Thomas Small Your heart must have been gladdened last weekend. You know, dear listener, we here in a Great Britain celebrated Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee.
Aimen Dean Hurrah.
Thomas Small And for an outspoken monarchist like you, Aimen, you must have been in seventh heaven. You must have just been overjoyed.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. As an avid monarchist myself, whether in the West or in the Middle East, wherever there is monarchy, I believe there is always stability. This is what I always say.
Thomas Small I can't deny that I myself was watching, you know, some of the splendour of the pageantry, you know, and I was moved to tears on occasion. There's something very moving about the …
Aimen Dean Exactly. You're—.
Thomas Small … the history, the sense of—. I don't know.
Aimen Dean You're an American who just want to yearn back to the days when you were …
Thomas Small Yes. It's true.
Aimen Dean … ruled.
Thomas Small A penitent American.
Right. Well, we've got a big episode today with lots to cover, so let's get straight into it.
Right. Dear listeners, today, having flitted around the edges of the Ottoman Empire for most of the season, we're going straight to the jugular, straight to the heart of that empire, to Istanbul or Constantinople, if you prefer, and to the epic, historic conflict between Turks and Greeks, a conflict most painfully manifests today on the divided island of Cyprus, the invasion of which by Turkish troops, in 1974, was yet another egg in the face of the declining British Empire, one of the defining events of the Cold War period and a living witness to the ongoing clash of civilisations in the Middle East.
Türkiye and Greece. Greece and Türkiye. It's the epic battle. Perhaps the battle to end all battles.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. I mean, you don't have Türkiye without having grease poured over it.
Thomas Small Goodness gracious. It's the battle to end all battles. When the holy and pious Orthodox Greeks, like reincarnated Achaeans storming the battlements of a Turkish Troy, finally regain control over their greatest city and most outstanding sign of their election by God, Constantinople, the new Rome, the navel of the world, inaugurating the return of the Roman Empire, the return of Jesus Christ, and the apocalyptic end of the world.
What do you think, Aimen? Muslim jihadists aren't the only ones obsessed with fever dreams of the end times, let me tell you.
Aimen Dean I'll tell you something. I've never seen a city, besides Jerusalem, which had so many prophecies told about it like Istanbul or Constantinople.
Thomas Small We're going to get into all that sort of stuff. We love it here on Conflicted. We love going back deep into time. And even eschatology. Long into the future. But now that we're zeroing in on Türkiye, Aimen, you're going to say, "Oh, you know what? I'm actually a direct descendant of the Osmanli dynasty and my great grandfather was pasha of the sanjak of Rumelia or something like that." Right?
Aimen Dean No. No. You know, my DNA states that I'm nine percent Turkish, and that is due to my Turkish grandmother.
Thomas Small You had a Turkish grandmother?
Aimen Dean Yeah. She was half-Turkish with some Greek mix, Kurdish mix. You know, it's a very strange mix. She was born in Konya.
Thomas Small Konya?
Aimen Dean Grew up—. Yeah. Konya.
Thomas Small Oh. Home of the whirling dervishes. Was your grandmother known for her whirling, Aimen?
Aimen Dean Only if she's whirling, like, you know, I mean, loaves of bread before she cooked them in the oven.
Thomas Small Now, Aimen, as you know, I like to add something from the present day whenever possible as an entryway into each episode's discussion. And for this episode, my goodness, there is a huge number of current conflicts involving Türkiye and Greece that we might draw upon. Right now, a massive struggle over gas rights in the Aegean involving Libya and France as well. Türkiye currently manipulating NATO for maximum geopolitical benefit over Ukraine and Russia and all that stuff. The economic collapse that's happening in Türkiye with huge inflation and, you know, the possible downfall of President Erdogan as a result, which I could press you on, because you assured us in season two, Aimen, that President Erdogan's stewardship of – of the economy there was excellent. But I don't want to talk about that now.
And just this morning, news reports are saying that President Erdogan is demanding that Greece demilitarise its Aegean islands while accusing the United States of threatening Türkiye with its military bases in Greece and elsewhere, which may have something to do with Türkiye's upcoming presidential election only a year away. I don't know.
Anyway, I don't want to talk about any of those things. I want to talk about something else: the reconversion into a mosque from a museum of the greatest building ever built anywhere on the planet, Hagia Sophia.
Aimen Dean Ah, yeah. The Ayasofya as the Turks would pronounce it.
Thomas Small The Ayasofya. That's right.
Aimen Dean Yeah. This is one of the most contentious issues. And it is – definitely was used as basically a theatre as it was completely a political spectacle in order to shore up Erdogan's political image as the saviour of Islam, as the protector of Islam, as the leader of the neo-Ottomans. As, you know, and, of course, like, you know, I mean, you can tell us more about the history of the Ayasofya as a church, but the Ayasofya was converted into a mosque in 1453, after the—.
Thomas Small 1453. Absolutely. Yeah.
Aimen Dean Yeah. The [crosstalk].
Thomas Small The – the infamous year when the Turks finally conquered Constantinople. And then, in 1935, the great president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, turned it into a museum.
Aimen Dean Indeed. The whole idea is that Atatürk wanted to put a stop to Greek claims on the Ayasofya. "So, okay. If I keep it as a mosque, there will always be this outcry all the time." You know? Well, it is time for it to be returned to the Greek Orthodox Church. So, he decided, "Well, make it a museum. Make it a secular monument. So, that's it. No one can claim it. Muslims, Greeks. No one."
Thomas Small Well, that all changed in March 2019, when President Erdogan formally announced his intention to change the museum back into a mosque, which then formally happened in July 2020. Friday prayers were said there, inside Hagia Sophia, for the first time in eighty-six years.
This is a kind of a dividing line. Hagia Sophia: Is it a secular museum or a religious place of worship, a mosque?
Orhan Pamuk, the famous Turkish novelist, he said, "Kemal Atatürk changed Hagia Sophia from a mosque to a museum, honouring all previous Greek Orthodox and Latin Catholic history, making it a symbol of Turkish modern secularism." He said it loud and clear. Kemal Atatürk changed it into a museum as a symbol of Turkish modern secularism.
