Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence (50 page)

Kasomoúlis survived the exodus, as did his brother Georgios, but the other brother Mítros was killed. ‘I last saw him’, wrote the grieving Kasomoúlis, ‘rushing forward with one hand shading his eyes and the other wielding his yataghan, and I never saw him again. His blood brothers were legion and he wanted everybody to be one. He longed to have the whole world as his friend and none as his enemy. He was just twenty years old.’
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Stournáris too was among the dead.

Some survivors reached Karaïskákis’ camp through appalling weather. They were gaunt, wrote Kasomoúlis, with pale and angry faces, their clothes bloodstained and bullet torn, their eyes reddened and half-closed from lack of sleep. They found Karaïskákis ill in bed, which perhaps partly excused his inactivity, for which he apologised. He provided food for them, but, abrasive as always, claimed that the 1,500 survivors he counted were all men and asked ‘Why so many? Did the Turks kill only women?’ The leader of the group was furious. ‘We got our arses here
through the gunfire without any help from you,’ he replied. ‘We have kept our word and are doing no more. We’re going, and you can fight the Turks now.’
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Karaïskákis did go on to fight the Turks. In December 1826 he defeated them in the snow-covered mountains round Aráchova, a few miles east of Delphi, and he played a major role in the unsuccessful attempt to drive the Turks back from Athens. In the last days of the Athens battle in May 1827 he was struck by a stray bullet and died the next day. Although his loyalty to the Greek cause was often suspect, he has since become revered as a symbol of Greece’s liberation. Other nations too have their legendary heroes – Britain’s Sir Francis Drake, for example – who pursued their own interests in parallel with serving their country.

Kasomoúlis’ war was not over with the fall of Mesolongi, but its most exciting days probably were. For him the decisive moment of the war was the defeat of the Turks at Navarino by the combined British, Russian and French fleets in October 1827. Kasomoúlis was in Corinth when the news arrived, which was greeted with a thunderous celebratory cannonade. ‘We did not know what to do’, wrote Kasomoúlis, ‘apart from congratulating ourselves and giving praise and thanks to God. That was the first day on which our chains were cut. It was the day that had been long awaited by our fathers and forefathers, by those who died at Mesolongi, and by the people – the people who had never truly submitted.’
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24

Some Conclusions

I
n September 2006 the Greek government introduced a new school history textbook for twelve-year-olds, covering Greek history from 1453 to the present. A furore over it erupted in the following spring. Church leaders, academics and right-wing politicians condemned the book in fierce public statements, and youths linked to an ultranationalist political group burned copies of it outside parliament in Síntagma Square.

The Church, led by the ailing but vigorous Archbishop Christódhoulos, objected that the book underrated the role of the Church in the Greek war of independence, that it even challenged 25 March as the date when the war started, that it questioned the existence of secret schools, and in general that the book enslaved youth. Some academics criticised the book because it did not mention Greek resistance to conversion to Islam, that it never described Turkish or Venetian rule as slavery, and that it described the devshirme as recruitment of the boys when it should have used the word kidnapping. The book was also vociferously denounced by the leader of the far-right political party.

The education minister Mariétta Yannákou battled back. ‘I believe in truth,’ she said, ‘in what really happened in history. We must not tell children fairy tales at school.’ She initially resisted calls for the book’s withdrawal, but in August 2007 accepted that it contained mistakes and inaccuracies, and said that a revised version would be used in schools from September.

This might seem like a straightforward confrontation between obscurantism and enlightenment, a repeat of the debates of the decades before the war of independence, but the background was now very different. In 1999 the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey had signed an agreement to review their respective school textbooks for nationalist bias. The 2006 Greek book was one of this agreement’s first results, and its treatment of the destruction of Smyrna in 1922 was an example of the new approach that particularly angered the critics.

