ABSTRACT Since mid-1980s, there is a rather feverish campaign by the Pontic Greek community both in Greece and in the diaspora for recognition of a Pontic Greek “Genocide” by the Greek government primarily, and then the other international bodies including individual states. The activists of this campaign claim that between approximately 350,000 and 1,000,000 Black Sea Rums were subjected to a “genocide” initially by the Ottoman government during 1914-1919 and then the Ankara government between 1920-1923. These claims have been upheld by a number of academics, especially in Greece. And there is a larger Armenian “genocide” literature part of which mentions a “Pontic Greek Genocide” in passing. As for the Turkish academics, a distinct lack of interest is evident, and not until very recently academic works on the Black Sea Rums during the First World War and what the Turkish historiography labels as the “National Struggle of 1919-1922” have been published. But, most of these works are in Turkish and rather devoid of any sort of comparative analysis of available primary sources, both Turkish and foreign. Particularly after the Greek occupation of Izmir in 1919, the Greek government encouraged a number of Pontic Rums, whom it deemed as another group of “unredeemed Greeks”, to agitate for an autonomous Pontic Greek state in the Eastern Black Sea region encompassing the towns of Sinop, Samsun, Giresun, Trabzon and Rize. This agitation was received with great alarm by the Istanbul government but there was not much it could do in the face of an Allied occupation of the capital city. Ankara government, which was formed in April 1920, however, took some measures of its own to suppress what it considered as “Pontus rebellion”. In this paper, an attempt will be made to examine the policies of Ankara government vis-à-vis the Pontic Rums, including both who participated in the autonomy movement and who did not. The study will be based on American and British archival documents as well as Turkish military archival records pertaining to the period. This will be an historical analysis with particular endeavor to avoid the “genocidist-denialist” dichotomy which seems to have permeated the current debate on the subject.