♱ An article on the ancient Panagia Sumela Monastery in Trabzon, Turkey, published by CNN Travel two weeks ago has caused outrage among the Pontian Greek community, which counts the monastery as one of its crown jewels.
“We cannot stand by and allow our history to be falsified. We cannot allow state sanctioned propaganda to rewrite our history,” writes the Connecticut-based Pan-Pontian Federation of the U.S.A. and Canada.
“CNN do better!” the Federation insists, calling on the outlet to retract the article.
The article, which was sponsored by Turkey, as acknowledged by the CNN editor, and seriously distorts the history of the monastery and the Pontic Greek people, was published one day after the 102nd anniversary of when Turkish forces burned tens of thousands of Greek and Armenian Christians alive in Smyrna.
“CNN, please do your research before reporting state sanctioned propaganda in a Wikipedia-soaked travel editorial,” reads an open letter by the Pan-Pontian Federation.
In particular, the CNN article claims that, “Even though they were Muslims, the Ottomans gave their subjects a surprising degree of religious freedom—as long as they were loyal to the emperor… Sometimes they would change a church into a mosque, like Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, but most of the time, they left the Christians to do their religion.”
Also controversial is the article’s description of the tragic 1923 population exchange: “Many of the Greeks living in the Pontic Alps and nearby Black Sea coast chose to relocate to Greece, including the monks of Sümela Monastery.”
The Pan-Pontian Federation responds:
The Ottomans did not leave the Christians to do their religion. Instead, they forced thousands of Greeks into Crypto-Christianity to avoid persecution. The Ottomans engaged in ethnic cleansing of all non-Ottomans for over 1000 years. The monks of Panagia Soumela and the Pontic Greeks did not choose to relocate from their ancestral homeland, nor did they fear they would be robbed during their journey to Greece. Instead, the Ottomans deceived them and led them to death marches and labor battalions and committed atrocities—murdering over a million Greeks.
On August 15, 2010, the Turkish government allowed the first Orthodox worship service at Panagia Soumela since 1923 to be led by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. This ceremony has NOT repeated every year on this date as services were banned by the current Turkish government in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2023, and again this year. Furthermore, Panagia Soumela reopened in 2020 just days after the Turkish President reopened the Christian Byzantine church Hagia Sophia in Constantinople as a mosque. Additionally, the Theological School of Halki, also known as Halki Seminary, which operated under the Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church since 1844, was closed by the Turkish government in 1971 despite the outcry of organizations such as UNESCO and other international foundations for the protection of religious freedoms.
While mosques are extended a peaceful existence in Greece today, all Orthodox churches in modern day Turkey have been either shut down, destroyed, turned into mosques, or museums that charge all non-Turkish citizens an entry fee ten times greater than Turkish citizens. All crucifixes have been purposefully covered or removed and iconography destroyed, not scraped off because it was deemed holy as quoted in the fictitious myth. History should not be subjected to at will alterations with distortions of the truth, especially within a travel article. Mainstream media and journalists must stop supporting Turkey’s denial of their historic atrocities who continue the cycle by collecting millions in revenue from the Christian culture they systematically destroyed. And the Federation concludes:
CNN do better. Retract this disrespectful, half-truth article at once.
