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South European Society and Politics

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Tourkokratia: History and the Image of Turks in Greek

Literature
Iraklis Millas
Published online: 02 Dec 2009.

To cite this article: Iraklis Millas (2006) Tourkokratia: History and the Image of Turks in Greek Literature, South European
Society and Politics, 11:1, 47-60, DOI: 10.1080/13608740500470315

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 South European Society & Politics
Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2006, pp. 4760

Tourkokratia: History and the Image of

Turks in Greek Literature
Iraklis Millas
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In this chapter I examine Greek conceptualizations and images of the Turks as they are
expressed in literary texts. I observe that the Turks appear as negative personalities
whenever they are portrayed as abstract/historical characters and as potentially positive
individuals when presented as concrete/experienced persons. This discrepancy is repeated
in the period of Tourkokratia, the Ottoman rule, which is depicted negatively as a
historical event, but positively in personal memories. I argue that the authors of these
literary texts resisted contradiction by compartmentalizing their perceptions of the Turks
in parallel domains of experience. In some cases, the friendly Turks in personal memories
are transformed into naively positive admirers of the Greek Self.

Keywords: Greek Turkish Relations; Nationalism; Stereotypes; Perceptions of Tourko-

kratia; Literary Criticism

In the conversations of my childhood, especially those with my father, communicating

opinions about Turks was a painful topic. I was born into a family of
Constantinopolitan Greeks, Turkish citizens and members of the Greek community
of Istanbul, known in Turkey as Rum (see Ors, this volume). My father used to refer to
the abstract category of the Turks in negative terms, frequently claiming that the
Turks hated us and treated us unfairly. On such occasions I would remind him of my
Turkish classmates and friends, whom he himself liked too and I would argue that we
had Turkish neighbours whom we, and indeed our whole family, held in good regard.
You contradict yourself, I used to argue; you are guilty of exactly the same things that
you condemn in our Turkish neighbours.
My father was born in 1900. He lived through the Balkan Wars, the Greek Turkish
war of 1919 1922 and the two World Wars, in which Greece and Turkey were in
different military camps. He was brought up in a period when nationalism was at its
peak in both Greece and Turkey and he had been educated to think in nationalistic
terms. I only came to understand him better after he passed away and after I completed
some studies of my own on Greek Turkish relations. Now I think that the term

ISSN 1360-8746 (print)/ISSN 1743-9612 (online) q 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13608740500470315
 48 I. Millas
contradiction was not adequate to explain his attitudes. His identity and his
understanding of politics were too complex to be accurately described in simple
words; trapped between conflicting nationalist paradigms, he reproduced several
stereotypical representations of the undifferentiated Turk as the ethnic Other. In real
life, however, he was forced to encounter the Other on a frequent basis, and he
sincerely liked some of these actual, concrete people who happened to be the Others,
the Turks.
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Viewing Others, Positive or Negative

This article is concerned with conceptualizations and images of the Turks in Greek
literature. I focus on two aspects of the Greco-Turkish relationship in particular: the
Turk as either an abstract or concrete ethnic Other, and, connected to that, the notion
of Tourkokratia, i.e. the period of Ottoman rule in Greek lands. I discuss Greek views
and representations of the Turks as these are expressed in novels that refer to the Other
in an indirect way, i.e. mostly by composing stories about the Turks and narrating
situations about ourselves and Others. Special attention is devoted to themes that are
silenced and forgotten, as well as some other contradictions inherent in these
discourses.
Ethnic stereotypes normally are developed and reproduced in pairs, mutually on
both sides of the Us vs. Others conceptual divide, but in this article I will concentrate
primarily on images the Greeks have about the Turks. Occasionally, I will present some
cases from the Turkish side and some Turkish images of Greeks in order to show how
widespread some tendencies are.1 I am particularly concerned with the deconstruction
of convictions that are not openly admitted by Greek and Turkish authors, images that
usually find their way into the narratives I examine in a rather implicit and
unconscious way; the disseminators of the stereotypes, on the conscious level, perceive
the images and the stereotypes as knowledge and as facts.2
A close examination of Greek novels that refer, in one way or another, to the Turks
confirms a recurrent phenomenon: the Turks appear as negative personalities
whenever they are portrayed as abstract characters and as potentially positive
individuals when they are presented as concrete persons.3 Abstract personalities are
the ones who appear as symbols, as representatives of authority in the Ottoman
(and/or Turkish state) apparatus, mostly as historical figures who played a certain role
in a framework where Greeks and Turks and their respective nations were in
confrontation. These negative personalities are almost always men in their middle age
and mostly appear in historical novels or in narrations that examine the past. It is not
their names, but their titles, ranks and official positions that are of importance. They
could be sultans, officers or dignitaries; in short, persons with authority and power.
They might also have nationalist dispositions, and act as agents or instigators of ethnic
strife. We learn little about their personal life and feelings, but much about their
(negative) behaviour and its effects on the Greek protagonists. They often appear in
settings where the ethnic Self and the Other are in controversy, only to act
 South European Society & Politics 49
unfavourably, not merely in the political sense, but also in ethical terms. The Turks as
abstract personalities are portrayed as cruel, fanatical and perverted, a source of
unhappiness and danger for the Greek Self , which is here uncritically equated with
the collectivity of the Greeks.
However, when Turks appear as concrete personalities they are not portrayed so
negatively and they may even have positive attributes. These are Turkish characters
who appear in the novels of Greek authors who have lived in Ottoman lands, writing
about events that they have personally experienced (and not about past historically
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transmitted incidents). Their Turkish protagonists tend to be normal and balanced

