Ottoman Greeks Research Articles

Greek Orthodox Communities, Religious Festivals, and National Identity in the Late Ottoman Empire

Abstract This article investigates the extent to which religious festivals played a formative role in shaping dynamic relations between Greek Orthodox Ottomans and the Ottoman and Greek states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A considerable number of festivals held on recurring cycles in the Ottoman Empire served as a unifying force by bringing together Greek Orthodox groups hailing from disparate geographical locations in the Ottoman Empire, Greece, and elsewhere. Although they were primarily religious occasions, these festivals, especially Easter, carried substantial cultural and social importance since they served as a crucial catalyst in the emergence and articulation of nationalist ideals among Ottoman Greeks.

The Ottoman Legacy of the Connected Histories of Demographic Engineering: The Case of the Ottoman Greeks of Western Anatolia

ABSTRACT Is there any relationship between the seemingly separate histories of demographic engineering that affected millions of Ottoman peoples of Albanian, Arab, Bulgarian, Circassian, Georgian, Greek, Jewish or Kurdish origin and the Muslim refugees from the Balkans and Russian territories during the late-Ottoman period? Does this historical legacy play a role in the nation-state building processes of the Republic of Turkey and other post-Ottoman nation-states? What may sound like simple and rhetorical questions, taken at their face value, provide a scholarly framework for a more connected and holistic history of demographic engineering. Focusing on the personal micro-histories of the victims and perpetrators of demographic engineering clearly demonstrates how such histories are entangled with each other, and their role in the creation of the post-Ottoman world. The article argues that, unique as it may seem, a segment in the life of a Unionist-appointed and Muslim nationalist Ottoman civil servant; Ferid Bey, who was both a victim and a culprit of ethnic violence, points out to a pattern that connects histories of demographic engineering designed primarily by competing nationalists in the late Ottoman Empire. It underlines the impact of this legacy on the nation-state building processes of the post-Ottoman world.

Compensation Schemes Following Forced Migration Movements in the 20th Century: A Comparative Perspective on Ottoman Greeks, Greek Muslims, East Germans, Palestinians, and Iraqi Jews

Abstract This article compares the policies of compensation implemented after five cases of forced migration in the 20th century. Compensation for property left behind was discussed in all these cases, but only implemented in some. One might think that compensation may have been easier when “abandoned” property was available and some form of “exchange” was engineered, but the relative failure of the Greek, Turkish, Palestinian, and Israeli cases and the relative success of the German ones suggest that the opposite may be true. This may be due to compensation systems being based on the principle of redistributory justice, rather than restoration of pre-conflict levels of wealth. Moreover, I argue that unilateral compensation schemes worked better than multilateral ones. However, in the long run, the most important factor impacting the refugees’ successful integration does not seem to have been compensation, but economic development, the granting of citizenship, and civil rights.

Ottoman and Turkish Exception(alism): States of Exception in Turkey, 1909–1927

ABSTRACT When the Ottoman Empire declared armed neutrality in August 1914, parts of its territory had already been under siege since April 1909. Wartime mobilisation extended the emergency measures geographically. Except for a brief period of ‘normality’ in 1912, the imperial and republican states declared one state of siege after another from 1909 to 1927 (and well beyond). Although the nature of the state, its name, and its capital changed, the use of extraordinary powers remained a near constant. That is, the exception became the norm. Even if the specific justifications for each declaration of a state of siege varied slightly over time, the justification remained the same: to safeguard the state and, later, the nation, against threats to its very existence. Internal enemies were feared the most, although the actions of external enemies were occasionally invoked, both directly and indirectly, as a reason for maintaining extraordinary powers. Frequently, the internal enemy took the form of a non-Muslim and/or non-Turkish ‘other’: Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians, and Ottoman and Turkish Republican Kurds. Occasionally, of course, Muslims and Turks could also become ‘the enemy’, but mostly as ‘suspect’ individuals or small groups, never as collectivities.

