Imbros and Tenedos

JOURNAL HELLE C D PO A Quarterly Review VOL. VII, No. 1 SPRING 1980 Publisher: LEANDROS PAPATHANASIOU Editorial Board: DAN GEORGAKAS PASCHALIS M. KITROMILIDES PETER PAPPAS YIANNIS P. ROUHATIS Advisory Editors: NIKOS PETROPOULOS DINO SIOTIS The Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora air mail; Institutional—$20.00 for one is a quarterly review published by Pella year, $35.00 for two years. Single issues Publishing Company, Inc., 461 Eighth cost $3.50; back issues cost $4.50. Avenue, New York, NY 10001, U.S.A., in March, June, September, and Decem- Advertising rates can be had on request ber. Copyright 0 1980 by Pella Publish- by writing to the Managing Editor. ing Company. Articles appearing in this Journal are The editors welcome the freelance sub- abstracted and/or indexed in Historical mission of articles, essays and book re- Abstracts and America: History and views. All submitted material should be Life; or in Sociological Abstracts; or in typewritten and double-spaced. Trans- Psychological Abstracts; or in the Mod- lations should be accompanied by the ern Language Association Abstracts (in- original text. Book reviews should be cludes International Bibliography) in approximately 600 to 1,200 words in accordance with the relevance of content length. Manuscripts will not be re- to the abstracting agency. turned unless they are accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. All articles and reviews published in Subscription rates: Individual—$12.00 the Journal represent only the opinions for one year, $22.00 for two years; of the individual authors; they do not Foreign—$15.00 for one year by surface necessarily reflect the views of the mail; Foreign—$20.00 for one year by editors or the publisher NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ALEXIS ALEXANDRIS received his doctorate in politics and Greek history from the University of London. He has published a number of articles on Greek-Turkish relations and, beginning in October of 1980, he will be a research associate at McGill University.. RICHARD BURNS is the founder of the Cambridge Poetry Festival and a recipient of the Keats Memorial Prize. He has published numerous collections of poetry and translated into English, with Peter Mansfield, Antonis Samarakis's novel, The Flaw . J. KENNETH MACKINNON is head of the division of classical civilization at the Polytechnic of North London. He has published several articles on Greek tragedy in various scholarly journals . EVANGELOS A. MANTZARIS is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Cape Town ... LINDA SUNY MYRSIADES teaches English at Widener College and has published essays in a number of periodicals, including Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, The Charioteer, and Theatre Survey. TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement 4 lmbros and T enedos: A Study of Turkish Attitudes Toward Two Ethnic Greek Island Communities Since 1923 by Alexis Alexandris 5 The Struggle for Greek Theater in Post -Independence Greece by Linda Suny Myrsiades 33 Biography: The Poetry of Nasos Vayenas 53 Greek Tragedy and the Women of Fifth Century Athens by J. Kenneth MacKinnon 73 Greek Rural Settlement in Southern Rhodesia, 1890 - 1930 by Evangelos A. Mantzaris 89 Forthcoming in the summer issue of the Journal • GEORGE SEFERIS's "Scenario for 'Thrush,' " translated for the first time into English by James Stone. • THANOS VEREMIS on the Pangalos dictatorship. • ANGELIKI LAIOU-THOMADAKIS on relief to Greece during the Occupation. • JOHN E. REXINE on Kalvos and Seferis. Statement The lead article in this issue of the Journal, "Imbros and Tenedos: A Study of Turkish Attitudes Toward Two Ethnic Greek Island Communities Since 1923" by Alexis Alexandris, is, in our opinion, one of the most important we have published in the last several years. What makes it so is that it points to a possibility as hor- rible as it is avoidable: the extermination of yet another part of the Greek presence outside of Greece. Alexandris's meticulous scholarly reconstruction of the events which led to the dehellenization of Imbros and Tenedos is nothing less than a sober forewarning of what the future probably holds in store for that part of the Greek population that is most beleaguered today: Cyprus. The precedent is clear and inescapable. It is in this century, after all, that the word "holocaust" has become a part of the vocabulary of politics and of the relations between peoples. In the final analysis, what invests Alexandris's essay with its tragedy is the implicit—and, at times, explicit—understanding that most of the frightful history between the modern states of Greece and Turkey in this century has been completely unnecessary. Chauvinist adventurers, imperialist irredentists, religious fanatics, and, of course, foreign intervention, have bloodied what should have been the fraternal development of two historically and cul- turally linked countries. Whenever calm and far-seeing—and authentically