Academic Conference on the Asia Minor Catastrophe Held in Illinois

ROSEMONT, Ill. (A.W.) – On Sat., Nov. 7, the Academic Conference on
the Asia Minor Catastrophe took place at the Westin Hotel in Rosemont,
Ill. One hundred people attended the daylong event. George
Movropoulos, president of the Pontian Greek Society of Chicago,
welcomed everyone and presented a brief overview of last year’s
conference, the first of its kind on the subject of the Asia Minor...

Catastrophe—the genocide of the Greeks in the Pontus region of
Anatolia. He stressed the importance of such a conference in order to
promote research, knowledge, and the culture of the Greeks in that
region. He added that to date not enough published literature is
available on the topic. For that reason, the society is working on
establishing a research center. After representatives from the various
Greek organizations, as well as the Greek Vice-Consul, were invited to
say a few words, Movropoulos introduced the moderator, George
Shirinian, director of the Zoryan Institute in Toronto, Canada, and
executive director of the International Institute for Genocide and
Human Rights Studies (a division of the Zoryan Institute).

In his opening remarks, Shirinian briefly discussed the previous
year’s conference, the need for more publications, more scholars, and
training in the languages involved, such as Greek, Armenian, and
Turkish. “These efforts,” Shirinian said, “lead to constructive and
powerful action.” As he concluded his remarks, he stated, “When a
people’s rights are trampled on, no people are free from the same
thing. In a sense, this is a shared human experience.” Shirinian’s
father was a genocide survivor. Following his opening remarks,
Shirinian introduced the speakers.

Dr. Taner Akcam, associate professor of history at Clark University in
Worcester, Mass., presented his paper titled “The Greek ‘Deportations’
and Massacres of 1913-1914, A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide,”
addressing the elements and the calculated methods of destruction of
non-Turkish minorities, namely the Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians,
along with any signs of their respective cultures in Ottoman society.
The goal of the Ottoman government was to “free themselves of
non-Turkish elements in the Aegean—to kill and annihilate them,” Akcam
said. “In 1913 through 1914, a large number of people were expelled
and murdered.” As for the Armenians, many were forced to convert to
Islam but later most were killed. The aim of the campaign of ridding
the country of certain citizens was to reduce the Christian population
to 5-10 percent for “security” reasons. The entire act was a social
engineering process—the killing of the Armenians, and the riddance of
the Greeks, most of whom were deported. “The government,” explained
Akcam, “presented two policies—one legal, the other private.” In the
legal policy, they presented a face of “humanitarianism” in their
manner of “moving” or “deporting” their unwanted populations, while
privately, they conducted illegal and treacherous activities against
productive and peaceful Christian members of their society. Ottoman
archives were to leave the impression that the government carried out
its mission of depopulating the Greek villages in a humane manner. For
those Greeks who survived, in addition to what they had suffered,
fares were collected from them as they were shipped away to Greece. In
his concluding remarks, Akcam explained that the Greek massacres and
deportations were so successful that they became the forerunners for
the Armenian Genocide. When asked about the Armenian Genocide, he
replied, “Turkey will never admit the Armenian Genocide—a crime maybe,
but not genocide.”

Dr. Constantine Hatzidimitriou, Queens director of school improvement
for the NYC Department of Education, and associate adjunct professor
at St. Johns University in New York, presented his paper titled
“Official and Unofficial American Reactions to the Asia Minor
‘Catastrophe’—What the Documentary Evidence Reveals.” Hatzidimitriou
described the burning of Smyrna, and referenced publications, namely
Marjorie Housepian Dobkin’s Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City,
and Giles Milton’s Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922; the Turkification of
minorities and the seizing of their properties; ethnic cleanings and
cover-ups, which continue today; and the use of sanitized reports,
such as those by Admiral Mark Lambert Bristol, instead of those by
George Horton (The Blight of Asia), which were detailed and damning,
and as a result kept secret until the 1950’s. Hatzidimitriou
emphasized the large volume of archival sources describing the
destruction of the Greeks (among them, the massacre of 350,000 Pontic
Greeks) and other minorities in Asia Minor. “If you were a Greek or an
Armenian,” he explained, “your property was seized by the government
because you were not there (either massacred or forcibly driven away).
When there were inquiries about missing people in the region, the
Turks would say ‘they never existed,’ and the Americans, for example,
would say, ‘they are presumed dead because they can’t be located.’”
The example Hatzidimitriou gave of seized property was that of the
burning of the American Consulate by Turkish soldiers and how, as a
result, the consulate found a house to rent. The house was that of an
Armenian who had fled Smyrna, and therefore the property was declared
abandoned.

