The 1914 Greek deportations was the forcible expulsion of around 150,000 to 300,000 Ottoman Greeks from Eastern Thrace and the Aegean coast of Anatolia by the Committee of Union and Progress that culminated in May and June 1914. The deportations almost caused war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire and were an important precursor to the Armenian genocide.
In the aftermath of the 1909 Greek annexation of Crete, the Ottoman boycott movement began to form, initially targeting citizens of Greece but also affecting Ottoman Greeks with Greek citizenship as well as eventually all Ottoman Greeks. Violence and looting were soon reported. [2] The aim of the boycott was to make it impossible for Greeks to live in Anatolia, [3] as well as to displace Christians from the economy to create a national economy dominated by Muslim Turks. This new economic class was perceived to be more loyal to the state, not just because of its ethnoreligious characteristics but because it owed its place to the removal of the competition by the state. Many Ottoman Greeks were economically ruined by the boycott but they were reluctant to leave. [4] Some left temporarily and returned when the boycott died down. [3] In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars the boycott continued to intensify and was directly organized by the ruling party, Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). [5] Historian Matthias Bjørnlund sees the Greek deportation as "an extension of the policy of economic and cultural boycott". [6]
The 1912 First Balkan War resulted in the loss of almost all of the empire's European territory [7] and the mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans; [8] around 350,000 to 400,000 Muslims fled to the Ottoman Empire between 1912 and the Ottoman entry into World War I. [9] Ottoman Muslim society was incensed by the atrocities committed against Balkan Muslims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment and leading to a desire for revenge. [10] Contemporary historian Arnold Toynbee, in The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (1922), emphasizes the similarities of the expulsion of Ottoman Greeks to that of Balkan Muslims, stating: "the Balkan War[s] had two harvests of victims: first, the Rumili Turks on the one side, and... the Anatolian Greeks on the other". [11] During the First Balkan War Greece also seized the Greek-populated islands of Chios, Lesvos, and Limnos near the Anatolian coast. [12] The European powers allowed Greece to keep the islands despite Ottoman protests that they threatened the mainland, as they were located adjacent to areas where many Ottoman Greeks lived. [13]
In January 1913, the CUP launched another coup, installed a one-party state, and strictly repressed all real or perceived internal enemies. [14] [15] After the 1913 coup, the CUP escalated anti-Greek and anti-Armenian violence and pursued a policy of changing the demographic balance of border areas by resettling Muslim immigrants while coercing Christians to leave; [16] immigrants were promised property that had belonged to Christians. [17] As a consequence of the war, Muslim/Turkish nationalism became the strongest ideological current in the remaining Ottoman Empire. [18] The deportations of Greeks were "informed by [this] radically exclusionist political ideology". [6] Another concern was the concentration of a population whose loyalty was doubted by the CUP in a strategically important location. [19]
When parts of Eastern Thrace were reoccupied by the Ottoman Empire during the Second Balkan War in mid-1913, local Greeks as well as Armenians were subjected to looting and intimidation especially in Malkara and Rodosto. Beginning in March 1914, Special Organization units began to systematically attack Greek villages, conscripting the men into labor battalions and forcing other residents to leave; Greek-owned businesses were confiscated and given to Muslims. [20] [21] The aim was to persuade or, failing that, force Greeks to leave, by preventing them from accessing their farmland, levying disproportionately high taxation, confiscation, forcible conscription, and murders. [22] The Ottoman government specifically controlled which enterprises should fire Christian workers and paid the passage of all emigrants to Greece. [23] Some Greeks still live in East Thrace in Turkey, descended from the people and families who converted to Islam in order to stay and avoid being deported to Greece. [24]
Danish consul Alfred van der Zee believed that due to the relatively low population density in the area, it would have been possible to resettle Muslim refugees without expelling the Greek population. [25] Special Organization leader Eşref Sencer Kuşçubaşı said that the population movement was organized by the state, and that in February 1914 Enver Pasha had insisted on doing away with the non-Muslim population due to its perceived disloyalty—such an action was deemed necessary to preserve the empire. Russian consul Andrew D. Kalmykow wrote that Talat Bey (later Talat Pasha) told him "the Greeks cannot remain. They are forced to leave. They must go." [26] Halil Menteşe stated that "Talât Bey suggested that the country be cleansed of those elements that were seen as capable of betraying the state". [17]
Attacks on Greeks began in March and April 1913, as attested by many complaints sent by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the Ottoman authorities of looting, seizure of property, arbitrary arrest, and expulsion. [27] The government closely observed the process, collecting information on the villages to be cleared and planning the resettlement of Muslims there. However, it maintained plausible deniability by employing a dual-track system—sending incriminating orders through unofficial channels—and denying responsibility for the ensuing attacks. [28] The government ordered that empty villages be guarded to prevent looting so that the property of the Greeks could be allocated to the intended recipients, Muslim immigrants to be resettled there. [29]
