Pontiques

The pontic Greek or Pontiques , are the descendants of the populations hellénophones (Greek or hellenized) of the circumference of the Black Sea, the Euxine Sea of the Antiquité.

Pontiques Anatolian in the Ottoman Empire

At the beginning of the 20th century, there remain still several hundreds of thousands of Pontiques in the Othoman provinces, but the near total is massacred during and at the conclusion of the First World War (unquestionable people in pontic Greece speaking about “genocide” following the example Armenian genocide - half of the 500 000 Pontiques residents of 1919 would have been massacred or would have succumbed during their deportation between 1919 and 1923), are expelled towards the Greece following the Traité of Lausanne of 1923.

The whole of the “Greeks” of Anatolia is qualified in Greece of Micrasiates. This name comes from Μικρά Ασία, minor Asia). Besides this category includes also orthodoxe Christian non-héllénophones, speakers of the " Roum " or " rum" (which is different from the Laze in the censuses of the Turkish State) or other Anatolian languages. The Ottoman Empire finishing, under the direction of Mustafa Kemal, expels also these populations, exploiting confusion between “Greek nation” and “Greek millet” ( rum milleti ), this last being makes of it only one religious category (Christian orthodoxe) and not main road.

Among the Micrasiates, the Pontiques are those whose territory of origin is the " Pont" (Royaume_du_Pont) a part goes down from Ionian (founders of the majority of the cities length the coast of the Black Sea) while others result from populations autochtones hellenized since Antiquity or christianized under the Byzantine Empire. The Royaume_du_Pont car its name of the " Pontos Euxinos" (Euxine Sea, " sea acueillante" in Greek), old name of the Black Sea (" Karadeniz" in Turkish: " sea ombreuse" i.e. " sea with the nord" symbolically, the Mediterranean being for Turkish " Akdeniz": the " sea lumineuse" that is to say the " sea with the sud" symbolically).

Pontiques ex-Anatolians in Greece

Since the years 1920, the majority of Pontiques thus live in Greece, where much maintained their language, at the origin a Greek Dialecte, the Pontique (or " roum" or " rum" in Turkish as mentioned in the registers of population of the Turkish State), which evolved to a distinct Langue, not very comprehensible by the speakers of the modern Greek , just like the Cappadocien recently (June 2005) redécouvert in Chalcidique. Pontiques are the subject often of jokes in racist matter on behalf of the other Greeks, the character of Pontique in the Greek jokes, like that of the Wallachian (Aroumain), is always a little ridiculous, not luke-warm. Generally, Micrasiates, whose Pontiques, were used by the Greek State to populate the emptied their populations slavo-Macedonians, aroumaines, Albanian, Turkish or Greek areas Islamized (" Turks hellénophones"). It is not a question of ethnic purification but d'" exchanges of populations" legatees (and made compulsory) by the Treated of Lausanne: 400.000 people have to leave Greece, while 1.500.000 Micrasiates (and also Greeks of Thrace, Bulgaria and the USSR in the following years) have to leave their hearths to come to Greece.

Pontiques Anatolian in Turkey

Whereas the pontic presence in Anatolia was regarded as belonging to a completed history, the publication in 1996 with Istanbul of the work the culture of the Bridge (Turkish title Pontos Kültürü , published in 1999 in Greek with Thessalonique, Ο Πολιτισμός του Πόντου ), of the writer Ömer Asan (born in 1961) revealed the existence of many Moslem speakers of pontic, perhaps 300 000, in particular in an about sixty villages in the neighborhoods of Trébizonde. A nationalist campaign was launched in December 2001, in the tread of the republication of its book, by a professor of theology, Zekeriya Beyaz, which showed it to be a “friend of Greece”, to want to reintroduce orthodoxe Christendom in a Moslem area, then, relayed by the press and the fascistic party MHP (gray Loups), of treason and insult to the memory of Atatürk. The court of state security ordered the seizure of all the specimens of its work and convened Asan and its editor for an audience on January 25th following under the count of indictment of “separatist propaganda”. The business was then entrusted to the civil jurisdictions. In March 2002, Ömer Asan was continued to have produced “writings aiming at breaking the national unit”, punishable offense a fourteen months to four years of prison. He was finally discharged in September 2003, thanks to the abrogation (under pressure of the European Union) of article 8 of the antiterrorist law.