Well, President Erdogan has said that that was a very big mistake.
So, Aimen, you have it: a question perfectly symbolising the clash of civilisations we've been discussing throughout the season. Is Hagia Sophia a museum or a mosque?
Aimen Dean Well, if you ask my honest opinion—and this is just a personal preference—for me, I look at the Ayasofya, and just next to it is the Blue Mosque, and I see that the Blue Mosque was built, you know, by the Ottoman sultans, because they were finding it rather difficult to pray in a place which was full of the icons of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. So, they built that mosque specifically for that. So, if they were not comfortable praying in the Ayasofya, then why not return it back to being a church for the Greek Orthodox? No. Seriously. Because you already have a monument.
Thomas Small Aimen, always – always – always with the outsider perspective.
Aimen Dean Look, there is already a monument, you know, to Islam there, which is the Blue Mosque. And you could restore this as a church for the Greek Orthodox and you end up with a perfect symbol of coexistence.
Thomas Small Oh, well, you see, Erdogan is giving voice to a pre-modern conception of history where Islam was triumphant and the conversion of Hagia Soia into a mosque in 1453 was God's will. The secularists, they're saying, "No, no, no. We need to be modern. It's a modern story where religion is something old. Moving forward, secular, scientific, rational modernity, perfectly symbolised by a museum."
Whereas you, Aimen, you have a postmodern narrative. You just wish everyone to get along. All religions are equal. Everything's relative. Christians can have their church. Muslims can have their mosque. And, you know, why do we need to fight about it?
Aimen Dean Well, I'm sick of conflict, Thomas. I mean, I want people to get along. That's why we are here on Conflicted.
Thomas Small Okay. Okay. I – I'll give you that much. Right. We're meant to be talking about the Cold War. Though, my goodness, we do meander, don't we, Aimen?
And in our last episode, we talked about India's first successful nuclear test, Operation Smiling Buddha, in 1974. And in this episode, we're talking about an event from that same year: Türkiye's invasion of the island of Cyprus, in 1974, an island that is still divided, to this day, between a Greek-speaking republic in the south and a Turkish-speaking Republic in the north, though only Türkiye recognises that Turkish-speaking republic.
But to explain that invasion properly and to put it in the right context, we have to go, as we always do, back much further into history, back to the rise of Islam and to the epic contest between the new caliphate and the age-old Roman Empire. And I'm calling a spade a spade here. It wasn't the Byzantine Empire. That's a slur. It was the Roman Empire. The jihad of jihads.
If I'm not mistaken, Aimen, ISIS and other maniacs are still sort of fighting that jihad, aren't they? It's all about bringing down Rome.
Aimen Dean Oh, yeah. For them, Rome refer to Europe and any territories that were under the domain of the Roman Empire, whether on the East or the West. And they do truly, you know, believe in the prophecies of Islamic eschatology that not only Constantinople will fall, but also Rome, the second city, you know, with [unintelligible] will fall, too.
Thomas Small I see. They're extending the prophecies to include the city of Rome. I'm not sure that's how it was understood originally. But that doesn't matter. The point is – is the epic contest between the caliphate and the Roman Empire. The great jihad lasted eight hundred and twenty years, from the Battle of Yarmouk along the Syrian-Jordanian border in 636 to the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
I cannot overstate how important this struggle was to world history, not to mention just how cool it was. I – I love the idea of this endless contest between the Arab Muslims and the Christian Greeks. It's not considered polite to say so these days, but jihad, you know, the military struggle to expand the caliphate, was a fundamental part of early Islam and the final conquest of the Roman Empire of its glorious capital city, Constantinople, had religious and even apocalyptic meaning for Muslims throughout those eight centuries.
Aimen Dean Eight hundred and twenty-two years. And within these eight hundred and twenty-two years of persistent, continuous struggle, forty-nine attempts at conquering Constantinople itself …
Thomas Small Oh, my God.
Aimen Dean … as if they were obsessed with it.
Thomas Small They were obsessed with it. The march lands between the two empires became fixed and stretched diagonally from ancient Cilicia. You know, where the Turkish city of Adana is today.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small Well, basically, to the present-day Turkish-Georgian border. So, this was sort of a diagonal line across the Taurus Mountains, across the Anatolian plain. And military incursions into Anatolia became a religious, almost ritualised, part of Islam for centuries.
Aimen Dean Yeah, yeah. Many caliphs, actually, like, you know, I mean, used to say that "one year, I go to the Hajj and, one year, I cross the Taurus Mountains."
Thomas Small That's right. It was like the counterpart to the Hajj. The Hajj …
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small … and the jihad against the Romans were the two great kind of caliphal rituals.
Aimen Dean Absolutely.
Thomas Small And, you know, just to give a sense of how important this contest was in the – in the imagination of Muslims and especially how important the – the building Hagia Sophia was, I found a couple of quotes, both from the 13th century, both from Persians, actually. One says, "Oh, Hagia Sophia, that great temple. Oh, the wonders and antiquities in the Hippodrome. Constantinople is greater even than its name. May God make it an abode for Islam by His grace and generosity. God, the exalted, the willing."
Aimen Dean Yeah. Because don't forget the prophecies. They were ever so present in the back of the minds of these Muslims.
Thomas Small Yes. I mean, the – the fighting went on and on. And in general, the Byzantines were able to defend the line. Even for a couple of centuries, they managed to conquer a bit of Syria back from the caliphate. But, eventually, that march land, that border, which the Arabs called al-Awasim, this border remained essentially unreached until the year – the key year of 1071.
Aimen Dean Ah, the Battle of Manzikert.
Thomas Small We did discuss the Battle of Manzikert in episode two, the one on Azerbaijan, when we talked about the arrival of the Oghuz Turks onto the scene of the Middle East. Well, at the Battle of Manzikert, the Seljuks – the Oghuz Turkish Confederation overran Anatolia. Islamdom reached the Bosphorus. This is, in fact, the context for the crusades. So, the Roman emperor called upon the Pope in Rome to help him throw off the Seljuks and retake Anatolia. But, you know, it didn't really work out like that.
