The National Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor by the Turkish State was established by a unanimous decision of the Greek Parliament on 24 September 1998 and is commemorated every year on 14 September. The initiative was taken by three PASOK deputies of Asia Minor origin, Yannis Kapsis, Yannis Diamantidis and Yannis Charalambous, who submitted the relevant legislative proposal on 12 May 1997. In the explanatory report they stated, inter alia, that:
«The collapse of the Greek forces in 1922 in Asia Minor, the massacres, looting and the subsequent refugees, constitute the culmination of a systematic effort to eliminate the Greek element from the soil of Asia Minor, which put an end to its three thousand years of presence in Greece beyond the Aegean, a region where the most mature phase of Greek civilization developed [...It was the Young Turks who first undertook to put this monstrous German conception into practice. And to the barbaric Asiatic methods of violent Islamisation, genitarianism and periodic racial cleansing was added the Teutonic cold methodicalness with the operation of the famous labour battalions.»
