Greece and the Ottoman Empire established diplomatic relations in the 1830s. This was following Greece's formation after its declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire. Their relations can be characterised as having a history of conflict. There were several wars that they directly and indirectly fought each other and that led to a gradual loss of territory by the Ottoman Empire until its final defeat during World War II.
The Byzantine Empire although a different regime to the nation of Greece, factors into the nations modern relations as heritage. [1] Some view the Byzantine Empire (the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire during the medieval era) as the medieval expression of a Greek nation and a pre-modern nation state. [2]
The Göktürks of the First Turkic Khaganate were the first Turkic state to use the name Türk politically. [3] The first contact with the Romans (Byzantine Empire) is believed to be 563. [4] [5] The 10th century saw the rise of the Seljuk Turks. [6]
The first conflict between the Byzantine Empire and Seljuk Turks occurred at the Battle of Kapetron in 1048. More notable is the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the Turkish settlement of Anatolia that followed. Later, Turkish Anatolian beyliks were established both in formerly Byzantine lands and in the territory of the fragmenting Seljuk Sultanate. [7] One of those beyliks was the Ottoman dynasty and become the Ottoman Empire. [8] In 1453, the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine Empire. [9]
All of modern Greece by the time of the capture of the Despotate of the Morea was under Ottoman authority, with the exception of some of the islands.
Life under the Ottoman Empire had several dimensions:
Romioi in various places of the Greek peninsula would at times rise up against Ottoman rule, taking advantage of wars the Ottoman Empire would engage in. Those uprisings were of mixed scale and impact.
Greek nationalism started to appear in the 18th century.
In March 1821, the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire began. In Constantinople, on Easter Sunday, the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, Gregory V, was publicly hanged although he had condemned the revolution and preached obedience to the Sultan in his sermons. [38]
Building on the success of the first year of war, the Greek Constitution of 1822 would be the first of the new state, adopted at the first National Assembly at Epidaurus.
However, the Greek victories would be short-lived as civil war would weaken its ability to react; the Sultan called for aid from his Egyptian vassal Muhammad Ali, who dispatched his son Ibrahim Pasha to Greece with a fleet and 8,000 men, and later added 25,000 troops. [39] Ibrahim's intervention proved decisive: much of the Peloponnese was reconquered in 1825; the gateway town of Messolonghi fell in 1826; and Athens was taken in 1827. The only territory still held by Greek nationalists was in Nafplion, Mani, Hydra, Spetses and Aegina. [39] [40] [41] During this time, there were many massacres during the Greek War of Independence committed by both revolutionaries and the Ottoman Empire's forces.
The Treaty of London (1827) was declined by the Ottoman Empire, which led to the Battle of Navarino in 1827. The French Morea expedition between 1828 and 1833 would expel Egyptian troops from the Peloponnese and the Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829) which occurred in retaliation due to Russian support at Navarino, led to the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) which enforced the Treaty of London. Karl Marx in an article in the New York Tribune (21 April 1853), wrote: "Who solved finally the Greek case? It was neither the rebellion of Ali Pasha, neither the battle in Navarino, neither the French Army in Peloponnese, neither the conferences and protocols of London; but it was Diebitsch, who invaded through the Balkans to Evros". [42]
The establishment of a Greek state was recognized in the London Protocol of 1828 but it was not until the London Protocol (1830), which amended the decisions of the 1829 protocol, that Greece was established as an independent, sovereign state. The assassination of Ioannis Kapodistrias, Greece's first governor, would lead to the London Conference of 1832 and that formed the Kingdom of Greece with the Treaty of Constantinople (1832).
The first borders of the Greek state consisted of the Greek mainland south of a line from Arta to Volos plus Euboea and the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea. The rest of the Greek-speaking lands, including Crete, Cyprus and the rest of the Aegean islands, Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace, remained under Ottoman rule. Over one million Greeks also lived in what is now Turkey, mainly in the Aegean region of Asia Minor, especially around Smyrna, in the Pontus region on the Black Sea coast, in the Gallipoli peninsula, in Cappadocia, in Istanbul, in Imbros and in Tenedos.
The relations between Greece and the Ottoman Empire during this time period were shaped by two concepts:
There were five wars that directly and indirectly linked all conflict
The Young Turks, who seized power in the Ottoman Empire in 1908, were Turkish nationalists whose objective was to create a strong, centrally governed state. The Christian minorities of the Empire, including Greeks, saw their position in the Empire deteriorate.