Aimen Dean They were very unwelcome guests. Let's put it this way. You know, those Catholic pests.
Thomas Small Anyway, we don't have time to tell the whole story, which is a pity since it's the greatest story ever told. But, eventually, an upstart Turkish warlord called Osman rose up, gained leadership of all the other Turks, and founded a dynasty named after him, which we call the Ottomans, which gained control of Anatolia, managed to cross over the Bosphorus and slowly, slowly conquer all of south-eastern Europe until, finally, in 1453, Osman's great, great, great grandson, Mehmet II, conquered Constantinople.
Aimen, describe what this would've meant to Muslims at the time and, in fact, what it means to Muslims to this day.
Aimen Dean I can tell you that the Muslims who were living in the 1450s were totally demoralised and for very good reasons. First of all, they just recovered two centuries ago from the biggest calamity ever before befell them, which is the Mongol invasions, and at the same time, they lost Andalusia. There was a very little sliver of land in Granada, and that's it. That's all what is left of the great Muslim civilisation in Spain. So, at the time they felt that, you know, their civilisation was almost gone. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, the news came that Mehmet II conquered Constantinople and it's now in Muslim hands and the prophecy have been fulfilled.
The Muslim historians of that era could not have written with more jubilation and, you know, more awe of what really happened.
Thomas Small So, it was a real shot in the arm for Islam's sense of confidence, sense of sort of self-esteem?
Aimen Dean Absolutely. You know? So, the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 couldn't have come at a better time, let's put it this way, for the Muslims.
Thomas Small Well, what about today, though? I know the Greeks still remember 1453 as a great tragedy. But what do Muslims today think of that year, 1453, and that epic achievement, the conquest of Constantinople? Does it factor in Islamic historical understanding today?
Aimen Dean Yeah. Because as a young man growing up in Saudi Arabia, the reality is that there were only two sultans, you know, of the Ottoman Empire that we knew their names and we knew their biography, Mehmet II and Suleiman the Magnificent.
Thomas Small The two greatest Ottoman sultans, really. Yeah.
Aimen Dean Indeed. And why? For their conquest. So, you know, the fact is that there were dramas. You know? There were school text of a drama, of a theatrical drama, you know, about the conquest of Constantinople. And, you know, the great characters that fought that war from Janissaries, mercenaries, you know, from the [unintelligible]. The Ottoman stormtroopers, if we can call them this way.
Thomas Small What about the huge Hungarian cannon that – that – that [crosstalk]?
Aimen Dean And Hungarian cannon, Orban. You know, of all people.
Thomas Small Yeah. Orban.
Aimen Dean Orban. You know? So, I don't know, like, you know, about Viktor Orban now, the prime minister of Hungary, how he feel that basically his namesake, like, you know, made, like, cannons. You know? And there were Christians, actually. There were so many Christians, actually …
Thomas Small Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah.
Aimen Dean … in the army that, you know, conquered Constantinople. And we have to understand that the Ottomans were not fanatical Muslims. You know? They were fundamentalist Muslims, but not fanatical.
Thomas Small We could debate the difference between fundamentalist and fanatical. But for the time being, you know, I think it's important to really try to give a sense of the Ottoman state and how it understood itself. I mean, it called itself the Eternal State. The Ottoman sultan claimed an extraordinary range of titles. He was the sultan of sultans, the khan of khans, commander of the faithful, caliph i.e. successor of the prophet, custodian of the three holy cities, and also emperor of the Romans. Roman Caesar, that was one of his titles.
So, in terms of the grand historical narrative of all the Abrahamic faiths, the Ottoman sultan was truly the universal emperor. He united in his person all the realms, all the kingdoms. He was the protector and guarantor of all faith in the one God.
Aimen Dean Oh, yeah. And that is why the Ottomans created the system, which called the millet system, which came from the Arabic word "mella." Because, you see, in the Quran, it says, "[speaks in Arabic]," which means "the faith of Abraham." So, it is understood not to be a traditional religion, you know, in the traditional sense with rituals, but more of teachings. Like, you know, faith from the teaching point of view.
Thomas Small But in – in the Ottoman Empire, it became ultimately, really, a signifier of your subjecthood. Because the – the Ottoman Empire based the identity of its subjects on their religious tradition, and the millets were almost like state departments where, you know, they – they comprised judicial courts and things. So, a Christian – an Orthodox Christian would go and seek legal redress in his own courts, which were run by the Orthodox Church in that case.
Aimen Dean This system exist to this day, actually, in some Arab countries, which were ruled by the Ottomans. For example, there were three recognised millet, you know, or faith beside Islam. So, Islam, of course, basically, is, you know, at the top of the food chain and then you have the three other religions, three other millets. You have Judaism, you have Christian Armenians, and you have Christian Greeks.
Thomas Small They were actually called—. It was called the Roman millet that—. Literally called millet Rum.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small The Roman millet, which was the Orthodox church and all Orthodox Christians. Whatever their ethnic background. So, Serbs. Even Arab Orthodox. There was the Armenian millet, which actually included all non-Orthodox Christians: the Syriac Christians, the Copts. They were within the Armenian millet. And then, the Jewish millet, which, obviously, was for the Jews.
Aimen Dean The reason for this system to exist and having all of these religious communities having their own different, you know, kind of courts and tribunals and arbitration committees and all of that is because the divorces, the marriages, inheritances, and intracommunal transactions. All of these, you know, were going to be difficult to be done according to sharia only. You know? You can't impose sharia on Copts in Egypt or on Armenians, you know, in the Eastern Anatolia. I mean, that's why they were given the right to have their own courts, so they can have their own marriages, they can have their own divorces, they can have their own inheritances, and they can transact among themselves. So, the court system for them was essential. And that is why the millet system was there, because there was no secular modern nation state, as we discussed before, Thomas.
Thomas Small Well, there wasn't no—. There was no modern secular state at all.
