between 10,000 to 15,000" for the casualties of the Great Fire of Smyrna. Some 150,000 to 200,000 Greeks were expelled after the fire, while about 30,000 able-bodied Greek and Armenian men were deported to the interior of Asia Minor, most of whom were executed on the way or died under brutal conditions. George W. Rendel of
27811-610: The formation of an opposition movement, the Young Turks , which sought to overthrow him and restore the 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire , which he had suspended in 1877. One faction of the Young Turks was the secret and revolutionary Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), based in Salonica , from which the charismatic conspirator Mehmed Talaat (later Talaat Pasha ) emerged as a leading member. Although skeptical of
28014-568: The genocide , with figures ranging from 600,000 to 1.5 million deaths. Between 800,000 and 1.2 million Armenians were deported, and contemporaries estimated that by late 1916 only 200,000 were still alive. As the British Army advanced in 1917 and 1918 northwards through the Levant , they liberated around 100,000 to 150,000 Armenians working for the Ottoman military under abysmal conditions, not including those held by Arab tribes. As
28217-779: The genocide and ended up mostly in Soviet Armenia . An estimated 200,000 Armenian refugees settled in the Middle East, forming a new wave of the Armenian diaspora . In the Republic of Turkey, about 100,000 Armenians lived in Constantinople and another 200,000 lived in the provinces, largely women and children who had been forcibly converted. Though Armenians in Constantinople faced discrimination, they were allowed to maintain their cultural identity, unlike those elsewhere in Turkey who continued to face forced Islamization and kidnapping of girls after 1923. Between 1922 and 1929,
28420-478: The genocide endured exploitation, hard labor without pay, forced conversion to Islam, and physical and sexual abuse . Armenian women captured during the journey ended up in Turkish or Kurdish households; those who were Islamized during the second phase of the genocide found themselves in an Arab or Bedouin environment. The rape , sexual abuse, and prostitution of Armenian women were all very common. Although Armenian women tried to avoid sexual violence, suicide
28623-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
28826-400: The intentional victims of hunger, disease, and exposure." For the whole of the period between 1914 and 1922 and for the whole of Anatolia, there are academic estimates of death toll ranging from 289,000 to 750,000. The figure of 750,000 is suggested by political scientist Adam Jones . Scholar Rudolph Rummel compiled various figures from several studies to estimate lower and higher bounds for
29029-429: The interior of Anatolia, were employed in road-making, building, tunnel excavating and other field work; but their numbers were heavily reduced through privations and ill-treatment and through outright massacre by their Ottoman guards. Following similar accords made with Bulgaria and Serbia , the Ottoman Empire signed a small voluntary population exchange agreement with Greece on 14 November 1913. Another such agreement
29232-470: The interior of Asia Minor. The Hellenization of the region accelerated under Roman and early Byzantine rule, and by the early centuries AD the local Indo-European Anatolian languages had become extinct, being replaced by the Koine Greek language. From this point until the late Middle Ages all of the indigenous inhabitants of Asia Minor practiced Christianity (called Greek Orthodox Christianity after
29435-449: The large numbers of Greek survivors at the end of the war. Because of cultural and political ties of the Ottoman Greeks with European powers, Midlarsky argues, genocide was "not a viable option for the Ottomans in their case." Taner Akçam refers to contemporary accounts noting the difference in government treatment of Ottoman Greeks and Armenians during WW I and concludes that "despite the increasingly severe wartime policies, in particular for
29638-477: The largest number in the world. In 1920, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople reported it was caring for 100,000 orphans, estimating that another 100,000 remained captive. Following the armistice, Allied governments championed the prosecution of Armenian genocide perpetrators. Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha publicly recognized that 800,000 Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin had died as
29841-469: The last to the CUP). Embezzling beyond that was punished. Ottoman politicians and officials who opposed the genocide were dismissed or assassinated. The government decreed that any Muslim who harbored an Armenian against the will of the authorities would be executed. Although the majority of able-bodied Armenian men had been conscripted into the army, others deserted, paid the exemption tax, or fell outside
30044-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
30247-662: The logistics of the Ottoman Army. By late 1915, the CUP had extinguished Armenian existence from eastern Anatolia. On 23 May 1915, Talaat ordered the deportation of all Armenians in Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum. To grant a cover of legality to the deportation, already well underway in the eastern provinces and Cilicia, the Council of Ministers approved the Temporary Law of Deportation , which allowed authorities to deport anyone deemed suspect. On 21 June, Talaat ordered
30450-455: The massacres went unpunished, the ARF continued to hope that reforms to improve security and restore lands were forthcoming, until late 1912, when they broke with the CUP and appealed to the European powers. On 8 February 1914, the CUP reluctantly agreed to reforms brokered by Germany that provided for the appointment of two European inspectors for the entire Ottoman east and putting
30653-576: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
30856-576: The men were killed immediately, many women and children were kidnapped by local Kurds, and others marched away to be killed later. By the end of June, there were only a dozen Armenians in the vilayet. The first deportations of Armenians were proposed by Djemal Pasha , the commander of the Fourth Army , in February 1915 and targeted Armenians in Cilicia (specifically Alexandretta , Dörtyol , Adana, Hadjin , Zeytun , and Sis ) who were relocated to
