The Greek population of Anatolia was persecuted systematically by the Ottoman Young Turk and the Kemalist governments between 1913–1924, resulting in the loss of their very existence in their historic homelands. The most prominent events during this process include the ethnic cleansing in Asia Minor during 1913–14; the 1921–22 systematic massacres of the Pontiac Greeks; the burning of Izmir in 1922; and the 1924 forced population exchanges. The author demonstrates successfully how these different episodes of violence were reconstructed as one “genocide” starting in the 1990s, meaning that this book is not about what happened during 1913–24; it is about how and why this history was reconstructed and what conditions this reconstruction was a product of.
The author explains that the process began slowly, with the demand by a small local community (the Pontiac Greeks) that their suffering be labeled a genocide. This request was met by criticism on the premise that it was dangerous to Greek national unity: not only the Pontiac Greeks, but the Greeks of Asia Minor had also suffered a genocide. Thus, two separate genocides came to the forefront. Later, the narrative of these two genocides was merged into one under the framework of a unified national memory. This “genocide” and “memory” construction gains meaning when considered under the context of contemporary political needs or as a part of the identity politics involved, especially within diaspora communities.
The general setup and structure of the book is successful. The reader can ascertain from the beginning what each chapter's contents and primary theses are. We are thus presented with a book that is easy to follow and understand. The Chapter 1 provides a brief historical background of the period leading up to the 1924 forced population exchanges. It offers useful information for those who are not well-versed in the topic. Chapter 2 discusses the process of how the Greek Genocide concept emerged. Until the 1990s, the Anatolian Greeks’ experience in 1912–24 did not play an important role in Greek politicial life. The refugees were also not much interested in the violence of their own history. The author provides various explanations for this: generational response to trauma and the 1946–49 Greek Civil War are two of these reasons. The turning point in the reconstruction of memory was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the memoirs published in the 1980s and 1990s.
Chapter 3 undertakes the topic of the Greek population's diversity and the emergence of two separate genocides–Pontiac Greeks and the Greeks of Asia Minor—as a result. The resolutions of the Greek Parliament regarding the 1994 (Pontus) and 1998 (Asia Minor) genocides, as well as the separate remembrance days assigned to each, symbolize this dual genocide narrative. One important consequence of these “new” genocide concepts and the demand for recognition is that it seriously clashed with the classical historical memory processes of both the Greek left and right. As a result, a serious debate emerged on whether the cases of the Pontiac and the Asia Minor Greeks represented genocide or not. The book summarizes these debates in a compelling manner.
Chapter 4 addresses the international component of the topic. In 2004, Greece declared January 27 as Holocaust Remembrance Day. Naturally, this compelled Greece to confront its own Nazi history. Remembering previous genocides in which Greeks were victims was easy; however, when it came to the Holocaust, it was different. The issues of Nazi collaboration and/or being bystanders in genocide emerged as important questions within the debate. Needless to say, the Greeks’ role in the Armenian Genocide also came into the forefront. The classical myths of a “familial and religious kinship” and a “shared fate of victimhood” with the Armenians became seriously questioned.
The issue was complicated further by the Greek neo-Nazi movement Golden Down denying the Holocaust, while simultaniously orchestrating campaigns for the recognition of the Pontiac and Asia Minor genocides. Chapter 5 and 6 debate the emergence of this cosmpolitan memory among the Greek diaspora communities, particularly in the USA. The diaspora Greeks took the cases of the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide as examples. The 1919–22 occupation of Anatolia by the Greek army, however, and the destruction that ensued, remained serious obstacles to the narrative depicting Greeks solely as victims. Thus, this dimension of history was completely left out of the contemporary publications. This was a resulf of the diaspora community's need for a unified Greek identity, for which the concept of a homogenized Greek Genocide became very useful.
The academic discourse regarding the recognition of the Greek Genocide is the last point discussed by the author. The debates between those who label every massacre and deportation as genocide in solidarity with the suffering victims and the academics who stick to their scholarly values and distinguish meticulously between distinct methods of mass murder are elucidated effectively. Ultimately, the book successfully demonstrates how the concept of genocide, instead of denoting a real event in history, is a product of various political needs, how it creates historical distortions, and how it is used and manipulated. The Greek example illustrates how difficult it still is to construct a memory based on universal values that shares in the pain of all those who suffer around the world.
