1914 – 1923 : THE GENOCIDE OF THE HELLENISM OF PONTOS. The Turkish regime continues the crime.

1914 – 1923 : THE GENOCIDE OF THE HELLENISM OF PONTOS
The Turkish regime continues the crime

From texts/archive*  HPrPHA “Argo”

19th MAY – MEMORY DAY

PONTUS EUXINUS –  Witness of the Biblical Cataclysm, the Starting Point of Mythology and History. The marine area of Pontus Euxinus (later named the Black Sea).

PONTUS (PONTOS) – is considered to be the coastal area around Pontus Euxinus, mainly of the south coast, in the northeast part of Asia Minor, in depth to 150 km deep in the peninsula. It is extended all the way to Batumi in the east, to Inepoli in the west and has an area of about 140.000 sq. km.

PONTIANS or ROMEI – the Greeks of Pontos; they established the first cities around the Black Sea 30 centuries ago (until then it was called Axenus Pontus). They were an indigenous population of the area until 1924…

The Hellenism of the Pontos has contributed immensely to the progress and civilization of humanity. From the Golden fleece, the Argonaut expedition, Prometheus and Kolchida, the Amazons – to name but a few of the Greek mythology – to the kingdom of the Mithridates, the philosopher Diogenes the Sinopian, the pioneer of the Renaissance Bessarion the Trapezuntian, the geographer Strabon, the great Emperors Komnenes, the society for the liberation of Greece “Filiki Hetairia” and its leader Prince Ypsilanti – the list can continue to many paragraphs in recalling the historical years…

In 363-63 b.C. there was the Pontian kingdom of Mithridates dynasty. Later, Pontos became an important region of the Byzantine Empire. After the collapse of Byzantium, the Pontus dominated as an autonomous Empire with Trapezus, (Trebizond) as its capital (The Empire of Trapezus, Komnenes Dynasty 1204–1461). It was the only organized Hellenic (Greek) country which lasted fourteen centuries as a self-ruled country or as a part of the Byzantine Empire.. It’s archaeological, cultural and population seal is evident all along the coastline of the Pontus Euxinus especially in the southern, northern and eastern regions. The Pontos offered Christianity many Saints and Martyrs. It is an area with innumerable ancient monuments and monasteries where a highly advanced educational system was maintained. The Empire of Trapezus was the last Greek, Byzantine soil which was occupied by the Ottoman hordes in 1461…

THE PONTOS IN OUR TIME – has been one of the most tortured and oppressed region Asia Minor due to Turkish brutality. It may be the only area in the world where even now Christians have to be hide their faith (crypto Christians) so as not to be persecuted or put to death. It was there that the horror of the Greek genocide by turks took place in the 20th century. In the years 1914-1923 thousands of women, children and men, young and old, were killed – about one half of the officially registered Greek population. They were Greek and Christians; therefore they “had” to perish.
In May 19, 1919 the Turkish military man Mustafa Kemal (ataturk) disembarks in Amisos (Samsun) in order to intensify the islamistic movement for the extermination of the indigenous Greek Christians and to finish the second stage of the genocide. Releasing their army and mobsters, the Turks savagely assault, torture, murder, rob and ravage the greek villages and homes. In 1921, in Amasya city, they stage a fake trial and rapidly kill hundreds of intellectuals and members of the political leadership of Pontos by hanging them. In many areas the turkish army gathers hundreds women with their kids and elderly people in the schools and churches of the village to burn them alive in the buildings. The atrocity of the barbarians was beyond limits! In the area of Amasya, out of the 183.000 residents the 134.078 of them were exterminated. The barbarian onslaught , the torturing and the massive killing of kids, women, eldery people and men is recorded throughout the area of historic Pontos. Officially, 353.000 perished but the number is much higher than that.
The Pontos was the only district of Asia Minor where the unarmed greek population– isolated from the rest of civilized world – resisted heroically against the genocide of the barbarian regime. Pontos fought completely alone for its survival and freedom, men and women all together.