One of the most severe attacks in Western Anatolia was the massacre of Phocaea beginning 12 June; several thousand Greeks were forced to flee after the systematic destruction and plundering of their town by bashi-bazouk irregulars. [26] Prior to this attack many Greeks from around Çakmaklı, Aliağa had fled to Phocaea while others emigrated to Partheni. [30] Those from inland areas such as Kozbeyli, Gerenköy, and Söğütcük came under threat and also fled to Phocaea. [30] This concentration of refugees, exceeding the capacity of the harbor, led to the village being surrounded and higher intensity violence occurring than elsewhere in Western Anatolia. [31] The American Consulate in Salonica estimated that some five hundred to six hundred people had been killed in the broader area around Smyrna. [32]
In some cases the violent anti-Greek campaigns were directly coordinated with the landing of Muslim refugees, who were tasked with driving out the Greek population and taking over their properties. [33] Tens of thousands of Greeks escaped to the nearby Aegean islands, often in the same boats that had brought Muslim refugees. [34] For the most part the Greeks did not engage in armed resistance, but in Saraköy some Greeks defended themselves until they ran out of ammunition and were killed; only a few were able to escape to nearby Menemen, too large of a town for the irregulars to attack. [35] [13] The later Turkish president Celal Bayar coordinated the expulsion. [19] The local economy and standard of living declined significantly, as most of the immigrants were peasants who lacked the skills to cultivate local crops and much property was looted or destroyed by them. [34]
On 29 September 1913, 14 October 1913, and 14 November 1913, the Ottoman Empire concluded agreements on voluntary population exchange with Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece respectively. [36] Based on negotiations in May between Eleftherios Venizelos and Galip Kemali Bey , an agreement was signed on 1 July 1914 "On the mutual, voluntary exchange of Turks in Macedonia for Greeks in the provinces of Eastern Thrace and Macedonia". This agreement was never ratified. [37] [38] The Ottoman government moved ahead with its expulsions of Christian citizens without waiting for international agreements or negotiations to proceed. [39]
The Ottoman authorities tried to maintain secrecy around the operation, and the responsibility of the CUP for organizing the campaign, in order to stave off international outrage. [35] Akçam states that "Maximum effort was expended to create the impression that none of these actions by agents of the CUP were ever connected to the state." [40] Emigrants had to sign papers asserting that they left voluntarily and willing their property to Ottoman institutions. [41] Foreign consuls, contrary to Ottoman denials, reported that the campaign of terror and expulsion was systematic and coordinated by the Ottoman government, noting that in some cases official gendarmes conducted the attacks. [42] The Ottoman Embassy in Paris reported that information about the anti-Greek campaign was harming the empire in European public opinion, and suggested that the attacks be stopped at once if the reports were true. [43]
The Ottoman authorities tried to leverage the threat of ethnic cleansing to pressure Greece to renounce its claims to the islands that it seized during the Second Balkan War. [17] Many observers believed at the time that persecution would lead to war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. [35] Venizelos stated that Greece would remain neutral in the upcoming World War I if Ottoman Greeks were not deported and the Ottoman Empire did not attack Greek islands in the Aegean. The CUP agreed to this and ceased their ethnic cleansing campaign. [44] On 2 November 1914, Talat announced the official end of the policy, as he had come to an understanding with Germany, which did not want Greece to join the Entente. This cable stated that no further attacks on Greeks would be tolerated. [45]
The total number of Greeks expelled from the Ottoman Empire is not known with certainty. Historian Taner Akçam estimates it at "roughly three hundred thousand", [46] while Bjørnlund writes that "some 150–200,000 Ottoman Greeks" left either forcibly or after being threatened with violence. [47] Vasileios Meichanetsidis estimates that at least 115,000 people were deported from Eastern Thrace to Greece, 85,000 from Eastern Thrace to central Anatolia, and another 150,000 from western Anatolia to Greece. [48]
In his memoirs, United States ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. states that "the Turks had expelled the Greeks so successfully that they had decided to apply the same method to all the other races in the empire". [49] On 6 July 1914, Ottoman Greek deputy Emmanouil Emmanouilidis raised the matter of the deportation in the Ottoman Parliament. Talat explained that the Muslim migrants were resettled in the depopulated villages because they would have died if sent to the deserts of Syria and Iraq—exactly where he sent Armenian deportees a year later. [50] [51] Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser writes that the success achieved by "the CUP men of action... exceeded all expectations" and they "could savor a crushing victory achieved in a secret war along domestic ethnoreligious lines". [52] Bjørnlund states that the perceived "success" of the Greek deportation "meant that even more radical measures could be seen as not only possible, but as yet another extension of a policy of social engineering through Turkification". [53] Historian Tessa Hofmann argues that "the deportations in Eastern Thrace appear as the prototype of all subsequent deportations of Christians". [48]
