In his message on the occasion of the 106th anniversary of the Pontic Greek genocide by the Ottoman Turks, the President of the Hellenic Republic, Konstantinos Tasoulas, called for the international recognition of the atrocity, emphasizing that the sacrifice of the Pontic Greeks “leaves us with the legacy of the struggle against all forms of violence, discrimination, and intolerance, and the promotion of peaceful coexistence and cooperation among peoples.”

“Today, on the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks, we respectfully honor the hundreds of thousands of victims who were persecuted, slaughtered, and uprooted from their ancestral homes—those who vanished in the death marches of Anatolia during the Ottoman Empire.”, he stated.

The President underlined that “international recognition of the Pontic Greek Genocide constitutes the minimum tribute to the lives of these people and contributes to efforts to prevent the recurrence of such heinous crimes in the future.”

The Greek president went on to point out that the Greek Parliament established May 19 as the Day of Remembrance of the Pontic Genocide on March 11, 1994, fulfilling, as he said, a duty not only to the Pontic Greeks who contributed to the building of modern Greece as a state but also to history itself.

“The sacrifice of the Pontic Greeks bequeaths us the struggle against all forms of violence, discrimination, and intolerance, and the pursuit of peaceful coexistence and cooperation among nations,” he said.

The Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis also posted on social media, honoring the somber occasion by dubbing the slaughter and uprooting of Pontic Greeks from their ancestral homes “a dark chapter in global history” that violated the very core of humanitarian values and emphasized the duty to keep the memory alive and to fight for the recognition of historical truth.

“The Pontians were struck, but they were not defeated,” Mitsotakis stressed, highlighting how they preserved their traditions and language, and rebuilt their lives with pride and hard work in their homeland. Their contribution, he noted, has enriched Greek society and identity for over a century.