On 21 September 1921, in Amasya in Pontus, the Turks hanged a 32-year-old journalist who had been sentenced to death after a show trial. His name was Nikos Kapetanidis.
Born in Rize in 1889 and a graduate of the renowned Frontistirion of Trebizond, he began his journalism career at a young age. In 1918, he founded EPOCH (EPOHI), through whose columns he recorded what was taking place not only in Trebizond but also in the villages, where Greek populations were left defenceless in the face of Kemalist violence.
The journalist and playwright Dimitris Psathas, who worked alongside him and knew him personally, portrays in The Land of Pontus a man brimming with life, energy, drive, patriotic fervour and dreams of a free homeland. Psathas writes that Kapetanidis loved Greece passionately and that, as publisher of EPOCH, he considered it his duty to fight openly for every national cause.
He was not a journalist who maintained equal distance in the face of a crime. He did not hide the perpetrators behind neutral language. He named the gangs, published accounts of their atrocities and exposed the machinery devised to exterminate the Greeks of Pontus. He knew that every issue of his newspaper could be turned into an accusation against him. Yet he continued, because for him journalism was a national mission, not a comfortable profession.
His encounter with Topal Osman reveals the full measure of his courage. Topal Osman was the notorious paramilitary leader from Giresun, commander of armed bands and an instrument of the Kemalist movement. His name became associated with massacres, looting, and the forced displacement of Greeks and Armenians. Mustafa Kemal later incorporated him into his inner security apparatus.
When Topal Osman warned Kapetanidis to stop writing against him, this was not merely a powerful figure addressing a troublesome publisher. It was an executioner confronting the man who was documenting his crimes. Kapetanidis did not yield. He did not alter his editorial line, nor did he purchase his life with silence.
The so-called Independence Tribunals of Amasya were not genuine courts of justice. They were extraordinary instruments of the Kemalist regime, operating without meaningful safeguards for the defence and delivering rulings designed to serve political and nationalist objectives. Their purpose was to decapitate the leadership of Pontic Hellenism: clergymen, politicians, teachers, businessmen and journalists.
The proceedings were a farce, but their consequences were bloody. Guilt was not proven; it had been predetermined. Greek identity, social influence and activity in support of Pontus were enough to send a person to the gallows.
Before the president of the tribunal, Kapetanidis displayed extraordinary courage. When accused of struggling for the independence of Pontus, he made no attempt to save himself. He declared that he had worked not only for the independence of Pontus but also for its union with Greece. Rather than retreat, he transformed the dock into a platform for a national declaration of faith.
On 21 September 1921, he was led to the gallows. His final cry from the scaffold was electrifying: "Long live Greece!"
The execution produced a paradox the tribunal could not control. By killing Kapetanidis, the Kemalist authorities silenced the man, but not the record he had already created. The attempt to destroy the witness became part of the evidence itself. More than a century later, Kapetanidis is dead, but the archive survives, and the act meant to erase his voice helps explain why that voice still matters.
The Kemalists failed to destroy his work. His brother, Kostas Kapetanidis, preserved the complete archive of EPOCH and brought it to Greece. In our time, this invaluable material has been digitised, creating the conditions for broader study and international use.
These are not merely old newspapers. They constitute primary evidence of the Genocide, written while the crime was still being perpetrated. Every issue, every report and every denunciation refutes Turkey's narrative of denial. EPOCH is one of the most powerful weapons available to Greece in the struggle for international recognition: a body of evidence that must be translated, studied academically and presented before parliaments, universities and international organisations.
The name Nikos Kapetanidis remains a thorn in Turkey's side because it proves that there were eyewitnesses, contemporary records and signed denunciations. Turkey did not follow the path taken by post-war Germany, which confronted the crimes of Nazism at an institutional level. It chose denial, concealment and the glorification of the perpetrators.
That question also reaches the present. Turkey now accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza and has invoked the Genocide Convention in proceedings before the International Court of Justice. The allegations against Israel are grave and must be judged on evidence and law. But they are also contested and scrutinised inside Israel itself, through its courts, journalism and civil society, while Israeli human rights organisations have gone so far as to publicly accuse their own state of genocide. Turkey, meanwhile, continues to reject the historical record of the Pontic Greek genocide. A state that demands scrutiny of another country's conduct cannot exempt its own historical record from scrutiny.
This is why the genocidal logic did not remain confined to the past. It survives in the invasion and occupation of Cyprus, in forced displacement, the oppression of minorities, cultural erasure and the constant threat of violence against neighbouring peoples. When a state refuses to acknowledge its crime, it keeps alive the machinery that produced it.
This is the central conclusion. Kapetanidis does not ask merely to be remembered. He calls upon us to make use of his testimony. Greece must transform the digitised archive of EPOCH into an international campaign for historical truth.
Christos Konstantinidis is a Greek journalist and Editor-in-Chief of Geopolitico.gr. He is also co-owner of PontosVoice.com and a contributor to the Middle East Forum.
