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Pontian Genocide Remembered in Thessaloniki
Addressing a public rally commemorating the Pontian Genocide Day (a national holiday by act of parliament) Defense Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos stated that the uprooting of over 2.5 million Pontians from Turkey should not be forgotten.
However, he stated that the uprooting of Pontians, who were moved out of Smyrna in an exchange of populations agreed after Greece lost the 1920-22 Asia Minor war to Turkey, was a calamity that benefited Greece in the long term since these proud people became a great asset to the overall Greek population.
According to Pontian organizations in Greece, over 350,000 people were murdered between 1916 and 1923, part of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's plan to systematically wipe out their 2500-year-old civilization, along with the Armenians and other potentially-hostile minority groups in the new secular Turkish state.
The ruthless clearances saw the Pontian population, which once numbered
almost one million people, made refugees - forced to take refuge wherever they
could find it, elsewhere in Turkey, in Greece or among other Black Sea
peoples.
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