Turkey and Byzantine art!!!
George Theodoropoulos
wonder what turkey has to do with byzantium
and why the greek state does not intervene
so that if the NY museum agrees to return
the treasure, this will come back to greece
where it belongs.
yiorgos theodoropoulos
manchester
--------------------------------------------------
Washington Post saturday Sept 25
Turkey's Next Target
Republic Seeks Return of Dumbarton Oaks Pieces
By Jo Ann Lewis
Special to the WP
Photo: A silver book cover from the "Sion Treasure," with a cross, palm
branches and columns.
The Turkish Republic, encouraged by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's
agreement to return 200 artifacts pilfered from a burial site in Turkey,
is now going after a part of the Byzantine collection at Washington's
Dumbarton Oaks (DO).
New York attorney Lawrence M. Kaye, who represented the Turkish Republic
in its six-year legal battle against the NY museum, said yesterday that
"the republic is most serious about the return of those (DO) pieces to
Turkey, and intends to press their claim in the immediate future."
The priceless collection, known as the "sion Treasure," dates from the
6th century and consists of about 50 pieces of early Byzantine
ecclesiastical silver - chalices, lamps, censers and gospel book covers.
Kaye said discussions with DO, which have gone on shortky after the
museum bought the artifacts in the 60's have been open and friendly -
not the case with the Met. DO's attitude "has always been to try to find
a solution, so I'm not saying were about to press a suit. But I think
the dscussions will become much more active."
DO, at 1703 32nd St NW in Georgetown, is a research center and
collection devoted to Byzantine and pre-Colombian art and culture. The
estate, along with its collection and gardens, was given to Harvard Univ
in 1940 by a diplomatic couple, Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Bliss.
DO director Angelica Laiou was traveling abroad yesterday and could not
be reached for comment. Byzantine art curator Susan Boyd said she could
not comment on the dispute.
Boyd did , however, make clear that the DO holdings are unrelated to the
Met's "Lydian Hoard," which dates back from the 6th century BC, was
purchased by the Met in the 60's for $1.5m and is now being returned to
Turkey.
She added that the DO pieces, which were acquired in damaged condition,
have since been restored and have been on display since they were
purchsed for a sum she would not reveal. "We've always been completely
open about what and how we acquired it; that's the difference between
the two cases," said Boyd.
Both the "Sion Treasure" and the Lydian Hoard were purchased around the
same time from a Swiss antiquities dealer.
The "sion Treasure" was found in 1963 in a small Turkish village called
Kumluca, "by villagers to the best of my knowledge" said Boyd. "It must
then be divided up and spirited out, because some of it was kept there
and is on view in the Antalya Archeological Museum. The rest came out by
means unknown to me, and came to us in two parts - in 1963 and a second
in '65 - both through the late Swiss dealer George Zacos.(??)
"Within 6 months" she said, "it was brought to our attention that it had
not come from Lebanon, as the exit permit said, and which would have
been legal at the time. We learned where it came from through scholars
who work in the field. They hear things and they learn things."
Boyd noted that the 60's were a turning point for museums, "both in the
attitude toward the acquisition and in the awareness of the importance
of preserving national patrimony. Before that, in the 40's and 50's
museums bought whatever was offered them."
"Look at the "Sevso Treasure," noted Boyd, referring to the widely
publisized, multi-million dollar hoard of Roman silver now being fought
over in a Manhattan court by Croatia, Hungary and an English lord who
had bought it. "No museum was willing to touch it because no one believs
it could have been legally exported."
At another museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, curators yesterday
were preparing to defend their ownership of the top half of a 2nd
century Roman sculpture, known as teh "Weary Herakles," which may also
be targeted by the Turks. The bottom half is in Turkey.
And at the State Department, an official said he was happy "the objects
are being returned by the Met" but added that the agency had nothing to
do with the decision. But coincidentally, Ely Maurer, assistant legal
advisor for cultural affairs, was getting ready to fly to Rome. There
he will attend an international conference next week on how to handle
the return of stolen and illegally exported art and artifacts to their
countries of origin.
Nick B Kontodimos
Prose3e to e3hs:
In article <georget....@cs.man.ac.uk> geo...@cs.man.ac.uk (George Theodoropoulos) writes:
>
>The "sion Treasure" was found in 1963 in a small Turkish village called
>Kumluca, "by villagers to the best of my knowledge" said Boyd. "It must
Dhladh o 0hsauros bre0hke sthn Tourkia... Ara den nomizw oti mporoume na
kanoume tipota epi tou 0ematos. Sigoura, kai emena me tsantizei h olh upo0esh
(ti sxesh exoun oi Tourkoi me to Buzantio? kamia... ) alla......
