My Greek Odyssey

Turkish Friendship

I am always surprised that MGO is visited and read by a significant number of Turkish readers who either live in Turkey or elsewhere. At times, they outnumber my readers who live in Greece.  Occasionally, they leave comments and although they are uniformly polite and most embrace some sort of Greek-Turkish friendship, they often espouse views that I think are indicative of the deep divide between Greeks and Turks. Almost two years ago I wrote a post which still seems to engender the periodic comment.  Hande recently made the following comment which is typical of the feedback I receive:

"History, history, history...Keeps repeating all the time. I dont really understand what is the importance to keep bring up this subject and be stuck on the past? And pointing in one way or another who did what, who is guilty?  Where is this going to lead anyway?........Turks don't hate Greeks! Like Greeks have been thinking all these years about Turks. But ironically its actually more the Greeks who still hate the Turks because of history/politics. Greece and Cyprus don't even come close to seeking a peace with Turkey because they are not willing to let go of the past and to get rid of this hate.  As long as the hate and the hostility remain inside it will be impossible to find the peace and the future can't get better. It's really, really sad why it just can't be like in the old times, when we lived side by side as friends with peace."

As someone who was born in Turkey, I grew up listening to the funny stories of Nasrudin Hoca.  He was a 13th century philosopher and wise man who lived in Anatolia, and is remembered throughout the Islamic world for his stories and anecdotes. Nasrudin's stories can be described as a repository of folk wisdom both illogical yet logical, bizarre yet normal, foolish yet brilliant, and simple yet profound, very much akin to Aesop's fables. Even more unique was how he gets his unconventional message across. My mother, in particular, always had a Nasrudin anecdote which magically appeared whenever she wanted to drive some lesson home to her wayward son.

As I write this I have no intention to embarass nor do I hold any malice toward Hande, who I believe sincerely wants to see better relations between Greeks and Turks. I welcome a dialogue on the subject and I will respond by first quoting a Nasrudin anecdote:

 Nasrudin sat on a river bank when someone shouted to him from the opposite  side:

    "Hey! how do I get to the other side?"

    "You are on the other side!" Nasrudin shouted back.

Greeks and Turks have a great deal of shared history. I personally am a great proponent of its study. It explains a great deal and if we avoid the all too customary attempts to rewrite it to our liking, we might learn enough from it to avoid repeating the catastrophes of the past. Most Greeks and Turks see history a little differently because they have been taught different versions of it. I think however, that if we can agree on one thing it is that for a very long time the relationship between Turk and Greek was very unequal, i.e. conqueror and conquered. It was a tenuous relationship, a Turk could be a friend one day and signing your death warrant the next.

Given your dislike of history and its stubborn facts, let's put it aside and fast forward to the present.

-The Greek minority in Istanbul, Tenedos and Imvros, a protected minority, is hovering around 2000,  down  from well over 200,000 in 1922. The Greeks whose property was destroyed or confiscated in the Pogrom of 1955 have never been compensated nor have they ever received an official apology.

-Turkish warplanes constantly violate Greek airspace, often directly flying over populated Greek islands in the Aegean.

-The Turkish Army illegally occupies almost half of the island of Cyprus which it cleansed of its original inhabitants. The Turkish authorities are currently selling Greek owned properties to the highest bidder while systematically destroying every vestige of the Greek cultural and religious heritage of the occupied territory.

-The Muslim minority which consists of Pomaks (Muslim Slavs), Roma and Turks in Thrace, also a protected minority, has grown from 85000 in 1922 to 100,000, and is the target of Turkish attempts to claim Turkish identity for is disparate groups.

-The Orthodox Patriarch, who must by law be a Turkish citizens, is not allowed to reopen the Halki seminary thus in effect condemning the Patriarchate to eventual extinction.

