Talk:Greek genocide/Academic quotes

Following is an incomplete list of academic quotes on to the Pontic Greek genocide. Historians and academics worldwide use a variety of terms for describing the events. Before the coining of the term "genocide" by Raphael Lemkin (who considered the fate of the Greeks in Turkey to be an example of such ) primary sources used to improvise terms, such as "annihilation", "systematic extermination", or "persistent campaign of massacre" and "wholesale massacre". Today, the events are described on a par with the Armenian Genocide, as a similar experience to the Holocaust, as "ethnic cleansing", and as "genocide". Other historians choose milder terminology, such as "organized killing and deportation", and "carefully planned atrocities [aimed at the Greeks'] complete destruction".

Quotes from books about the events
Samuel Totten and Steven L. Jacobs state in their work "Pioneers of Genocide Studies": One begins with (attempted) comprehension of the motives, intent, scale, implementation, and operation of the Holocaust. To understand it is necessary to look at similar phenomena, and so one attempts an unravelling of the Armenian, Pontian Greek, Rwandan, Burundian, and Aboriginal experiences.

Benjamin David Lieberman, in his "Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe", states: For CUP's leaders, attacking the country's Greeks was a means to purify the core regions of Turkey. Talaat Pasha made clear that this was his intent ... As the war continued, the Turkish campaign against the Greek civilians expanded to include the Pontic Greeks who lived on the Black Sea. The road to persecution here was quite similar to that elsewhere on the war's eastern fronts. Military threats and setbacks - in this case defeats by Russia - convinced Turkey's leaders to begin a campaign against a civilian population accused of treason ... Subject to state-sponsored terror despite their status as Ottoman subjects, during World War I Turkey's Greeks experienced persecution just short of full-scale ethnic cleansing.

Charles King, in his The Black Sea: A History states: ... the massacre of Armenians and other Christians in eastern Anatolia in the 1890s; ...and then the organized killing and deportation of Armenians, Greeks, and others in the Ottoman empire from 1915 to the early 1920s.

Harry Psomiades, professor emeritus of political science at Queens College the City University of New York, refers to these events as the killing "of the 275,000 Pontian souls who where slaughtered outright or were victims of the 'white death' of disease and starvation - a result of the routine process of deportations, slave labor, and the killings and death marches."

Donald Bloxham,Professor of Modern History at the University of Edinburgh describes the rationale behind the Turkish treatment of Greek populations as proximate to that which resulted in the Armenian Genocide and the events themselves as sometimes of the same order.

The two present threats to Turkish territorial integrity—by the Greeks and the French—and the one potential threat—an Armenian state—reproduced the proximate CUP ‘rationale’ for the 1915—16 genocide, and the forthcoming violence was sometimes of the same order.

Manus I. Midlarsky in his The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, compares the Greek Genocide to the Armenian one but notes it was restricted to selected regions.

Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks. Massacres most likely did take place at Amisos and other villages in the Pontus. Yet given the large numbers of surviving Greeks, especially relative to the small number of Armenian survivors, the massacres were apparently restricted to the Pontus, Smyrna, and selected other "sensitive regions"

Cathie Carmichael, senior lecturer in Eastern European History at the University of East Anglia, writes in her book Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans: Nationalism and the Destruction of Tradition: The extermination of over 90 per cent of Poland’s Jews in early 1944, the Highland clearances in Scotland in the eighteenth century; the expulsion of ethnic Germans from post-war Czechoslovakia; the transportation of he Crimean Tartan in 1941; the slaughter of lzmir’s Greeks and Armenians in the early 1920s; and the exodus of Muslims from the Balkans after the mid-nineteenth century are only a few of the numerous instances of this kind of violence.

Peter Balakian, in his book The Burning Tigris, states the following: While the death toll in the trenches of Western Europe were close to 2 million by the summer of 1915, the extermination of innocent civilians in Turkey (the Armenians, but also Syrian and Assyrian Christians and large portions of the Greek population, especially the Greeks of Pontos, or Black Sea region) was reaching 1 million.

Historian Niall Ferguson, mentions the massacres of the Pontic Greeks along with the Armenian Genocide and the forced population exchange of 1923.

The Armenian Genocide, the massacres of the Pontic Greeks, the forced "exchanges"...