Xairetw
Nikos en Agiw Loudobikw
UG des to kai apo mia allh apoyh: den nomizw na dwsame pote stous Italous ta
osa rwma.i.ka antikeimena brhkame sthn Ellada :-) (elafrws diaforetikh
katastash, alla...)
Napoleon Mau
I do not see why Greeks should complain about Turkey displaying Greek
art in Turkish museums.
If the Turks would like to acknowledge the greatness of Greek Byzantium
we should not complain. All Greeks should feel proud when even the people
who presecuted us for such a long time acknowledge our greatness.
The existence of a huge amount of Greek artifacts all over Asia minor and
Constantinople but the absence of Greek people would make any tourist wonder
what happened to the Greeks living in Turkey.
Napoleon
From article <georget....@cs.man.ac.uk>, by geo...@cs.man.ac.uk (George Theodoropoulos):
Serdar Argic
>I do not see why Greeks should complain about Turkey displaying Greek
>art in Turkish museums.
'Greek art'? More ridicule. Today those 'paliks' boast about being
the descendants of a great civilization, and the cradle of democracy.
Howevers there are serious doubts in history for both claims.
First of all, several historians and anthropologists have produced
substantial evidence with respect to any connection between
present-day Greece and ancient Greece. The prominent German
historian Jacop P. Fallmerayer published a treatise in 1830
and made the assertion that during the Middle Ages slavik
tribes poured into Greece and annihilated the entire Greek
population. Truly, can anyone see any resemblance between
that beacon of ignorance, and the ancient Greeks who created
a civilization?
As for democracy, in its entire history Greece has never been a
democracy - except for the last 18 years. The Turkish rule in Greece
ended in 1821 and since then, for more than 150 years, Greece was ruled
either by a monarch or a military junta. When Greece attempted to annex
Cyprus in 1974 with a clumsy coup, Turkiye acted swiftly to foil this
larceny, and the junta also toppled in the tremor. Therefore, Greece
must be indebted to Turkiye for its own fledgling democracy.
Furthermore, the evolution of democracy leads one to believe that
the cradle of democracy is really in England, rather than in Greece.
The Greek version of 'democracy' was purely an accident. It was a
product of the love of fallacy and a passion for sophistry of the
ancient Greeks. No mechanism or method to make it worth was set
forth, save a loose oratory. On the other hand, the British adapted
the concept, developed it, turned it into a reality from a mere
fantasy, and made it work. Had democracy really been an inherent
virtue of Greeks would it have dragged its feet for so long to come
to Greece? Even today, democracy is just so much as a catchword among
the tourism slogans of Greece - not much substance and a lot of aura.
Professor Stanford J. Shaw, 'The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the
Turkish Republic,' New York University Press, New York (1991).
page 187:
<<...the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire which had been going on
for a century was disastrous for Ottoman Jewry. This was the age of
nationalism among the Christian subjects of the Sultan, starting with
the Greek Revolution early in the nineteenth century, which, based on
the Megali Idea, or Great Idea, sought to add to Greek kingdom Istanbul
and large portions of Anatolia, union of which with Greece was felt to be
the 'dream and hope of all'. The success of the Greek national movement,
provided more in fact by the intervention of the Great Powers than by the
efforts of the Greeks themselves, stimulated similar uprisings among the
other subjects in Southeastern Europe who had long been oppressed, not so
much by the Ottomans but, rather, by the Greek religious hierarchy which
dominated the Orthodox millet, leading first to pressure for religious
independence, granted to the Bulgarian Orthodox Exarchate in 1870, to the
Serbian Church in 1879, and to the Rumanian Church in 1885, with subsequent
aspirations for, and achievement of, political independence following...>>
page 188:
<<...They [new nationalist leaders] were greatly assisted in their
campaigns against the Ottomans both by the diplomatic and consular
representatives of the major Powers of Europe and also by Christian
missionaries, who emphasized feelings of Christian superiority and
hatred for Muslims and Jews which fortified the religious as well as
ethnic bases of their pursuit of independence.
Christian nationalism, based as much on religious as on ethnic identity,
soon resurrected the medieval bigotries which had devastated both Jews
and Muslims and consequently had driven them together in the past.
Vicious anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic movements developed, involving
large-scale persecutions and massacres carried out by invading armies,
by the independent states that resulted, also by Christian subjects
who remained within the Empire, particularly because of Jewish and Muslim
support for Ottoman integrity in fear of their fate in the emergent
nationalist states of Southeastern Europe. The results were explosive
and damaging.
