page_title: Greek genocide
section_title: Casualties
hierarchical_section_title: Greek genocide / Events / Casualties
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Smyrna burning taken from a ship in Smyrna gulf, 1922. The writing on the picture is in Italian and it reads "Smyrna, 06:00 hours, 18 September 1922"
context_page_description: The Greek genocide, including the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population carried out in Anatolia during World War I and its aftermath on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was instigated by the government of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish national movement against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire and included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, summary expulsions, arbitrary execution, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.
  By late 1922, most of the Greeks of Asia Minor had either fled or had been killed. Those remaining were transferred to Greece under the terms of the later 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, which formalized the exodus and barred the return of the refugees.
context_section_description: For the whole of the period between 1914 and 1922 and for the whole of Anatolia, there are academic estimates of death toll ranging from 289,000 to 750,000. The figure of 750,000 is suggested by political scientist Adam Jones. Scholar Rudolph Rummel compiled various figures from several studies to estimate lower and higher bounds for the death toll between 1914 and 1923. He estimates that 384,000 Greeks were exterminated from 1914 to 1918, and 264,000 from 1920 to 1922. The total number reaching 648,000. Historian Constantine G Hatzidimitriou writes that "loss of life among Anatolian Greeks during the WWI period and its aftermath was approximately 735,370".
  Some contemporary sources claimed different death tolls. The Greek government collected figures together with the Patriarchate to claim that a total of one million people were massacred. A team of American researchers found in the early postwar period that the total number of Greeks killed may approach 900,000 people. Edward Hale Bierstadt, writing in 1924, stated that "According to official testimony, the Turks since 1914 have slaughtered in cold blood 1,500,000 Armenians, and 500,000 Greeks, men women and children, without the slightest provocation.". On 4 November 1918, Emanuel Efendi, an Ottoman deputy of Aydin, criticised the ethnic cleansing of the previous government and reported that 550,000 Greeks had been killed in the coastal regions of Anatolia (including the Black Sea coast) and Aegean Islands during the deportations.
  According to various sources the Greek death toll in the Pontus region of Anatolia ranges from 300,000 to 360,000. Merrill D. Peterson cites the death toll of 360,000 for the Greeks of Pontus. According to George K. Valavanis, "The loss of human life among the Pontian Greeks, since the Great War (World War I) until March 1924, can be estimated at 353,000, as a result of murders, hangings, and from punishment, disease, and other hardships." Valavanis derived this figure from the 1922 record of the Central Pontian Council in Athens based on the Black Book of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, to which he adds "50,000 new martyrs", which "came to be included in the register by spring 1924".
caption: Smyrna burning during the Fire of Smyrna. According to different estimates some 10.000,[105] to 100,000[89] Greeks and Armenians were killed in the fire and accompanying massacres.
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