Pontiques of Russia and Soviet ex-Union

Other Pontiques continued to live in the port cities like Odessa, in Ukraine, or Soukhoumi, in Abkhazie (autonomous republic of the northern coast of the Georgia). They were also present in the Crimea, in Eupatorija, Sébastopol, Soudak and Feodosija. Stalin made some off-set 36 000 or 37 000 towards the Ouzbékistan and the Kazakhstan in 1949. In November 1955, Khrouchtchev removed the discriminations inherited the Stalinist era for 5 000 Greeks pontic of Georgia. They still represented 3 % of the population of the Abkhazie in 1989. Pontiques tatarophones of the Crimea and Pontiques Turkish-speaking of Georgia are known under the name of Urum S which comes from Turkish Rum .

Pontiques ex-Soviet in Greece

The Greek law envisages facilities for the " retour" Greeks of the diaspora towards the " mother-patrie" on the model of the " laws of the retour" Israeli and German, and of many (60 000 between 1988 and 1994) Pontiques (including mixed couples) of the ex- Soviet Union (of the Kazakhstan e.a.), often qualified " Russo-Pontiques " ( Ρωσσοπόντιοι in Greek) because not speaking more that Russian, landed thus in the disinherited suburbs of Athens and in the North of Greece where much actually regard them more as Russian immigrants that like " compatriotes" Greeks. This situation is in particular described in the film the Boys of Athens (English title From the edge off the city , dialogs in Greek and Russian) of the realizer Constantinos Giannaris, left in 1998 and compared by some critical with American film My Own Private Idaho .

Pontiques of Romania and Bulgaria

Pontiques de Dobrogée (Rumanian Dobrogea, Dobroudja into Bulgarian) and of the Bulgarian Thrace, 120.000 in 1938 according to the censuses Rumanian and Bulgarian of the time, were to some extent autochtones (resulting Ionian colonists and of thraces hellenized) and to some extent come from Constantinople, Sinope and Trébizonde during the economic development of the XIXème century, with the construction of the railways Roussé - Varna and Axiopolis (Cernavoda) - Tomis (Constanţa) to run out the grains of the Danubian principalities. They spoke a local Greek dialect interfered with Rumanian, Bulgarian and Turkish, evoked by Panaït Istrati. They were not worried until 1945, but thereafter, when their trade were nationalized, much of them these countries left, benefitting from the " Law of the return " Greek. Romania counts today 35.000 Greeks on his territory, but all are not of Pontiques, because there are also " koukoués": Communists taken refuge in the countries of the Warsaw Pact at the conclusion of the Greek Civil war. In Bulgaria, they would be still 2.500 and of the whole Greek cities such as Messembria (Nesebar), Pomorje (Anchialos), Ahtebol (Agathoupolis) or Tsarevo ex-Mitchourine (Vassiliko) entièrment abandoned and were almost entièrment repopulated the Bulgarian ones.

External bonds

Greek pontic: Diaspora, identity, territories (presentation of a collective work on the subject) (recension and presentation)
Omer Asan: Greek-speaking writer from Turkey and has guide to the Pontian culture, Tuesday April 25 2000 International Herald Tribune
Nikos Doukas, The Pontian muslims At the target off Turkey (informative, but Greek nationalist point of view)
Vahit Tursun, Site in pontic dialect with Latin letters (also in turk). Continuous pontic music (époustouflant Site! Cat and forum into pontic, Greek and Turkish allowing pontic come to Greece to dialog with the pontiques ones remained in Turkey in their native language.)

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