The invading armies of Russia and Austria as well as the revolting
nationalists and, later, successfully established independent Christian
states, committed systematic genocide against Jews and Muslims throughout
the nineteenth century, despite Great Power admonitions to the contrary
in the treaties of Paris (1858) and Berlin (1878),...>>
page 188:
<<...As the peoples of Southeastern Europe achieved their independence,
their Muslim and Jewish minorities were systematically persecuted and
massacred, and those who survived were driven beyond the ever-shrinking
boundaries of the retreating Ottoman Empire in a kind of slaughter which
had not been seen since the dispersal of the Jews from Palestine centuries
earlier.
This sort of genocide had begun as long before as the late sixteenth
century, with the Rumanian Principalities taking the lead, as united
Rumania did subsequently during the later years of the nineteenth
century. In 1579 the ruler of Moldavia, Peter the Lame, banished its
Jews because of their competition with its Christian merchants. When
Prince Micheal the Brave revolted against the Ottomans in the Rumanian
principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1593, he ordered the massacre
of all the Jews as well as Turks in Bucharest.>>
page 189:
<<The slaughter continued well into the nineteenth century. When the
Greeks revolted against Ottoman rule many Greek volunteers coming from
Russia and the Principalities to join in the effort slaughtered and
plundered the Jewish communities along their paths as they went through
Moldavia and Wallachia toward Greece.>>
page 190 (second paragraph):
<<When Venice occupied the island of Chios in 1694, its Jewish population
was either massacred or deported and all Jewish communal and personal
property was stolen by the native Greek population, leaving those Jews
who returned in utter poverty and reduced to begging, no longer able to
compete with the Greeks in trade or commerce.>>
page 190 (third paragraph):
<<Jews living in Greece and the Rumanian principalities suffered terribly
because of their support for Ottoman rule. When the Greek nationalist
movement Philike Etairia started its uprising in Wallachia and Moldavia
during the spring of 1821, hundreds of Jews and Muslims were killed by
the Greeks who lived there as well as by native Wallachs [14]. During
the height of the Greek revolution, five thousand Jews were massacred
in Morea along with most of the Muslim population, numbering about
twenty thousand in all [15]. In Tripolizza alone 1,200 Jews were
massacred along with uncounted Turks [16]. Reverend John Hartley,
after describing the carnage, concluded 'Thus did Jewish blood, mingled
with Turkish, flow down the streets of captured city. The sons of Isaac
and the sons of Ishmael, on this as well as on every occasion during the
Greek Revolution, met with common fate. Their corpses were cast out of the
city, and, like the ancient sovereign of Judah, they received no burial
superior to that of an ass.' [17] Jewish communities on the islands of
Sparta, Patras, Corinthos, Mistra, and Argos were wiped out by bands of
Greek rebels along with those of Thebes, Vrachori, Attica and Epirus [18].
The surviving Jews fled to the island of Corfu, where Jews who had fled
from Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula had lived in peace and prosperity
under the Venetian rule since the twelfth century, though divided into
rival Greek and Italian communities. It was not long, however, before
it too fell victim to the Greek Revolution, leading to savage repression
and massacres of Jews, forcing the surviving members of the two communities
to come together for self-defense for the first time. Throughout the years
of Greek revolution, Greek nationalists went from town to town on the
mainland and from island to island in the Agean, exterminating all the
Jews and Muslims they could find, many along the roads as they desperately
fled to safety in what was left of the Ottoman Empire. Contemporary
accounts relate that the Greeks left the murdered Jews and Muslims lying
exposed so their bodies could be torn apart by the buzzards [19]. Most of
the Jews who survived these massacres fled across the Agean in small boats
to Izmir, thus starting its rise as one of the leading centers of Ottoman
Jewish life during the nineteenth century. Only in Northern Greece,
particularly in the areas of Janina and Salonica, were the Jews and the
Turks able to successfully resist the Greek assaults, thus saving their
populations from massacre as well [20]. During the remainder of the 19th
century, particularly during the Greek-Turkish war in 1897, those Jews
who remained in Greece in the areas of Athens, Chalkis, Larissa, Corfu
and Crete suffered severe persecution and massacre, forcing thousands
more to emigrate into Ottoman territory, particularly to Salonica and
Izmir [21].>>
page 193 (last paragraph):
