Greek Christians Massacred or Deported by Turks

Systematic Attempt to Extinguish the Hellenic Race Inspired by Pagan Germany

Section 19- 1918

Under the tuition of pagan Germany, the unspeakable Turks attempted to destroy the large and flourishing Greek Christian populations that, from time immemorial, have dwelt along the coast of Asia Minor and the Marmoran coast in Thrace.

The Mahometans (Muslims) tore these Christians from their ancestral homes, confiscated all their property, and deported them variously into the interior of the Asia Minor, into the Turkish pale, or over the burning desert sands to far off Mesopotmaia. It is estimated that 1,500,000 Greeks were thus deported into desolate regions where they died off like flies of starvation of disease.

On this dreadful journey 700,000 are known to have perished. The survivors found themselves without shelter or food in a strange land and subjected to every indignity and torture which the abominable Turks, and their pagan German allies, could devise. These among the Greeks who would agree to abjure Christianity and adopt the faith of Islam were spared [ My emphasis ]; the rest were left to starve.

The wholesale deportation of the Greeks from Thrace had been under way since the close of the Balkan Wars in 1913. It accorded not at all with Germany’s ideas of Oriental conquest to permit these Greeks to remain in European Turkey. The Turks were consequently instructed to extirpate the Greeks in any way they might choose.

In justification of these wholesale deportations, the Turks falsely alleged that the Hellenic populations of Thrace and the Asian coast were plotting revolution. The first deportations, numbering 250,000, were from Thrace into Greece proper. This persecution continued unabated up to the opening of the War. In this period the Greek Government did everything possible to protect their co-nationals, but after the World War had begun, King Constantine and his German wive (the sister of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany), impeded every attempt made to ameliorate the lot of the exiled Hellenes. The bishop of Pera, after journeying to Athens to implore the King to take some action against the Turkish atrocities, was warned by the Queen to return to his home, “as it is the will of the King that you live on good terms with the Turks.”

All this time the German agencies in Turkey, especially the German Palestine Bank, were urging the Mussulmans to cultivate hatred for the Christians and to have no commercial dealings with them.

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