The persecutions , massacres , expulsions , and death marches of the Asia Minor Greeks were renewed during the early 20th century by the Young Turk administration of the Ottoman Empire and during the subsequent revolution of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk . The Ottoman Greek population was severely affected ; its misfortunes became known as the Greek Genocide . After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I , the Allies granted Greece , with the Treaty of Sèvres , the administration of Eastern Thrace ( apart from Constantinople ) and the city of Smyrna and its environs . The Pontic Greeks attempted to establish their own republic , the Republic of Pontus . The defeat of the Greek army during the Greco-Turkish War led to what became known in Greece as the '' ' Asia Minor Catastrophe ' '' . A series of events , with the Great Fire of Smyrna been their peak , ended the 3,000-year-old Greek presence in Asia Minor . The Treaty of Lausanne , which was signed in 1923 , anticipated the compulsory exchange of populations . The remaining Greek Orthodox population of Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace , as well as the Muslim population of Greece ( the Greeks of Constantinople , Imbros and Tenedos and the Muslims of Western Thrace were excluded ) were denaturalized from homelands of centuries or millennia
Greek Genocide
Greek genocide
Greek refugees