Quotes from books describing the events as genocide or holocaust
Mark Levene in his Creating a Modern "Zone of Genocide": The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923, suggests that:

"Historians, perhaps concerned not to magnify these events by comparison with those of 1915-16, tend to avoid the term genocide to describe them. In my formulation, however, these events would constitute partial genocide..." "...In the last hundred years, four Eastern Anatolian groups—Armenians, Kurds, Assyrians, and Greeks—have fallen victim to state-sponsored attempts by the Ottoman authorities or their Turkish or Iraqi successors to eradicate them" ... "By ridding themselves of the Armenians, Greeks, or any other group that stood in their way, Turkish nationalists were attempting to prove how they could clarify, purify, and ultimately unify a polity and society so that it could succeed on its own, albeit Western-orientated terms. This, of course, was the ultimate paradox: the CUP committed genocide in order to transform the residual empire into a streamlined, homogeneous nation-state on the European model..." Unlike the Armenian case, in each of these other instances the scope, scale and intensity of the killings was limited, though this does not rule out comparison...'' The persistence of genocide or near-genocidal incidents from the 1890s through the 1990s, committed by Ottoman and successor Turkish and Iraqi states against Armenian, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek communities in Eastern Anatolia, is striking. ... I have concentrated here [on the genocidal sequence affecting Armenians and Kurds only], though my approach would be pertinent to the Pontic Greek and Assyrian cases.

Constantine Fotiades, professor of Modern Greek History at the University of Western Macedonia, Greece chronicles the events from 1916 to 1923 in his 16 volume work "Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus".

David Levinson PhD, author of several anthropological encyclopaedic works, in his Encyclopaedia of World Cultures-Ethnology includes the Greek Genocide in the wider policy of the Turkish state against its minorities: In the genocide of various minority nationalities that followed, the Turks massacred over 350000 Greeks.

Alfred de Zayas, professor of Law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, notes that: The Genocide Convention of 1948 and other United Nations Conventions strengthen the claims of genocide victims, including the Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians of Asia Minor.

Panikos Panayi, Professor of European History at De Montfort University in his Outsiders: A History of European Minorities states the following: The Turkish state which emerged at the collapse of the Ottoman Empire contained several minorities within its interior, in an attempt to move towards a homogeneous population the Turkish state, which has passed through varying phases of dictatorship and democracy, has used any means possible, including genocide and deportation, to eliminate the Armenians, Greeks and Kurds remaining within Anatolia.

David J. Jonsson in his book The Clash of Ideologies - The Making of the Christian and Islamic Worlds remarks on what he terms "The Genocide of the Eastern Christians of Smyrna": The Turkish army entered Smyrna on September 9. 1922 and soon thereafter the city went up in flames. A fire razed most of the Armenian quarter. It is estimated that 50,000 Christians were killed in the city during this period. No indigenous Christians remained in Smyrna after this holocaust that had deeply stained relations between the two peoples.

Igor M. Diakonov in his book The Paths of History mentions what he terms the "genocide of the Greeks": Most of the Armenians had already been massacred during the reign of the Sultan, in 1915—1916; Kemal attempted to continue the genocide of Armenians in Transcaucasia, and of Greeks on the coast of the Aegean. Especially heartrending and horribly bloody was the genocide of the Greeks in Smyrna (Turkish Izmir) where they had lived since the tenth century BC.

On the book Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society, edited by Elizabeth Burns Coleman and Australian National University professor Kevin White while discussing the Turkish government's denial of the Armenian Genocide the following paragraph states refers to the Greek Genocide: Turkish denialism of the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians is official, riven, driven, constant, rampant and increasing each year since the events of 1915 to 1922. It is state-funded, with special departments and units in overseas missions whose sole purpose is to dilute, counter, minimise, trivialise and relativise every reference to the events which encompassed a genocide of Armenians, Pontian Greeks and Assyrian Christians in Asia Minor.

Professor William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland quotes in his Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes: However, the Treaty of Sevres was never ratified, As Kay Holloway wrote, the failure of the signatories to bring the treaty into force ‘resulted in the abandonment of thousands of defenceless peoples Armenians and Greeks — to the fury of their persecutors, by engendering subsequent holocausts in which the few survivors of the 1915 Armenian massacres perished.” The Treaty of Sevres was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1 Q23 that included a ‘Declaration of Amnesty’ for all offence’s committed between 1 August 1914 and 20 November 1922.