In 1922 at the end of the disastrous Greek invasion of Turkey, Greek troops fell back to Smyrna, which already had a large Greek and Armenian population. On 9 September Turkish forces entered the town, and
four days later a fire began that raged for days, almost entirely destroying the Greek and Armenian quarters, though not the Turkish, and forcing into the sea many of those at the harbour hoping for escape by boat. Turkish historians have blamed the Greeks or the Armenians for starting the fire, but it was probably lit by the Turks and there is overwhelming evidence that they fed it by first spraying houses with petrol and then setting fire to them. But all the textbook has to say of the event is: ‘The Turkish army enters Smyrna. Thousands of Greeks crowd at the port and try to leave for Greece.’

This seems too bland even for twelve-year-olds, and the critics were surely right to object to it. It demonstrates the main difficulty of the textbook writers. If all Greek nationalist bias against Turks is to be removed, Turks cannot be blamed for anything, even if they are clearly responsible for it. History with false judgements is replaced by history containing no judgements at all. Nevertheless perhaps this is a stepping stone on the way to a history with valid and objective judgements.

Before that goal can be reached maybe a deeper shift in attitudes is needed: away from the idea of ‘self’ being defined in relation to some ‘other’ that is different or inferior or evil – of ‘us’ as opposed to ‘them’, or, in the jargon, identity versus alterity. This way of thinking goes back to the ancient Greeks who, as Paul Cartledge has argued, constructed their identities negatively by means of polarised oppositions of themselves to what they were not: Greek–barbarian, citizen–alien, free–slave and so on. He concludes that ‘It was one of the less celebrated but none the less essential aspects of “the Greek achievement” to take this process of negative polarization to extremes.’
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This legacy has been inherited by the western world as a whole and markedly by the Greeks in their view of the Turks, for better or worse, sustaining them through centuries of Turkish rule but blighting all their subsequent relations with the Turks.

The conclusion of the schoolbook story shows that the process of rewriting the old Greek histories still has some way to go. In the parliamentary elections of September 2007 Mariétta Yannákou, who had championed other radical and fiercely opposed educational reforms, lost her seat, gaining less than half the votes she had won in the previous election, and with it her post as education minister. Her successor immediately withdrew the textbook.

It is impossible to ignore this background to the writing of Greek history, but there is no need to be constrained by it. What then can be said about the centuries of Turkish and other foreign rule in Greece? Where, for both the foreign rulers and for the Greeks themselves, do praise and blame lie?

One of the continuing causes of Greek resentment against the Turks is the devshirme or child-collection, an incident of which is described at the opening of this book. The most appropriate word for it is conscription, rather than voluntary ‘recruitment’ or criminal ‘kidnapping’ – the terms debated in the textbook controversy. It can be argued, of course, that the devshirme was increasingly rare after about 1650 and ended altogether in the early 1700s, so the grudge is a very old one. It can also be argued that many of the conscripted boys achieved fame and fortune, rising as high as grand vizier, and that sometimes parents volunteered their sons for the devshirme. But these arguments do not soften the harsh reality that for many if not most Greek families, in which ties of kinship have always been particularly strong, the removal of a son was a heartbreaking loss.

The devshirme faded out over time but taxation, another cause of Greek resentment became steadily more of a burden. It was resented because it was heavy and was arbitrary, and we have seen instances of both. It became heavier because of the deteriorating Ottoman economy and more arbitrary because central control of officials became weaker. Greeks and other non-Muslims paid a higher poll tax than Muslims, which was often cited as a cause of resentment, but on the other hand Muslims were liable for military service and non-Muslims were not. The balance was a reasonable one.

Was the taxation of the Greeks heavier and more arbitrary than for their counterparts in western European countries? Even if this assessment could be made it would not really be relevant. The Greeks, with very few exceptions, could not choose where to live and be taxed; they had to put up with what they had.

