Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
Ottoman Government; the Turks accused them of furnishing supplies to the
English submarines in the Marmora and also of acting as spies. The Turks
also declared that the Greeks were not loyal to the Ottoman Government,
but that they also looked forward to the day when the Greeks outside of
Turkey would become part of Greece. These latter charges were
unquestionably true; that the Greeks, after suffering for five centuries
the most unspeakable outrages at the hands of the Turks, should look
longingly to the day when their territory should be part of the
Fatherland, was to be expected. The Turks, as in the case of the
Armenians, seized upon this as an excuse for a violent onslaught on the
whole race. Everywhere the Greeks were gathered in groups and, under the
so-called protection of Turkish gendarmes, they were transported, the
larger part on foot, into the interior. Just how many were scattered in
this fashion is not definitely known, the estimates varying anywhere
from 200,000 up to 1,000,000. These caravans suffered great privations,
but they were not submitted to general massacre as were the Armenians,
and this is probably the reason why the outside world has not heard so
much about them. The Turks showed them this greater consideration not
from any motive of pity. The Greeks, unlike the Armenians, had a
Government which was vitally interested in their welfare. At this time
there was a general apprehension among the Teutonic Allies that Greece
would enter the war on the side of the Entente, and a wholesale massacre
of Greeks in Asia Minor would unquestionably have produced such a state
of mind in Greece that its pro-German king would have been unable longer
to have kept his country out of the war. It was only a matter of state
policy, therefore, that saved these Greek subjects of Turkey from all
the horrors that befell the Armenians. But their sufferings are still
terrible, and constitute another chapter in the long story of crimes for
which civilisation will hold the Turk responsible.
CHAPTER XXV
TALAAT TELLS WHY HE “ANNIHILATES” THE ARMENIANS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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