The recent armed confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region puts Greece on the side of the Armenians, with Turkey firmly on the side of the Azeris.
Greece has centuries-old friendships with the East Country, and the two peoples also share many painful experiences, as the Greeks and Armenians suffered greatly at the hands of the modern Turkish state in the early 20th century.
Until the 5th century AD, Armenians used the Greek alphabet to write their language. During the Byzantine period, Greeks and Armenians coexisted in the best friendship in the wonderful Eastern Orthodox state. to be officially recognized, has followed parallel paths with the Greek Orthodox Church.
The ties of the two peoples were forged more intensely at the time under Turkish rule which was sealed with two wonderful disasters: defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
They were connected to the broader political, economic, social, cultural, national and devout advances in the region. Armenians and Greeks shared the same fate, lived for centuries in non-unusual houses and shared cultural identities and reports, which led them to unite in many countries. Forms.
Perhaps most significant of all, however, is the fact that both peoples were victims of the same perpetrator. During the first Armenian massacres of the 1890s, the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the Pontian genocide of the same period, both peoples were massacred through the Turks and suffered the same tragic fate of forced expatriation and exile.
The Armenian quarter of Izmir was the first to be burned down by Kemal Ataturk’s army in 1922. One hundred thousand Armenians followed the Greeks on their violent departure which has become the unhappy epilogue to Greco-Armenian history in Asia Minor.
Why the Greeks are with the Armenians
A Greek-American explains why the Greeks help Armenians and the values that unrave the history of the two nations: << Refugees from the illegal invasion and the continuing profession of Cyprus, innocent women and young people facing ethnic cleansing in Afrin, Syria. t forget on 24 April 1915 to show the Republic of Turkey that we will not remain silent in the face of the crimes and injustices of Turkish governments, beyond and in the present. Molon Washes!" Ioannis Pavlos Fidanakis
Posted through Greek Reporter on Wednesday, September 30, 2020
A Greek-American explains why the Greeks are with the Armenians. Credit: Greek reporter
More than 40,000 ethnic Armenians harmoniously as Greek citizens in many parts of the country, including Athens, Thessaloniki, Alexandria, Serres, Kavala, Xanthi, Komotini, Kalamata, Larissa, Argos, Corinth, Megara, Lavrio, Corfu, Chios, Mytilene, Samos and Crete.
Eight thousand Greeks lived in independent Armenia, according to a 1979 census, this number would possibly have declined significantly through upcoming population movements, mainly to Greece and the former Soviet republics.
The Greek language is taught as a foreign language at yerevan University, Brassov Linguistic University and the School of Theology and the Armenian Military Academy.
Greece was one of the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence, which was won on 21 September 1991. There has been a Greek embassy in Yerevan since 1993 and a corresponding Armenian embassy in Athens.
Greece is one of the countries that officially recognized the genocide of Armenians through the Ottomans in 1915. Greece also provides humanitarian and progressive aid to Armenia and has supported Armenia’s rapprochement with the European institutions.
Since Armenia’s declaration of independence, the two countries have cooperated in foreign organizations, joining the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and BSEC, while Greece strongly supports the progression of EU-Armenia relations. .
Greece officially identified the 1915 Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey as genocide in 1999 and in 2014 enacted a law criminalizing public denial of genocide and others.
The Armenian Parliament, for its part, also unanimously followed a solution condemning “the genocide of the Greeks and Assyrians perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1923”.
The International Association of Genocide Specialists concluded in 2007 that “the Ottoman crusade opposed to the Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide opposed to Armenians, Assyrians, Porticos and Greeks of Anatolia.
Successive Turkish governments have vehemently denied this fact.
Turkey has criticized Armenia and Greece for the factor of the Armenian genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Greeks in Smyrna in 1922.
But as Turkey refuses to acknowledge its violent beyond and claims to be the recipient of unwarranted hostilities, more and more people are discovering the fact of atrocities perpetrated through the Turkish state in the early 20th century and in Cyprus in 1974.