Greeks annually commemorate the genocide of their countrymen on May 19, on Greek Genocide Remembrance Day.
This memorial day was established by the Greek parliament in 1994.
Greeks in Asia Minor were systematically massacred under a special program of the Ottoman Empire, started by the Young Turks and continued by the followers of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
The program of the Greek Genocide lasted from 1915 to 1923.
The first group of the Greeks were massacred in March 1915, when the Young Turks killed recently drafted Greeks to the Turkish army.
Although the massacre started in March, the date of this memorial day was chosen as May 19, when Mustafa Atatürk landed in Samsun in 1919.
This day marked the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence and the beginning of the second wave of massacres of the Greek population in Turkey.
From 350,000 to 1.2 million Greeks were massacred during the eight years of the genocide.