Greece entered the First World War on the side of the Allies in the summer of 1917 following The Great Division between the King and Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos The Ottoman Empire entered the War with the attack on Russia's Black Sea coast on 29 October 1914. The attack prompted Russia and its allies, Britain and France, to declare war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 31 October 1918, ending the Ottoman participation in World War I.
With the Allies victory in World War I, Greece was rewarded with territorial acquisitions, specifically Western Thrace (Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine) and Eastern Thrace and the Smyrna area (Treaty of Sèvres). Greek gains were largely undone by the subsequent Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). [50]
On 1 November 1922, the Turkish Parliament in Ankara formally abolished the Sultanate, thus ending 623 years of monarchical Ottoman rule. The Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923, which superseded the Treaty of Sèvres, led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the newly formed "Republic of Turkey" as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, and the republic was officially proclaimed on 29 October 1923 in Ankara, the country's new capital. [56] The Lausanne Convention stipulated a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, whereby 1.1 million Greeks left Turkey for Greece in exchange for 380,000 Muslims transferred from Greece to Turkey. [57]
There were atrocities and ethnic cleansing by both sides during this period. The war with Greece and the revolutionary Turks saw both sides commit atrocities. The Greek genocide was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which started before the World War I, continued during the war and its aftermath (1914–1922). It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, [59] against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire.
The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1829. In 1826, the Greeks were assisted by the British Empire, Kingdom of France, and the Russian Empire, while the Ottomans were aided by their North African vassals. The war led to the formation of modern Greece, which would be expanded to its modern size in later years. The revolution is celebrated by Greeks around the world as independence day on 25 March.
Rūm, also romanized as Roum, is a derivative of Parthian (frwm) terms, ultimately derived from Greek Ῥωμαῖοι. Both terms are endonyms of the pre-Islamic inhabitants of Anatolia, the Middle East and the Balkans and date to when those regions were parts of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Rumelia was the name of a historical region in Southeastern Europe that was administered by the Ottoman Empire, roughly corresponding to the Balkans. In its wider sense, it was used to refer to all Ottoman possessions and vassals in Europe. These would later be geopolitically classified as "the Balkans", although Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia are often excluded. During the period of its existence, Rumelia was more often known in English as Turkey in Europe.
The Megali Idea is a nationalist and irredentist concept that expresses the goal of reviving the Byzantine Empire, by establishing a Greek state, which would include the large Greek populations that were still under Ottoman rule after the end of the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) and all the regions that had large Greek populations.
Enosis is the movement of various Greek communities that live outside Greece for incorporation of the regions that they inhabit into the Greek state. The idea is related to the Megali Idea, an irredentist concept of a Greek state that dominated Greek politics following the creation of modern Greece in 1830. The Megali Idea called for the annexation of all ethnic Greek lands, parts of which had participated in the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s but were unsuccessful and so remained under foreign rule.
The Orlov revolt was a Greek uprising in the Peloponnese and later also in Crete that broke out in February 1770, following the arrival of Russian Admiral Alexey Orlov, commander of the Imperial Russian Navy during the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), at the Mani Peninsula. The revolt, a major precursor to the Greek War of Independence, was part of Catherine the Great's so-called "Greek Plan" and was eventually suppressed by the Ottomans.
The vast majority of the territory of present-day Greece was at some point incorporated within the Ottoman Empire. The period of Ottoman rule in Greece, lasting from the mid-15th century to the successful Greek War of Independence that broke out in 1821 and the First Hellenic Republic was proclaimed in 1822, is known in Greek as Tourkokratia. Some regions, however, like the Ionian islands and various temporary Venetian possessions of the Stato da Mar were not incorporated in the Ottoman Empire. The Mani Peninsula in Peloponnese was not fully integrated into the Ottoman Empire, but was under Ottoman suzerainty.
Phanariots, Phanariotes, or Fanariots were members of prominent Greek families in Phanar, the chief Greek quarter of Constantinople where the Ecumenical Patriarchate is located, who traditionally occupied four important positions in the Ottoman Empire: Voivode of Moldavia, Voivode of Wallachia, Grand Dragoman of the Porte and Grand Dragoman of the Fleet. Despite their cosmopolitanism and often-Western education, the Phanariots were aware of their Greek ancestry and culture; according to Nicholas Mavrocordatos' Philotheou Parerga, "We are a race completely Hellenic".
The Greeks in Turkey constitute a small population of Greek and Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox Christians who mostly live in Istanbul, as well as on the two islands of the western entrance to the Dardanelles: Imbros and Tenedos. Greeks are one of the four ethnic minorities officially recognized in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, together with Jews, Armenians, and Bulgarians.
