THREAD: Today we commemorate the Greek Genocide victims of Pontus, killed by Ottoman & Kemalist forces. 1 million Greeks were massacred - 353,000 of them from Pontus alone.

We will never forget even if Turkey continues to deny it.

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü
#GreekGenocide

1) Mustafa Kemal, Turkey's founding father, said on 13 August 1923 in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (Turkiye Buyuk Millet Meclisi) in Ankara, that:

"At last we've uprooted the Greeks..."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

2) On 26 November 1916 Rafet Bey (or Paşa) informs Dr. Ernst von Kwiatkowski, the Austro-Hungarian consul in Samsoun in Pontus:

"We must at last do with the Greeks as we did with the Armenians..."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü
#GreekGenocide

3) Two days later, 28 November 1916, Rafet Bey informed Consul Kwiatkowski of the Austro-Hungarian consul in Samsoun in Pontus:

"We must now finish with the Greeks. I sent today battalions to the outskirts to kill every Greek they pass on the road."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

4) In a telegram dated 14 May 1914 Talaat Bey and İbrahim Hilmi, the Director of the Ministry of the Interior, said for Greeks to be deported and for those who refuse to use local Muslims to use "excesses of any kind" to make Greeks leave.

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

5) According to an Austro-Hungarian agent, on 31 January 1917 Talaat Bey (1874-1921), the Minister of the Interior, declared:

"... I see that time has come for Turkey to have it out with the Greeks the way it had it out with the Armenians in 1915."

6) General Mahmut Şevket Paşa (1856-1913), the Ottoman Commander-in-Chief, tells Orthodox Patriarch Ioakeim III (1834-1912), Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, in June 1909:

"We will cut off your heads, we will make you all disappear."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

7) Damad Ferid Paşa, the Ottoman Turkish Grand Vizier, described Turkey's policy of extermination against the Christians in June 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference as crimes:

"... such as to make the conscience of mankind shudder with horror for ever."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

8) U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924):

“I am in hearty sympathy with every just effort being made by the people of the U.S. to alleviate the terrible sufferings of the Greeks of Asia Minor. None have suffered more or more unjustly than they."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

9) In a telegram to the Secretary of State in 1915, Henry Morgenthau (1856-1946), United States ambassador to Turkey, states:

"Evidently Turkish nationalistic policy is aimed at all Christians and not confined to Armenians."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü
#GreekGenocide

10) Henry Morgenthau, United States ambassador to Turkey, stated: "Their [the Young Turks] passion for Turkifying the nation seemed to demand logically the extermination of all Christians---Greeks, Syrians, and Armenians."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü
#GreekGenocide

11) Henry Morgenthau, U.S. ambassador to Turkey, stated: "The story which I have told about the Armenians I could also tell with certain modifications about the Greeks and the Syrians. Indeed the Greeks were the first victims of this nationalizing idea."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

12) Henry Morgenthau, U.S. ambassador to Turkey, stated: “The Turks adopted almost identically the same procedure against the Greeks as that which they had adopted against the Armenians.”

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

13) Millerand of the Supreme Allied Council wrote in 1920:

“Not only has the Turkish Government failed to protect its subjects of other races from pillage, outrage & murder, but there is evidence that it has been responsible for organizing savagery.

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

14) US Secretary of State George Horton, former United States Consul General at Smyrna wrote:

“I wish to repeat that the consistent policy of the Turk, since the fall of Abdul Hamid, has been the expulsion, killing & elimination of the Christian races."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

15) Lewis Einstein was the late Special Agent of the American Embassy at Constantinople. In his memoirs he wrote:

"The persecutions of the Greeks are assuming unexpected proportions [...] the intention existed to uproot and destroy."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

16) Speaking on Greek deportations in the House of Commons, the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George declared:

“tens of thousands of men, women and children have been deported, & tens of thousands have died. It was pure deliberate extermination.”

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

17) British Prime Minister David Lloyd George also wrote in his memoirs:

"The Greeks of Asia Minor had also suffered heavily from the brutalities of the Turks during the Great War. Hundreds of thousands were massacred in cold blood during the war."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

18) Sir Horace Rumbold (1869-1941), British High Commissioner in Constantinople to Lord George Curzon, British Minister of Foreign Affairs:

"The Turks appear to be working on a deliberate plan to get rid of Minorities."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü
#GreekGenocide

19) In a memorandum on massacres and persecutions of Greeks, George W. Rendel (1889-1979) of the British Foreign Office wrote:

“... it is generally agreed that ... over 500,000 Greeks were deported, of whom comparatively few survived."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü
#GreekGenocide

20) In his memoirs, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote:

“... Mustapha Kemal's Army ... celebrated their triumph by the burning of Smyrna to ashes and by a vast massacre of its Christian population...”

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü
#GreekGenocide

21) British Diplomat Mr. Lindleys Dispatch #317 from June 21 1922:

"The conditions of Christians is horrible. All villages have been set on fire. Others who were driven away were massacred on the way, and others were killed on the spot or burned alive."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

22) British Diplomat Mr. Lindleys Dispatch #317 from June 21 1922:

"Amissos, Paffra and Arba where most of the Greek communities were have completely disappaered [...] Asman Aga has exterminated all the male inhabitants."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

23) The New York Times, January 13, 1915.

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24) The Evening Independent, St.Petersburg, Florida, October 17, 1917.

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25) "Turks Slaughter Christian Greeks", Lincoln Daily Star, 19 October 1917.

"Not satisfied with torture of Armenians, Turks extend cruelty to Greeks."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

26) Newspaper published by The Scotsman on 20 July 1915 entitled, "Greek Population of Turkey, A Crisis At Aivali."

"Aivili is a purely Greek town. The population of 25,000 has been ordered to withdraw into the interior of Asia Minor."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

27) 20 Mar 1919: Defeated Turk Orders Killing, Washington Herald.

"I call your attention to the attitude of the Greeks towards Muslims. We must exterminate this base, miserable nation."

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28) Hamilton Spectator - 30 April 1918.

"The Turks are advancing in the Caucasus and are perpetrating wholesale massacres of Christians killing indiscriminately Armenians, Greeks, Americans
and missionaries."

#PontosSoykırımıAnmaGünü

29) "Pontian Greeks who escaped from the labour battalions or direct extermination, began to organise resistance against the genocidal Turks as early as 1915. The idea was to escape the extermination and to defend themselves, but also to take revenge." https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/05/19/the-pontian-greeks-fought-hard-and-bravely-against-genocidal-barbarity/