Civilizations over the world have developed and perpetuated myths as a means of explaining natural phenomena and the mysteries of life and death itself. Though widely unknown, Albanian Mythology holds an intriguing blend of tales and legends, most dating back to the pagan beliefs of Ancient Illyria. Others have incorporated more blends of fictional beings addressing the many complexities of morality, good, and evil. At the beginning reside the Illyrian divinities of nature, constructed by our ancestors as a means of comprehending the world which surrounded them. Many pan-cultural influences can be noted in some Albanian mythological characters.

The lubi, –a monster  holding the head of a lion, body of a goat, and tail of a serpent—is to the  Greeks a chimera, while the ghostly kukuth holds similar powers to the  Slavic vila. Even a variation of the very English Tom Thumb can be noted as resting akin to the Albanian tale of Kacilmic. Such similarities also exist between Illyrian Gods and Goddesses with those of other cultures. The Illyrian Goddess Diana,  accompanied by a female goat  (alb. dhia goat),  was directly adopted by the Romans and holds a host of qualities to the Greek’s  Artemus. Other divinities remained highly local. Enji, the God of fire (Agni in India), Surd, the God of weather, and Bindus that of water, were all creations of Illyrian reverence to the awesome powers of nature. Goddesses such as Medauras and Prema were held as the supreme beings to heal ailments and spawn fertility. Strangely, unlike the mythology of others, the Albanian strain developed without the cosmogenic view of how the world was created, nor the eschatological prophecies of how the world would end, and remained firmly terrestrial and centered on those things that could be touched  or felt firsthand. The advent of Christian and Islamic lore brought belief in such deities to the end of their epoch in Albania and elsewhere. Myths such as  Persius saving Andromeda from the Hydra for the most part were replaced by  related religious ventures such as Saint George saving the princess of Sylene  from being sacrificed to the dragon. If not for the work of such astronomers as Ptolemy Llagos of Illyria, who placed such stories literally into the heavens through the naming of constellations, such mythology would be even less recalled today.

Supplementing the acts of the Gods and Goddesses rests the mythology of the common man and the world?s evil they must face. Albanian Mythology is filled  with a variety of monsters, ranging from mighty giants called Baloz, to  tiny gnomes called Thopc who take delight in teasing people by turning  them into animals. In such tales live witches known as shtrigas which cast spells and the Syni I keq. Female nymphs known as oras, whose  glance can turn a man into stone, vampire-like lugats which live off  human blood, and karkanxhols—half-man, half-wolf , which hunt shepherds  under the full moon—are among the mythological personifications of evil in  which folklore and superstition abound. Indeed, though made famous by the Germanic minority of Wallachia who were subjugated to the horrors of ruler Vlad Dracul, then later by the author Bram Stoker, it was Lord Byron who first related tales to Western Europeans of vampires. These tales were inspired by the folklore and tales he encountered while visiting Southern Albania.

To such vestiges of horror as lugats came the need for heroes with ingenious methods to combat them. Such heroes might themselves take the form of mere mortals, or those figures of mythology which were adhered to as good. Zanas, female mountain spirits which dwell near streams, have often been called upon to protect Albanian warriors. The deadly acts of kulshedras,  a fire-breathing serpent with seven heads that pollutes the water, air, and  soil, have for time immemorial been slain by drangues; human-like  warriors with wings under their arms. When lacking such mythical interventions, Albanians have taken it upon themselves to combat evil with assorted amulets, herbs, magical stones, rings, and through such practices as shooting at the moon to ward off wolves. It is still the belief that to spit in a fire is taboo, and that one will be petrified if he breaks an oath made on a pledge stone.

Aspects of more modern and tangible calls for courage are highly represented in more recent forms of Albanian folklore, whereby the acts and deeds of real individuals become legendary, and take on almost mythical proportions. Typical  in Southern Albania are the heroics of noble sons, burri I dheut, who  took to battle against the overwhelming might of the Turk, as well as faithful  women, bukura e dheut, who chose to jump to their death off of cliffs,  their babies in arm, rather than be taken or even touched by the invader. The tales of Northern Albania generally focus on the common man’s battle with their Slavic neighbors. Songs and tales surround such characters as Muj, a shepherd who gains great powers by capturing three goats with golden horns, and in turn defeats the Slavs in battle. Upon his death, the enemy challenges him in his grave, from where he calls on his brother Halil to defeat them and return him to life. Other figures of mountain lore such as Oso Kuka, Marash  Uci, and the brave maiden Tringa have been immortalized in the works  of such writers as Gjergj Fishta, and represent battles for freedom and  survival which are unfortunately still very prominent in the lives of the  Albanian people to this day.

One might wander what other written lnguages could hvae been used during the classical times? Here are some references in contradiction to current claims:

 Appian, The Foreign Wars ( The Illyrian Wars) Ill. 1.1

a. Ἰλλυριοὺς Ἕλληνες ἡγοῦνται τοὺς ὑπέρ τε Μακεδονίαν καὶ Θρᾴκην ἀπὸ Χαόνων καὶ Θεσπρωτῶν ἐπὶ ποταμὸν Ἴστρον. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ τῆς χώρας τὸ μῆκος, εὖρος δ’ ἐκ Μακεδόνων τε καὶ Θρᾳκῶν τῶν ὀρείων ἐπὶ Παιονας καὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον καὶ τὰ πρόποδα τῶν Ἄλπεων. καὶ ἔστι τὸ μὲν εὖρος ἡμερῶν πέντε, τὸ δὲ μῆκος τριάκοντα, καθὰ καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν εἴρηται. Ῥωμαίων δὲ τὴν χώραν μετρησαμένων ἔστιν ὑπὲρ ἑξακισχιλίους σταδίους τὸ μῆκος, καὶ τὸ πλάτος ἀμφὶ τοὺς χιλίους καὶ διακοσίους.

b.The Greeks call those people Illyrians who occupy the region beyond Macedonia and Thrace from Chaonia and Thesprotia to the river Danube. This is the length of the country. Its breadth is from Macedonia and the mountains of Thrace to Pannonia and the Adriatic and the foothills of the Alps. Its breadth is five days’ journey and its length thirty – so the Greek writers say. The Romans measured the country and found its length to be upward of 1,000 kilometers and its width about 220. (Translation by Horace White, William Heineman, The Macmillan Co., New York, MCMXII)

Philhellenes have attempted to dilute the meaning of references about the non-Greek character of Epirus. Specifically, Appian mentions Ionian Sea , while the translator instead uses “Adriatic” Sea which would have the effect of putting Epirus outside of the country the Illyrians inhabit.  A more pricise translation as of the breadth of the Illyrian area would be “…from Macedonia and the mountains of Thrace to Pannonia and the Ionian sea and the foot-hills of the Alps…”

***

Stephani Byzantinii, Ehnicorum Quae Svpersvnt, Berolini, Impesis G. Reimeri, MDCCXLIX

Άθαμανία, χώρα Ιλλυρίας, οι δε Θεσσαλίας.τό έθνι χόν Αθαμανες . (p. 33)

Translation: “Athamania, territory in Illyria…”

Greek nationalist interpretation: Athamanians or Athamanes were an ancient tribe that inhabited south-  eastern  Epirus and west Thessaly. Although regarded as “barbarians” by Strabo and Hecataeus of Miletus, the Athamanians self-identifed as Greeks. (An expert taken  from Wikipedia)

***

Polybius, The Histories, Book XXVII, 8

Translation:

Perseus, on arriving at Syberra, sold the booty, and rested his army waiting for the return of the envoys. Upon their arrival, after hearing the answer of Genthius, he once more dispatched Adaeus, accompanied by Glaucias, one of his bodyguard, and again by Pleuratus owing to his knowledge of the Illyrian dialect, with the same instructions as before, just as if Genthius had not expressly indicated what he was in need of, and what must be done before he would consent to the request.

The question of the Macedonian ethnos is a case in point. The antiquity authors had described the original Macedonians as barbarian (that is non-Greek). And Strabo cited similarities between the Macedonians and the Epiriots. He wrote: “some go so far as to call the whole of the country Macedonia, as far as Corcyra, at the same time stating as their reason that in tonsure, language, short cloak, and other things of the kind, the usages of the inhabitants are similar…” (Geography, Book VII, 8). But in the light of tendentious attitudes, these were not good enough reasons not to consider Macedonians as being 100% Greek. This attitude went so far as to even effect the objectivity in translations of antiquity authors, and as a result attempt to leave no room for any doubt as to the ethnos of the Macedonians. For example, on the question concerning the original language of the Macedonians, Strabo’s citation was taken as meaning Illyrian and Macedonian languages were two distinct languages; but, as we can observe from the above, Pleuratus, a Macedonian, was taken along because he was familiar with the Illyrian dialect, thus affirming a close relationship between Macedonian and Illyrian languages, which is different from the traditional translation indicating that Pleuratus was familiar with the Illyrian language, thus inferring that Illyrian language was different from Macedonian, as has been maintained by the Greek historians. It is unfortunate, but this Greek effort has taken hold on many. Even the Albanian archeologist/turned politician, Neritan Ceka, while accepting commonality in culture between the Illyrians, Macedonians and Epiriots, still assumes that the Macedonian, Epiriotic and Illyrian languages were distinct languages (Iliret, p. 225).

***

George Akropolites Γεῶργιος Ἀκροπολίτης (1217 – 1282)

(Translated by Ruth Macrides, Oxford University Press, 2007)

P. 95:

The Epiriotes are not Romans; ‘they are the western race’, the inhabitants of the western parts’.

The rulers of Epiros break their oaths ( 25, 38, 49), assume (usurp) imperial power (21, 38, 49), and are ignorant of Roman customs and traditions (21).

p.358:

In this part of his narrative, Akrop. expresses the opposition between ‘Nicaea’ and ‘Epiros’ in strong terms of identification which separate ‘us’ from ‘them’: ‘ours’, ‘our men’, ‘our Hellenic land’, as opposed to the ‘western race’…

…Akrop.’s statement that the Pyrrenaia mountains separate Old and New Epiros from ‘our Hellenic land’ indicates that these are the Pindos mountains… (82).

The ethnogenesis of today’s Serbia begins with the emergence of the Slavic settlements south of Danube River. Historians in general have stayed from the subject as to what followed with Slavic settlements.  The simple, idealistic Serbian view is that they came, established empires, and every subject relating to life under these empires relates exclusively to them. As to what happened to the original population of the area, is said nothing, and one is lead to assume that there never was such a population. There is no basis to assume that the area was not populated or that the original inhabitants left the area after Slavs came. At least for the case of Kosovo, knowledge that has come to light after WWII testifies that “original” population survived the Slavic onslaught and continued to inhabit the area throughout the middle ages.  Here is what well known Yugoslav historians have noted about the survival of the pre-Slavic population of the area.

Fannula Papazoglu has indicated that Dardania was “one of the Balkan regions less Romanized” and that “its population seems to have preserved better its individuality and its consciousness from antiquity…and the possibilty that the Dardanians were able to escape romanization, and to have survived, can not be excluded.”(Iliri I Albanci, Belgrade, 1988, p. 19)

Henrik Baric indicated that the Albanians inhabited Dardania and Peonia before Slavs settled in these areas. In the absence of historical sources to support of a contrary view, the Albanian presence at the end of Antiquity and the beginning of Medieval period is proven not only by individuals bearing Illyrian names appearing in tombstone inscriptions, but also the old toponomy of the area, such as Shkup (Scupi), Nish (Naissus), Shtip (Astibos), Oher (Lychnid), etc., which are not explained on the basis of Slavic phonological rules, but on the basis of Albanian language. (H. Baric, Hyrje ne historine e gjuhes shqipe, Prishtine, 1955, f. 49-50).

It is a fact that the population of the Byzantine empire was multi-ethnic but it was traditionally identified common name, specifically Romanoi. Literature has noted Albanians as a separate ethnic group only as Albanians defied the empire and identified with Rome. What is possibly the earliest written reference to the Albanians is that to be found in an old Bulgarian text compiled around the beginning of the eleventh century. This fragment of a legend from the time of Tsar Samuel endeavours, in a catechismal ‘question and answer’ form, to explain the origins of peoples and languages:

It can be seen that there are various languages on earth. Of them, there are five Orthodox languages: Bulgarian, Greek, Syrian, Iberian (Georgian) and Russian. Three of these have Orthodox alphabets: Greek, Bulgarian and Iberian. There are twelve languages of half-believers: Alamanians, Franks, Magyars (Hungarians), Indians, Jacobites, Armenians, Saxons, Lechs (Poles), Arbanasi (Albanians), Croatians, Hizi, Germans.

It appears that division is made on the basis of three religious categories: Orthodox, half-believers (i.e. non-Orthodox Christians) and non-believers. A major question involved here is if all Albanians in reality fell under this identification, were all Albanians “half-believers”? Albanian history definitely speaks for a different reality. A considerable number of Albanians have clung to the Orthodox faith throughout the Christian era. In other words, the 1054 schism did not change much when it came to what were Albanian territories. At the outset of the 12^th century, there were 20 bishoprics in Albania. Bishoprics of Northern Albania were dependent on the Catholic Archbishopy of Antivari, while those affiliated with Patrichate of Contantinople were Metropolite of Durres central Albania), and Archbishopry of Oher (which included southern Albania). With the rise of Serbian power, there was a corresponding reduction in the affiliation of areas under its domination with Catholic Rome, specifically the area called formerly Dardania which included today’s Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.

During the VI Century, at the time of Slavic invasions, geographical designations, Dardania and Macedonia (2^nd ) consisting of Epirus Nova et pars Macedonia Salutaris were still in use and distinctions remained. As Noel Malcom (Kosovo: A Short History, 1998) indicated, history for the Serbs, started in the early 7th century, when they settled in the Balkans but their power base was outside Kosovo until they fully conquered in the early 13^thcentury. They ruled Kosovo for about 250 years, until the final Ottoman takeover in the mid-15th century. This domination turned into an eventual claim that Kosovo was the “cradle” of the Serbs, as baseless a claim as the one that connects today’s Macedonia with the Macedonia of antiquity! The fact that these claims are in contradiction with historical facts, on the basis of these opinions are just not important. And Malom adds that there is no more continuity between the medieval Serbian state and today’s Serbia than there is between the Byzantine Empire and Greece.

Map 1: The directions of Slavic migrations towards Balkans

Churches and monasteries remain from that period in territories of former Dardania. It is interesting to note, as we will indicate below, that most of places of worship were functional and in existence before the introduction of Serbian dominance. One can assume that with the strengthening of the Nemanje state, the state administration also took control of the churches. Can one assume that the worshipers were exclusively “Serb”, this is very doubtful. It is hard to comment about how much the “Serb” ethnos had consolidated at the time former Dardanian territories fell under the Nemanjid state. By all indications, as a whole, today’s Serbs are not descendents of a genuine ethnic group, but a conglomeration of various Christian communities around the church. Under this reality any follower, willing or forced, would be considered a “Serb” under medieval norms. There is no reason why Albanians after 200 years of dominance would not be part of the flock. When old Serb texts refer to Albanians, the inference is not these Orthodox followers, but Catholic Albanians.

Unless there is an extraordinary, as yet an unknown reality, we have to accept that after 200 years of political and religious dominance, the population of what came to be known as Kosovo had gone through a process of assimilation. Data relating to the period right after the Ottoman takeover, clearly reveal the effects of this process.

Research of Turkish archives by H. Hadibegic, A. Handzic, E. Kovacevic (OblastBrankovica, Opstirni katastarski popis, Sarajevo, 1972) and S. Pulaha (Popullsia Shqiptare e Kosoves gjatr Shek. XV-XVI, Tirana, 1984)  has provided valuable information relating to the ethnic status of the area at the time the Ottoman occupation commenced. A summary of S. Pulaha’s findings follows:

Registration of land and population of Shkodra Sandjak in 1485 includes information on an area that extending between Tropoj, Junik and Gjakove, known as Altun-Alia. Areas to the north and south of this district were not included in the Shkodra Sandjak. This district included 53 villages with 926 households, 356 able-bodied men and 99 widow households. The register recorded the names of the heads of the families, the able-bodied and widows of each village that was responsible for dues.

This period is reflective of the period of when Ottomans had just taken over the area and organized it administratively, and Islam had not as yet taken hold. Thus the names of the inhabitants reflect their religious affiliation prior to the conversion to Islam. The tendency being that the Catholics maintained their Albanians names while others had either Slavic names or a mix of Slavic-Albanian names.

Albanian researcher used this criteria in identifying the ethnicity of the inhabitants, and based on this, he stated …”the plain between Gjakova and Junik…in the 15^th century was without a slightest doubt a territory inhabited entirely by Albanians”. He also adds that on the higher grounds, towards Tropoja, there were villages where the inhabitants exhibited Slavic names and Albanian names are not in preponderance. But at the same time, S. Pulaha observed, there were cases of Albanian families also used Slavic names. Here is how this phenomenon appears: Radosavi, son of Gjon; Vladi, son of Gjon; Bozhidari, son of Gjon; Gjorgj Mazaraku or Vulkashin Zhevali and Gjon, his son; Leka son of Mirosavi; Dejan, son of Gjon; Novak, son of Gjon; Ukca Stepani, son Leka Stepani and grandson of Stepan Leka; Milen son of Daba and his son, Lleshi the son of Milen; Gjon Bogoi and Ivan, his son; Lleshi son of Gjorgji, Tanushi son of Radsave; Bogdan, son of Novak, Dimitri, his brother, and Duka, his brother.

Pulaha indicates that there are many other such cases. There are also Albanian names with Slavonic adaptations, such as Lekac from Leka, Nikac from Nika, Dedac from Deda… More telling in this regard is information about the Vilayet of Kecova, located to the south of Altun-Alia which relates to the period of Bayazid the Second. The ottoman register divides Kercova into Albanian (arvnanvud) and Serb (serf) quarters. Pulaha indicates that the inhabitants of the Albanian section are indicated to bear not Albanian but Slavonic names.

Of the 547 Christian heads of family about 217 had Albanian or Albanian-Slav names and 330 heads of family had Slav Orthodox or Greek Byzantine religious sphere. By all indications, the former group was made up of individuals of Albanian ethnicity. At least part of the latter group must also be of Albanian ethnicity.

The phenomenon of Albanians bearing Serbian names prior to the Ottoman occupation is attested by Mihail Lukarevic, a Dubrovnik merchant who had affiliations in Novoberda during the thirties of the 15^th Century. His debtor’s books give a considerable number of people with Albanian names which point to the existence of an Albanian majority in this area. Along with people with purely Albanian names and surnames, there are also mixed Albanian-Slav names or Albanian names with characteristic Serbian suffixes.

In the cadastre books of 1455 in Vucitern and Prishtina areas following type names are found:

Todor, son of Arbanas, Bogdan son of Todor; Radislav, son of Todor; Branislav, son of Arbanas (Kucica village); Bozhidar Balsha (Bresnica village); Radovan, son Gjon (Cikatovo village); Radislav, son of Gjon and Bogdan, his son (Sivojevo villages); Branko, son of Gjon and Radica, his brother; Gjoka, son of Miloslav (Gornja Trepz village), etc. A. Handic concluded that adaption of Slavic names was evident in second generation Albanians (A. Hadgic, Nekoliko vjesti o Arbanasimana Kosovo i Metohiji sredinom XV veka, Simoziumi per Skendebeun, 1969, p. 110).

It is interesting to note that in the 1566-1574 register of Vucitern Sandjak, at location designated as Albanian quarters in Janjeva, nearly half of the inhabitants (84 heads of family and 8 bachelors) carried Slav Orthodox names. Thus, the section identifies as inhabited by Albanians, inhabitants bore Slavic names or mixed Albanian-Slav names. This phenomenon is observed in many villages of Kosovo and as far north as Kurshumlia and Nish.

The data would support the view that at this time, Albanians also bore Slavic names, and it would be wrong, as some have done, to consider these inhabitants as being of Serb ethnicity. The Serbian anthroponomy certainly was the effect of two hundred years of Serbian political and religious domination of Albanians. Under this reality, many Albanians adapted Serbian names, as they were to adapt Moslem names under Ottoman occupation. But the mass conversion to Islam of population in Kosovo, would indicate that their ethnic dilution was not deep. As the Serbian control ended, Albanians renounced their Serbian names.

As for the claim that Albanians flooded Kosovo after the Ottoman occupation, it also seems to be superficial. The Turkish defters had the practice of noting the new comers to the villages. The mentioned researchers found no evidence in the XV century data to connect the new comers with Albanians. (M. Ternava, Popullsian e Kosoves gjate shekujve XIV-XVI, Prishtine, 1995, p. 46)

Serb nationalists have used the existence of churches and monasteries to prove their claims that Kosovo was theirs and that it belongs to them. This is in itself a ridiculous claim. The fact is as I indicated above, most of the churches and monasteries were in existence prior to the Serbian takeover. The mass presence of the Albanians in the area, must have been part of the contribution to the Orthodox religious life associated with these churches and monasteries. The question, then arises, why contrary to all historical data, would Serbs claim the exclusive right to these churches?

M. Cerabregu in his Distortionism in Historiography, 19^th century falsifications, New York, 1995 has provided a brief history of Kosovo’s Churches which takes a broader view of history and concludes that the Serbia claim that Kosovo’s churches are Serbian has no basis. Being that the Albanians were in the area before VI century, and have continued to use the churches through the centuries they also have a right to consider most of the churches and monasteries as their own. Below is a summary of Cerabregu’s work. The names of churches are reflective of how the Albanians of the area identified these centers of worship.

The Church of Shen Meria (St. Mary)

The church was built by Byzantine ecclesiastic builders in downtown Prizren. Its Albanian-Byzantine basilica is the most original among churches. Conspicuous in the central section a double headed eagle dominates the altar. In 1326 reference about the Prizrendi archbishopric, indicates that history of Shen Meria starts at a distant past. It was chatered by various Byantine Emperors. Chart of Nemanja (according to Albanian etymology: nem+anja, literally meaning big+side)) indicates that the church was previously an old Byzantine archbishopry. Recent restoration (from a mosque to a church) revealed its original decorations. The double-headed eagle, in its color and design, painted as a fresco is an excellent copy of Comnens adapted symbol and testimony of emperor’s influence of authority.

In Prizren is also located The Shen-Pjetri (St. Peter) Monastery which dates from Byzantine era. Original fresco paintings and inscriptions were in Greek. Other churches in this area are: The walls and dome of Church of the Holy Saviour, in the Steske area stand the ruins of a Byzantine era church, in Korishe is located Byzantine era monastery, inside the city of Prizren is situated St. Archangels Church.

The Shën Kolla (St. Nicholas)

Further north, in the foothill of the lofty Albanian Alps, close to the river Bistrica, at the entrance of Rugova gorge is is situated Shën-Kolli (St. Nicholas) Church. The history of this monastery is closely linked to the life and deeds of a prominent Albanian Saint called Shën Kolla or Shën Kolli (St. Nicholas) during he Byzantine era. This church designation is preserved only among the Albanians. In the Slav literature the church is called Patriarchate of Peje-Pec, reflecting the preeminent role Emperor Dushan (according to Albanian etymology: dush being a prominent name and ab being a characteristic suffix), family had bestowed it.

St. Nicholas chapel is situated in the southern part of the complex of three churches. The first church along the chapel is dedicated to our Lady of Odgria, the second church is dedicated to St. Dhimitri (us), and the third church is dedicated to the Holly Apostels. There is a narthex that connects the entrances of the three churches. In close proximity, archeologists have unearthed a site on which a church had existed, most likely dating from early Christianity.

As Dushan stretched his dominion from Sava nad Danube Rivers, to the Adriatic and the Gulf of Corinth and crowned the Emperor of Albanians, Greeks and Slavs, in 1345 he converted Church of Shin Kolli to being the seat of patriarchate. But with the Ottoman takeover, archbishopric of Ohrid took jurisdiction over the church and Patriarchate ceased to exist. Serbs were helped by their status as Ottoman vassals and allies. In 1557, as a reward for Serbian assistance against Hungary, The Sultan, accepted recommendation of Mehmet Pasha Sokolovic, of Boshnjak descend, and appointed latter’s brother Makarie Sokolovic as patriarch, thus leading to the restoration of the seat of the Patriarchate. The seat was abolished again in 1690, after an Albanian insurrection lead by an Albanian Catholic friar, and forced Patriarch Arsenie Cernojevic to move north. Only after the area was occupied by the Serbs in 1912, the Church was restored as a Serbian Patriarchate which lasted until after the Second World War, when the seat was again moved to the north.

After adaption as a Slavic church, the Church experienced numerous restoration, although, the interior fresco painting of the existing church is representative of several periods. The original part of the church is preserved in architecture, while decorations and scripts have suffered changes.

Gashi Church (Visoki Decani)

This church is erected in the western part of Deçan, the center of the Albanian Gashi clan settlement. It is situated in the foothills of the Albanian Alps, on the right bank of river Bistrice, facing the Deçan gorge. Due to its situation within the Gashi clan’s settlements, the church has been traditionally been identified as Kisha e Gashit (Gashi Church). It is an immense building encircled by high walls. It was built during Dushan’s reign. The architect of the church was Franciscan friar Vito from Kotor. Architecturally, the construction represents a composition of Byzantine style (the dome), of Gothic (Catholic Church height), and Romanesque (shape of doors and windows) elements. The fresco painting, as well as other decorations were done by skilled Byzantine masters. A large metal chandelier suspended in the northern sub-dome, was presented to the church by Skenderbeg in the 15^th century.

