“There is one Greek family left in Ortaköy.”
The statement has recently been made by the Ortaköy Greek Foundation Chair, Strato Dolçinyadis.
“Expropriated in the 1980s, the Greek school has been returned to them as a result of their struggle at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The revenue coming from the school is now used by the Greek Foundation to help the neighborhood residents in need regardless of their religious beliefs, says Dolçinyadis,” reported the Turkish news website, Bianet, on January 7.
Ortaköy (“middle village” in Turkish), called Agios Fokas in the Byzantine period and Mesachorion (“middle village” in Greek) later, is a neighborhood in Constantinople, built and once ruled by Greeks.
Constantinople, now termed Istanbul, was reinaugurated by Emperor Constantine the Great, who ruled from 306 to 337, and transformed the ancient Greek city of Byzantium into “The New Rome” or “Constantinopolis”, the City of Constantine.
From “Agios Fokas” in what was the capital of the Greek Byzantine Empire between 395 and 1453 to “Ortaköy” with just one Greek family in 2020 in Turkey… How did this population collapse happen?
From 1453 to 2020
The transformation of Asia Minor from a Christian, Greek land to a Muslim and majority-Turkish one began in the eleventh century with the invasion and settlement in the region of Turkic tribes originally from Central Asia.
These tribes who had converted to Islam from their Shamanistic religions by the end of the tenth century invaded the Armenian highland of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire in the 11th century and started taking control of it.
Norman Itzkowitz, professor of Near Eastern studies, writes in his book “Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition” that “the migrations of the Oghuz confederation of Turkish tribes from Central Asia to Asia Minor ultimately gave rise to the House of Osman [the Ottoman Empire].
“It is sufficient to note that in the tenth century those indomitable steppe peoples were located in an area of Central Asia bounded in the south by the Aral Sea and the lower course of the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River, in the west by the Caspian Sea and the lower Volga River, and in the northeast by the Irtysh River. They were largely nomadic, their wealth consisting of camels, horses, and sheep.
“By the end of the tenth century Islam was securely established among the Oghuz Turks, who were now separated from the Islamic territories to the south only by the Syr Darya River.
“Once converted to Islam, the Turks began a southward expansion across that river under the leadership of the Seljuk family. The Seljuks started as military bands hired by Muslim princes and soon emerged as governors of provinces and eventually became autonomous rulers of vast areas. After overrunning Persia (Isfahan fell in 1043), the Seljuks struck out in a westerly direction. Under the leadership of Tughrul Bey, they thrust themselves into the settled centers of classical High Islam. Baghdad, the seat of the caliphate, fell in 1055.”
Itzkowitz also notes that “Islamized nomadic Turks known as Turcomans who were impelled by the love of booty and the desire to spread the faith of the Prophet Muhammed” were used by the Seljuks to facilitate their territorial expansionism.
“The Seljuks encouraged the Turcomans and other tribal elements to raid and plunder the eastern provinces of the Byzantine empire in Anatolia in order to divert them from settled Islamic areas. The Turcomans swelled the ranks of the Muslim frontier warriors, who inhabited the military borderland between Byzantium and Islam, were known as ghazis, or warrior for the faith. The sacred duty of the ghazi was to extend the Islamic territory (Darülislam, ‘Abode of Islam’) at the expense of the land inhabited by the non-Muslims (Darülharb, ‘Abode of War’). He did this by means of the ghaza, or raid, which came to be the perpetual warfare carried on against unbelievers, especially Christians. Wealth captured in this type of warfare was, according to the religious law of Islam, the sharia, lawful booty, and the inhabitants of the raided area could be enslaved or massacred.
“As the number of ghazis on the frontier increased, their raids became more frequent and venturesome, penetrating deeper into the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia…In August 1071 the Seljuks routed the Byzantines at Manzikert [Malazgirt] near Lake Van. Anatolia was now open to full-scale invasion and permanent settlement, and the long process of Anatolia’s Turkification and Islamization was set in motion.”