Clarence Pendleton Lee in his book Athenian Adventure: With Alarums & Excursions terms the events a genocide but recognizes that the term was not in use at the time.

“…had been its Greek populace, the Turks massacred as many Greeks there as possible, to so1ve that ethnological problem by genocide, a term a later and more delicate…”

Dr. Israel Charney, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars states the following:

It is believed that in Turkey between 1913 and 1922, under the successive regimes of the Young Turks and of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), more than 3.5 million Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians were massacred in a state-organized and state-sponsored campaign of destruction and genocide, aiming at wiping out from the emerging Turkish Republic its native Christian populations. This Christian Holocaust is viewed as the precursor to the Jewish Holocaust in WWII. To this day, the Turkish government ostensibly denies having committed this genocide.

Quotes from journals about the envents
Matthias Bjørnlund of the University of Southern Denmark has described the 1914 events as "ethnic cleansing" in his The 1914 cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a case of violent Turkification, published in the Journal of Genocide Research.

Seen from the vantage point of observers in the major harbour city of Smyrna (Izmir), and in Constantinople (Istanbul), the Ottoman capital, CUP policies of group persecution began in earnest with the attempted ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Greeks living along the Aegean littoral.Attempts at removing non-Turkish influences from the economy had been initiated by the CUP after a radical faction of the Committee had gained power in 1913, and this policy was supplemented with the cleansing of more than 100,000 Greeks from the Aegean and Thrace in the spring and summer of 1914.

The nation, beginning with the areas of trade and language, was to be cleansed from “foreign elements” in order to establish a national culture and economy.

As noted, the 1914 cleansing was initially attempted through a severe economic boycott and by other intimidating measures.

Quotes from journals describing the events as genocide or holocaust
Dominik J. Schaller of the University of Berlin and Jürgen Zimmerer of the University of Essen, in their article Late Ottoman genocides: the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies - introduction, published in the Journal of Genocide Research clearly term the Greek Genocide as such and discuss it within the wider context of the Young Turks' policy of extermination of several of their states' ethnic minorities.

The genocidal quality of the murderous campaigns against Greeks and Assyrians is obvious. Historians who realize that the Young Turks’ population and extermination policies have to be analysed together and understood as an entity are therefore often tempted to speak of a “Christian genocide.” This approach, however, is insofar inadequate as it ignores the Young Turks’ massive violence against non-Christians.

The Young Turks’ overall aim was a demographic reorganization of the Ottoman Empire. All deportations were planned and supervised by the “Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants” that belonged to the Ottoman Ministry of the Interior. A relatively small number of government administrators were thus chiefly involved in the coordination of the murder and expulsion of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and other minority groups.29 Therefore, the isolated study and emphasis of a single group’s victimhood during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire fails to really understand Young Turks’ motives and aims or its grand design.

R.J.Rummel stated in an article:

These genocides not only involved the Holocaust and the killing of the Armenians, the best known of this century's genocides, but also the lesser known genocide of Gypsies by the Nazis and of Greeks by the Turks

According to a December 2005 article by M.A. Mcdonnell and A.D. Moses for the Journal of Genocide Research, eminent genocide historian Raphael Lemkin considered the fate of the Greeks in Turkey a genocide.

Then, in a “Report on the preparation of a volume on genocide,” dated March–May 1948, a less ambitious project comprising ten chapters, two of which covered extra-European colonial cases: “2.The Indians in Latin America” and “10. The Indians in North America (in part).” The Holocaust, a term Lemkin never used, was not included, although the Armenians and Greeks in Turkey were, as well as the Early Christians, and the Jews of the Middle Ages and Tsarist Russia.14 To continue to deny, as many “founders of genocide studies” deny, that he regarded colonialism as an integral part of a world history of genocide is to ignore the written record.

A Xanthopoulou-Kyriakou writing for the Journal of Refugee Studies in 1991 states:

First of all, the Ottoman Empire itself, now ruled by the nationalist Young Turks Committee, began to implement a deadly policy, which aimed at wiping out the non-Turkish elements in the Empire and culminated in the genocide of the Armenians and Greeks, particularly those living in the Pontos region

E. G. Vallianatos in his review of the book, The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul for the Mediterranean Quarterly states the following:

The Turks had used genocide against the Greeks and Armenians but did not have enough time to finish them off completely. The Kurds revolted in 1925, demanding independence or autonomy.