The Church of Ulipiana (Graçanica)

This church was built in the site of the ancient Ulpiana, as it was called prior to Slavic invasion of the Balkans and Justiniana Secunda since the time of Justinian the Great. The Church stands on the foundation of a Christian sanctuary which was erected above the tomb of two early Christian martyrs, during the time of Diocletian.

The church is considered a fine model of Byzantine architecture. Much of the building material was taken ready-made from the ruins of Classical Ulpiana. Walls contain stones with latin scripts, brick and tombstones from Roman times. The original fresco paintings have undergone renewal and changes in the course of centuries. The monastery played an important role as the residence of the archbishop from the time of its foundation in both Roman and Byzantine times.

Other Churches:

The Church of Monte Argentaria or Nova Brda

The Church is situated on a hilltop near the fortress of Nova Barda (Argjentaria), the location of a known as rich lead, silver and gold mine. Today the church is in ruins, probably since the time of barbarian invasions.

The Church of Zvecani

The church is situated on the top of a conical hill where an Illyrian castle had existed. It was a Byzantine stronghold against barbarian invasions and during the time of Justinian the great was restored and enlarged. The high location of the church provides an unhindered view of Kosova Plain. In the central part of this high fortress stand the remains of a church built during the Middle Ages.

The Church of Banjska

On the north of Mitrovica, on the left side of the Iber Valley stands a settlement and a church erected near a spa called Banjska (etymology: -ba + -anj + -ska, meaning well + side + rock). The monastery has been there before the barbarian invasions.

Addendum:

Nationalist Serb historians have held mythical views about the so-called 1690 “great Serbian exodus” of “37,000 families” from Kosovo. Their view is that after this mass exodus, the Albanians settled Kosovo. This view has no historical backing whatsoever. On the subject of this exodus, Noel Malcom, after a thourough research would rely on signed statements by the Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III Carnojevic which utterly contradict the Serbian traditional claim that 37,000 families departed Kosovo.    In fact a smaller number of people did join in the withdrawal of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Catholic Encyclopedioa, 1913 would write:

“When, in 1690, the Emperor Leopold I issued a proclamation declaring that he would protect the religion and the political rights of all Slavonic peoples on the Balkan peninsula, and called upon them to rise against the Turks, about 36,000 (sic!)  Servian and Albanian families, led by their patriarch, emigrated from Servia. After Leopold had given them the desired guarantees they crossed the Save and settled in Slavonia, in Syrmia, and in some of the Hungarian cities, where their descendants now form a considerable portion of the population” (Charles George Herbermannm, Encyclopedia Press, 1913, p. 733).

As to the ethnic composition of Kosovo prior to 1690, please see the article “Serbia entangled in Myths” @http://albter.com/

Paja Jovanović: Serbian Migrations (1896) depicting the Great Serb Migrations, on display in the National Museum of Serbia

Excluding the church hierarchy headed by Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević and the idealized guards, one can see typical Albanian mountaineer dress worn by many others in the painting. I don’t know the source of Paja Jovanović’s inspiration for the specifics of this painting, but one can assume that he was attempting to convey his information about the event. What is important, as we had indicated above, this is also in support of the view that the Albanian Orthodox in Kosovo constituted a vital element in the Medieval religious life of Kosovo.

Originally taken from: http://albter.com/?tag=albanians-and-orthodox-churches-in-kosova

Albania,

Strips of plain, sheltered, sultry, fertile as gardens exposed to the sun, bestrew here and there the margin of the waters along these coves. They present to the sea a town, a citadel, a port, sails painted with ochre like those of the ancient Greek mariners, orchards surrounding the crenelated walls, towers in ruins upon the shoals in front; then those plains disappear by gradual narrowing and elevation into gorges excavated by the torrents that descend from the snows or from the lakes of the mountains.

The robust knot which seems to colligate all the divergent ramifications of this Alpine chain into a common trunk is Epirus or lower Albania and Macedon, this kingdom of Philip and of Alexander, which seems to lean over Greece as if to master it, and over Turkey of Europe to use by turns or to menace its possessors.

Bosnia, Dalmatia, Croatia, the very heights of Bulgaria and of Servia, are but superposed stages of upper Albania. Snows, pasture-lands, forests, lakes, torrents and inaccessible precipices, basins enchased in the roots of mountains, plains enriched by alluvial deposits, villages suspended on the sides of cliffs, interior and maritime towns, citadels, harbors, isles, are distributed to them equally. They form but a single people under a diversity of names. Their origin is misty as their mountains. Their tongue, according to its etymology, varies insensibly in its dialects from the popular Greek of Attica to the Turkish of Thrace, and from the corrupt Italian of the isles to the savage German of Croatia. Their religion, also changed by vicinity, by invasion, and by the colonization of their lowlands, floats from Mahometanism to Christianity, and from the Greek schism to Roman Catholicism, according to the races with whom they carry on by turns trade and war. They change with an astonishing facility their creeds, or they adulterate them with a barbarous promiscuousness which associates the rites of one with the superstitions of the other. This promiscuity of creeds renders them fit to serve indifferently the Christians against the Mussulmans and the Mussulmans against the Christians, at the whim of their adventurous spirit and of their romantio intrepidity. The only thing unchangeable among the Albanians is, the passion for independence and for glory. This passion for glory is the dominant trait of their character and the source of their heroism ; theirs has been a land of heroes in all times. Their heroism is sometimes mistaken in its object and takes pillage for ambition. It is but natural that Homer should have found there his Achilles, Greece her Alexander, the Turks Scander-Beg, a man of the same race, of the same blood, and of the same genius.
XII.
It is not known from what human stock the Albanians are descended. They are found under the name of Illyrians in their native mountain strongholds before the Greeks, the Hungarians, the Germans, the Venetians, the Turks. Some historians think they recognize in their traditions and in their tongue an Italic colony of shepherds from Alba, emigrated with their flocks from Latium, and transported, it is not conceived how, into this lllyria from which they were separated by the Adriatic. Others derive their name from the whiteness with which the snows crown, a great part of the year, the summits of their mountains. It is certain that a city of Alba had been built by them before the Greek times, on the confines of the mountain which separates them from Servia. It is more probable they take their name from Alb, permuted from Alp, which in almost all primitive idioms signifies high pasturages, and from the site has been extended to the inhabitants.
Their beauty, masculine in the men, majestic and virile in even the women, is celebrated in the East. These are the Circassian men and women of the Adriatic.
The Caucasus in Asia, Albania in Europe, seemed to correspond geographically and morally at the bottom of the two gulfs of the Mediterranean, which confound their waters, through the current of the Bosphorus, at Constantinople. The Albanians are the Circassians of Europe, the Circassians are the Albanians of Asia. These two groups of mountains seem to have generated the same men, the same women, and the same manners. It is from these two fountains, as from the snows of their hills, that descends for five centuries back, by constant mixture of the three races, the beauty and the intrepidity that repair the race and vigor of the Ottomans. They love arms, battles, adventures, journeys by land and sea, perilous piracies, fields of- battle without care for causes, military engagements in the camps of the Sultans of Egypt, of Syria, of Constantinople. The too regular discipline of European armies is irksome to them; they prefer the eclat of individual exploits, the license of the Ottoman camps, the combat hand to hand upon impetuous horses of Arabia or of Transylvania, the civilization which allows slaves to mount, at the caprice of a master, from servitude to the rank of vizier or of pasha, the religion which gives harems and slaves to heroes.
Their spirit is poetic like their manners. Their popular songs, especially those of their heroic epoch under their countryman Scander-Beg, recall the Homeric rhapsodies rather than the spiritless ballads of modern Greece. They mingle, like Achilles, poetry, music and dance, with war. In the leisure of their mode of life, by turns somnolent and feverish, they are seen carelessly lying in the sun, upon the beach or on the terraces of their houses, chanting to the accompaniment of the sounds of a rustic lyre, their own exploits, or dancing, like women, to the airs by turns warlike or effeminate of their instruments.
The government of the Albanians was feudal like all tho governments of the East, formed by nature on the type of the patriarchal family; a government favorable at once to liberty and to servitude, wherein the father is chief, the family is tribe, the servants are slaves ; wherein power, designated as it were divinely by birth and by primogeniture, is sacred and incontestable as paternity, and where the movable and transient confederation of the tribes among themselves constitutes the State; sometimes coalesced together for a national war against other races, sometimes severed into independent groups for the greater liberty of the whole. Each city, each province, each village recognizes a prince, a lord, a beg, who governs despotically according to tradition and manners. This subjection of the cities, the provinces, the villages, to feudal masters or princes, diminishes nothing of the sentiment of general liberty and the passion of patriotism which is an instinct of the Albanians.
XIII.
It has been seen that, under the first sultans of Adrianople, partly by incursions into Epirus, partly by voluntary infeoffment as in the case of Janina, partly by armed conquest such as that of Troia after the possession of Thessalonica, Albania was all over become Ottoman. Islamism and Christianity were there commingled without a contest by the mutual tolerance of the two religions, among a people where the same family was usually divided between the two worships. The conformity of warlike and pastoral manners had easily united the two races. Consciences were free; the Albanians suffered only in their national pride from the dominion and the tribute imposed by the Turkish governors.
Such was the state of lower Albania or Epirus, when Amurath II., after the siege of Corinth and by the submission of the Morea, enveloped, so to say, through the conquered coast of the Adriatic, this country which he approached also on the north by Adrianople and the valley of the Heber or the Maritza. The conquering policy of the three last Sultans tended evidently to occupy those high places, natural citadels of Germany, which extend from the summit of Pindus along to the Gulf of the Adriatic at Venice, thence to descend by the Styrian Alps into Germany, and thus embrace, by the Black Sea on one side and by the Mediterranean on tne other, the entire of that Germany which they had but a glimpse of, from the banks of the Danube. Vast and grassy plains have always been the irresistible ambition of shepherd peoples. Eaces like rivers have their currents from the mountains and settle only in the broad basins of the earth.

History of Turkey, Volume 2, Alphonse de Lamartine

The following article shed some light on the Greek atrocities towards innocent Muslim population, who used to live in what is now Greece. The article seem to be backed up by reliable evidences written by Phil-Hellenes themselves. They were either shocked and irked with the cruelty of Greeks, to whom they have glorified so much. The neo-Greeks were deceitfully portrayed as having the same human virtues as their supposed ancestors. Hence it was constructed the myth of ethnic continuity that lurks on the assumption that Greek people went undiluted through centuries But the truth was quite the contrary. With the drift of time,  Greece of city-states was poured with new waves of ‘barbarians’, who had obliterate the Greek nation once forever. European supporters of Greek cause noticed that their beloved Greeks have swept away…’Most of the old Greek race has been swept away, and the country is now inhabited by persons of Slavonic descent. Indeed, there is a strong ground for the statement that there was more of the old heroic blood of Hellas in the Turkish army of Edhem Pasha than in the soldiers of King George, said once Mr. W. H. Ireland. Yet it was only the merit of phil-hellenes who managed to revive the Greeks of their imaginary vision and  gave some Hellenic credentials to the people who had slight ties with the ancient past.

It’s very irritating that the atrocities committed by the Greeks against Albanians and Turks never fanned European and American outrage. Moreover, history books are still lamenting the allegedly sufferings of Greeks by the evil Ottomans. Such a narrow point of view tend to conceal the very fact that the Greeks owe their independence to Albanian Muslims who often deserted from Ottoman armies. The Muslim population in the besieged cities facilitated the entrance of rebels. As a result, they were massacred by the merciless and infamous Greek bands.   (Alb – note).

Part 1 – Greek Atrocities and Massacres of Turks During the Greek Rebellion, 1821-1822

How the Greek Rebellion Began

When Sultan Mahmut II, who was a patient and determined ruler, tried to strengthened the weakening Ottoman Empire with reform, he fell out with Ali Pasha of Tepedelen, the governor of Jannina. When the governor revolted against the Sultan in 1820, his action inspired the Greek revolutionaries to rise up to benefit from the rift among the Turkish rulers.9,24 The Greeks began their rebellion in the Peloponnese on 6 April 1821 (by the Gregorian calendar-25 March by the Julian calendar) with the slogan: “Not a Turk shall remain in the Morea”, which inspired indiscriminate and murderous action against all Muslims.16 Upon hearing the news of the rebellion, some Greeks in the cities began killing their Turkish neighbours and setting fire to their property.13, According to the British writer William St. Clair, “The savage passion for revenge soon degenerated into a frenzied delight in killing and horror for their own sakes”. Another British writer, David Howarth, observes that the Greeks did not need any reason for these murders, “Once they had started…they killed because a mad blood-lust had come upon them all, and everyone was killing”.15,24

Massacres of the Turks

It is estimated that more than 50,000 Muslims , including women and children, lived in the Peloponnese in March 1821. A month later, when the Greeks were celebrating Easter, there was hardly anyone left. The few who managed to escape to fortified cities were suffering from starvation. Everywhere the unburied bodies of murdered Turks were rotting. According to William St. Clair:

“The Turks of Greece left few traces. They disappeared suddenly and finally in the spring of 1821, unmourned and unnoticed by the rest of the world…Upwards of 20,000 Turkish men, women and children were murdered by their Greek neighbours in a few weeks of slaughter. They were killed deliberately, without qualm and scruple…Turkish families living in single farms or small isolated communities were summarily put to death, and their homes burnt down over their corpses. Others, when the disturbances began, abondened home to seek the security of the nearest town, but the defenceless streams of refugees were overwhelmed by bands of armed Greeks. In the smaller towns, the Turkish communities barricaded their houses and attempted to defend themselves as best as they could, but few survived. In some places, they were driven by hunger to surrender to their attackers on receiving promises of security, but these were seldom honoured. The men were killed at once, and the women and children divided out as slaves usually to be killed in their turn later. All over the Pelopennese roamed mobs of Greeks armed with clubs, scythes, and a few firearms, killing, plundering and burning. They were often led by Christian priests, who exhorted them to greater efforts in their holy work”.24

According to Steven Runciman, author of a history of the Greek Orthodox Church, “The great fathers of the Church, such as Basil, would have been horrified by the gallant[!] Pelopennesian bishops who raised the standard of revolt in 1821″.23 This was not a war of Greek independence or liberation, but a war of extermination against the Turks and other Muslims, and the main instigators of it were the Greek Orthodox Christian clerics.

In 1861, the historian George Finlay wrote:

“In the month of April 1821, a Muslim population amounting to upwards of 20,000 souls, was living, dispersed in Greece, employed in agriculture. Before two months had elapsed, the greater part was slain-men, women and children were murdered without mercy or remorse…The crime was a nation’s crime, and whatever perturbations it may produce must be in a nation’s conscience, as the deeds by which it can be expiated must be the acts of a nation.”12

According to the historian C.M. Woodhouse, the entire Turkish population of cities and towns were collected and marched out to convenient places in the countryside where they were slaughtered.30 In Greek Orthodox Romania also, the leader of the Greek rebellion, Alexander Ypsilanti, and his supporters took the towns of Galatz and Yassy. The Turks were surprised and massacred in cold blood.10,22

Turks Burnt Alive

In April 1821, the Greek residents of the islands of Hydra, Spetsa and Psara joined the rebels. They attacked ships carrying the Ottoman flag, capturing crew members and killing them or throwing them into the sea. They also captured and killed many Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca. According to British writers such as St. Clair, Howarth and William Miller, the Greek rebels captured 57 crew members of a Turkish vessel, took them to the island of Hydra amidst shrieks of triumph and there, on the coast, they roasted them alive on a fire.15,21,24

Many Greeks in Thessaly, Macedonia and Halkidiki, too, joined the rebels and began to attack the Turks without mercy. The Greek peasants who remorselessly killed their Turkish neighbours saw the rebellion as a war of religious extermination, and for the most part, the bishops and priest who led them, shared this view.24

Massacres of Monemvasia and Navarino

The Muslims of the small town of Monemvasia, besieged by the Greek rebels, decided in August 1821 to surrender as they no longer endure the prevelant hunger and disease. Nevertheless, the rebels slaughtered them all barbarously. These events were hailed in Western Europe as “a victory of liberalism and Christianity”.27 A few days later the same fate befell the Muslims of Navarino. Between 2,000 and 3,000 Muslim residents were cruelly massacred. Turkish women were stripped and searched for valuables. Naked women were plunged into the sea and were shot in the water: children were thrown in to drown and babies were taken from their mothers and beaten against rocks.12,15,21,24 Muslim girls and boys, who were kept alive, half naked and in fear, were offered for sale as prostitutes. Some of them lost their minds and roamed round the ruins.

Meanwhile, some Greeks in Navarino were proudly relating the terrible massacres that had taken place there. One of them boasted that he had killed eighteen Turks; another one was relating how he had stabbed to death nine women and children in their beds.6 These merciless killers were proudly showing to the European volunteers, who had come to help the Hellenic cause, the corpses of the Muslim women whom they had raped, carved up and then thrown over the fortifications some time earlier.

But these terrible scenes did not impress the volunteers. On the contrary, they schocked and disgusted them. A German volunteer, Franz Lieber, describes how the volunteers felt hatred and disgust towards the Greek rebels, who were calling upon them to rape women after they themselves had already sexually assaulted them.18

Tripolitsa Massacre

In the town of Tripolitsa, where the Turkish governor resided, and which consisted of a population of 35,000 Turks, Albanians, Jews and others, the rebels committed a massacre on 5 October 1821. It lasted for three days and claimed the lives of more than 10,000 people. Most of the corpses were decapitated and carved up.7,15,19,21 According to the historian William Phillips:

“In Tripolitsa for three days the miserable [Turkish] inhabitants were given over to the lust and cruelty of a mob of savages. Neither sex nor age was spared. Women and children were tortured before being put to death. So great was the slaughter that [guerilla leader] Kolokotronis himself says that, when he entered the town, from the gate of the citadel, his horse’s hoofs never touched the ground. His path of triumph was carpeted with corpses. At the end of two days, the wretched remnant of Mussulmans were deliberately collected to the number of some 2,000 souls, of every age and sex, but principally women and children, were led out to a ravine in the neighbouring mountains, and there butchered like cattle.”20,22

According to St. Clair, Howarth and British Colonial and Foreign Office documents, these unfortunate people were slowly burnt to death after their arms and legs were chopped off. Pregnant women were subjected to all kinds of indignities. About 2,000 captives, consisting of mostly women, were stripped naked; driven to a plain outside the town and then killed. After this atrocity, many starving Muslim children ran from place to place, only to be shot dead by the Greek rebels, who were elated and with their mouths foaming.5,24 The chief Greek brigand, Theodoros Kolokotronis, who occupies pride of place in the Greek pantheon of heroes, took part in these massacres and pillages with relish.4

A Prussian officer described the incidents that took place after the capture of Tripolitsa by the rebels, as follows:

“A young Turkish girl, as beautiful as Helen, the queen of Troy, was shot and killed by the male cousin of Kolokotronis; a Turkish boy, with a noose around his neck, was paraded in the streets; was thrown into a ditch; was stoned, stabbed and then, while he was still alive, was tied to a wooden plank and burnt on fire; three Turkish children were slowly roasted on fire in front of the very eyes of their parents. While all these nasty incidents were taking place, the leader of the rebellion Ypsilantis remained as a spectator and tried to justify the actions of the rebels as, ‘we are at war; anything can happen’.” 24

European officers, including Colonel Thomas Gordon, who happened to be at Tripolitsa during the massacre, witnessed the hair-raising incidents there, and some of them later recalled these events in all their ugliness. Colonel Gordon became so disgusted with the Greek barbarities that he resigned from the service of the Greeks. A young German philhellene doctor, Wilhelm Boldemann, who could not bear to witness these scenes, committed suicide by taking poison. Some of the other European philhellenes who were extremely disillusioned, followed suit.2,17

Acrocorinth Massacre

Towards the end of January 1822, more than 1,500 Turks and other Muslims at Acrocorinth agreed to surrender to the rebels, provided that they could keep enough money to hire neutral vessels for their journey to Asia Minor. But, while they were waiting for ships to arrive, rebels under the leadership of Kolokotronis and others killed them.7 These bloody incidents were later related by a German officer as follows:17

“[The Greek rebels] spared the lives of beautiful Muslim women, but sold them as slaves. The proceeds from these sales went to augment the pockets of rebel leaders such as Mavrokordatos. Mavrakordatos sold the women to the captain of a British ship.”

An Italian volunteer named Brengeri, on a road to Corinth, found the dead body of a Turk, and further on, he found his wife and baby, still alive but very hungry. He and his friends gave her a few coins, in the hope that she would be able to feed herself and the baby a little longer. Before they had gone a few metres, they heard two shots. Some Greeks had killed her and the baby, and taken the coins.15 Brengeri later saw some Greeks killing a Turkish family, a man, his wife and two children. Before they killed the mother they tore off her veil to see what she looked like, and at that moment Brengeri rushed up and begged them to spare her. They asked for 50 piastres, which he gave them, and so he saved her.15 At Acrocorinth, following the Turkish capitulation, a Turkish couple, too starved and exhausted to carry their child any further, tried to hand it to a Greek. He immediastely drew a long knife and cut off his head, explaining, as a German officer was trying to prevent him, that it was best to prevent the Turks from growing up.24

Up to the summer of 1822, the Greek rebellion had cost the lives of more than 50,000 Turks, Greeks, Albanians, Jews and others. Many more were forced to live in slavery and deprevation. Compared to this, very few people died during direct and mutual confrontations. This so-called Greek war of independence hitherto was hardly a war at all in the conventional sense, but mostly a series of opportunist massacres.24

Massacres of Athens and Acropolis

Muslims besieged in the Acropolis area of Athens for a long time, suffering from thirst, surrendered on 21 June 1822, accepting the promise of bishops, priests and rebel leaders, that they would not be killed. However, with the exception of a few saved with great difficulty by foreign consuls, they were all killed. At the same time 400 defenceless Muslims in Athens were carved to pieces in the streets.7,13,21

When the Greek rebels were attacking Modon, they caught a Turk outside the city walls. They decapitated him, put his head on on a pike and took it to Navarino where they kicked it about as if it was a football.25 According to the statements of British sailors, the rebels used to torture the Turks they captured on the high seas. Anemat, a Dutchman, relates how the rebels revived the Turkish sailors whom they had captured unconscious and then tortured them to death and tore them to pieces. The Dutch described the Greeks as “cowards and barbarians”.14

Dervenaki Massacre

When the Turkish army appeared before Corinth in the summer of 1822, the so-called “Greek government”, which was established at Argos, tried to retreat to the coast and from there to escape on ships. Thousands of Greeks in the Argos plain were following suit, whilst the Greek brigands of Mainotis were trying to rob their own people before escaping. Soon the Turkish army ran out of provisions and munitions and tried to withdraw to Corinth. But as the mountain passes were under the control of Kolokotronis’ marauders, thousands of Turks were massacred at the Dervenaki pass. Had the rebels not wasted time in robbing the dead bodies, the whole Ottoman army would have been routed there and then. Many years later, travellers touring the area used to come across heaps of bones of massacred Turks.7,24

Nauplia Massacre

In December 1822, it was the turn of Nauplia town. In the streets of that town, which the rebels besieged for a long time, people frequently came across the dead bodies of children who had died of starvation. Emaciated women tried to scavege for food in filthy drains. Accordind to a German officer, Kotsch, one of the European volunteers who happened to be at Nauplia during the incidents, a Greek Orthodox priest who was suspected of establishing relations with the Turks had his fingers scalded by Greeks with hot water and his nails burnt. He was then buried in the ground up to his neck and his face was brushed with syrup so that flies would attack him. It took him six days to die in agony. Rebels captured a Jew trying to escape from the town, stripped him and cut off his genitals, before leading him around the town and then hanging him.24

When the town of Nauplia surrendered to the rebels on 12 December, they committed a terrible massacre, after which the rebels piled up the victims’ heads in the form of a pyramid. Commodore Hamilton, arriving in port on the British warship HMS Cambrian, was instrumental in saving some of the Muslim and Jewish residents of the town from certain death.15,24 During the ransack of the town, the lion’s share went to the Greek rebels. The rebels gave the European officers two or three Turkish girls as booty. They took them to Athens where they sold them to consuls, who transferred them to Anatolia and thus saved their lives.

One hundred and fifty Albanians who were returning to their home country on a Turkish ship that ran aground just outside Missolonghi, surrendered to the rebels following promises of safety given to them by Mavrokordatos only to be killled after being robbed.