Aimen Dean Exactly.
Thomas Small There was nothing like a modern state. There wasn't sort of the rule of law in the way we understand the rule of law. This one law for everyone, all people equal under the law. It wasn't that way at all. It was a traditional, patrimonial, hierarchical system where each religious community governed itself to a large degree.
For example, the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople, the chief prelate of the Orthodox Church, was essentially given secular rule over the Rum millet, over the Roman millet. All Romans were under his rule. 'Cause the sultan thought, "Well, the whole empire is under my rule, especially Muslims, and I de – delegate that rule to the patriarch to rule the Roman Christians."
I think the point, though, moving forward, is it means that in a pre-nationalist age, the citizens or the subjects of the Ottoman Empire did not identify with their nation, with their ethnos, with their language. That sort of—. They identified with their religious tradition.
Okay. So, moving on. You know? Basically, the hundred years after the Conquest of Constantinople, basically 1450 to 1550, let's say, everything changed. And I mean, everything kind of everywhere. Early modernity as it's called. You know? The modern world was born. The main thing that happened in that century is that the three what are called gunpowder empires were established.
Now we have talked about the end of all three of these empires in this season of Conflicted. Now we're talking about the period of their formation. The Ottomans, they conquer Constantinople in 1453. They reached their territorial peak in 1566. So, in that hundred years, they – they become one big gunpowder empire.
The Safavids, in the same century, conquer Iran and create the second big gunpowder empire, the Safavid Empire.
And from 1526, the Mughals conquer India, establishing the third great gunpowder empire, the Mughal Empire.
So, you have three huge empires controlling the whole world from, basically, Algeria to Bangladesh and from Hungary to Yemen. They're religiously Muslim, culturally Persianate, dynastically Turkic, and politically Mongol. This was really the world. And the establishment of this imperial zone, you know, changed everything. And it's the theatre—. It becomes the theatre against which Europe begins its ascent to power.
Aimen Dean You know, know Europe and, you know, specifically Christendom here was only, you know, in Europe. Like, you know, I mean, it was only, like, you know, I mean, in a corner in Europe. And they felt that, because the Ottomans were encroaching, you know, from, you know, the Balkans and, you know, going all the way to the gates of Vienna.
So, the Habsburgs, the Russians, and everyone basically were really, really frightened of this new empire. And, therefore, the Europeans were looking for "how do we bypass this great empire, so we can conduct trade with the east without having to go through them and having to pay significant amount of money to them?"
Just like today's Europeans thinking, "How do we get rid of Russian energy and how do we get rid of paying so much to the Russian empire?" You know?
Thomas Small It's true. I mean, the – the Ottomans actually closed off the Mediterranean to non-Ottoman shipping to some large extent. And, yeah, as you say, the Europeans then needed to find new trade routes, which demanded that they explore not just the sea, but the oceans, which had never really been done properly before. This required the Europeans to develop sophisticated naval technology to allow them to explore the oceans.
In 1498, Vasco de Gama reached India via the Cape of Good Hope around Africa. So, this is another—. This is the other great thing that's happening during this very pivotal century.
At the same time, Greek intellectuals who were fleeing the Ottoman Conquest brought their literature, ancient Greek literature and learning, with them to Italy. This gave a new Greek flavour to the growing movement, you know, known as Renaissance's humanism and injected Western Europe with new ideas or with a new way of developing intellectually. You know? This led to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century, and the enlightenment in the eighteenth century.
So, the Ottoman Conquest and the establishment of these gunpowder empires had an [unintelligible] effect in that way, too, leading to the development of Europe.
Aimen Dean There you have it, Europe facing a enemy armed with two frightening weapons. One was the massive cannons they used and their gum powder and the other frightening weapon was the Janissaries.
You know, European boys kidnapped, you know, from Europe, you know, from the Balkans and other places and brought up to be the crack troops of the Ottoman Empire, the Janissaries. So, the Janissaries, with the aid of the cannon, were the scourge of Europe. So, Europe and European kingdoms and European Royal families, I mean, had to come together and to try to really explore more scientifically how to counter the Ottoman advances and how to actually build better cannons to counter the Ottoman cannons. And that led further and further towards not only competition between the great European powers, but between them and the Ottoman Empire. And that led to many inventions, the renaissance, you know, coming in with greater scientific discoveries and openness towards embracing science and, of course, openness towards exploring the oceans, as you said. And you have the recipe for a great power to rise.
Thomas Small Yeah. So, these wars were like an engine for technological development in Europe and they also forged the modern European state. You know, a – a centralised, bureaucratic military state able to prosecute war on a big scale, first to defend itself from Ottoman aggression and then to push the Ottomans back to some extent and reclaim some of the lost lands for Christendom.
All right. So, that's a little breathless, sweeping description of the rise of modern Europe. But this whole episode is supposed to be about Cyprus. Yeah. So, let's spend a moment and talk about Cyprus. So, the first thing to know about Cyprus is that Aphrodite was born there.
Aimen Dean Ooh, I didn't know that.
Thomas Small Did you know that? Oh, no.
Aimen Dean No, I didn't.
Thomas Small Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She was born in Cyprus. And there was an ancient Greek sanctuary to her honour on the island of Cyprus.
So, Phoenicians, Syrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, the whole shit show passed through Cyprus. But in the – in the early Islamic period, a near miracle happened. It's called the condominium. So, the jihad of the caliphate against the Roman Empire is raging. But, somehow, by some miracle, the island of Cyprus was shared between them. They agreed to rule Cyprus jointly between the Roman emperor and the Muslim caliph. And, you know, taxes were distributed equally to both sides. And for many hundreds of years, Cyprus was this place of weird Muslim-Christian peace. Did you know that, Aimen?
Aimen Dean Oh, yes. I knew about the condominium arrangement, and it's all due to trade. No one wanted to kill the golden goose.
Thomas Small Oh, Cyprus was important for trade?
Aimen Dean Oh, yes. No question. Trade, industry, products. You know? Food. Everything you can imagine. The ports were very important. And so, the two empires decided not to destroy it.