These are hardly manifestations of Turkish "friendship."   I suggest to you that even if we set aside the historical context of our two peoples, we cannot as easily set aside these current and divisive issues.  Recently hundreds of pilgrims from Russia and Greece traveled to the Monastery of Panagia Soumela in Trabzon.  Many of them were descendants of the Pontic Greeks who lived along the Black Sea coast for thousands of years before the arrival of the Turks. Over half a million were killed and the rest were forcibly evicted from their lands and homes, well before the exchange of populations decreed by the Treaty of Lausanne. This small group of tourists had the audacity to attempt to hold a small prayer service outside the monastery, an Orthodox religious site that is over a thousand years old and still sacred to Orthodox Christians.  The Turkish government has converted it to a museum for tourists. The prayer service took place on the occasion of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The service was interrupted by the Director of the Trabzon Museum, Nilgun Yilmazer, who tried to stop the prayer saying, "Sumela is not a place open to prayer." The incident was captured on video and reported in the Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet, which by the way, incorrectly states that the monastery was "abandoned."  The monks who occupied it were either killed or were focrcibly evicted by the Turkish military, they hardly left of their own accord.

Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey on a strict principle of secularism. In Turkey, secularism does not mean the separation of state and religion, but rather the control of religion by the state. For Muslims it means women are not allowed to wear a head scarf  while attending a university, for Christians it means something completely different. It means in many cases that they are not allowed to freely practice their religion in a country that professes freedom of religion for all.  There is an ongoing power struggle for Turkey's soul between the secular Kemalists and the Islamists. Neither group is dedicated to protecting individual freedoms and rights and both groups subscribe to the ultra-nationalist thinking that breeds an environment in which Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is a bestseller, the Armenian and Pontic genocides are denied, minorities are persecuted and dreams of a new Ottoman Empire are revived. Hrant Dink, the Armenian editor, was murdered by such a nationalist. It is this mix of virulent nationalism and predatory Islam in Turkey that poses such a challenge for many well meaning and peace loving Turks who want their country to change for the better.

As Nasrudin cleverly points out, Hande, the problem is not on the other side of the river, it is on your side.

The Cretan Runner

George Psychoundakis died on the 29 January, 2006, at Canea.    He was best known for his extraordinary account of clandestine life in the Resistance after the German occupation of his island in 1941; the book was translated into English by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, and enjoyed success in Britain as The Cretan Runner. His obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 18 February 2006:

"George Psychoundakis was born on November 3 1920 at the village of Asi Gonia, perched high in a mountain pass in central Crete.  "Asi" means "unconquerable" in Arabic, and was bestowed by one of a long list of invaders that left their mark on his island. He was the eldest of four children, born to a family whose only possessions were a single-room house with a earthen floor, a few sheep and goats.

Education at the village school was basic; but unlike most of his fellows George learnt to write as well as read, and gleaned what learning he could from books lent by the schoolteacher and the village priest.  When the German invasion of Crete began, he was 21, a light , wiry, elfin figure who could move among the mountains with speed and agility.  While the Germans imposed their rule with the utmost brutality, Psychoundakis was among the many who guided straggling Allied soldiers over the mountains to the south coast, from where they could be evacuated.

As the Resistance grew more organised, Psychoundakis became a runner, carrying messages, wireless sets, batteries and weapons between villages and secret wireless stations, always on foot, always in danger, often exhausted and hungry, over some of the most precipitous terrain in Europe.  It was gruelling work, but in an interview many years later Psychoundakis made light of the hundreds of miles he covered at a run: "I felt as if I were flying, so light and easy - just like drinking a cup of coffee."  