The Turks are also blamed by Greeks for failing to develop the country, and leaving little of value behind; some elegant bridges but no decent roads, some fountains but no major buildings except mosques and a few bazaars. This was one aspect of a general neglect of the Greek economy whose development was almost impossible when manufacture was regulated by official guilds and exports were government controlled. These complaints are valid, and from the time when the 1774 Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji opened the way for increased trading on land and sea Greek economic development was remarkable.

Greek revolts, which occurred for a variety of reasons over the centuries, were ruthlessly suppressed. Governments in western Europe, for example in Spain and France, could be just as savage, but again this is hardly relevant to a situation from which the Greeks had no escape; it matters little to a sufferer that others elsewhere may be suffering more.
Some forms of Turkish retribution, such as impalement, were particularly horrible. This raises the question of how a historian should judge such matters: by the standards of his or her own day, or by the standards of the time. Either alone leads to absurdities: to blaming Genghis Khan for not complying with the Geneva conventions, or to treating impalement simply as part of Ottoman culture. The historian probably veers between the two approaches, guided by the light of some absolutes of justice and decency.

Against these darker aspects of Turkish rule can be set certain advantages for the Greeks. First, they were spared for much of the period from wars fought on their mainland territory. The original Turkish conquests of the fifteenth century had ended the turmoil of wars fought in Greece by the dying Byzantine Empire, and no further wars were fought on the Greek mainland until the invasion of Venice and her allies in 1684, their expulsion in 1715, and the Orlov revolt of 1770.

Second, the Greeks were given religious freedom. This included not only freedom of worship but freedom, with only minor restrictions, to build churches. It was never Turkish policy to convert, forcibly or otherwise, Christians to Islam, and the preachings of the Church against apostasy were apparently against a largely exaggerated danger. Besides religious reasons there were strong social pressures on the Greeks to remain in the Orthodox Church, and the instances of conversion seem to have been for some personal benefit. Finally, with freedom of religion went freedom of education, which was left in the hands of the Church.

Greek religion was, paradoxically, more under threat from fellow Christians, the Venetians and other Italians, than from Muslims. In many of their territories the Venetians directed that all bishops should be Catholic, and elsewhere Jesuit missionaries often aggressively proselytised. This threat should not be overstated: both Catholic and Orthodox churches could be found in Cretan towns, congregations were often mixed, and help from Catholic and Orthodox priests was called on without distinction. Nevertheless, many Greeks welcomed the Turks when they replaced the Venetians because the Turks offered greater religious freedom, especially in permitting the appointment of Orthodox bishops.

The role of the Orthodox Church was central during the centuries of Turkish rule. As travellers to Greece noted, holy images were everywhere and religious ceremonies spontaneously practised – especially by sailors – and prayers for intercession, most often to the Mother of God, were the response to misfortune. When after early setbacks in the war of independence Kolokotrónis, the rough military leader, was alone and
in despair, he tells us that he went into a little church, threw himself down and wept for Hellas. ‘“Holy Virgin,” I cried, “help us now, that the Greeks may take heart once more.”’
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Religious belief was heartfelt and almost universal among the Greeks, and the Church achieved what it saw as its main purpose, that of sustaining the faith and worship of its flock.

In other areas the Church could have done more. Education, for which the Church had sole responsibility, was badly neglected, and efforts to improve it in response to Enlightenment ideas were consistently blocked by conservative diehards. The Church attitude to modernising the language of the New Testament was also unnecessarily restrictive. This attitude has been credited with preserving the Greek language, but the Church of England revisers of the prayer book in 1662, with their more flexible approach, enormously enriched the English language; they did not impoverish it, let alone destroy it.

A persistent weakness of the Church was the revolving door of the patriarchate, with patriarchs constantly losing office after a short reign only to return later, the same patriarch going in and out up to five times. The suggestion that all this was engineered by Turks wanting to maximise the number of payments on accession is unconvincing. It was the Holy Synod who elected the patriarch, to be approved by the Sultan, and it is more likely that constant factional strife within the Holy Synod was the main cause of these frequent changes that so debilitated the Church.