Thomas Small It's wealth and must have encouraged Richard the Lionheart, because he conquered it …
Aimen Dean Oh, yes.
Thomas Small … during the crusades, which began several centuries of so-called Frankish rule on Cyprus. And then, the Venetians grabbed it. And then, finally, in 1571, the Ottomans conquered it and incorporated it into their empire.
The millet system applied to Cyprus, as it applied to the rest of the empire, of course. So, its Christian inhabitants were governed by the archbishop of Cyprus. Now this is important for the – the '74 Turkish invasion. So …
Aimen Dean Indeed.
Thomas Small … the archbishop of Cyprus became a very important political figure on the island.
Anyway, in 1878, Britain invaded Cyprus, and it became the first Ottoman province controlled by the British Empire. At the time, the Cypriots, the vast majority of whom were Greek-speaking Christians, by and large gave the British their support. And this is because they expected the British to arrange for Cyprus to unite with their fellow Greek speakers in the Kingdom of Greece. But where did this country come from? There we were talking about the Ottomans and their sublime eternal state. But what is this Kingdom of Greece?
Aimen Dean Well, it came as a result of the Greek revolution.
Thomas Small The Greek revolution of 1821.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. The first successful national uprising that resulted in a major province of the Ottoman Empire becoming an independent kingdom.
Thomas Small Yes. So, right. As I said, Greek learning traveled west after the Turkish conquest, and this learning contributed massively to Renaissance's humanism. But then, in the eighteenth century, networks of Greeks across Europe, you know, merchants, traders, et cetera, brought back enlightenment ideas to their fellow Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. So, Greek ideas went West and then they came back two hundred – three hundred years later to the Greeks there.
Until then, the Orthodox Christian inhabitants of the empire and especially the Greek-speaking ones called themselves Romaji. Romans. That's how they understood themselves. They were Romans.
But in the meantime, Western Europeans, like the English, the French, they'd sort of adopted Ancient Greece and especially ancient Athens as the semi-mythical font of their own new, modern civilisation. And Greek-speakers began adopting that story for themselves as well. Now this led Greek national self-identity to be split. Just like I often say that Muslim self-identity is split between a Greek, a Hellenic identity, rooted in the idea of Ancient Greece and a Roman identity rooted in the history of the Christianised Roman Empire of the East. Anyway, with these new nationalist ideas, the Greek revolution broke out in 1821. This is a massive oversimplification of what is a fascinating and complex story. But revolt broke out among Greeks throughout the European half of the Ottoman Empire. I mean, all the way from what is today Romania, obviously Greece, in Thrace. You know, in Constantinople itself. So, the Greeks were spread out all over the place.
Revolt broke out and was quickly suppressed everywhere, except in the southern half of modern Greece, the Peloponnese, Attica where Athens is, that part of the – of the country, where the rebels managed to really hold their own.
To fight them, the sultan in Istanbul reached out to a long-time friend of the podcast. You know who I'm talking about, don't you, Aimen?
Aimen Dean Oh, yeah. Muhammad Ali of Egypt.
Thomas Small Yes. They called Muhammad Ali of Egypt. He sent his son, Ibrahim, to crush the Greeks. He was fresh off crushing the Saudi. The first Saudis, as you remember, Aimen.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small We talked about that.
Aimen Dean That's why there is – there is so much affinity between the Saudis and the Greeks, because they both felt the Turkish wrath through the power of Muhammad Ali and his sons, Ibrahim and [name].
Thomas Small It is amazing how Muhammad Ali and his son Ibrahim come up again and again in these podcast episodes, I mean, they were so important.
So, Muhammad Ali sends Ibrahim to crush the Greek uprising, and Ibrahim would have done it, too. But then, Britain and France decided to intervene. They destroyed Ibrahim's fleet at the famous Battle of Navarino. And, eventually, in 1932, the Kingdom of Greece was proclaimed. It was a very weird thing. It had a German king from Bavaria. It was a puppet of foreign powers. But nonetheless, it was independent of the Ottoman Empire. And it was this Greek kingdom that, fifty years later, when the British took Cyprus, the archbishop of Cyprus, speaking on behalf of the island's Christian majority made it clear that he expected Cyprus to unite with it.
But nonetheless, fifty years later, after the British took Cyprus, the archbishop of Cyprus, speaking on behalf of the Island's Christian majority, made it clear that he expected Cyprus to unite with the Kingdom of Greece, a policy known as Enosis. Union. A notorious policy that would in time lead to the 1974 Turkish invasion.
Aimen Dean But, Thomas, why would you think the British would give up this strategic prize in the Eastern Mediterranean, which overlooks the Levant and it'll become a useful, useful place for the British to launch the invasion of Egypt and that, later, they would be able to control the Suez Canal from? Why would they do that?
Thomas Small Well, they – they, in fact, wouldn't, Aimen. So, the British declined the archbishop's suggestion of uniting with Greece and kept Cyprus to itself.
Now—. Then, the world ended. I'm talking about the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. We've told that story a hundred ways already, across several episodes. But this time we're going to tell it through the prism of one of the greatest men of the twentieth century and certainly the greatest Ottoman of the twentieth century, Atatürk. Go for it. Aimen.
Aimen Dean Ah, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Do you know that he was born, of all places, in [Thessaloniki].
Thomas Small Okay. [Thessaloniki], huh.
Aimen Dean He was born in – in modern-day Greece and—.
Thomas Small 18—. He was born in 1881 in Salonika. Yeah.
Aimen Dean Indeed. And the irony is that, you know, while he came from humble means—. He was orphaned at a young age. And nonetheless, like, you know, I mean, he—. Through his intermittent education, he excelled to the point where one of his teachers was calling him "perfect." "Kemal," which is the Arabic word—. Okay. It's an Arabic word lent to Turkish. So, he then finally find his way through – into the military academy in Istanbul, graduates. And one of the first battles he will engage in—. Guess against who?
Thomas Small The Italians.
Aimen Dean Indeed.
Thomas Small In Libya.