heroes, who look real (or more real). They might be men or women of any age
(including children and old people), practising less authoritative occupations, mostly
of a humble trade. The reader is allowed to have a glimpse of the inner life of these
characters, to share their often unique personal stories. We know them by their names
because in most cases they are the people next door. They are not introduced in ethnic
termsas Others in conflict with usbut rather as ordinary human beings. They
may have weaknesses, as all human beings do, but they are not distinguished for their
political actions. They appear to meet with us, the Greeks, under ordinary
circumstances, not in an atmosphere of war and strife, as is almost always the case with
the abstract and historical Turks. In short, they look like real persons, not like rude
stereotypes, representatives or caricatures of an imaginary ethnic group.
The same tendencyi.e. viewing abstract personalities as negative and concrete
ones as positiveis encountered in Turkish texts vis-a-vis the Greeks too. Authors
who in their memoirs portrayed those Greeks whom they actually met almost
exclusively in positive terms wrote negatively about Greeks in their novels and short
stories. Literary texts and memoirs differed in the following respect: the fictional Other
that comes normally to the agenda in a national context is almost without exception a
negatively portrayed person, whereas the actual one, the one really remembered, is
almost always a balanced personality. We can see this in the work of Omer Seyfettin,
Halide Edip Advar and Yakup Kadri Karaosmanogluthree well-known Turkish
national authors, as they are called in Turkey, who published their novels in the years
1910 1960. It is also interesting to note that these writers actually praised all the
Greeks whom they had met in their lives, but portrayed the Greeks, men and women,
as enemies and inferior persons in their fictional narration.4
I have been using so far the terms positive and negative to refer to evaluations
used by authors to describe the Other, and there is a danger here of reproducing
further generalizations. This is why I want to clarify that the novel protagonists, in
several cases, cannot readily be classified as good or badand their portrait cannot
be easily described as positive or negative. Sometimes the Other is portrayed with
positive characteristics, but actually in a neutral and perplexing manner. These are
cases where the Other may be presented as close to the ethnic Self, preferring us
instead of his own ethnic group, confessing the ill doings of his or her group, voicing
our arguments, in short acting as our agent. This very particular Other is effectively
devoid of the ethnic characteristics of the abstract Other; he or she is practically
 50 I. Millas
assimilated into our group and is not one of them anymore. The author, in effect,
uses protagonists like these to make a case against the Other. In this respect,
protagonists of this kind seem to be or to act as positive Others, whilst in truth not
being exactly representative of most of the (other) Others. I call characters of this kind
naively positive, since they carry a certain naivety, but also because they present a
simplistic approach on behalf of the author. This is a misleading attempt to appear to
be acting against nationalistic stereotyping: a supposedly positive Other is created
simply to confirm a demonstrable number of expected, stereotypical attributes.5
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Turks as Abstractions
The negative-and/or-positive Turk in Greek novels is connected to the worldview of
the author and the recipient society. The Us vs. Them polarity is connected to a
particular religious and/or ethnic identity; the stereotypes related to this polarity are
also closely connected to a certain national history. Most images of the Other in Greek
novels reflect a past of diachronic significance, a past that gives meaning to the present,
our Greek present. Most Greeks locate themselves in a time continuum: a national
existence of many centuries. Without this imagined continuum, past incidents would
become isolated and coincidental happenings. Within this context, the Turks also
obtain a time-enduring entity. The timeless existence of the Other (and the
interrelation of the Self with this Other) is secured by the name used to define him or
her. Greeks often name as Turks various states and groupssuch as the Seljuks, the
Ottomans, even the Albanians (Turkalvanoi)whereas these groups, in the past,