31059-497: The mid-nineteenth century, Armenians faced large-scale land usurpation as a consequence of the sedentarization of Kurdish tribes and the arrival of Muslim refugees and immigrants (mainly Circassians ) following the Russo-Circassian War . In 1876, when Sultan Abdul Hamid II came to power, the state began to confiscate Armenian-owned land in the eastern provinces and give it to Muslim immigrants as part of
31262-525: The middle class. Confiscation of Armenian assets continued into the second half of the twentieth century, and in 2006 the National Security Council ruled that property records from 1915 must be kept closed to protect national security. Outside Istanbul, the traces of Armenian existence in Turkey, including churches and monasteries, libraries, khachkars , and animal and place names , have been systematically erased, beginning during
31465-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
31668-499: The night of 12 June 1914, a town in western Anatolia next to Smyrna , where Turkish irregular troops destroyed the city , killing 50 or 100 civilians and causing its population to flee to Greece. French eyewitness Charles Manciet states that the atrocities he had witnessed at Phocaea were of an organized nature that aimed at circling Christian peasant populations of the region. In another attack against Serenkieuy, in Menemen district,
31871-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
32074-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
32277-411: The outbreak of World War I , Asia Minor was ethnically diverse, its population included Turks and Azeris , as well as groups that had inhabited the region prior to the Ottoman conquest , including Pontic Greeks , Caucasus Greeks , Cappadocian Greeks , Armenians , Kurds , Zazas , Georgians , Circassians , Assyrians , Jews , and Laz people . Among the causes of the Turkish campaign against
32480-422: The perceived success of the Greek deportations allowed CUP leaders to envision even more radical policies "as yet another extension of a policy of social engineering through Turkification ". A few days after the outbreak of World War I, the CUP concluded an alliance with Germany on 2 August 1914. The same month, CUP representatives went to an ARF conference demanding that, in the event of war with Russia ,
32683-446: The period between late 1916 and the first months of 1917, the government's treatment of the Greeks – although comparable in some ways to the measures against the Armenians – differed in scope, intent, and motivation." Some historians, including Boris Barth [ de ] , Michael Schwartz [ de ] , and Andrekos Varnava argue that the persecution of Greeks was ethnic cleansing or deportation, but not genocide. This
32886-604: The predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation
33089-438: The pretext of the national movement of Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk). In an October 1920 report a British officer describes the aftermath of the massacres at İznik in north-western Anatolia in which he estimated that at least 100 decomposed mutilated bodies of men, women and children were present in and around a large cave about 300 yards outside the city walls. The systematic massacre and deportation of Greeks in Asia Minor,
33292-817: The process also required the eradication of Armenian names , language , and culture , and for women, immediate marriage to a Muslim. Although Islamization was the most feasible opportunity for survival, it also transgressed Armenian moral and social norms. The CUP allowed Armenian women to marry into Muslim households, as these women would lose their Armenian identity. Young women and girls were often appropriated as house servants or sex slaves . Some boys were abducted to work as forced laborers for Muslim individuals. Some children were forcibly seized, while others were sold or given up by their parents to save their lives. Special state-run orphanages were also set up with strict procedures intending to deprive their charges of an Armenian identity. Most Armenian children who survived
33495-412: The provinces during this time, abandoned movable and non-movable Greek property was not to be liquidated, as that of the Armenians, but "preserved". On 14 January 1917 Cossva Anckarsvärd , Sweden's Ambassador to Constantinople, sent a dispatch regarding the decision to deport the Ottoman Greeks: What above all appears as an unnecessary cruelty is that the deportation is not limited to the men alone, but
33698-425: The refugees and survivors fled to Greece (adding over a quarter to the prior population of Greece). Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire . By late 1922, most of the Greeks of Asia Minor had either fled or had been killed. Those remaining were transferred to Greece under the terms of the later 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey , which formalized
33901-401: The regime insisted on their destruction wherever their numbers exceeded the five to ten percent threshold, or there was a risk of them being able to preserve their nationality and culture. Talaat Pasha personally authorized conversion of Armenians and carefully tracked the loyalty of converted Armenians until the end of the war. Although the first and most important step was conversion to Islam,
34104-439: The region, was not conducted as ordered: men were taken in labour battalions, women and children were attacked, villages were looted by Muslim neighbours. As such in March 1917 the population of Ayvalık , a town of c. 30,000 inhabitants on the Aegean coast was forcibly deported to the interior of Anatolia under order by German General Liman von Sanders . The operation included death marches , looting, torture and massacre against
