Istanbul (Turkey) -- Description and travel; Istanbul (Turkey) -- Social life and customs
My friend Carayanni is not a Levantine. He is an Ottoman Greek. Just
as a Scotchman is a British subject, so Carayanni is a Greek but a
Turkish--or Ottoman--subject, and is supposed to be as faithful to
Turkey as the Scotchman is faithful to Great Britain. But in the eyes
of the world Turkey is not Great Britain, and Carayanni is a Greek
and everyone, except the Turks, seem to consider it quite natural
that he should be a Venizelist. Foreigners call him and the other
Ottoman Greeks like him who are Venizelists “patriots,” and blame
the Turks for not loving them. A Venizelist is a Greek who wants the
downfall and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, that is to say that
an Ottoman Greek who is a Venizelist is _de juro_ a rebel, a traitor,
who conspires for the downfall and dismemberment of the Government of
his own country. When the Turks take this attitude and try to repress
this intestinal strife they are accused of committing “atrocities.”
When Great Britain or any other Western Government quells with machine
guns and hand-grenades a similar intestinal strife in their own
country, they are said to make a legal repression of a rebellious or
revolutionary movement. Double standards again.
The Venizelists want the downfall of the Ottoman Empire so that
Constantinople may become again a Greek Byzance as it was over five
centuries ago. Just because a city originally founded by the Romans
happened to be Greek thirty-nine years before Columbus discovered
America, Carayanni and all the Greeks claim now that it should again
be made Greek. They call themselves Venizelists because they follow
the principles of Venizelos who, although himself an Ottoman Greek,
turned traitor to the country of his birth and adoption and became the
political leader of Greece in her anti-Turkish policy. The western
powers hailed him as the greatest statesman and diplomat of the century
and never give a thought to his treason or to the weakness of his
claims.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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