Chronology

10th -12th Century

Ottoman Turks migrate from central Asia to Asia Minor

 

1204

Fourth Crusade; Crusaders capture Constantinople and sack Constantinople; Greek Empire of Trebizond established in the region of Pontus on the Black Sea

 

1299

Formation of Ottoman State

 

1453

Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Empire; End of the Byzantine Empire

 

1458-1460

Turks occupy mainland Greece

 

1461 (August 15)

Empire of Trebizond fall to the Ottoman Turks: forced conversions of Christians begin

 

17th & 18th Centuries

250,000 Pontian Greeks forced to convert to Islam; Thousands of Pontian Greeks depart for Russia, Constantinople and Danubian Principalities to avoid persecution

 

1821-1828

Greek war of independence

 

1832 (August 30)

Greece becomes an independent state

 

1877-1878

Russo-Turkish War; after a series of defeats at the hands of Russia, the Ottoman Empire is crippled; Russia becomes dominant power in the Balkans and Black Sea

 

1880

Ottoman reprisals in response to Russian victories cause 250,000 Greeks to leave Pontus and settle in the Russian-held Caucasus Mountains

 

1894-1896

Hamidian Massacres of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire

 

1908

Young Turks revolt; rise to power of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) Party, which resorts Parliament and the Constitution of 1877 and promises reforms including equality among all ethnic groups

 

1912-1913

First and Second Balkan Wars; Ottoman Empire loses significant territories in Europe

 

1913

Coup within the CUP; a triumvirate (three pashas) seizes control of the government and establishes a military dictatorship that rules the Ottoman Empire until the end of WWI Ottoman Empire Masterminds and implements the Genocide against the Christian minorities with a goal of establishing a Turkish, Islamic, nationalistic empire as “the only solution for their salvation”

 

1914

Deportations of Greeks in Eastern Thrace and Western Asia Minor

 

1914-1919

World War I; conscription of Christians to the Ottoman army in 1914;  Many Pontian Greek men flee to the mountains to avoid military service and “labor battalions”; They form guerilla groups to protect themselves, their persecuted relatives, and co-nationals; First phase of the Anatolian Pontian Greek Genocide

 

1914-1922

Pontian Greek fighters resist deportations, Turkish persecutions and massacres

 

1915

Armenian Genocide begins; over one million Armenians eventually perish

 

1916

Greek inhabitants of the Pontian Greek towns of Matsouka and Tripolis deported to the interior of Anatolia

 

1918

Allies defeat the Ottoman Empire; World War I ends; Armistice of Mudros; Allies occupy Constantinople; Ottoman Empire partitioned

 

1919 ( May 15 )

Greek Army lands in Smyrna, at the suggestion of the Allies, to prevent control of Asia Minor by Italy and to protect the Greek population of the surrounding area from Turkish persecutions and atrocities; this was also part of a longstanding dream of the Greeks, called: “Megali Idea” – the recapture of old Greek homelands –

 

1919-1922

Nationalist movement of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk); second phase of Pontian Greek genocide; Pontian Greeks attempt to establish independent state as th only solution to their salvation

 

1920 ( August 10 )

Treaty of Sevres between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire liquidates the Ottoman Empire; Treaty was not ratified by the Grand National Assembly or Kemal Ataturk during the Turkish War of Independence

 

1922 ( August-September )

Turkish Army defeats the Greek expeditionary army and destroys Smyrna; hundreds of thousands of Greeks flee or are expelled by the advancing Turkish forces

 

1923

Treaty of Lausanne; Turkey and Greece agree on compulsory Exchange of populations; Turkey regains control of all territories in Asia Minor;

 

1924

Last survivors of Pontian Greek Genocide leave Turkey. Remaining Asia Minor Greeks are exchanged with Muslim population of Greece; Thousands of Greeks die of starvation and disease while in transit to Greece; This also results in thousands of orphaned Greek children