Murder of European Grecophile Volunteers

The Greek rebels went so far in their barbarities as to murder some of their foreign supporters, including many of whom that had come from Europe to help them. After the rebels captured the town of Nauplia, some Greeks led their foreign supporters into a sauna bath in the town and disposed of them. The Greek owner of the sauna persuaded the foreigners to take off their clothes so that when he murdered them their clothes and boots would not be bloodstained. He would then be able to sell them. Of course, the naive volunteers did not suspect what would befall them.11

The orgy of genocide in the Peloponnese ended only when there were no more Turks to kill. The philhellene volunteers who went to help the Greeks and began to return to their homelands in 1822 and 1823, could not save themselves from the nightmares of those terrible days. They were expecting many good things from the Greeks, but instead they were flabbergasted. They began to hate the Greeks for deceiving them.8,24,28,29 Despite pressure from Greek societiesin Europe, they began to put pen to paper about their own experiences. The following sentiment is typical of what they wrote:

“I am writing this so that others will not make the same mistakes that I have made. Modern Greece is not like old Greece. The Greeks are a wicked and barbaric race who have no gratitude”24

Greek Disinformation

Meanwhile , there were stirrings in Crete, Cyprus, Samos, Samothrace, Thessaly, Macedonia and Epirus. The hellenophiles and propagandists portrayed to the West the Ottoman’s strong measures as “Turkish barbarity against the Christian people”26 The West, which closed its eyes and ears to the extermination of the Turks in Greece, began to raise its voice against the Ottoman reaction. The following leaflet distributed in August 1821 in Hamburg is very instructive:

“Invitation to the youth of Germany. The struggle for religion, life and independence is calling us to arms; humanity and duty are calling us to the aid of the noble Greeks, who are our brothers. We must sacrifice our blood and our life for the sacred cause. The end of Muslim rule in Europe is approaching. The most beautiful land of Europe must be saved from the monsters! Let us join the struggle with all our strength…God is with us, because this is a sacred cause-it is a cause of humanity-it is a struggle for religion, life and independence”.1

The returning Western volunteers who witnessed the bloody events in the Peloponnese became the antodote for this hellenophile and Greek propaganda. Several French officers who returned from Greece to Marseilles in April 1822 described the Greeks as, “Vile, cowardly and ungrateful”.24 A Prussian officer who had witnessed the Corinth massacres appealed to new volunteers on the point of departue:

“There [in Greece] you will find only misery, death and ingratitude. Don’t believe what they tell you in Germany or Switzerland; believe what an old soldier is saying”

Another Prussian officer wrote the following:

“The Ancient Greeks no longer exist. The place of Solon, Socrates and Demosthenes has been taken by blind ignorance. The logical laws of Athens have been replaced by barbarism…The Greeks do not fulfil the attractive promises they make to the foreigners through the Press”. 3

Establishment of a Greek State

During the Greek rebellion the British, French and Russian governments were clandestinely helping the rebels. These governments did not raise any objection to the dispatch of money, weapons and fighters to the rebels, and did their utmost to help them through their own secret agents. By contrast, the Reverend John Hartle, who was in Greece in 1826, wrote in his book Researches in Greece and the Levant (London, 1831) that the Turks suffered terrible things at Greek hands because they refused to become Christians.

When, in 1825, fortunes changed, and the army of Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mehmet Ali Pasha, the governor of Egypt, began to reconquer the Peloponnese, all the Greek rebels who surrendered were spared. In April 1826, when the Turks recaptured Tripolitsa, Argos, Kalamata and Missolonghi, all Europe rose in outcry against them.

On 4 April 1826, England and Russia signed a protocol in St. Petersburg, agreeing to mediate between Turks and the Greeks. France later joined this initiative. Following the intervention of Grecophile states of England, France and Russia, in accordance with the London Agreement of 6 July 1827, and their navies’ complete rout of the Ottoman navy at Navarino on 20 October of the same year, a protocol was signed in London in February 1830. The protocol specified the frontiers of an independent Greece, guaranteed by Britain, France and Russia, the protecting powers. A year later the Greek state was established. In 1832, this state offered the crown to the son of the king of Bavaria, Prince Otto. The resulting Greek kingdom, taking its inspiration from the Megali Idea (Great Idea), the driving force of Greek imperialism, began to follow a policy of aggrandisement, first against the Ottoman Empire and later against the Republic of Turkey.

(Britain and France who were clandestinely helping the Greek rebels massacring tens of thousands of Turks in 1821-1822 and helped establish the Greek state, also helped Greece, together with Italy and United States of America, to occupy Izmir and Western Anatolia committing similar massacres, atrocities agaimnst the Turks, and to a lesser degree to Jews and other non-Greek communities during May-September 1919 and until September 1922. See article titled “Greek Occupation of Izmir and Adjoining Territories”. – Ed.)

References:

1 – Barth Wilhelm and Kehrig-Korn Max, Die Philhellenezeit, Munich 1960

2 – Bees N, Documents Relating to the Siege and Capture of Tripolitsa, 1821, Armonia, 1901

3 – Bolmann L de, Remarques Sur L’etat Moral, Politique Et Militaire De La Grece, Marseilles, 1823

4 – Brengeri, Adventures of a Foreigner in Greece, London Magazine, II. 1827

5 – British Colonial Office documents. CO 136/1085

6 – Byern E.V., Bilder Aus Griechland Und Der Levant, Berlin 1833

7 – Dakin Douglas, The Greek Struggle for Independence, 1821-1833, London 1973

8 – Dakin Douglas, The Origin of the Greek Revolution, History 1952

9 – Dakin Douglas, Unification of Greece, 1770-1923, London 1972

10 – Finlay George, A History of The Greece, Oxford 1877

11 – Finlay George, An Adventure during the Greek Revolution, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1842

12 – Finlay George, History of The Greek Revolution, Edinburgh 1861

13 – Frazee A. Charles, The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece, 1821-51, Cambridge 1869

14 – Hastings Diary, 6 July 1822, Hastings Papers, British School at Athens

15 – Howarth David, The Greek Adventure-Lord Byron and Other Eccentrics in the War of Independence,

London 1976

16 – Kinross Lord, The Ottoman Centuries-The Rise and Fall of The Ottoman Empire, London 1977

17 – Le Febre W. de, Relations De Divers Faits De La Guerre De Grece, Marseilles 1822

18 – Lieber Franz, Tagebuch Meines Aufenthaltes in Griechenland, Leipzig 1823

19 – Mansel Philip, Constantinople, City of The World’s Desire, 1453-1924, London 1995

20 – McCarthy Justin, Death and Exile, The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, Princetown,

New Jersey, 1996

21 – Miller William, The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors, 1810-1927, 4 vols, London 1966

22 – Phillips W. Allison, The War of Greek Independence, 1821 to 1833, New York 1897

23 – Runciman Steven, The Greek Church in Captivity, Cambridge 1968

24 – St. Clair William, That Greece Might Still be Free-the Philhellenes in the War of Independence, London

1972

25 – Stabell Johann H., Schicksale eines danischen Philhellenen, Leipzig 1824

26 – The Examiner, 1821, pp 372, 456, 631 and 689

27 – The Examiner, 1831, 2/632, quoted in St. Clair

28 – Thomas Gordon, History of The Greek Revolution, 2 vols, Edinburgh and London 1832

29 – Walsh Robert, Residence in Constantinople during the Greek and Turkish Revolution, 2 vols. London

1952

30 – Woodhouse C.B., The Greek War of Independence: Its Historical Setting, London 1952

This article is taken from a study titled “The Turco-Greek Imbroglio Pan-Hellenism and The Destruction of Anatolia” by Prof. Dr. Salahi R. Sonyel and published by the Centre for Strategic Research in Ankara, July 1999 (SAM Papers, No. 5/99).

Part 2 – Greek Atrocities and Massacres of Turks During Greek Occupation of Izmir and Adjoining Territories, 1919

Report of the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry (May-September 1919)

Preface

The Greek Army started occupying Western Anatolia on 15 May 1919, in the aftermath of the World War I and under the sanction of the Council of the Paris Peace Conference. Although the initial instructions of the Council restricted the occupation zone to the borders of Izmir province, the Greek Army started to advance into Anatolia from the first day of their landing in Izmir.

During the incursion of the Greek occupation forces, Greek soldiers and local Greeks committed atrocities against, not only Turkish population, but also all of the non-Greek communities that had been living peacefully in the region for centuries. These atrocities included massacre, pillage, rape and the destruction of towns and villages.

The severity of the incidents and the reactions of the Turkish and Western witnesses forced the Paris Peace Conference to establish a commission to investigate the claims against the Greek forces. The Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry into the Greek Occupation of Smyrna (Izmir) and the Adjoining Territories conducted an investigation in the region between 12 August and 15 October 1919. The Commission visited the towns and villages where atrocities were committed, listened to witnesses from all communities, collected evidence and prepared a report.

All the events mentioned in this study are based on the official reports of European and American representatives in the region and the Turkish authorities. This study makes extensive use of official sources, such as documents on British foreign policy and papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States. Furthermore, this study uses books and articles in English and Turkish that are the products of intensive archival research and of academic value.

World War I Secret Treaties for the Partition of Turkiye

During the course of the World War I, the Allies concluded a number of secret treaties intended to shape the post-war world and, more significantly, to share out their possible territorial gains. Five of these treaties were related to the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Three of them concerned the rules and regulations governing the Turkish Straits and the division of various territories. Two of them, the Treaty of London and the Treaty of St. Jean de Maurienne, were exclusively dedicated to the partition of the western districts of Asia Minor.

Britain and France paid a high tribute to Italy for her services to the Entente with the Treaty of London on 26 April 1915. According to the secret clauses of the Treaty, Italy would gain full possession of the Dodecanese, which she had held since the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-1912. Italy would also gain rights in Antalya province on the Asia Minor littoral. Italy’s territory in Asia Minor, centred on Antalya and its hinterland, was to be proportional to that of the other Allied Powers. This zone was to be established in conformity with the vital interests of France and Britain. However, if France, Britain and Russia should occupy certain districts of Asiatic Turkiye during the course of the war, then the territory adjoining Antalya was to be left to Italy, which reserved the right of occupation.6

Italy had planned to enlarge her proposed share in Asia Minor, but Britain had already prevented further Italian demands by making previous commitments to Greece.

Greece, after gaining her independence in 1829, expanded her territory three times against the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century and the first thirteen years of the twentieth century. She was enthusiastic about taking part in the final apportionment of ‘the sick man of Europe’. As the traditional Megali Idea (Great Idea), a policy committed to creating a larger Greece by including practically all of the regions in which ‘the influence of Hellenism has been paramount throughout the ages’, became increasingly popular, the Greek Prime Minister Venizelos, sought to fulfil the demands of his country by claiming the lands of ‘ancient Greek heritage’ on the opposite side of the Aegean.

On one hand, Venizelos was following closely the Italian’s expansionist aspiration for Asia Minor, and on the other hand, he was trying to contact the Allies so Greece could participate in the partition plans. Venizelos had an interview with Sir Francis Elliot, the British minister plenipotentiary in Athens, on 9 January 1915, on the subject of sending Greek troops to the assistance of Serbia. In this interview, after pointing out the difficulty of persuading the public, Venizelos mentioned his country’s prospects of brilliant territorial gains.10

A fortnight later, on 23 January 1915, the British Government offered Greece large concessions on the coast of Asia Minor as an inducement to enter into war on the side of the Allies. Venizelos welcomed this lucrative business with eagerness.7

During the war, Lord Balfour, Foreign Secretary of Britain had long conversations with Imperiali, the Italian Diplomatic representative to London, hoping to settle the pressing Italian claims. Italy demanded the addition of Mersin and Adana to her planned territory in Asia Minor, but France refused this concession. After this disappointment, Italy began to sound out the Allies on getting Izmir added to its assignment of Anatolian territory. Britain strongly rejected such a demand because Izmir could still be offered to Greece as an inducement for her entrance into the War.

The secret Treaty of St. Jean de Maurienne signed on 19 April 1917 rewarded the Italian demands. By the terms of this Treaty, Italy recognised the claims of Britain and France to Mesopotamia, and obtained some further concessions for herself in Asia Minor, in the Antalya and Izmir regions. Since Britain and France did not abandon the idea of drawing Greece into the War, Italy’s satisfaction would be only temporary.6

Greece declared war on the Central Powers on 30 June 1917. Although Greek participation in the War did not provide a momentous contribution to the Allies’ victory, as soon as the War ended, Venizelos claimed the territory promised by the British.

Greek Policy after the Mudros Armistice

The Ottoman and British officials signed an armistice at Mudros on 30 October 1918, putting an end to the state of war between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies.

In November 1918, immediately after the conclusion of the Armistice, Venizelos went to Paris to present Greece’s territorial claims to the Peace Conference convened by the Allies to prepare draft peace treaties with the defeated powers. Venizelos reasserted Greece’s claims to all of Western Anatolia, from opposite Rhodes to the Sea of Marmara, in a letter and memorandum addressed to the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George.10

When the Paris Peace Conference was convened in January 1919, it appeared that all the Allied Powers agreed that the Ottoman Empire was to be divided into separate elements.6 This was a great opportunity for legitimising Greece’s demands. As a matter of fact, between 3 and 4 February 1919, Venizelos, in a lengthy exposition at the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference, presented the case for the reconstitution of Hellas and the unification of all the Greek-speaking peoples under one flag. According to Venizelos, this claim was based on Point Twelve of the Wilson Principles and on the right of self-determination. He called for the cession to Greece of Northern Epirus, the islands in the Aegean, all of Thrace and mostly radically, Western Anatolia.3,13

To Lloyd George, who considered Venizelos to be “the greatest statesman Greece had thrown up since the days of Pericles”, such demands seemed both fair and expedient. The Greeks could serve Britain’s interests by replacing the Turks as the protectors of imperial communication lines with India.7

Despite Lloyd George’s strong desire to recompense Greece urgently, the Supreme Council decided that the matter should be submitted to a Commission of Greek Claims, composed of the representatives of Britain, France, Italy and the United States. The Commission completed its work on 6 March 1919. It accepted the basic principles of the Greek case with modifications, but with the important reservations of certain members. There was a lot of difficulty concerning Western Anatolia because of the Allies’ prior commitments in the secret treaties made during the War. The American representative was opposed to the cession of Western Anatolia to the Greeks on general principles. In addition the American representative stated to the Commission that his country was free of the secret treaties’ obligations and could not take them into consideration in the settlement of the question. Both the American and Italian members were opposed to the approval of the Commission report when it was submitted to the Central Committee on Territorial Questions on 7 March 1919.3

The Landing of Greek Troops in Izmir

The subject of partition of Ottoman territory caused a deep confrontation between Italy and her allies at the Paris Peace Conference. Italy became particularly angry about the possibility of Greek occupation of Western Anatolia. The Italian delegation left the Conference on 24 April in protest and did not return to Paris until 5 May. Although the Italians engaged in an unprecedented operation and sent a warship to Izmir on 30 April to prevent Greek occupation, the absence of the Italian delegation from the Conference facilitated the hard work of Lloyd George to persuade France and the United States in Greece’s favour.11

As a result of British diplomacy, Greek forces were authorised on 6 May to land on Turkish territory. There were three reasons for allowing Greece to occupy Izmir.

The first reason was to reward Greece for her participation in the War, as previously promised. However, to obtain the approval of the Allies other than Britain, they needed to be persuaded that the majority of the population of the aforementioned region was Greek. As early as February 1919, Venizelos presented to the Paris Conference some statistics about the Greeks inhabiting Western Anatolia, mostly inflated and manipulated by the Greek Patriarchate. Relying on these statistics he claimed that the total population of Greeks in Western Asia Minor, including Aydin and Bursa were 1,080,000, while in the same territory the Turkish population was only 943,000.14 However, these statistics were far from reality. Even the actual statistics of the Greek Patriarchate were different from those, which were presented to the Conference. According to the statistics of the Greek Patriarchate which were [published in London in 1918, the total number of Greeks in Western Anatolia, including Aydin, Bursa and Biga was 934,061.9 On the other hand, according to the Turkish Official Statistics of 1910, which is the only reliable source still being cited by serious researchers, the Greek population of the region was clearly fewer than the Turkish population. The total Greek population in the provinces of Aydin, Bursa and Biga was 511,544, while the Muslim (Turkish) population of the same provinces was 3,170,705.9 H.O Whittal, a British businessman resident in Izmir, wrote to the British Chamber of Commerce of Izmir, in February 1919, observing that the Greeks had put forward "most exaggerated" estimates of their number in that province, whereas the majority of the population was Turkish, adding:

"Unfortunately, as far as concerns the Greeks of this country, they all join their idea of liberty with the idea of becoming masters where they were servants of the Turks, and proclaiming and enforcing the fact by trampling upon their former masters…Even if justice is evenly handed, they would trample on their [the Turks’] feelings, their customs, their usage in such ways as to amount to brutal treatment which would not be brought under the terms of the law…”

The British High Commissioner in Istanbul, Admiral Calthorpe, when submitting this letter to the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, added the following comments:

“I most unhesitatingly and unreservedly endorse all of Mr. Whittal’s observations…I fear that they [the Greeks] have taken advantage of this act of benevolent justice to exploit and tyrannise their Moslem neighbours. No more striking example could be imagined than the utter intolerance and overbearing nature of the Greeks…Thus there are no guarantees for the future and there is everything to fear from the experience of the past.”

The second reason was base on humanitarian concerns. Ostensibly, the Greek army would occupy the city and province of Izmir to stop Turkish atrocities against the Greek population in that city and the surroundings. Venizelos reported to the Conference, 12 April, one month before the decision for occupation, “Some serious troubles had been occurring in Izmir and Aydin.” He claimed, “Turks had committed some crimes against the Greeks in those regions” and emphasised his, “Concern for the furtherance of such atrocities.”6

Lloyd George and the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau strongly supported these accusations, despite the lack of convincing evidence in order to justify occupation. On 2 May, Lloyd George presented to the Council of Four, the executive organ of the Peace Conference, a document supporting the Greek cause and purporting to be from a Greek Committee in Athens. This document appeared to confirm the existence of atrocities committed by Turkish soldiers on the basis of official messages signed by the Turkish military officers ordering the Turks to exterminate the Greeks (These documents were proven as forgeries by the Commission of Inquiry. Point No.1 of Document 3, dated 7 October 1919, states that “These documents are undoubtedly forgeries”). On 12 May, Clemenceau once more emphasised the importance of stopping the Turks’ atrocities and Lloyd George repeated his previous allegations.

The third and main reason was to prevent the Italian operations in Western Anatolia. Britain and France were against comprehensive Italian expansion despite the fact that some parts of the region had been promised to Italy in secret treaties during the War. In Lloyd George’s words, “Any day it might be found that Italy had captured Anatolia and it would be difficult to get them out of there once they had occupied it.”11

When Lloyd George informed Clemenceau and Wilson on May 6 that the Italians had completed their preparations for a landing in Izmir, the French and American presidents demonstrated their strong opposition and gave their approval for a Greek operation.

Having obtained the authorisation of the Paris Peace Conference, the Greek troops left the Port of Eleftheron in Greece on 13 May 1919. Fulfilling the directives of Admiral Calthrope, the highest-ranking British naval officer in the region, the Greek military fleet anchored at the island of Lesbos on 14 May to review the final details of the landing. On the same day at nine o’clock Admiral Calthrope informed Ali Nadir Pasha, the commander of the Turkish forces in Izmir, that the fortified positions of Izmir would be occupied by the Allied forces according to the clauses of Article VII of the Armistice. Admiral Calthrope did not mention the Greek troops in his first note to Ali Nadir Pasha.5

During the night of 14-15 May, Greek troops disembarked at Izmir under the protection of British, French and Greek warships. On 15 May at 11 o’clock, the Greek troops began to march to the Turkish barracks. At the head of the troops, native Greeks carried a large Greek flag and surrounded and preceded the troops in a compact body, shouting “Zito Venizelos” (Long live Venizelos) and applauded frantically.5

During this march, a shot went off and killed a Greek soldier. Although the Turkish officers announced that the shot was a personal act and could have been fired by a demonstrator, the Greek troops immediately took up their positions against the Turkish barracks and opened steady fire. A light machine gun also took part in this fussilade.5

As time passed, the landing turned into a general slaughter of the Turkish population. Besides Greek troops, the civilian Greeks roamed the streets and began looting and killing.12 Greek soldiers occupying the Governor’s Hall and the Turkish barracks plundered whatever they found, even snuffboxes and pocket-books. The Greek officers did not try to prevent these abuses, but on the contrary, their attitudes and gestures excited them.5 During the pillage, money was stolen to the value of 23,143,690 piastres, which was then equivalent to 5,250,000 French francs.5

Unfortunately, the first day of the Greek occupation was not only consisted of robbery, burglary and plunder. According to Allied sources, the Greek occupation forces and civilian Greeks killed 300 to 400 Turks on 15 May 1919. More than 2,500 Turks, some even as young as 14 years of age, were subjected to arbitrary detention. The Turkish population was subjected repeatedly to rape, beating, insults and torture.2

An Italian naval officer on the warship Duilio, which was anchored in Izmir bay on 15 May, communicated his observations during the Greek landing to the Italian Chief Commander of the Navy as follows:

Greek troops which were brought by seven ships started to land in Smyrna (Izmir) in the morning of 15 May at 9.30. As directed by the British Admiral (Calthrope) one night before, no one from the Turkish population tried to oppose or resist the occupation. The occupation started as local Greeks saluted the Greek forces with joyful demonstrations. After being sanctified by the Greek Metropolitan (Chyrysostomos), troops began to march to the Turkish quarters of town, accompanied by victorious songs and applause. Then a firearm was shot. Recovering from the initial panic, the Greek soldiers started to attack Turks, beastly and wildly. A wounded Turkish colonel was transferred to the Duilio. After the first treatment he was sent to the Italian hospital in the town. During the incidents of the first day of the occupation more than 400 Turks were killed or wounded.1

The officers of the Allied Powers did not stop the Greek army’s atrocities against the Turks in Izmir. Moreover, the Allied military authorities condoned the advance of Greek troops into the interior of the country.

Enlargement of the Occupation and more Atrocities

The Greeks made it clear from the first day that they had come, not far a temporary occupation, but a permanent annexation of Western Anatolia into a greater Greece encompassing both shores of the Aegean, thus bringing nearer the Megali Idea and the restoration of the departed glories of the Greek Christian Empire of Byzantium.8 A strong foundation was necessary for the establishment of lasting rule over the occupied land. Therefore, the Greeks commenced to penetrate into the interior of Anatolia.

During the advance of the Greek Army, the Greek soldiers and the local Greeks, who were incited by the Greek officers and clergy, committed innumerable atrocities against the Turks. The atrocities took the form of mass destruction in some towns. In particular, incidents during the first two months of the Greek military occupation were dreadful in the towns of Menemen and Aydin. These events were confirmed by the official reports of Turkish, British and Italian commissioners.

A Special Commission of Judicial Inquiry, established following the atrocity reports, reached Menemen on 17 June 1919. The Commission was composed of Turkish administrative and military officers, the British officers, Captain Charns and Lieutenant Lorimer, and medical delegates from the British and Italian consulates in Izmir. They presented a report to the commanders of the Allied Powers in Izmir. Some of the horrible details that were stated in this report are as follows:

…From the unanimous declaration of (persons) questioned separately by the Commission, it stands out clearly that the Mussulman population of Menemen gave a perfectly correct reception to the Hellenic occupying corps and that far from provoking them to the excesses, which would have been reprehensible in any case, it remained absolutely calm and tranquil. The Greek commandant’s allegation regarding the shots fired on the Hellenic soldiers was denied upon oath by all the witnesses without exception. The non-existence of Greeks wounded, either civilian or military, as against a thousand Turkish victims, confirms the veracity of the evidence. The massacre, the destruction and the extortion committed at Menemen by the Hellenic soldiers and the native Greeks can only be imputed to a vile spirit of vengeance and cupidity…

…All sorts of people, women, girls, children down to babies, more than a thousand persons, were basely assassinated. During the few hours of its stay at Menemen, the Commission was able to draw up a list, which though incomplete, contains the names of more than five hundred unfortunate victims. The Hellenic agent, having opposed a thorough investigation, and the exhumation of the hundreds of corpses buried clandestinely by the Hellenic military authorities, the identity of the victims could not be established on the spot the same day…

… The Greeks, to hide the proof of their guilt, wanted to destroy the corpses. But the number of the latter being too great, for lack of time they piled them by tens into hastily dug trenches, insufficiently covered with earth…The massacres were not confined to the town. They extended also to the surroundings, to the fields, the mills, the farms where another thousand victims may be counted. All the buildings outside the town, as well as several hundreds of houses in the town itself, were pillaged, sacked or destroyed.5

The situation in Aydin was no different. Sukru Bey, the commander of the Turkish forces in the region, communicated the sequence of the atrocities to the commander of the Italian contingents if Cine, to be forwarded to the representative of Italy, the United States, Britain and France. Sukru Bey, in his letter of 1 July, revealed the terrifying results of the Greek occupation and begged immediate relief:

The Greeks who have occupied Aydin and the surrounding region have begun after a short period of calm, to practice with unheard savagery the policy of extermination of the Turkish element, with the object of being able to claim and annex these countries…The massacres, the abominable offences, the burning of whole villages and of Turkish quarters, all these crimes perpetrated by the Greeks constitute a disgrace in our era of civilisation. To have been victims of such odious acts, what faults could possibly have been committed by these women, children and poor, innocent people who were only going about their own business. They have been fired upon with bombs, rifles and machine guns. They have been cast into burning houses and burnt alive…Turkish travellers were taken out of the trains, the women and the young girls were violated before the eyes of their husbands and parents…

…I beg you to be so good as to inform the Great Powers of the Entente that we pray them in the name of humanity to restore calm and order to this country by putting an end to the ignoble regime of Greek adventurers and by withdrawing the Hellenic forces of occupation.5

However, the Great Powers, so called champions of humanity, were as inhuman and disgraceful as the Greeks as nothing has been done to stop the Greek atrocities.

