A commemorative lecture marking the National Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor was held today, Monday, September 14, 2026, by the Kalymnos Cultural and Literary Association “Ai Mousai.”
The event took place at 7:30 p.m. on the ground floor of the Kalymnos Cultural Centre, with Panagiotis Giamaios, honorary president of the association, as the keynote speaker.
The lecture was entitled: “1919–1922: Smyrna – Sakarya – Çeşme, from Triumph to Catastrophe.”
The historical presentation revisited one of the most decisive and tragic periods in the history of Asia Minor Hellenism—from the Greek presence in Smyrna and the Asia Minor Campaign to the military operations at Sakarya, the collapse of the front and the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922.
September 14 has been officially designated in Greece, under Law 2645/1998, as the National Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor by the Turkish state. The date is symbolically associated with the culmination of the destruction of Smyrna in September 1922.
The Turkish army entered Smyrna on September 9, while the Great Fire broke out on September 13, devastating primarily the Greek and Armenian districts. Mass killings, persecution, captivity and the violent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Greeks from their ancestral homelands followed.
Today’s event by the “Ai Mousai” Association was an act of remembrance and a tribute to the Greeks of Asia Minor, their lost homelands and a centuries-old civilisation that was violently uprooted but continues to live on in collective memory.
