​GREEK GENOCIDE
​1914-1923 

Seeking justice for
the victims of the
Greek Genocide

Contents

  1. Position Statement on the Greek Genocide

  2. Overview of the Greek Genocide

  3. Chronology of the Greek Genocide

  4. Greek Genocide Recognition and Commemoration
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  5. Greek Genocide Research and Educational Material

3. Chronology of the Greek Genocide


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​Precursor events leading up to the genocide
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​1876
  • 23 December: The Constitutional Period in the Ottoman Empire commenced by a group called the Young Ottomans in opposition to the previous Tanzimat reforms period (1839-1876) which had essentially failed. Sultan Abdulaziz was dethroned, and replaced by the pan-Islamist Abdul Hamid II. Opposing the very idea of a liberal constitutional government, by 1878 using the ongoing Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) as an excuse, Sultan Abdul Hamid II suspended the Ottoman Parliament and established his own absolute monarchy;

1877
  • 24 April: The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 commenced between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, resulting in a Russian with coalition partner victory. The war came to an end on 3 March 1878;

1878 
  • 13 July: The Treaty of Berlin was signed* months after the Russian victory in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Aside from gaining certain military goals, and establishing independence in the Balkans for coalition partners Serbia, Romania and Montenegro, and autonomy for Bulgaria, one of the most important goals was the internationalization of the Armenian Question, and the promises made by the Ottoman Empire to implement reforms in the Armenian-inhabitant provinces;

    * Note: at the end of the Russo-Turkish War on 3 March 1878, a previous treaty was attempted - i.e. the Treaty of San Stefano - however, it failed due to excessive Russian demands in the Balkans. That failure led to this second treaty being accepted by all parties.

​1894-1897
  • c. Summer/fall: The Hamidian Massacres commenced when Sultan Abdul Hamid II, not interested in the decades-long Armenian pressure for civil reforms and calls for equality as stipulated in the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, decided that the best way to deal with the Armenians was to slaughter them. Over 300,000 Armenians, 25,000 Assyrians and thousands of Greeks were killed;

1908
  • July: The Young Turks nationalist reformist movement was founded during the latter years of the Ottoman Empire, in opposition to the absolute rule of Abdul Hamid II. Initially meant to reinstate the Ottoman Parliament and the constitution of 1876, and to implement reforms and equality for all citizens regardless of ethnic background or religion, the Young Turks movement quickly morphed into an extremist, ultra-nationalist movement that pursued policies of ethnic homogenization in Ottoman Turkey, resulting in the genocides of the Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians. Inspired by the more racist elements within the movement, their motto became "A Turkey  for the Turks" - a motto which left absolutely no room for the indigenous Christian minorities in their ancestral lands within the Ottoman Empire;

1909
  • c. Winter: The Ottoman Boycott Movement commenced following Crete's unilateral declaration of union with Greece months earlier on September 24, 1908. Although Crete was not part of the genocide, the boycott of the Greeks was a tool extensively used by the Ottoman Empire to target its Greek subjects, up to and including the period of the Greek Genocide;

1912 
  • 8 October: The First Balkan War commenced, ending on  May 30, 1913; the Ottoman Empire lost the majority of their European territories to the Balkan League - i.e. Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro;

1913 
  • 25 January: The Massacre of the Greeks at Oikonomeio (Kumburgaz), Eastern Thrace, commenced; this massacre is considered the first targeted large scale massacre of Greeks leading up to the Greek Genocide;
  • Mid March: Ottoman units of the secret police paramilitary force Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa (aka the Special Organization) began an organized attack on Greek towns in Eastern Thrace. Men were arrested and conscripted into the labor battalions, and other residents forced to leave. Greek businesses were confiscated. Greeks that remained were levied high taxation;
  • 29 June: The Second Balkan War commenced, ending on August 10, 1913; Bulgaria lost some of their newly acquired territories to Greece, Serbia, Romania and the Ottoman Empire after instigating this second Balkan War on her former Balkan League allies;
  • 10 August: It is estimated that over 15,000 unarmed Greeks were killed by Ottoman authorities in Eastern Thrace during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 according to historian Tessa Hoffman (GGRC, 2021). These massacres occurred in a region in which there was no Greek military presence on the battlefield​;