Many of the same CUP operatives, including Şükrü Kaya, Nâzım Bey, and Mehmed Reshid, were involved in both persecutions. [53] [54] Akçam describes the Greek deportation as "a trial run for the Armenian genocide". [55] [49] He notes that both operations were "ostensibly under the legal umbrella of Ottoman population policy", yet "an unofficial plan was implemented by a shadow organization that attacked and terrorized the Ottoman Christians". [11] Bjørnlund states that "the official reactions to the 1914 events point toward aspects of" Armenian genocide denial as developed by the CUP and continuing into the present day: "the claim that the government, when it came to killings and persecution, had no control of local officials or of the designated killer gangs, and the attempts to apply damage control through cover-ups, shifting of blame, and propaganda". [56] Talat blamed all excesses on the local government of Rahmi Bey, while the Ottoman government claimed that only 1,000 Greeks had left, against the will of the authorities, and the "incidents" were caused equally by Greeks and rogue Ottoman elements. [57] Major deportations of Anatolian Greeks from the coast to the interior occurred during World War I from 1915 due to belief that they were a fifth column, although they were not subjected to systematic killing as were the Armenians. [58] [59]
The Treaty of Lausanne is a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–23 and signed in the Palais de Rumine in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially resolved the conflict that had initially arisen between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied French Republic, British Empire, Kingdom of Italy, Empire of Japan, Kingdom of Greece, Kingdom of Serbia, and the Kingdom of Romania since the outset of World War I. The original text of the treaty is in French. It emerged as a second attempt at peace after the failed and unratified Treaty of Sèvres, which had sought to partition Ottoman territories. The earlier treaty, signed in 1920, was later rejected by the Turkish National Movement which actively opposed its terms. As a result of the Greco-Turkish War, Izmir was reclaimed, and the Armistice of Mudanya was signed in October 1922. This armistice provided for the exchange of Greek-Turkish populations and allowed unrestricted civilian, non-military passage through the Turkish Straits.
The Armenian genocide 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.
Mehmed Talaat, commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha, was an Ottoman politician and convicted war criminal who served as the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918. Talaat Pasha was chairman of the Union and Progress Party, which operated a one-party dictatorship in the Empire; during World War I he became Grand Vizier. He was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansings during his time as Minister of Interior Affairs.
The Greek genocide, 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) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It 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 the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.
The Special Organization was an intelligence, paramilitary, and secret police organization in the Ottoman Empire known for its key role in the commission of the Armenian genocide. Originally organized under the Ministry of War, the organization was shifted to answer directly to the ruling party Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in February 1915. Led by Bahaeddin Şakir and Nazım Bey and formed in early 1914 of tribesmen as well as more than 10,000 convicted criminals—offered a chance to redeem themselves if they served the state—as a force independent of the regular army.
Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out, claiming that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated. In the genocide's aftermath, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed, and denial has been the policy of every government of the Republic of Turkey, as of 2023, and later adopted by the Republic of Azerbaijan, as of 1991.
Mustafa Abdülhalik Renda was a Turkish civil servant and politician of Tosk Albanian descent who was acting President of Turkey for one day after Atatürk's death in November 1938. He is infamously known for his role in the Armenian genocide.
Mehmed Reshid was an Ottoman physician, official of the Committee of Union and Progress, and governor of the Diyarbekir Vilayet (province) of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He is known for organizing the 1915 genocide of the Armenian and Assyrian communities of Diyarbekir, in which between 144,000 and 157,000 Armenians, Assyrians, and other Christians were killed. During the Allied occupation of Istanbul, Reshid was arrested and his roles in the massacres were exposed. He later escaped from prison, but committed suicide after being cornered by local authorities.
The Committee of Union and Progress, later the Union and Progress Party, was a revolutionary organization and political party active between 1889 and 1926 in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey. The foremost faction within the Young Turk movement, it instigated the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which ended absolute monarchy and began the Second Constitutional Era. From 1913 to 1918, the CUP ruled the empire as an authoritarian one-party state and committed genocides against the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian peoples as part of a broader policy of ethnic erasure during the late Ottoman period. The CUP was associated with the wider Young Turk movement, and its members have often been referred to as Young Turks, although the movement produced other political parties as well. Within the Ottoman Empire its members were known as İttihadcılar ('Unionists') or Komiteciler ('Committeemen').
