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constituted the centres of growth
of a Minor Asiatic, of a refugee -
if I can it call thus- culture. With
this formulation I do not only mean
the cuisine and the foods, I do not
mean the songs, I do not mean
the particularity of language, the
customs, the house decoration, the
gardens, etc. I mean another more
general perception for life, another
perception of culture itself.
They developed an enormous collectiveness in their daily life, a collectiveness
that was expressed outside their houses: in the squares, in the taverns, in
their joints, but also in the pavements of their settlements. In the frame of
the refugee’ settlements therefore was developed a folk like culture, an alive
and extrovert culture, that it began from “Karagiozi” and reached to the habit
to eat outside even the simple common daily persons. This culture began as
refugee’ and progressively became Greek popular culture.
However, in the émigré settlements progressively another perception of
culture was shaped. Through official, national narration and the “national”
civilization was risen a Greek Asia Minor, a nationalised Asia Minor that did not
make anything other than to supply us with a Greek culture, homogeneous,
diachronic and tragic, full of national pain, where the Turk was the sovereign
rival form. Asia Minor of refugees was full of variegation, multi-religious
aspects, multi-nationality.
That Asia Minor was a world where a new horizon was opened: a horizon of
cosmopolitanism, a horizon in the frame of which you could be a Greek and live
peacefully together with a Turk without any problems.
I was given birth in the first of the four émigrés settlements of Patras, roughly
forty years after 1922. In my childhood but also in my adolescence many of
the refugees of my first generation were still live, and I lived with them. My
grandmother was from the Nikomidia, she came to Greece by the Asia Minor
Tragedy, in 1922. My grandfather, from Ikonio, came with the population
exchange, in 1924. To them and all the refugees of Patras I owe another Asia
Minor. I owe another perception of life and culture.
TURKISH-SPEAKING REFUGEES FROM PONT 2 IN GREECE:
PROBLEMS OF INCORPORATION
................................................................................................ by Nikos Marandzidis
This particular article is supported in my older research that took the form of
book was published in the Greek with the title “Jasasin Millet- Viva the Nation:
refugees, possession and civilian, national identity and political behaviour
in Turkish-speaking Greek orthodoxies the Western Pont”. The populations
that the present work examines lives in the hinterland and in coastline of
Western Pont, mainly in the administrative provinces the Sivas (Seva’steja),
the Kastamonou and the Tsanik. According to Kitromilides and Alexandris, in
1911 roughly 120.000 Greek that lived there spread in 336 unmixed Christian
communities. From this population, the Turkish-speaking communities were
246 and represented more than 80.000 persons. Turkish-speaking populations
lived, also, in the limits of metropolis Neokaisareia (Niksar), which included, in
1910, roughly 102.563 Greek Orthodoxies. The majority of these persons were
living in rural communities, isolated from the rest of the world and with few
contacts with the central authority. These persons were much attached to their
region, in their village and in their mahalle (district).
The language of an important part of the Christian population of Western Pont
was Turkish. The use of the Turkish language, that was widespread and in other
Christian Orthodox populations in the Asia Minor (Kappadokes), showed, after
all, the limited effect of the educational institutions controlled by Greece
that were implanted in these communities of Pont’s inhabitants. Generally,
the distance that separated these populations from the intellectual centres of
Hellenism appears to be big. It is characteristic that, while in Smyrni 13 Greek
newspapers were being published in the dues of 19th century, in the Sevasteia
and in the Kastamonou none was published.
2 The term “Pontus” evolves from “Pont-Euxin”, which in ancient Greek denotes the Black Sea, the
term currently refers to eastern Black Sea region of Turkey
Population Exchange Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe