Republic of Pontus

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The Republic of Pontus was a Pontian Greek state that existed in the north-eastern part of modern Turkey from 1917 to 1919.[1] The Republic of Pontus was never officially proclaimed, but a central government of an embryonic state existed, though not occupying all the claimed areas.[2] The Pontian Greeks rebelled against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, under the leadership of Chrysanthus, Metropolitan of Trebizond. In 1917 Greece and the Entente powers considered the creation of a Hellenic autonomous state in Pontus or on a Ponto-Armenian Federation.[3] In 1919 on the fringes of the Paris Peace Conference Chrysanthos proposed the establishment of a Republic of Pontus but neither Greece nor the other delegations supported it.[4]

Trebizond was the de facto capital of the republic and the emblem of the state was the one-headed eagle, symbol of the Komnenian dynasty of the Empire of Trebizond.[1]

After the collapse of the Greek front in Asia Minor, during the Greco-Turkish War the plan of a fully independent state in the region collapsed.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Republic of Pontus (Greece, 1917-1919), Flags of the World
  2. ^ The Times History of the War, The Times, London, England, 1920, p. 438
  3. ^ A Short History of Modern Greece, 1821-1940, Edward Seymour Forster, 1941, p. 66.
  4. ^ Dimitri Kitsikis, Propagande et pressions en politique internationale, 1919-1920 (Paris, 1963) pp. 417-422.
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