Witnesses and testimony provide an important and valuable insight into the events which occurred both during and after the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide was prepared and carried out by the Ottoman government in 1915 as well as in the following years. As a result of the genocide, as many as 1.5 million Armenians who were living in their ancestral homeland were deported and murdered.
George Edward White was an American Congregationalist missionary for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for forty-three years. Stationed in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian genocide as President of the Anatolia College in Merzifon, White attempted to save the lives of many Armenians, including "refused to tell" where Armenians were hiding so to save them from getting deported or killed. Thus he became an important witness to the Armenian Genocide.
Sürgün or verb form sürmek was a practice within the Ottoman Empire that entailed the movement of a large group of people from one region to another, often a form of forced migration imposed by state policy or international authority. The practice was also a form of banishment or exile often applied to the elites of Ottoman society, the Pashas. It was most famously used as a method to forcefully displace the native ethnic Armenians by the Young Turk government in 1915, in order to deal with a perceived threat from Armenian partisan groups receiving military support from the, Ottoman hostile, Russian Empire. These events are listed as one of the methods used to complete the Armenian Genocide.
The massacre of Phocaea occurred in June 1914, as part of the ethnic cleansing policies of the Ottoman Empire that included exile, massacre and deportations. It was perpetrated by irregular Turkish bands against the predominantly ethnic Greek town of Phocaea, modern Foça, in the east coast of the Aegean Sea. The massacre was part of a wider anti-Greek campaign of genocide launched by the Young Turk Ottoman authorities, which included boycott, intimidation, forced deportations and mass killings; and was one of the worst attacks during the summer of 1914.
The evacuation of Ayvalik took place in May 1917 as part of the genocide policies of the Ottoman government. The population of the predominantly Greek-inhabited town of Ayvalik, Ottoman Empire on the east coast of the Aegean Sea was forcibly deported to the hinterland of Anatolia by the Ottoman authorities. The deportation was organized by Imperial German Army General and chief military adviser to the Ottoman Empire, Liman von Sanders, and included death marches, looting, torture and massacre against the local civilian population.
During World War I, Imperial Germany was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire, which perpetrated the Armenian genocide. Many Germans present in eastern and southern Anatolia witnessed the genocide, but censorship and self-censorship hampered these reports, while German newspapers reported Turkish denial of the massacres. About 800 Imperial German Army officers and 25.000 German soldiers were an integral part of the Turkish army and belonged to its command and general staff. It is known that individual German military advisors signed some of the orders that led to deportations of Armenians.
National economy is the economic plan, essentially kleptocratic, envisioned by Ziya Gökalp and carried out by successive Ottoman and Turkish governments, which involved the systematic dispossession of native Christian upper-classes and their replacement by Muslim Turks, in addition to large-scale confiscation and redistribution of Christian-owned property. Türk Yurdu announced 1915 as the starting year of the national economy. To Emil Ludwig, Talaat Pasha mentioned that the loss of the Armenian workforce would damage the economy for a short while, but that Turks would step in their positions and replace the Armenians soon.
On 15 March 1921, Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian assassinated Talaat Pasha—former grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire and the main architect of the Armenian genocide—in Berlin. At his trial, Tehlirian argued, "I have killed a man, but I am not a murderer"; the jury acquitted him.
On 24 May 1915, on the initiative of Russia, the Triple Entente—Russia, France, and the United Kingdom—issued a declaration condemning the ongoing Armenian genocide carried out in the Ottoman Empire and threatening to hold the perpetrators accountable. This was the first use of the phrase "crimes against humanity" in international diplomacy, which later became a category of international criminal law after World War II.
Differing views of what caused the Armenian genocide include explanations focusing on nationalism, religion, and wartime radicalization and continue to be debated among scholars. In the twenty-first century, focus has shifted to multicausal explanations. Most historians agree that the genocide was not premeditated before World War I, but the role of contingency, ideology, and long-term structural factors in causing the genocide continues to be discussed.
Below is an outline of Wikipedia articles related to the Greek genocide and closely associated events and explanatory articles. The topical outline is accompanied by a chronological outline of events. References are provided for background and overview.
A territorial dispute over the northern Aegean islands of Chios, Lesbos, and Lemnos, seized by Greece during the First Balkan War and still claimed by the Ottoman Empire, propelled a naval race between the two states.