Hellenic Electronic Center

Turkish Propaganda tries to associate the Armenian Genocide with the Russians and the Hellenic Genocide with the expedition of 1919-22 to Smyrna.

As previously posted, the policies to destroy the Greek populations in the regions of Asia Minor were conducted as early as 1914 when the Sublime Porte sent a letter dated May 14th, 1914 to take action against the Greeks of Smyrna. The message implies Genocide as a possible measure
when it declares, “If they (the Greeks) refuse to emigrate to the places assigned to them, you should issue verbal instructions to our Mussulman brothers so that they may, by all kinds of excesses, compel the Greeks to leave their homes of their own accord.”

There has been a tendency by many to confuse the motivations of the Greek presence in Asia Minor.
The outright Genocide of the Greeks has been demonstrated in a previous message with specific quotations given by Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos in an address to Parliament as early as
1915, and in the memorandum submitted to the Peace Conference of 1919.

At the conference that took place in Lausanne, Venizelos was out of power but represented Greece. Doros Alastos, biographer of Venizelos cited a statement of the defense of the Greek campaign in Asia Minor in his book, “Greece was not brought to Asia Minor and the Hellespont by territorial greed or for the desire of the appropriation of other nations property. She was brought to TERRITORIES ESSENTIALLY GREEK (emphasis mine) by a sense of duty to the call of blood and the cry of history.”

Herbert Adam Gibbons, another biographer of the Greek Prime Minister wrote about the Turkish atrocities against Greece during the First World War, in his 1920 biography “Venizelos”.

The following is a quote from Gibbons,

“All around Aidin the Turks, instead of opposing the Greek advance, burned villages and shot up their fellow Christian citizens. At Omorlou for instance, the whole population was murdered.

While these horrors were going on, the press of Europe and America was being fed with stories of Greek atrocities after the Smyrna landing. It was asserted that the Turks at Aidin could hardly be blamed for reprisals- as if the Turks, up to the time of the Smyrna landing , had not been responsible for the death of half a million Greeks!”

Greece was the only power with legitimate claims in Asia Minor. Greece had religious, cultural and historical ties to Asia Minor, and was intent on protecting the Greek populations from the Turks. None of the major powers could claim humanitarian or historical purposes for entering the region. On the contrary, as has been brilliantly described by Edward Hale Bierstadt as “economic imperialism” in his book the Great Betrayal, the Great powers had strict economic and political interests.

With regard to the question of Greek atrocities, this has been addressed by George Horton in his dispatches to the State Department from Athens in the days after the devastating events at Smyrna.

“The conduct of the Greeks toward the thousands of Turks residing in Greece, while the ferocious massacres were going on, and while Smyrna was being burned and refugees, wounded, outraged and ruined, were pouring into every port of Hellas, was one of the most inspiring and beautiful chapters in all that country’s history. There were no repri­sals. The Turks living in Greece were in no wise molested, nor did any storm of hatred or revenge burst upon their heads. This is a great and beau­tiful victory that, in its own way, rises to the level of Marathon and Salamis.”
Capt. Evangelos Rigos
HEC Director
www.greece.org