<<The inclusion in the Treaty of Berlin of stipulations providing
protection for the Jewish and Muslim minorities in Southeastern Europe
stimulated more popular anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hysteria in all
the countries involved, with blood-libel accusations once again being
used as pretexts for attacking and ravaging Jewish quarters as well as
for new tactics for boycotting Jewish shopkeepers, merchants and
professionals, a movement which was quickly adapted by the Christian
millets in the major cities of the Ottoman Empire. Because the Bulgarians,
Rumanians and Greeks correctly regarded the Jews as supporters of the
Turks, both Jews and Turks were expelled from these countries in equally
atrocious and brutal manners. Their property was plundered and their
homes and shops taken over without compensation, while the survivors
fled in desperation to Edirne and Istanbul. While official statements
subsequently were issued granting equal rights to Jews, little was done
in fact and they continued to be persecuted regularly well into the
twentieth century.>>
page 194 (last paragraph):
<<Things were not much better elsewhere in Southeastern Europe or the
Greek islands of the Agean and the eastern Mediterranean. In 1891 the
Jews on Corfu were subjected to severe persecution by local Greeks due
to the revival of the old ritual murder accusations [26]. Many of
those who survived found refuge in Ottoman territory with the help of a
popular subscription drive carried out in Istanbul under leadership of
the Banque Camondo. In 1881 and 1884, and again in 1892 and 1903,
thousands of Jews came to Ottoman territory as a result of pogroms
in Russia which went on between 1881 and 1921 with only slight periods
of respite. In 1899 Jewish families arrived in Istanbul in flight from
persecution in Vidin, in independent Bulgaria.
The conquest of Ottoman Thrace and Macedonia by Greek and Bulgarian
forces during the Balkan Wars (1912-13), including Salonica, Corlu,
and Edirne, was followed by general attacks on Jews, their synagogues,
homes and shops, in both countries [27], resulting in a renewed exodus
toward Istanbul and beyond. Two reports from Salonica graphically
described the situation caused by the invading armies:
'All the self-interested justifications of the newspapers of Europe,
all the lies which they have used to cover up the truth, can never
destroy the impression of the terrible anguish which has marked the
entry of the Greeks in Salonica. A week of terror and horror one can
never easily forget. The Hellenes now cruelly feel today all the
damage that the explosion of hatred by the (Greek) population has done
to their cause. The mob has shown itself odious and the government
weak...The incompetence of the Greek administration and the horrors
inflicted by the soldiers has put them in a terrible situation. The
consuls guaranteed the absolute safety of the Muslims, but sixty of
them were massacred in a single night....'[28]
'It wasn't only irregulars (Comitacis) who massacred, pillaged and
burned. The soldiers of the Army, the Chief of Police, and the high
civil officials took an active part in the events at Serres. Out of
6,000 houses, 4,000 were burned. Almost 1,200 shops were consumed by
flames and destructive bombs. The (Jewish) population lost all, and
without even anything to wear is in despair. Everyone wants to
emigrate...'[29]
page 196:
<<As a result of these assaults, massacres, and forced deportations from
the independent countries of Southeastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire
received literally thousands of Jewish refugees who joined the Muslims
who survived the persecution, flooding into the Empire...>>
[14] Shlomo Rozanes, Korot Hayehudim Beturkiyah Vebeartzot Hakedem:
Hadorot Haachronim (Jerusalem, 1945), pp.42-44, cited Yitzchak Kerem,
'The Influence of Anti-Semitism on Jewish Immigration Patterns from
Greece to the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century', pp.2, 14.
[15] Maxime Raybaud, Memoires sur la Grece, pour servir a l'histoire de la
Guerre de l'Independence (2 Vols, Paris, 1824), pp.5-19; Galante,
Turcs et Juifs (Istanbul, 1932), 76-77.
[16] Rev. T.S. Hughes, Travels in Greece and Albania (2nd edn, 2 vols,
London, 1830), II, 194-95.
[17] Rev. John Hartley, Researches in Greece and the Levant (London, 1831),
207, quoted in Yitzchak Kerem, 'Jewish Immigration Patterns from Greece
to the Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth Century', published paper
delivered at the Comite International d'Etudes Pre-Ottomanes et Ottomanes,
VIII Symposium, 'Decision-Making and the Transmission of Authority
in the Turkic System', University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, 14-19 August 1988, p.4.
[18] Hartley, ibid., pp.206-7, William Martin Leake, Travels in Northern
Greece (2 Vols, London, 1835) II, 231-32, 609; Errikos Sevillas,
Athens-Auschwitz (Athens, 1983), p.ix, quoted in Kerem, ibid., p.14.