The victims of these massacres were not only the Turks or the Muslims in general. The Greeks targeted everything and everyone that was not Greek. In Nazilli, between 19 and 20 June, 16 Jews were slaughtered besides hundreds of Turks. The Jewish houses and synagogues were set on fire as well as the Turkish houses and mosques.5 Such anti-Semitic acts were first practised in Izmir on 15 May. Some Greek soldiers plundered a number of Jewish shops during the incidents occurring that day. However, the British and French authorities warned and the Greek officers sentenced them. Within the interior of Anatolia, far from the Allies’ eyes, the Greek army and the local Greeks did not differentiate between Muslim and Jewish targets.

The Attitude of the Great Powers towards the Greek Atrocities

The diplomatic, consular and military representatives of the Allies in Turkiye closely followed the Greek operations in Western Anatolia and communicated their observations to their headquarters abroad. Detailed reports of the atrocities and massacres in the Turkish towns and villages were often sent to the foreign capitals.

James Morgan, the British Consul General in Izmir, communicated to London on 11 July that the Greek artillery shelled two villages, killing 20 Turks, including women and children.15 Morgan informed the British authorities of another barbarous act of the Greek army in his report of 17 July. He wrote in his report that the Greek soldiers had arrested 37 Turkish soldiers and civilians. The corpses of these people were found later. The throats of the victims had been cut, all the bodies had been pierced by bayonets and their ears and lips had been torn off.15

Major Hadkinson of the British army gave dreadful details of the Greek slaughter in Ayvalik, Turgutlu and Nazilli in his report dated 4 July 1919. Hadkinson stated that the Greek soldiers had committed all sorts of crimes, particularly murder, rape, pillage and robbery. He continued by saying that innumerable dead bodies of the Turkish population from the occupied towns had been found outside of those towns.15

C.E.S. Palmer, a British diplomat, reported to the Foreign Office on 25 July that the Greek army had taken Turkish civilians as hostages, just as the German and Bolshevik armies had done during the War. He criticised the atrocities against the Turkish population.15

Palmer stated in his report of 1 August 1919, that the Greeks had killed 2,000 Turks in Aydin and it was difficult to find any excuse for the Greek excesses.15

The Americans in Turkiye were also sending reports on the Greek incursion and atrocities. W.L. Westermann, the American delegate to the Commission of Greek Claims at the Paris Peace Conference, recorded in a memorandum that, by the middle of June 1919, according to the reports from senior officials (such as the commanders of the American warships in Izmir, the Swedish Consul in Izmir and prominent American residents of the city) the Greek army and Greek officials in Izmir had been acting in a manner of semi-barbarity.3

The French and Italian delegates in Izmir sent notes to their high commissions in Istanbul on 12 July 1919, also emphasising the gravity of the situation the Greek occupation caused. The Allied delegates stated that the Greeks were not following the orders of the Allied Commander in Izmir, who, as the Allied Commander in Chief of the Izmir operation, was technically in command of the Greek forces. In fact, the Greek field officers ignored the orders of their own commanders and acted completely independently. As a result there was almost no control exercised over the troops in the field and none at all over the irregular forces operating in the front and flanks of the army. They had organised massacres of the Turkish population, engaged in simple banditry and settled wherever possible. It was recommended that the entire Greek force be recalled to the Izmir district.3

All of these reports and hundreds of others, combined with the complaints of Turkish officials, including a letter of protest sent by the Turkish Sheik-ul-Islam, the highest official of the Islamic clergy, and the news reports in the widely circulated European newspapers, brought the matter to the attention of the Council of the Heads of Delegations of the Paris Peace Conference. The members of the Council began to discuss seriously the Greek operations in Western Anatolia and try to discover the dimensions of the atrocities.

The Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry

The subject of the Greek atrocities in Anatolia was first formally brought to the Council by the Grand Vizier ad interim and Sheik-ul Islam Mustafa Sabri Efendi. He stated in his telegram to the President of the Conference on 15 July 1919, “The Greeks had committed atrocities in Izmir and its surroundings.” He formally accused the Greeks and requested the Conference to send a commission of inquiry to the region. He further stated, “The Council was not without responsibility, seeing that it had sent the Greeks to Izmir.”2

When Clemenceau read this telegram at the Council meeting on 18 July, Balfour, the British representative said, in acquiescence, that he had been “Much concerned about the reports from Asia Minor”. Balfour added, “A question had been asked in the House of Commons and it had been learned on investigation that the Greeks had, in fact, committed atrocities.” According to Balfour, “Even Venizelos himself had been forced to admit the truth of the allegations.” However, Balfour claimed, “It was more important to prevent recurrences of atrocities in the future rather than to investigate those which had already occurred.” He added, “The control could only be exercised by the Conference through the local Commander-in-Chief.”2

On the other hand, Clemenceau evaluated Balfour’s remarks and said, “Balfour’s plan to prevent further atrocities would only result in the issuance of a proclamation, which would have no effect at all.” He stated “The Allies would have to deal with the Turks hereafter and that it had to be made clear to them that the Allies did not send the Greeks to Smyrna (Izmir) merely to commit atrocities.”2

The situation became so explosive that the Sultan gave the following statement to the London Morning Post, on 26 July:

“It is a mistake to punish thousands of people who had no part in sending the country into war. Why should the faults of the government be expiated by massacring, sacking, raping many peaceful inhabitants in Asia Minor by the Greek troops and Greek bands? The Greeks behaved and behave still like the most sanguinary barbarians of ancient times…They should not be allowed to go where they will, burning and sacking and killing my people like sheep in a slaughterhouse. There will certainly be serious trouble unless the Powers do something to stop it. They [the Greeks] have for 150 years tried in every way to mauling the Turks in European eyes, and they have been helped and encouraged a great deal by Russian diplomacy. Now they turned themselves into butchers”

On 25 August, the Independent Labour Party (City of London Branch) passed a resolution that declared:

“This meeting strongly protests against the wholesale massacre which is being carried out by the Greek )Hellenic) troops in Asia Minor, and calls upon the British Government, in consultation with its Allies, to expel these troops and to substitute for the Hellenic occupation some such form of occupation which will safeguard the Turks from murder”

After lengthy debates and despite the opposition of Britain and Greece, the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry was formed. The original members of the Commission were Admiral Bristol for the United States of America, General Bunoust for France, General Hare for Britain and General Dall’olio for Italy. Besides the commissioners, three interpreters each from the USA, France and Britain and two from Italy were appointed to the Commission. The Greek Government had designated Colonel Mazarakis to follow the investigation just a few days before the Commission’s first meeting. Colonel Kadri Efendi, the Turkish representative, could only be appointed on 21 August, nine days after the first meeting of the Commission.2

The Commission held its first meeting in Istanbul on 12 August 1919. The Commission convened 46 times up until the end of investigation on 15 October. The last meeting was also in Istanbul; however, the Commission held all the others in the places where the incidents had occurred. The Commission visited Izmir, Menemen, Manisa, Aydin, Nazilli, Odemis, Ayvalik, Cine and the surroundings during the course of the inquiry and listened to 175 witnesses. There were Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Americans, British, French and Italians among witnesses.

The report of the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry was consisted of mainly of three parts. The first part was a detailed narrative of the investigation and was officially called the “Account of Events that took place following the Occupation, which were established during the Inquiry between 12 August and 6 October 1919″. The second part was committed to finding the persons responsible for the incidents and was titled “Establishment of Responsibilities”. The third part, “Conclusion put forward by the Commission” contained an evaluation of the inquiry and proposals for the Council of the Paris Peace Conference. The report also included correspondence with Colonel Mazarakis, the Greek representative to the Commission, and a reservation from General Dall’olio, the Italian representative, on the subject of the Greek occupation of Izmir.2

The Commission’s conclusion consisted of four main parts.

First, the Commission stated that although the principle behind the occupation was only to preserve order in the region, actually the operations of the Greek authorities had all the appearances of an annexation. Moreover, the Commission affirmed that it found the occupation incompatible with the restoration of order and peace.

Second, the Commission asserted that if the purpose of the occupation was to preserve order and public safety, then the Allied troops should implement it, not the Greek troops. The Commission also declared that a Greek annexation of the region would be contrary to the principle of respect for nationalities because in the occupied region, with the exception of the City of Izmir and the town of Ayvalik, the Turkish population undoubtedly over that of the Greeks.

Third, the Commission proposed replacement of the Greek troops in Anatolia with the Allied occupation forces. If the Greek army were to take part in the Allied forces, then it should be placed far away from the Turkish nationalist forces.

Fourth and finally, the Commission stated that if the Greek forces were removed from the region, then there would be no reason for armed resistance against the Allied occupation because the opposition of the Turkish nationals was only against the Greeks.

The Allies’ Approach to the Report

The report of the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry was discussed at the meeting of the Council of Heads of Five Great Powers held on 8 November 1919. Clemenceau pointed out that Greek Prime Minister Venizelos had asked to be heard in the meeting. According to Clemenceau, “There were two questions to be asked of Venizelos. First, he should explain the massacres of which the Greek troops were accused. Second, Venizelos should give a reasonable clarification of the operations of the Greek army beyond the borders of Smyrna (Izmir) province without the approval of the Council.” Clemenceau noted, “It was necessary to remind the Greeks that the Turkish question was not settled and to ask Venizelos to state definitely if they could maintain themselves in Smyrna (Izmir) with their own efforts.” He also said, “The information received indicated that in many respects the conduct of the Greeks had been abominable and that the Turks would never accept the Greek occupation unless obliged to by force.” Clemenceau frankly affirmed, “The Council would be more and more led to respecting the integrity of the Turkish territory. Under the above mentioned circumstances, it would be well to warn the Greeks that they should not behave as the conquerors of Asia Minor.”2

The Italian representative to the Council, de Martino, made similar assertions to those of Clemenceau’s. De Martino said “The military occupations in Asia Minor were clearly only provisional and should in no way prejudice the final settlement of the Turkish question.” He stated, “The Italian opinion was clearly favourable to the principle of respecting the integrity of the territories.” He also pointed out, ” The relations between the Italian troops and Turkish population were excellent and that no conflicts had occurred between them.”2

Despite the analogous attitudes of the French and Italian representatives, Sir Eyre Crowe, the British delegate, stated “The Commission had been formed to investigate the claims of atrocities by the Greek army, not the general course of the Greek occupation in Anatolia.” He asked the other members of the Council, “What would happen if they, as the Report of the Commission suggested, asked the Greeks to leave Smyrna (Izmir)? Would the Turks replace them or was an Inter-Allied occupation contemplated? If an Inter-Allied occupation was impossible, then could the Council really think of allowing the Greeks to withdraw when there was no one to replace them? Could the Council possibly think of evacuating the country before a peace treaty had been concluded?”

Sir Eyre Crowe depicted in his further remarks some of the Greek excuses for the atrocities. He pointed out, “The Greeks claimed that many of the difficulties arose from the fact that they did not have complete authority in that region.” He proposed, “To give the Greeks greater liberty of action and at the same time a greater share of responsibility.” Clemenceau immediately rejected this proposal. The French representative told the British representative, “He observed the danger was that the Greeks would take too much latitude.”2

At this point Venizelos was invited to the meeting to present his remarks on the Report. Venizelos, at the beginning of his speech gave a brief historical summary of the investigation and asked the Council to consider the Report of the Commission null and void and to establish another commission of investigation.2

He had some difficult time while trying to find excuses for the Greek atrocities. After Venizelos had completed his efforts to justify the Greek operations, Clemenceau once more reminded him, “Greece had had a mandate from the Conference and had not kept within the limits of that mandate.” He asked Venizelos, “What would happen if the Turkish attacks should increase and if Greece could, without the support of her allies, make the necessary military and financial effort until such time when the country would be completely pacified.” Venizelos replied, “Greece had an army of 12 divisions with 325,000 men, an army stronger than it was at the time of the Armistice. Mustafa Kemal had only 70,000 men”. He proudly asserted that with 12 divisions he had nothing to fear.2 (Despite the superiority in numbers of the Greek army and the support it had from the Allies, the Greek army was drawn back to the sea by Kemal’s nationalist forces who entered and freed Izmir on 9 September 1922. The only escape route for the Greek soldiers were to swim to the Allied warships anchored at the Izmir Bay).

At the Council’s meeting on 12 November 1919, the British delegation presented a draft letter for Venizelos evaluating the Commission’s Report and warning the Greek government about recurrence of such incidents. The important parts of this letter are as follows:

…While admitting the reasonableness of the reservations which you thought fit to express, the Supreme Council does not think that the results of the Inquiry can be regarded as wholly vitiated, in so far as the excesses and acts of violence committed by the Greek troops are concerned. The Council paid its tribute to the impartiality of the members of the Commission and to the scrupulous conscientiousness with which their work was performed.

The Council agrees that the incidents, which took place after the debarkation of the Greek troops at Smyrna (Izmir), appear to indicate an almost total absence of the precautionary measures on the part of the Greek civil and military authorities, which the circumstances required: this omission was the principal cause of the unfortunate incidents reported by the Commission.

It is our opinion that on the whole, the responsibility for the excesses committed and for measures the severity of which were not justified by the actual circumstances, rests upon the Greek military authorities. You yourself, moreover, with the loftiness and sincerity of your character, have recognised these faults and these abuses, and have ordered the punishment of the guilty.

The Supreme Council invites your most serious attention to these grave mistakes and trusts that the experience acquired by the Greek administration will enable it to avoid repeating them in the future.

Respecting the region of Aydin, the Powers have decided that in view of the practical difficulties and of the political drawbacks which the organisation of an Inter-Allied occupation might entail, they prefer to maintain the situation as it actually exists and the Greek occupation…

…Supreme Council reminds you that the de facto occupation by the Greek troops of Smyrna (Izmir) and of the neighbouring districts was only decided upon because of existing circumstances, and create no right for the future. This is merely a provisional measure which leaves entire liberty to the Peace Conference…2

By sending this letter, the Council, on the one hand, condemned the atrocities that had been committed by or because of the misrule of the Greek military and political officers, but on the other hand, it legitimised the Greek occupation of Aydin. The British policy aiming not to lose or lessen the Greek presence as a fortress against the Italian troops in Western Anatolia provided the basis of the Council’s attitude towards Greece.

Although the Council of the Paris Peace Conference generally accepted the conclusions of the Commission of Inquiry and warned Greece, it did not take definite measures to prevent further atrocities by the Greek army. Even the Report of the Commission was not permitted to be published in the European press. Encouraged by this weak approach, the Greek troops in Anatolia persisted in increasing the atrocities in an enlarged area of occupation for more than three years.

The Greek Army’s Violatios of International Law

The documents of international law in force in 1919 clearly adopted the principles to protect civilians from the evils of military operations. Family honour, the lives of individual, private property as well as religious convictions and practice had to be respected.4 To kill or wound individuals belonging to the hostile nation was strictly prohibited.4 The pillage of a town or place, even when taken by assault, was prohibited. The property of municipalities, that of institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, even when state property, should be treated as private property.4

Principally, no general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, should be inflicted on the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly or severally responsible.4

The Report of the Commission included many examples of violations of these international rules. The Greek soldiers and local Greeks committed dreadful atrocities against the Turkish population in Izmir on the 15 and 16 May 1919. About 2,500 civilian Turks were arbitrarily detained and were accused of being responsible for the first day incidents that were, in fact, started not as a mass resistance, but as individual acts. In violation of international regulations, they were inhumanely treated and were subjected to unhealthy conditions (Commission of Inquiry, Document 3, Point No.14). The Turks were the targets of killings, rape, pillage and other kinds of offences. The Greek military authorities did not take effective measures to prevent such crimes (Commission of Inquiry, Document 3, Point No.15).

The Greeks slaughtered 300 to 400 Turks in Izmir (Commission of Inquiry, Document 3, Point No.16). However the body count from the Greek atrocities was not only consisted of slayings and pillage in Izmir. Similar atrocities occurred and thousands of Turks were killed, wounded, raped, beaten or robbed in Nazilli, Aydin, Odemis, Menemen, Manisa, Ayvalik and the villages between these towns (Commission of Inquiry, Document 3, Points No.30, 33, 39, 42 and 44).

The Greek army’s assaults also targeted religious buildings. All of the mosques and religious institutions of Manisa, numbering about 150, were violated by the Greek troops. Their doors were forced open, their floors torn up, their carpets stolen or soiled and their inside walls defaced. In addition, the school of theology and the Turkish cemetery were attacked, defiled and damaged.5

Furthermore, while the 1907 Convention prohibited the destruction or seizure of the enemy’s property unless such destruction or seizure was a necessity of war,4 the Greek army wantonly set fire to some villages, agricultural fields and factories and killed livestock (Commission of Inquiry, Document 3, Points No.32, 34 and 3). (Greeks also burnt down the majority of towns and villages in Western Anatolia and in particular Izmir while running away from the advancing Turkish nationalist forces).

Both the 1899 and 1907 Conventions stated that prisoners of war were under the control of the hostile government and not the individuals or corps that had captured them. So they had to be humanely treated. All of their personal belongings except arms, horses and military papers would remain their property.4

The Turkish army officers and civilians who were captured were treated inhumanely during the Greek occupation of Izmir, which was not even an operation during war but during armistice. According to Point 13 of the Commission’s Report, the Turkish Governor, administrative and military staff, including the Turkish commander in the city, were insulted, beaten and even slain. In violation of the clear articles of the Convention, all of these Turkish prisoners were robbed of their personal money and belongings.

While it was forbidden to compel the inhabitants of the occupied territory to swear allegiance to the hostile power,4 all prisoners and most of the Turkish population were forced to shout “Zito Venizelos” (Long live Venizelos), and persons who refused to do so were immediately and severely punished. Most of the Greek officers approved of this behaviour and did not try to stop the atrocities (Commission of Inquiry, Document 3, Point No.13).

In Nazilli, 30 Turks were arbitrarily detained as suspects by the Greek soldiers and savagely killed outside of the town (Commission of Inquiry, Document 3, Point No.30).

In conformity with their general attitude towards the 1899 and 1907 Convention, the Greek troops in Western Anatolia did not conduct their military operations under the principles of international law. Although the Greek occupation was implemented at a time of armistice, the military attacks on residential areas were more severe than were those in time of war. For instance, the Greek artillery, without prior warning, shelled some villages around Aydin. Many villages on the Balatcik-Aydin railway line were similarly destroyed (Commission of Inquiry, Document 3, Points No.32 and 39).

Conclusion

Eighty years after the Greek landing in Izmir, it is still being debated in foreign academic and political circles whether or not the Greek government and army could be accused of the excesses in Anatolia. The Report of the Commission of Inquiry clearly stated that the responsibilities for the sad incidents that occurred in Western Anatolia during the incursion of the Greek forces undeniably rested on the wrong decisions and operations of the Greek authorities. It was accepted unanimously during the discussions at the meeting of the Council of the Paris Peace Conference that the Report of the Commission mostly reflected what happened and that it was far from exaggeration.

The Report of the Commission, the basic formal source for the incidents, was written only after the claims against the Greek occupation forces had been thoroughly investigated. The members of the Commission collected first-hand evidence; listened to witnesses of the events and inspected the area. When the Commission visited the towns and villages under Greek occupation, there was still smoke emanating from some of the destroyed buildings and the wounds of the victims were still bleeding.

Moreover, the Commission was composed of members from different powers. The members of the Commission signed the Report without hesitation despite the different and sometimes contradictory policies and interests of their respective governments.

Bearing in mind the realities of the structure and the course of study of the Commission, it was and still is impossible to refute the facts and conclusions it reached. As a matter of fact, even Greek Prime Minister Venizelos could not easily contest the findings and the conclusions of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry during his long statement before the Council of the Paris Conference. He did not deny the excesses committed by the Greek army, but he tried to invent some excuses for them.

However, the approach of the Council towards the Report was interesting. Although all of the members of the Council agreed that responsibility for the incidents in Anatolia rested on the Greek authorities and that it was a mistake of the Greek government to instruct its forces in Anatolia to enlarge their occupation zone without authorisation from the Allied Command, the Council did not want the Greek army to evacuate the region. Whereas some members of the Council wanted strong measures to be taken to prevent a recurrence of the atrocities, the British delegation opposed this.

The only affirmative step of the Council was to send a letter to Venizelos to inform him that the Greeks were responsible for the atrocities and to warn him not to repeat the same mistakes in the future.

Without a strong condemnation from the Great Powers, the Greek army continued its operations and atrocities in Anatolia for over three more years, until its banishment from the region in 1922. Had the Council exhibited a strong attitude against Greece and ordered the Greek army to withdraw within the borders of the initial occupation zone, as it had been proposed in the Report, then tens of thousands of innocent persons would not have been victimised.

The Council member countries (Britain, France, Italy and United States of America) are as guilty as Greece for atrocities committed against Turks, and to a lesser degree to Jews and other non-Greek communities in Anatolia during May-September 1919 and until September 1922.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 – Archivio Storico Diplomatico Minitero Degli Affari Esteri, Affari Politici, Busta: 1644-7738

2 – Documents on British Foreign Policy, First Series, Vol. I. London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1974

3 – Evans Laurence, United States Policy and the Partition of Turkey 1914-1924. Baltimore, The John

Hopkins Press, 1965

4 – Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Convention (IV) Respecting The Laws and Customs of War on

Land Signed at the Hague (18 October 1907)

5 – Greek Atrocities in the Vilayet of Smyrna (May to July 1919). Lausanne, The Permanent Bureau of the

Turkish Congress at Lausanne, 1919

6 – Howard Harry, The Partition of Turkey. A Diplomatic History 1913-1923. New York, Howard Fertig, 1966.

7 – Kinross Lord, Ataturk The Rebirth of a Nation. London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1964

8 – Lewis Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London, Oxford University Press, 1968

9 – McCarthy Justin, Muslims and Minorities. The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire.

New York, New York University Press, 1983

10- Pallis A. A., Greece’s Anatolian Venture and After, A Survey of Diplomatic and Political Aspects of the

Greek Expedition to Asia Minor (1915-1922). London, Methuen & Co.,1923

11- Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. The Paris Peace Conference 1919, Vol.V.

Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946

12- Shaw Stanford and Shaw Ezel Kural, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. II.

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977

13- Smith Elaine D., Turkey: Origins of the Kemalist Movement (1919-1923). Washington, D.C., 1959

14- Sonyel Salahi R., Turkish Diplomacy 1918-1923. London, SAGE, 1975

15- Sonyel Salahi R., Turk Yunan Anlasmazligi. Ankara, Kibris Turk Kultur Dernegi, 1985

This article is based on a study titled “Greek Occupation of Izmir and Adjoining Territories, Report of the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry, May-September 1919″ by Cagri Erhan and published by the Centre for Strategic Research in Ankara, April 1999 (SAM Papers, No. 2/99). The complete version of the study can be obtained from the Australian Turkish Media Group.

Part 3 – Greek Atrocities and Massacres of Turks in Anatolia after the London Conference 1921-22

In February 1921, a conference was held in London between the Greeks and the Turks, including the representatives of the Ankara Government, but it failed to solve the Turco-Greek imbroglio.

Yalova and Orhan Gazi massacres

On 6 April 1921, Resit Pasha, the diplomatic representative of the Istanbul government in London. Submitted an aide-memoire to the British Foreign Office, informing it that the Greeks had massacred many Turks at Yalova and Orhan Gazi. When the Foreign Office asked its High Commissioner in Istanbul, Sir Horace Rumbold, about this incident,5 the latter replied as follows:

“There is little doubt in our minds from the details the French authorities have received that grave excesses have been committed in the Yalova and Orkhan Ghazi districts against the Mussulman population, and that these outrages are the work of Greek bands.”7

At first, Allied observers felt that the murderous actions were those of local Greeks in quest of revenge for real or imagined wrongs. However, even British observers, who so wanted to find in the Greeks a positive force for Christian civilisation in the East, were forced to admit the nature of the Greek atrocities: which aimed at “a systematic destruction of Turkish villages and the extinction of Moslem population”. Greek and Armenian bands, which appeared to operate under Greek instructions, carried out the plan, sometimes even with the assistance of detachments of regular troops, declared the Inter-Allied Commission report.29

Following the Greek atrocities at Yalova and Orhan Gazi and Izmit peninsula, an Inter-Allied Commission was established. The Commission submitted its report to Foreign Office on 16 July 1921, via the Admiralty. In his covering letter Admiral de Robeck stated that, from a careful perusal of the report, it would appear that the majority of the crimes were perpetrated by the Greeks, including Greek regular officers and men, and that they were commenced by them.10 The report gave the following information:

* During the past nine months parties of regular Greek soldiers with officers marched at intervals into villages in the neighbourhood of Bozalfat (Eser Koy) near Aghva. The Greek brigand Katsaros had been a visitor and behaved badly. Both Greek regular officers and men had raped women and committed robberies and acts of violence.

* Greek soldiers took everything of value such as money, cattle and effects, having tortured the people. There were cases of murder and rape. Some villages were totally or partly destroyed. The villages of Mehter Koy, Lazlar Koyu, Armak Koy, Omer Aga Koyu and Aga Koy were totally destroyed.