Ottoman Greeks who Studied and Transcribed Ottoman Turkish Music: The Case of Nilevs Kamarados

Nilevs Kamarados (1847-1922) was an Ottoman Greek musician and music teacher who was highly respected both during his lifetime and after his death. He was a performer and theorist of Byzantine music (Greek Christian Orthodox Ecclesiastical music), but he also studied Western, Ottoman Turkish, Greek folk, and Armenian music. The archive he left behind is of particular interest, since it contains testimonies of his involvement with all these musical genres: publications, musical transcriptions in Byzantine, staff and Hamparsum notation, drafts, and notes on theoretical subjects. Kamarados’s archive is now part of the Greek Music Archive of the Music Library of Greece “Lilian Boudouri”. The aim of this study is to present Kamarados’s association with Ottoman Turkish music, as it is highlighted by his archive, while providing catalogs with the corresponding transcriptions in Byzantine and staff notation found there, as well as a catalog with the transcriptions of song lyrics in Karamanlidika (Turkish language written with the Greek alphabet).

The Hellenic Literary Society at Constantinople between Ottomanism and Greek Irredentism

"… the Turks, public servants or soldiers, remained in sum what they’ve always been, Barbarians making a life out of plunder and robbery..." The above statement reveals how one of the finest institutions of Ottoman Greek letters and sciences, the Hellenic Literary Society at Constantinople, described the Turks in a petition to its honorary members, academics, university professors, and learned societies in the Allied countries and in those that had remained neutral during the Great War, just a month into the deliberations of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The picture of the Turk as a barbarian permeates the petition and juxtaposes that of the Greek as the bearer of civilization. In this way, the society attempted to elicit the support of Western intellectuals in favor of Greek irredentism. Such an approach was not unique to the Ottoman Greeks, as Armenians also employed a similar distinction between the Turks and themselves to enhance their national aspirations.2 Yet, such a snapshot of the society in the post-Armistice period can be misleading as to its sixty-odd year-long lifetime. The society had remained, for the most part, in favor of Ottomanism, and its endorsement of Greek irredentism tells us more about how and why multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empires can fail rather than providing an accurate depiction of the society throughout its existence.

«The Others» in Polıtıcs Durıng the era of the Young Turks: Ottoman Greeks ın the Parlıament (1908-1918)

This article analyzes the role and the discourses of the Ottoman Greeks in the parliament during the Young Turks’ rule between 1908 and 1918. In this way, it attempts to contribute to the knowledge about the newly established so-called constitutional order in the Ottoman Empire, the parliament and its impact over the socio-political fluctuations which mostly affected the non-Muslims. In order to do it, this work focuses on the speeches, discourses and topics of discussion which were brought to the agenda by the Ottoman Greeks in the parliament. The research is formed upon the parliamentary minutes as well as both Ottoman Turkish and Greek newspapers of the related period. The examination of these sources allows us to conclude that the efforts of the Young Turks for bringing equality, freedom and justice in fact created a reverse effect and further deepened the gap between the Greeks and the Turks; difference in the interpretations of the terms propagated by the Young Turks such as equality, freedom and Ottomanness as a uniting identity, contrary to expectations, accelerated the disintegration of the Empire.

Greek Personal Names and the Question of Personal Identification in the Late Ottoman Empire: a Social Historical Approach

Abstract The Ottoman state, Greek communal authorities and Greek individuals used various forms and renditions of Greek personal names across imperial and communal spaces, sometimes simultaneously. Based on how these names were written in Ottoman and Greek documentation, this article focuses on the implications of the variations in personal names to explore Greek personal identification in the late Ottoman Empire. Concentrating on Istanbul and its environs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the article is concerned with one of the results of increasing literacy and formal education, the growing dominance of modern bureaucracies and efforts for national linguistic formalization. It examines the Ottoman usage of colloquial Greek, practices of linguistic standardization by Greek administrative/literate circles and the intersection of the two practices. The article demonstrates how variations in personal names reflected and also contributed to the shaping of a multiplicity of forms of personal identification for Ottoman Greeks.

