[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 118 (Tuesday, September 9, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1706]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BURNING OF SMYRNA

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BRAD SHERMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, September 9, 1997

  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the 75th 
anniversary of the burning of Smyrna and honor the memory of its 
civilian victims.
  The destruction of Smyrna in 1922, was the culmination of a Turkish 
campaign to systematically eliminate the ethnic Greek population in 
Asia Minor, in the current day Republic of Turkey. During this 
campaign, thousands were consigned and killed in forced labor 
battalions and hundreds of Greek towns and villages were destroyed. 
Turkish forces massacred 450,000 Greek civilians in areas where they 
comprised a majority, specifically, on the Black Sea coast, in Pontus, 
and the Smyrna region.
  Smyrna was the largest city in Asia Minor and a cosmopolitan hub 
populated by a highly educated Greek community and flourishing 
commercial and middle classes. In September 1922, the city was sacked 
and burned to the ground, and its Greek and Armenian inhabitants along 
with refugees from the countryside were slaughtered by Turkish forces. 
Western diplomats and journalists stationed in U.S. and European ships 
offshore compared the devastation to that of Carthage.
  Metropolitan Chrysostomos, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox 
Christians in Smyrna who refused to abandon the city, was seized from 
religious services in the cathedral by the Turkish police and was 
turned over to be dismembered by a street mob. Other Greek 
metropolitans were brutally tortured to death as were dozens of 
Armenian clerics.
  The 75th anniversary of the destruction of Smyrna is more than a 
symbolic anniversary. A year later, in 1923, more than 1.2 million 
Greeks were uprooted from Turkey and persecutions of the Greek minority 
remaining in Turkey have since recurred. In a pogrom in Istanbul in 
1955, Orthodox churches and Greek businesses were burned and 
vandalized, and expulsion of Greeks followed in 1964. Restrictions on 
press and religious freedoms and harassment of the Ecumenical 
Patriarchate continue today.
  Mr. Speaker, so that such atrocities may never again be repeated, it 
is important to honor the memory of the victims of Smyrna on this 75th 
anniversary. It is important that we bring these events to the 
attention of the American people and encourage the Republic of Turkey 
to acknowledge and recognize the victims of Smyrna.

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