General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
Note: Ismini Lamb and Christopher Lamb, co-authors of The Gentle American: George Horton’s Odyssey and His True Account of the Smyrna Catastrophe shared the following list with The National Herald in time for this year’s centennial of the Smyrna Catastrophe.
Misconception: that World War I ended on the Western Front, a widespread misconception among the American, British and French publics and historians.
Reality: a breakthrough in Greece and the Balkans, enabled by nine fresh Greek divisions, the largest portion of the Allied forces there, drove four hundred miles in less than eight weeks, knocking Bulgaria, Turkey and Austro-Hungary out of the war and forcing German surrender. Horton was present at the attack and at the Bulgarian surrender. All this is critical for understanding the post-WWI peace enforcement environment.
Misconception: that the 1919-1922 fighting in Anatolia was a “Greco-Turkish” war.
Reality: it was a continuation of World War I, as George Horton explained.
Misconception: that Greek forces “invaded” Asia Minor, a widespread mischaracterization used by even excellent histories of the period.
Reality: Allied Forces, including Greek soldiers, occupied small portions of Asia Minor to enforce compliance with peace terms signed by Ottoman authorities.
Misconception: that Greek atrocities in Smyrna ignited Turkish resistance.
Reality: Turkish forces laid a premeditated ambush for Allied troops in Smyrna, and about 400 on each side of the resultant violence were killed.
Misconception: that the Greek Administration in Ionia was rapacious rather than progressive.
Reality: as George Horton argued in his reporting and book, The Blight of Asia, the Greek Administration restored order quickly, was harder on Greek miscreants than Turkish ones, and was a boon to all inhabitants.
Misconception: that Greek and Turkish atrocities were roughly equivalent.
Reality: in scope, intensity and intent, the Turkish atrocities dwarfed anything done by Greek regular or irregular forces.
Misconception: that the “Megali Idea,” and Greek imperialism led the Greeks on a hopeless quest to conquer Asia Minor that was doomed from the beginning.
Reality: Greece was motivated to provide security for Greek Ottomans as well as hopes of acquiring Thrace and Ionia, and almost did so despite all odds. However, as predicted by Horton, tiny Greece was only up to the task with Allied backing, particularly finances. Venizelos did not secure that backing in writing, however, and Italy and France and eventually the Soviet Union betrayed their former ally, Greece, providing Turkish nationalists with arms, money, and advisors, leading Britain to declare itself neutral, as did the United States, thus isolating Greece completely.
Misconception: that no one really knows or can determine who burned Smyrna.
Reality: for reasons well explained by George Horton 100 years ago, it has always been clear that Turkish Nationalist soldiers burned Smyrna.
Misconception: that one man, Asa Jennings, saved the 300,000 refugees on the quay in Smyrna.
Reality: multiple heroes on the scene in Smyrna made the life-saving boat lift possible, and only high-level intervention allowed it to proceed in any case.
Misconception: that the United States Government (USG) just avoided taking sides and was not involved and never would have become involved.
Reality: the USG was involved, as senior Dept. of State diplomats whitewashed the genocide, promoted disinformation, and covered up Turkish atrocities in pursuit of Turkish approval for oil concessions. Moreover, the USG came closer to intervening than most historians realize, but these same diplomats suppressed Horton’s reporting, which was not seen by the Secretary of State before his decisive meeting on intervention with President Harding.
Misconception: that the senior American representative in Turkey, Admiral Mark Bristol, was an honorable champion of realism who advanced American interests.
Reality: Bristol was the embodiment of the “the Ugly American,” an irredeemably ethnocentric ambassador uninformed on his assigned country and region who was nonetheless loud and opinionated in the only language he could comprehend— his native English— who said and did things that were jaw-droppingly immoral, stupid, and duplicitous.
Misconception: that religion played no part in the Asia Minor genocides and Horton’s book, The Blight of Asia, which examines the role of religion, is anti-Turk and Islamophobic.
Reality: Turks, motivated by their religion, targeted Christians because of their religion, just as Horton described and explained. Moreover, his book, The Blight of Asia, is almost universally misunderstood. It was not directed at the Turks, whom he argued had just done what they habitually did, only with more vigor, but at Americans, whom he chastised for their failing moral sense of direction as evidence by the Department of State’s cover up of genocide and some missionaries caring more about saving their buildings than people and souls.
Misconception: that the Armenian, Pontic Greek, and other Christian genocides were unconnected.
Reality: a succession of Turkish governments between 1894 and 1924 systematically and single-mindedly pursued the ethnic cleansing of all minority Christian populations in Anatolia in a sadistic fashion.
Misconception: that Horton and others who assert, explain, and expose the Turkish genocides of Ottoman Christians are bigots.
Reality: Horton was a Christian humanitarian who intervened to aid Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Ottomans throughout his career, and who was investigated after false charges of bias and found to be a model of objectivity by his superiors in the Department of State. Being anti-genocide is not the same as being anti-Turk. Horton argued that it was best for Turks to acknowledge their genocides because only by doing so did they have a chance for an open society with civil liberties and freedom of conscience.
Misconception: that an Armenian zealot named Vahan Cardashian, and to a lesser extent, a former ambassador, James Gerard, alone were responsible for the U.S. Senate’s rejection of the Lausanne Treaties with Turkey.
Reality: Cardashian came by his passion honestly, having served the Ottoman Empire’s New York consulate until he learned his mother and sister had been murdered in the 1915 genocide of Armenians, and by the time the Senate voted, Gerard had stepped back from lobbying against the treaties and Horton had stepped forward, playing a critical but now unknown role in the Senate vote that rejected the treaty with Turkey.
Misconception: that the Asia Minor catastrophe and genocides took place too long ago to matter and are best forgotten.
Reality: truth matters, and always matters. In the years following the Catastrophe, Germans admired the Turks for fighting back against the harsh post-war treaties, defeating the Allied powers, and wiping out “internal enemies” to produce a homogenous, united Turkish national entity. When the Nazis came to power, they emulated the Turks’ genocide. By rewarding the Turks for their genocide, the world got more genocide in WWII. Even today the Asia Minor genocides still matter, as nations like China, guilty of persecuting more than a million Uyghurs in a quest for complete national homogeneity, calculate they have far more to gain than lose from such behavior.
SELECTED SOURCES
———. and Umit Kurt, “After Lausanne: The Armenians Remaining Outside of Turkey,” in Taner Akcam and Umit Kurt, The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018).
_____. “The Continuing Value of The Blight of Asia by George Horton: An Assessment After Ninety-six Years,” American Journal of Contemporary Hellenic Issues, Vol. 13, Spring 2022 (Washington, D.C.: American Hellenic Institute).
_____. Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016).
_____. and Sam Koktzoglou, eds., The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2020).
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — An international team of doctors visiting a hospital in central Gaza was prepared for the worst.
ATHENS - The tragedy of the Tempi train collision is a much greater issue than an opportunity for parties to table a motion of censure against the government, but the opposition parties used it anyway "to turn society's pain into a tool to strike at the government and me personally," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday night in parliament.
ATHENS - PASOK-KINAL leader Nikos Androulakis, speaking at the Hellenic Parliament on Thursday, emphasized that there is "an established belief among the Greek people" that the government "operates as a well-oiled machine of corruption, cover-up, and propaganda.
ATHENS — Greece’s center-right government survived a motion of no-confidence late Thursday that was brought by opposition parties over its handling of the country’s deadliest rail disaster a year ago.
ASTORIA – Greek Minister of the Interior Niki Kerameus offered an informative presentation on postal voting in the upcoming European Union elections for Greek citizens in a well-attended event held at the St.