Recognition of the Pontic Greek Genocide by the Turks should be a U.S. National Interest

By Christos Konstantinidis, Middle East Forum

On May 19, 2026, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis published a message referring to the slaughter of 353,000 Greeks as “one of the most tragic chapters of modern history.” The events he cited Turkey continues to deny: the genocide of the Greeks of Pontus. Yet even this careful and measured statement was enough to trigger a reaction from Ankara.

In a foreign ministry statement, Turkey portrayed itself as unjustly accused, and attempted to shift responsibility and reconstruct the past in order to distort the historical identity of the Black Sea region. But history does not simply disappear because a state chooses to erase it.

Silence has long been a Greek weakness. For decades, the logic of ‘not provoking Turkey’ functioned as a veil over truth, especially within the framework of NATO’s southeastern flank and the Cold War. Historian Polychronis Enepekides (1917–2014) revealed, for example, that in 1958, Greek politicians obstructed his research out of fear of damaging Greco-Turkish relations.

In 1994, after years of struggle by Pontic associations and the efforts of figures such as Panhellenic Socialist Movement activist Michalis Charalambidis, the Greek Parliament officially recognized the Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus and established May 19 as the Day of Remembrance for its victims. The date coincided with Turkish military leader and future president Mustafa Kemal’s May 19, 1919,  landed in Samsun, marking what historians identify as the second and bloodiest phase of the genocide.

Here lies the contradiction. The same day that for Hellenism represents mourning and remembrance, Turkey celebrates as a national holiday. For Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, to praise Mustafa Kemal, the one who Turks are calling “Atatürk”, on the day undermines the reconciliation that should be a U.S. national interest. For the peoples who suffered under Kemalist nationalism, the founder of the Turkish Republic remains a controversial figure and, in Pontic historical memory, the man culpable of genocide.

States possess memory and reproduce it through political culture. When a state is never held accountable for its crimes, those crimes become embedded within its strategic identity. Germany, after World War II, acknowledged its crimes and rejected Nazism, breaking the shame surrounding the Holocaust. Because many in Washington and Europe saw Turkey as a useful ally, diplomats derailed pressure for historical accounting, allowing the same ideologies that fueled genocide to nurture and build, while Turkish officials grew to believe they could act in the region with impunity.

From the anti-Greek pogroms in 1955 and the expulsions of Greeks from Constantinople in 1964, to the eradication of Hellenism from Imbros and Tenedos, the invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and the continuing occupation of more than a third of the island, Turkish state behavior reveals a consistent conception of power. Demographic engineering, settler policies, repression of minorities, and systematic challenges to sovereign rights are all links in the same chain.

When a genocidal state evades punishment, it repeats its crimes in new forms. Today’s Turkey challenges Greek sovereign rights in the Aegean, raises claims over Thrace, strengthens its presence in Cyprus, and suppresses Kurds, Alevis, and other minorities within its borders. It supported Azerbaijan during the war against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. At the same time, it maintains military presences in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, and Somalia while supporting terrorist organizations like Hamas, past Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria, and myriad jihadi groups in Pakistan and Libya.

Turkey seeks to exploit the geopolitical fluidity of the current era. It projects itself as an autonomous regional power, cultivates neo-Ottoman ambitions, and plays a balancing game between Moscow and Washington. Such behavior is not a sign of alliance reliability.

The only real prospect for peace in the region lies in Turkey’s transformation into a democratic state that respects human rights, ethnic minorities, languages, religions, traditions, and the cultures of the peoples living within and around its borders. Without such a transformation, the region will remain hostage to historical denial and geopolitical instability.

Recognition of the Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus is not an act of revenge, but one of historical restoration. Temporary diplomatic calculations should not subordinate the memory of the victims. The United States and Europe cannot build peace upon a falsified version of history. It only creates the conditions for Turkish revisionism and perhaps renewed aggression.

Official U.S. recognition of this crime would represent an act of justice toward the victims and their descendants. It would support the diaspora, vindicate Greek-Americans of Pontic origin, and serve Washington’s own geopolitical interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. Above all, it would send Ankara a clear message: the security of the future can only be built upon truth and that there will be no moral equivalence in the West to legitimize President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s historical revisionism and revanchism.

Christos Konstantinidis is a journalist, editor-in-chief of Geopolitico.gr, co-owner of PontosVoice.com, and a member of the International Institute of Strategy.