folklore☦

19th May - remembrance of the Pontic Greek Genocide

“The persecutions of the Greeks are assuming unexpected proportions. Only a fortnight ago they reassured and told that the measures taken against the Greek villages in Marmora were temporary and not comparable with those against the Armenians. Now it looks as if there is equality in suffering and that the intention existed to uproot and destroy both peaceful communities.” - Lewis Einstein

The systematic expulsion and extermination of the Armenian population (Armenian Genocide) also became the fate of the Greeks from 1914-23 by the Ottoman Empire and then Turkish National Movement. It followed the same process of forcing people from their homes, death marches, starvation and massacres. The infamous catastrophe of Smyrna (September 1922) subsequently destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters in the city and resulted in the estimated at least 10-100,000 deaths. 

“We must at last do with the Greeks as we did with the Armenians…” - Rafet Bey, 1916

Overall, figures put it to at the very least 353,000 victims (possibly up to by 750,000). Just like with the Armenian Genocide, recognition for the Pontic Greek Genocide is not fully recognised or accepted. 

Black sheep

I recommend reading the The Number 31328: The Book of Slavery by the Anatolian Greek Elias Venezis. It’s an autobiographical testimony detailing the author’s experience as a prisoner enslaved in a work battalion during the Greek Genocide. Venezis was arrested, taken prisoner and enslaved in a labor battalion. Of the 3,000 conscripted into his labor brigade only 23 survived. Each prisoner was assigned an identifying number and 31328 was the number assigned to Venezis. From the book:

Wait can I also get a comment on Stontelberg or whatever his name is and EU, in regard to Kasuvoglou's declarations? I forgot to add that before. My brain is still on strike

Wow Anon you totally murdered their names but I mean... well done for murdering them, you know?

Anyway, I had not searched this in depth but in short some nice things Turkish FM Çavuşoğlu (that was copy-paste) said recently were:

“Greece should not be influenced by other countries (???) and do exercises wherever it wants and any other steps. Otherwise we will not only have an accident, but we will do what we have to do“  NOTE: Here, by “wherever it wants” the Turkish FM means the official and legal Greek territorial waters and the Greek EEZ. In the rest of his sentence, he let us know that Turkey is ready and willing to attack Greece on purpose, if Greece does something as provocative as move within its own borders.

He added that “the members of the Muslim minority of Thrace should be called Turks”. NOTE: Here the Turkish FM equates an entire religious minority in Greece to his own nationality. He also forgets that according to the Treaty of Lausanne: “ Moslems established in the region to the east of the frontier line laid down in 1918 by the Treaty of Bucharest shall be considered as Moslem inhabitants of Western Thrace”.  It is true that the majority of the Muslims of Thrace have Turkish ancestry but this completely excludes other people, such as Pomak and Roma Muslims who are 35% and 15% of the minority respectively. And I reassure you Turkey doesn’t do that because it’s so (mistakenly) woke about sensitive terminology but because if all the Muslim minority was named Turkish, Turkey would invade Thrace in milliseconds as a “rightfully Turkish region”.

He also threatened on Friday that if Greece expands its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in the Aegean Sea this will be “occasion for war”. NOTE: The expansion of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles is a right of any country surrounded by sea and literally every country can use that right whenever it wants. The Turkish Parliament decided in 1990 on its own that if Greece in specific did that, it would be casus belli (occasion for war) because fuck you, that’s why.

Last but not least, he said that Greece “claims” sea space for an island 2km off the coast of Turkey. NOTE: This is about the island Kastellorizo which is officially and legally, even to Turkey’s admission, a Greek island within the Greek borders populated by Greeks. However, Turkey is one of the 8 countries in the world which did not sign the United Nations Charter Law of the Sea, according to which islands have sea space just like mainlands do. Unlike Turkey most of the other countries that did not sign it are landlocked, but Turkey obviously did not sign it in order to question Greece’s territorial waters later. Turkey’s aim is to basically eliminate Greece’s authority in its own sea and be able to sail and do whatever they want undisturbed in short distances from and in the mid of the Greek islands. Furthermore, it would create all the perfect conditions for Turkey to eventually claim these islands with the argument “our sea, our islands”. Right now, Turkey tries to convince us that  it’s gonna be “their sea, our islands” which as you may understand is one of the most ridiculous things to be imagined or believed in world history. However, extremists in the Turkish TV have shown multiple times maps that depict the Aegean Sea and the Aegean Islands separated in half.

I’m not gonna waste that much time in NATO’s secretary general Stoltenberg, in short he met good fella Çavuşoğlu, who told him that “if EU applies sanctions against Turkey, it will destroy everything”. After this not at all threatening declaration, Stoltenberg thanked Turkey for being such a good ally in NATO and for seeking to solve the issues with Greece with DiALOGuE. He also made clear that “NATO, through the mechanism designed to avoid friction military, has helped bring positions closer”. Don’t ask me what that means, I’m still trying to figure it out.  There was also a thing I didn’t quite get, will Turkey assume the leadership of NATO for 2021? If it is so, RIP Greece.

OVERALL VERDICT: Nothing new, that’s how they’ve always been, I didn’t even bat an eye.

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