The Pontian Greek Genocide
The Pontian Greek's black period in history was during the same time the young Turks started their march against the Ottoman Turkes och their empire. The long history that the Pontian Greeks have in what today is called Turkey is more than 3,000 years old. After that the Ottoman Turks took over the area, the living conditions for all Christian people got worse and in periods the situation was unbearable. In the beginning of the 20th centrury the Turks systematically started to weaken the Christians by depriving them their rights, chock raising the local taxes, violently taking over their businesses and homes (specially in the country side) but also by psycological terror with night raids where men were abducted and women raped.

From 1915 to 1922 there was a Genocide that can be compared with the systematic anihilation of the Jews in Europe during the second world war. The Genocide, that was carried through in the Ottoman empire by the Turks, hit all Christian minorities like the Pontian Greeks, the Greeks of Smyrni (today Izmir) and of Constantinople (today Istanbul) but also the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Syrians and the Caldeans. The total number of murdered children, women and men is not yet established but historians around the world talk about everything from 1,250,000 human lifes up to 3,500,000!

The end of a 3,000 years presence at the Black Sea. With the revolution of the Turkish batallions in Macedonia July 1908, a new dynamic power stepped in to the political arena, the young Turks. Their leader was Mustafa Kemal, also known as the "grey wolf" among the turks conspiratory circles. Their party "Unity and progress" was a success and speeded up the overthrow of the sultan Abdul Hamid, who was hated by the people. The country was now ruled with the fundamental politics to decrese the economic dependence of the western powers but also to assimilate the minorities in the future creation of the national state. Therefor a new slogan was shouted: "Turkey for the Turks". The slogan disregarded the presence of Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Assyrians, Syrians and Caldeans, because according to the Turks they were insignificant minorities.

From 1908 to 1920, the Ottoman empire lost a majority of its European, Asian and African territories. In 1908 Bosnia and Hercegovina was lost together with the rulership of Bulgaria, in 1913 over Albania and Crete and in 1920 over eastern Thrace. From 1910 until 1918, the Arabian countries were in ongoing revolutions that became French protectorats in Syria and Lebanon and English in Jordan and Palestine. italy occupied Cyrenaica in Libya in 1911 and annexed the Twelve Islands to Greece the year after. The peace treaty of Sévre in 1920 confirmed the dissolution of the Ottoman empire and Asia Minor was divided by the French, the Italians and the Greeks.

But the fundamental problem with the minorites remained unsolved with large groups of Greeks in Asia Minor and Pontos and of course other Christian people. I the beginning of 1914, the German military attaché in Constantinople "spoke his mind" about in case of military interaction (war) in Turkey by the western powers, the Greeks shouldn't be trusted and it would be wise to transport them at least 200 kilometres to the eastern parts of Anatolia. Same methods was used earlier by the Turks under German counselling against the Armenians in 1895-96 and 1905-07 that led to 400,000 victims. The same method was now in play against the Greeks. The outbreak of the first world war and Greece's involvement in it aloud the Turks to neglect the excuses and execute an open anihilation of the Greeks.

The most common tactics that the Turks used were to mobilise the Asia Minor Greeks and send them to the Macedonian warfront to fight against the Greek army or to fire and inprison Greeks that held posts in the official goverment and by take tough economic mesures in form of special fees to undermine the Greeks economic prosperiry. But worst of all was the mass transportation of the male population to the work batallions in Anatolia, where they were xposed to torture by long marches in unfriendly areas so they could die before they reached their destination. For those how did survive the marches, life was even harder. Twelve hour hard work in stonepits , with bad and insufficient food in miserable quarters was the daily life for the men who were taken from their homes violently.

The words are not enough to describe the fear and the drama. Christos Nerantzis tells that during the Pontian Greeks march from the village Poulantzakli to the working batallions, a mother fell tired to the ground and the guards left her to die alongside the road. A 15 year old boy rushed to her and said: "I''ll carry her, it is my mother". But the burden was too heavy for the exhaust boy and he fell down with her. The escorting guards hit him hard with a whip and he cried out of pain. They forced him to drag her about 100 metres outside the road to leave her there to die and dragged him back to the marching line. On the evening the boy disappeared. Did he go back to his mother? Did they die together? Did the wolfs eat them alive? No one knows... There are thousands of stories like this one.

The last defence, the resistance. After the mobilisation that the Turks announced in July 21, 1914 as an ally to Germany in the first world war, the Pontian Greeks was also mobilised but not for the warfronts. All drafted men between 20 and 45 years of age was removed violently from their homes, they were disarmed as suspects after the Russian front collapsed and was treated hostile by the Turkish officers. They were all sent to the working batallions. Even those men who were under 20 and over 45 years of age weren't free from the mobilisation and they were treated with the same hostility, specially after the Russian occupation of trapezounta (today Trabzon) in April 5, 1916. The risk to be attacked was so common that the rich Greeks bought their freedom for a special fee (200 gold coins) while those who couldn't afford it fled to the mountains. Deserters from the Turkish army was added those who chose the mountains. These were the pioneers of the first resistance groups who worked alone or in joint actions. The resistance was bound mostly in western Pontos, in the areas around Amissos and Bafra. It is said that the fact that 50,000 Greeks of Amassias population survived thanks to the resistance. The total Greek population of the city was 183,000 people.