* Everywhere the Greek soldiers behaved savagely, killing men and raping women. They hung some peopler by their feet over straw fires. In the Beykoz area many massacres took place at Cubuklu and bodies were exhumed. They were buried fully clothed and shod, thrown together.

The historian Arnold J. Toynbee and his wife personally witnessed these atrocities.29

Meanwhile, the Greek authorities, who were embarrassed (!) by these excesses, were trying to turn the tables against the Turks by accusing them of counter-atrocities. According to McCarthy, in Anatolia the British, unlike their compatriots at the Peace Conference, often seem to have given little credence to Greek charges. For example, upon receiving a Greek report of Turkish atrocities in a place named in the report as Tatabazar, the acting High Commissioner, Frank Ratting, remarked: “The slaughter of 7,700 out of 8,000 Greek inhabitants of Tatabazar is untrue, and there is even doubt as to the existence of such a place. Possibly it is intended for Ada Bazaar, but no reports of wholesale massacre of Greeks has been received from that quarter”.8 During the war, the British reported that the Greeks were ‘trumping up’ false atrocity stories against the Turks.2

The Greeks evacuated Izmit on the night of 28 June. The town was reported to be in flames; the Greeks probably started the fire before they left. A number of Turks were reported massacred by Armenians in Izmit itself. Both the Armenians and neutral Turks were terror stricken, but all the Greeks were evacuated by the Greek forces.9

On 1 July, General Franks reported that the Greek troops were retreating towards Yalova and burning all the villages in the coastal area. The Commission on atrocities went to Izmit on 30 July where they were well received by the Turkish Nationalists. There was no evidence of any massacre of Christians. Officials of the American hospital and French priests spoke highly of the Kemalists’ discipline and demeanour. However, atrocities of an appalling nature, including murder, torture and mutilation, were verified by exhumation. American evidence supported that these were committed by Christian, Armenian and Circassian brigands, assisted by drunken and undisciplined Greek troops whilst the town was in Greek military occupation. The Commission was of the opinion that the behaviour of the Greek army in retreat was “deplorable and unworthy of a civilised nation”.28

Greek Atrocities continue

While the Turco-Greek war continued, so did the Greek atrocities. The well-known British academic, Arnold J. Toynbee, who visited Izmir in August 1921 as correspondent of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, wrote to a senior British officer at the High Commission in Istanbul. “The Greek army are carrying out systematic extermination of the Moslem population in the newly occupied areas”. Lamb described Toynbee as “notoriously anti-Hellenic”.

Professor Toynbee, as the holder of the Korais Chair in Byzantine and Modern Greek Language, Literature and History at the University of London, was in fact no friend of the Turks.27 He had expected to see noble actions from the Greeks, and base actions from the Turks. However, he realised the reality of Greek actions and intentions after viewing the massacres at Yalova and Gemlik, and later investigating the continuing destruction around Izmir. He, like the Inter-Allied Inquiry Commission, concluded that the Greek government planned the massacres and expulsions of the Turks.29

On 20 September, Mrs Toynbee sent a note to the British High Commissioner asking that it might be regarded as confidential in view of the names. She gave a vivid picture of Greek horrors in the Greek occupied area.

During May and June 1921, the villages of Savilar, Korfulmus, Kaganli, Kabasdere and Tepecinar were attacked and completely pillaged. The whole population was massacred. The villages of Pekmezli, Kadidag, Komurcu and Selcuklu were pillaged and destroyed with some massacres. In the district around Sogandere, between 25 and 30 villages were destroyed with massacre of the entire population. Between Akhisar and Manisa, 82 villages were attacked with varying degrees of massacres. Some, not all, were burned. On or about 2 May, the following villages were attacked and pillaged: Irekkoy, Isafakihler, Arzular, Karabag, Karapinar, Aligoz, Kizilcakoy, Carankoy and Ballikoy. Some villagers were massacred; others escaped into the forest. On 14 June, Gordes and Kayacik were completely pillaged and burned. On 24 June, at Baslamis, near Akhisar, Greek soldiers and Armenian bands surrounded the village and massacred all the inhabitants between the ages of 12 and 60. Four of them were beaten before being killed. Six of the (including 3 women) were killed ‘by having hot irons run into them”. On 28 June, the Greeks blockaded 18 villages in the neighbourhood of Tire, and pillaged and burned them in varying degrees. These included Uzgun, Karakilise, Toparlak, Meheli, Musalar, Bozkoy, Yenisehir, Mehmetler, Ispatlar, Camkoy, Ortakoy, and Dagdere.

The Greeks were collecting Turkish civilians, especially notables, from various towns and villages and marching them off as prisoners of war. They were supposed to be deported to Greece, but nobody heard from them, and the corpses of some of them had been found. Deportations took place at Kasaba (Turgutlu), Manisa, Nif, Alasehir, Salihli, Usak, Kula, Marmara, Akhisar, Tire, Odemis, Bayindir, Turbeli and Aydin. On 13 April, at Salihli, the Greeks arrested a number of people, including the mufti, the judge and 25 notables, made them prisoners of war and sent them first to Izmir and then to Greece. On 16 April, at Usak, they arrested the mufti and 20 other notables and sent them to Greece. On 20 April, near Aydin, in the villages of Sultanhisar, Erbeyli, Kosli, Umurlu, Germence and Balac, the Greeks arrested 80 people and the bodies of some of them were later recovered. There was no news of the others. On 21 May, at Karapinar, near Aydin, 50 notables were sent to Izmir but there was no news of them. In the evening, Greek officers came to the houses of the notables and violated the women. Next morning they began to beat the people with iron whips in order to extort valuables. The same happened on 2 May at Nazilli and Atja involving 32 people.

These descriptions of the situation in territory under Greek occupation were so horrible that, they prompted some of Foreign Office officials to pour out venom against Toynbee. Thus E.G.F. Adams observed:” …Both she [Mrs Toynbee] and her husband have become rather violently anti-Greek”. E.G.F. Adams added: “Professor Arnold Toynbee has turned pro-Turk and his pro-Turkish articles have been appearing in the Manchester Guardian. On the other hand, Mr [Reginald W.A.] Leeper [of the British Foreign Office] tells me that the Manchester Guardian prints equally pro-Greek propaganda and pro-Armenian articles, and that in its leaders it takes a middle course.” 11

Meanwhile, atrocities continued. On 30 September information was received of the burning of further villages in the districts of Bayindir and Odemis, from which refugees were drifting into the city. The situation was so bad that, even the Foreign Minister of Soviet Russia, Georgi V. Chicherin, sent a note to the British Foreign Office, through the Soviet representative in London, Leonid Borisovich Krassin, calling attention to the Greek atrocities, and expressing the view that a protest should be addressed to the Greek government. Lord Curzon minuted this at the British Foreign Office as follows: “What has Chicherin to do with this? I would return no answer at all.”

Greek Retreat

The Greeks began to retreat from Western Anatolia in August 1921 after they lost the battle at Sakarya, where the Turkish Nationalist forces checked, held and then reversed their advance on Ankara. With their retreat, their Ionian vision, encompassing most of western Anatolia, began to fall apart. As the Greeks retreated, they destroyed more thoroughly than before all that was in their path.

During the Greek retreat, one city, town and village after another was set on fire.6 The American Consul at Izmir, Loder Park, who toured much of the devastated area immediately after the Greek evacuation, described the situation in the cities and towns he has seen, as follows:

“[Manisa] almost completely wiped out by fire…10,300 houses, 15 mosques, 2 baths, 2,278 shops, 19 hotels, 26 villas…[destroyed]. Kasaba [present day Turgutlu] was a city of 40,000 souls, 3,000 of whom were non-Moslems. Of these 37,000 Turks only 6,000 could be accounted for among the living, while 1,000 Turks were known to have been shot or burned to death. Of the 2,000 buildings that constituted the city, only 200 remained standing. Ample testimony was available to the effect that the city was systematically destroyed by Greek soldiers, assisted by a number of Greek and Armenian civilians. Kerosene and Gasoline were freely used to make the destruction more certain, rapid and complete.”30

Consul Park was not fond of the Turks. According to the American scholar Justin McCarthy, he was distressed to see that the Greeks, whom he had supported, had committed such outrages. Yet, he was forced to agree that the evidence he had seen was conclusive. He concluded his report to the State Department, as follows:

“The destruction of the interior cities visited by our party was carried out by Greeks. The percentages of buildings destroyed in each of the last four cities…were: Magnesia [Manisa] 90 percent, Cassaba [Turgutlu] 90 percent, Alasehir 70 percent, Salihli 65 percent.

The burning of these cities was not desultory, nor intermittent, nor accidental, but well planned and thoroughly organised. There were many instances of physical violence, most of which was deliberate and wanton. Without complete figures, which were impossible to obtain, it may safely be surmised that ‘atrocities’ committed by retiring Greeks numbered well into thousands in the four cities under consideration. These consisted of all three of the usual type of such atrocities, namely murder, torture and rape.” 30

All through 1922, until the expulsion of Greek army from Turkiye in September, Greek atrocities continued. The Greek army was in full flight to Izmir, burning, looting and massacring indiscriminately on its way.13 Eskisehir and Kutahya and other towns and villages were also burnt. Only the prompt intervention of the Allies saved Bursa from a similar fate. The presence of Allied officers and men in the city, and the fact that Turkish troops had the Greek army in Bursa surrounded, spared the city. However, the Greek soldiers destroyed the city’s bridges and also burnt 40 houses and Greek churches,23 but the damage was minimal when compared to that suffered elsewhere.17

By 2 September, the Allies had become aware that the Greek army was decisively defeated and that defeat was rapidly turning into a rout. Incidents were expected in Izmir.18 The US Consul, John Horton, informed his government on 2 September that the military situation was “extremely grave” owing to the exhaustion and low morale of the Greek troops. It was so serious that it could not be saved. The local Christians were panicking and trying to leave the city. When the Greek army reached the city, observed the consul, serious trouble was possible, and he had heard threats that it would burn Izmir. He advised that cruisers be sent to protect American lives.31

By 6 September, the Greeks were still falling back and burning everything as they passed.14 On the same day, sources in Paris reported that the British Foreign Office had information indicating that the situation in Asia Minor was lamentable. The Greek army had been completely routed and was burning and massacring in its retreat.24,32 Again, on 6 September, the US, British, French and Italian Consuls addressed a joint note to the Greek Minister for War, M. Theotokis, requesting assurances that Izmir was in no danger of being burned or pillaged. The Minister replied that he could give no such assurances. At this time refugees and Greek deserters were pouring into Izmir from the interior, the number arriving on September 6 being estimated at 60,000 refugees and 10,000 deserters. The soldiers, for the most part, carried arms but without officers. Many of the soldiers threw away or sold their arms and equipment, which thus passed into the possession of civilians. The city of Izmir became “a mass of living beings made up of the members of a defeated army, the hangers-on of that army, all the disreputable people of the country as well as of the city, and a mass of women, children, wagons, draft animals and all kinds of households and personal effects.” It also contained “numerous deposits of ammunition and inflammable or incendiary material.” 15

On 8 September, the British General, Tim Harington, reported to the War Office that the news was very bad from Izmir. There were reports that the Greek troops were completely out of hand, and were looting and burning.16

Turkish Army enters Izmir

On 9 September 1922, the Turks entered Izmir “in perfect order”, according to the US Consul.24,33 His Vice-Consul, Maynard B. Barnes, in a dispatch to the Secretary of State on 18 September, observed that the advance guard of the Turkish forces, a cavalry unit, entered Izmir at 11 o’clock on the morning of 9 September, and order reigned throughout the city during the first few hours of the occupation, “Despite the burning of Turkish villages and cities in the interior, and the slaughtering of Turkish civilians by the evacuating Greek Army and the refugee Christians, and despite the throwing of bombs by Armenians at the Turkish cavalry upon the appearance of that force on the streets of Izmir.” 24,33

The Izmir Fire

On 13 September, four days after the Turkish Nationalist army entered the City of Izmir, a fire broke out in the afternoon in a house situated near the railway station, in the quarter known as Basmahane. It soon spread and burnt most of the city. At the time, accusations were made against the Greeks, the Turks and the Armenians. However, fingers were pointing mostly at Greeks. They were, after all, burning and looting on their retreat to Izmir following their defeat, and both the Greek High Commissioner in Izmir, Aristide Sterghiades, and the Greek General, A. Papoulas, had warned that the Greek army might burn the city. The accusations levelled against the Turks were based on the reports and eyewitness accounts of a number of Greeks and Armenians but they were dismissed as being biased. The Armenians, too, were accused of collaborating with the Greeks in their sordid deeds in order to cover up their bomb throwing, sniping and arson.

The US Vice-Consul Maynard B. Barnes, no friend of the Turks, admitted that it did not seem logical for the Turks to destroy Izmir. On the morning of 15 September the Vice-Consul called with Captain Hepburn on the Vali (Governor) Abdul Halik Bey, and upon Kazim Pasha, the Military Governor of the city. Captain Hepburn stated in his diary: “The Turks had been so proud to have preserved Izmir intact throughout all the devastation caused by the Greeks, but the Armenians and Greeks have defeated us in the end” 26

On 20 September, the Turkish Legation in Stockholm issued a communique, stating that they have received telegraphic assurances that the fire in Izmir was started by the Greeks and the Armenians, who had set fire even to their own buildings, in order that the Turks might not be able to make use of them. The Legation pointed out that there was “absolutely no reason for the Turks to destroy their most beautiful city next to Istanbul, now that they had definitely retaken it.” 19

The Turkish statements were supported by Sir A. A. Baig, who observed in The Asiatic Review of October 1922 that attempts were being made to saddle the Turks with the crime of firing Izmir. “Though every Ottoman interest was involved in preserving the famous town, and to excuse the Armenians and the Greeks who had every motif of revenge to destroy what they were abondoning.”1

Justin McCarthy adds that the historical record of the fire is extremely confused. “One can easily theorise that there was, in fact, not one fire, but many fires, set in revenge by Christians who did not wish the Turks to have the city, and by undisciplined soldiers and civilians, who simply wished to see the buildings burn. The often-stated idea of the Turkish Nationalist Government deliberately burning down their second greatest city immediately after it had once again become theirs is a prima facie absurdity.”25,27

More Greek Atrocities

After the Greek army’s expulsion from Anatolia, The Greeks continued their atrocities elsewhere. According to a secret report prepared by the British General Headquarters in Istanbul on 8 November 1922, the Greeks burnt the following Muslim villages in Thrace: Sarlar, Cakmak, Sefki Koy, Katanca and Karis Diren. Greek soldiers and refugees systematically pillaged the Rodosto area. There were murders and looting at Kara Hisar, Turkmen Ciftligi, and Boztepe. Even as late as February 1923, the Greeks continued to wreak their vengeance on Muslims, this time in Crete and Western Thrace. On 16 February 1923, the British consular agent in Rethymo (Crete), M. A. Scouloudis, informed the British Consul, J. G. Dawkins, in Canea, the capital of the island, that the Turks, who were driven into the town, did not dare to return to their homes in the country districts chiefly for fear of being attacked and because their houses had been destroyed. Scouloudis then went on to describe the miserable state in which all Turkish refugees were living, and went on:

“The greater service that could be rendered to this population would be to assist them to emigrate; this is moreover their desire too, expressed by a committee to the local authorities. Great anarchy prevails in the island district of Rethymo; armed bands continue to rob the Turkish farms as well as those of the Christians, and not only Turks but Christians, too, are not safe to travel around.” 22

The Greek Devastation

The mass destruction of the Greek army of occupation caused in Anatolia is difficult to estimate. According to Justin McCarthy, the loss of Muslim property was due to theft by individual Anatolian Greeks and by Greek officers, enlisted men, officials and irregular gangs. The worst loss, according to McCarthy, was that of timber used in buildings; if defrosted Anatolia, burnt wood was often irreplaceable. So was the loss of livestock. Most of the spoils were “ferried to Mitylene by boats.”4 Cities such as Aydin and Odemis became collection points for plundered goods that were intended for sale in bazaars or for dispatch to Greece.3

At the British Foreign Office, G. W. Rendel minuted this document as follows:

“Vandalism of Greeks towards Moslem art is undeniable. I remember once hearing Prince Andrew boast of having paved his quarters at Salonica with Moslem tombstones…”12

During the Lausanne Conference (20 November 1922-24 July 1923), Eleutherios Venizelos, who was the chief delegate of Greece, at a private interview on 14 May 1923 told Ismet Pasha, the chief delegate of Turkiye, that Greece could not pay indemnity. However, Venizelos said Greece was ready to give moral satisfaction to the Turkish government by making a declaration to the effect that Greece recognised that it was incumbent on it to pay indemnity for the acts committed by the Greek army in Asia Minor “contrary to the laws of war”. Turkiye, for its part, should recognise that Greece’s financial position precluded it from paying the indemnity, which should be waived.20

Venizelos, meanwhile, had received the consent of the Greek government to offer Karaagac to Turkiye.21 Thus, Greece, through Venizelos, the very person responsible for sending the Greek army to invade Western Anatolia, had admitted moral and legal responsibility for the misdeeds of that army. Ismet Pasha, with the help of Mustafa Kemal, wound-up this most controversial issue between Turkiye and Greece. The deal was incorporated into Article 59 of the Treaty of Lausanne.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 – Baig, Sir A.A., The Greek Defeat and British Policy. The Asiatic Review, October 1922

2 – British Foreign Office Document FO 106/1501, General Harington to War Office, 16 August 1922

3 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/4220/E115562, Calthorpe to Curzon, 1 August 1919

4 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/4221/12447, Ayvalik report by Hedkinson, dated 7 August 1919

5 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/6491/E4224

6 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/6511/E5232

7 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/6611/E5375

8 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/6515/E6441, Rattigan to Curzon, 29 May 1921

9 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/6520/E7377

10 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/6523/E8245, Robeck to Admiralty, 20 June 1921

11 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/6557/E10550

12 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/7880/E7453, Ispahani of the London Moslem League to Curzon, 25 July

1922

13 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/7885/E8745, telegram from Lamb, 2 September 1922

14 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/7886/E8984, Lamb’s telegram, 6 September 1922

15 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/7886/E9048, Lamb at FO, 7 September 1922

16 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/7992/E9054, Harington to WO, 8 September 1922

17 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/7891/E9649

18 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/7906/E11667, O. Murray to Admiralty, FO despatch of 25 October 1922,

transmitting copy of report of proceedings at Izmir, 3-14 September, and diaries of events from 29 September to 6

October, from Admiral O. de B. Brock

19 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/7894/E9946, Patrick Ramsay to Curzon, 20 September 1922

20 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/9102/E4927, Rumbold to Curzon, 14 May 1923

21 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/9103/E5094; DBFP 1/XVII pp 762-63, Rumbold to Curzon, 18 May

1923

22 – British Foreign Office Document FO 371/9109/E2950, MC G. Dawkins to Bentnick, 19 February 1923, enclosing

copy of desp. From M. A. Scouloudis, 16 February 1923

23 – British War Office Document WO 106/1501, G.O.C. Allied Forces, Istanbul, to WO, 15 September 1922

24 – Evans Laurence, United States Policy and the Partition of Turkey, Baltimore, 1965

25 – Heath W. Lowry, Turkish History: On whose Sources Will it be Based? A Case Study on the Burning of Izmir,

1988

26 – Hepburn Diary, 15 September 1922, quoted by Marjorie Housepian, The Smyrna Affair, New York, 1966

27 – McCarthy, Justin, Death and Exile, The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, Princeton, New Jersey,

1996

28 – Prince Andrew of Greece, Towards Disaster: The Greek Army in Asia Minor in 1921, London 1930

29 – Toynbee, Arnold J, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, London 1923

30 – US archives US767.68116/34, J. Loder Park to Secretary of State, Izmir, 11 April 1923

31 – US archives US767.68/274, telegram from Izmir, 2 September 1922

32 – US archives US767.68/2911, telegram from Paris, 6 September 1922

33 – US archives US767.68/297, telegram from Istanbul, 9 September 1922

34 – US archives US767.68/304, telegram from Izmir, 9 September 1922

This article is taken from a study titled “The Turco-Greek Imbroglio Pan-Hellenism and The Destruction of Anatolia” by Prof. Dr. Salahi R. Sonyel and published by the Centre for Strategic Research in Ankara, July 1999 (SAM Papers, No. 5/99).

Part 4 – Greek Atrocities and Massacres of Turks in Cyprus, 1963 – 1974

K. B. Raif is a Turkish Cypriot born in Paphos in 1932. In his book “Greeks, The Democrats Who Are Not” he recalls:

“During my childhood, our Greek neighbours used to love me as if I was their own; and I remember their children playing happily in our backyard.

During my boyhood, I played football with my Greek friends and at flirting age we ran together after the most alluring girls of our town.

I remember taking our special dish of ‘Kadayif’ to our Greek neighbours during our ‘Bayram’ festivities and receiving in reciprocation their special ‘Pilavuna’ during their ‘Easter’ festivities. When we grew up we enjoyed many feasts around the same table and frequented the same nightclubs.

We attended to each other’s funerals and wedding ceremonies so many times that we knew exactly how to behave on these occasions.

And at maturity, we worked together at the same government offices and jointly attended the same international seminars and meetings of technical nature.

Then, what makes Greeks the way they are: so unfair, so cruel, so unjust, so one-sighted and so undemocrat when it comes to politics, religion and ideologies?

It seems to me that this is in their blood. However, there is no doubt that the Greek educational structure and the Greek political parties are highly influential in this regard.

Another factor I know for sure that is responsible for this phenomenon is the Greek Orthodox Church. I will give an example for this from my life experience.

One Sunday morning, my Greek friends collected me from my home for a picnic. We were teenagers then. They said we had to pass by the church because their parents would not allow them to go for picnic if they did not attend the morning prayers. So, we went together to the church, which was also within our neighbourhood. The priest was preaching. The final words of the priest are still in my ears: “…a good Greek is the one who is fortunate enough to kill a Turk and bring his head to our church-yard. When the time comes you will be asked to do so. We will now pray for this time to come…soon…”

‘This time’ came during the Noel of 1963.

During this Noel, the Turkish community witnessed with great pain and bewilderment that all their good Greek friends suddenly became professional fighters running after their heads. Where and when these people were mentally prepared and physically trained for such a cruel and inhuman mission? Who were behind this hatred?”

On 21 December 1963 the Greek Cypriots, acting in accordance with the secret Akritas Plan (the full text of the Akritas Plan has been published as a UN Document A/33/115, s/12722 of 30 May 1978) attacked the Turkish Cypriots all over the island, destroyed the bicommunal Republic of Cyprus created in 1960 under the London and Zurich Agreements, and usurping the powers of the State, turned Cyprus, unconstitutionally, into a Greek Cypriot State. The Turkish Cypriots were expelled from the organs of the state and were deprived of their benefits from the State budget. All Turkish Cypriots enclaves were besieged and subjected to a war of attrition. This illegal state of affairs continued until 20 July 1974 when the Turkish intervention, undertaken in discharge of the obligation and right emanating from the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, prevented the annexation of the island by Greece and also, stopped the genocide of the Turkish Cypriots that had been going on systematically, since 21 December 1963.

It is a historical fact that before Cyprus entered under the Ottoman rule in 1571, there existed no influential Greek community in the island. Cyprus was then under the Venetian rule and the Catholic leadership kept under severe suppression the Greek population. Which was sparsely scattered on the island. After 1571, the Ottomans allowed the construction of new Orthodox churches at every settlement and granted autonomy to the Greek Archbishops. It is extremely sad that this very Archbishopric, in years to come, professed to its followers the genocide of the Cypriot Turks.

“Unless this small Turkish Community – forming a part of the Turkish race which has been the terrible enemy of Hellenism – is expelled from Cyprus, the duty of the heroes of EOKA can never be considered terminated”. These are the words of Makarios, the President of the Republic of Cyprus addressing to the Greek Cypriots on 4 September 1962. With many other remarks like the above, Makarios together with Grivas and his terrorist organisation EOKA were the masterminds behind the Greek atrocities and massacres of Turkish Cypriots from the early days of Republic (1960) until the intervention of Turkish peace troops in 1974.

The following is a letter sent to a Greek Cypriot citizen by Dhigenis (Grivas) a General from Greece who came to Cyprus to establish the Greek terrorist underground organisation under the name of EOKA for the union (ENOSIS) of Cyprus with Greece.

“We have been informed that you are making a great mistake at the expense of Greek Cypriots eg. there is a Greek-owned car which goes to Dhekelia yet you prefer to travel there by a Turkish-owned car.

You are not ashamed either of God or of man and you accept exploitation by the Turks? Pity…you are called Greeks. Don’t you know that you violate your religion and betray your fatherland by cooperating with Turks?

I ORDER YOU TO STOP IMMEDIATELY GOING OUT WITH THEM. Otherwise EOKA, the punisher, will fall on your head and we shall stain our hands with the blood of traitors and make a lesson of you.

When water and fire become intimate friends and when hell and paradise unite, then and only then shall we be the sincere friends of the Turks.

You must remember therefore that within three hours from the receipt of my letter you must stop cooperating with the Turks otherwise I will order your immediate execution.

