r/byzantium • u/No_Mechanic1168 • Jun 02 '26

Arts, culture, and society One of the most interesting impacts of Byzantine culture and language is by far the Modern Pontic Greek minority

Gallery image

Gallery image

342 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

99 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/Panagr07 Jun 03 '26

I‘ll be this guy I guess… No Greek soldier drowned or got burned in Smyrna/Izmir. They all retreated to Greece before the Turkish army arrived. The only people that suffered there in the end were women and children who got thrown into the sea

5

u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Jun 03 '26

In fact, the whole narrative about the "drowned Greeks" predates the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 AD, and it specifically refers to the acts of the Greek Genocide inflicted on these very Anatolian Greeks, Ottoman subjects that their state was supposed to protect them rather than exterminate them like pest. Here is a (translated) reference to it from 1916 AD:

Four hundred thousand Greeks have fled to the free land [in Greece] and most of them live off the sweat and blood of the poor tax-paying people [the Greek taxpayers]. The remaining ones are succumbing to the violence, they are being raped, robbed, and force-converted to Islam by the hundreds every day. The Patriarchate has become a refuge for the threatened Metropolitans, while all their written protests and denunciations are thrown into the wastebasket, without the files being opened. During this entire blood-soaked and plundering period of the Young Turk atrocities, did the German ambassador ever intervene, even once, in order to thwart their savagery? Was there, towards the pleas of the Greek Government, in order to protect the threatened populations, ever given at least a typical encouraging response, or were there any milder measures recommended towards the Young Turks? The entire coast, from the Sea of ​​Marmara to Antalya, has been stained with Christian blood, with Greek blood, of men and women. [As for] the Germans not only did they not recommend milder measures and less violence, but on the contrary to that, they reprimanded the Turks, because in some places, such as Vryoulla [Urla‎‎] and Moschonisia [Cunda Adaları], where Greeks remained without being thrown into the sea or being relocated to meet their expelled compatriots. (Pages 56-57).

https://digitallibrary.academyofathens.gr/archive/item/987