normally used the word Turk either pejoratively and/or to denote nomads.
All of the above elements are incorporated and frequently expressed in the Greek
discourse on Tourkokratia. Normally Tourkokratia refers to the 400 years of bondage;6
the expressions invasion, slavery and Turkish yoke are also used to refer to the same
concept. Tourkokratia is always unfavourable: in school books, in historiography, in
literature, in the discourse promoted by politicians representing the whole political
spectrum (from the extreme right to the left).7 In all cases, Tourkokratia is presented as
the Dark Age of the Greek nation and everything is assessed as negative in this period:
the leading Turkish (Ottoman) dignitaries, the legal system, the economic situation,
the daily life of the subjects. The Greeks suffer; they are condemned to darkness and
backwardness; they are not respected; the Other humiliates them.
There are some illuminating passages in Greek novels related to these terrible years
of bondage. The novelist Ilias Venezis (19041973), who was born and lived in
Anatolia in the earlier part of the twentieth century and had first-hand experiences
with Turks, portrayed the Turkish Other realisticallyand quite often positivelyin
his novels. In his writing, however, he gives special importance to Tourkokratia:
From old times come the memories, the stories and the tears . . . The [Greek]
mothers narrated stories of . . . massacres and hunger to their babies to put them to
sleep . . . Everything here exists in order to remind us of the past. We are a nation of
memories. This is the source of sorrow and of our pride . . . So we address the other
 South European Society & Politics 51
side of the Aegean and we say [to the Turks]: If you expect us to forget our history,
our martyrs, we cannot do that. (Venezis 1979, pp. 156157)
And indeed, when he writes about old incidents that supposedly took place during
the Tourkokratia, the Turks are presented as terrible and cruel invaders. Here again the
concrete and positive Turks whom the author met are in direct contrast to
the historical, abstract negative Other.8 The same author, who clearly believes in the
importance of maintaining good relations with the present-day Turks, explicitly states
his position vis-a-vis forgetting the pastforgetting is here synonymous with
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excusing the Turks who had done so many terrible things to the Greeks: Hatred is a
matter of ethics. Not to forget is a need. If I forget it is as if I betray my country, my
parents (Venezis 1988, p. 37).
The necessity and usefulness of remembering and reproducing the old sufferings of
the nation which were caused by the Other are voiced in a novel by Dimitris Vikelas
(1835 1908), Loukis Laras (1879), almost 100 years before Venezis:
The Turks by massacring, distracting and enslaving the male population, women
and children, took care to remind us the unity of our nation, even if we would wish
to forget it. (1991 [1879], p. 18)
The history of the nation is composed of the history of the persons; and the history
of Greek rebirth is not composed only of the achievements of our ancestors on land
and at sea, but also of the persecutions, the massacres and the humiliations of the
unarmed and of the weak. (pp. 122 123)
There is an additional purpose in reproducing the negative past and the suffering
caused by the Turks, as this becomes apparent in the The Sword of Vengeance (1861) by
Nikolaos Votiras. It proves to the Westerners that modern Greeks are the descendants
of the glorious ancient Hellenes: The hero suffered a terrible death bravely, he was
impaled and burned alive (by the Turks), and he did not shed a single tear; he proved
thus by his bravery that all those who doubt the authenticity of Greek nation, and who
do not accept that the modern Greeks are the grandsons of Leonidas, are wrong
(Votiras 1994 [1861], p. 59).
The idea of a terrible and overtly negative Tourkokratia provides useful images that
sustain the ideology of the Greek nation state, nurturing the values that preserve
national identity. A negative past, presented as the outcome of a problematic
relationship with Others, is required for a number of related reasons: it justifies the
revolt against those Others, that is, the Greek Revolution (or War of Independence) in
1821, the existence of a sovereign Greek state, the personal and communal sacrifices
made in the past for the nation. It also explains why Greece is not as advanced as other
European states or as successful as its ancestors, the ancient Greeks; in other words,