For the repression of the Salvation Effort and to complete the genocide, the Turks got 30.000 soldiers and thousands of mobsters. The salvation groups kept fighting and after the defeat of Greece in 1922. The last Pontian rebels remained in the mountain area of Santa until 1924 and retreated without surrending their armor.
The expediencies of the Great Powers of the time, the unreserved support of the Turk criminals by the newly created soviet government of Lenin and the hypocrisy of the E. Venizelos government facilitated the crime. Those who survived became refugees in various countries (Europe, USA, Russia) leaving behind thousands of massacred relatives, ancestral grounds, cities and ancient temples. A big part of the survivors embodied liberated Greece and contributed substantially to the progress of its modern history. Even now many Pontian greek families are still arriving from the ex-Soviet Union…Thousands Greek families from Pontos came in Greece the next decades from the Soviet Union, specially the period 1965-1967 and after 1980 when the Soviet Union was down.

In1994, after a long lasting fight for justice the Greek Parliament officially instituted 19 May as the Day of Commemoration of the Genocide of the Hellenism of Pontos with great delay of decades towards its obligation to pay justice to the martyrs and heroes of the genocide…

Turkey and the kemal regime – the “spoiled, naughty child“of the region – was never obligated to apologize for the crimes they committed and which they are still committing. It has never contributed anything to the world Civilization – only genocides, slaughters, suppression and plundering of people.
The toleration of the “western world” and the absence of punishment allow the guilty Turkish regime to continue its violent tactics and cover the traces of its crimes. The brutalities and the killings of Christians by the islamistic and kemalistic system of Turkey stem from its syndrome to impose the result of the massive genocide of 1914-1923 [such as the assassination of pastor Andrea Santoro in Trebizond in 2006, the murder of three persons in their work place in Malatya in 2007 because they distributed the Bible etc., the prosecution of the Pontian writer Omer Asan for his book “Pontus Kulturu” (Pontian Culture, 2002), turning the museum of the Byzantine Holy Temple of Saint Sofia in Trapezunta into a mosque (2013), closing again the historic Byzantine monastery of Panagia Sumela (2016), imprisoning the Pontian Yannis-Vasilis Yayladi because he referred to genocide (2017) etc..]. In historic Pontos the Turkish regime continues to persecute the Pontic culture, terrifies and imprisons the inhabitants, restrains the communication in Romeika (the Pontic language) – the only surviving branch of the ancient Greek language – and destroys the cultural, historical and natural identity of the area… For which alleged crimes, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria were “punished“ by some of the “NATO allies“, who allowed the real terrorist of the area to continue undisturbed… Consequently, the destruction of historical Christian shrines in northern Balkans and the strengthening of the islamistic fanaticism [see atrocities and destructions of hundreds orthodox churches in Serbia, separation of Kosovo and installation-development of a new barbarian autonomous state structure, tolerance and fomentation of the Turkish and Albanian aggression i.e.] encouraged the dark activity of the Turkish regime in the northern Greek region too.
The Turkish regime, always close to its barbarian and obscurantist past, has proven that it always acted and acts with hate towards anything Greek and Christian. The unofficial, hidden political agenda of Turkey about supporting and enhancing the criminal hordes in Middle Asia, Balkans and other places, that terrorize and kill massively Christian populations, embodies its unrepentant and expansive goals, as a continuation of the Genocide Turkey committed in the historical Pontos. The Turkish regime, besides all that, arrests and imprisons reporters (27-11-2015) that show the role it plays in the support of the international terrorism.
The guilty Turkey, by attacking Cyprus in 1974 is still military holding  the north section of Cyprus Democracy, where it settled thousands of islamistic illegal immigrants.Turkey is often violating the Greek air and sea borders by using military aircrafts and ships, pursuing warfare with Greece and Cyprus.
Acts of “solidarity” to the Turkish regime is an insult to the Human dignity, especially when coming from government executives of Countries.

The indigenous of Pontos (Romei – Rum and Urum) that have stayed and live in their ancestral region of Pontos, that have preserved and speak the Pontian (Romeika, Rumca) or speak Turkish as result that occurred after centuries of harsh oppression, have the undeniable right to speak their mother Pontian language, a right to their culture, to preserve their unique Pontian iden-tity and to know their history. With them are all the other Pontians that found themselves living in other countries.
Turkey is called, as it has the ongoing enga-gement to the millions living Pontians of the world, to provide their undisputed rights given the fact that it is highly responsible for the Genocide and the exterminate the Pontian people. The historical Pontos belongs to its people only and noone has any right to falsify, change or covet to its cultural, historical and geographical identity of martyric Land of the Hellenism of Pontos.

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(* Personal, association’s, bibliography of others).