Vasil Agas (Vasilis Anthopoulos) started in 1915 his resistance with his group against the Turks and became their horror in Amissos. Pantel Agas (Pantelis Anastasiadis) from Amissos and his men succeeded to stand their ground several days when the one thousand man strong Turkish army attacked them in Agiostepe in November 16, 1917. The most important battle this group had was in Nebievtag outside Bafra where they confronted a top equiped Turkish regement. When their amnunition was out, they prefered to kil themselfs instead of surrendering.

At the end of 1921, the village of Dazli was the terrible scene during the collision between the resistance and the general Kemal Kevit where not a single Greek man was left alive. All of them who didn't die in the battle were hanged in the village together with its Greek Population. In eastern Pontos, the men of Santa forced the Turks to give the territory an unofficial independence. In the battle of Kopalanton in January 25, 1918 the Turks lost and they signed a local treaty not to harm the local population. Until 1921. Mustafa Kemal decided to demolish the area with his big army and the resistance commander Euclides Kourtidis managed to save only the women and the children. Everyone else was murdered.

The village Similki outside Kerasounda (today Kerasoun) became the Pontian Mesolongi where the women and girl jumped in the river and drowned themselfs so the Turks couldnät rape and murder them.

Accourding to Greek calculation the Pontian resistance was 7,000 man strong. Their living conditions were miserable and they lived in huts made by branches and in caves. The tough weather conditions and specially the snow during the winters stopped their supply roads to the villages so food was almost a daily luxury. They were armed with primitive weapons such as knifes, hatchets and simple rifles but it was enough to defend the women and children from the Turkish attacks. If they won a battle they kept the weapons. The failure of the resistance can be ascribed in the absence of a joint leadership and organisation, the lack of weapons and supplies, the difficulty to move around in the mountains since almost all groups were accompanied by defendless women and children and of course the Greek state's lack of interest to help out despite the church's attempt to influence. If the Greek state had listen the advices to help the resistance movement in Pontos as a distracting force against Mustafa Kemal, maybe Asia Minor's fate would have been different today.

A well organised Genocide. On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal came ashore at Samsunda (today Samsun) with his mission to take over command of the military armed forces in Anatolia. From that day, the Turk's mass murder behavior against the Pontian Greeks escalated and reached its culmination. The Pontian greeks victims of the satanic goal of the young Turks and kemalism, were buthered for a homogenised Turkish Asia Minor, free from minorities. The homogenity was also a "Trojan horse" that Germany (which was allied with the Ottoman empire) invested in to win economical, political and military advantages in Asia Minor and nearby areas and therefor didn't hesitate to sacrifise the Christian populiation of Anatolia.

With support and guidence of the German colonel Liman von Sanders, Turkey started the mobilisation of the Christians to the work batallions which in reality were death camps. Neither the Greek Ministry for Foreign Affairs or the German Consuls Turkish friendly documents dared to hide the crimes that their ally comitted. According to the testimony in 1916 of the German Consul Kuckhoff in Amissos, it seams that the whole Greek population of Sinopi and the nearby areas have been deported. The Kemalists used the Russian occupation of Trapezounta and the Greek resistence uprising as an excuse so that everything Greek left could now vanish. From newborns to elders, the Greeks were violently transported from place to place so they could starve to death. According to a report from the Greek Ministry for Foreign Affairs in February 1917, a fourth of the transported population died. The Metropolitan Polykarpos in Nea Kessaria informed the Patriarch's advisors in a urgent report on November 12, 1918 about his people's miserable condition. And if all this suffering wasn't enough, once again the violent conversions to islam was again in play. The Greek populations degradation was often used by the Turks just as the mayor of Kerasounda Topal Osman leveled everything to the ground. From the city's 14,000 strong Greek population, only 4,000 managed to survive.

The Tsets, that mainly came from lawless circles, was placed after May 1919 under Mustafa Kemal's command in the Turkish gendarmery and continued to execute their terrible cruelties against the Greek.s Even the legal advisor of the Turkish military headquarters in Constantinople Kemal Nuzget confounded Kemal's methods and reported that thousands of Greeks were burned alive in churches, women were raped, villages and towns are plundered and that about 90 % of the Greek population of Bafra has been annihilated. European and American humanitarian organisations and Consular authorities confirmed these accusations. In the newspaper Telegraph May 17, 1922, reports about a Ukranian diplomat who witnessed horrific scenes a long the road on his way from Samsounda to Ankara where children's and women's bodies were thrown beside the road with signs of brutal violence. Until the exchange of the populations, about 350,000 Pontian Greeks met horrible deaths by the young Turks in towns and villages, in canyons and mountains, in deportation and in prisons. The Turkish crime is international and enduring. It started with the Armenians, continued with the Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians and continues today in the occupied territories on Cyprus and in Kurdistan.