[19] Documented in Kerem, ibid., pp.14-19. Pearl L. Preschel, The Jews
of Corfu (Greece), Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New York University,
1984. Goerge Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution (London, 1861),
172, 179-86; See also 'Greece', EJ VII, 876-77.
[20] Yoannina Vasdraveli, Ee Thessaloniki: Kata Ton Agona Tis Aneksantizias
(Salonica, 1946), pp.19-35; Yitzchak Kerem, An Outline of the History
of Jews of Selonica (in Hebrew) (Museum of Kibbutz Lahoma, Getaot, 1985),
p.21, quoted in Kerem, ibid., p.15.
[21] Kerem, ibid., pp.8-12, 'The Persecution of the Jews', Times (London),
16 May 1891; A. Ablagon to AIU, 19 October 1898, AIU, Grece VIII.B.34,
Schaki (Larissa) to AIU, 23 August/4 September 1893, BAIU, Grece,
Deuxieme Serie, no.18, 1er et 2e Semestre, 1893; Elia Fraggi (Larissa)
to AIU, 5 June 1874, AIU Grece, I.C.22; Larissa AIU represantatives
to AIU, 23 June/5 July 1897, AIU, Grece II.B.16; Jewish Community of
Canea leaders in Samos to AIU, 3 March, 1897, AIU, Grece VIII.B.35.
[26] Pearl L. Preschel, The Jews of Corfu (Greece), Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, New York University, 1984.
[27] Leon Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica: Portrait of an Era (New York, 1946);
Edgar Morin, Vidal et les Siens (Paris, Seuil, 1989), 55-67; Paul Dumont,
'The Social Structure of the Jewish Community of Salonica at the end of
the nineteenth century', Southeastern Europe V (1979), 33-72; Galante,
Turcs VIII, 18-21; Rodrigue, pp.178-80.
[28] A. Cohen, Ecole Secondaire Moise Allatini, Salonica, to AIU, Paris,
no.7745/7, 4 December 1912, in AIU Archives I C 49.
[29] Mizrahi, President of AIU at Salonica, to AIU (Paris), no.2704/3,
25 July 1913. In AIU Archives (Paris) I C 51.
( AIU = Alliance Israelite Universelle, Paris. )
Serdar Argic
'We closed the roads and mountain passes that
might serve as ways of escape for the Turks
and then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
(Ohanus Appressian - 1919)
'In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists
a single Turkish soul.' (Sahak Melkonian - 1920)
Gregory Dandulakis
Napoleon Mau <m...@herky.cs.uiowa.edu> wrote:
>
>I do not see why Greeks should complain about Turkey displaying Greek
>art in Turkish museums.
The same holds true for Ottoman art in Greece. The first Turkologic studies
programm in Greece has been created at the University of Crete in Rethymnon.
They have certainly lots of work ahead of them.
>If the Turks would like to acknowledge the greatness of Greek Byzantium
>we should not complain. All Greeks should feel proud when even the people
>who presecuted us for such a long time acknowledge our greatness.
The greatness goes to the culture which we accept as our ancestral culture.
As far as our own modern culture is concerned, we are struggling to define
it and develop it.
>The existence of a huge amount of Greek artifacts all over Asia minor and
>Constantinople but the absence of Greek people would make any tourist wonder
>what happened to the Greeks living in Turkey.
The same which holds true for the area which was called "Greater Greece"
in ancient times (1000-100 BC); i.e. Southern Italy and Sicily. The majority
of the population converted to a different culture (for survival's sake).
Gr
PS: Politics and culture; one and the same thing in most cases...
Napoleon Mau
Grigoraki, to trabai h psixi sou.
Napoleon
From article <CE2Gy...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, by gd...@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Gregory Dandulakis):
Adnan Olmez
m...@herky.cs.uiowa.edu (Napoleon Mau) writes:
> I do not see why Greeks should complain about Turkey displaying Greek
> art in Turkish museums.
>
> If the Turks would like to acknowledge the greatness of Greek Byzantium
> we should not complain. All Greeks should feel proud when even the people
> who presecuted us for such a long time acknowledge our greatness.
>
> The existence of a huge amount of Greek artifacts all over Asia minor and
> Constantinople but the absence of Greek people would make any tourist wonder
> what happened to the Greeks living in Turkey.
>
Is that what you want? Do you want ancient art to be destroyed?
The existence of all those ancient stuff in Turkey shows that we do care
about the ancient Greek art.