The Islamic Ottoman Empire was established in 1299 in Asia Minor. Steadily violating the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire, and finally reaching the heart of Byzantium, Constantinople, in the fifteenth century, the Ottoman Turks completed the destruction of the Byzantine Empire.
On May 29, 1453, after a seven-week siege, the Ottoman army, led by sultan Mehmed II, also known as Mehmed Muhammad the Conqueror, invaded and captured the city of Constantinople. Dionysios Hatzopoulos, a professor of classical and Byzantine studies, describes what happened after the city fell to the Ottoman Turks:
“[B]ands of soldiers began now looting. Doors were broken, private homes were looted, their tenants were massacred. Shops in the city markets were looted. Monasteries and convents were broken in. Their tenants were killed, nuns were raped; many, to avoid dishonor, killed themselves. Killing, raping, looting, burning, enslaving went on and on according to tradition. The troops had to satisfy themselves. The great doors of Saint Sophia were forced open, and crowds of angry soldiers came in and fell upon the unfortunate worshippers. Pillaging and killing in the holy place went on for hours. Similar was the fate of worshippers in most churches in the city. Everything that could be taken from the splendid buildings was taken by the new masters of the imperial capital. Icons were destroyed, precious manuscripts were lost forever. Thousands of civilians were enslaved; soldiers fought over young boys and young women. Death and enslavement did not distinguish among social classes. Nobles and peasants were treated with equal ruthlessness.”
During the Ottoman rule, Christians and Jews stood under Muslim law, the sharia, which imposes the inferior status of “dhimmitude” on Christians and Jews who accept Muslim sovereignty. Dhimmi is the subordinate legal status given to the “kafirs” (“unbelievers”) as a way to allow Christians and Jews to stay alive as non-Muslims in exchange for fees or high taxes, also known as jizya.
Despite these heavy pressures and oppression, Greeks and other Christians remained sizable communities across the Ottoman Empire until the final “blow” they received before, during, and after World War I.
1914-1923 Christian Genocide: Islamic Jihad and “Turkey for the Turks” ideology
The Christian genocide that targeted Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians was carried out by the Ottoman regime of the CUP, Committee of Union and Progress, otherwise known as the Young Turks, and the successor nationalist movement that would establish the Turkish republic in 1923.
The genocide was ethnically and religiously based – Islamic jihad was a major determinant of the atrocities committed against Christians. On November 14, 1914, in Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire, the religious leader Sheikh-ul-Islam declared an Islamic holy war (jihad) on behalf of the Ottoman government, urging his Muslim followers to take up arms against Britain, France, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro in World War I.
Historian Dr. Vasileios Th. Meichanetsidis notes in his article “The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, 1913–1923: A Comprehensive Overview” that “The jihad was largely understood by the Muslim population as granting mujahids, or holy warriors, permission to attack, kill, and plunder (al-ghanîmah) gavurs [kafirs\infidels], as explained in the Qur’an and the hadith, or sunnah.”
The jihadi aspect of the Christian genocide is often ignored but it takes a little researching to grasp the religious motivations of the perpetrators. Historian Suren Manukyan, the Chair of the Department of Genocide Studies at Yerevan State University and Head of the Department of Comparative Genocide Studies at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, writes in his 2017 article “The Socio-Psychological Dimension of the Armenian genocide”:
“It is generally accepted that the planners of the Armenian genocide were neither inspired by Islam nor motivated by religious intolerance. But this is by no means decisive. In practice, they activated social forces by the policies they pursued, including the proclamation of jihad at the beginning of world war I, to mobilize religious fanaticism among the population of the empire.
