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Asia Minor Greeks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Asia Minor Greeks
Μικρασιάτες
Mikrasiates
Asia Minor Greek Teachers and Graduates from the Evangelical School of Smyrna
Regions with significant populations
Historically Asia Minor, present day Greece
Languages
Demotic Greek
Asia Minor Greek (including Cappadocian and Pontic Greek)
Propontis Tsakonian Greek
other languages (diaspora)
Religion
Greek Orthodox Church
Related ethnic groups
Byzantines, Rum millet, Ottoman Greeks, Greeks, Mariupol Greeks, Urums, Tsakonians

The terms Asia Minor Greeks, Anatolian Greeks or Mikrasiates (Greek: Μικρασιάτες, romanized: Mikrasiates), refer to the Greek populations who lived in Asia Minor from the 13th century BC,[1] up until the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey according to the Treaty of Lausanne, in the aftermath of World War I and the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922).

Most of the Asia Minor Greeks migrated to Greece. Today, many Greeks descending from Asia Minor Greek refugees live all over Greece and the diaspora. Greeks in present day Turkey form a small minority, mostly living in Istanbul.

Historical context

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Linguistic map of the Roman Empire c. 400
The Byzantine Empire at the death of Basil II in 1025

Ancient Greek

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Hellenistic

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East Roman

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Ottoman

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An official Ottoman document giving the results of the 1914 population census. The total population (sum of all millets) was 20,975,345, of which 1,792,206 were Greeks.
Distribution of ethnic Greek population in Anatolia at the end of the 19th century

Modern

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For the whole of the period between 1914 and 1922 and for the whole of Anatolia, there are academic estimates of death toll ranging from 289,000 to 750,000 Ottoman Greeks killed. The figure of 750,000 is suggested by political scientist Adam Jones.[2] Scholar Rudolph Rummel compiled various figures from several studies to estimate lower and higher bounds for the death toll between 1914 and 1923. He estimates that 384,000 Greeks were exterminated from 1914 to 1918, and 264,000 from 1920 to 1922, with the total number reaching 648,000.[3][4] Historian Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou writes that "loss of life among Anatolian Greeks during the WWI period and its aftermath was approximately 735,370".[5]

Smyrniote Greeks

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Smyrniote Greeks (Greek: Σμυρνιώτες Έλληνες; Turkish: İzmir Yunanlıları) are a Greek ethnic community originating from Smyrna and its surrounding region on the western Anatolia.[citation needed]

Pontic Greeks

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Pontic Greeks (Greek: Πόντιοι, romanized: Póndii or Ελληνοπόντιοι, romanized: Ellinopóndii; Turkish: Pontus Rumları or Karadeniz Rumları, Georgian: პონტოელი ბერძნები, romanized: P’ont’oeli Berdznebi) are an ethnically Greek[6][7] group who traditionally lived in the region of Pontus, on the shores of the Black Sea and in the Pontic Mountains of northeastern Anatolia.

Cappadocian Greeks

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Cappadocian Greeks also known as Greek Cappadocians (Greek: Έλληνες-Καππαδόκες, Ελληνοκαππαδόκες, Καππαδόκες; Turkish: Kapadokyalı Rumlar)[8] or simply Cappadocians are an ethnic Greek community who traditionally lived to or originated from the geographical region of Cappadocia in central-eastern Anatolia up until the population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

Notable Asia Minor Greeks

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Ancient Greek

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Byzantine

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Modern

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See also

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References

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  1. ↑ "Anatolia - Greek colonies on the Anatolian coasts, c. 1180–547 bce". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 2015-06-19. Before the Greek migrations that followed the end of the Bronze Age (c. 1200 BCE), probably the only Greek-speaking communities on the west coast of Anatolia were Mycenaean settlements at Iasus and Müskebi on the Halicarnassus peninsula and walled Mycenaean colonies at Miletus and Colophon.
  2. ↑ Jones 2010, pp. 150–51: "By the beginning of the First World War, a majority of the region’s ethnic Greeks still lived in present-day Turkey, mostly in Thrace (the only remaining Ottoman territory in Europe, abutting the Greek border), and along the Aegean and Black Sea coasts. They would be targeted both prior to and alongside the Armenians of Anatolia and Assyrians of Anatolia and Mesopotamia ... The major populations of 'Anatolian Greeks' include those along the Aegean coast and in Cappadocia (central Anatolia), but not the Greeks of the Thrace region west of the Bosphorus ... A 'Christian genocide' framing acknowledges the historic claims of Assyrian and Greek peoples, and the movements now stirring for recognition and restitution among Greek and Assyrian diasporas. It also brings to light the quite staggering cumulative death toll among the various Christian groups targeted ... of the 1.5 million Greeks of Asia minor – Ionians, Pontians, and Cappadocians – approximately 750,000 were massacred and 750,000 exiled. Pontian deaths alone totaled 353,000."
  3. ↑ Rummel, R.J. "Statistics Of Turkey's Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources". University of Hawai'i. Retrieved 15 April 2015. Table 5.1B.
  4. ↑ Hinton, Alexander Laban; Pointe, Thomas La; Irvin-Erickson, Douglas (2013). Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory. Rutgers University Press. p. 180. ISBN 9780813561646. The foremost expert on genocide statistics, Rudolph Rummel, has estimated that from 1914 to 1918 the Ottomans exterminated up to 384,000, Greeks, while from 1920 to 1922 another 264,000 Greeks were killed by the Nationalists.
  5. ↑ Hatzidimitriou, Constantine G., American Accounts Documenting the Destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalist Turkish Forces: September 1922, New Rochelle, NY: Caratzas, 2005, p. 2.
  6. ↑ Alan John Day; Roger East; Richard Thomas (2002). A Political and Economic Dictionary of Eastern Europe. Psychology Press. p. 454. ISBN 1857430638. Pontic Greeks An ethnic Greek minority found in Georgia and originally concentrated in the breakaway republic of Abkhazia. The Pontic Greeks are ultimately descended from Greek colonists of the Caucasus region (who named the Black Sea the Pontic Sea)
  7. ↑ Totten, Samuel; Bartrop, Paul Robert; Jacobs, Steven L. (2008). Dictionary of Genocide: A-L. ABC-CLIO. p. 337. ISBN 978-0313346422. Pontic Greeks, Genocide of. The Pontic (sometimes Pontian) Greek genocide is the term applied to the massacres and deportations perpetuated against ethnic Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire at the hands of the Young Turk government between 1914 and 1923. The name of this people derives from the Greek word pontus, meaning "sea coast," and refers to the Greek population that lived on the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea, that is, in northern Turkey, for three millennia.
  8. ↑ Özkan, Akdoğan (2009). Kardeş bayramlar ve özel günler. İnkılâp. ISBN 978-975-10-2928-7. Evlerin bolluk ve bereketi şu veya bu sebeple kaçmışsa, özellikle Rumların yoğun olarak yaşadığı Orta ve Kuzey Anadolu'da bunun sebebinin karakoncolos isimli iblis olduğu düşünülürmüş. Kapadokyalı Rumlar yeni yılın başında sırf ...

Sources

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  • Jones, Adam (2010) [2006], Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 978-0-415-48618-7
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