through their problematic relationship with the Greeks in the past, the Turks serve as
the scapegoats for what is wrong about the Greeks in the present (see Herzfeld 1987).
It would be wrong to interpret this negative image of the Turk as a natural outcome
of the period in question, that is, the period of Ottoman rule, even though wars, social
unrest, revolts, famine and repression did indeed characterize some periods of this era.
 52 I. Millas
The appearance of hostile personalities in such a setting is not surprising. It is not,
however, the recurrence of the negative Other that creates the stereotypes; it is the
striking absence of positive Turks. The Turks in the texts that refer to this period are, in
their totality, negative. This stereotypy is accomplished also by avoiding references to
women, children and the elderly; their absence aids in the legitimization of hostile
actions of the Greeks against negative Turks. The readers would otherwise face a
profound difficulty in incorporating all of these kinds of different Turks into one single
enemy group that is annihilated.
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Demirozu (1999) shows that in the novels of Karagatsis, Prevelakis and Petsalisall
writers who lived in Greece and had not actually encountered Turksthe Turks of
Tourkokratia consist of middle-aged, negative males. Even though Greek women
appear in the novels referring to this period (and are most frequently portrayed as
mothers, a positive association), Turkish women are rarely encountered, and when this
does happen they are never mothers or ordinary personalities, but stereotypical
females of pleasure serving the harem. Children appear rarely too, and when they do
they do not show characteristics of their age but are wicked; they are, for instance,
arrogant or aggressive, showing by their actions what the Greeks can expect of them.
Old people and babies are not part of the Turkish community of Tourkokratia.
This extreme negative image of Tourkokratia comes across in Greek historiography
too. For Paparrigopoulos, the most prestigious Greek historian of the nineteenth
century, Tourkokratia was a disastrous period for Hellenism: the Greek population
was dramatically diminished and Christians were forcibly Islamized (Paparrigopoulos
(1903), p. 495). According to Vakalopoulos (1973), a well-known liberal historian of
the twentieth century, during Tourkokratia,
oppression, terror, enlisting in the army and various extra taxes... were enforced.
What irritates the Turks is the fact that the Christians are always on the side of their
enemies, helping their enemies, always ready to revolt. That is why the Turks are
especially against the Greeks. The Greeks are terrified that they will be slaughtered in
their churches... The whole Macedonia suffers. Whole areas are deserted and are not
cultivated. Many inhabitants chose to become Muslims to avoid these mishaps. This
is repeated every time the horizon darkens. (Vakalopoulos 1973, p. 86)
The reader understands, and also feels as he reads this text in the present tense,
that the horizon gets darker every time the Turks appear. Marxist historians portray a
completely negative Tourkokratia too. In 1957 Kordatos, another historian,
writes in his conclusion, When the Turks conquered Asia Minor and the Balkans
they neither brought with them a high technology nor did they develop the means
of production. On the contrary, they were an underdeveloped people in all aspects
of social and political life... So, the non-Muslim peasant had not a single happy
day. His life was a misery (Kordatos 1957, p. 149). Svoronos (1985), a modern
Marxist historian, maintains a similar position: [The Greek] peasant could not
enjoy a single day. His life was a misery. Especially when he did not own his own land
he was twice a slave. Slave of the Turkish invader and slave of the landowner
(Svoronos 1985, p. 149).
 South European Society & Politics 53
It is very hard to find any positive, even neutral, attributes of Tourkokratia in these
texts. Apart from the context, the language used to describe the period is dramatic and
emotion-provoking. In this respect, historiography and literary approaches seem to
merge and supplement each other; the demarcation line between writing history and
novels becomes blurred. Passion, sentimental involvement, identification with the past
generations of Greeks and negative feelings against the Turks, who are presented as
the source of all mishaps, are common in both types of texts.
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Concrete Experiences with Turks

