Today, September 14, marks the annual commemoration of the Day of National Remembrance of the Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor by the Turkish State.
The annual commemoration was established in a unanimous vote in Greece’s Parliament in September 1998.
This year’s commemoration comes on the tragic centennial of the destruction of Smyrna by Kemalist forces, and the eradication of millennia-old Hellenism on the western shores of Asia Minor.
On the occasion of the 100-year anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the Holy Synod of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece has issued an encyclical, which was read out at all parish churches on the Sunday ahead of the great feast day of the Elevation of the Venerable and Life-Giving Cross.
The encyclical reads, among others, “…We remember the events without vindictiveness, without fanaticism. We are instructed by history so that no genocide, whatsoever, is repeated. We speak to our children over the consequences of division and discord, and we pray and work for national unanimity.”
In a related development, the documentary “New Halicarnassus” will be posted this evening on the Pemptousia TV platform.
The documentary details a journey beginning in Halicarnassus, the ancient and heralded city on the western coast of Asia Minor, to New Halicarnassus, the settlement founded by Greek refugees after 1922 in Irakleio, on the large island of Crete.