EOKA

Dhigenis, The Leader

14.05.1956″

Let’s follow the Greek atrocities and massacres through the eyes of Western correspondents:

“…We went tonight into the sealed-off Turkish quarter of Nicosia in which 200 to 300 people had been slaughtered in the last five days. We are the first Western reporters there and we have seen sights too frightful to be described in print and horrors so extreme that people seemed stunned beyond tears and reduced to a hysterical and mirthless giggle that is more terrible than tears…” Daily Express, 28.12.1963, reported by Rene Maccoll-Daniel Mc Geachi.

“…Greek cruelties in Cyprus: Greeks have started an attack on the areas where the Turks are living…The Turks are trying to escape from the Greek attacks…25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes…” Daily Express, 28.12.1963.

“…I was allowed to move through the whole besieged Turkish sector. I was taken to the Kumsal district and trod over shattered glass into a green and white house with orange trees in the garden, and an ownerless black and white cat wandering around. The bathroom of this house was a blood-soaked shambles with a woman and three small boys lying dead huddled together in the bath and in an adjoining room another dead woman. My guide said this second woman and her children were the family of a Turkish major and were all shot by Greek Cypriots. Wherever I looked in the Turkish sector there were the stark and tragic signs familiar to any town, which has endured civil war. Sandbags and sentry positions, haggard men with guns whose faces behind the stubble of beard show nothing but fatigue. Men and women lying on their backs in impoverished aid centres with shot and stab wounds, gazing up blankly at a world they no longer recognise. The uncheckable allegations…’They used dumdum bullets…our soldiers obeyed orders from Ankara not to move …they (The Greeks) changed into civilian clothes and attacked…they took 30 women and children, some one, two and three years old and we know nothing of their fate…” Daily Mail, 28.12.1963, reported by John Star from Cyprus.

“Uneasy Calm and State of Anarchy in Cyprus.

…Whoever fired the first shots in the early morning of December 22, when a Turkish man and woman were killed, there is no doubt that certain Greeks had been deliberately provoking the Turks to action. For a week or two before this, Greeks in civilian clothes had been demanding to see the identification papers of Turks in Nicosia which caused bitter resentment and when on December 23rd armed Greek police shot at Turkish schoolboys who booed them, the tinderbox was set aflame. It is nonsense to claim, as the Greeks do, that all causalities were caused by fighting between armed men of both sides. On Christmas Eve many Turkish people were brutally attacked and murdered in their suburban homes, including the wife and three small children of the Turkish head of army medical services – allegedly by a group of forty men, many in army boots and greatcoats.” The Guardian, 31.12.1963, reported by Michael Wall from Nicosia, Cyprus.

“…With other British newsmen I was taken to the clinic of a tubby doctor, where a team of nurses were tending severely wounded men, women and children. A ward of 14 held 40. The injured lay on mattresses on the floor from wall to wall. Curiously there were no tears. And no fear. Defiance shone in the eyes of every victim. I saw Mrs. Ayshe Ibrahim, aged 24, a bullet wound in her back lying alongside her three-year-old daughter, who had a shattered knee. White coated Doctor said ‘The mother is paralysed. The child will never walk properly again. Greeks burst into their homes and opened up with guns’. A 14 year old boy lay shot in the stomach, another victim of senseless violence…At the shell of a villa I saw a woman and three children who had been strangled and thrown into a bath. The children’s mother was shot dead in another room. ‘This is what the Greeks did’ a Turk told me bitterly…” Daily Mail, 31.12.1963, reported by Peter Moorhead from Nicosia, Cyprus.

” …In one street in Omrphita all the misery of war was on view in the deserted bullet-riddled home of Mr. And Mrs. Mentes, a Turkish family. The place had been ransacked. The walls were scored with bullet holes. I picked up a bullet-shattered memory of happier day; their wedding portrait. On a table nearby lay a tiny doll. In a bedroom bullets had shattered a cot. But there was no trace of the Mentes family. A Turk told me ‘We don’t know what happened to them. Perhaps they die, perhaps they live…” Daily Herald, 31.12.1963.

” I asked President Makarios whether it was true that there was an underground committee of Greeks which had armed people and drawn-up plans for action. He answered: ’It is quite true’…” The Guardian, 01.01.1964.

“…Drama in a silent village – In one night of terror 350 men, women and children vanished:

In this village of shame today I found grim evidence of the hatred between Greeks and Turks that has bedevilled this beautiful island. A few days ago, 1,000 people lived here, in their solid, stone built homes which hug the coast road to Kyrenia, 13 miles from Nicosia. Then in a night of terror 350 villagers – men, women and children – vanished. They were all Turks. Today I was one of two British correspondents to drive to the village to investigate the mystery. In the dusty village street I found hungry Greek children playing listlessly. From doorways men and women eyed me suspiciously. When I asked where are the Turks the women averted their gaze. The men shuffled their feet and said ‘We don’t know. They just left.’ And when I came across the Turkish homes they were an appalling sight. Apart from the walls, they just did not exist. I doubt if a napalm bomb attack could have created more devastation, I counted 40 blackened brick and concrete ‘shells’ that had once been homes. Each house had been deliberately fired by petrol. Under red tile roofs which had caved in, I found a twisted mass of bed springs, children’s cots and cribs, and ankle deep grey ashes of what had once been chairs, tables, wardrobes. In the neighbouring village of Ayios Vassilios, a mile away, I counted 16 wrecked and burned out homes. They were all Turkish. From this village more than 100 Turks had also vanished. In neither village did I find a scrap of damage to any Greek house.” Daily Herald, 01.01.1964, reported by Peter Moorhead from the village Skylloura, Cyprus.

“…Fires swept through Turkish homes in the northern suburb of Omorphita tonight while Mr. Duncan Sandys, Commonwealth Secretary, was watching the return of Turkish prisoners held by Greek Cypriots. Mr. Sandys left immediately for the scene when he heard the news. Before the fires started, Greek irregulars had broken into houses in Omorphita, which in peacetime had a mixed Greek-Turkish community. They dragged out clothing and furniture and overturned cars. Then fire broke out and flames were spotted by petrol of the Gloucestershires. Looters fled as armoured vehicles draped with Union Jacks raced to the spot. Mr Sandys watched as a British fire fighting unit brought the blaze under control…” Daily Mail, 01.01.1964, reported by John Starr and Bernard Jordan from Nicosia.

“…Houses were set on fire yesterday in the evacuated Turkish suburb of Nicosia where the worst incidents of the recent emergency occurred. Mr. Duncan Sandys, Britain’s Commonwealth Secretary, was rushed to the spot and stood near burning Turkish houses with parts of the buildings crashing down near him and flames leaping high into the sky. ‘It’s more than a dozen now, sir,’ reported an Army Officer as British troops fought the blaze. Even as they fought one another was seen to start in another house. ‘It is the work of irregulars who have sneaked in and set the houses on fire’, Mr. Sandys was told. He had only just escorted back Turkish hostages into the Turkish quarter, personally supervising the unloading of each load when news of the burning reached him and he set out at once. Mr Sandys stood close to the fire damage oblivious, it seemed, of the danger and said ‘How tragic it is for the people who are going to come back here today and find this happening…” Evening Standard, 01.01.1964, reported by Anne Sharpley from Nicosia.

“Troubled Cyprus

…I feel certain that most Irish people do not appreciate the grave wrongs that have been inflicted on the Turkish population of Cyprus and on Turkey itself. Historically and geographically Cyprus belongs to Turkey and it is a tribute to the patience and forbearing of that country that it agreed for the sake of peace to the imposition of Greek rule…The recent riots provoked by (Greek) elements who want to find an excuse for a pogrom against the island’s Turks is a glaring example of the manner in which the real owners of Cyprus are being treated…It is too much to expect that Turkey will remain patient forever, and if peace is to be maintained in the Mediterranean the problem of Turkish Cyprus must be solved.” Irish Evening Press, 01.01.1964.

“…Turkish homes in the city had been set ablaze by arrows tipped with paraffin soaked rags, and hundreds of hard core EOKA men were prowling towns and villages under arms…” The Daily Sketch (London), 02.01.1964, reported by Los Crabby from Nicosia.

” The Imam of Omorphita and his paralysed blind son were found today murdered in their beds in Nicosia. Turks returning to Omorphita suburb under British escort found the 75 year-old priest Huseyin Igneci riddled with machine-gun bullets. The Turkish religious leader had gone to bed after leading prayers in a mosque…”"Daily Mail, 03.01.1964, reported by Bernard Jordan from Nicosia.

“…A sinister demonstration of EOKA power occurred during the height of the Christmas crisis at Kyrenia, the north coast harbour town. EOKA men, working with the regular Greek Cypriot police, took control of key points. These included the telephone exchange, where EOKA men with sub-machine guns made the Turkish operators leave their posts with their hands up and guns at their backs. They were told to go home and stay there. Telephone lines to most British and other foreign residents in the area were cut and these are still out of order. EOKA groups put up roadblocks in the town and on mountain roads behind it. Turkish policemen were arrested on Christmas Day when they arrived for a conference with the Greeks on keeping order in the town. With the policemen, they were handcuffed in pairs and imprisoned for seven days in a village near Kyrenia. They were told all the Turks in Kyrenia would be wiped out if Turkish forces landed in Cyprus…” Daily Telegraph, 03.01.1964.

“…The Constitution gives the Turkish community certain social guarantees. It is a pity that these guarantees were not enough to prevent bloodshed. These guarantees, especially if the President (Makarios) continues to insist in the abolishment of the constitutional rights of the Turks, will have to be safeguarded with more efficient means…” The Times, 04.01.1964.

“Turks to be exterminated

…On the Greek Cypriot side the extremists resent President Makarios’ acceptance of British intervention and would have preferred the fighting to continue, leading to the extermination of the Turkish community…” The Times, 04.01.1964.

“…Once there had been Turks there too but I could not discover what had become of them. A couple of hours later I got through more roadblocks to reach the village of Aghios Vassilios and stumbled on a ghastly scene. Apparently 13 Turks of the predominantly Greek community had gathered for safety, as they thought, in a fine modern villa. At once they came under attack. Fire from shotguns, rifles, sub-machine guns and revolvers raked the walls. Finally one of the attackers climbed to the roof, tore away the big red tiles and began pitching hand grenades onto the helpless people below. Eleven were killed instantly. The other two, one a deaf mute, feigned death and managed to crawl away to safety in darkness. At yet another township, Skilloura, I discovered almost the entire Turkish quarter burned out and still smoking. Greek women were looting among smouldering ruins that were almost too hot to tread over. Far down the coast at Lefka (a Turkish town) I heard that five British families with 12 children including some out for the Christmas holidays from boarding schools in Britain – had been – stranded for 12 days on a nearby hill called the Black Mountain. They live among several thousand Turks who work in the copper mines there. Mr. W. J. Rowlands, a mining supervisor, from near Newport, Monmouthshire, who has a house on the hill and speaks fluent Turkish, volunteered to guide us through the lines together with a British doctor stationed near Lefka town. It was the most tense part of my journey. After talking our way through the Greek barricades we had to move slowly across about a mile of wild country. Guns poked menacingly out from sandbags and stone strongpoints on every hillock and followed us every inch of the way. But Chief Inspector Husain Kavaz, the Turkish police chief who served in the British Army during the war, told us his people were starving. They had nothing to eat, he said, except oranges and a little barley. Babies particularly were in grave danger as there was no milk. Chief Inspector Kavaz implored us, as many other had done along the way, to ask the British, the United Nations, the International Red Cross – anyone – to send help. Quickly…” News of the World, 05.01.1964, reported by Noyes Thomas.

“…Through binoculars from the police station roof I watched the Greeks who are acting under the orders of EOKA leader, Nicos Sampson, waiting to swoop…” Daily Mail, 06.01.1964 reported by Bernard Jordan from Nicosia

“Homes Blaze Again in Nicosia

Homes are blazing again tonight in Omorphita, the battlefield suburb of Nicosia. I counted 11 fires in the area where Turks fled from their houses last week. This is despite an appeal by the Cyprus Government to keep calm…” Daily Mail, 07.01.1964, reported by Bernard Jordan from Nicosia.

“…Dr Vassos Lyssarides, a Greek Cypriot M.P. and personal physician to President Makarios, told me tonight that he leads one of the organisations which have been fighting the Turks. This was the first confirmation of reports that about four private armies on the Greek side were engaged in the clash…” Daily Mail, 10.01.1964, reported by Bernard Jordan from Nicosia.

“…Some of the heaviest fighting took place in the Turkish suburban neighbourhood of Omorphita. Dozens of homes were burned down or gutted. Greek youths can be seen pulling doors and shutters off houses. A looter’s car, nearly sagging under the weight of everything from an old refrigerator to mattresses, slowly chugged away. Curiously, some houses had not been touched. The Greeks claimed the suburb was a hive of underground tunnels with caches of arms, but a British sergeant on patrol said: ‘You can have my 12 months’ pay if you can find any tunnels around here’…” New York Herald Tribune, 13.01.1964.

“…Two British women with their children were among 20 refugees flown from Nicosia to London today. One, aged 26, was afraid to identify herself because her Turkish husband has stayed behind. She claimed to have seen Greek police officers shoot at five Turks outside her flat. She said she saw one of the Turks machine gunned as he walked towards the police with his arms raised.” Daily Telegraph, 13.01.1964, reported by Special Correspondent H. D. Miller from Nicosia.

“In Cyprus the terror continues. Right now we are witnessing the exodus of Turks from villages. Thousands of people are abandoning their homes, lands, herds: Greek terrorism is relentless. This time, the rhetoric of the Hellenes and the busts of Plato do not suffice to cover up their barbaric and ferocious behaviour. At four o’clock in the afternoon curfew is imposed on the Turkish villages. Threats, shootings and attempts of arson start as soon as it becomes dark. After the massacre during the past Christmas that spared neither women, nor children, it is difficult to put up any resistance…” Il Giorno, 14.01.1964, reported by Giorgio Bocco.

“Silent crowds gathered tonight outside the Red Crescent hospital in the Turkish sector of Nicosia, as the bodies of nine Turks found crudely buried outside the villages of Ayios Vassilios, 13 miles away, were brought to the hospital under an escort of the Parachute Regiment. Three more bodies, including one of a woman, were discovered nearby but they could not be moved. Turks guarded by paratroops are still trying to locate the bodies of 20 more believed to have been buried on the same site. All are believed to have been killed during fighting around the village at Christmas. It is thought that a family of seven Turks who disappeared from the village may be buried there. Their house was found burnt, and grenades had been dropped through the roof. Shallow graves had apparently been hurriedly scooped by bulldozer. The bodies appeared to have been piled in two or three deep. All had been shot. One man had his arms still tied behind his legs in a crouching position and had been shot through the head. A stomach injury indicated that a grenade may have been thrown into his lap…” Daily Telegraph, 13.01.1964, reported by Special Correspondent H. D. Miller from Nicosia.

“…As the Greek Cypriot taxi man who drove me around Nicosia said: ‘If the Turks want to stay – OK. But they can’t have any rights. They are the minority and must do what we say.’ Some Greeks are more extremist than the taxi man. They don’t merely wish to deprive the Turks of all rights. They want to deprive them of the right to live. I have heard men say all Turks should die and these were men with nervous trigger fingers. Last Thursday hundreds of soldiers were drafted into a suburb of Nicosia to safeguard Turkish families coming back to their homes and ‘restore confidence’. I saw more Turks going than coming back. As one of the said ‘My four-year old daughter was shot by my next door neighbour. I don’t want to return and be killed.’…” Evening Post, 15.01.1964, reported by John White from Nicosia.

“…If the Turkish Army has not already landed reinforcements to its Treaty Force in Cyprus, that is simply proof of the patience of Turkey. Its right to do so can not be denied. If international treaties mean anything, Turkey can protect the Turkish Cypriot minority from further massacre. It is radical discrimination in its most bestial form. Although there have been efforts to cloud the issue by suggesting that both Cypriot communities are to blame, by far heaviest guilt is that of the Greek Cypriot force known as Eoka or Edma…” Daily Telegraph, 15.01.1964, Editorial.

“…I have seen in a bathtub the bodies of a mother and of her three young children murdered just because their father was a Turkish officer…” Le Figaro, 25-26.01.1964 reported by Max Closs

“…It is a military operation that the Greeks launched against the six-thousand inhabitants of the Turkish quarter yesterday morning. A spokesman of the Greek Cypriot Government has recognised this officially…It is hard to conceive, how Greeks and Turks may seriously contemplate working together after all that has happened…” Le Figaro, 15-16.02.1964 reported by Max Closs.

“Hatred in Cyprus, Makarios Enigma

…Archbishop Makarios, robed and bearded cleric who serves as President of Cyprus, has a Byzantine talent for equitation…His government deliberately provoked the clashes and is bent upon the extermination of the Turkish population…” Washington Post, 16.02.1964, article by Robert H. Estabrooh.

“…the fanatic Greeks are gradually approaching to ethnic genocide…” Washington Post, 17.02.1964.

“…Outnumbered ten to one the Turkish Cypriots packed most of their women and children into a movie theatre and school in their sector (of Limassol),…a Turkish member of the Cypriot House of Representatives, stated to foreign journalists after pointing out the precarious defensive position of his men. ‘We are getting ready to die’…” The Christian Science Monitor, 17.02.1964, reported by John Rigos.

“Day by day and as murder follows murder detached observes here find it harder to credit the Government of Cyprus with any real determination to stamp out violence. If the President really wants peace on earth and to restore the rule of law he could start by investigating publicly the circumstances surrounding last Thursday’s attack on the Turkish inhabitants of Limassol. The known facts are that on Wednesday the British peace keeping forces were assured by the Greek authorities that no attack would be made on the Turkish Community. Accordingly the British Army did not patrol the town. At 5.30 the following morning Greek Cypriot security forces launched what our special correspondent describes as ‘a heavy well organised attack against the Turkish quarter of Limassol’. It was carried out by hundreds of steel helmeted men armed with automatic weapons and supported by one tank and two armoured bulldozers. If the Greek Cypriot authorities connived at this formidable attack their behaviour is inexcusable. If they were ignorant of its coming they must forfeit their claim to govern and control their own people, let alone the whole Cypriot Community…” The Guardian, 20.02.1964.

“…If Turkey comes in order to save Turkish Cypriots, Turkey will find no Turkish Cypriots to save…” The statement of Archbishop Makarios, August 1964.

“Greece has come to Cyprus and Cyprus is Greece. I firmly believe that the Pan-Hellenic struggle for the union of Cyprus with motherland Greece will shortly be crowned with success. This success will be the beginning of a new era of Greek grandeur and glory.” Speech made by Makarios on the occasion of the visit of the Minister of Defence of Greece, 27.10.1964 (as reported by all Greek Cypriot newspapers on 28.10.1964).

“…We shall keep the Cyprus question open and will never close it under any circumstances or conditions…until we close it through union with Greece, a genius ENOSIS without exchanges.” Makarios (as quoted in the Greek Cypriot press of 17.03.1965).

The Guardian published the following on 02.04.1988:

“One of Packard’s first tasks was to try to find out what had happened to the Turkish hospital patients. Secret discussions took place with a Greek Minister in the collapsed government. After a brief investigation, he was able to confirm local rumours. It appeared that Greek medical staff had slit the Turkish patients’ throats as they lay in their beds. Their bodies were loaded on to a truck and driven to a farm north of the city where they were fed into mechanical choppers and ground into the earth.’ The Guardian, 02.04.1964 (from the ‘secret’ report of Commander Packard, who was a high-ranking British Officer in Cyprus during 1963-64).

Andreas Papandreu, veteran Greek politician, recalls in his memoirs titled ‘Democracy at Gunpoint”:

“…Incidents followed, until we were at the brink of war. Makarios visited Athens in early April (1964). He and my father, who was handling personally all the aspects of the Cyprus problem, reached complete agreement…This was my father’s proposal, and Makarios accepted it. A clandestine operation then began on a huge scale of nightly shipments of arms and troops, of ‘volunteers’ who arrived in Cyprus in civilian clothes and then joined their ‘Cypriot’ units. The process was not completed until the middle of the summer. No less than 20,000 officers and men, fully equipped, were shipped to Cyprus.” Papandreu Andreas, Democracy at Gunpoint .

On July 15, 1974 the mainland Greek troops started the invasion of Cyprus, overthrew President Makarios and installed a notorious gunman called Nicos Sampson as President and immediately began to murder Turkish Cypriots. Turkiye, after failed negotiations with Greece and UK sent troops to Cyprus on 20 July 1974 to protect the Turkish Cypriots

Again, let’s follow the Greek atrocities and massacres through the eyes of Western correspondents:

“…On the second day of the coup, they brought trucks full of human bodies to the cemetery and buried them. There were no records on the identity of these people. I have observed that some of the wounded were still alive. I tried to stop them, but I was kept away on gun point…” As told by Priest Papatsertos, responsible for the Nicosia Greek cemetery, to Ta Nea newspaper of Greece on 28 February 1976, regarding atrocities during Greek coup d’etat in Cyprus on 15 July 1974.

“…today, early in the morning Greek ships boarded on Famagusta port and discharged Greek soldiers fully furnished with modern arms…soon after the discharge, atrocities started to take place…Cyprus is not a sovereign state anymore…Widespread massacre is taking place all over the island…At the main police station, one witness saw people tied to each other…they were later executed…” Evening Standard, 19.07.1974.

“…In the island, thousands of Turks were held as hostages. Turkish women were raped and Turkish children killed on the streets. The Turkish quarter in Limassol was burnt down. The incidents have been confirmed by Greek Cypriots.” The London Times, 22.07.1974.

“…the Greeks killed many women and children in Limassol. I have seen the bodies of 20 children lying on the road…some were wounded and crying…the Greek soldiers are waiting for their turn to enter in the Turkish homes and kill the women…” United Press International (UPI), 23.07.1974.

“In a Greek raid on a small village near Limassol, 36 people out of the population of 200 were killed. The Greeks said they had been given orders to kill the inhabitants before the Turkish forces arrived.” The Washington Post, 23.07.1974.

“I saw with my own eyes the shameful incidents. The Greeks burned Turkish mosques and set fire to Turkish homes in the villages around Famagusta. Defenceless Turkish villagers, who have no weapons, live in an atmosphere of terror, created by the Greek marauders, and they evacuate their homes and go and live in tents in the forest. The Greeks with their bazookas create total chaos in the Turkish villages. The Greeks’ actions are a shame to humanity. Those Turks who can save their lives run to the nearby hills and are able to do nothing but watch the callous looting of their homes.” France Soir, 24.07.1974.

“…In the Turkish village of Aleminio, the Turks were collected in front of a wall and the Greek national army shot them all and killed them indiscriminately…” NBC, National Broadcasting Corporation, 29.07.1974, reported by John Palmer.

“…the human mind can not comprehend the Greeks butchery. Greek National Guard…entering the Turkish homes, ruthlessly rained bullets on women and children, they cut the throats of many Turks; rounding up the Turkish women, they…raped them all…” Voice of Germany, 30.07.1974.

“…Every hour new ditches and numerous corpses are being discovered. It is very difficult to endure the job…” United Press International (UPI), 20.08.1974.

“…what happened in Cyprus during the coup d’etat, can not be named…it can only be called as ‘dirty’ and ‘inhuman’…” The Sun, 03.09.1974.

The Greeks were also massacring their own people as well. Mrs Rina Catselli, wife of a Greek Cypriot M.P., in her memoirs on coup d’etat in Cyprus on 15 July 1974, recalls:

“At the Castle of Kyrinia, I saw the Greeks massacring their Greek brothers under the Greek flag…They were not hesitating to crush any one who were not supporting them…Order was given to a Greek soldier with a machine gun to shoot at the Kyrinia Metropolit. He was killed by another Greek when he did not obey the order…two children were killed by the Greek soldiers. The father asked for the bodies. They killed the father as well and buried all in the mass graves…In the Nicosia general hospital, the soldiers from Greece did not allow the doctors to treat the wounded people who supported Makarios…If these people from Greece are Hellenes, we should stop calling ourselves Hellenes…mass arrest of those not supporting them started. The roads of Kyrinia were full of armed persons sent by the Greek junta…I have never thought that one day I will be arrested by brother Greeks and put in the Kyrinia Castle. I pray for justice and freedom to come back…” Catselli Rina, Refugee in my Homeland, 1979.

Mr George W. Ball, the former US Undersecretary, recalls in his memoirs:

“…Makarios’ central interest was to block off Turkish intervention so that he and his Greek Cypriots could go on happily massacring Turkish Cypriots…Three or four vignettes of my Cyprus days stand out sharply in my memory. A massacre took place in Limassol on the south coast in which, as I recall, about fifty Turkish Cypriots were killed, in some cases by bulldozers crushing their flimsy houses. As Makarios and I walked out of the meeting together on the second day, I said to him sharply that such beastly actions had to stop…With amused tolerance, he replied, ‘But Mr Secretary, the Greeks and Turks have lived together for two thousands years on this island and there have always been occasional incidents; we are quite used to this.’ I was furious at such a bland reply. ‘Your Beatitude,’ I said, ‘I’ve been trying for the last two days to make the simple point that this is not the Middle Ages but the latter part of the twentieth century. The world’s not going to stand idly by and let you turn this beautiful island into your private abattoir.’ Instead of the outburst I had expected, he said quietly, with a sad smile, ‘Oh, you’re a hard man, Mr Secretary, a very hard man!’…I promptly telegraphed the President advising him of my proposal…’The Greek Cypriots’, I wrote, ‘do not want a peace keeping force; they just want to be left alone to kill Turkish Cypriots’. Ball George W., The Past Has Another Pattern, 1982.

