Paphitis wrote:That is an appalling post STUD. There can never be any justification for the sacking of Smyrna or the 100,000 Greeks and Armenians who were butchered.
Can I ask you, when you think the Greek Genocide started? Was it 1914?
How many Pontian Greeks were killed? Estimates range from 300,000 to 500,000?
When did the Armenian Genocide occur? How many killed? 1,500,000
When did the Greeks land at Smyrna? 1919 you say?
Indeed: Greek Government military forces landed at Smryna in 1919 - but what was the justification for the slaughter of Turkish Civilians in 1919/23 by Greeks in the Greek-Turkish war of 1919/23 that followed this landing?
I am in that respect very well aware that in the period from 1900 on-wards, in particular after 1915, The various Ottoman Empire administrations presided over wholesale and systematic genocide, of which the Armenian Genocide is the best known, starting 100 years ago this month, but also involving the Pontian Greeks and the Assyrians. I understand that the acts of the then governments resulted in possibly as many as 4 million deaths, either due to deliberate murders, or as direct consequence of the forced marches, death marches, no less, that they ordered. The crime of those massacres and marches is matched only by the crime of Turkey in refusing to recognise these events for what they were, as evil acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
What happened in 1923, with the sack of Smryna is simply inexcusable - a crime against Humanity, as were, in my view, the massacres conducted by Greeks on the Turks in the period before.
However I do not think one can selectively condemn one set of events without condemning the other. Will you join me in condemning both?
I otherwise think you have missed the point - that in 1955 to 1964 there was a history of Genocide by Greeks inflicted on Turks in the living memory of anyone in their late 40's (in 1964) which TMT could shamelessly exploit to create fear, even though ethnic cleansing let alone Genocide of TSC may not have been on the agenda of the GSC.