Efkleidis Kourtidis (; 1885–1937) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

resistance leader of Pontos. He fought Turkish troops from the

Pontic Alps The Pontic Mountains or Pontic Alps (, meaning 'North Anatolian Mountains'), form a mountain range in northern Anatolia, Turkey. They are also known as the "Parhar Mountains" in the local Turkish and Pontic Greek languages. The term ''Parhar'' ...

near Sanda.

Life

He was born in the Ishanandon village of Sanda. Kourtidis was the head of Greek guerrilla forces based in the town of Santa (Dumanlı), Pontos, that resisted Turkish bands. Kourtidis' struggle with the Turkish army was prolonged; his guerrillas refused to come down from the mountains. However, he was still able to send messages to people outside of Sanda, including the Metropolitan of Rodopolis. During the

Pontic Greek Genocide The Pontic Greek genocide, or the Pontic genocide (), was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the indigenous Greek community in the Pontus region (the northeast of modern Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire during World War I and its afterm ...

(1912–1922) as part of the wider

Greek genocide The Greek genocide (), which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia, which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) – including the T ...

, he rescued a large number of women and children from the advancing Kemalist armies. They were finally transported safely to

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. His statue is erected in Nea Santa,

Kilkis Kilkis () is a city in Central Macedonia, Greece. As of 2021 there were 24,130 people living in the city proper, 27,493 people living in the municipal unit, and 45,308 in the municipality of Kilkis. It is also the capital city of the regional un ...

, Greece. The statue also bears the names of 141 known Greek genocide victims from Sanda. Upon his death in 1937, Kourtidis' friend wrote a song about him.

References

External links

Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kourtidis, Euklidis 1885 births 1937 deaths Ottoman Pontians Guerrillas Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to Greece People from Gümüşhane