Beginning in 1914, the Young Turks leading the Ottoman Empire started to implement a policy of “Turkification.” At the onset of WWI, the Ottoman Empire started to round up young, non-Turkish men and send them off to labor camps at which most died due to exhaustion, malnutrition and severe weather. The “Turkification” campaigns also involved massive, forced exodus of the remaining women, children and elderly to the interior of Turkey, marches very few could survive. In other cases, the Turkish forces simply shot their victims on the outskirts of their own villages.
The genocide ended with the destruction of Smyrna in 1922, when Mustapha Kemal burnt the city to the ground, massacred its Christian inhabitants, and definitively marked the end of Hellenism in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). By 1923, over 700,000 Greeks and 2.5 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians were killed as a result of these genocides. Furthermore, over 1.5 million Greeks found themselves refugees after a forced exchange of the Greek and Turkish populations between the two countries.
The evidence documenting the genocide is indisputable. However, Turkey continues to deny these actions as well as the genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians during those same years. The American Hellenic Council calls for the recognition of the Greek, Armenian and Assyrian genocide committed by the Turkish government between the years of 1914-1923.