“After the proclamation of jihad on November 14, 1914, the killing of Armenians was seen to bear legitimacy in religious terms. In many areas, clerics led the columns of Muslims and blessed them for punishing the unbelievers. This activated the traditional springs of religious fanaticism. From April 29 to May 12, 1915, parliamentary deputy Pirincizade Feyzi visited all the villages in Cezire, exhorting the Kurdish tribes to perform their ‘religious duty’. Feyzi incited these populations against the ‘infidels’ with the help of religious references and with the support of the hojas (Muslim teachers), rather than Turkish nationalistic discourse. One slogan was repeated everywhere: ‘God, make their children orphans, make widows of their wives… and give their property to Muslims.’ In addition to this prayer, legitimization of plunder, murder, and abduction took the following form: ‘it is licit for Muslims to take the infidels’ property, life and women.’”
Through jihad, the Muslim populations of Ottoman Turkey targeted all Christian subjects of the country. Meichanetsidis, co-editor of the book The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks, lists other factors that are likely to have provided the ideological background to and justification for genocidal fate of Greeks:
“Traditional Turkish ethnic hatred against non-Turkish communities; traditional religious antipathy and fanaticism of Muslims against Christian infidels; and social, economic, and cultural envy for the Christian and culturally European Greeks…. The Ottoman citizens of Greek Orthodox religion were generally accused of being ‘treacherous’ and, ‘disloyal’, and seen as ‘protégés’, ‘agents of the Hellenic national state’, or ‘internal tumors’—as other Young Turk hardliners, too, put it… Greed also played a significant role in the process of radicalization.”
All these provocations – mostly in the name of jihad – led to unspeakably inhumane atrocities against Christians. Meichanetsidis writes:
“Having in mind the whole picture, we can conclude that the genocidal process against the Ottoman Christians constitutes the first massive destruction of citizens by their own government in the modern period. Under two consecutive, chauvinist regimes, the Ottoman Greeks suffered for the same reasons and from the same genocidal intent as their Armenian and Assyrian/Aramean compatriots, though methods, places, and motivations were sometimes different. The process continued even after the creation of the Turkish republic, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, against the remaining Greeks of Constantinople, Imbros, and Tenedos and their institutions, the most important being the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, which was a pan- Orthodox, pan-Christian, and inter-religious point of reference. In sum, from 1913 to 1923, the Ottoman Greek community was thoroughly destroyed through expulsion, massacre, war, and genocide.”
Many survivors of the genocide were then expelled from Turkey to Greece within the Convention on the Exchange of Populations signed between Turkey and Greece in 1923.
Sadly, despite the “secular” constitution of the Turkish republic, the persecution of Greeks and other non-Muslims continued during the republican period, as well. For example, in 1941-1942, there was an attempt to enlist all non-Muslim males in the Turkish military — including the elderly and mentally ill — to force them to work under extremely severe conditions in labor battalions; in 1942, a Wealth Tax was imposed to eliminate Christians and Jews from the economy; in 1955, there was an anti-Greek pogrom in Istanbul; and in 1964, most remaining Greeks were forcefully expelled from the city.
According to Professor Alfred de Zayas, the 1955 Istanbul pogrom “can be considered a grave crime under both Turkish domestic law and international law. In the historical context of a religion driven eliminationist process accompanied by many pogroms before, during, and after World War I within the territories of the Ottoman Empire, including the destruction of the Greek communities of Pontos and Asia Minor and the atrocities against the Greeks of Smyrna in September 1922, the genocidal character of the Istanbul pogrom becomes apparent.”
In 1991, Helsinki Watch carried out a fact-finding mission to Turkey and published a comprehensive report titled “Denying Human Rights and Ethnic Identity: The Greeks of Turkey,” which said, in part: “The problems experienced by the Greek minority today include harassment by police; restrictions on freedom of expression; discrimination in education involving teachers, books and curriculum; restrictions on religious freedom; limitations on the right to control their charitable institutions; and the denial of ethnic identity.”
Historical evidence reveals that Turkish officials were obsessively intent on destroying the Greek presence in Asia Minor. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), which established the Turkish Republic in 1923 and ruled until 1950, stated in its 1946 report on minorities that its aim was to “leave no Greek in Istanbul until the 500th anniversary of the 1453 conquest of Istanbul”, which would be 1953.
