PERSECUTIONS OF THE GREEKS IN TURKEY SINCE THE ...

CHAPTER IV
CONVERSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANISM
HAVING thus aimed at and achieved the financial ruin
of the Greek people, they sought to decrease their numbers
by forced and crafty conversions to Mohammedanism.
One who recalls the first years of the government
under the Young Turk constitution immediately remembers
the turmoil which this question provoked even in
the Turkish parliament. Consequently, an age limit for
such conversions was fixed and the necessary formalities
were decided on.
During the period of the persecutions, as the conversions
to Mohammedanism formed part of the system
which was planned, it was thought proper quietly to lay
aside the laws and regulations and to pursue by every
means and in a systematic manner the Islamization of the
Christians. One of the most diabolical methods adopted
was the creation of the so-called Orphan Institutions at
Panormo, the founder of which was General Liman Von
Sanders himself, who had the impudence to demand from
the Greeks 10,000 Turkish pounds for the maintenance
of these institutions. (Telegram from Constantinople of
March 17, 1917. Ministerial Archives, No. 3272.)
These Orphan Institutions have in appearance a charitable
object, but if one considers that their inmates are
Greek boys, who became orphans because their parents
were murdered, or who were snatched away from their
mothers, or left in the streets for want of nourishment
(of which they were deprived by the Turks), and that
these Greek children receive there a purely Turkish education,
it will be at once seen that under the cloak of
charity there lurks the ' child collecting' system insti-
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