Greek nationalism, otherwise referred to as Hellenic nationalism, refers to the nationalism of Greeks and Greek culture. As an ideology, Greek nationalism originated and evolved in classical Greece. In modern times, Greek nationalism became a major political movement beginning in the early 19th century, which culminated in the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) against the Ottoman Empire.
Ottoman Greeks were ethnic Greeks who lived in the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922), much of which is in modern Turkey. Ottoman Greeks were Greek Orthodox Christians who belonged to the Rum Millet. They were concentrated in eastern Thrace, and western, central, and northeastern Anatolia. There were also sizeable Greek communities elsewhere in the Ottoman Balkans, Ottoman Armenia, Ottoman Syria and the Ottoman Caucasus, including in what, between 1878 and 1917, made up the Russian Caucasus province of Kars Oblast, in which Pontic Greeks, northeastern Anatolian Greeks, and Caucasus Greeks who had collaborated with the Russian Imperial Army in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 were settled in over 70 villages, as part of official Russian policy to re-populate with Orthodox Christians an area that was traditionally made up of Ottoman Muslims and Armenians.
In AD 1453, the city of Constantinople, the capital and last stronghold of the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Ottoman Empire. By this time Egypt had been under Muslim control for some eight centuries. Jerusalem had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate Muslims in 638, won back by Rome in 1099 under the First Crusade and then reconquered by Saladin's forces during the siege of Jerusalem in 1187. Later in the seventh Crusade, it was briefly taken back by the Catholics once again. It was conquered by the Ottomans in 1517. Orthodoxy, however, was very strong in Russia which had recently acquired an autocephalous status; and thus Moscow called itself the Third Rome, as the cultural heir of Constantinople. Under Ottoman rule, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired power as an autonomous millet. The ecumenical patriarch was the religious and administrative ruler of the entire "Greek Orthodox nation", which encompassed all the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Empire.
The participation of Greece in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 is one of the most important episodes in modern Greek history, as it allowed the Greek state to almost double its size and achieve most of its present territorial size. It also served as a catalyst of political developments, as it brought to prominence two personalities, whose relationship would dominate the next decade and have long-lasting repercussions for Greece: the Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, and the Army's commander-in-chief, the Crown Prince and later King, Constantine I.
The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent fall of the successor states of the Eastern Roman Empire marked the end of Byzantine sovereignty. Since then, the Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans and Anatolia, although there were some exceptions: the Ionian Islands were under Venetian rule, and Ottoman authority was challenged in mountainous areas, such as Agrafa, Sfakia, Souli, Himara and the Mani Peninsula. Orthodox Christians were granted some political rights under Ottoman rule, but they were considered inferior subjects. The majority of Greeks were called rayas by the Turks, a name that referred to the large mass of subjects in the Ottoman ruling class. Meanwhile, Greek intellectuals and humanists who had migrated west before or during the Ottoman invasions began to compose orations and treatises calling for the liberation of their homeland. In 1463, Demetrius Chalcondyles called on Venice and “all of the Latins” to aid the Greeks against the Ottomans, he composed orations and treatises calling for the liberation of Greece from what he called “the abominable, monstrous, and impious barbarian Turks.” In the 17th century, Greek scholar Leonardos Philaras spent much of his career in persuading Western European intellectuals to support Greek independence. However, Greece was to remain under Ottoman rule for several more centuries. In the 18th and 19th century, as revolutionary nationalism grew across Europe—including the Balkans —the Ottoman Empire's power declined and Greek nationalism began to assert itself, with the Greek cause beginning to draw support not only from the large Greek merchant diaspora in both Western Europe and Russia but also from Western European Philhellenes. This Greek movement for independence, was not only the first movement of national character in Eastern Europe, but also the first one in a non-Christian environment, like the Ottoman Empire.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity is today the religion of only a minority in Turkey. It was once the dominant religion, during the time of the Byzantine Empire, as the region that comprises Turkey today was a central part of the Byzantine heritage. Today, less than one tenth of one percent of the population are Orthodox Christians. The provinces of Istanbul and Hatay, which includes Antakya, are the main centers of Christianity in Turkey, with comparatively dense Christian populations, though they are minorities in these areas. The traditional variant of Orthodox Christianity present in Turkey is the Eastern Orthodox branch, focused mainly in the Greek Orthodox Church.
