Crusader mentality in Greece, Turkish genocide

History of the Greeks

The official name of today's Greece is the Hellenic Republic (Elliniki Dimokratia). Hellenes came to these lands as tribes in the second millennium BC. They had to fight the Persians in 492-448 BC. Sparta, which ruled the Peloponnese peninsula (Peloponnese), took action against Athens and the Peloponnesian War took place between Athens and Sparta between 431-404 BC. The Athenians were defeated in this war and their leadership in the Greek world ended. 

The Macedonian King Philip II's decisive victory over the Greek armies in 338 BC could not be prevented. Thus, the political independence of the Greek city-states came to an end. Alexander the Great, who ascended the throne in 336 BC, took Macedonia and Greece as his base and moved against the Persians. Alexander conquered Anatolia, Egypt and Iran. He moved deeper into Asia; thus, while classical Greek culture spread, the cultural elements of the conquered places were also carried to Greece. As a result of this interaction, Hellenistic culture was formed. Some time after Alexander's death, Roman rule began in Greece. In 148 BC, Macedonia was a province of Rome and the Hellenes called themselves Romans (Romaios) during the Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

Turks granted the Greeks the right to self-government

They were also called Rum by the Seljuks and Ottomans. Throughout history, what is now Greece has been home to various elements such as Lacedaemonians, Italians, Peloponnesians, Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, Gypsies and Turks. From 1387, when the first Peloponnesian campaigns began, until the capture of the Peloponnese in 1460, the Ottomans made 13 expeditions to the island. During the 1460 campaign, Mehmed the Conqueror personally led the army to the Peloponnese.  The region remained under Ottoman rule from that date until 1829.

Although the Ottoman rule that began in Greece is characterized by Greeks as "the darkest period", a growing number of studies, especially recent ones, show that Greeks made significant progress in population and trade during the Ottoman period. When Mehmed the Conqueror protected and reorganized the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, the Orthodox Church was granted certain rights and autonomy, thus securing the religious life of the Greeks. The privileges granted to the monasteries of Athos and Meteora enabled the training of many Orthodox clergymen. In particular, Athos (Ottoman Aynaroz, Greek Agion Oros "holy mountain"), the easternmost part of the Halkidiki (Three Fingers) peninsula extending to the Aegean Sea, continued to be an important religious center with many monasteries. The Ottoman sultans confirmed and extended the rights of the monasteries by edicts. In addition, many new churches were built in the mountains of Ossa and Pelion, in the Pindos region, in the accidents of Tarhala and Karpenisi, in mountain villages in Epirus and elsewhere. The Tahrir books clearly show that the Christian population and trade increased every year.

The Venetians occupied the Peloponnese between 1684 and 1686. In 1698, with the Treaty of Carlofça, the Ottomans were forced to cede the Peloponnese to the Venetians. In 1715, with the cooperation of the local Greeks, who were devastated by the persecution of the Venetians, the Peloponnese came back under Ottoman rule. 

After the 1789 French Revolution, the Russian-backed organization "Filiki Eteria" (Friendship Society) was founded in Odessa under the influence of the freedom movements. The aim of the organization was determined as "Megali Idea", i.e. the "Big Idea", to establish a Greek state without leaving a single Turk in Greek lands. In 1820, Alexander Ipsilanti, an aide to the Russian Tsar and a member of the Fenerli families of Istanbul, was appointed as the head of the organization. Although the members of the organization wanted to start the rebellion in the Peloponnese, Ipsilanti took action in Wallachia and Bosphorus. When the Ottomans suppressed the rebellion, he fled to Austria, where he died a miserable death. The remaining members of the organization fled to the Peloponnese and continued the rebellion from there. They took their defeat in Wallachia-Bogdan out on the civilian Turks in a very brutal way. In 1715, the local Greeks, distraught by the cruelty of the Venetians, joined forces with the rebels. Under the guarantees of Russia, France and England, the State of Greece was established in 1830.

Peloponnese Massacre

From the beginning of the rebellion until the establishment of the Greek state, all but a few of the approximately 50,000 Turks living in the Peloponnese, who were able to migrate to Anatolia, were massacred in the most brutal manner. All architectural monuments belonging to the Turks in the Peloponnese were destroyed, something that was not done in Spain, Sicily or Crimea. Not even a single tombstone belonging to the Turks was left. Foreign sources describing these murders were destroyed in French, German, British and American libraries.

Justin A. McCarthy, an American professor of history at the University of Louisville, describes these events in great detail in his book Death and Exile. A few sentences are very instructive:

The national slogan of the uprising was given by Bishop Germanos of Patras: "Peace for Christians! Respect for the consuls! Death to the Turks".

McCarthy states that all Turks were killed, men, women, old and children, and that this was the crime of a nation. Although all European observers reported the shameful reports they witnessed to their countries, the countries encouraging the rebellion did not pay any attention. 

British historian Walter Alison Phillips describes the Tripoli massacre as follows:

"For three days the poor Turkish settlers were subjected to the lust and cruelty of a band of savages. There was no sparing of sex or age. Even women and children were tortured before being killed. The carnage was so great that even Kolokotrones himself, the head of the mob, said that "when I entered the town, my horse's feet never touched the ground, starting from the gate of the upper fortress". The victory celebration parade route was lined with a blanket of corpses. When two days had elapsed, the wretched survivors of the Muslims, about two thousand people of all ages and sexes, mostly women and children, were brutally rounded up and taken to a stream bed, where they were slaughtered like sheep".

The same incitement and support that was given to Greece yesterday is being given to both Greece and the Kurds today, perhaps even more so. We need to be very vigilant as a state and nation. May God give no opportunity to any of them.

References

1. Elizabeth M. Edmonds, İngilizce tercümesi, Kolokotrones, the Klepht and the Warrior, Sixty Years of Peril and Daring. An autobiography. London, 1892,

2 McCarthy, Justin. The Turk in America: The Creation of an Enduring Prejudice (2010), Utah Üniversitesi Yayınlar

3. McCarthy, Justin, Ölüm ve Sürgün, Çev.Fatma Sarıkaya , Ankara, TTK, 2020.