The Republic of Pontus (, Dimokratía tou Póntou) was a proposed Pontic Greek state on the southern coast of the Black Sea. Its territory would have covered much of historical Pontus in north-eastern Asia Minor. Today it forms part of Turkey's Black Sea Region.
History
Background Greek colonies were established on the Pontus coast in 800 BC, and by the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great the local inhabitants were already heavily Hellenized. By the 4th century AD, Greek had become the sole spoken language in the region, and it would remain so for a thousand years, first under the Byzantine Empire and then the Empire of Trebizond, a Byzantine successor state. In 1461 the Ottoman Empire conquered Pontus, but the remote mountainous region remained predominately Greek speaking for centuries more.
In the early 1830s, the modern Greek state achieved independence, but with less territory than it holds today. Megali Idea made further claims on Greek-populated territories elsewhere. The Pontic Greeks were far from the new Greek state, and had few connections to it, so joining the new Greece was never strongly considered. At that time, many Pontic Greeks migrated to the much closer Orthodox states of Russia and Georgia.
In 1904, a secret society, the Pontus Society, was founded in Merzifon whose main purpose was achieving an independent republic of Pontus. The movement gained significant support and during the 1910s and 1920s, the Metropolitan of Trabzon Chrysanthos Filippides, who would later become the Archbishop of Athens, became a major leader in pushing for an independent Republic of Pontus. International societies of Pontic Greeks became connected with the Pontus Society in Merzifon and began significant lobbying efforts to push for an independent Pontic Greek state: most prominently in Russia and the United States. During this period, Leonidas Iasonidis became a primary leader in the movement for the establishment of a Republic of Pontus.
World War I
In 1916, during World War I, Trabzon fell to the forces of the Russian Empire, fomenting the idea of an independent Pontic state. With the Russian Revolution, Russian forces withdrew from the region to take part in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923).
Like Armenians, Assyrians and other Ottoman Greeks, the Greeks of Trebizond province suffered a genocide at the beginning of the 20th century, first by the Young Turks and later by Kemalist forces. In both cases, motivation was the fear of the Turks on losing the territory sooner or later to the local indigenous populations of Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians and the policy of Turkification. Death marches through Turkey's mountainous terrain, forced labour in the infamous "Labour battalions" in Anatolia and slaughter by the irregular bands of Topal Osman resulted in approximately 350,000 of Pontic Greeks perishing from 1914 to 1922. The Greek population of the city itself was however not targeted directly, as the local authorities refused to supply Topal with weapons, and local Turks forced his band out of the city. The local Muslims of the city protested the arrest of prominent Christians.Library Journal Review of Not Even My Name by Thea Halo.
Pontic Greeks that escaped the death marches went on to the mountains with women and children, and formed self-defense groups that were protecting the Greek and Armenian population, until the population agreement exchange in 1923. The self-defense groups are believed to have saved the lives of more than 60 thousand Pontic Greeks and Armenians.people.http://www.impantokratoros.gr/antartiko-pontou.el.aspx/>
On January 8, 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson enunciated his Fourteen Points towards a post-war order. Point Twelve specified that the non-Turkish nationalities "which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development." This declaration led to significant activity to organize on the part of non-Turkish populations throughout Anatolia, including the Pontus region. In July 1918, a congress of Greek representatives from southern Russia, Transcaucasia, and Pontus was convened in Baku. It proclaimed the independence of Pontus and elected a seven-member council, under whose authority all Pontic associations were placed. In November 1918, the large conference of Pontic organizations convened in Paris.
In 1918–1919, Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos began a process of financial payment for repatriation of Pontic Greeks who had resettled in Russia during the violence before and during World War I. In May 1919, the head of the Greek Red Cross for the Pontus region wrote a report indicating that security for the population was very precarious and assistance was necessary.
Following the Armistice of Mudros which ended World War I hostilities between the Allied powers and the Ottoman Empire, British troops landed in Samsun and occupied much of the region.
Appeal in the Paris Peace Conference Chrysanthos arrived at the Paris Peace Conference on 29 April 1919 to push for an independent Pontus, presenting an 18-page memorandum in support of the Republic's establishment. The proposed state was to include the districts of Trabzon, Samsun, Sinop, and Amasya, covering much of the northeast Black Sea region of modern Turkey. Chrysanthos won some outside support: U.S. President Woodrow Wilson said he would vote for the Republic's independence, and André Tardieu backed it as well; Georges Clemenceau said he would do the same if Wilson did.
Armenian claims to Trabzon collided against Pontic Greek demands for an autonomous or independent Pontus. At the conference, Chrysanthos tried to work out some form of cooperation with the Armenian delegation. The Armenians acknowledged that the Vilayet of Trebizond had been the seat of the Kingdom of Pontus and that its Greek population was certainly predominant over the Armenian one, but they argued that Trebizond's port was crucial as an outlet to the Black Sea for the Armenian plateau. Greek opinion mostly ran toward an independent Pontus or some kind of confederation with Armenia, while Armenians preferred a unitary Armenian state with autonomy granted to the Pontic Greeks. Nevertheless, both Greek and Armenian officials were united in believing that the issue could be resolved by adequate guarantees for an autonomous administration in Pontus.