Forging an Anti-Racist Praxis: Housing Discrimination against Ottoman Greek Immigrants in Early-Twentieth-Century Portland and Seattle

Whiteness provides its possessors with the privilege of homeownership without racial restrictions and obstructs black, brown, and Indigenous people. I examine that privilege for the Ottoman Greeks, an early-twentieth-century Southeastern European immigrant cohort to the United States. To conduct the examination, I analyze data from the Dictionary of Races or Peoples, the Segregated Seattle Project, and the Portland Restrictive Covenant Project. Racial formation theory and the concept of racial fluidity provide the framework for this study’s three main findings.1 First, housing discrimination impacted Ottoman Greeks less than other racialized groups. Second, Ottoman Greeks experienced this discrimination as racially fluid Greeks or Turks. Finally, Ottoman Greek housing discrimination occurred in elite white communities of Portland and Seattle. My findings illustrate an alternate knowledge of whiteness that, when harnessed by descendants of early-twentieth-century immigrants, can potentially lead them toward anti-racist political advocacy and activism.

Caring for the sick man? Russian and Greek reactions to the Ottoman reforms (1856–1908)

Greece and Russia had had a long and complicated relationship to the Ottoman Empire and especially to its sizable Orthodox Christian minority. The Sick Man of Europe was trying to cure himself quite vigorously from 1856 to 1908 but most contemporary Western and Balkan observers as well as modern historians did not rate Ottoman modernization efforts very high. Unlike their Russian counterparts implemented in the same time period, they are never labeled as ‘Great Reforms’. This article will demonstrate that during Tanzimat and its sequels, even Turkey’s archrival yet similarly dynastic empire supported Ottoman secularization and religious equality short of removing residual Christian Orthodox autonomy. Surprisingly, a very different polity, the ethnocentric Greek nation-state had similar reactions hoping to enable Ottoman Greeks to dominate the Sultan’s realm politically and economically. Russia’s motive was also to extend its influence through the traditional Ottoman institution - the Patriarchate of Constantinople - without destroying the Ottoman Empire or even engaging in conspicuous unilateralism and thereby provoking another war with the other Great Powers. While St Petersburg attempted to steer Ottoman reforms along federative lines advocating broad autonomy for Christian majority provinces, Athens backed Sultan’s direct rule except in ethnically Greek areas like Crete.

The Second Exchange: Ottoman Greeks and the American Deportation State during the 1930s

After multiple wars, Greece and the newly-founded Republic of Turkey made peace through the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the 1930 Treaty of Ankara. A critical component of this rapprochement was the mutual exchange of population and property involving the transfer of some two million people. As part of the exchange, Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the Republic of Turkey – with the exception of those who remained in Istanbul as of the Treaty of Ankara – became Greek nationals. This article explores how the agreements between Turkey and Greece indirectly facilitated a ‘second exchange’ involving the deportation of Ottoman-born Greeks from the United States during the 1930s. As the American deportation state grew to deport upwards of 20,000 people at the outset of the Great Depression, groups targeted by stringent immigration quotas such as communities of the former Ottoman Empire were deported in large numbers. The exchange of populations provided a framework for resolving the ambiguous nationalities of Greeks in the US, allowing American diplomats to secure Greek passports for prospective deportees. As we further demonstrate, only the terms of this agreement – not national affinity nor diplomatic relations with the US – could be invoked to secure these passports in a number of cases. When it came to immigration enforcement, how people self-identified in racial, ethnic, religious, or national terms was virtually irrelevant. What mattered was how states identified them.

Revisiting the legal infrastructure for the confiscation of Armenian and Greek wealth: an analysis of the CUP years and the early modern Republic

ABSTRACTProperties belonging to Ottoman Armenians and Greeks were seized through various laws, decrees and other legal regulations passed by the Committee of Union and Progress (hereafter CUP) government, and later the cadres of the Republican regime. Both governments concocted ways of making this illegal process look legitimate by using the legal veil of the law. Central to this process were the economic outcomes of violence committed against Armenians and Greeks. The aim of this article is to analyze these laws and statutes, which were known as the Abandoned Properties Laws, and discuss the impact of this legislation on the process of the changing of hands of Armenian and Greek properties. It attempts to elucidate the dominant logic of the laws, decrees, and regulations concerning the abandoned properties in the periods of 1915–1923 and post-1923.

