A Critical Review of Konstantinos Photiades’ Publications on the Greek Genocide
Photiades' fourteen volume work The Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus
Introduction
This article will provide a brief review of the more important contributions to Greek Genocide scholarship by Dr. Konstantinos Photiades (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Φωτιάδης), an academic of Modern Greek History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Konstantinos E. Photiades (sometimes spelt Fotiadis) was born (1948) to Pontic Greek refugees and, as will become clear, his Pontic Greek heritage has profoundly influenced the course of his historical scholarship. Photiades received his university education at the Philosophical School of Aristotle University and later studied at the University of Tübingen, where he obtained his PhD (1985). His thesis was titled The Islamification of Asia Minor and the Crypto-Christians of Pontus [Die Islamisierung Kleinasiens und die Kryptochristen des Pontos]. In 1989 Photiades was appointed lecturer at Aristotle University, in 1993 he became associate professor of Modern Greek History and in 1997 was granted full professorship.
The most comprehensive work produced by Photiades on the Greek Genocide is undoubtedly a fourteen volume publication titled The Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus [Η Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων του Πόντου] (Thessaloniki: Herodotus, 2004). The first three volumes consist of an introduction and background on the Genocide and are followed by eleven volumes of transcribed archival documentation from more than half a dozen countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy and Russia. This publication is an immense contribution to scholarship of the Greek Genocide and the value of having rare and often previously unpublished archival documentation readily accessible cannot be understated.
In his paper Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor eminent scholar Prof. Speros Vryonis refers to the Photiades publication as a “huge … work” and as the first “systematic effort to martial thousands of documents and to write an orderly history of the event.” In fact, earlier attempts have been made to compile archival documentation pertaining to the Greek Genocide – for example, by Polihronis Enepekides in 1962 – but, as rightly pointed out, this is first time it has been realized on such a scale.
Regional Isolation and the Elevation of Pontic Greek Suffering
However, despite the title of his work, Photiades systematically reproduces documentation extrinsic to Pontus and frequently omits documents that explicitly refer to the fate of Greeks beyond Pontus in an attempt to unscrupulously demonstrate that Pontic Greeks, unlike other Ottoman Greeks, were subjected to a genocidal campaign.
Despite this conscious attempt of distortion, careful analysis of the documentation presented reveals that the genocidal campaign was not restricted to Pontus but encompassed Ottoman Turkey as a whole. For example, to excerpt from a document titled Report on Conditions in the Interior of Anatolia under the Turkish Nationalist Government and reproduced in volume thirteen of the series (p. 221), American relief worker Stanley E. Hopkins (incorrectly named Stanley K. Hopkins in the volume) affirms that the “deportation of the Greeks is not limited to the Black Sea Coast but is being carried out throughout the whole country governed by the Nationalists.” Yet, regardless of what the archival material says, Photiades aggressively pursues the exclusive “Pontic Greek Genocide” thesis in his writings.
Figures for deportation, enforced conscription and death toll as well as reports, eye-witness accounts and other empirical documents have all been presented as if they pertain exclusively to Pontus and its Greek population. As a consequence the reader is mislead and forms the conclusion that genocide was perpetrated solely against the Greeks of Photiades’ ancestral homeland. Prof. Vryonis also affirmed that Photiades’ figures on enforced conscription are misleading, “it is not always clear whether the total numbers refer to conscriptions in Pontus or to more general figures of Greeks conscripted everywhere.” In fact, so far as statistics, it should be noted that in his own writings Photiades depends too heavily on Greek figures and ignores important foreign sources regarding numbers on population, deportation, and death toll.
The fundamental flaw of the publication rests in Photiades’ myopic stance of exclusivity of suffering, that is the raising of the regional Pontic Greek plight above and beyond that of all other Ottoman Greeks, and it is this crippling factor which has ultimately compromised the standard of his historiography.
Distortion of Photographic Material
In his efforts to validate the spurious thesis that the Pontic Greeks were subjected to an isolated and exclusive genocidal campaign, Konstantinos Photiades has also engaged in the distortion of key photographic documents. To illustrate this we turn to another publication by Photiades. In this case a single tome publication but by the same title, The Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus [Η Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων του Πόντου], and published (2004) by the Hellenic Parliament Foundation for Parliamentarianism and Democracy. Note that the photographs here are all reproduced in the fourteen volume series with equivalently false and fabricated captions. We will now examine three key examples.
1.
Photiades reproduces this photograph (p. 601) with the caption “Document from the deportation and exile of the Greeks of Pontus” [Ντοκουμέντο από τις εκτοπίσεις και εξορίες των Ελλήνων του Πόντου]. Note that this photograph is also pictured on the cover of the book.
Contrary to his claim, this photograph does not represent a "deportation" or an “exile”, but an evacuation of orphan children by the Near East Relief organization conducted sometime between 1922 and 1923. The photographer, Major Charles Dexter Morris (1883-1954), was a member of the Near East Relief in Turkey.
Contrary to his claim, there is no evidence to suggest the subjects are Pontic Greeks. The evacuation movement began from Near East Relief stations in Kharput, central Turkey and, as evidence suggests, moved southwards towards Syria. The subjects pictured are either Greek or Armenian, from various regions of the Empire, or perhaps even both.
2.
Photiades reproduces this photograph (also p. 601) with the caption “Deportation of the Greeks of Pontus” [Εκτοπισμός των Ελλήνων του Πόντου].
Contrary to his claim, this photograph has no connection with Pontus or the Greeks of Pontus. In fact, it was taken in September 1922 in the Aegean port city of Smyrna, hundreds of kilometers from Pontus, and depicts Greek men of Smyrna being separated from the rest of the population for enforced conscription into labor battalions. Major Charles Dexter Morris was again the photographer.
3.
Photiades reproduces this photograph (p. 616) with the caption “The massacre of Greeks and Armenians in Trebizond (28 February 1919)” [Η σφαγή των Ελλήνων και Αρμενίων στην Τραπεζούντα (28 Φεβρουαρίου 1919)].
Contrary to the claim that the location was Trebizond of Pontus, the photograph was actually taken in Aleppo, Syria at an American Relief Hospital – again several hundred kilometers from Trebizond, Pontus.
Contrary to Photiades claim that Greeks are amongst the bodies, those pictured are in fact all Armenian, victims of a massacre perpetrated by Arabs in Aleppo on the same day as the photograph was taken, namely Friday 28th of February 1919. The date was the only correct particular Photiades relayed.
Incidentally, in the same publication there is another photograph which clearly depicts the deportation of Armenians from Kharput in 1915 but regrettably is subjected to Photiades’ policy of photo falsification and distortion.
It seems entirely inconceivable that such crucial particulars regarding the true origin and attribution of such well-documented photographs could have escaped Photiades’ attention. In fact, there is strong evidence to suggest that information detailing the actual subject and context of these photgraphs was available to Photiades. In his defense, one might argue that the images were being used in some form of generic context but, even if this was the case, it cannot justify outright distortion of pictorial documents through false captions in what is meant to be a serious historical publication.
Conclusion
One should not lose sight of the fact that this fourteen volume publication, consisting of some 8,000 pages and including some 1,200 illustrations, contains hundreds of archival documents from a range of international archives and that, as a whole, the documents have been meticulously transcribed and presented in their original form. On the other hand, one does have to look past the deceptive title and its fallacious introduction. Nevertheless, regardless of Photiades’ spurious position on the Pontic Greeks, his publications will certainly remain an indispensable resource for scholars researching the genocidal fate of the Ottoman Greeks for many years to come.
Compiled for Greek-Genocide.org, 22 May 2008