Hellenes And Assyrians Need To Be Mentioned More

[kumkap]

nice to have you here HellenicPride.

 

boy i have been reading some bizarre comments on this thread. of course armenians support the greek cause in cyprus, and if they don't, they better. cyprus was a place that became a refuge for armenians after the genocide (remember melkonian) and there was a thriving community there until the 1974 invasion. most of the armenian property and community was on the occupied side, and all of it was lost to the turks (as were all the properties of greeks). schools, churches, shops, there was even an armenian monastery in northern cyprus that is now a hotel or something. in nicosia there's one area where you can walk up to the green zone and look over to the turkish side. to your right is the remains of a shop that was owned by an armenian, bohdjalian. there was also a lot of armenians in famagusta, also in the hands of the turks. that's why so many armenians left after '74.

 

and the turkish position on cyprus is breathtaking: they claim they had to invade, occupy and ethnically cleanse the northern part of the island in order to protect the safety of turkish cypriots following a coup led by greeks who wanted union with greece. and yet turkey refuses to establish relations with armenia b/c of Artsax, which started b/c azeris decided to start butchering armenians when Artsax started peacefully demonstrating for union with armenia.

 

actually the armenian ties with cyprus are pretty deep, i believe the crusader lusignan family whose castles are still standing in cyprus married into one of the cilician armenian noble families. more info here

 

About Cyprus: the Armenian Community

 

as far as greece goes, i know there is some animosity in armenia b/c of armen-tel but the record will show that greece helped armenia out a lot in the early 90s after independence. i read the book by leonidas chrysanthopoulos, first greek ambassador to armenia, it was pretty interesting.

 

as i said before i think the #1 priority should be to reframe the narrative of 1915-23 as the destruction of the christian communities of turkey first, then talk about armenians, greeks, assyrians.

[Dave]

Unfortunately, the Assyrians of Iraq have been siding with the Turkmens and Turks against the Kurds who didn't let Assyrian and Turkmen ballots get counted.

[Artaxias]

We must help Hellenes no matter what.

Anything that's good for them is automatically good for us.

Hail Hellas!

 

As for "Assyrians", I couldn't care less about them. We should have cordial relations with them and nothing more. A lever or two higher than Kurds.

[Z'areh]

The way I see it is that the Ottoman rulers planned the removal and the destruction of the Armenians [to them it didn't matter which came first as long as the Armenian element disappeared from Anatolia]. To this end the idea of complete Turkification of the land, Assyrians and other Christians included, and the destruction of the Armenians were two shades of the same colour, therefore, the fate of the Assyrians was doomed in the face of the fanatical policies the triumvirate.

 

Now, whether the case of the Assyrians should be considered a genocide or not, I think if we take Lemkin's definitions then their can be no other designation to this case.

 

There is this notion, especially expressed by the Jews, that Genocide should mean only one thing; the Holocaust the way it happened to them. But, Lemkin's definitions allows a wider margin of "intentions" than what the Jews and modern Western intelligentsia tries to force the world to define what Genocide should mean.

There are many reasons for this, one being the maintaining the "uniqueness" of the Jewish experience, the other, which I think is more crucial, is the fact that the Western world finds it convenient to hide behind the limited perimeters of the Holocaust to avoid in acting in cases of genocides, to punish or to prevent genocides as defined by Lemkin. Latest case in point is Darfour.

 

That is why if other cases of genocides miss one or two elements of the Holocaust then they are easily dismissed as non-genocides. A famous example of Turkish "counter argument" is pointing to the fact of Armenians had the freedom to occupy successful high level Ottoman government posts, or had the freedom to become successful in other domains of Ottoman life. Another example is pointing to the fact that since the Ottomans did not go after all those who had "Armenian blood" as the Nazis did, killing Jews who considered themselves as Germans but had the misfortune of having a grandparent of Jewish origin, then it is said the Armenian case cannot be a genocide, etc...

 

So we get a model of a genocide, the Holocaust, being used as a definition of all genocides. That is not unlike saying if all apples are not "Mackintosh" then none of the other kinds should be considered as apples.

 

If we take Lemkin's definitions then what happened to the Assyrians and the Greeks of Pontus should be considered genocide as well.

 

I think pushing forward especially the case of the Assyrians will help the Armenian cause. If Armenians are accused of "stabbing Ottoman Empire in the back" then what were the guilt of the Assyrians, If Russian-Ottoman borders were threatened because of the Armenian "treason", why were the Assyrians murdered in Merdin or Dyarbekir? These Turkish acts simply point to one direction only and that is the fanatical nationalistic acts of eliminating each and every non-Muslim inhabitants, Armenian or otherwise, in as total and as effective manner as possible.

 

It is a shame that Armenian political circles are not using this factor in their fights against Turkish denials.