Aimen Dean In Libya, of all places, which we talked about in the last episode. He was one of those who fought against the Libyans on behalf of the Ottomans before, of course, the Ottomans surrendered Libya to the Italians. Then, he was stationed in many different places. He – he participated in the War of the Balkans. And when World War I began, he was in Bulgaria. By that time, he was already many years into being a member of an underground revolutionary military movement that wanted to overthrow the monarchy and the sultan.
Thomas Small Well, it was certainly an anti-monarchical secret society of – of military officers. A bit like, you know, the – the one that—. You know, the – the young officer's movement that Nasser was a part of, the young officer's movement that Gaddafi would be a part of. You know, it's – it's funny. Atatürk, in a way, paved the way. He joined this secret society of military officers, who were part of a long-gestating reformist movement within the Ottoman Empire.
Aimen Dean Indeed. He really wanted to emulate France. I mean, he was an admirer, you know, of European secular Renaissance. And he said exactly this, "There are many cultures, but there is only one civilisation, and that is Europe."
Thomas Small Yes. He was definitely a pro-Westerner in the sense of wanting the Ottoman Empire to reform along European lines and to become a secular, you know, modern state in—. You know, like European states.
So, World War I breaks out. That's where we left Atatürk, in Bulgaria. He's a – he's assigned to – to Gallipoli. He – he commanded the Turkish forces at Gallipoli. A tremendous victory. And then, he was sent to Eastern Anatolia, where he trounced the Russians. And, eventually, he – he was in charge of the seventh army fighting the British in Syria and Palestine.
Aimen Dean Yes. But that campaign was doomed, because he was underequipped and the British, of course, were overwhelming the Turks, not only with their forces, but with the auxiliary Arab forces, you know, that we're accompanying them.
Thomas Small Which we talked about in previous episodes. The episode on Syria, the episode on the Hashemites. After the war, you know, the empire, the Ottoman Empire, which was on the side of the Germans. So, it lost. It was occupied by the victorious allies. And Atatürk becomes a founding member of the Turkish National Movement. So, this aimed at securing Turkish national sovereignty. And to that end, it opposed the sultan, Mehmet IV, because they considered him a collaborator with the allies. 'Cause he was actually willing to negotiate some kind of truce with them.
The truce in question is the infamous Treaty of Sèvres.
Thomas Small Actually, the Treaty of Sèvres, what – what it did is to completely dismember the Ottoman Empire into many zones of influence from Levant and Iraq, you know, which was divided between the British and the French. You know? You have, you know, the Armenians taking a chunk, the Georgians, obviously, taking a chunk, and you have the Italians taking a huge chunk, as well as the Greeks. And the rump Ottoman Empire, the remaining rump, would be just a puppet state for the Europeans.
Aimen Dean The treaty did not abolish the Ottoman Empire, but, yes, it greatly reduced its territory. So, the sultan, you know, agreed to this. Atatürk found this to be totally unacceptable.
At the same time, the treaty put the Aegean city of Smyrna, which is modern-day Izmir, and the surrounding region under Greek protection. It called for a plebe site to determine whether Smyrna and its environments would stay in the empire or join the Greek state.
This really got Atatürk's blood up, because, you know, the – the Aegean coast of Türkiye, as it now is, is very economically and strategically important. There were a lot of Turkish speakers in the area, although it's—. Arguably, the majority were Greek. This is a – a big showdown. It's called the Greco-Turkish War. The Greeks had invaded an occupied Smyrna the year before. And following the treaty, the Greeks began marching inland to conquer as much land as they could. Even in their dreams, maybe Constantinople itself. The Greeks were really fired up. They're going to finally get it back, you know. But it didn't work out that way.
Aimen Dean Indeed. Because of the fact that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk gathered the remnants of the Ottoman army, united them in coherent coordinated units, and started what is now known as the Turkish War of Independence.
Thomas Small Exactly. And they – they trounced the Greeks. They pushed them into the sea, burning down Smyrna. Well, over a hundred thousand people civilians were killed in the process. Atatürk has been accused of masterminding that effort. Obviously, Turks contest this, 'cause – but it seems pretty clear.
Aimen Dean They contest everything. Don't worry.
Thomas Small It – it seems clear that he did that. It was very brutal. The Greeks remember it today with great sadness. In fact, it happened one hundred years ago this year.
Aimen Dean Indeed.
Thomas Small The burning of Smyrna. The expulsion of one and a half million Greek speakers from Asia Minor, from Anatolia, and, at the same time, a half a million Muslims from what is now Greece to Türkiye. There was this incredible exchange of populations. You know, really extinguishing three thousand years of Greek inhabitation of Asia Minor. It's called the Asia Minor disaster in Greece. And it—. It's—. It really reverberates to this day.
Aimen Dean This war of independence is what cemented Mustafa Kemal's legacy and legend, and that is why he was given, in later years, the title of Atatürk. Atatürk actually is not his surname. Atatürk is a title given to him by the Turkish media at the time and it means "father of the Turks."
Thomas Small "Father of the Turk." You know, as we said, Atatürk was dedicated to Turkish sovereignty and independence, but he was not anti-Western. Quite the contrary. He was anti-traditional and staunchly pro-Western. He just didn't want Western countries to bully Türkiye or boss it around.
And to this end, following his victory in the Turkish War of Independence, he stablished a very rigorous revolutionary regime in Türkiye. You know, basically transforming Türkiye into a modern secular nation state. As we've said in the past, he abolished the caliphate. He launched a policy of Turkification. Everyone becomes a Turk. He abolished the Arabic script and introduced the Roman alphabet. He banned traditional costume, forced everyone to wear Western dress. He liberated women to some large extent. He, in one big, you know, galloping go, transformed Türkiye from a traditional patrimonial Ottoman, hierarchical state into a modern state and, in so doing, became the model for all of the great modernisers that we've talked about this season, from Reza Shah in Iran to Nasser in Egypt to—. All of them. The—. Atatürk was the first.