Policing the ‘suspects’: Ottoman Greeks and Armenians in Istanbul, 1914–18

ABSTRACTDuring the First World War, a primary domestic political aim for all belligerent countries was to preserve the socio-economic status quo in order to provide appropriate conditions for the survival of the state. Therefore, war governments paid particular attention to the maintenance of internal order. While doing this, the central authority of governments became paramount and this situation had remarkable repercussions on state–society relations. This article examines the wartime public order policies of the Ottoman government specifically concerning the Ottoman Greeks (Rum) and Armenians living in Istanbul. During the Great War, these non-Muslim elements were officially regarded as ‘suspects’, in other words, as ‘potential political criminals’ threatening the internal order of the capital. To control the Ottoman Greeks and Armenians, the war government implemented a number of policing strategies that consisted of deportation of individuals and groups, strict control on travel, and close surveillance of ‘suspects’.

Refugees, Locals and “The” State: Property Compensation in the Province of Izmir Following the Greco-Turkish Population Exchange of 1923

This article studies the application of laws regulating the settlement and compensation of migrants who came to Turkey from Greece in the course of the population exchange. By using petitions and administrative documents, it discusses the questions of legality and legitimacy with regard to two problems: First, the status of exchangees as a group privileged by law, and second, the bureaucratic procedure through which they were given temporary property rights (tefviz). The article shows that laws can by no means be taken to be identical with their application, and that various notions of legality and legitimacy were at play, both in different state administrations and among those affected by their policies. It thus makes an important contribution to a better understanding of the relationship between law, state and society in early Republican Turkey. The mutual and compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey marks a crucial event in the demographic, economic and social history of both countries. Signed on 30 January 1923, the agreement between both governments sealed the fate of about 800,000 Greek-Orthodox citizens of the Ottoman state (known as Rum) who had involuntarily left Anatolia and Thrace between 1912 and 1922, banning them from ever returning to their homeland again. Those who were still in place were also forced to emigrate to Greece. The same rules were applied to the Muslim population of Greece (including those who had already left during the Balkan Wars), which was to emigrate to Turkey. Exceptions were made for the Greeks living in Istanbul (including Greek citizens who were known as Yunan in Ottoman Turkish), the Muslims of Western Thrace, and the Rum island populations of Imros and Tenedos at the mouth of the Dardanelles. 1 As an internationally sanctioned forced migration, the exchange helped to legalize and make permanent the ethnic cleansing of the Ottoman Greeks that had  Ellinor Morack is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; email ellinor.morack@mail.huji.ac.il * I would like to thank all the participants of the graduate student workshop on “Turks in Conflict” at Columbia University who provided feedback on an early draft of this article. Special thanks go to the two anonymous JOTSA reviewers for their very helpful criticism and suggestions. 1 Onur Yildirim, Diplomacy and Displacement: Reconsidering the Turco-Greek Exchange of Populations, 1922-1934 (London: Routledge, 2006); Renee Hirschon, ed., Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey (New York: Berghahn, 2003). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.60 on Mon, 18 Jul 2016 06:17:36 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Organised chaos as diplomatic ruse and demographic weapon. The expulsion of the Ottoman Greeks (Rum) from Foça, 1914

TSEG (Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis) - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, is het Nederlands-Vlaamse vaktijdschrift op het gebied van de sociale en economische geschiedenis

The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor (1912–1922) and Its Aftermath; History, Law, Memory the History of Greece

Book Review| June 01 2013 The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor (1912–1922) and Its Aftermath; History, Law, Memory the History of Greece Matthias Bjornlund, Tessa Hofmann, and Vasileios Meichanetsidis, Editors: The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor (1912 - 1922) and Its Aftermath; History, Law, Memory. New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, 2012. 520 pages. ISBN 978-0-892-41615-8. $75.00 (hardcover).Thomopoulos, Elaine: The History of Greece. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2012. 215 pages. ISBN 978-0-313-37511-8. $58.00 (paperback). Evaggelos Vallianatos Evaggelos Vallianatos Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Mediterranean Quarterly (2013) 24 (2): 111–115. https://doi.org/10.1215/10474552-2141935 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Evaggelos Vallianatos; The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor (1912–1922) and Its Aftermath; History, Law, Memory the History of Greece. Mediterranean Quarterly 1 June 2013; 24 (2): 111–115. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10474552-2141935 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsMediterranean Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2013 by Mediterranean Affairs, Inc.2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Beyoğlu, Turkey