Sir Alec Douglas-Hume, the former Prime Minister of the UK, recalls in his memoirs:

“I was early convinced that if Archbishop Makarios could not bring himself to treat the Turkish Cypriots as human beings, he was inviting the invasion and partition of the island.” Douglas-Hume Alec, The Wind Blows.

Mr Ayionatitis, the leader of the Greek political party ‘Ergaticki Demokratika Association’ in his interview published in the Greek Cypriot weekly magazine Periodika on 06.02.1994, admits the following:

“Greek Cypriot leadership says that the Cyprus problem began in 1974; but it began long before this and even before the independence (1960)…Power-holders on our side were oppressing Turkish Cypriots before 1974…We should not forget that before 1974 Turkish Cypriots had been treated like Negroes…Turks were doing the worst work but receiving the least money. Turks had not had any control over the island’s economy. Reverting to the state of affairs before 1974 would not be a justified move at all. Turks will never agree to this. And we have to admit one more thing: If Turkey arrived in 1974 to save the Turkish Cypriots, the latter were really in need of being saved. No one could know what the coupists would do if they took over. Turkish Cypriots were concerned about their fate in case Cyprus was united with Greece and they were justified with their concern. It is because of this concern that Turkish Cypriots have been fighting against Enosis since 1945. Under this climate, there remains to be no justification for refugees to return to their homes.” Periodika (Greek Cypriot weekly magazine), 06.02.1994.

“Greek Cypriot terrorist movement led by political bandit called George Grivas had one simple aim: Enosis or union with Greece….In my view the Turkish intervention of 1974 was not an invasion, as widely accepted, but a morally justified rescue operation…I regret the Greek rejection of a federal solution, which alone makes sense to me…Greek Cypriots are trying to make life uncomfortable for Northern Cyprus by cutting of gas and electricity daily…There are warning signs today in the Greek Cypriot Republic…for months past, a Russian Mafia and ex-KGB presence has been building up there…there is a massive arms build-up as well…There are also reliable reports on a still more sinister development, with the training of anti-Turkish, Leninist terrorists of the PKKK in the South (Greek Cypriot)…” National Review, 12.06.1995 by Brian Cozier.

There are many hundreds of eyewitness accounts and reports like the above describing the Greek atrocities and massacres committed against the Turkish population of Cyprus. Despite all these, the Christian Western World, as usual, sided with the Greek Cypriots and turned a blind eye to the suffering of Moslem Turkish Cypriots. For twenty-five years, the Turkish Cypriots were denied of their basic rights in the international arena.

WHAT A GREAT SHAME FOR THE WESTERN COUNTRIES, WHO APPROVES THE BARBARIC AND INHUMAN GREEK ATROCITIES BY SUPPORTING THEM AND PUNISHING THE TURKISH CYPRIOTS WHO ARE THE REAL VICTIMS.

THE WESTERN WORLD, THE SO CALLED CHAMPIONS OF DEMOCRACY, HAS PROVEN ONCE AGAIN THAT THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF DELIVERING JUSTICE WHEN IT COMES TO NATIONS WITH RACE AND RELIGION OTHER THAN THEIR OWN.

This article is based on a study titled “Greeks: The Democrats Who Are Not” by K. B. Raif and published by the Turkish Democracy Foundation in Ankara, September 1995.

Linear B tablets pertain to the pre 1100 BC period, spanning from 15th to 12th century. (Chronology of Linear B Documents, Jan Driessen, A Companion to Linear B, 2008, p. 76). Most tablets were found in Knosos (Crete), Pylos (Peloponesos) although traces of its usage have been found on approaches to Egean coast and as far north as Aiani. During the first half of the 20th century, the opinion of Sir Arthur Evens dominated the opinion that Linear B was not a form of written Greek. Michael Ventris as early as 1930’s commenced his effort to decipher the tablets and eventually would indicate progress. Ventris was joined later by John Chadwick who unlike Ventris knew Greek. In 1953 they laid out their thinking with a paper entitled ‘Evidence for Greek dialect in the Mycenaen Archives’.

The common belief today is that the two had proven the existence of written Greek during the Mycenaean era. But this conclusion is controversial. Professor Saul Levin would write (The Linear B Decipherment, Contraversy Re-examined, State University of New York, 1964):
We can properly say it is not demonstrably Greek but looks as if it might be Greek, but again it might be something else… (p. 197)

The Greek words have been taken to prove the decipherment, and the decipherment has in turn been taken to guarantee the words. The caution proper to an experiment is forgotten; abd the Greek words thus “deciphered” become not a hypothetical but an illusionary context for interpreting other words in the same tablets… (p. 198)

The language of the Aegean world in the classical period, written in the Greek alphabet of Phoenician origin, is predominantly Indo-European in structure and in basic vocabulary, but includes many words and even some structural features that do not correspond to anything in the other Indo-European language. A small part of this apparently non-Indo-European component of the Greek has recognizable Semitic source, but much more is taken from no known language, and its existence in Greek is presumably to be attributed to the contacts of the Indi-European speakers with some other language or languages of the Aegean area… (p. 198)

Professor Levin gave a warning which philhellenes never paid much attention. He would write:

…a dangerous error of the method lurks in the working assumption of most scholars that whatever we recognize as Greek is nevertheless Greek, but Greek from the Mycenaean age… (p. 176)

Professor Levin is not ready to accept Greek as being the language of the tablets. “With our meager knowledge of Linear B, it is safe to affirm that part of it resembles classical Greek and part of it differs; but most of it we cannot make out one way or other… I must add that the undeniably Greek features, particularly those of Indo-European origin, amount to less than the undeniably non-Greek features… (p.188)

Ventris and Chadwick in Evidence would acknowledge that a relatively small portion of tablets were interpreted, and conceived as being “surrounded, possibly closely intermingled, with barbarian languages spoken by peoples of equal or superior culture.” (p. 188)

The latter could not be used as an explanation of why the tablets varied so much from classical Greek because it raises more questions than it answers. What is the bases of the assumption that the “Greek” speakers lived next to peoples who spoke barbarian language in 1400 BC? If the source of “Greek” language was “Pelasgian” why one can’t assume that the distinct features developed later in time (because the so called “Greek” features were in reality part of “Pelasgian” language)? What would be wrong if one were to assume that the language of tablets was not the language of the Cretan population at that time, but the language of a small elite. If classical “Greek” component of the language of the tablets was less than that of non-Greek at about 400 BC, it would be logical to assume that earlier in time the language was less “Greek” (or with features more in common with the older language, whatever that might have been). If Lavin was right about the non-Greek component of the tablets, one wanders what the ratio would have been in 1200 BC. One has to conclude that the writing of the tablets was in a language that was substantially different from classical Greek dialects.

In 1864 The Home and Foreign Review would summarize a view held by some historians about the prehistoric population of Europe (Volume 4, pp. 155-156):

The Pelasgians form one of the mysteries of ethnologies; the ancient writers, as we have seen, associated them, however, with the Carians, Caunians, Lycians, and other races of Asia Minor, the Greek Islands, and Greece itself. Strabo66 reckons the Caucones among the earliest inhabitants of Greece, and associates them with Pelasgi, Leleges, and Dryopes. The Leleges were certainly more nesirly related to the Pelasgi than the Carians; but there can be no doubt, from other passages in the same author,67 that the Carians, Pelasgians, and Leleges were of the same race. Philist may perhaps be connected with Philistus, son of Pasicles, mentioned by Herodotus68 as going from Attica to Asia with Neleus, or Keileus, son of Codrus, when he founded Miletus. This Codrus was son of Melanthus, and is described by Herodotus69 as of the race of the Caucones, to which we have referred to above. Hiphite may perhaps be connected with the Hittites, or Khatti, who formed a confederacy of petty chieftaincies between Damascus and the Euphrates. They were the Cheta of the Egyptians, and are represented on the monuments of the latter as defeated enemies. Sir G. Wilkinson and Mr. Stuart Poole”0 imagine the Khitta or Hittites to have been a tribe of Scythians who had advanced to, and settled on, the Euphrates.

All the races we have mentioned may be divided, therefore, into three categories: 1. Pelasgians, Leccians or Leleges, Carians, Caucones; 2. Hittites; 3. Silcat, Liburnians, and Mercill or Marucini. The geographical position and supposed origin of the Hittites, as well as some apparently non-Semitic characteristics, tempt us to connect them with the Carians, Lycians, and other kindred races of Western Asia; so that in reality we have but two categories—Pelasgian and Illyrian races. Are these races distinct? We think not. We believe that the Siculi, the Libumii, the Marici or Marucini, belong to the race which occupied Middle and South Italy, the Illyrian coast, Macedonia, Greece, and the Asiatic shores of the Levant. Further, we conceive that the same race had colonized the whole northern coast of Africa, and had formed the basis of the Egyptian population, as well as of that of Cyrenaica, and of the ancient colonies of Utica, H ippo, Carthage, and other Phoenician settlements along that coast. The Indo-European Hellenes and Latins, and the highly Semitic races of the ancient world, were subsequent elements added, out of which grew the civilization of the Mediterranean nations, first commencing with the Egyptians…

The author maintains that a similar population inhabited the geographic spread. As for the initial origin and formations of this people, not much is known. But historians and archeologists have written of various population movements. Specifically in the Balkans, the neighboring populations who had originated in Asian steppes were involved in sever waves of invasions during the third millennium B.C. Some others think that the indo-European or paleo-Indo-European element had existed in Balkans much earlier, during the Neolithic era. While this explanation is accepted in general, archeologists and historians point out that the invasion that took place at the beginning of the Bronze Age had a strong effect in accelerating the process of indo-Europeanization of the Balkans.

In this process, the autochthonous eneolithic culture blended with contemporary Balkan cultures. In this cultural and ethnic assimilation and de-assimilation, and also of other contacts and population movements, took shape the indo-Europeanization of the area, with its beginnings at least in the eneolithic era.

It is interesting to examine the available date relating to territory of today’s Albania which in ancient times it was part of area identified as being inhabited by a “barbarian” populations. The data available is limited, but based on this evidence it can be said that the effect and extent of areas of the steppe population was less pronounced in Albania than in the eastern Balkans. Written sources attest to the survival of a population that appears to have been less effected by the later invasions and to have survived well into the 1st millennium B.C. The ancient authors identified this population as being different from the Greek tribes, and identified it by the name “Pelasgian”.

Homer in Iliad refers to this population as originally settled in Epirus: centre of the most ancient oracle and cult of Zeus and Rhea (or Gaia):

“Ζεῦ ἄνα Δωδωναῖε Πελασγικὲ τηλόθι ναίων”

[Pelasgians Dodonæan Zeus supreme]

While Herodotus (The Histories, Clio, LVII ) gave us this information :

… judging by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who dwelt in the city of Creston above the Tyrsenians, and who were once neighbours of the race now called Dorian, dwelling then in the land which is now called Thessaliotis, and also by those that remain of the Pelasgians who settled at Plakia and Skylake in the region of the Hellespont, who before that had been settlers with the Athenians, and of the natives of the various other towns which are really Pelasgian, though they have lost the name…. If therefore all the Pelasgian race was such as these, then the Attic race, being Pelasgian, at the same time when it changed and became Hellenic, unlearnt also its language. For the people of Creston do not speak the same language with any of those who dwell about them, nor yet do the people of Plakia, but they speak the same language one as the other: and by this it is proved that they still keep unchanged the form of language which they brought with them when they migrated to these places.

Strabo (Book 7.7.1) gives us additional information:

Now Hecataeus of Miletus says of the Peloponnesus that before the time of the Greeks it was inhabited by barbarians. Yet one might say that in the ancient times the whole of Greece was a settlement of barbarians, if one reasons from the traditions themselves: Pelops {395} brought over peoples {396} from Phrygia to the Peloponnesus that received its name from him; and Danaüs {397} from Egypt; whereas the Dryopes, the Caucones, the Pelasgi, the Leleges, and other such peoples, apportioned among themselves the parts that are inside the isthmus–and also the parts outside, for Attica was once held by the Thracians who came with Eumolpus, {398} Daulis in Phocis by Tereus, {399} Cadmeia {400} by the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, and Boeotia itself by the Aones and Temmices and Hyantes. According to Pindar, “there was a time when the Boeotian tribe was called “Syes.” {401} {402} Moreover, the barbarian origin of some is indicated by their names–Cecrops, Godrus, Aïclus, Cothus, Drymas, and Crinacus. And even to the present day the Thracians, Illyrians, and Epeirotes live on the flanks of the Greeks (though this was still more the case formerly than now); indeed most of the country that at the present time is indisputably Greece is held by the barbarians–Macedonia and certain parts of Thessaly by the Thracians, and the parts above Acarnania and Aetolia by the Thesproti, the Cassopaei, the Amphilochi, the Molossi, and the Athamanes–Epeirotic tribes.

Most of the references about the Pelasgians are scattered and just oblique, sound more like hints and unconfirmed reports that tend to be more slightly descriptive – quite contradictorily, though – and often just in order to provide justifications of root/myths derived from this pre-Hellenic civilization rather than seeking for their roots and social/demographic development/collapse, whose findings and results still remain inconclusive. That is how much their base of knowledge allowed them.

As to their origin, “they are said to be of Illyrian or Aetolian* origins; or according to Ephorus – and also Hesiod – they seem to have Arcadian* roots as he maintains Lycaon being the son of Pelasgus and Meliboea (or the nymph Cyllene), and the mythical first king of Arcadia.” (Aetolians and Arcadians were also considered barbarian by Greeks)

Pelasgians, according to a more extensive interpretation they apparently also colonized the northern Adriatic sea… More audacious versions even want them to derive from northern Indian populations. However according to the various, and unfortunately only rarely coincidental, traditions they seem to have spread all over the insular and peninsular Greece, and almost certainly also on the coasts of the Hellespont – and according to Homer even in Crete… (Stoa Poikile, Atheneion’s researches and studies on the ancient world /website)

Stoa Poikile reference of equating Pelasgians and Illyrians, is a contemporary remainder by a historian of a possible Illyrian connection with the pre-Hellenic Greece. Although this extended view of Illyrians has not been proven to be wrong, John Wilkes (The Illyrians, 1995, p. 39) points out that modern historians have stayed away from these Pan-Illyrian theories, but, “the question that prompted their formulation still remain: there are traces of Illyrian names, and some historical tradition, for the presence of Illyrian peoples in parts of Europe beyond the limits of their historical homelands, and also in Asia Minor. What one is to make of these references remains a challenge? In general the linguistic evidence for Illyrians in Greece, Asia Minor and Italy is yet to be interpreted…”

“Illyrian” related evidence has not been adequately studied or evaluated. And at the same time, as Wilkes infers, history is not being done justice by ignoring the role of Illyrians in the Balkans. It has been easier for modern historians to uphold the theory that Greeks (meaning the modern Greeks) have a continuity that goes back to the earliest time.

The example of Crete is telling. According to Homer, Crete was inhabited by at least five peoples: the Achaeans, Dorians, Eteo-Cretens, Kydonians and Pelasges. Dr. Zacharie Mayani* wrote that the “presence there of an Illyrian element is attested by the river Messapios and a mountain, Messaion. Jokl connects the name of another locality of ancient Crete, Dordhannai, with the name of Illyrian Dardania. (Illyrer, Ebert Reallexikon, VI, p. 38) Hrozny enumerates several toponymical terms which are common in Crete, and shows that the same terms are found among various peoples of Illyrian stock elsewhere. (Histoire de l’ Asie Ant., pp. 281-301). We have already mentioned the identity of the Cretan word piva and Albanian piva=drank. There is another Cretan word: ibena, “wine”, according to Hesychius…(Corsen, loc. Cit., p. 735) perhaps we should also mention Rhadamanthus, a king of Crete who became one of the three judges in the Underworld. Rhada, the meaning of which was discovered by Hammarstrom, has survived in the Albanian verb radhis, “to inquire, to arrange, to dispose” (Mann, Stuart E., A Hisorical Albanian-English Dictionary, 1948, p. 422)…

As for the language of the Pelasgians, not much is known. If this extended people spoke the same, similar or different languages, it is not known. One thing is known, in the Herodotus’ passage above it is indicated that the “Pelasgian” language was not similar to the Greek language of his time. At the same time, it should be pointed out that the ancient authors do not dwell on the question of the origin of Greek language, the extent of differences between the two languages, if Greek evolved from “Pelasgian” language. On the other hand, twentieth century linguists such as M. Budimir, V. Georgiev, Fr. Lochner-Huttenbach, G. Bonfante, etc. have pointed out that there are connections between the Pelasgian language and the languages that were later identified as Thracian and Illyrian.

In line with the latter observation some have used Albanian language in their effort to decipher writings from the distant past, believing that Albanian language provides a more direct connection than the modern Greek. There were earlier philological and ethnical studies by John Georg Hahn, Franz Bopp, Demetro Camarda, Iakovo Thomopulo and others that dealt with the question of the antiquity of the Albanian language and provided evidence of similarity with the language of earliest inhabitants of the area. More recently, attempts to find a genetic relationship between Albanian language and Pelasgian were made by Z. Mayani (1970) and S. Konda (1964).

But Albanian linguists under the authoritarian regime ruled that Konda’s and Mayani’s work did not adequately follow scientific methodology. This conclusion, due more to their limited knowledge and hesitancy to deal with such a challenging question, and ignored by non-Albanian linguists, has had the effect of relegating the subject as speculative and most of historians have stuck to the view that these ancient writings are in Greek, which is as speculative, if not more.

Their fascinating work is easy to follow, similarities in vocabularies and etymological explanations are convincing. Their observations followed on this line:

“Pelagon” is mentioned by Homer and is said to mean “plak”=old man in Albanian; to explain the loss of “e”, Konda referred to Strabo who indicated that “according to the Malossian and Thesprotian language, that an old woman is called “peliai” and old and an old man is called “pelioi”; thus, p+e+l=pel→pelak=pelag. Stuart Mann would explain the meaning of Zeus: the Albanian word Zot derives from the same root as the Indo-European term for God (*di): “IE *di > Alb. z (> s finally), zot ‘lord’, zojz ‘god of lightning’” (“The Indo-European Consonants in Albanian”). Currently, fascinating work is being presented on the Albanian word etymology which confirms a strong connection between Albanian language and ancient “Greek” (arberiaonline.com: Etimologji e fjaleve…).

This hesitancy to identify with a theory that has not been considered proven by Albanian scholars, was never evident with philhellenes on questions relating to Greek history and language. For the last two hundred years, they have built a myth around the claims that present Greeks and their language descend from the earliest times. Any trace of similarity between Modern Greek and ancient languages for them would be sufficient proof for Greek language to have been in use even during Pelasgian times. One of them was their claim that Linear B tablets were in Greek language. As Professor Saul Leven would indicate, “Having indeed found some Greek in the Linear B tablets, he (Linear B decipherer, Ventris) chose to regard them as virtually pure Greek…” (Levin, Saul, The Linear B Decipherment…, 1964, p. 188)

Certainly Greek language, and I maintain the Albanian language, evolved from ancient past. But the philhellene attitude to patronize any seeming connection with the earliest inhabitants of The Balkans goes beyond any rational bound. These scholars work on the methodology of ‘whatever we recognize as Greek is nevertheless Greek’. In reality, it is risky to describe the language of the tablets as being Greek, especially in circumstances that identifies it with Modern Greek. We don’t know the scope of infusion from the “Pelasgian” (which is described as different from Greek). We also don’t know how different in this “Greek” language was the indo-european language component in relation to other neighboring languages, such as Thrucian or Illyrian. Or, if both Greek and Albanian languages had a similar indo-European base, when did the differences between Greek and Albanian languages develop. Let’s take a look how philhellenes took claim of Tablet B.

Linear B tablets pertain to the pre 1100 BC period, spanning a period from 15th to 12th century. (Chronology of Linear B Documents, Jan Driessen, A Companion to Linear B, 2008, p. 76). Most tablets were found in Knosos (Crete), Pylos (Peloponesos) although traces of its usage have been found on approaches to Egean coast and as far north as Aiani. During the first half of the 20th century, the opinion of Sir Arthur Evens dominated the opinion that Linear B was not a form of written Greek. Michael Ventris as early as 1930’s commenced his effort to decipher the tablets and eventually would indicate progress. Ventris was joined later by John Chadwick who unlike Ventris knew Greek. In 1953 they laid out their thinking with a paper entitled ‘Evidence for Greek dialect in the Mycenaen Archives’. The common belief today is that the two had proven the existence of written Greek during the Mycenaean era. But this conclusion is controversial. Professor Saul Levin would write (The Linear B Decipherment, Contraversy Re-examined, State University of New York, 1964):

We can properly say it is not demonstrably Greek but looks as if it might be Greek, but again it might be something else… (p. 197)

The Greek words have been taken to prove the decipherment, and the decipherment has in turn been taken to guarantee the words. The caution proper to an experiment is forgotten; abd the Greek words thus “deciphered” become not a hypothetical but an illusionary context for interpreting other words in the same tablets… (p. 198)

The language of the Aegean world in the classical period, written in the Greek alphabet of Phoenician origin, is predominantly Indo-European in structure and in basic vocabulary, but includes many words and even some structural features that do not correspond to anything in the other Indo-European language. A small part of this apparently non-Indo-European component of the Greek has recognizable Semitic source, but much more is taken from no known language, and its existence in Greek is presumably to be attributed to the contacts of the Indi-European speakers with some other language or languages of the Aegean area… (p. 198)

Professor Levin gave a warning which philhellenes never paid much attention. He would write:

…a dangerous error of the method lurks in the working assumption of most scholars that whatever we recognize as Greek is nevertheless Greek, but Greek from the Mycenaean age… (p. 176)

Professor Levin is not ready to accept Greek as being the language of the tablets. “With our meager knowledge of Linear B, it is safe to affirm that part of it resembles classical Greek and part of it differs; but most of it we cannot make out one way or other… I must add that the undeniably Greek features, particularly those of Indo-European origin, amount to less than the undeniably non-Greek features… (p.188)

Ventris and Chadwick in Evidence would acknowledge that a relatively small portion of tablets were interpreted, and conceived as being “surrounded, possibly closely intermingled, with barbarian languages spoken by peoples of equal or superior culture.” (p. 188)

The latter could not be used as an explanation of why the tablets varied so much from classical Greek because it raises more questions than it answers. What is the bases of the assumption that the “Greek” speakers lived next to peoples who spoke barbarian language in 1400 BC? If the source of “Greek” language was “Pelasgian” why one can’t assume that the distinct features developed later in time (because the so called “Greek” features were in reality part of “Pelasgian” language)? What would be wrong if one were to assume that the language of tablets was not the language of the Cretan population at that time, but the language of a small elite. If classical “Greek” component of the language of the tablets was less than that of non-Greek at about 400 BC, it would be logical to assume that earlier in time the language was less “Greek” (or with features more in common with the older language, whatever that might have been). If Lavin was right about the non-Greek component of the tablets, one wanders what the ratio would have been in 1200 BC. One has to conclude that the writing of the tablets was in a language that was substantially different from classical Greek dialects.

For Herodotus there was no question as to the origin of the “Greek language”:

“The Hellenic race has never, since its first origin, changed its speech. This at least seems evident to me. It was a branch of the Pelasgic, which separated from the main body, and at first was scanty in numbers and of little power; but it gradually spread and increased to a multitude of nations, chiefly by the voluntary entrance into its ranks of numerous tribes of barbarians. (The Histories, Clio, LVIII)

It was a branch of the Pelasgic. It should be clear that when Herodotus says “since its first origin” he has in mind the original Hellenes. Herodotus is indicating that many other people assimilated into the “Hellenic race”. Not much can be said about the identity of the “numerous tribes”. If the assimilated tribes were Pelasgic why would that assimilation lead to a “multitude of nations”? Hellenes came only in 1100-1200 BC and would have taken time for them to assimilate other tribes. Let’s not forget that Heroditus indicated the Hellenes were originally Pelasgic themselves. Can one talk of a separate Greek language at the time of Linear B tablets? I don’t think so! The language of the tablets was Pelasgic. What Levin identifies as “Greek language features” in the tablets, which eventually were to become part of classical Greek are only features what Greek language retained from its Pelasgic past, but. Putting the latter in a different prospective, if the non-“Greek” features were substantial in classical Greek, they must have been even greater during the time of the tablets. “Greek” features that Lavin refers to and consist less than the non-Greek features in the tablets are elements that eventually were inherited, as this would be normal, for “the Hellenic race…was a branch of the Pelasgic”. One might add that the “entrance into its ranks of numerous tribes of barbarians” and time had worked against preserving much of the Pelasgic in ancient Greek.

Professor Levin said about the language of the tablets “We can properly say it is not demonstrably Greek but looks as if it might be Greek, but again it might be something else…” It is too early to identify this language as being Greek. This language relates to a period before the coming of the Dorians. That is way before the Greeks identified themselves as Hellenes, which is much later. Referring to their background Thucydides indicated ≪the Hellenes had not as yet been designated by a common distinctive name opposed to that of the barbarians≫. How can one talk of a distinct Greek language in 1500 bc? Another logical assumption to be made is that the language of the tablets might have been somewhat different from the spoken language of the people.