As with the Turks as novel protagonists, the notion of Tourkokratia in Greek novels is
similarly considered in terms of the same correspondingnegative or positive
relationship with respect to abstract/historical and concrete/real descriptions. Even
though Tourkokratia, Turkish/Ottoman rule, is generally referred to in negative terms
in Greek novels, the real and actually experienced Tourkokratia (living in an Ottoman
world) is sometimes discussed in a positive manner. The interplay of an imaginary
versus a real Other is encountered anew in the case of Tourkokratia. Some novels that
appeared only a few years after Greeks had fought to free themselves from Turkish
bondage present Greek heroes returning to Ottoman lands to find happiness and
wealth, as in the following examples.
Alexandros Soutsos (1803 63) in his novel The Exile (1834), which was published
only five years after the presumed liberation of the Greeks from Tourkokratia,
narrates how his protagonist ends up in Istanbul, where he had lived his childhood
free of troubles (p. 110), and how he buys the house of his father anew, having decided
to live there thereafter (Soutsos 1999 [1834], p. 209). Pitzipios (180269) in The
Orphan of Chios (1839) narrates the life of the Greeks of Smyrna and Istanbul. Turks
do not appear in these cities, especially Turks who cause problems to the Greeks. Some
Turks, when they do appearfor example Aine, a Turkish girl (253)are introduced
in order to help the Greeks. In The Ape Ksuth (1848) Turks do not influence the life of
the Greeks in Smyrna (Pitzipios 1995a [1839]; 1995b [1848]).
Grigorios Paleologos (17941844) was an author who settled in Istanbul right after
the liberation of Greece and published his novels there. In The Painter (1842), he
narrates how his hero, Filaretos, who moves to Istanbul and chooses to live there
permanently, will always earn enough money to live in comfort with his beloved
Hariklia (1995 [1842], p. 296). He also praises the Ottoman government because it
can control gambling, and he adds that in the Ottoman state there is more freedom
than in many states in Europe (Paleologos 1995 [1842], p. 226). This discourse of a real
Turkish rule that secures a normal and even a happy life for the Greeks neither seems
to cause any reactions on the part of the Greek readers nor suggests a contradiction to
them, which needs to be explained. The two faces of Tourkokratia are allowed to
coexist side by side.
The happy life of Greeks in Turkish lands, i.e. in Anatolia and in Istanbul, are
narrated in later novels too, for example in the novels of Venezis, Mirivilis, Politis,
 54 I. Millas
Sotiriou, Iordanidou, all authors who lived in Asia Minor and met the Other. In all of
these cases Turkish rule is concrete and real; it is experienced by the authors, and the
protagonists of their novels, directly and personally. However, this kind of agreeable
Turkish government is not called Tourkokratia; this name is reserved only for an
explicitly negative rule. It is as if rule that is not overtly negative cannot be called
Tourkokratia.
The novels of the above-mentioned authors were written mostly in the decades of
1920 to 1950, and the Turks appear in them against a turbulent background; the
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Balkan Wars (1912) and the Greek Turkish war of 1919 to 1922 are mostly the settings
where the Greeks meet the Other, although the memory of Tourkokratia is not the
main subject of these narratives.9 The generalized Turk is often presented as a
nationalist fighting against us (the Greeks), but often, next to this Turk, some
additional positive Others make their presence felt. Most importantly, there are also
some Greeks who appear to act like the negative Turks; here, the demarcation line is
not founded on an ethnic basis and all kinds of personalities appear on both sides.
The Turks in these novels behave unfavourably, but only because of war. A Turks
cruelty, for example, does not originate from a national characteristic or from the
Turks nature: the suffering caused by both sides is the result of the circumstances of
war. The intended message is that war is the guilty party, as Dido Sotiriou (1911
2004) points out at the end of her book Matomena Homata (Bloodied Soil) (1962).10
In these novels we meet, maybe for the first time in Greek literature, the ordinary
Turk, the ordinary citizen, who is not the conqueror, a person in the service of the
state. The ordinary Turk, like the ordinary Greek, struggles for his or her own survival
and for his or her immediate family. There are even cases where the rich Greeks in
Anatolia (during Tourkokratia) exploit the poor Turks economically. Turkish women
are portrayed as working hard, side by side with their husbands; there are no harems.11
These writers who present a balanced approach vis-a-vis Turkish rule may still
present the abstract, historical Tourkokratia as negative when they refer to the old
times. The work of Venezis is a typical example of this approach; he often relates to his
personal experience with the Turks, drawing a portrait of the Other as an ordinary, and
even positive, fellow human, who is in some cases superior to the Greek, more just and
honest.12 However, when Venezis returns to narrating the history of old generations in
Tourkokratia, the Other is demonized and stereotyped (Millas 1998; 2001, pp. 354
359). In fact, a negative personal memory of Tourkokratia does exist in the minds of
these authors; and when a Turkish rule that has been experienced in actuality appears
to be satisfactory, or at least not very negative, it is simply not referred to as
Tourkokratia.
Surprisingly enough, the abstract, negatively portrayed Tourkokratia, on the one
hand, and the concrete and positive (or balanced) Ottoman rule, on the other,
simultaneously coexist in the narration of many authors. An extreme example of this
simultaneity is found in a primary school textbook used in the 1980s, and is an
example that shows that the phenomenon of the dual evaluation of Ottoman rule is
not limited to literature, but has a social and a national basis. The textbook starts with
 South European Society & Politics 55
the suffering that the Turks have imposed upon us (the Greeks): The Turks, because
they were wild and uncivilised, spread disaster on their way and they did not render
any rights to the enslaved nation [of the Greeks]. Then the misery of the people who
are referred to as Greeks is further emphasized: they were forced by threats on their
lives to convert to Islam, Turks grabbed children away from their families and enlisted
them in the Turkish (Ottoman) army, and there was no justice for the Greeks, who
were not allowed to study, or even to speak their own language, and suffered many ills.
Paradoxically, in the same school textbook, an additional chapter, entitled The Way
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Enslaved Hellenism Was Organised, makes mention of the privileges of the Greeks in
Ottoman times. It is clearly stated that the Greeks had religious privileges, that the
Church had all the rights it enjoyed in the Byzantine period, and that the Patriarch had
jurisdiction over the internal affairs of the Greek population. The Turks, it is also
mentioned, did not even have the right to arrest a priest without the consent of the
Patriarch, and the Greeks had some political privileges too. They were allowed to run
their own affairs (e.g. collecting taxes) and organize their schools and the teaching
curriculum; indeed, it is stated, the Greeks had many very good schools. As in the
novels examined above, these two mutually exclusive representations of the Ottoman
rule coexist within the same textbooks without any further explanation
(Diamantopoulou & Kyriazopoulou 1984).