After consulting with Venizelos, Chrysanthos met Wilson on 16 May 1919 with Venizelos's full approval and agreement on the approach he would take. Chrysanthos raised the possibility of an American mandate, or, alternatively, a Greek one, for Pontus, gaining Wilson's support. French delegate André Tardieu backed the plan as well, while Clemenceau told Greek diplomat that he would support the Pontic Greeks, if Wilson did the same. Despite this, the Greek delegation kept looking for a compromise with Armenia.
Negotiations with the First Republic of Armenia
In December 1919, Chrysanthos and Greek diplomat Ioannis Stavridakis went to Tiflis and Yerevan to negotiate. The Pontic delegation proposed a federation of two separate autonomous entities. Armenian Prime Minister Alexander Khatisian proposed Pontus to enter Armenia, but with autonomy and its own parliament, keeping the Armenian state formally unitary. Customs, postal and telegraph services, and other shared institutions were also discussed. The talks continued in Yerevan from 10 to 16 January 1920. Khatisian sent Chrysanthos a confidential letter on 10 January and another from Tiflis on 16 January, and on that day the two men jointly appealed to Venizelos and to the Armenian and Pontic delegations at the conference. Chrysanthos told Venizelos afterward that the Armenian government considered the final settlement dependent on the Armenian delegation's position in Paris. By then, both sides were pushing a Greek landing at Trabzon.
The two sides agreed in principle to a Pontic Greek–Armenian confederation, while leaving the precise degree of federalisation open. The agreement provided that each constituent state would keep its own parliament, laws, ministries, and regular army, while military forces would fall under a common commander and war ministry. In addition, foreign policy, commerce, industry, customs, currency, and postal and telegraph services would be handled jointly, while religion, education, and the gendarmerie stayed with each state. Pontus's portion of the federation was to include the Trabzon Vilayet, covering Samsun, Amasya, Sinop, and Karahisar. A military agreement accompanied the political one, with Greek and Armenian forces agreeing to cooperate against anyone threatening the arrangement. Greek troops under Dimitrios Katheniotis would land at Trabzon and push toward Erzurum as the Armenian army advanced on it from the other side.
Negotiations with the Allies and initial abandonment In February 1920, the Entente refused to cede Trabzon to Armenia, believing it to be "politically and ethnographically problematic". Katheniotis went to London hoping for British backing for a Republic of Pontus under Greek mandate, but found none. The San Remo Conference refused Trabzon to Armenia again in April, and, afterwards, Chrysanthos and other Pontic representatives proposed an autonomous Pontus within Turkey, governed by someone appointed by the League of Nations, as a last resort.
In May, Venizelos told the Greek parliament that an independent Pontus could not be realized. He recalled that his earlier idea was a League of Nations mandate for Armenia and Pontus leading into a federation, and blamed its failure partly on the populations involved rejecting it and partly on the Pontic representatives' own failure to negotiate properly with Armenia.
Revival and final abandonment
The subject was revived in June. Venizelos told Greek diplomat Nikolaos Politis on 15 June that if Greece had to enforce the peace settlement by force, he hoped that its terms could be revised to allow for a federation between Pontus and Armenia. David Lloyd George then invited Venizelos to London and put Greece in charge of enforcing the Allied settlement against the Ankara government. The successful Greek Summer Offensive that followed encouraged the Pontic representatives to take up the campaign for independence again.
The Athens Pontus Committee sent Venizelos a memorandum on 7 July offering 20,000 men for an advance along the Samsun–Sivas road. Three days later, representatives Constantine Constantinides and Socrate Oeconomos told the French Foreign Ministry they were still seeking full independence, while promising good relations and assistance to Armenia. Venizelos told his deputy Emmanouil Repoulis on 29 July that Greece would keep any territory occupied beyond the treaty's terms for as long as Turkey threatened Armenia, and, days later, assured Constantinides that if Turkey failed to implement the treaty, Greece would occupy Pontus with three or four divisions.
The Treaty of Sèvres was signed on 10 August. Under Article 89, the frontier between Turkey and Armenia in the provinces of Erzurum, Trabzon, Van, and Bitlis was to be determined by arbitration. The next day, on 11 August, Venizelos got Armenia to formally drop its claim to Trabzon, in return for a Greek commitment to keep fighting in western Anatolia and hold occupied territory as long as Armenia remained under threat. On 17 August, Aharonian told the Greek government that Armenia wanted to send an ambassador to Athens. Athens planned to reciprocate in Yerevan.