ArmInfo.Armenian Ambassador to Germany Ashot Smbatyan delivered a speech at a memorial evening dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Genocide of Pontic Greeks in the Ottoman Empire in Berlin.
As the press service of the RA Foreign Ministry told ArmInfo during his speech, the ambassador touched upon the community of Armenian and Greek peoples with histories of thousands of years, as well as tragic pages, in particular, the genocide perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and other national Christian minority period of the First World War. Smbatyan stressed that Armenia as a pioneer in the field of prevention of genocides and crimes against humanity underlines the need for joint efforts of the international community in this matter.
The Ambassador of Greece to Germany, Theodoros Daskarolis, the well-known genocide scholar Tessa Hofmann Savvidis, Professor Taner Akcam and others, also addressed the event . The genocide of the Pontic Greeks - the deliberate physical extermination of the indigenous Greek population of historical Pontus, carried out by the government of the Young Turks and continued by the Kealists during the period of 1914-1923 in the Ottoman Empire. The genocide of the Pontic Greeks is part of the wider Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor, but is considered separately because of the geographical isolation of the Pontus region and a number of geopolitical and historical features. According to various sources, from 350 thousand to a million Greeks were his victims.