As Strabo indicated above, wide “barbarian” populations still inhabited wide areas north. We know that the ancient authors have identified them as Pelasgian. We don’t know if the language had varied in the wide area that Pelasgians inhabited. Did successive IE intrusions impact equally on all areas, that is the areas we came to know as Greece and also the areas to the west and north of Greece? Answers to this question would correct much of the weak assumptions and unrealistic false interpretations of history. The fact that Strabo (Book 7.7. would point to similarity of language between the Macedonians and Epiriots, and Polibius (The Histories, Book XXVII, would infer that Macedonians and Illyrians spoke dialects of the same language would be indicative that the area to the north of Greece still preserved a common language. Most likely earlier in time, Pelasgian population to the south of them also spoke the same language.

As it was mentioned above, some linguists have considered the Albanian language a relatively conservative language that has preserved many features and vocabulary from its ancient origin. But the language remains badly understudied and enigmatic. Periodically works come out that confirm its ancient connection, but many still remain unconvinced. The latest is the work of philologist Guiseppe Katapano, Thot/Thoth spoke in Albanian, and indicates that Albanian language (or the original language from which Albanian would have evolved) was spoken very early in time.

It is true that the modern Albanian contains a large number of words borrowed from the languages which the Albanians were exposed to in the course of their history: Greek, Latin, Gothic, Slavonic, Turkish, etc. But language’s ancient nucleus constitutes an independent linguistic treasure… Albanian language has been inadequately studied and today’s views on it have been determined by unsubstantiated opinions, some due to the inadequate understanding of the subject and the rest wanting to ignore evidence. For example, G. Meyer tended to narrow down the size of the “ancient nucleus” alleging in many case to be borrowings from Greek, Latin, Slavonic or elsewhere. On the other hand, N. Jokl, Walde-Pokorny, S. E. Mann proved that G. Meyer in fact was dealing unawares with a ‘single, common, primitive source’.

Although the Albanian archeologists have traced the presence of pre-I.E. people with their unearthing throughout Albania, linguists have not contributed much to the question of ethnic-linguistic knowledge of the Illyrian or pre-Illyrian population. Due to the availability of only scanty material on Illyrian language, some linguists have relied on the Albanian language to explore non-I.E. linguistic elements.

N. Jokl pointed to one (see Cabej, 1970, 45) in the Albanian numerical system, where besides the I.E. enumeration (dhjete=ten, tridhjete=thirty, pesedhjete=fifty, etc), there are remnants of the vigestimal system, as nje-zet=twenty, dy-zet=forty; by the Arvanites in Greece, and Arbersh in Italy are also found tre-zet=sixty and kater-zet=eighty. The vigesimal system is widespread in the non-I.E. language of Basques who have escaped assimilation.

In regard to the vocabulary, Albanian word lepjete=orach, is of Mediterranean origin; of such an origin are also the words vene=wine and shege=pomegranate (Cabej, 1976/a, I, 320 and II, 131, 280). Baric (1955, 57) includes words such as (h)ardhi=vine, bisht=tail, mal=mountain, shege=pomegranate, sh-kurre=bush, etc. as being of pre-I.E. origin.

But the fact is that the Albanian language has not received adequate study. This is due to various reasons, first, it was too challenging a task and then there were too many mistaken theories being promoted, some for the purpose of diverting attention, one of them being that the Albanians are not autochthonous in the territories they inhabit today. Working from such a reality is never easy, it is even harder correcting these opinions. Like the established belief of explaining Greek words in Albanian as a borrowings from “Greek”. But, N. Jokl, Walde-Pokorny, S. E. Mann proved that was not the case, in reality the words were coming from a ‘single, common, primitive source’. More serious work is necessary to understand the scope of pre-I.E. influence on the Albanian language.

Let’s quote Saul Levin as to the situation during classical times: “In classical times the Eurpean side of the Aegean was solidly Hellenic –the whole Peloponnese and the region beyond it from the Isthmus north to Thessaly. However, barbarian peoples still lived in the region north of the Gulf of Corinth and nearer to the Ionian Sea than the Aegean…” (p.77) Evidently Epirus and Macedonia had a dissimilar development from the areas to the south.

Strabo talks about a past when Greece was inhabited by barbarians. But says nothing about the origin of Greeks, where did they come from. The Greeks of historical times had no tradition of a break and therefore no concept of a different civilization in the millennium before their own, although they knew in a vague and inaccurate way that other languages had once been spoken in Greece. While Strabo talks about this barbarian past, he says nothing about the origin of Greeks, as to where did they come from.

Even as of today there is no agreement as to which elements contributed to the creation of Greek ethnogenesis, but archeologists note dates such as 2100-1600 BC, some mention even 1100-1200 BC, as events in the settlement of Greece, but there is no agreement if the settlers had came from north or east. It is estimated that most of the found tablets were written during LHIIIA-LHIIIB. This would mean that by 1500-1400 BC the new comers were culturally ready to replace the existing, developed “Pelasgian” civilization. This is very hard to believe. More recent times indicate that it would take the Albanian settlements in Greece 1000 years to be assimilated.

Now, if as indicated Pelasgians were different from classical Greeks, Hellenes as Thucydides infers were barbarian (M. Niebuhr, Lectures on the ancient history, 1852, p.202) maintained Pelasgians and Hellenes (original) were a kindred people; identity of religion and similarity of language connected them with each other; M. I. Finley, Early Greece, 1969, talking about the language of the Dorians indicates that “some of the peculiar word-formations and phonetics cannot be explained on strictly linguistic grounds… presumably it was a dialect which emerged separately in the more isolated northwestern region of the Greek peninsula, outside the Mycenean sphere, before it was brought into southern Greece and Crete…” p. 72). In reality, this is an attempt to identify the original Hellenes as Greek in the face of the remark by Thucydides that originally they were a barbarian people. Herodotus identifies the Ionians as being Pelasgian, which most likely infers differences in language. it would be more proper to assume that the Greek language developed its distinctive features late. Even if Dorians had spoken a Pelasgian variant, Peloponnesus would have still been Pelasgian speaking. At the time of the tablets Greek had not as yet taken the characteristics of a distinct language.

If Doric word formation and phonetics was so different in classical times, it must have been significantly different prior to 1100-1200 BC. An important question would be how different was it from “Pelasgian” of the time, or could it have been the same language or maybe similar to the language of their northern neighbors? Modern historians have found it convenient to follow Herodotus’ comments on Hellenes. But it is a fact that what Herodotus presented was an attempt to arrange and reconcile various legends and tradition. At the same time it should be kept in mind that In this case he was reflecting on a reality well before his time, many centuries before.

Herodotus clearly pointed out that based on the information available during his time, that is almost a thousand years later, that Pelasgians language was different from Greek. Now a question arises, how could the language of the tablets be Greek, when the predominant culture of the period was “Pelasgian”. The fact that similar words are found in ancient “Greek” would not be an adequate reason to assume that there were two different languages in clash for dominance, as Levine seems to indicate when he talks about the presence of two languages in the tablets. It would be expected that Greek language had assumed words from “Pelagian” language. Most likely other languages as well have inherited vocabulary from “Pelasgians”.

One event that basically finds consensus is the evidence relating to widespread destruction at about 1200 BC. This event, referred to as the Dorian invasion, not only brought a new population to Greece, but it also dislodged the existing population. An important question relating to this event is, how much did dislocation of the people contribute to the development of the main dialects of the Greek language?

Strabo mentions the similarity in language that still prevailed with the people bordering with the Greeks to the north :

In earlier times these peoples were ruled separately, each by its own dynasty……But some go so far as to call the whole of the country Macedonia, as far as Corcyra, at the same time stating as their reason that in tonsure, language, short cloak, and other things of the kind, the usages of the inhabitants are similar.(Book 7.7.

Evidently Strabo relates to a reality in which there existed the Greek language and another language. We have to assume that Hellenes (the original ones) had assimilated with the majority population, while in general Epiriots and Macedonians had been more conservative and their culture, including their language, by Strabo’ s time, was seen as being different from that of the Greeks. That is the logical understanding of Thucydides’ fragment that ≪the Hellenes had not as yet been designated by a common distinctive name opposed to that of the barbarians≫. In other words, Thucydides indicates that Hellenes before assimilating with the rest of the Greeks, had been barbarian. A clear distinction is being made of a divergence of Greeks from the ‘Pelasgians’. If Dorian invasion occurred at the earliest at about 1200 BC, which most likely they had spoken a different variant/dialect of Pelagian language, it must have taken Hellenes at least a few hundred years to complete the process of assimilation.

It is not known what exactly prompted the development of these various Greek language dialects. But, from the process of formation of Greek dialects, it would be logical to assume that these dialects inherited elements from what was to be considered the language of the “barbarian” past of Greece. Interestingly, as the Greek language consolidated, populations to the north and northeast continued to be described as “barbarian”.

How much of “Pelasgian” language northern people preserved is not known, but it had to be at a much higher degree than what Greek dialects inherited. On this point it is interesting to note an observation made by Aristides P. Kollias in his work, Arvanites and the Origin of Greeks in Homeric Greek. He observed in Homer’s work, that is in Ionic/Aeolic “Greek”, the presence of quite a few words that are a part of Albanian vocabulary today:

Albanian Homeric Greek Modern Greek

Anda, enda—————————–ënda, andha—————————efkaristis

Arë—————————————arura————————————-horafi

Bashkë ec—————————— vask ithi———————————porevume

Dera————————————-Thira————————————–porta

Deti—————————————theta————————————thalasa

Dhe,dheu—————————— jea, dhor, dha————————–ji

Dore, dora——————————ekedeka-dor-o————————-oheri

Dru—————————————dris————————————–ksilo

Edhe,dhe——————————–idhe————————————–qe

Elbe, elbi——————————–alfiton———————————–krithari

ene—————————————enimi————————————ruho

errët————————————–ere-vos———————————skotos

ethe—————————————ethir————————————piretos

flas—————————————-flio—————————————-milao

fryma, frima—————————-frimao————————————fisima

hedh————————————–heo—————————————rhini, tinazo, sio

heq—————————————-elko————————————–travae

iki,ika————————————-iko—————————————-fevgo

kale————————————– kelis-tos———————————-alogo

kall————————————— kileo————————————–qeo

korr—————————————kir—————————————-thiro

krua—————————————krunos———————————–vrisi

kri, krye———————————-krithen———————————–qefalo

leh, lind———————————–leh—————————————-jenieme

lepur————————————–leporis———————————–lagaes

lesh—————————————-lesios————————————mala

lig——————————————ligos————————————–adhinatos

loz—————————————–lizo—————————————-pezo

lutem————————————–litome————————————parakalo

marr, mar——————————–mar-pto———————————-perno

marre————————————-margos———————————-trelaes

me duket———————————-dhokei mi——————————-nomizo

mend, mendoj—————————-mendohem—————————–sqeftome, nus

meri, meni——————————–minis————————————thimos

mi, miu————————————-mis————————————–pondaqi

mjeshter———————————–mistor———————————–tehnitis

mjet—————————————-mitos————————————nima hondrae

ndaj, naj———————————–dheo, deo——————————-horizon

ne——————————————-noi————————————–emis

nëm—————————————–nëm————————————-katara

nisem—————————————nisome———————————-nifi

nuk——————————————ni uk————————————-dhen

nuse—————————————–nisos, nios——————————nifi

para—————————————–paros———————————–mbrosta

per ty—————————————-par ti————————————ja sena

per-hapa, perhapesh———————apsh, aps——————————–piso

pune, puna———————————-ponos———————————–dhulia

qas, kias————————————-qio, kio———————————simono

qen, qeni———————————— qion————————————-sqilos

re, rete————————————– rea————————————–spanemfo

rrah——————————————rahso, raso—————————–dhermo, htipae

rri——————————————–eridhome——————————–kathame

rronje—————————————-rronio, rronimi————————zo, akmazo

ruaj, rojtar———————————- rrio, rritor——————————filsao

shkel—————————————– skelos———————————–patio, patae

shkop—————————————–akipon, skiptro————————ravdhi

sy———————————————-ose————————————-mati

tata, ati, i ati———————————- tata, ata, jetas————————-pateras

ter——————————————— terso———————————–stegnaeno

thrras, thrres———————————threo, throos————————–fonazo

torre——————————————-tornoo———————————-jiro

udhe, udha————————————udhos———————————-dhromos

vane——————————————-van————————————-pigan

vend, ved————————————–vedos, vedhos————————edhafos, topos

vere——————————————–vear————————————katoqeri

vesa, versa————————————versi———————————–dhrosos

vesh, vishem———————————-vesthis, visnimi————————forae, forao

zie———————————————–zei————————————–vrazi

The list is not exhaustive and does not include the words with the same meaning in both languages, or words that were preserved in Greek and not in Albanian. Nor does it include root words (that are preserved in Albanian) that seem to be the base words in use today. By all accounts, this is not an exhaustive study of the language attributable to the ancient “Greek”. More comprehensive work is needed to fully evaluate the scope of ancient features in the Albanian language. Kollias, concluded that the Pelasgian race might be the progenitor race of Greeks and Latins, but Albanians are the only ones that preserved the old “Greek” language.

One cannot discount the effect of the “barbarian” language on the Greek dialects; based on the above analysis, it can also be concluded that Albanian language preserves a considerable amount of words from ancient “Greek”/Pelasgic language. This observation raises the question as to how does the Albanian language relate to the ancient “Greek” dialects? Another question would be which language was distinctly more conservative, thus more faithful in preserving elements of the old language/Pelasgian?

These questions took the attention of many scholars in the last few hundred 250 years. As the Balkans became an object of attention in 18th and 19th centuries, many scholars focused on the then held common opinion that Albanians are descendents of the original Balkan population. Pioneering work was done by Johan George von Malte-Brun, Hahn, Franz Bopp, Depetro Camarda, Giuseppe Krispi, and others. Giuseppe Krispi would write:

…in analyzing the origin of Greek language, it is realized that a major part of it reverts to Albanian…due to latters older origin; and in essence, the language that was spoken in centuries before Homer, even if it were to be half-Greek, it served as the source for most of the Hellenic language, and which basically does not differ from the original language…Pelasgian (Albanian, Mother of all Languages, 1831.)

Johan Georg von Hahn in 1854 published Albanian studies, in which he concluded that the illyrians, Epiriotes and Macedonians were not Greek, but antedated them, descending from ancient Pelasgians. He used Albanian language to dwell into the meaning of words from Greco-roman mythology: Uranus, Rhea, Kronos, Kyklopea, Venus, Anna, Perenna, Anaitis, Zeus, Ge, Dhemeter, Deukalion, Thetis, Oceanus, Dif, Diel, Kybelle, Atlas, Vulkanus, Tinias, Tina, Ceres, Kore, Hermakes, Turms, Merkuris, Nemesis, Ruana, Pales.

Camarda documented the antiquity of the Albanian language in his book A Comparative Grammar Essay on the Albanian Language (1864). He made an important philological comparison of Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, classical Greek and Albanian roots. From his critical analysis of more than a score of scholarly sources he concluded that the Albanian language was the most ancient of European languages.

The subject of the antiquity of the Albanian language never took hold, as the philehellenes refocused the attention on convincing the world that the modern Greeks were the descendents of the classical Greeks, of even the Myceneans. Everything else of outside of this line of thought was seen as irrelevant. Albanian history fell a victim of philohellenic vision, and work on its history basically came to a standstill.

The situation was not helped by the fact that Albanians did not produce good historical linguists. The writings of the latter constituted in summarizing the work of non-Albanian linguists, and they were careful to present opposing viewpoints; at the end coming out of in favor of Albanian autochthony, but in reality not contributing much. In reality, the linguist Eqerem Cabej, has done serious work in the advancement Albanian linguistic history. He highlighted many problems of both the Albanian Language and Albanian culture by demonstrating its ancientness and its Illyrian origin. He demonstrated that the ancient names of places, rivers and mountains differ from the present Albanian names only in relation to the phonetic changes that have occurred over time.

I should point out that in contrast, the Albanian archeologists have made significant contribution in the field of archeology and in filling the gaps in the history. They proved that material culture in Albanian territories had continued uninterrupted from the earliest times.

Neolithic traces were found throughout Albania, but particularly the discoveries at Maliq attest to its role as an important Balkan center. Its pottery indicates to have inherited traditional forms, but at the same a more refined pottery surfaces are evidenced. The effects of the this culture have been observed Dardania (Hisar I, Glladnice, Bubanj Hum Ia), in Pelagonia (Servia, Armenohori). More general connections lead to Thesaly (Dikili-Tash), Rumania (Salkuca), Bulgaria (Krividol) and also Troy.

With the coming of steppe people at about 2100 BC, the pottery is indicated to have turned coarse. Another element that the new comers introduce was tumulus burial. But unlike in the adjoining areas, no interruption is indicated in cultural layers, material life continued same as in eneolithic centers. Thus, the steppe migrations were not as onerous on the local population which it would appear that not only survived, but it also assimilated the new comers. These migrations and the fusion that followed was to change the eneolithic ethno-cultural make-up of the area.

Unlike Greece where the Iron Age was accompanied by the destruction of the Mycenaean-Cretan civilization, the introduction of the new metal appears to have been peaceful in Albania. Albanian archeologists have observed no evidence to support the introduction of the “Aegean” factor in the development of Illyrian ethnogenesis. Thus escaping the thrust of invasions and in turn securing a cultural continuity that eventually differentiates them from their neighbors to the south. This would logically explain why the ancient Greek writers continued to refer to the inhabitants of Epirus, Illyria, Macedonia as “barbarian”.

All this speaks in support of the opinion that Albanian language has been a conservative language that has preserved ancient features. It is the only language that has a natural development, developed on its own, unlike the neighboring languages that owe their formation to a church or government. As such, some have seen Albanian language as the only basis through which ancient writings can be approached for decipherment.

Author:

Effective demolition of the main argument put forward by Greece to justify blocking Macedonia’s path to integration into NATO and the EU.

The late N.G.L. Hammond, Emeritus Professor of Greek at the University of Bristol, Honorary Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge, and Officer of the Royal Hellenic Order of the Phoenix, was perhaps the Western world’s leading authority on ancient Macedonia, and author of a three-volume history of ancient Macedonia. From early on, he was quite categorical about the nationality of the ancient Macedonians: ‘The Macedonians in general did not consider themselves Greeks, nor were they considered Greeks by their neighbours.’ This conclusion was based on a study of Herodotus, Thucycidides and other ancient Greek writers (N.G.L. Hammond, A History of Greece to 322 BC, 2nd ed., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967, p. 535).

This conclusion was reaffirmed in the works on ancient Macedonian history he subsequently published. In his ‘History of Macedonia’, he wrote the following:

The Macedonians had no reason and presumably no wish to align themselves with the Greek states either as promoters of Greek culture or as speakers of a common language. Each people had its own culture, and each people was destined to develop on its own lines in accordance with its own genius and its own situation. Hostility between the two was to be expected. A slender bridge between them was represented by the Greek language, spoken as contemporary Doric by the royal house and in the form of an ancient patois by the Macedones, but a means of communication is very far from assuring peaceful relations between two peoples, as we know from our experience of the modern world. (N.G.L. Hammond, A History of Macedonia, vol. 1, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972, p. 441).

In his ‘The Macedonian State: Origins, Institutions and History’, Hammond wrote the following:

We have already inferred from the incident at the Olympic Games c. 500 that the Macedonians themselves, as opposed to their kings, were considered not to be Greeks. Herodotus said this clearly in four words, introducing Amyntas, who was king c. 500, as ‘a Greek ruling over Macedonians’, and Thucydides described the Macedonians and other northern tribes as ‘barbarians’ in the sense of ‘non-Greeks’, despite the fact that they were Greek-speaking. When it came to political controversy, it was naturally good invective to call the king a barbarian too. Thus a Greek speech-writer called the Thessalians ‘Greeks’ and Archelaus, the contemporary Macedonian king, ‘a barbarian’. Demosthenes spoke of Philip II as ‘the barbarian from Pella’. Writing in 346 and eager to win Philip’s approval, Isocrates paid tribute to Philip as a blue-blooded Greek and made it clear at the same time that the Macedonians were not Greeks. Aristotle, born at Stageira on the Macedonian border and the son of a Greek doctor at the Macedonian court, classed the Macedonians and their institution of monarchy as not Greek, as we shall see shortly. It is thus not surprising that the Macedonians considered themselves to be, and were treated by Alexander the Great as being, separate from the Greeks. They were proud to be so. (N.G.L. Hammond, The Macedonian State: Origins, Institutions and History, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989, p. 19).

Other classical scholars support Hammond’s thesis on the non-Greek character of the ancient Macedonia. The late Chester G. Starr, Bentley Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Michigan, has this to say:

‘The Acarnanians, Aetolians, and other Greeks dwelling in the forests and fertile plains of northwest Greece remained backward tribal peoples. To their east lay the large but weak kingdom of Macedonia. This was not counted as Greek, though its stock was closely related’. (Chester G. Starr, ‘A History of the Ancient World’, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1991, p. 260).

‘Macedonia was essentially a tribal kingdom, far larger than any Greek state but so loosely organised and beset by even more barbarian neighbours that it had never been important. Its kings had fostered Greek culture at their courts and been accepted as Greek by the officials of the Olympic games; but the peasantry and nobles, though akin to the Greeks, were considered distinct’. (Ibid., p. 367).

As the above quotations indicate, a case could be made that, if not the Macedonian people, then the Macedonian kings could be considered to have been Greek, insofar as they claimed Greek descent and promoted Greek culture at their court. Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge and a biographer of Alexander, mentions that ‘it is noteworthy that only the reigning king of Macedon, and no other Macedonians, was considered sufficiently Greek to be permitted to enter the sacred Olympic Games as a competitor.’ (Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past, MacMillan, London, 2004, p. 33).

Yet to describe Alexander the Great and his father Philip II as ‘Greek kings’, as their respective Wikipedia entries, presumably bombarded by edits from Greek nationalists, rather pointedly do, is somewhat akin to calling the British monarchs since the 1710s ‘German kings and queens’. The late Moses I. Finley, Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge, wrote that, from the point of view of the Greeks, Philip II was ‘a despot and outsider, at best an “honorary Hellene,” whose own motives and interests, it need scarcely be said, were fundamentally not those of the Greeks he was to lead.’ (M.I. Finlay, The Ancient Greeks, Chatto and Windus, London, 1963, p. 83). As for Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, ‘It seems that he relied almost entirely on his own Macedonian generals and soldiers and had little trust in the Greeks, and that he was prepared to make a place for the Persian nobility.’ (ibid., p. 173).

Cartledge goes into some depth about Alexander’s unwillingness to rely on Greek troops, and on the fact that many more Greeks fought for Persia against him than vice versa:

‘To sum up: the most plausible explanation of the composition of Alexander’s forces, as it seems to me, is that he mistrusted the Greeks’ loyalty, with good reason after all, and that an awful lot more Greeks disliked or feared Alexander’s Macedonian rule than positively favoured or embraced it. This impression seems confirmed by none other than Arrian, retailer of the pro-Alexander Official version of events for the most part. At the Battle of Issus, he reports, there was among Alexander’s troops ‘even a degree of emulous antagonism between members of the Greek and Macedonian peoples’ – that is, between troops who were supposed to be fighting on the same side in a common cause. This was because for many Greeks, the Macedonians too – not just the Persians – were ‘barbarians’. Furthermore, it was Macedon, not the [Persian] Great King, which they thought was the real, or at any rate the more immediately present, danger and enemy. For many Macedonians, conversely, Greeks were members of a recently defeated and so despised people who did not know how to conduct their political and military life sensibly‘. (Cartledge, Alexander the Great, pp. 94-95).

There remains the question of why certain classical scholars whose own works have shattered the myth that the ancient Macedonians were Greek should have ended up endorsing the Greek-nationalist cause vis-a-vis the Republic of Macedonia, even at the price of eating their own words. As we noted above, Hammond, in his ‘History of Macedonia’, wrote the following of the ancient Greeks and Macedonians:

‘A slender bridge between them was represented by the Greek language, spoken as contemporary Doric by the royal house and in the form of an ancient patois by the Macedones, but a means of communication is very far from assuring peaceful relations between two peoples, as we know from our experience of the modern world.’

Yet in an interview with the Greek-nationalist publication Macedonian Echo in February 1993, he said the following, in response to the suggestion that Demosthenes of Athens viewed the Macedonians as ‘barbarians’:

‘Personally, I believe that it is the common language, which gives one the opportunity to share a common civilization. Thus the language is the main factor that forms a national identity.’

Cartledge devotes a considerable part of his biography of Alexander to discussing the ambiguous nature of Alexander’s relationship with, and identification with, the Greek world, noting:

‘We have already seen that it was a live issue whether Alexander was truly “Greek”.’ (Cartledge, Alexander the Great, p. 15).

Yet five years later, Cartledge added his name to an open letter to President Obama signed by 200 classical scholars in support of the Greek-nationalist stance on Macedonia, which claimed:

‘Alexander the Great was thoroughly and indisputably Greek.’

I am not going to speculate here as to why such scholars might contradict themselves in this way, though I believe it is not difficult to work out. Suffice it to say that I take more seriously what scholars say in their major works, than what they say when making political statements.

This comment appeared on the author’s Greater Surbiton weblog, 15 September 2010