patriotic—statesmen have prevailed, putting the wel- fare of their people above the interests of foreign powers and alliances, Greece and Turkey have not only lived in peace, but have coexisted like the two sister nations that they are. Whenever self-serving and flag-waving politicians and generals have asserted themselves, however, destruction has invariably ensued. In the end, what is truly disturbing about the relations between Greece and Turkey today is that we are not living in an age of statesmen but in a time of politicians and generals. —The Editors Imbros and Tenedos:: A Study of Turkish Attitudes Toward Two Ethnic Greek Island Communities Since 1923 by ALEXIS ALEXANDRIS Introduction Together with Thassos, Lemnos, and Samothrace, the islands of Im- bros and Tenedos make up a geographical unit known as the Thracian Sporades at the northeastern corner of the Aegean Sea. The most dis- tinctive characteristic of these islands, however, is their proximity to the Straits of the Dardanelles. Imbros is located only eleven nautical miles from the mouth of the Dardanelles, and Tenedos twelve.' The Thracian Sporades were annexed by the Ottoman Empire in 1455-1456 and, together with certain coastal districts, were directly administered by the Kaptan Pasha of the Ottoman imperial navy. But it was only with the promulgation of the new Vilayet law in 1864 that the administrative status of the islands vis-a- vis the central government was defined. Accord- ingly, they formed two administrative districts (the kazas of Imroz and Bozcaada) of the Dardanelles sanjak (Limni Mutasarrifligi), which in turn was a subdivision of the wider province of the Aegean archipelago (Cezayir Bahr? Se fit Vilayeti). Between 1908-1912, Imbros and Tenedos were transferred to the sanjak of the Dardanelles (Canakkale Mtstesarri- fligi). During this period the islands were administered by a governor (kaymakam) and an administrative council in which the local Greek element was well represented. Describing the administrative system on the island of Imbros during the mid-1870s, Ismail Kemal Bey, a pro- minent Ottoman politician who spent about a year there, stated that: The sole authority in the place was the mudir [a sort of mayor 1 The common English names of these two islands have been used throughout this article mainly because they are still widely known by these two names. While the Turkish name of Tenedos — Bozcaada — has been widely employed by the Turks for centuries, Imbros was only renamed as Glikceada on July 29, 1970 (law no. 5442/decision 8479). 8 0n the geography of the islands, see T. Yilcel, "Imroz'cla Cografya G5zIem- leri" ["Geographical Observations on Imbros"], Cografya Arartirmalari Dergisi [Journal of Geographical Research), 1 (1966), 67-73; M. Aktuna, "Imroz adasinda bazi jeolojik milsahedeler" ("Some Geological Observations on the Island of Im- bros"), Turk Jeoloji Kurumu Billteni [Bulletin of the Turkish Geology Society], 11:2 (1950), 9-17. 6 JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA appointed by the government), who was a charming Albanian, and more like the father of this island than a representative of the Government.... There were four or five gendarmes recruited from among the Greeks of the country, who did not even find the need of using them — and it is doubtful if they would have known how to if the occasion had arisen.... There are no pleasures there except the songs of young Greeks and country dances.' Notwithstanding their long occupation by the Ottoman Turks, the islanders were allowed to retain their Greco-Christian ethnic character intact. The almost exclusively Greek Imbriot community, for instance, maintained eight churches and fifteen priests. The see of the Archbishop of Imbros and Tenedos was situated at the provincial capital, 'Castro (Kalektiy). There were also ten schools with 1,070 students and 15 teachers in Imbros in 1907 1 In the summer of 1854, there were some 4,000 inhabitants on the island of Tenedos, of which one-third were Turks. There was only one Greek school in Tenedos with about 200 students.' But the numerical preponderance of the Greek element is born out by the Ottoman general census of 1893, according to which the population of the islands was divided as follows: Foreign Greeks Turks nationals Armenians Total Imbros 9,357 99 9,456 Tenedos 2,479 1,247 103 6 3,835 By 1912, when the Ecumenical Patriarchate conducted its own census, the population of these rather small islands (Imbros: 280 square kilo- meters; and Tenedos: 32) was estimated to be: Greeks Turks Total Imbros 9,207 — 9,207 Tenedos 5,420 1,200 6,620 The soil of the islands was relatively rich, and Tenedos in particular 3 1. Kemal, The Memoirs of Ismail Kemal Bey, ed. by Sommerville Story, London, 1920, p. 92. 4 "'Etivtxri tAcoOpum KOGTC4CiT1l PAW iv KtovotavItvounast," lip.spo- X6ye Loy , &song r' (1907 ) , Constantinople, 1906, pp. 104-5. C. T. Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, vol.

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