What about the Turkish monuments in Greece? But, wait-a-minute, there are
no Turkish monument. I wonder how it disappeared.
Personally I prefer the destruction of everything in Turkey which gives any
indication to the Greeks. This will prevent jerks like you making this kind of
statements:
"The existence of a huge amount of Greek artifacts all over Asia minor and
Constantinople but the absence of Greek people would make any tourist wonder
what happened to the Greeks living in Turkey."
BTW, jerk, it is ISTANBUL (since 1453, not Constantinople.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adnan Olmez. "pmis...@nl103.ittpub.nl"
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Europe.
All my postings represent my own opinion,
therefore it should not be attributed to my
employer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick B Kontodimos
>
>Is that what you want? Do you want ancient art to be destroyed?
>What about the Turkish monuments in Greece? But, wait-a-minute, there are
>no Turkish monument. I wonder how it disappeared.
Could it be there were none to begin with?
>Personally I prefer the destruction of everything in Turkey which gives any
>indication to the Greeks. This will prevent jerks like you making this kind of
>statements:
See? You are the one who wants it destroyed....
>
>BTW, jerk, it is ISTANBUL (since 1453, not Constantinople.
BTW f*ckhead... that's how we call it... something like Deutschland (sp?)
and Germany....
Nick
George Theodoropoulos
>If the Turks would like to acknowledge the greatness of Greek Byzantium
>we should not complain. All Greeks should feel proud when even the people
>who presecuted us for such a long time acknowledge our greatness.
>The existence of a huge amount of Greek artifacts all over Asia minor and
>Constantinople but the absence of Greek people would make any tourist wonder
>what happened to the Greeks living in Turkey.
Not really, the Greek artifacts in Asia Minor are
presented to the tourists as ancient turkish, I have
first hand experiece on this. Take a tourist guide for
turkey or the occupied part of cyprus. You will
see the word Roman, but the word greek is not mentioned at all....
The last thing the turks want to do by claiming the Byzantine
artifacts back is to acknowledge the "greatness of Greek Byzantium".
>Napoleon
yiorgos theodoropoulos
manchester.
Michael Polymenakos
>BTW, jerk, it is ISTANBUL (since 1453, not Constantinople.
The joke's on you.... The city's official name was Constantinopole until
1930. Official Ottoman documents always refered to it as Constantinopole.
Michael
--
______________________________________________________________________________
Justice so moves that those only learn who suffer; | Michael Polymenakos
And the future you shall know when it has come; | mp...@panix.com
Before then, forget it. - Aeschylus | e o a a p p
Serdar Argic
>The joke's on you.... The city's official name was Constantinopole
>until 1930. Official Ottoman documents always refered to it as
>Constantinopole.
I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is 'polpol' about
sense, anyway? Further striking bigoted and 'paliky' attitude of
certain Greeks still exists in our day. Most Greeks insist even
today, that the 537 year-old capital of the Ottoman Empire should
be called not by its rightful name of Istanbul, but by its half
a millennium-old moniker 'Cons*(whatever).'
Everyone knows that New York City was once called 'New Amsterdam'
but Dutch people do not persist on calling it that today. The name
of Stalingrad too is long gone, replaced by Volgagrad. China's
Peking traded its name for Beiging long ago. Ciudad Trujillo
of the Dominican Republic is now Santa Domingo. Zimbabve's
old colonial capital Salisburry became Harrare. These changes
have all been accepted officially by everyone in the world.
But, Greeks are still determined on calling the Turkish Istanbul
by the name of 'Cons*.'
How can one explain this total intransigence? What makes Greeks
so different from other mortals? 18-year-old questionable
democracy? Why don't they seem to reconcile with the fact,
for instance, that Istanbul changed hands 537 years ago in
1453 AD, and that this predates the discovery of the New
World, by 39 years. The declaration of U.S. independence
in 1776 will come 284 years later.
Shouldn't then, half a millennium be considered enough time for
'Cons*' to be called a Turkish city? Where is the logic in the
Greek reasoning, if there is any? How long can one sit on the
laurels of an ancient civilization? Ancient Greece does not exist,
any more than any other 16 civilizations that existed on the soil
of Anatolia.
These undereducated 'wieneramus' live with an illusion. It
is the same mentality which allows them to rationalize
that Cyprus is a Greek Island. No history book shows
that it ever was. It belonged to the Ottoman Turks 'lock,
stock and barrel' for a period of well over 300 years.