“Turkey used to be called Anatolia or Asia Minor and was a Christian civilization,” writes Dr. Bill Warner, the president of Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI). “Today Turkey is over 95% Muslim… Islam does not reach a balance point with the native civilization; it dominates and annihilates the indigenous culture over time.”
Dr. Warner appears to be right. In 1913, there were more than 2 million Greeks in Turkey. Today, there are fewer than 2,000 in Constantinople, or ancient Byzantium, the once capital of the Byzantine Empire. The annihilationist mission of Turks targeting Greeks has finally been “successfully” completed.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara.
Tony Naim says
The Hagia Sophia Cathedral ought to be returned to the Greek Orthodox Church. The Jewish Temple in Jerusalem ought to be returned to the Jews.
The Islamic theft of Christian and Jewish holy sites must be stopped at any cost.
That is the ultimate aim of all violent Jihad in the history of Islam.
These people tried to subdue Christianity in Europe:
Initially From the west, via the Iberian peninsula,
Then from the East, through the Balkans.
The return of the Hagia Sophia to Christianity and the Temple in Jerusalem to Judaism, will most certainly prove that 1400 years of aggression was futile.
The abolition of Dhimmitude laws , and the return of the Christian and Jewish Holy sites will put an end to violent radical Islam.
SAFI says
The conversion of churches into Mosques (or in many cases their complete destruction) is an essential part of the cultural dimension of the genocide. Just like the changing of all non-turkic/infidel placenames (most famous example was Constantinople changing to Istanbul). These changes didn’t occur “naturally” , the were state policy as part of a deliberate cultural genocide which ran parallel to the physical one. Because killing all of Turkey’s native “gavurs” wasn’t enough. The Turks also felt the need to kill the memory of them ever existing. Hence the principal architect of the Armenian Genocide, Enver Pasha, also came up with the idea to wipe out all infidel names from Turkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_name_changes_in_Turkey
More recently the Turks felt threatened by the names of certain animal species such as Ovis Armeniana, Capreolus Armenius and Vulpes Kurdistanica so they felt the need to change those also…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_name_changes_in_Turkey
gravenimage says
Grimly true, SAFI.
cornelius says
The great Historian Will Durant – who was quite forgiving of Islam in many respects – wrote about how the streets of Constantinople became “rivers of blood” during the conquest.
As for the Armenian genocide, I had an Armenian friend who had a book with nothing but dispatches from the New York Times during the period. It chronicled the genocide in detail, massacre by massacre. Much of the killing was perpetrated by Kurdish tribesmen doing the bidding of their Ottoman masters. It was horrific reading.
Kudos to Uzay Bulut for his courage and forthrightness in writing such an article. Quite obviously, he no longer resides in Turkey. He is no doubt considered a traitor by the Erdogan regime. If only there were more Muslims (ex-Muslims?) like him who were willing to speak the truth about Islam’s propensity for violence.
SAFI says
I think Uzay is a “she”.
gravenimage says
True, SAFI. Here’s more on Ms. Bulut:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/biography/Uzay+Bulut
Roland says
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish native versed in Turkish language and history, always performs a public service when she writes. This tragic story should be better known to complacent Westerners: Christians, Jews, secular humanists, and others. Lately, there has been flurry of Muslim candidates for public office in the United States. Some may be perfectly competent honorable people. But we should vet them all for Islamist connections, dress, beards, and statements.
Martin says
Adieu Istanbul – A Film by Dieter Sauter – Turkish & English Subtitles –
( 1h 32 min )
Harassed, attacked, deported… “We lived in a permanent‚ cold fear!” says one of only two Istanbul-Greeks who still has a shop in the European center of Istanbul, Istiklal-Street.
Before 1950 Istanbul Greeks made up half of Istiklal Street.
It began on the night of 6-7th September 1955 with a pogrom.
40 years later out of 150.000 Istanbul-Greek in Istanbul only 2.000 remained.