Tourkokratia and the Resurrection of the State

In addition to the themes discussed in the previous sections, there is a particular
historical and cultural theme, very popular in Greek society, that adds meaningfulness
to the story of the nation, and consequently to the story of Tourkokratia. This is the
story of Christ, a very legitimate narrative that presents a series of well-known divine
and human interventions which, in turn, as in the story of the nation, influence
peoples ideas about their present and future lives, not only in this world, but also in
the next one. The story of Christ is associated with metaphysical concerns and a search
for immortality; the story of Tourkokratia is often narrated and perceived in terms of
the metaphorical framework of the story of Christ. Thus, national and religious
identities are united in the same story motif.
Life is twofold, the story goes, darkness before Christ and hope after Him. The same
seems to apply to the story of the Greek nation: Greeks are presented as living in total
darkness in Tourkokratia from before the Liberation War of 1821 until the day they
established a nation state. In both cases the happy incident is called in Greek
Resurrection (Anastasi),13 and there is a similar cyclical story plot: first a fulfilled life
in Heaven (as in glorious ancient Greece), followed by the sin and the punishment
(and there are many texts that show that the Byzantines and the Orthodox Christian-
Graecophones of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries presented the Ottoman
domination as a result of divine will due to the sins of the community).14 Then we
have the suffering (of Christ and of the Greeks) and afterwards the sacrifice (of Christ
and of the Greek heroes). This is followed by the Resurrection, of God and of
 56 I. Millas
the nation (ethnos). Naturally, life after death is secured, both for the Christians and
for the Greeks (through the eternal nature of the nation).15
The grand narrative of the Greeks is not a new story. It is based on an older religious
motif that is easily understood by the greater community, the idea that eternal life is
secured for all those who have suffered and persevered (following the example of
Christs sacrifice). The martyrs and the heroes of the nation have suffered for the sake
of the continuing existence of the nation, and are thus, like saints, respected on similar
grounds. The heroes of the war of 1821 against the Turks are frequently referred to as
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ethnomartyres, which is Greek for martyrs of the nation. They have chosen willingly to
die for a belief, as did the early Christian saints, which is why the Church of Greece has
officially proclaimed some heroes of the Liberation War to be martyrs. The myth of the
nation cannot adequately fulfil its meaning without a negative Tourkokratia; why
should one rejoice in the formation of the Greek nation state if life before the state was
pleasant? How else could one justify the sacrifices made for the nation? Is it possible to
have resurrection without suffering, reward for the many without the sacrifice of the
few? The rhetoric of nationalism draws extensively upon the story of Christ and his
suffering.
Greek metaphors that describe national sacrifices borrow themes from religious
imagery. Heroes die on the altar of the home country (sto vomo tis patrithas), and
historical developments are often presented as predestined.16 Those who do not agree
with the general ideology of the state are treated as traitors, who just like Judas, the
student of Christ, have betrayed their benefactor. Furthermore, the Greek War of
Independence is officially presented as having started on 25 March, which according to
the Orthodox calendar is the Annunciation Day (Heralding of Christ). This date is
nowadays a national holiday celebrated with devotion, despite available historical
evidence demonstrating that nothing of particular importance happened on 25 March
1821. But this very date stands for the beginning of a process of suffering that brought
about the end of Tourkokratia, the resurrection of the nation, the end of suffering and
the start of eternal life for the Greek state and its heroes.