34307-608: The roads and their bodies were buried hastily or, more often, simply left beside the roads. The Ottoman government ordered the corpses to be cleared as soon as possible to prevent both photographic documentation and disease epidemics, but these orders were not uniformly followed. Women and children, who made up the great majority of deportees, were usually not executed immediately, but subjected to hard marches through mountainous terrain without food and water. Those who could not keep up were left to die or shot. During 1915, some were forced to walk as far as 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) in
34510-457: The slightest provocation." On 4 November 1918, Emanuel Efendi, an Ottoman deputy of Aydin , criticised the ethnic cleansing of the previous government and reported that 550,000 Greeks had been killed in the coastal regions of Anatolia (including the Black Sea coast) and Aegean Islands during the deportations. According to various sources the Greek death toll in the Pontus region of Anatolia ranges from 300,000 to 360,000. Merrill D. Peterson cites
34713-406: The state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The strategy implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them to death, hunger, and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks. The Greek presence in Asia Minor dates at least from
34916-463: The status of Ottoman subjects regardless of religion. The reforms to equalize the status of non-Muslims were strongly opposed by Islamic clergy and Muslims in general, and remained mostly theoretical. Because of the abolition of the Kurdish emirates in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman government began to directly tax Armenian peasants who had previously paid taxes only to Kurdish landlords. The latter continued to exact levies illegally. From
35119-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
35322-436: The summer heat. Some deportees from western Anatolia were allowed to travel by rail . There was a distinction between the convoys from eastern Anatolia, which were eliminated almost in their entirety, and those from farther west, which made up most of those surviving to reach Syria. For example, around 99 percent of Armenians deported from Erzerum did not reach their destination. The Islamization of Armenians, carried out as
35525-401: The survivors sent to Deir ez-Zor. In general, Armenians were denied food and water during and after their forced march to the Syrian desert; many died of starvation, exhaustion, or disease, especially dysentery , typhus , and pneumonia . Some local officials gave Armenians food; others took bribes to provide food and water. Aid organizations were officially barred from providing food to
35728-447: The various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
35931-529: The vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between
36134-459: The villagers formed armed resistance groups but only a few managed to survive being outnumbered by the attacking Muslim irregular bands. During the summer of the same year the Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa), assisted by government and army officials, conscripted Greek men of military age from Thrace and western Anatolia into Labour Battalions in which hundreds of thousands died. These conscripts, after being sent hundreds of miles into
36337-641: The war and continuing for decades afterward. The first arrivals in mid-1915 were accommodated in Aleppo . From mid-November, the convoys were denied access to the city and redirected along the Baghdad Railway or the Euphrates towards Mosul . The first transit camp was established at Sibil, east of Aleppo; one convoy would arrive each day while another would depart for Meskene or Deir ez-Zor . Dozens of concentration camps were set up in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia . By October 1915, some 870,000 deportees had reached Syria and Upper Mesopotamia. Most were repeatedly transferred between camps, being held in each camp for
36540-436: The war of independence was "intended to complete the genocide by finally eradicating Armenian, Greek, and Syriac survivors". In 1920 Kâzım Karabekir , a Turkish general, invaded Armenia with orders "to eliminate Armenia physically and politically". Nearly 100,000 Armenians were massacred in Transcaucasia by the Turkish army and another 100,000 fled from Cilicia during the French withdrawal . According to Kévorkian, only
36743-429: The war siding with the Allies , preparations were made for the deportation of Greeks living in border areas. In January 1917 Talat Pasha sent a cable for the deportation of Greeks from the Samsun district "thirty to fifty kilometres inland" taking care for "no assaults on any persons or property". However, the execution of government decrees, which took a systematic form from December 1916, when Behaeddin Shakir came to
36946-403: The war." The Treaty of Sèvres was never ratified by the Turkish government and ultimately was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne . That treaty was accompanied by a "Declaration of Amnesty", without containing any provision in respect to punishment of war crimes. In 1923, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey resulted in a near-complete ending of the Greek ethnic presence in Turkey and
37149-422: The way for the formation of an ethno-national Turkish state. In September 1918, Talaat emphasized that regardless of losing the war, he had succeeded at "transforming Turkey to a nation-state in Anatolia". Deportation amounted to a death sentence; the authorities planned for and intended the death of the deportees. Deportation was only carried out behind the front lines, where no active rebellion existed, and
37352-428: The wealth of some Armenians, their overall political power was low, making them especially vulnerable. Armenians in the eastern provinces lived in semi- feudal conditions and commonly encountered forced labor , illegal taxation , and unpunished crimes against them including robberies, murders, and sexual assaults. Beginning in 1839, the Ottoman government issued a series of reforms to centralize power and equalize
37555-556: The withdrawal of Greek refugees into the Russian held Caucasus, before being disbanded in the aftermath of the Treaty of Poti . After the Ottoman Empire capitulated on 30 October 1918, it came under the de jure control of the victorious Entente Powers. However, the latter failed to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice, although in the Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919–20 a number of leading Ottoman officials were accused of ordering massacres against both Greeks and Armenians. Thus, killings, massacres and deportations continued under
