A young German philhellene doctor, Wilhelm Boldemann, who could not bear to witness these scenes, committed suicide. Towards the end of January , more than 1, Turks and other Muslims at Acrocorinth agreed to surrender to the rebels, provided that they could keep enough money to hire neutral vessels for their journey to Asia Minor.
But, while they were waiting for ships to arrive, rebels under the leadership of Kolokotronis and others killed them. Up to the summer of , the Greek rebellion had cost the lives of more than 50, Turks, Greeks, Albanians, Jews and others. Many more were forced to live in slavery and deprivation. Muslims besieged in the Acropolis area of Athens for a long time surrendered on June 21, , accepting the promise of Greek religious and rebel leaders, that they would not be killed.
However, with the exception of a few saved with great difficulty by foreign consuls, they were all killed. At the same time defenseless Muslims in Athens were carved to pieces in the streets. When the town of Nauplia surrendered to the Greek rebels on December 12, , the rebels committed terrible massacres. Commodore Hamilton, arriving in port on the British warship HMS Cambrian, was instrumental in saving some of the Muslim and Jewish residents of the town from certain death.
One hundred and fifty Albanians who were returning to their home country on a Turkish ship that ran aground just outside Missolonghi, surrendered to the rebels following promises of safety given to them by Mavrokordatos only to be killed after being robbed. The genocidal orgy in the Peloponnese ended only when there were no more Turks to kill. This so-called Greek war of independence hitherto was hardly a war at all, but mostly a series of opportunist massacres against defenseless civilians, women and children who were slaughtered because of their ethnicity and religion.
The philhellenes and propagandists portrayed to the West the Ottoman's strong measures as " Turkish barbarity against the Christian people. The following leaflet distributed in August in Hamburg is very instructive:.
The struggle for religion, life and independence is calling us to arms; humanity and duty are calling us to the aid of the noble Greeks, who are our brothers. We must sacrifice our blood and our life for the sacred cause. The end of Muslim rule in Europe is approaching. Wide-scale violence against the Greek community of Istanbul, believed to have been engineered by the Turkish government of then Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, destroyed an estimated , shops and precipitated the exodus of thousands of ethnic Greeks from the city in In July , as a guarantor power under the Treaty of London, Turkey invaded Cyprus after a coup by Nicos Sampson ousted the elected Makarios government in an effort to unite the island with Greece.
Turkey eventually occupied close to 40 percent of Cyprus. In the post period, Greek pressure against the Turkish minority of Thrace was, if less violent, no less deleterious. Turkish women used to be sold between 30 and 40 piastres, according to age and beauty.
An Italian volunteer named Brengeri, on a road before he came to Corinth, found the dead body of a Turk, and further on, he found his wife and a baby, still alive but very hungry. He and his friends gave her a few coins, in the hope that she would be able to feed herself and the baby a little longer. Before they had gone a few yards they heard two shots: some Greeks had killed her and the baby, and taken the coins[ 31 ].
Brengeri later saw some Greeks killing a Turkish family, a man, his wife and two children. Before they killed the mother they tore off her veil to see what she looked like, and at that moment Brengeri rushed up and begged them to spare her.
They asked for 50 piastres, which he gave them and saved her[ 32 ]. At Acrocorinth, following the Turkish capitulation, a Turkish couple, too starved and exhausted to carry their child any further, tried to hand it to a Greek. He immediately drew a long knife and cut off his head, explaining, as a German officer was trying to prevent him, that it was best to prevent the Turks from growing up[32a].
Up to the summer of the Greek rebellion had cost the lives of more than 50, Turks, Greeks, Albanians, Jews and others. Many more were forced to live in slavery and depravation. Compared to this, very few people had died during direct and mutual confrontations.
This so-called "Greek war of independence" hitherto was hardly a war at all in the conventional way, but mosdy a series of "opportunist massacres". Many of the Turks and Greeks killed were not soldiers and rebels, respectively; the victims had merely paid the price of belonging, in their respective circumstances, to the weaker community and die wrong religion[ 33 ]. At the same time the defenceless Muslims of the town of Athens were carved up into pieces in the streets.