Matthias Bjornlund, a Danish archival historian who specializes in the
Armenian Genocide and related issues, presented his paper titled
“Aspects of Western Sources and Interpretations of the Pontian
Genocide.” Bjornlund is a researcher and translator of Danish
documents on the Armenian Genocide for a Danish section of the German
website (www.armenocide.de), a committee member preparing for the 2010
exhibition and conference on Scandinavia and the Armenian Genocide in
cooperation with the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute
(www.genocide-museum.am), and author of a monograph on Denmark and the
Armenian Question. His MA thesis was titled “Et Folk Myrdes. Det
Armenske Folkemord i Danske Kilder” (“A People is Being Murdered: The
Armenian Genocide in Danish Sources”). In his paper, Bjornlund
discussed the destruction of Greek and Armenian communities in Smyrna
and stated that the Danish Consul there, as well as Swedish
eyewitnesses described the violence against these people, and the
Austrian Consulate reported mass arrests of Armenians. In 1916, the
Ottoman government had attempted to exterminate the Armenians in that
city but the Germans stopped them. Finally, in 1922, the Greek and
Armenian communities in Smyrna were destroyed. Bjornlund outlined some
of the methods and reasons for expunging not only Smyrna’s Christian
Greek and Armenian minorities, but also the entire country’s Christian
minorities. He explained that the extermination of these minorities
was the official policy of the Ottoman government. Expulsions were to
accompany torture, intimidation, and violent persecution. Greek and
Armenian merchants were forced to close their businesses, which were
quickly replaced with Turkish ones. People were instructed by Muslim
religious leaders to boycott Christian businesses, and as a result,
merchants went bankrupt. In 1914, Inga Nalbandian (a Danish woman
married to an Armenian) reported from Turkey that Muslim women were
threatened not to buy from Greek and Armenian merchants, and that
Greek and Armenian professors were fired from their university
positions. In his concluding remarks, Bjornlund said that, in general,
England, Europe, the Scandinavian countries, and the U.S. try to place
a lid on the Greek and Armenian genocides for economic reasons.

Alexander Kitroeff, associate professor of history at Haverford
College in Pennsylvania, where he also serves as the academic director
of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship, presented his paper
titled “The Plight of the Greek Refugees After the Break-Up of the
Ottoman Empire.” He discussed the importance of photographic evidence,
which documents the way people live, the destruction, the burning, as
well as the superficial or obvious, such as symbols, flags—things we
take for granted. “And the way the photographer takes pictures reveals
much. For example, some photos of victims are taken in a passive way,”
he added. Kitroeff discussed the resettlement of the Ottoman Greeks in
Greece in the 1920’s, their adoption of a “refugee identity” based on
their place of origin and the memories it generated—their common
experience of violence and displacement, and their treatment by
others. He stated that the refugee identity has a history. For the
Ottoman Greeks, it was resettlement in the 1920’s; establishment and
incorporation in the 1930’s to 1950’s; and upward social mobility in
the 1960’s to 1980’s. The professor concluded his presentation by
saying that for political reasons, the Greek government does not want
to raise the issue of the Greek Catastrophe, and so refers to it in
indirect ways, such as literature.

Dr. Van Koufoudakis, rector emeritus, University of Nicosia, Cyprus,
and dean emeritus of the College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana
University and Purdue University, presented his paper titled “Turkey’s
Deliberate and Systematic Violations of International Agreements Since
1923,” in which he described how the Pontian Greeks and the Armenians
were forcibly removed from their homes—their ancestral homeland dating
back 3,000 years—because of their ethnicity, religion, language, and
culture. To assist in the ethnic cleansing of these minorities, which
was the Turkish way of dealing with ethnic groups, criminals were let
loose to terrorize these populations. The people were intimidated,
their properties confiscated, forced to labor under horrendous
conditions, raped, and murdered. The rape of women and children was
the ultimate attack because the offenders knew they had the protection
of the state. Evidence that showed where these minorities had lived
was destroyed, such as buildings, churches, schools, and cemeteries.
Koufoudakis discussed Turkey’s violations of international agreements
since 1923; international apathy, which allows Turkey to continue with
its violations of international laws with impunity; and the practice
of “blaming of others, which is how Turkey can deny what they did.”
Koufoudakis concluded his presentation by stating that American and
British policies against Turkey’s violations are to overlook the
actions on the basis of political expediency for economic and
strategic reasons. “What can we do?” he asked, and then gave examples
of what has been done: “1) The Cypriots have taken Turkey to the
European Court of Human Rights. 2) The Greeks and the Patriarchate of
Istanbul have gone against Turkey for violating property rights to the
European courts and have won.”

As the academicians took final questions from the audience, and then
as Hatzidimitriou presented the closing remarks—in which he discussed
“placing the events of the Anatolian Genocide in the broader context
of Hellenic and world history”—I could not help but think of the final
two lines of the poem, “They Thought They Were Free”: “…When they came
for me, there was no one left to speak out.”

With conferences such as this one, with the establishment of research
centers, more researchers and publications on the topic of genocide,
anguished voices brutally silenced will be heard again.

Πηγή: Armenian Weekly

--
H E L L E N I C A F F A I R S F O R U M
http://hellenic-affairs-forum.blogspot.com