Patrick Leigh Fermor, one of a handful of SOE officers whose job it was to co-ordinate the Cretan resistance, first met Psychoundakis at the end of July 1942 in a rocky hide-out above the village of Vaphe.  The messages Psychoundakis was carrying were twisted into tiny billets and hidden away in his clothes: "They were produced," wrote Leigh Fermor, "with a comic kind of conjuror's flourish, after grotesquely furtive glances over the shoulder and fingers laid on lips in a caricature of clandestine security precautions that made us all laugh."  His clothes were in rags, one of his patched boots was held together with a length of wire - but his humour and cheerfulness were infectious.  Humour and danger went hand in hand.  Psychoundakis told how a couple of German soldiers decided to help him with an overladen donkey, whish was carrying a heavy wireless set under bags of wheat.  The Germans beat the poor creature so hard that Psychoundakis was afraid they would knock off the saddle-bags but mercifully their attention was drawn to some village girls, and the soldiers started flirting with them instead.  He also describes British officers with wry amusement - one had "pyjamas, a wash basin, and a thousand and two mysterious objects.  He wore a row of medals on his breast, and had a rucksack full of geological books which he studied all day long."  At the same time, the harshness of everyday life was ever-present.  Near starvation at one point with another SOE officer, Jack Smith-Hughes, Psychoundakis described how they picked broken snail shells off blades of grass and ate them, pretending that each was more delicious than the last.  A bed of springy branches in a dry cave was a luxury: George spent many a night freezing on a rain-soaked mountainside, listening out for German search-parties, knowing what they would do if he were caught.  Tales of torture, burning villages and summary executions were all too familiar.  On the one occasion he visited England, in 1955, Psychoundakis was awarded the King's Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom.  yet at the end of the war, the Greek authorities had taken a very different view of the man who had done so much for the Cretan resistance.  Psychoundakis's paperwork was not in order, so he was arrested and imprisoned as a deserter. Months of bitterness, misery and humiliation followed in the jails of Piraeus and Macedonia.  In the end he was released, though there was little comfort for him at home.  His family's flock had been stolen during the Occupation, they were poorer than ever, and Psychoundakis was now the chief bread-winner.  When Leigh Fermor caught up with him for a few days in Crete in 1951, he was working as a charcoal burner.  He told Leigh Fermor, who recorded their meeting in the introduction to The Cretan Runner, that while in prison he had begun to write down everything he could remember about the Occupation.  On his release he got a job building roads, and lived in a little cave in the hills.  Here he continued his writing by the light of an oil-lamp.  Leigh Fermor asked if he could see the results.  "Without a word he dived into his knap-sack, fished out five thick exercise books tied in a bundle, and handed them over."  As he read them, Leigh Fermor recognised Psychoundakis's manuscript as a unique document and made up his mind to translate it.  At a time when dozens of books by ex-officers were filling the bookshops, this was one of the first to reveal the occupation from the point of view of the local inhabitant - and the fact that it was written with such truthfulness and honesty made it all the more impressive.  The book appeared first in English, translated by Leigh Fermor, in 1955.  It was published in Hungarian in 1981, and in Greek in 1986.  With publication of The Cretan Runner, he bought some grazing land, and became immediately embroiled in a dispute with neighbours - "but if I'd bought land by the sea, I'd be a rich man now!"  In later years he looked after the German cemetery in Canea.  A German War Graves Commissioner came to see it one day, and was impressed by how well Psychoundakis looked after it- though he was surprised that he spoke no German.  "Well, there's not much opportunity to learn it here," said Psychoundakis.  "All the Germans I look after are dead." He never stopped reading and writing.  After The Cretan Runner he wrote a book on the island's legends and customs, Eagle's Nest in Crete, and translated Hesiod's Georgic Works and Days.  His most ambitious project was the translation of The Odyssey from other prose translations into Cretan verse, based on the pattern of The Erotokritos.  This celebrated 17th-century Cretan epic, composed in rhyming couplets of 15 syllables, rivals Homer in length - though Psychoundakis's father, despite being illiterate, could recite it word-perfect.  When he had finished, Patrick Leigh Fermor asked what he was going to do next: "He looked surprised at the question, and answered, "Oh, The Iliad."  For his translations of Homer, Psychoundakis was honoured by the Academy of Athens. Years after the war ended, George Psychoundakis sang for his friend Patrick Leigh Fermor a mantinada. This is what it said:

With patience first and patience last, and doggedness all through,
A man can think the wildest thoughts and make them all come true.

