The seven churches, tlie seven torches of light of the Greek-Christian civilisation are no longer burning. The land of Asia Minor, an area where for 3000 years Greek civilisation flourished is now being trampled by foreign invaders : the Turks.
The leaders of the varius Turkish tribes quickly realized that since they comprised a minority of conquerors it would be difficult for them to control the occupied lands, and simultaneously to pursue further conquests without taking certain <<special measures>>. Thus, they decided to adopt and apply harsh methods previously unknown to the whole world. Methods which were never repeated again by another nation on earth. The primary measures taken were as follows :
1. They declared their state a warrior or <<Gazi>> state. In other words, a state that was bound to declare holy war (Jihad) against the non-believers. This way, they were able to bring together all kinds of adventurers, who were willing to fight either for ideological reasons, or for just the spoils of the war.
2. They adopted the inhumane measure of forcibly recruiting young Christian children. In other words, they forcibly took male children of the enslaved Christian families (mainly Greeks. and later also Armenians Bulgarians, Albanians and Serbs), and brought them up in special camps They conditioned them to become fanatic Turks and relentless killers to their own people. These children would grow up to believe that their father was the Sultan and that if they were to die in battle they would go to heaven. Thus, because of this New Army, or Janissaries, (Yeni-ceri in turkish) the Turks continued to pursue their conquests.
3. They slaughtered systematically millions of Asia Minor's inhabitants, in order to change the ethnic character of the land. It has been estimated that during the seven centuries of Turkish presence in Asia Minor several millions of Greeks, at least two-three million Armenians and hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Syrians, but also Serbs, and Bulgarians in Europe, were systematically massacred. In the 20th century alone, it has been estimated that approximately 1,5 million Armenians and more than 1 million Greeks were extrerminated.
In this manner, the Turks managed to hold on to Asia Minor, a foreign land for them, where Greek civilisation had flourished for 2.000 years before the appearance of the Turks.
The Turks just destroyed this civilisation and unfortunately did not even try to take advantage of its accomplishments.
The Turks failed to assimilate the various nationalities within their empire. They could not also administer them efficiently, not even control the economy because commerce and industry was left in the hands of the Greeks, Armenians and Jews, while the Turks kept busy with governing and simultaneously exploiting the profits while terrorizing the inhabitants.
The massacres were premeditated : It was decided that <<the Ottomanisation of all Turkish citizens, which never succeeded through persuasion, had to be done by the force of arms>>,
At first, the persecutions took place against the Greeks, made under the pretext of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Persecution took the form of lootings, expulsions and murders. After the wars, persecution continued even more intensively, to the point where on the 25 of May 1914 the Ecumenical Patriarchate was forced to declare that the Orthodox Church was <<under attack>>.
The Patriarchate, further, in a show of protest and mourning, suspended the activities of Greek churches and Greek schools throughout Turkey.
Prominent officers of the Young Turks movement, while serving as members of the government, organized the expulsion of the inhabitants as well as the lootings and massacres that were perpetrated against them. Specifically, Talat Pasha, minister of the interior, was prominent as the master mind of the pogroms. However, the entire Turkish state administration participated in the organization and the execution of the extermination programme.
They began with the genocide of the Armenians, who did not possess a state which would rush to their aid and followed it up with mass expulsions and massacres of the Greeks. The victims of this period are over 2.5 million people of which 1.5 million were Armenians.
In 1920, Alexander Millerand, president of the Supreme Allied Council stated : <<The Turkish government not only failed in its duty to protect its non-Turkish citizens from the looting, violence and murders, but there are many indications that the Turkish government itself was responsible for directing and organizing the most cruel attacks against the populations, which it was supposed to protect. For these reasons, the Allied powers have decided to liberate from the Turkish yoke all the lands where the majority of the people were non-Turks>>.
The Treaty of Sevres was signed by the Turkish government but Mustafa Kemal refused to recognize it.
After 40 long months of war, duringiwhich Kemal's forces secured considerable foreign assistance, the Greek military front in Anatolia collapsed.
The Turks reoccupied Asia Minor and entered Smyrna on September 8, 1922. In Smyrna, in the meantime, there was an influx of refugees from various parts of Asia Minor. And the conquering Turks set the city on fire and unleashed the last phase of the genocide against the Greeks and Armenians.
These were moments of unbelievable horror. The pier turned red by the blood of tlhe victims. The bishop of Smyrna Chrysostomos was publicly ridiculed and then slaughtered. Events were too horrible to even describe. The American Consul in Smyrna, George Horton, gives a detailed and objective picture of the chilling Turkish crimes in his book T h e B l i g h t o f A s i a ( Indianapolis : Bobb and Merryl, 1925).
The Treaty of Lausanne ended the Greek-Turkish war and imposed the unjust and mandatory exchange of 300,000 Turks from Greece for the 1,400,000 Greeks that survived the holocaust.
The Greek refugees of Asia Minor, without being consulted had to give up their ancestral homes to the Turks, after almost 4,000 years of glorious and productive history.
Even though the Turks have not yet been punislied by human justice, we believe that there is a Divine Justice to which the Turks will sooner or later be answerable.
TEXT TAKEN BY "http://imia.cc.duth.gr/turkey/gree.e.html"
