Letter from Thessaloniki
So, according to some historians, if it wasn’t for the Turks, the Greeks probably would even be speaking Greek today. Shocking, isn’t it? For us, and those who love us, this is a horrendous assumption, yet it came from prominent lips. Sir Steven Runciman, a top British historian renowned for his work on the Middle Ages, wasn’t the only one who said it. In his book, «The Fall of Constantinople, 1453,» he wrote that though the Turks were cruel conquerors they also were sensible governors. And unlike the Roman Catholics, they did not persecute others for their religion. Runciman and others have supported the thesis that the Greek Orthodox Church survived by submitting politically to the sultan. Meanwhile, the Hellenic community continued to maintain its identity in a way that might have been difficult under other rulers. Considering the well-known remark of Loukas Notaras, the last Megas Doux of the Byzantine Empire – «better the sultan’s turban than a cardinal’s hat» – the atmosphere was tense just before the fall of Constantinople. But if you ask traditionalists in Greece today (and there are many of them), they will tell you another story – that Ottoman authorities prohibited education in the languages of their non-Muslim subjects. As a result, Greeks were forced to go to small underground schools to learn about their language and culture. Popular belief has credited these secret schools with keeping the Greek language and Greek literacy alive throughout the period of Turkish rule. A sixth-grade history book denied this story and therefore wreaked havoc. The Turks as good guys? No way. The textbook has left people fuming for weeks now, but Greek pride took another blow on Saturday after Greece’s disastrous loss to Turkey. Both events have left people clinging to the nationalistic spikes of identity, and clinging strongly to them. For instance, critics of the primary school textbook accused historians of trying to create an improper policy of «fraternization» between the Greeks and the Turks. The private TV channel ANT1 – a third-rate outlet for information, unless you want stale ideas, conspiracy theories and gossip – summoned the tired old argument that the «unpatriotic schoolbook» was the work of the US State Department. ANT1 has a supporter in Chryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn) – the far-right Greek political group that hates immigrants, Jews, and anybody else who doesn’t also hate immigrants and Jews. During the Greek Independence Day parade on Saturday, the Golden Dawners interrupted a day of celebration to burn the disputed schoolbook. No one wants to discuss anything but the accepted story of Good Greeks versus Bad Turks. But this myth, this strong tendency to glorify Byzantium at the expense of the Ottomans, is a question that has troubled many scholars. Christianity under Islam was no doubt a second-class religion and its adherents were second-class citizens. Yet the Turks were certainly not monsters, at least not in the way our modern media has depicted them. «The Turkish dominion did not forcibly interrupt a historical evolution,» wrote Professor Phaidon Maligoudis of Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, in a May 12, 2005, article in the newspaper Eleftherotypia. «On the contrary, it constituted itself as an element of continuation.» As the European Union expands, there are certainly many useful questions to ask and about as many myths to destroy, especially now. One of the famous questions Professor H. Trevor-Roper once asked the readers of The New Statesmen was: «As a living political system was the Byzantine Empire, at least in its decline, really better than the Ottoman Empire in its heyday?» The question was purely rhetorical, because Trevor-Roper already indicated that his own answer would be «no.» During the last 40 years, the attitude of the West toward Byzantium has changed from indifferent contempt to a fascinated admiration. It is hardly mentioned in Greek school manuals, but much of the old Byzantine Empire accepted the rule of the sultans without significant protest, preferring political and economic stability to the depressing and treacherous comings and goings of bankrupt despots. The Turks considered Christians «people of the Book.» Abraham and Mary are still revered by Muslims; «Jesus on whom salvation be poured,» as one Ottoman decree described him, is one of Islam’s greatest prophets. But historians, especially ones who are masters of narrative and details, often tell stories of the past in human terms. «The long-lasting image of a peaceful co-existence of all those different cultural communities in the Balkans would be perturbed if the transplantation of an ideology based on national states had arrived from the West,» Maligoudis wrote in in Eleftherotypia, in reference to the Ottoman Empire. «The Turkish dominion does not interrupt forcibly a historical evolution; on the contrary, it constitutes itself as an element of continuation.» But still, something in the human spirit craves the heroic, even if that act of heroism must be exaggerated or fabricated. Since God has not revealed any master plan to us, should we feel impelled to preach «the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth» in schoolbooks, on the pulpit and at military parades?