What kind of life was it – as a member of a minority there – and how is it today?
“The worst thing is to hide your identity”, says one of those, who remained – and: “Nobody was concerned about us, neither Greece nor Europe”.
Will the different cultures at the Bosporus disappear?
Some Istanbul-Greeks who have lived in Greece or another country for more than 30 years want even to return to their hometown now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0s8Cg7nRN4
SAFI says
Worth noting that in the 40s and 50s Turkey wasn’t ruled by the “islamist baddy” Erdogan but by the “good secular kemalist republicans”. They’re the ones who instigated those pogroms and they’re the ones who put the Greeks, Jews and Armenians in labor camps and confiscated their properties during WW2.
By the way, in 1941 Greece had just fallen under Nazi German occupation so that’s way the Turks wasted no time to renew the persecution. That wasn’t a coincidence, it’s just that the Turks are major cowards and so they only do this kind of stuff only if they’re certain there won’t be any retaliation.
Then in 1955 they got another chance when Greece was going through political crisis, plus their confidence of being able to walk away with it was also strengthened by the fact that they’d just joined NATO three years earlier and had thus officially become part of the West which was therefore going to turn a blind eye to such turkish attrocities much like it does today 65 years later.
gravenimage says
The Armenian Genocide–which was really a genocide of all Christians–continued even under Attaturk himself.
GreekEmpress says
Martin,
Thank you very much for posting the link to the film. I am very much looking forward to watching it. It is one I have not seen.
GreekEmpress says
PS
Martin, I watched the movie last night. It was excellent. It is also an illustration of how Islam rules a country where they become the majority. Everybody should watch it, if just to see that point being made. An interesting comment by a man being interviewed said that every country has had a dark period to its history, but they acknowledge the problem, fix it, and move on.
Turkey never has.
Infidel says
There are Greeks in Turkey? The article does a good job detailing the history of their eradication from Anatolia: the Seljuqs followed by the Ottomans did a thorough job in eradicating them. I was surprised to read that there are any left
The real scandal is there being Turks in Europe – from Greece to the Netherlands. Turkey has a pretty solid economy – there is no reason even economic migration from Turkey deserves to be entertained
SAFI says
Why yes of course we need millions of turkish colonists (“assimilation is a crime” remember) in Europe in so that they constantly pressure our governments and lobby for Erdogan’s agenda, and also one day in the (not very) distant future turn our countries into Ottoman provinces, insallah…
In a speech just yesterday Erdogan scolded his nation’s youth for getting married later than they should and not having enough children. Apparently the Sultan needs more footsoldiers for his colonization scheme to work. Turkish muslimas you know what to do…
gravenimage says
Yes–Muslims are now busy invading Greece again.
Infidel says
Greece needs their version of India’s CAA, where they let in Christians from Turkey – be it Greek or Armenian or Syraic – but no Turkish Muslims whatsoever! Or maybe Armenia could share some of the burden by taking in Armenians as well as Syraic Christians and Yazidis
gravenimage says
Agreed, Infidel.
The Muslim population has been growing in Greece, but the Christian and Jewish population in Turkey has been almost wiped out.
Similar to the situation in India vs Pakistan and Bangladesh with Muslims and Infidels like Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians.
Muslims do this wherever they go.
Martin says
The Rum (Greek) community of Istanbul
( 7 min 28 )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ2SuQr-ZEM
SAFI says
TRT is turkish state propaganda. This seems intented to advertise the regime’s “humane” face and its “tolerance” towards minorities.
The turkish consulate’s bombing wasn’t “false news” which resulted in “raising tensions” as this video falsely claims. It was an operation by turkish intelligence to help facilitate the state orchestrated pogrom.
gravenimage says
Spot on.
gravenimage says
Greeks in Turkey on the Verge of Extinction
……………………..
Turkey was majority Greek for centuries, but they have been under siege ever since Muslims began to attack the Byzantine Empire centuries ago. Most of the survivors were wiped out a hundred years ago, and much of the Istanbul community in a pogrom back in the 1950s.