Edited June 22, 2005 by Z'areh

[kumkap]

i was unaware that the pontian genocide has been recognized by 12 u.s. states. this message appeared on the trapezounta yahoogroup yesterday. obviously still a burning issue:

 

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Message: 2

Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 19:09:17 -0700

From: "Stavros Stavridis"

Subject: Fw: The National Herald - Issue

 

The National Herald - Issue

 

Dear good friends,

 

This is a magnificent publication on the Pontian Genocide. It is a

labor of love by a first class scholar.

 

ss

 

http://www.thenationalherald.com/issue.asp...rchtxt=fotiades

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

UPDATED MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2005 3:17 PM ET

 

Search Results / News / Front Page

 

15-Volume Work Documents Pontian Genocide

By Zoe Tsine

Special to The National Herald

 

 

NEW YORK - "We will show that the United States has only to look at its own documents from that period in order to find proof of the Pontian Genocide," according to Constantine Fotiades, Professor of Modern Greek History at the New University of Western Macedonia.

 

Dr. Fotiades, author of a monumental work on the Genocide spoke about the horrific ethnic-cleansing campaign Turkey conducted against the Pontian Greek populations of the southeastern Black Sea coast in the early 20th Century during recent lecture hosted by the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York?s Committee for National Issues at the Stathakion Center in Astoria on June 2.

 

The lecture was attended by, among others, Pan-Pontian Federation of America and Canada President Elias Tsekerides and Pan-Macedonian Federation President Sotirios Proios.

 

During the lecture, Dr. Fotiades focused on Pontian activism in the United States, as well as the official U.S. reaction to the tragedy at that time.

 

The event highlighted his book, "The Genocide of the Greeks of Pontos," a 15-volume work published by the Hellenic Parliament, the first official Greek source about the Genocide.

 

The project ? which chronicles the events of the Genocide from 1916 to 1923 and numbers its victims at 353,000 ? was assigned to Dr. Fotiades in 1996 after a unanimous vote in Parliament. The vote followed a decision by the 1994 International Pan-Pontian Conference in Thessaloniki to pursue long-overdue historic research and political recognition of the tragedy on an international level. In 1996, Parliament also commemorated May 19th as Pontian Genocide Remembrance Day.

 

Dr. Fotiades? book includes a large collection of documents from primary sources ? e.g., international organizations, immigrant unions and newspapers ? but most importantly from the government files of the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Vatican, the Society of Nations and Greece, published both in translation and in their original languages. A comprehensive volume of the book has been sent to parliaments around the world.

 

This impressive work is expected to be completed this year with the publication of the 16th volume, a 600-page book featuring official U.S. documents.

 

Dr. Fotiades told the National Herald that, during his research in the U.S., he obtained copies of documents totaling 25,000 pages from the library of Congress.

 

The upcoming volume will include documents sent to the State Department by American diplomats. "They describe in detail the crimes committed on a daily basis by both Kemalists and Young Turks, thus confirming what other primary sources have clearly demonstrated: that the Pontian Genocide is a fact."

 

The presence of Greeks at the Efxeinos Pontos (i.e., Hospitable Sea), a Greek euphemism for the dreaded Black Sea, dates back to 1000 BC, when sailors like the mythical Jason and his Argonauts traded gold and minerals in the region. In the 8th Century BC, cities like Miletus ? home of the mathematician Thales ? founded colonies settled by Greek-speaking populations around the Black Sea. The Greek language and culture were predominant on its coasts during both Roman times and after the arrival of Christianity.

 

According to Dr. Fotiades, 22 million Christians lived throughout Asia Minor in the 11th Century AD. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the Pontian city of Trebizond in 1461 to the Ottomans was a turning point for the region?s indigenous Greeks, many of whom fled to the mountains of Pontos, as well as to Russian Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan, where they prospered in their new communities. Pontians spoke a special dialect, and had unique musical and dancing traditions (most famously the Pyrrichios, a direct descendant of ancient war dances).

 

In the beginning of the 20th Century, Dr. Fotiades said, an estimated 1.5 million Christian Greeks inhabited Asia Minor, despite Ottoman efforts to forcibly convert them to Islam. "The 1913 census of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople showed that 697,000 Greek and Turkish-speaking Christians lived in Pontos, as well as 190,000 Greek-speaking Muslims and 43,000 crypto-Christians," he told his audience.

 

ROOTED OUT LIKE VEGETABLES

 

On May 19, 1919 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk descended upon the Pontian city of Kerasounta with tribal leader Topal Osman and commenced with the systematic extermination of the area?s Greeks. In preceding years, Pontians were already fleeing their ancestral homes to avoid being taken to labor camps or the Turkish army, which meant sure death. "Turks were destroying the Christian ?carcinoma.? People were rooted out of their land like vegetables," the historian said, adding that the expulsions were matched with rapes, hangings and murder of children.

 

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne ? signed by Eleftherios Venizelos for Greece, along with the U.K., France, Italy, Japan, Romania and the Serbo-Croat-Slovene State on one side and Turkey on the other ? dealt with the Pontian Genocide and the Destruction of Smyrna, and sealed the end of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. A 3,000-year era in Greek history had come to end, even though people speaking the Pontic dialect still inhabit various parts of Turkey and Russia. "The Treaty of Lausanne brought 333,000 Pontian Christians back to Greece, almost equal in number to the 353,000 killed on mountains and canyons by the Turks. About 90,000 Pontians took the road of exile to Russia," Dr. Fotiades said.