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The genocidal period of 1914-1923
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1914
  • 12 January: Metropolitan Bishop Chrysostomos of Smyrna wrote his first of forty-two reports directed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate reporting on the ongoing systematic persecutions in Eastern Thrace and western Asia Minor; Some historians and researchers have put forward 'January 12' as a future remembrance day for the Greek Genocide in its entirety (Papathanasopoulos, 2023); 
  • 6 April: The Greek Genocide commenced with the deportation of 200 Greek families from Strantza, Eastern Thrace; it was on this day that the genocide became systematic;
  • May: The Persecution of the the Greeks of Ayvali and Moschonisia commenced, lasting sporadically until 1922;
  • May/June: The Committee of Union and Progress organized the 1914 Deportations of Greeks from Eastern Thrace and western Asia Minor of around 150,000 to 300,000 Greeks. Most victims were forced to go to Greece, while around 85,000 were forced into the interior of Asia Minor. These deportations almost caused a war with Greece;
  • 12 May: The Persecution of the Greeks of Erythrae‎‎ (Urla Peninsula) commenced;
  • 25 May: The Ecumenical Patriarchate declared the Christian church under persecution;
  • 12 June: The Massacre of Greeks at Phocaea (Foça), Ionia;
  • 28 July: World War I commenced;

1915
  • Mid January: Ottoman authorities started blaming their Christian soldiers for the empire's failures on the battlefield against the Russians in the early period of WWI. Armenians and Greeks in Pontus were targeted. Greek men of military age were forced into the labor battalions;
  • Late January: Some Greeks broke away from the forced labor battalions and formed rebel groups in the mountains of Pontus and in Bithynia to protect themselves against Ottoman persecution;
  • ​March/April: Over 25,000 Greeks in Gallipoli were given a few hours' notice to abandon their homes and their businesses and were deported to the interior of Asia Minor upon German* orders under the guise of "military necessity" as the Gallipoli Campaign was being fought during World War I;

    ​* Note: During WWI, the German Empire was allied to the Ottoman Empire and involved in the genocide of the various Christian communities primarily as military advisors but also in some massacres, while German military units were employed and serving within the Ottoman Military until their defeat in 1918; There were many German units fighting within the Ottoman Military, most notable being the Yıldırım Army Group (Heeresgruppe F), German Asia Corps (Deutsches Asien-Korps), various combat units and others. ​

1916
  • As WWI was raging: Fearing repercussions, Ottoman authorities forced Greeks in various areas of the empire to sign official documents declaring that they left their ancestral lands on their own accord;
  • August: Reports of mass deportations, violence and rapes were reported throughout Pontus; 
  • ​c. ​11 December: The First deportation of Greeks at Samsun, Pontus and environs commenced. By January 1917, over 20,000 Greeks were deported and hundreds of Greek villages in Samsun and its surrounding areas were destroyed;

1917
  • Throughout the year: Pontic Greek leaders started discussing the idea of the establishment of an autonomous Republic of Pontus. Following Venizelos' defeat in the crucial 1920 elections in Greece, the idea no longer looked feasible to Greece's allies. Following the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the idea was abandoned;

1918
  • 2 November: Ethnic Greek members of the Ottoman Parliament submitted a report estimating that 750,000 people had been killed or displaced since the onset of massacres and persecution four years prior;
  • 29 December: Bishop Germanos of Amasya and Samsun recounted the atrocities committed by the Turks throughout Pontus in a letter he sent to the Pont-Euxin Unredeemed Greeks Committee, a lobby group that was headquartered in Marseille, France;

1919
  • April: The first Black Book was published in Constantinople by the Ecumenical Patriarchate documenting the persecutions of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire from 1914-1918;
  • 15 May: The victorious Western Allies of WWI gave the Hellenic Military a legal mandate to occupy Smyrna. The Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) immediately erupted as a result of a bullet from the Turkish quarter that was fired towards the Greek occupational forces as they were disembarking. Outside of the immediate war zone in western Asia Minor, the Turks continued on with the ongoing genocides (Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians) throughout the empire;
  • 19 May: Mustafa Kemal landed in Samsun, Pontus, with an order to quell the violence against the Greeks and Armenians of the region. However, instead of following orders, he encouraged the continuation of the massacres and incited Turkish civilians and military officials to join him in his nationalist movement;
  • June: The Massacre of the Boy Scouts at Aydin. The massacre of 31 boy scouts and their leader was committed by the then young Adnan Menderes, who was elected to the office of Prime Minister of Turkey decades later;

1920
  • February-August: The Massacres at Bafra, Pontus, take place. The Turks set Bafra on fire and everything is destroyed. The few who survived were deported to the interior of Asia Minor;
  • 14 May: the southern part of Bulgarian occupied Thrace was ceded to Greece as a penalty for Bulgaria's participation in WWI with the defeated Central Powers;
  • 23 June: The Massacre of Greeks at Fulacik, Bithynia;
  • 10 August: the Ottoman occupied Eastern Thrace was ceded to Greece as a penalty for the Ottoman Empire's participation in WWI with the defeated Central Powers;
  • 27 August: The Massacre of Greeks at İznik (Nicaea), Bithynia, commenced;