Sadly, they are almost extinct in Turkey today.
Thanks to Uzay Bulut for exposing this story, and welcome to Jihad Watch.
Falsafa says
You should all come and visit Ortaköy! a beatiful Suburb of Istanbul with a thriving artistic community. Who knows maybe you might even decide to settle down there?
gravenimage says
At one point Ortaköy was quite cosmopolitan–it has Jewish, Orthodox, and other Christian structures. Sadly, though, it has few surviving Christians and Jews.
Here’s what Wikipedia rather blandly has to say:
Ortaköy’s once famously cosmopolitan population began to disappear with the emigration of non-Muslim minority groups.
After the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Jewish population rapidly decreased. The riots of 1955 caused the emigration of many members of Istanbul’s minority groups, including Ortaköy’s Greeks and Armenians. There are very few non-Muslims left today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortak%C3%B6y
Does the absurdly self-styled “Falsafa” have a problem with this? No t so he says…
Falsafa says
The spin doctors at work again! If living in Istanbul is such an unbearable place then why are there hundreds of thousands of Armenians from Armenia (you know the former Soviet Republic) working in Turkey illegally?
And also what the Greek state did to the Ottoman Turks in the past hundred years is unspeakable. How many Turks are left in Crete today?
You’re a one-sided view of historical events is pathetic.
SAFI says
“How many Turks are left in Crete today?” None, I guess. Because there was a “population exchange” signed by Turkey in case you forgot. You know the same agreement that allowed Turkey to de-naturalize and seize all the properties and belongings of over one million christian refugees (not just Greeks) who had already fled to Greece to escape turkish genocidal violence.
The thing is the Muslims/Turks who remained in Greece after the exchange are still there receiving generous welfare and even freely practicing sharia, their numbers having actually increased. The Greeks left in Turkey after the exchange have magically disappeared. In a generation from now even the Patriachate could be dead because Turkey’s law won’t allow any non-turkish born citizens to fill the office and there simply aren’t any orthodox left in Turkey to keep it going.
Now what was it you wanted to imply about muslims of Crete, that they were ruthlessly slaughtered?
Care to elaborate on those “unspeakable” things you speak of? Got any examples of Greek “unspeakabilities” besides whatever happened during the Greek war of independence (which was more than “reciprocated” on the ottoman side anyway)? I mean something comparable to the event described in this article happening in peacetime.
Infidel says
Funny how all these countries that supposedly commit genocide of Muslims – be it Israel, India, Greece, Serbia – end up w/ more Muslims at the end of the process than when they began. They should take a page out of Pakistan, Gaza, Turkey and Kosovo, so that the ‘genocides’, w/o actual major bloodletting, frighten Muslims enough to make them flee the place.
Something like what Burma successfully did: you know it’s bad when Bangladesh is the country those Muslims chose to flee to
SAFI says
Heh, heh you’re quite right Kosovo, Gaza, Kashmir… every time they go through an alleged “genocide” , Muslims end up more numerous than prior. Genocides don’t work on Muslims I guess.
I also find it very funny how Turkey accuses the Serbs for the “genocide” of muslims in Bosnia or talks about the “Khojaly genocide”(“Hocali Soyqirimi”) of 160 muslims by the bloodthirsty Armenians during the war with Azerbaijan or accuses Cyprus for the “genocide” of about 200 turks of the island (even though it wasn’t done by the government and even though about as many greek-cypriots were killed at the same time by turkish militants armed by Turkey, and in any case it is but a small fraction of the mumber of cypriots killed by the subsequent turkish “peace operation”), yet if anyone in Turkey dares speak of the killing of 1,5 million Armenians by the term “Armenian Genocide” they could easily end up in jail for “insulting turkishness” (yes that’s a real “crime” defined by the turkish penal code – Article 301) or even murdered as in the case of Hrant Dink.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Infidel.
black adder says
You shut that turkr@ach up for good. That was a really good comment.