Courses, Seminars, Research Units
Seminars and courses in several western universities also examine the events. These include the University of New Mexico the College of Charleston, the University of Michigan Dearborn and the University of New South Wales which has a dedicated research unit.

Lead
WP:LEAD reads:

The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, summarizing the most important points, explaining why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describing its notable controversies, if there are any.

"Concise overview, establishing context, and summarizing the most important points" is met by listing all the terms used. "Explaining why the subject is interesting or notable", is through the variety of the terms used, and through the controversy that follows. "Notable controversies" are perfectly presented IMO in Levene's last quote about "concern".

Leads are supposed to be repetitive. Please do not delete on these grounds. NikoSilver 11:56, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Why this article is needed
I would have no objection to merge it back, but there were many voices in the past supporting that it should be excluded from the main article so as to "de-clutter" it, and there was also a quotefarm tag on top of the section there. That's why I have changed my mind and now think that this article is needed. NikoSilver 12:59, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The meaning of quotefarm, was that these rather excessive number of quuotes are needed neither in the main article--nor here. DGG (talk) 14:49, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I do not think this is applicable. This article here serves more as a list of quotes, and I find it very helpful for both "sides" of the issue. In any case, I would have no problem in transferring this to Wikiquote if that would be appropriate. NikoSilver 19:32, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I haven't any idea of WQ practices. What I do know, is that article like this are not generally supportable at WP. Now you may think one way about what the practice ought to be and I another, but the thing which matters is what does turn out to happen by consensus at AfD--so I am just trying to advise you as best I can what I think is likely to be the result. My suggestion is to trim them and try to put a few in the article. Compromise often succeeds--or at the very least is worth a try.DGG (talk) 01:46, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I see, thanks. Anyway, I'm glad the main article is de-cluttered at least with this move. I'll let our comments sink in a little bit until someone with full knowledge on WQ practices comes by for advice. Regarding your proposal for trimming, there was a huge debate on the interpretation of these specific quotes in the main article talk, which resulted in that they should be left untouched because nobody agreed on their actual meaning. I suppose if the matter was less controversial there wouldn't have been such a disagreement among WP editors (let alone among academics, as very well put by Levene -see last sentence in intro). NikoSilver 13:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Firstly, there is still an ongoing dispute as to whether the Pontian Greek Genocide article should even exist, given the complete absence from mainstream academic material outside of Greece. Second, knowing that the dispute over the title is still unresolved, I dont know why you would create yet another article with the same title. Thirdly, as DGG pointed out, quotefarming whether isolated in one article or as part of another article is still quotefarming. This article, like List of eyewitness accounts related to the Pontic Greek Genocide and List of press headlines relevant to the Pontic Greek Genocide is being used to further a position, one that lacks any mainsrtream academic support. --A.Garnet (talk) 19:07, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * "Mainsrtream [sic] academic support" referring, of course, only to whomever is not in violation of Article 301. ·ΚέκρωΨ· (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Niko and would not object to its being transfered to wikiquote provided a link is placed in the main article's relevant section. A.Garnet regarding your objections please see discussion on main article talk page.Xenovatis (talk) 10:55, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Removed tags
Rationale
 * 1. The NPOV tag is due to the title being Genocide. That is debated in the main article talk. If the decistion is against the use of the term the title will be changed here as well, if it is to keep the term the title stays here as well. In either event there is no point keeping the tag.
 * 2. Quote tag unchanged.Xenovatis (talk) 11:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


 * As I understand it the discussion has gone against using Pontic Greek Genocide as a title, although there is no agreement as yet as to what the descriptive name should be. Given that the introduction of this article should be altered to reflect that it is a descriptive title and not a common name. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 10:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is not quoted. What does he actually say? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 10:11, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

This was an quote placed some time ago. I looked for the book in Google book but it is not available. From Amazon.com I gleaned the following:

'''The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West Niall Ferguson p.184'''

You need to have made a purchase from amazon.com to see the whole page but all my buys from .co.uk. It seems that Ferguson refers to the events as massacres so I amended the sentence to reflect this. Still not sure what he writes on p. 182 though.Thanks.Xenovatis (talk) 10:23, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Sentence Today
The first two citations for the sentence:
 * Today, the events are described on a par with the Armenian Genocide (Ferguson, Niall. The War of the Worlds Penguin 2007 p.182), as a similar phenomenon to the Holocaust

Do not seem to support what is written.