Conclusion
There is no simple gap between experience and stereotypy. Stereotypy is a device for
looking at things comfortably; since, however, it feeds on deep-lying unconscious
sources, the distortions which occur are not to be corrected merely by taking a real
look. Rather, experience itself is predetermined by stereotypy. (Adorno 1982, p. 309)
In my youth, myself an ethnic minority member in a wider Turkish community, trying
to come to terms with my immediate environment with respect to the nature of the
Turks, I came face to face with contradictory messages: the real Turks I met were
ordinary people with their merits and vices, much unlike the stereotypical caricatures
of the generalized, singular Turk promoted in the depictions of my elders. This
discrepancy, and the constant questioning on my part of the stereotypes that underpin
it, triggered lengthy research and a lifelong curiosity.
 South European Society & Politics 57
Were the real people I met simply anomalies in the timeless, imagined community
of generalizable ethnic Others? Are we expected to abandon our worldview, and the
paradigms or beliefs that sustain it, when confronted with some exceptions or
contradictions? How do people deal with real-life experiences that do not conform to
nationalist ideologies? Adorno believes that one cannot correct stereotypy by
experience; one has to reconstitute the capacity for having experiences in order to
prevent the growth of ideas which are malignant in the most literal, clinical sense
(1982, p. 309). The authors examined in this chapter have skilfully avoided
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reconstituting their understanding of their own experiences. They resisted

contradiction by compartmentalizing their perceptions of the Turks in parallel, but
not overlapping, domains of experience.
At the level of national experience they reproduced the story of the Greek state, the
negative stereotypes of the (abstract) Other, and an unfavourable portrait of
Tourkokratia. At the level of personal experiences they were forced to recognize
(or remember) a less dangerous kind of Turk, who could be like the Self: a man, a
woman, a child, an elderly person. Whilst writing their novels they kept these two
levels of experience sealed from each other, and their world did not topple over in the
face of contradiction; it was readapted or diverted around the obstacles posed by the
interpretation of the Other. The friendly Turks of their memories were transformed
into some naively positive characters, agents or admirers of the Self, who occasionally
verified the eternal truths of the nations timeless reality.
In this respect, not only the abstract but also the concrete Turks of the Greek
novelists work as metaphors that sustain and nourish a national identity, as this was
understood during a particular historical period and within a given ethnic
community. Authors with a well-constructed and circumscribed national identity
imagine and ardently maintain a belief in a certain type of Other that adds meaning to
their consciousness. When they decide to reproduce the world in a realistic manner
they do not prioritize their personal experience (the particulars), but choose to
represent reality in abstract and essentialist terms and as this fits better with their
ideology.17 And when they are forced to account for the particularin our case, the
concrete Other who is similar to the Selfthey conflate particularity with
essentialism. The friendly Turks of real life are good, or good enough, to the degree
that they naively reproduce an ideal Greek national existence.