Falsafa says
here you go;
Human rights violations of the Turkish Minorities in Greece in modern times committed by the ‚noble‘ Greeks on a massive scale.
https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/greece/Greec991-06.htm
read it and weep!
Mr Spencer’s biased platform allowing so called journalists such as Mr Bulut to spew their vitriole, feeding the anti Turkish vultures (aka Mr Spencer fan club – contributing here in the comments section) is sickening!
gravenimage says
Wait–having a problem with Christians being wiped out in Turkey–where they much predate the Muslim invasion–is “vitriol”? Well, it is true that under Shari’ah law that victims are not supposed to complain about abuse. Bad dhimmis!
SAFI says
Ok so I went ahead and read most of your lenghty largely garbage and even self-contradictory report by the notoriously biased (at least when it comes to Israel and in favor of muslims) hrw. Even if I took this nonsense propaganda at face value it doesn’t bring Greece anywhere close to turkey’s human rights record. All I can say is that all you got? Seriously?
So the big complaints is muslims greece not being able to “elect” the mufti(an insidious way for letting Ankara to select its own prefered candidate) and not hiring exclusively Ankara’s agents for running the turkish schools? Really? Why should Greece accept this Ankara’s subversive demand? Where did you see that happening anywhere in the muslim world? Are muftis in Turkey “elected by the people” or are they approved by the State (Diyanet)? Why shouldn’t Athens be able to approve the muftis whose salaries it pays from its budget?
What other nonsense you got? “Denial of turkish national identity”? Oh that’s a rich one especially coming from the country with the 20 million “mountain turks” XD In other words the complaint is over “not labeling all muslims as Turks” (to make it easier for Ankara to control) Well that’s because as your stupid self contradictory article admits in the first or second paragraph they are NOT. About half of Greek Muslims (at least those in Thrace) speak Pomak(bulgarian) or Romani and identify ethnically as Pomaks or Romani(Gypsies). And contrary to what you may believe Pomaks despise being labeled as “Turks” and Turkey’s attempts to do so in order to inflate the numbers of its “oppressed” fifth columnists in Greece (as it does in other countries as well) with the intention of pulling of a “Sudetenland” maneuvre at some future point. Greece naturally resists this subversion but Turks are very far from being culturally “oppresed” especially when one compares to Turkey’s “Mountain Turks” (also known as Kurds). If anything it’s the regions Pomaks and Gypsies who are being “oppressed” because as muslims they are obligated to go to turkish schools, because there aren’t any Pomak schools in Greece even though most of them despise this educational turkification their children are being subjected to. That could very well be blamed on Greece for not protecting Pomak language and culture while favoring the privileged Turks but it sure doesn’t help the case of turkish propagandists who try to argue that “Turks are being oppressed”.
In short your accusations are BS. Until Turkey allows its 20 million “mountain Turks” to have some “mountain turkish” primary schools and until Greece begins killing, torturing and “disappearing” people on a massive scale you shouldn’t dare to compare these two countries in terms of their Human Rights records. Greece is a Democracy that prides itself on its freedom to express dissent, blaspheme etc whereas Turkey is an Asiatic/Islamic/fascistic/militaristic autocracy with zero freedom where you could end up in jail or worse for simply speaking “mountain turkish” or some other form of “insulting turkishness”(article 301). Any comparison is ludicrous.
gravenimage says
“Falsafa” believes that saying anything critical about the genocide of Christians in Turkey should not be permitted. But then under Shari’ah the victims of Jihad are not allowed to complain lest they want more of the same.
black adder says
All these Greeks who believe that returning to Turkey would be a good idea are idiots who have learned nothing from what happened in the past. The greek community of Istanbul is too small now, so the turks can’t use these people as hostages against the greek state. This is definitely a positive thing.
SAFI says
Yes no significant infidel minorities left for Turkey to use as hostages. Now Turkey can only use troublesome muslim minorities in Greece and other european countries for its backmail purposes.