Niall Ferguson quoted in the section before this one does not support the first phrase.

The page linked in the citation is p.210 but a search can the be done for the quote, that is quoted in the Wikipedia article page and appears on p.213. (the word "attempted" should be removed from the quote as it adds nothing to the quote). Assuming that the quote supporting the phrase is "One begins with [attempted] comprehension of the motives, intent, scale, implementation, and operation of the Holocaust. To understand it is necessary to look at similar phenomena, and so one attempts an unravelling of the Armenian, Pontian Greek, Rwandan, Burundian, and Aboriginal experiences" I interpret this as the "similar phenomena" being referred to the "comprehension of the motives" "intent, scale, implementation, and operation" not the event itself. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:22, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I disagree with your reading of Toten but removed the Ferguson quote as per your suggestion and replaced wiht the Schlaer and Zimmerer one.Xenovatis (talk) 11:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

You may disagree but it is not a citation that clearly supports the statement. Do you have a better one? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:32, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Fine remove it, there are five more on that group. Any problems with these?Xenovatis (talk) 12:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

The first citation is now for "murder and expulsion of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and other minority groups." it does not support "Today, the events are described on a par with the Armenian Genocide," unless one argues that "murder and expulsion" means genocide, which from our previous conversations you and I agree is not what the majority of scholars would say is sufficient for genocide (must have intent and sufficient a part of the group killed). --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:44, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No but genocidal quality meand genocide The genocidal quality of the murderous campaigns against Greeks and Assyrians is obviousXenovatis (talk) 12:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * And what is the point of working on the quotes when the main article is still in limbo. You need to make some compromise as well in order to reach consensus. So far you haven't backed an inch. I noticed you were quick to latch on to the communities/populations distinction I proposed in good faith yet you don't seem quite so eager to compromise yourself.Xenovatis (talk) 12:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

It may be obvious to you but it is not obvious to everyone. "genocidal quality of the murderous campaigns" came up in the ICJ ruling:
 * (8) Intention to commit Genocide: The Court made long and detailed findings of fact on the alleged atrocities which are grouped according to the categories of prohibited acts described in Article II of the Genocide Convention. With respect to “killing members of the protected group” (Article II (a) of the Convention: killing members of the group), the Court finds that it is established by overwhelming evidence that massive killings throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo, Drina River Valley, Prijedor, Banja Luka and Brčko - and detention camps) were perpetrated during the conflict. However, the Court was not convinced that those killings were accompanied by the specific intent (dolus specialis) on the part of the perpetrators to destroy, in whole or in part, the group of Bosnian Muslims. It acknowledges that the killings may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, but that it has no jurisdiction to determine whether this is so.

and
 * The [Bosnian government] representatives admitted that they “did not get everything we wanted" but stressed, "we got quite a lot". First of all, it was confirmed that the Bosnian Serb forces had committed a number of grave crimes tantamount to "acts of genocide". With the exception of Srebrenica, they could not be qualified as genocide because of the difficulties involved in proving the existence of “genocidal intent”. 

--Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Erm that was a direct quote from the article, that's why I bolded it....Now could we please get back to the question I asked just above? Thanks. Xenovatis (talk) 13:54, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

As I said "genocidal quality of the murderous campaigns" may be obvious to you but it is not obvious to everyone that "genocidal quality" means genocide. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 16:14, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * What is the alternative meaning? Can you please provide one? NikoSilver 16:19, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * How about the article's title: Late Ottoman genocides? In a journal titled Journal of Genocide Studies? Would that mean genocide do you think? And what about Christian genocide? Does that mean genocide? Now can we please return to the question I asked? Thanks.Xenovatis (talk) 16:23, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Why is this not on wikiquote?
Wiki policy is quite clear that Wikipedia is not a repository for quotations. The npov implications aside of creating a page to find quotes which match a particular pov, this page is an example of quotefarming and should be moved. --A.Garnet (talk) 08:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Archive under Pontic Greek genocide
I propose to move this article to talk:Pontic_Greek genocide/Academic quotes because it is a useful resource for the article Pontic Greek genocide but it is not enough Wikipedia is not a quote farm and although some of these quotes may be of use in the Pontic Greek genocide this should not be a stand alone article. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 10:26, 9 July 2008 (UTC)