Turco-Albanian is an ethnographic, religious, and derogatory term used by Greeks for Muslim Albanians from 1715 and thereafter. In a broader sense, the term included both Muslim Albanian and Turkish political and military elites of the Ottoman administration in the Balkans. The term is derived from an identification of Muslims with Ottomans and/or Turks, due to the Ottoman Empire's administrative millet system of classifying peoples according to religion, where the Muslim millet played the leading role. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the term Turk and from the late nineteenth century onwards, the derivative term Turco-Albanian has been used as a pejorative term, phrase and or expression for Muslim Albanian individuals and communities. The term has also been noted to be unclear, ideologically and sentimentally charged, and an imperialist and racialist expression. Albanians have expressed derision and disassociation toward the terms Turk and its derivative form Turco-Albanian regarding the usage of those terms in reference to them. It has been reported that at the end of the 20th century some Christian Albanians still used the term "Turk" to refer to Muslim Albanians.
The Vilayet of Janina, Yanya or Ioannina was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire, established in 1867. In the late 19th century, it reportedly had an area of 18,320 square kilometres (7,070 sq mi). It was created by merging the Pashalik of Yanina and the Pashalik of Berat with the sanjaks of Janina, Berat, Ergiri, Preveze, Tırhala and Kesriye. Kesriye was later demoted to kaza and bounded to Monastir Vilayet and Tırhala was given to Greece in 1881.
Rūm millet was the name of the Eastern Orthodox Christian community in the Ottoman Empire. Despite being subordinated within the Ottoman political system, the community maintained a certain internal autonomy.
This is a timeline of the presence of Eastern Orthodoxy in Greece. The history of Greece traditionally encompasses the study of the Greek people, the areas they ruled historically, as well as the territory now composing the modern state of Greece.
Bulgarian Millet was an ethno-religious and linguistic community within the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th to early 20th century.
The first people to use the ethnonym Turk to refer to themselves were the Turuk people of the Gokturk Khanate in the mid sixth-century
The name 'Seljuk is a political rather than ethnic name. It derives from Selčiik, born Toqaq Temir Yally, a war-lord (sil-baši), from the Qiniq tribal grouping of the Oghuz. Seljuk, in the rough and tumble of internal Oghuz politics, fled to Jand, c.985, after falling out with his overlord.
That they hailed from the Kayı branch of the Oğuz confederacy seems to be a creative "rediscovery" in the genealogical concoction of the fifteenth century. It is missing not only in Ahmedi but also, and more importantly, in the Yahşi Fakih-Aşıkpaşazade narrative, which gives its own version of an elaborate genealogical family tree going back to Noah. If there was a particularly significant claim to Kayı lineage, it is hard to imagine that Yahşi Fakih would not have heard of it.
In fact, no matter how one were to try, the sources simply do not allow the recovery of a family tree linking the antecedents of Osman to the Kayı of the Oğuz tribe.
The klephts were descendants of Greeks who fled into the mountains to avoid the Turks in the fifteenth century and who remained active as brigands into the nineteenth century.
A sultan's Firman in 1680 lists the ethnic groups on the Balkan lands as follows: Greeks (Rum), Albanians (Arnaut), Serbs (Sirf), "Vlachs" (Eflak, referring to the Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians), and Bulgarians (Bulgar).
According to Kavanin-i Yeni eriyan, it was forbidden to take the only son of a family, or more than one boy from the same family; and only one boy could be taken from every forty households. Uzun arşılı states that "the one in forty" application was rarely used, but the basis for his statement is unclear
The French Revolution, which intensified this battle between conservative and liberal Greek Orthodox elites, represented the second main source of inspiration for the new secular Greek Orthodox intelligentsia. In the 1790–1800 decade, a heated conflict broke out between conservatives and liberals during which the Church did not hesitate to condemn Godless "Franco-masonic" ideas, while proponents of "enlightened reason" accused the Church of "voluntary slavery."
Fear of collapse and dissolution, heavy emphasis on foreign conspiracy and intervention, categorical denial of the insurgents' historical agency, the pampered "other" turning into pawns in the hands of foreign powers, a discourse of isolation in the international arena, and a feeling of victimization are the main themes that run through the documents in this book, mainstream Ottoman/Turkish historiography, and, indeed, the speeches of contemporary Turkish politicians
The genocide was committed by two subsequent and chronologically, ideologically, and organically interrelated and interconnected dictatorial and chauvinist regimes: (1) the regime of the CUP, under the notorious triumvirate of the three pashas (Üç Paşalar), Talât, Enver, and Cemal, and (2) the rebel government at Samsun and Ankara, under the authority of the Grand National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi) and Kemal. Although the process had begun before the Balkan Wars, the final and most decisive period started immediately after WWI and ended with the almost total destruction of the Pontic Greeks