 

Dr. Fotiades spoke at length about the official American reaction to the genocide, which included U.S. Senate condemnations of its events. At one point, he read the Greek translation of a letter signed by an American diplomat named Huntington, an official U.S. envoy to the Ottoman Empire. In a letter to Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State in 1921-1925, written during the Genocide period, Huntington highlighted the period?s shift in American-Turkish relations, a political phenomenon common among World War I allies which Dr. Fotiades attributed to "the smell of the oil of Mosul reaching" far beyond Turkish

borders.

 

Huntington wrote he was "reluctant" to ignore the Genocide, an issue so popular among many American citizens, issuing a note of caution:

 

"We must accompany our expressed desire to participate? with an insinuation that it is not in accord with American policy to invite our forces to intervene in all parts of the world that have problems," Huntington wrote, echoing an American foreign policy philosophy which is almost diametrically opposed to the current War on Terror tactics.

 

12 AMERICAN STATES

 

According to a recent article in the June 4-5 issue of Simera (the National Herald Greek Edition?s special weekly insert), the Pontian Genocide has been recognized by 12 American States, which have commemorate May 19th as Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day.

 

The final volume of "The Genocide of the Greeks of Pontos" will include important information about the activism of the 40,000 Pontians who, according to Dr. Fotiades, lived in the U.S. during the Genocide years, "mostly in New York, Boston, and Canton, Ohio," as well as in Pittsburgh and Connecticut. Many of these Pontians volunteered to fight in Turkey, he said. "Pontian Americans held demonstrations and sent written protests repeatedly to the State Department," he added, citing among other articles, one published in The National Herald on August 13, 1921: "The Great Tragedy of the Annihilation of the Pontians."

 

The numerous articles and official letters aside, however, the personal accounts of Pontian survivors collected by Dr. Fotiades convey the depth and long-term projection of the tragedy. The professor read excerpts from the book, "Pontian Dream," by Professor Haris Efremides (published in 2003 by the National Polytechnic Institute in Athens), who documented his return to his ancestral Trebizond where, at his Pontian refugee aunt?s request, he visited her former house to ask its Turkish inhabitants for a forgotten family treasure, the gold cross worn by her lost son, Dr. Efremides? cousin. Upon hearing his request,

the house?s new resident, a Turkish army officer, took the cross out of his pocket and confessed that he was Vasilis, the lost cousin. After a long-overdue embrace, he asked Dr. Efremides not to reveal the truth, so as not to damage his children?s careers.

 

"We have a duty as Greeks to our dead, just like Antigone who buried her brother so he could rest in peace," Dr. Fotiades said. "Turkey must confront its past atrocities to relieve its younger generations from a guilt complex, which prevents them from embracing European values and ideals."

 

Dr. Fotiades, who is himself half Pontian in lineage, told the Herald that he started his research on the Genocide during his doctoral-studies years at the University of Tubingen in Germany. "My German professor urged me to account for Germany?s participation in the Genocide through military training and leadership to Turkey," he said.

 

"Kemal?s active participation in the Genocide implicates the modern Kemalist Turkish state directly," Haralambos Vasiliades told the Herald after the lecture. Mr. Vasiliades is president of the Iero Idryma "Panagia Soumela" Pontion Amerikis, a group named after the historic Pontian Monastery.

 

"This book comes after an 80-year delay. The Genocide was followed by World War II, the Civil War and much political turmoil, which made Greeks focus on their own survival," he said, adding that Pontian feuds have also delayed the project.

 

Shortly after the Hellenic Parliament?s decision to promote the book in 1994, he explained, disagreements between various Pontian organizations and individuals as to who should be assigned to the project, marked by a consequent official Greek reluctance during a period of improving Greek-Turkish relations, brought the book to a halt for three years.

 

"But documents have fortunately survived even the Genocide survivors," Dr. Fotiades told the Herald. "They awaited in their files for decades in order to vindicate the victims through their publication. On national issues, we don?t have the luxury to be divided," he concluded.

 

The publication of the book is being challenged by Turkey's efforts to enter the European Union, a fact that Mr. Vasiliades said increases the chances of the country's acknowledgement of its past atrocities. "Turkey is bound to issue a recognition," Mr. Vasiliades said. "Turkish Prime Minister (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan has people researching the Genocide in Turkish archives, and is planning to reopen Panagia Soumela mainly to attract religious tourism. Nevertheless, it is a big step forward," he said.

 

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[Dave]

Assyrians are the ones who were the most affected by the Genocide, as they are now left without a country.

[phantom22]

Artaxias,

 

You are allowing your "Aryan" ideology to cloud your thinking. You don't give a damn about Assyrians? Well you have one here (part-Assyrian) to deal with every day.