When the Greek rebels were attacking Modon, they caught a Turk outside the city walls. They decapitated him; put his head on a pike; took it to Navarino where drey kicked it about as if it was a football[ 34 ],. According to tire statements of British sailors, the rebels used to turture tire Turks tlrey captured on the high seas.
According to Anemat the Dutchman, the rebels used to bring round the Turkish sailors whom drey captured unconscious, and then kill them with all kinds of torture, ultimately tearing them into pieces. The Dutch used to describe the Greeks as "cowards and barbarians"[ 35 ]. The Dervenaki massacre When tire Turkish army appeared before Corinth in the summer of , the socalled "Greek government", which was established at Argos, tried to retreat to tire coast, in parric, and to escape on ships.
Thousands of Greek refrtgees in the Argos plain were following suit, whilst the Greek brigands of Mainotis were trying to rob their own people before escaping. Soorr the Turkish army ran out of provisions and munitions, and tried to withdraw to Corinth; but as the mottntain passes were under tire control of Kolokotronis's maratrders, thousands of Tttrks were massacred at the Dervenaki pass.
Had de rebels not wasted time in robbirrg the dead bodies, the whole Ottoman army would have been rotrted then. In December it was the turn of Navplia town-cum-port. In the streets of that town, which had been besieged by the rebels for a long time, one very frequendy came across the dead bodies of children who had died of starvation. Emaciated women were trying to scavenge for food in filthy drains.
According to the German officer Kotsch, one of the European volunteers, who happened to be at Navplia during the incidents, a Greek Orthodox priest who was suspected of establishing relations with the Turks, had his fingers scalded by the Greeks with hot water and his nails burnt. He was then buried in the ground up to his neck, and his face was brushed with syrup so that he might be attacked by the flies.
It took him six days to die in agony. A Jew who was trying to escape from the town was captured, completely undressed, his organs severed, and having been led around the town in that condition, he was hanged[ 37 ]. The rebels piled up the heads of the murdered in the form of a pyramid. At that very moment the arrival into port of the British warship Cambrian, under the command of Commodore Hamilton, was insU'umental in saving some of the Muslim and Jewish residents of the town from certain death[ 38 ].
During the ransack of the town the lion's share went to the Greek rebels. In a Turkish ship which struck the bottom of the sea just outside Misolonghi, Albanians, who were returning to their own country, surrendered to the rebels following the promise given to them by Mavrokordatos, but another rebel leader had them all killed, after they were robbed of their belongings.
The murder of European Grecophile volunteers The Greek rebels went so far in their barbarities that they even began to murder their foreign supporters who had come from abroad, mainly from Europe, in order to help them. After the capture of the Navplia town by the rebels, it was observed that some Greeks led their foreign supporters into a sauna-bath, in the town, and disposed of them.
The Greek owner of the sauna-bath persuaded the foreigners to take off their clotlies so that when he murdered them, their clothes and boots would not be blood-stained, and he would then be able to sell them. Of course, the naive volunteers did not suspect what would befall them[ 39 ]. The genocide orgy in the Peloponnese ended only when there were no more Turks to be killed[ 40 ].
The philhellene volunteers who went to help the Greeks and began to return to their homeland in and could not save themselves from the nightmare of those terrible days.
They were expecting many good tilings from the Hellenes or Greeks , but instead they were flabbergasted. They began to hate the Greeks and to curse themselves for having been taken in by them. Despite pressure from the Greek societies in Europe, they began to put pen on paper about their own experiences. Deportations were issued in the Dardanelles and Gallipolli regions of Asia Minor. The Greek inhabitants of the western coastline of Asia Minor were sent to Muslim villages, where they had to either convert to Islam or be killed.
The rest of the Christian Greek population was sent to the interior lands, where they would be exposed to harsh winter weather, starvation and illness. Approximately 3. After the loss, leaders of the CUP Party were sentenced to death for their role in the organized Greek genocide. A year later, the Greek Genocide ended.
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