MyGreekSpirit: Asia Minor Greeks

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Asia Minor Greeks

The persecutions, massacres, expulsions, and death marches of the Asia Minor Greeks were renewed during the early 20th century by the Young Turk administration of the Ottoman Empire and during the subsequent revolution of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Ottoman Greek population was severely affected; its misfortunes became known as the Greek Genocide. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, the Allies granted Greece, with the Treaty of Sèvres, the administration of Eastern Thrace (apart from Constantinople) and the city of Smyrna and its environs. The Pontic Greeks attempted to establish their own republic, the Republic of Pontus. The defeat of the Greek army during the Greco-Turkish War led to what became known in Greece as the Asia Minor Catastrophe. A series of events, with the Great Fire of Smyrna been their peak, diminished the 3,000 year old Greek presence in Asia Minor. The Treaty of Lausanne, which was signed in 1923, anticipated the compulsory exchange of populations. The remaining Greek Orthodox population of Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace, as well as the Muslim population of Greece (the Greeks of Constantinople, Imbros and Tenedos and the Muslims of Western Thrace were excluded) were denaturalized from homelands of centuries or millennia.
The Asia Minor Expedition and Catastrophe, as well as the uprooting of the ethnic Greek population from Anatolia after three thousand years of presence, had an enormous impact on the Greek psyche. The Smyrna Catastrophe has been considered as the worst incident of modern Greek history, and as an incident of the same magnitude as the Fall of Constantinople for the Greeks. The matters related to the refugees halted the Greco-Turkish relations for many decades. The issues concerning the missing Greeks were soon raised in the International Red Cross, without any success and cooperation from the Turkish side. To this day, the Greek citizens who were born in Asia Minor have to apply for a visa in order to enter Turkey (something that does not apply to Greek citizens born in Greece).
The descendants of the refugees have found hundreds of organizations and institutes in Greece and in the diaspora to promote their civilization and to keep in touch with their roots. Various museums in Greece (such as the Benaki Museum) display artifacts from Asia Minor, Pontus, Cappadocia and Eastern Thrace to denote the Greek presence and emphasize the origins of about 40% of the population of modern Greece. *Wikipedia*