The March to the Front by Odysseas Elytis

The Axion Esti (Worthy Be) published in 1959, after a long silence, is one of Nobel Laureate Odysseas Elytis greatest works. It was set to music by Mikis Theodorakis in 1964 and became so popular that every Greek can sing some of its words. You can listen and download some of the music from the panel in the right margin. I'll post at least two or three more excerpts in the coming weeks.

Download 2-03 Η Πορεία Προς Το Μέτωπο 1

Translated by Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris from the Collected Poems of Odysseas Elytis, revised and expanded edition

At dawn on St John's Day, the day after Epiphany, we received the order to move up to the places where there were no weekdays or Sundays.  We had to take over the lines, held until then by the men from Arta, which extended from Heimarra to Tepeleni, because they had been fighting without a break right from the start and only half of them were left and they couldn't bear any more.

We had already spent twelves days in the villages behind the lines. And as ours ears again became accustomed to the sweet rustlings of the earth, and timidly we gave ear to the barking of the dogs, or to the sound of distant church bells, it was then we had to return to the only din we knew: slow and heavy from the cannons, dry and quick from the machineguns.

Night after night, we marched without stopping, one behind the other, as if blind.  Slogging through the mud with great effort, we sank up to the knee.  Because it often drizzled on the roads as in our souls.  And the few times we stopped to rest, we wouldn't exchange a word, but grim and silent, with a little torch for light, we shared our raisins one by one.  At our times, if we had the chance, we hurriedly loosened our clothes and furiously scratched ourselves until we bled. Because the  lice had come up as far as our necks, which was even more unbearable than our exhaustion. And then the whistle is heard through the darkness, signaling us to start again, and like pack animals we advanced as far as we could before daybreak, when we would be targets for airplanes.  Because God had no idea about such things as targets, and as was his wont, he always made daybreak at the same hour.

Then hidden in gullies, we rested our heads on their heavy side, whence no dreams emerge. And the birds  got angry at us, thinking we paid no attention to their words--or because we had perhaps made creation ugly for no reason.  We were peasants of another kind, with spades and tools of another kind in our hands, damn them.

Twelve days ago, while at the villages behind the lines, we had looked in the mirror for many hours at the contours of our faces. And as our eyes again became accustomed to their old familiar features, and we timidly gave eye to our naked lip or our cheeks freshened by sleep, so we saw that on the second night we had changed somewhat, on the third night more so, and on the fourth and last, it was obvious we were no longer the same. It was as if, you might think, we were a motley crowd with all generations and years mixed together, some from present times and some from times long past, whitened with an abundance of beard. Unsmiling chieftains with turbans, and gigantic priests, sergeants from the wars of 1897 and 1912, ax men swinging their axes over their shoulders, Byzantine border guards, and shield bearers with the blood of Bulgarians and Turks still on them.  All together, not speaking, grunting side by side for innumerable years, we crossed ridges and ravines, thinking of nothing else. Because as when continual setbacks strike the same people so  they become used to Evil and finally change its name to destiny or fate. 

And we realized that we were very near the places where there are no weekdays or Sundays, neither sick nor hale, neither poor nor rich.  Because the distant explosions, like a thunderstorm behind the mountains, kept getting louder, so much so that we could finally make them, slow and heavy from the cannons and quick from the machineguns.  And because more and more frequently, we came across medics with the wounded, moving slowly from the front. Wearing armbands with red crosses, they set down their stretchers and spat on their palms, their eyes wild for a cigarette.

And when they heard where we were heading they shook their heads, and began to tell horrible stories.  But the only thing we paid attention to were those voices in the darkness, rising still burning from the pitch of the pit and from the sulfur. "Oh Mother, Oh, Mother."  And sometimes less often, we heard the choking gurgles, like snoring, which those in the know said  was the death rattle itself.  Sometimes the medics brought prisoners with them, captured only a few  hours before during the sudden  attack by the

patrols.  Their breath smelled of wine and their pockets bulged with food tins and chocolate.  We didn't have such things, because the bridges behind us were down, and our few mules were incapacitated by snow and slippery mud.

Finally, rising smoke appeared here and there, and the first bright flares on the horizon.