80 worldliteraturetoday.org top photo: gabriele quaglia bottom photo: vince millett outpost I n the nineteenth century, as Old Istanbul south of the Golden Horn struggled to awaken from its medieval slumber, a new European-style city sprang to life on the north shore: Pera. Foreign embassies built their palatial residences on the hills among Pera’s vineyards, competing for space with the prosperous businesses and Frankish houses of Ottoman Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. Pera, now known as Beyoğlu, became the Ottoman Empire’s window to the West, the lens through which most Turks first saw European culture. Through the difficult first half-century of the Turkish Republic and the 1950s and ’60s that Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has rightly described as “melancholy,” Beyoğlu struggled to maintain this role. Things got worse, then much better. Symbolic of Turkey’s phenomenal economic and social progress during the 1990s was the opening of a new foreign-language bookshop in Beyoğlu on İstiklâl Caddesi (Independence Avenue), the former Grande Rue de Péra. Robinson Crusoe Kitabevi (www.rob389.com), founded in 1994 by Uğur Eruzun and Deniz Kunkut, was designed to bring foreign authors to Turkish readers in their original language. “Our customers include Turks who want to read foreign authors in the original version, foreign residents who want both books in English and a good selection of the best Turkish authors in Turkish, and visitors looking for guidebooks, histories, contemporary studies, and Turkish literature in translation,” staff member Seda Ateş explained. “The best-sellers in the shopwindow satisfy some customers and help to cover our overhead, but it is the well-selected assortment of new, standard, and classic works that gives Robinson Crusoe its literary and philosophical depth.” Ateş proudly showed me the shop’s authors’ guest book bearing the tributes and signatures of Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber), Arundhati Roy, Jacques Derrida, John Freely, Godfrey Goodwin, Soraya Faroqhi, and, of course, Istanbul native Orhan Pamuk. And yes, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, first translated into Turkish a century and a half ago, became and still is one of the most popular novels for both young and mature Turkish readers. Tom Brosnahan’s latest book is the humorous travel memoir Turkey: Bright Sun, Strong Tea (brightsunstrongtea.com). Beyoğlu, Turkey Tom Brosnahan ...

TANER AKCAM. The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire.

This book, an edited translation from the 2008 Turkish original, is a welcome addition to English-language scholarship about the Armenian genocide. Clearly structured, the book consists of twelve thematic chapters ranging from the provenance of Ottoman sources to wartime treatment of the Ottoman Greeks. Chapter five, “The Initial Phase of Anti-Armenian Policy,” and chapter six, “Final Steps in the Decision-Making Process,” include detailed examinations of the Young Turks' decision-making processes in the period from August 1914 to April 1915. These are followed by two long thematic chapters, one on forced cultural assimilation and one on the spoliation of property. In essence, this book argues that Ottoman archives corroborate German, American, and Armenian source bases on the Armenian genocide. It further concludes that Ottoman materials conclusively prove that the Young Turk treatment of Ottoman Armenians was genocide, and that this was part and parcel of a broader policy of forcible demographic Turkification of the empire.

The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: studies on the state-sponsored campaign of extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor, 1912-1922 and its aftermath: history, law, memory

The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: studies on the state-sponsored campaign of extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor, 1912-1922 and its aftermath: history, law, memory

Entangled allegiances: Ottoman Greeks in Marseille and the shifting ethos of Greekness (c. 1790–c. 1820)

An attempt is made here to consider ‘the Greek experience of Ottoman rule’ beyond the frontiers of the Empire itself, by focusing on the resilience of the Ottoman aspect of collective identity among the Greeks in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Marseille. Beyond the classic questioning of political, social and cultural categories and labels, this article makes a plea for taking this resilience seriously, as part and parcel of a broader process of identity formation in a diaspora context. Making the case for a richer and more complex analysis of the phenomenon of ‘entangled identities’ among the Greeks in Marseille, some suggestions are made for what this claim might bring to the analysis of identity formation in the context of diaspora communities.