37758-416: Was "organized and carried out by the top leaders of CUP". Eighteen perpetrators (including Talaat, Enver, and Djemal) were sentenced to death, of whom only three were ultimately executed as the remainder had fled and were tried in absentia . The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres , which awarded Armenia a large area in eastern Anatolia , eliminated the Ottoman government's purpose for holding the trials. Prosecution
37961-515: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
38164-416: Was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. German diplomats approved limited removals of Armenians in early 1915, and took no action against the genocide, which has been a source of controversy. Relief efforts were organized in dozens of countries to raise money for Armenian survivors. By 1925, people in 49 countries were organizing "Golden Rule Sundays" during which they consumed
38367-533: Was acquitted by a German jury. The CUP regrouped as the Turkish nationalist movement to fight the Turkish War of Independence , relying on the support of perpetrators of the genocide and those who had profited from it. This movement saw the return of Armenian survivors as a mortal threat to its nationalist ambitions and the interests of its supporters. The return of survivors was therefore impossible in most of Anatolia and thousands of Armenians who tried were murdered. Historian Raymond Kévorkian states that
38570-423: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
38773-442: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
38976-402: Was expanded to other parts of the Ottoman Empire , including Greek communities in Pontus , Cappadocia , and Cilicia . According to a newspaper of the time, in November 1914, Turkish troops destroyed Christian properties and murdered several Christians at Trabzon . After November 1914 Ottoman policy towards the Greek population shifted; state policy was restricted to the forceful migration to
39179-502: Was hampered by a widespread belief among Turkish Muslims that the actions against the Armenians were not punishable crimes. Increasingly, the genocide was considered necessary and justified to establish a Turkish nation-state. On 15 March 1921, Talaat was assassinated in Berlin as part of a covert operation of the ARF to kill the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. The trial of his admitted killer, Soghomon Tehlirian , focused on Talaat's responsibility for genocide. Tehlirian
39382-409: Was often the only alternative. Deportees were displayed naked in Damascus and sold as sex slaves in some areas, constituting an important source of income for accompanying gendarmes. Some were sold in Arabian slave markets to Muslim Hajj pilgrims and ended up as far away as Tunisia or Algeria . A secondary motivation for genocide was the destruction of the Armenian bourgeoisie to make room for
39585-403: Was often used to fund the deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims, as well as for army, militia, and other government spending. Ultimately this formed much of the basis of the industry and economy of the post-1923 republic, endowing it with capital . The dispossession and exile of Armenian competitors enabled many lower-class Turks (i.e. peasantry, soldiers, and laborers) to rise to
39788-545: Was only possible in the absence of widespread resistance. Armenians who lived in the war zone were instead killed in massacres. Although ostensibly undertaken for security reasons, the deportation and murder of Armenians did not grant the empire any military advantage and actually undermined the Ottoman war effort. The empire faced a dilemma between its goal of eliminating Armenians and its practical need for their labor; those Armenians retained for their skills, in particular for manufacturing in war industries, were indispensable to
39991-529: Was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk , against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire . The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert , expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of
40194-411: Was probably the reason that the civilized world did not protest against these deportations". US Consul-General George Horton , whose account has been criticised by scholars as anti-Turkish, claimed, "One of the cleverest statements circulated by the Turkish propagandists is to the effect that the massacred Christians were as bad as their executioners, that it was '50–50'." On this issue he comments: "Had
40397-666: Was signed 1 July 1914 for the exchange of some "Turks" (that is, Muslims ) of Greece for some Greeks of Aydin and Western Thrace , after the Ottomans had forced these Greeks from their homes in response to the Greek annexation of several islands. The swap was never completed due to the eruption of World War I . While discussions for population exchanges were still conducted, Special Organization units attacked Greek villages forcing their inhabitants to abandon their homes for Greece, being replaced with Muslim refugees. The forceful expulsion of Christians of western Anatolia, especially Ottoman Greeks, has many similarities with policy towards
40600-429: Was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I . Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children. Before World War I, Armenians occupied
40803-453: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
41006-408: Was used to communicate orders; those for the deportation of Armenians were communicated to the provincial governors through official channels, but orders of a criminal character, such as those calling for annihilation, were sent through party channels and destroyed upon receipt. Deportation convoys were mostly escorted by gendarmes or local militia. The killings near the front lines were carried out by
41209-450: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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