In fact, prior to the Turks' acquisition of it, following
bloody naval battles with the Venetians in 1570 AD, the
island of Cyprus belonged, invariably, to several nations:
The Assyrians, the Sumerians, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians,
the Ottoman Turks, of course in that order, owned it as
their territory. But, it has never been the possession
of the government of Greece - not even for one day -
in the history of the world. Moreover, Cyprus is
located 1500 miles from the Greek mainland, but only
40 miles from Turkiye's southern coastline.
Saddam Hussein claims that Kuwait was once Iraqi
territory and the Greek Cypriot government and
the terrorist Greek governments think that Cyprus
also was once part of the Greek hegemony.
Those 'Arromdians' involved in this grandiose hallucination
should wake up from their sweet daydreams and confront
reality. Again, wishful thinking is unproductive, only
facts count.
As for Selanik,
<<Those Jews who survived these assaults in Southeastern Europe fled
particularly to Salonica, whose Jewish population increased substantially
as a result, from 28,000 in 1876 to 90,000 in 1908, more than half the
total population, though even there increased persecution by local Greeks
led many Jews to flee elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, particularly to
the great port of Izmir.
Despite all the pressure from Ottomans and foreign Jews alike, the ritual
murders and other assaults by Christians on Jews went on and on. Greek
efforts to decimate the Jewish population of Salonica culminated in 1912
and 1913, following Greek conquest of Salonica during the first Balkan War,
when many of its Jews, were either killed or terrorized into leaving...>>
<<Though Greece was obligated by the post World War I treaties to allow
Jews and other minorities to use their own languages in education and to
practice their religions without hindrance, a law was issued in 1923
which forbad all inhabitants from working on Sunday, stimulating a new
Jewish exodus as it was intended to do. Between 1932 and 1934 there was a
series of anti-Semitic riots in Salonica, with the Cambel quarter, where
most of the remaining Jews lived, being burned to the ground. This
was followed by regulations requiring the use of Greek and prohibiting
Hebrew and Judea-Spanish in the Jewish schools. A start was made also
on expropriating the land of the principal Jewish cemetery in Salonica
for use by the new University in order to derive the Jews out [47]. By
killing and driving out large numbers of Jews, the Greeks left a
substantial Greek majority in the city for the first time, and starting
Salonica Jewry on the way to its final decimation by the Nazis during the
occupation of Greece starting in 1941.
Salonica and Izmir of course were not the only places of refuge for
Jewish refugees entering the Empire during its last century of existence.
Istanbul, Edirne, and other parts of Rumelia and Anatolia received
thousands more. Nor were Jews the only refugees received and helped by
the government of the Sultan. Thousands of Muslims accompanied them in
flight from similar persecutions wherever Balkan christian states gained
independence or expanded. The Russian conquest of the Crimea and the
Caucasus starting in the late eighteenth century, and particularly during
and after the Crimean War, combined with the same independence movements
in Southeastern Europe that had caused so much suffering and flight among
its Jews caused thousands of helpless, ill, and poverty-stricken Muslim
refugees to accompany them into the ever shrinking boundaries of the
Ottoman Empire, with the Istanbul government struggling mightly but vainly
to house and feed them as best it could. From 1850 to 1864 as many as
800,000 Crimean Tatars, Circassians, and other Muslims from north and
east of the Black Sea had entered Anatolia alone, as many as 200,000 more
came during the next twenty years, while 474,389 refugees entered in 1876-
1877 as a result of the Ottoman wars with Russia and the Balkan states,
with an equal number gaining refuge in the European portions of the
Empire.>>
[47] Robert Mantran, 'La structure sociale de la communaute juive de
Salonqiue a la fin du dix-neuvieme siecle', RH no.534 (1980), 391-92;
Nehama VII, 762; Joseph Nehama (Salonica) to AIU (Paris) no.2868/2,
12 May 1903 (AIU Archives I-C-43); and no.2775, 10 January 1900 (AIU
Archives I-C-41), describing daily battles between Jewish and Greek
children in the streets of Salonica. Benghiat, Director of Ecole Moise
Allatini, Salonica, to AIU (Paris), no.7784, 1 December 1909 (AIU
Archives I-C-48), describing Greek attacks on Jews, boycotts of Jewish
shops and manufacturers, and Greek press campaigns leading to blood libel
attacks. Cohen, Ecole Secondaire Moise Allatini, Salonica, to AIU (Paris),
no.7745/4, 4 December 1912 (AIU Archives I-C-49) describes a week of terror
that followed the Greek army occupation of Salonica in 1912, with the
soldiers pillaging the Jewish quarters and destroying Jewish synagogues,
accompanied by what he described as an 'explosion of hatred' by local
Greek population against local Jews and Muslims. Mizrahi, President of the
AIU at Salonica, reported to the AIU (Paris), no.2704/3, 25 July 1913
(AIU Archives I-C-51) that 'It was not only the irregulars (Comitadjis)
that massacred, pillaged and burned. The Army soldiers, the Chief of
Police, and the high civil officials also took an active part in the
horrors...', Moise Tovi (Salonica) to AIU (Paris) no.3027 (20 August 1913)
(AIU Archives I-C-51) describes the Greek pillage of the Jewish quarter
during the night of 18-19 August 1913.
