On the 106th Anniversary of the Greek Genocide, Bethnahrin National Council Urges Reckoning with History

BETH NAHRIN — On the 106th anniversary of the Pontic Greek genocide, the Bethnahrin National Council (Mawtbo Umthoyo D’Bethnahrin, MUB), issued a solemn statement urging Turkey to confront the legacy of its past atrocities and abandon exclusionary policies that continue to marginalize ethnic and religious components across the Middle East.

The statement commemorated the mass killings and forced deportations that targeted Christian peoples—specifically Pontic Greeks, Armenians, and Syriacs (Assyrians-Arameans-Chaldeans)—in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of the Turkish State. These campaigns, the MUB said, amounted to a coordinated effort to erase indigenous Christian populations from Anatolia and Beth Nahrain (Mesopotamia). 

Entitled “Genocide Cannot Be Forgotten,” the MUB’s statement recalled the events that began on May 19, 1919—widely recognized as the onset of the Pontic Greek genocide along the Black Sea coast. The massacres resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, accompanied by the destruction of churches, homes, and schools, the looting of property, forced displacements, and efforts to erase cultural and religious identities from the surviving population. 

The MUB accused successive Turkish governments of systematically covering up these crimes, citing policies of Turkification and state-imposed religious nationalism. It argued that these policies continue to suppress minority rights, including cultural, linguistic, and religious freedoms. 

“What happened cannot be separated from the broader Turkish nationalist project,” the statement said. “That project sought to construct a homogenous state at the expense of the region’s historic diversity.” 

According to the MUB, the refusal to acknowledge these atrocities remains a major obstacle to democratic reform. “A state built on the ruins of massacred peoples cannot progress without historical reckoning and justice,” it said, emphasizing the need for dismantling the authoritarian structures rooted in that legacy. 

The statement called on regional and international actors to support a new era of coexistence based on pluralism and human dignity. It noted that global momentum is increasingly favoring the dismantling of authoritarian regimes and exclusionary politics—developments that Turkey, it argued, must not ignore. 

In closing, the MUB honored the victims of the Pontic Greek Genocide and reaffirmed its commitment to seeking justice and recognition for all oppressed ethnic and religious communities in the region.

“The future must be built on truth,” the Council declared. “Not on the silence of forgotten crimes.”