Jerusalem, Istanbul, Athens, Thessaloniki, Skala, Heraklion, Nicosia, Lipsi Town, Dayton, New York, Orlando – what do they have in common? Substantive Greek populations. We easily understand communities like New York, Dayton and Orlando – they're immigrant communities where now generations of Greco-Americans have made their home, family from the old country come and visit and occasionally first, second and third generations spread out across America - joining the great American Melting Pot.
Athens, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Skala and Lipsi Town also make sense to the modern American – or generally Western – brain because these cities are all within Greece. So in a homogenous country - they're of course Greek. Nicosia, Cyprus kinda' makes sense because Cyprus has a Greek ethnic majority, although probably few of us stop to think about why it isn't part of the modern Greek state – largely because how often do we even think of Cyprus, if we're aware of it, and even if we are – what impact does Cyprus have on anything? So, we can accept that they're separate, but Greek-ish mostly because we once read it somewhere.
Istanbul and Jerusalem don't seem like places you'd expect to see a lot of Greeks – and there aren't huge numbers in either anymore. But if you consider the Greek Orthodox Church's long-time role in Jerusalem and their continued strong presence, it makes sense. And unless we've recently listened to They Might Be Giants, few people consider that Istanbul was once Constantinople – the very seat of the Orthodox Church, capitol of the Byzantine Empire and therefore – the one-time epicenter of Greek-ness.
But the Greeks who remain in Istanbul, unlike their American cousins are not finding opportunity and prospering. Those who remain are a hearty, stubborn bunch who managed to resist being expelled (or "repatriated the way it was seen by Turkish eyes) in the aftermath of the First World War or killed or driven out during the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955, also known as "The Events of September 6-7" in Turkish nomenclature. People of Greek ethnicity who hadn't lived in and in many cases even seen Greece in generations were forced "back" to a country they never knew, often leaving behind their assets – in some cases substantial wealth – to start again.
We live in a world where the modern nation-state is the bedrock political concept on which our world works. The idea of national borders and identities based on lines that in theory or should represent national/ethnic self-determination have led to a UN recognized 195 nation-states globally. Prior to the end of the Second World War, there were roughly 55 independent nations in the world – although the idea of self-governing nation-states began taking hold in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Just as Greece was one of the early great empires, it was also an early example of a nation-state, with the modern Hellenic Republic arguably beginning in 1821 with the Greek Declaration of Independence, but commonly recognized by the world in 1830. But it wasn't the size we know it as today. Greece encompassed much of the area around Athens and some of the nearby islands – which much of the land and islands at its periphery which were uninhabited by Greek people and probably would have liked to be part of an independent Greece remained under Ottoman (aka Turkish) control – including Patmos and the rest of the Dodecanese islands – but also some heavy-hitters like Corfu, Crete and Thessaloniki/Thrace
Today, Greece refers to its period under the Ottoman Empire as "The Turkish Occupation" which from a nation-state perspective totally makes sense. But the idea of Greece began long before the modern nation-state and existed for thousands of years without union as its own political entity. The ancient Greeks would hardly have identified as being part of the same nation since Athens, Thebes, Crete, etc were all separate kingdoms – or republics in Athens' case. Greece was a term that described a linguistic-ethnic – culturally semi-homogenous area of the Mediterranean. And the Greek people lived under numerous waves of empires that came and went including Assyria, Rome, Byzantine and Ottoman (the last being the most relaxing after a hard day).
To me, one of the most amazing thing about the Greek people is that similar to Poles (who maintained an identity despite having only small portions of their history as a sovereign nation) or Jews (who have maintained a strong identity over thousands of years of diaspora) for that matter – they managed to keep their own, very specific ethnic and cultural identity despite having relatively little (or no depending on whether or not you count the Byzantine
Empire as Greek) since antiquity under their own rule. Something about them managed to impress their imperial overlords enough to allow them to continue being Greek. We know Rome was so impressed with Greek civilization that it adopted their religion and much of their culture. The Byzantine Empire was heavily Greek. But when you think that the Ottoman Empire was predominately muslim and spread Islam to other parts of Southeastern Europe such as the Balkan Peninsula – there must have been something either impressive or fierce enough about Greeks to allow them to continue to be Greek Orthodox and live their traditional way of life.
In the aftermath of World War I, having been on the right side of the war, Greece really came into its own having taken Thrace and most of the islands that remained under Ottoman or other rule - except the Dodecanese. Somehow in Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, Italy bargained as Italians can and claimed the Dodecanese for themselves. Despite an attempt at "Italianification" in Rhodes, the Dodecanese proved mostly fruitless for Italy, but it nonetheless hung onto its little "colony" until surrendering to the Allies in World War II. Sadly, Italian defeat in 1943 didn't free the Dodecanese because Greece, using Bulgarian henchman, had already taken Greece and moved quickly to secure the Dodecanese before the Allies could. Besides two miserable years under German control for the local Greeks, 6,000 Greek Jews perished during those two years, with only 1,200 escaping to Turkey by boat.
So it wasn't until 1945 and the final end of the war that the Dodecanese became the final Greek islands to reunite with the modern Hellenic Republic. So from a liberal Western and Greek perspective, all is now right – the land mass and people of Greece are united with self determination and democracy. Despite some years of economic volatility and a fair number of airplane hijackings out of the Athens airport in the 70's – Greece is a success story in our modern paradigm. The Greek people deserve credit for a tremendous amount of patience and perseverance even if they still ride the economic rollercoaster.
Sometimes I marvel at the fact that little, remote islands like Patmos and Lipsi have retained their Greek identity despite the waves of occupiers over the course of centuries. Other times I also wonder, if Greeks can remain Greeks and Poles can remain Poles for so long without the aid of a sovereign nation state, which way are they better off? The modern liberal-democracy story that we all generally share says that Poles and Greeks currently live
in the best of all possible worlds. Maybe.
Traditionally, empires have held two functions: 1. As trophies to megalomanic leaders 2. As free-trade zones that increase cooperation across broad expanses and reduce political and economic inefficiencies. Of course, sometimes they have been both. Because of the first, the modern Western view is that empire=oppression, which it can. But some empires, such as arguably the Austrian, Ottoman and British also created incredible free-trade
zones that in many cases brought distinct benefits to their territories and colonies. No one wants their country taken by force and ruled from afar – but it's hard to imagine Greece didn't have greater trade opportunities under a large, relatively tolerant regime like the Ottomans than it did in the hundred or so years after Greek Independence.
This is where the idea of the European Union enters the picture – a voluntary compact bringing out the benefits of empire without the conquering and oppression. NATO performs the another key function of empire – eliminating the chance of war with neighbors and creating a common defense against larger, outside threats. Thus, collective security and economic cooperation zones are no longer confined to Europe, but are becoming increasingly popular globally - ASEAN, MERCOSUR, ANZUS, the African Union and to some degree the British Commonwealth.
Our world seems to be struggling with retaining our various national and ethnic identities as global interdependence and cooperation become unshakable facts of life. The idea that there is no going back frightens many and even worse that someone in America is essentially competing against someone else in China, India, Israel of Romania for the same job. The world will inevitably become smaller as places as remote as Patmos, Lipsi or Bali are connected by the same high speed and wireless communications as everywhere else. We are increasingly one-world and whether by force or not, the Dodecanese no longer belong to Turkey and Italy – but they do not belong solely to the Greek nation-state. Like the rest of us, they increasingly belong to the world – while working to retain their Greek-ness. Which based on who they are, and everything they have gone through – I am thoroughly confident they will. Maybe we can all take a page from their playbook.