Notes
[1] Some of my findings are presented in detail in my other publications: Turk Roman ve Oteki
(Millas 2000) is based on a study of approximately 500 Greek and Turkish novels; Eikon16
Ellhnvn kai Toyrkvn (Millas 2001) contains Greek images of the Turks in textbooks and
historiography; Dos & Donts (Millas 2002) also deals with mutual images and stereotypes of
Greeks and Turks.
[2] The demarcation line between fact and perception (or reality/myth, objectivity/subjectivity)
is a complex philosophical issue that will not be dealt with here. It suffices to remind oneself
that a stereotype is usually preserved unnoticed or is discarded as such if it is recognized.
 58 I. Millas
[3] See Millas (2001) for an analysis of 62 novels of 41 well-known Greek authors, published
between 1834 and 1998. See also Demirozu (1999). Demirozu demonstrates that Greek
authors, such as Venezis, Theotokas, Mirivilis and Politis, who have lived in Asia Minor and
met Turks in person have written about modern times and portrayed the Turks in a balanced
way, whereas writers who have lived in Greek lands and not met Turks, such as Ampot,
Karagatsis, Petsalis and Prevelakis, have written about historical times, mostly Tourkokratia, in
which the Turks appear in general as negative and abstract personalities or symbols of
despotism.
[4] See Millas (1996). See also Millas (2000) for an analysis of 350 novels of 118 well-established
Turkish writers published between the years 1870 and 1998.
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[5] Naively positive Turks are encountered often in Greek literature, where their role is to
confirm Greek theses and arguments. A typical example is Selim, who appears in the novelette
of Viziinos, Moskof Selim, as a sane and good person, who confesses that the Turks, as a nation,
are not liable to possess the lands they own and that they should leave them to Greeks and go
back to Central Asia. Naively positive Greeks are encountered often in Turkish literature too;
the good Greeks in the novels of Halikarnas Balkcs and Kemal Tahir are almost all of this
category.
[6] It is not very clear how one reaches the 400. Probably 1453 (capture of Constantinople by the
Ottomans) is subtracted from 1830 (the year the modern Greek state was founded), which gives
377 years. Both dates are symbolic. Turkish-speaking groups arrived and gradually established
themselves in Greek lands (that is, Byzantine territory) in the eleventh century (symbolically,
from 1071). Thessalonica was liberated from Turkish occupation in 1912, and, according to
some, Turks still occupy Istanbul. So one could as well talk of 800 years of Tourkokratia. In any
case these calculations make sense only if one is prepared to see the Ottomans as the Turks, and
the Byzantines as the Greeks.
[7] There are some rare exceptions. Some religious persons, mostly very opposed to Western
(Catholic and Protestant) influences, seem to perceive a less negative East (in comparison with
the West). In the writings of Professor Kitsikis and Presbyter Metallinos, for example, the Turks
appear to be preferable to the non-Orthodox Westerners. See Kitsikis (1988, pp. 101 111) and
Metallinos (1993, pp. 85 89).
[8] See Millas (1998).
[9] The expression ethnic memory (in Greek ethniki mnimi) is of course misleading. People do
not merely remember a certain past; they are taught to remember the past. The term memory
of the nation infers an imaginary national continuum.
[10] Also known in English as Farewell to Anatolia.
[11] See also Demirozu (1999, pp. 284 287).
[12] His short story Lios is a typical example of this approach (see Venezis 1967 [1941]). For
analysis of this short story, see also Millas (1998; 2001, pp. 354 357).
[13] Anastasi means coming to life anew, resurrection. It is used both for Christ and for the nation,
the Liberation War of 1821 and the establishing of the national state. The phrase anastasi of the
nation is commonly used in Greek discourse.
[14] See for example Patriki Didaskalia of 1798, which originated from the Orthodox Church.
[15] According to Hugh Seaton-Watson, nationalism has become an ersatz religion. The nation, as
understood by the nationalists, is a substitute of god; nationalism of this sort might be called
ethnolatry (Seton-Watson 1977, p. 465).
[16] The poetic verse it was the will of God that Constantinople should fall into the hands of Turks
(Itan thelima Theou i poli na tourkepsi) is well known among the Greeks.
[17] The belief that literary texts present the essence (the universals) beyond the facts
(the singulars) is at least as old as Aristotle. In his Poetics he wrote,
 South European Society & Politics 59
it will be seen that the poets function is to describe, not the things that happened,
but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e., what is possible as being probable or
necessary. The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing
prose and the other verse . . . it consists really in this, that the one describes the
thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is
something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its
statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are
singulars. (Aristotle 1954, p. 234/1451)
Hence, authors of novels in their depiction of the Other seem to voice the universals, as these are
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conceived by them, irrespective of singulars.

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