(AIU = Alliance Israelite Universelle, Paris.)
Gregory Dandulakis
Nick B Kontodimos <nb...@cec2.wustl.edu> wrote:
>In article <1993Sep28...@nl103.ittpub.nl> pmis...@nl103.ittpub.nl (Adnan Olmez) writes:
>>
>
>>What about the Turkish monuments in Greece? But, wait-a-minute, there are
>>no Turkish monument. I wonder how it disappeared.
>
>Could it be there were none to begin with?
There are some. Not of any grandeur level, but sufficiently attractive
to complement all the other monuments. But in a place like modern Greece,
there are so many remains (pre-historic, ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine,
Frankish and Ottoman) that there is a very meaningful reason not to spend
all the money possible (it would require fortunes) to take care all of them.
It is understandable that Greek archaelogical services have so far spent
most of their effort to recover first the most significant from an obje-
ctive point of view and/or of special importance for the greek history,
since those had mostly suffered from centuries neglect. Gradually though,
attention has been given to other era monuments. Actually, the least taken
care monuments so far are those of the Frankish-Venetian period in the main-
land.
>>Personally I prefer the destruction of everything in Turkey which gives any
>>indication to the Greeks. This will prevent jerks like you making this kind of
>>statements:
>
>See? You are the one who wants it destroyed....
It doesn't make sense. If there are political reasons for confrontation,
having or not having the monuments makes little difference; there are people
who returned back to perceived homelands thousands of years later, and
while the monuments of their historical period paled in comparison to
those later added. Destruction of artifacts has no political use, while
makes no sense from an economic and cultural point of view.
>>BTW, jerk, it is ISTANBUL (since 1453, not Constantinople.
Not really. The name was changed just barely during the 1920s. Since then
nothing serious has been added to its history such as to justify the
nullification of a name which is used in innumerable previous texts; of
course this is justified if we are talking in a historical context, because
in its modern version should be used otherwise.
Epilogue: There are places in this world, other than Turkey, where Greek
artifacts are great and/or many (e.g. Italy). But because the modern poli-
tical environment is pausitive with those countries, history is not used
to justify animosities. After all, every Greek is able to move in those
Italian (ex-Greek) areas if he feels that it is to his interests today;
the move can be peaceful, not of an invasion form. Who knows, maybe one
day this will be able for the places easterward to Greece too.
Gr
Gregory Dandulakis
After a second look, some gross grammatical mistakes were found.
I apologize.
In article <CE38G...@murdoch.acc.virginia.edu>,
Gregory Dandulakis <gd...@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU> wrote:
>
>tical environment is pausitive with those countries, history is not used
^^^^^^^^^ -> positive
>day this will be able for the places easterward to Greece too.
^^^^^^^^^^ -> eastward
(Who knows; because of the day's fast pace, I was dreaming "Easter" times
with long "pauses"...:-)).
Gr
Philip Santas
Gregory Dandulakis <gd...@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU> wrote:
>
>The same holds true for Ottoman art in Greece. The first Turkologic studies
>programm in Greece has been created at the University of Crete in Rethymnon.
>They have certainly lots of work ahead of them.
Yes, this reminds me some faculties in american universities for
'marxistic philosophy', and 'sovietology': not that there has been
any soviet or marxistic monument in the US.
>PS: Politics and culture; one and the same thing in most cases...
Not in time: cultures last, politicians fall...
Filippos
Philip Santas
Adnan Olmez <pmis...@nl103.ittpub.nl> wrote:
>m...@herky.cs.uiowa.edu (Napoleon Mau) writes:
>>
>> The existence of a huge amount of Greek artifacts all over Asia minor and
>> Constantinople but the absence of Greek people would make any tourist wonder
>> what happened to the Greeks living in Turkey.
>
>no Turkish monument. I wonder how it disappeared.
Guess what: it disappeared *before* its construction!
Filippos ;-)