1921
  • 18 February: The Massacre of Greeks at Konzes, Bithynia, commenced;
  • c. 4 July: The Second deportations of Greeks at Samsun, Pontus and environs commenced;
  • August 20: The Amasya Trials commenced. These show trials were orchestrated by the Kemalist Nationalists and resulted in the execution of around 450 Greeks, under a "legal" pretext. The Turks purposely held these trials in Amasya as the city was far away from any foreign presence;
  • September 11-12: The Sacrifice of the Children of Sanda occurred;

​1922​
  • c. April: The Third deportations of Greeks at Samsun, Pontus and environs commenced;
  • 9 September: Upon recapturing Smyrna, Kemalist soldiers immediately arrested the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Bishop Chrysostmos of Smyrna and handed him over to a rabid Turkish crowd that massacred him in the presence of French soldiers who were ordered not to intervene by their superiors;
  • 13 September: The Holocaust of Smyrna occurred after Kemalist soldiers started a fire in the Armenian and then the Greek quarters. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Armenians and foreigners ran to the Smyrna quay to try to save themselves. Kemalists committed a wholesale massacre; anarchy ensued;
  • 11 October: The Armistice of Mudanya was an agreement signed between Turkey on the one hand and the Allies (Italy, France and the UK) on the other. One of the terms of the agreement included Greek troops leaving Eastern Thrace within a fifteen day period. Greece acceded to this agreement on October 14. The Armistice of Mudanya paved the way for the final settlement between all parties at the Lausanne Conference which started in November 1922;
  • 25 November: November 25, 1922: As stipulated in the terms of the October 11, 1922 signing of the Armistice of Mudanya, the Greek military withdrew all its forces from the region of Eastern Thrace and control was ceded to Turkey. Around 400,000 Greeks (250,000 civilians and 150,000 soldiers were forced to evacuate the region in a very short period of time. This would be formalized by the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923;
  • c. November/December: The second Black Book was published in Constantinople by the Ecumenical Patriarchate documenting the persecutions Greeks in the Ottoman Empire from November 1918 until the end of 1920;

​1923​
  • 30 January: The Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations was signed during the Lausanne Convention. The agreement provided for the mandated expulsion of Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and of Muslims from Greece to Turkey and was to take effect on May 1, 1923; this population exchange was pushed by Mustafa Kemal in his bid to Turkify Turkey;
  • 24 July: The Treaty of Lausanne was signed which brought an end to the hostilities of World War I and its aftermath; the treaty established the modern Turkish Republic;

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The post genocide period
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1924
  • Throughout 1924: International media reported on ongoing massacres of Greeks that were still taking place throughout the newly established Turkish Republic even after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne; 

1930 to mid-1980s
  • 30 October: The Greco-Turkish Treaty of Friendship of 1930 was signed between Greece and Turkey, and was meant to keep the peace between the two countries. In order to pacify Turkey to keep regional tensions low, the Greek government categorized the topic of the genocide as a taboo subject. The Ministry of Education pulled the topic from the educational system, and the Greek Refugee communities were muzzled from public displays of remembrance. The topic of the genocide became a topic discussed in hushed tones within the homes of the Greek Refugee communities. Within that time period, some of Greece's best historians on the subject of the genocide and the catastrophe of Hellenism in the east would emerge from within the Greek Refugee communities. In the mid-1980's, a group of young, second generation Pontic Greeks brought the topic of the genocide out of the shadows and into the forefront of Greek society, discussing the stories they had heard about the genocide while growing up (Agtzidis, 2009);

1990s to 2020s
  • 11 March 1994: The Greek government issued a law designating May 19 as a "Day of Remembrance of the Greek Genocide in Pontus" (this region-specific recognition was unexpected as it divided the genocide, causing an immediate reaction by other co-victims);
  • 13 October 1998: The Greek government issued a law designating September 14 as a "Day of Remembrance of the Greek Genocide in Asia Minor" (this broader regional recognition came after pressure from other co-victims of the genocide following the 1994 recognition; however, it too fell short).
  • 9 July 2022: The Greek government issued a law designating April 6 as a "Day for Thracian Hellenism" (this law was haphazardly written and was devoid of the word "genocide" as it was issued in a tense period in Greek-Turkish relations prior to the signing of the Athens Declaration of 2023, which was meant to calm tensions).

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​​* The outline above is not exhaustive. For a more in-depth look into the Greek Genocide or for other related information, refer to the Greek Genocide Resource Center and the other research links

​Last update: September 13, 2026