Aimen Dean When it comes to Atatürk's reforms, they are viewed with mixed feelings in Türkiye even today. The urban, you know, populations love him so much. The rural, not so much. They are grateful for his victories and for the founding of the republic. They are not so grateful for, you know, what they considered to be an attack on faith, which he did, and the banning of Arabic even as liturgical language. You know, the adhan, the call to prayer, actually, was done in Turkish for many years, because, you know, of Mustafa Kemal's reforms.
In the Arab world, however, no. He is universally despised and hated.
Thomas Small Really?
Aimen Dean Yeah, yeah. For two reasons. The first is because he got rid of the Arabic script and the adoption of the Latin script and for even trying to get rid of as many loan Arabic words in the Turkish language and he replaced them with—. Yeah.
Thomas Small That's right. He purged the Turkish language of Arabic words. Yeah.
Aimen Dean Indeed. So, he—. You know, they saw this as rabid anti-Arabism. Yeah.
Thomas Small It was.
Aimen Dean Yes, it was. Rather than, you know, any attempt at modernisation. I'm trying to be fair to him. Like, you know, I mean, from his own point of view, like, you know, that he experienced defeat, you know, in the Syrian campaign as the hands of not only the British, but the Arabs, too. And so, you know, he might have, like, you know, some valid reasons. But he, of course, went too far in his anti-Arab sentiments. And so, he is hated.
As well as the fact that they, you know, believe that he went too far in attacking fundamentals of Islam as a religion, including, basically, the teaching of the Quran and the call to prayer in Turkish.
Thomas Small Well, rushing to the end here, you know, we can quickly summarise the Second World War period. You know, Türkiye was neutral until the very end of the Second World War, when it joined on the side of the Allies, luckily for it. And after the war, the Soviet Union actually started a big military build-up in the Black Sea, in the Caucasus, intending to, you know—. Not necessarily to conquer Türkiye, but certainly to force its will upon it. But the American sailed to the rescue and Stalin backed off.
Now, Greece. You know, ultimately, we're – we're talking about a conflict between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus. So, Greece, in the Second World War, was conquered by Germany. And after its liberation by the Allies, the country fell into a terrible civil war between communists and anti-communist royalists. And the royalists won, obviously. So, both countries fell within the orbit of the west. Both countries joined NATO in 1952. And it was understood that, perhaps, by being in NATO, their age-old rivalry, the rivalry between Greece and Türkiye, the rivalry between Greeks and Turks, would be laid to rest.
Except for Cyprus.
You know, I started this episode saying, in order to understand what happened in 1974 in Cyprus, you have to go back to the beginnings of Islam, you have to go back to different narratives of the – of Constantinople, of Greekness, of Turkishness, of what these things mean, because they all played out in a big and very tragic way on the island of Cyprus, beginning in the twentieth century,
Aimen Dean As far as post-World War II Cyprus, we could say that the inhabitants of the islands were divided between eighty percent Greek-speaking Christians and twenty percent Turkish-speaking Muslims.
Thomas Small That's right.
Aimen Dean And the island was ruled by the British. And they have two—.
Thomas Small Yeah. Throughout all of this.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small Throughout the First World War, the Second World War, throughout all of these things, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, it had remained peacefully within the British Empire.
Aimen Dean Indeed. And they had two massive, you know, bases there, military bases on the island.
Thomas Small The British did.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small Mmhmm. Now I say "peacefully," but in the early 1950s, an anti-British nationalist movement was founded on Cyprus. This is called the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters or EOKA, which was dedicated to the cause of Enosis, union with Greece. So, the leader of EOKA was a former officer in the Greek army, a hero of the Greek resistance to the Nazis. His name was Georgios Grivas, and he was working with the archbishop of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, to oust the British. EOKA thought, "We've got to get rid of the British. And once we get rid of the British, then we can unite with Greece."
So, to that end, a guerrilla campaign of increasing brutality against British agents in Cyprus began. The British counter attacked. The Greek government was secretly providing armaments to EOKA. It grew bloody.
Aimen Dean This sounds very much like what happened to the British, you know, during their mandate over the Israel-Palestine territories, you know.
Thomas Small Yeah. Very similar.
Aimen Dean Yeah. The same. like, you know, I mean, what happened in the Malaya, what happened in Kenya. Oh, my God. like, you know, I mean, it's always the same story. Like, you know, I mean, the British fighting insurgents.
Thomas Small It's true, you know. The end of the British Empire was full of these—. Well, what about India? We—. Or the last episode, the partition in India. The British Empire ended with this – with calls for partition, with calls for ethnic cleansing, with, you know—. Ugh. It was a—. It was really difficult.
Aimen Dean Yes. But what about the twenty percent inhabitants of the island? The Cypriot Turks were really nervous about union with Greece, because, in the island of Cyprus, there are twenty percent, they will have twenty percent of the [unintelligible] parliament. They will have some influence. But if they are part of a much greater Greek population, their influence will be completely diluted and they will have no say whatsoever. They were afraid of that. And that is why they were advocating for something else completely different, you know, from the policy of union with Greece. They were advocating for taksim.
"Taksim" is yet another Arabic loan word into Turkish—sorry, Atatürk—which means "partition." So, they advocated for partition.
Thomas Small Yeah. So, the Greeks were advocating union with Greece. The Turks were advocating partition between Greeks and Turks, two separate states. Very similar to the Palestinian situation and the Palestinian debate that had gone on a few years before, you know.
The Turks had reason to be afraid. I mean, Cypriot Turks, I'm talking about. Intercommunal violence broke out between the Cypriot Greeks and the Cypriot Turks. And it was really mainly the Greek majority attacking the Turkish minority. The Turks, I think, rightly feared for their lives.
Aimen Dean Indeed. And I think the sentiment, unfortunately, among the Greek Cypriots were rather inflammatory and poisonous towards, you know, the Turkish inhabits of the islands. They were viewing them, for some reason, as invaders, even though they were there for hundreds of years. And they were always viewed as if they were non-indigenous to the island.
