Prisoners of War
Both sides routinely slaughtered prisoners of war, despite guarantees. The Turks would typically offer captured Greeks the option of conversion to Islam or death(, and most Greeks chose the latter being deeply attached to their religion. Turkish prisoners of war were typically at the mercy of the commanders that captured them, there exist examples of massacres of prisoners after they were promised guarantees of safety, such as the garrison of Kalamata, and of remarkably humane treatment such as the Turkish garrison of the Acropolis of Athens which was saved by Karaiskakis(.
The most famous Greek prisoner of war who was killed by the Turks was Athanasios Diakos. After a fierce battle, the severely wounded Diakos was taken before Omer Vryonis, a Turkish commander, who offered to make him an officer in the Ottoman army if he converted from Christianity to Islam(. Diakos refused the offer, replying "I was born a Greek, I shall die a Greek" ("Εγώ Γραικός γεννήθηκα, Γραικός θε' να πεθάνω"). The next day, he was impaled.
Read more about this topic: Massacres During The Greek Revolution
Famous quotes containing the words prisoners of, prisoners and/or war:
“We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When posterity judges our actions here it will perhaps see us not as unwilling prisoners but as men who for whatever reason preferred to remain non-contributing individuals on the edge of society.”
—George Lucas (b. 1944)
“The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting—the war and the revolution—and the character of the accused—revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power—you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)