Thomas Small One can see this more widely. There was still a lot of tension and violence between Greek speakers and Turkish speakers, you know, inside Türkiye. You know, many hundreds of thousands of Greeks still lived in Türkiye. And there were pogroms in Istanbul against Greek communities. So, the Greeks in Türkiye felt like they were being attacked rightly by Turks. In Cyprus, this spilled over. Greeks attacking Turks there. It was, you know, a very sad story, the sort of story that we're familiar with here on Conflicted.
Well, in the end, in 1960, in London, Greece and Türkiye and representatives from both Cypriot communities agreed a compromise solution. Cyprus gained its independence and would have a Greek-speaking president, but it would have a Turkish-speaking vice president, and each would have the power of veto. Thirty percent of government ministers would be Turks. This was the compromise.
At the same time, the British would retain their two big military bases on the island, and Greece and Türkiye would station army contingents of their own on the island to guarantee its independence.
The first president of independent Cyprus was the archbishop, Makarios. And if that sounds weird, remember the Ottoman legacy. Churchmen were the ethnarchs, as they were called in Greek, of their people. The people were guided by religious leaders. Most of the archbishop's appointments to the government were EOKA members still passionate about Enosis and most Turkish speaking ministers were still aiming for taksim.
So, the solution that was brokered in London soon broke down and fighting broke out again in 1963, requiring UN peacekeepers to get involved. And we're really talking about deaths in the hundreds. Population displacement, burning down of villages. I mean, serious violence.
Aimen Dean Poor Father Makarios. The man really wanted, as we say in Arabic, to hold the stick from the middle and, you know, to please everyone, because he wanted the whole of Cyprus to be united, but, also at the same time, not part of Greece. That, in the end, did not please anyone, you know.
Thomas Small Yeah.
Aimen Dean So, you know, it – it shows that you cannot please everyone.
Thomas Small Yeah. He was looking for a neutral solution, neither Enosis or taksim, which got everyone's backs up, actually.
Now the big thing that happened in 1967, in Greece, a military junta came to power in a coup. Now that's a huge story in its own right. But for now, the new Greek regime in Athens supported Enosis, union with Greece. A Cypriot union with Greece. And Archbishop Makarios was standing in their way.
In 1971, EOKA comes back and begins paramilitary operations on Cyprus again. This time, though, largely fighting other Greeks – Greeks who were opposed to Enosis.
The Cypriot National Guard was allied with the junta in Athens. And all of this culminated in 1974 to a coup against Archbishop Makarios, sponsored by Greece, carried out by the Cypriot National Guard, and a new passionately pro-Enosis government was installed in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. Türkiye was not pleased.
Aimen Dean No one was pleased to some extent, except, you know, Greece. But nonetheless, I think that coup really got rid of Makarios, but also got rid of any chance of peaceful coexistence on the island.
Thomas Small Türkiye called on Britain to fulfil its obligations and to intervene to protect the Island's neutrality. But Britain—. You know, this is 1974. Britain just was not in the mood. It refused. So, Türkiye invaded.
Aimen Dean So, the prime minister of Türkiye, Bülent Ecevit, decided that "now is the time. It's now or never. If we don't intervene, there could be the possibility or the probability of ethnic cleansing on the island" and that the Turkish minority there were really in peril. Or at least that's what he said, and that is the narrative of the Turkish government at that time. So, the troops were sent and they established beachheads and they started pushing the Greek military and EOKA militias all the way back to what we know – now know as the separating line between the two [crosstalk].
Thomas Small The green line. Another green line.
Aimen Dean Yeah. We have Belfast and we have, goodness, how many other? Talking about Belfast and Ireland, like, you know, I mean, another island, you know, where the British were there and, you know, it went into, well, poop.
Thomas Small How many partitions now have we – have we – have we—? Kashmir, Palestine. Now Cyprus.
Aimen Dean Yeah. Yemen. It was partitioned between north and south, you know. So, yeah. Talk about it.
So, reality here is that the Turks, when they established that green line, it became the line through which, you know, Greeks in the north will flee south and Turks tucks in the south will flee north. And a—. I would say, like, you know, a transfer of population happening.
Thomas Small Yeah. It was a—.
Aimen Dean Quite quickly, actually.
Thomas Small It was a sad echo of the transfer of populations after the Smyrna disaster in 1922, where both sides swapped population. And – and that's largely where it remains. You know? Thirty percent or so of the island, a Turkish Northern Republic, and the internationally-recognised Republic of Greece centred in the south of the island with the Greek speakers.
And it was a real war. It lasted several weeks. The Greek army got involved. There was serious fighting. It was a real war, and the consequences of that war remain with us to this day.
Now, I think coming to the end of this very long, very twisting episode of Conflicted, that it's ironic that during the Middle Ages, when the jihad against the Eastern Roman Empire was that its most persistent, the island of Cyprus was peacefully ruled by a neutral condominium, where power was shared equally by both parties. And yet now, the island is bitterly divided between two fiercely nationalistic, ethnic communities.
Nationalism, Aimen. Nationalism. It is the problem. You're a big supporter. But nationalism, it just brings chaos wherever it comes.
Aimen Dean Thomas, Thomas, Thomas. How many times do I have to tell you? It's not the nation state. It is the absence of monarchy.
Thomas Small Oh, well. We've come full circle. We started with Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee. And here you—. You, once again, haranguing me about the need for a monarch. So, you think that a monarch, a king of Cyprus would solve the problem of Cyprus?
Aimen Dean Yes. They could have proclaimed King Makarios and—.
Thomas Small An Archbishop. I mean—. You mean the caliph then. One man to unite within his person secular and religious authority.
Aimen Dean Religious authority.
Thomas Small Dear listener, thank you for listening to this long and complex episode of Conflicted. I think, if nothing else, it's done a great job of setting up our next episode, which is a story of ethnic intercommunal sectarian violence and chaos compared to which Cyprus was a walk in the park. I'm referring to, of course, that beautiful land on the other side of the Levantine Sea, Lebanon.
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Bea Duncan. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Production support and fact-checking by Talia Augustidis. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.
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