Rationality in political speech, memory, and Cypriot national myths – part 1, The taking of Constantinople and life under Ottoman rule

All too often we find the political positions people hold, from the leaders of nations all the way down to our own friends, as irrational and unexplainable. I have critiqued ideologues in the past- and though not everybody rejects all ideologies, most people will find themselves criticizing certain positions- the religious madman, the bloodthirsty war-leader, the racist nationalist.

Yet these positions are often to their holders rational, and they arrive to them through what appears as a logical frame of thinking. Rationality in politics can be a difficult concept to understand. Dr. Stephen Humphreys, whose work I am currently reading has presented one of those common sense ideas that is sometimes more enlightening when presented in its entirety down in writing. We all base our political stances (how we act ourselves and how we judge the actions of others) based on our knowledge of the world- who other people are, what is our role in the world, and how does the world behaves. In that regard, memory is all important, since we judge the world based on what has happened in the past. After all, the state of the world today, and of the people inside it, is nothing if not the consequence of the actions and facts carried out in the past. One, for example, can understand thus a leader of a foreign Middle Eastern nation as an ‘autocratic madman’, based on what one knows of what that leader has done in the past. Without historic memory, one can have no understanding of the reasons why political situations arise and their current nature as a result of that history, and thus cannot have a position on how to respond.

Problems and misunderstandings arise though because the political impressions of most of us are shaped not just by the things that happened in the past that we know have occurred. We are most shaped, firstly by the things that happened in the past which we know nothing about- and more things have happened that we do not know about (and which if we did, our positions today might be different) than we do know about. And secondly, by the things which we do know about, which in reality, just aren’t so.

To all individuals then, based on the historical remembrances they have, their actions are logical and rational, even if to people who share different memories they seem as not. So often the ‘crazy’ leaders of the Middle East as the West likes to imagine them, act in very rational ways, which the West is incapable of understanding (or at least the average observer is) because their historic knowledge of the region is so faulty. Thus there can be found a very clear and well thought out logic in the actions of dictators, from al-Asad to Saddam Hussein. One does not need to agree with those actions- but seeing them as irrational is not only a mistake in understanding, it’s also a mistake in devising policy to respond to them.

At the same time, we find common people devoted to ideas and ideologies that seem rational and apparent to them, but are really only so because the historical memories of these people do not match with reality. People will tend to believe national myths, passed down from their parents, teachers and overall society, and from then on to their own children or students- but all too often, if not always, national myths bear little resemblance with reality. How does one know then when one’s position, whether a national leader, or a common citizen is based on historic reality, or historic myth? The important thing to realize is that to each person, whatever the reality of his worldview, his position is a rational one. From there on, it is important for each one who wishes to truly understand the world, and form positions that match reality and not some imagined history in our heads, to know history and the realities of the past and present, and be able to understand why others arrive at different conclusions through their different experiences.

I wish to consider here some of the myths that have shaped Greek-Cypriot political thought and ideology, ideology which has often led to tragic events, based as it is on a historical reality that never existed. Specifically I want to look at ultra-nationalism, a thought process that has led to violence in the past, and hostility between the different nationalities of the island. This will be covered in a series of post, since the topic is to me an extensive one. Ultra-nationalism to the Greek Cypriots that adhered to it, has emerged in the form of not only pro-Greek sentiment, but also a decidedly anti-Turkish one as well. To the Greek-Cypriot, history has proven that Greeks are strong and noble fighters, who even when outnumbered never give up on their principles, and eventually manage to defeat their oppressors (whether these are British or Turkish). They managed to retain their language and religion even under centuries of a foreign rule which wished to destroy their national identity. Turks on the other hand have been a barbaric and uncultured foreign race that based its empire on the ruins of another greater one (the Byzantine), oppressed the people under its rule and sought to eliminate their culture, religion and sense of identity, and has never achieved anything of note by itself.

As with many national myths, the history of the noble Greek warrior defending his values, and the barbarian Turk (or rather Ottoman, for though the original Ottomans were Turks, and the language of the empire was Turkish, for most of its existence the Ottoman empire was not synonymous with Turkish ethnicity) trying to oppress the people under his rule, has little to do with reality. I will examine a number of commonly held beliefs- and then show the corresponding historical reality.

The taking of Constantinople, and life under Ottoman rule

Let us go as far back as the time of the Byzantine Empire. To the Greeks, Byzantium was a glorious empire of learning and culture, which was conquered by a barbaric and warlike enemy in the form of the Turks- an enemy much more intolerant and violent. Yet this is far from the truth. Byzantium had by the late 6^th century started to enter into its long stage of decline, and into a stage of constant warfare with the Sasanian empire in the East, and later on the Arabs coming from the South. The emperors imposed heavy periodic taxes to finance their military campaigns. Furthermore the empire was extremely religiously conservative. Once Orthodox Christianity was adopted as the imperial religion, the emperors could not tolerate any other religions in their lands. Thus non-Christians, Jews, and non-Orthodox Christians were branded as heretics and systematically persecuted. In this environment, most subjects of the empire welcomed what their new, much more tolerant, initially Arab, (in the case of the lands of what was Greater Syria, Egypt and North Africa), and later on, Ottoman rulers.

Even before the fall of Constantinople, Turkish leaders had adopted the cultural and social lifestyle of the great cosmopolitan Arab cities, which had reached their glory during past Arabian empires. At its peak, the Ottoman Empire was the cultural, intellectual and artistic centre of the world. Moreover they were far more technologically advanced than any either the Byzantine empire, or the kingdoms of Western Europe- it was the use of Turkish gunpowder while their enemies still fought with pikes that enabled them to have such great military victories, and eventually defeat Constantinople. Constantinople itself, weakened as the empire decline, had already been sacked by Western crusaders (the sacking being the definitive turning point towards collapse of the empire) and had by 1453 become a symbol of the crumbling Byzantine Empire - a conservative and bureaucratic entity that had fallen behind the powers of the East and West. When it was taken by the Ottomans in 1453, it was a crumbling city, with a population of less than 50 000. It was under Ottoman rule that the city was repopulated, and it was Ottoman architectural revolutions that gave the city much of its present glory. Unlike popular belief in the Greek-speaking world, it was Byzantium that was by 1453 an unsophisticated, backwards entity, and the Ottomans a strong, cultured people with a finely organized and highly efficient army.

Ottoman rule over its subjects was noted for adaptability, flexibility and pragmatism. Taxes were decidedly lower than they were under the Byzantine empire, and different religions were tolerated, as was the custom for Islamic civilizations of the time, as the Quran demands respect for ‘people of the book’, that is, Jews and Christians. The peoples of different religions were divided into different ‘millets’ or communities, each one granted considerable autonomy and the right to have their own religious leader. Furthermore, the Ottomans were considerably lenient in terms of allowing local practices and customs in their conquered lands. The Ottomans had realized the difficulties of ruling over as large a territory as theirs, and thus were very tolerant in terms of allowing the people under their rule to maintain their local customs and traditions. Completely contradictory to popular misunderstandings of the Greek world, the Ottoman empire was noted for the fact that a large mosaic of cultures and peoples existed within them, with considerable rights granted to them, and governed relatively leniently. A governor who was so harsh as to cause his province to revolt against him was seen as ineffective and impractical.

This is not to say that the Ottoman Empire resembled a modern nation in any sense in terms of humanitarian affairs, but it surpassed contemporary kingdoms and empires of the time, before it itself reached the beginning of its decline and the Western powers begun their ascend. It is also important to note that the concept of nationalism and of commitment to an idea of common ethnicity was a concept that only really emerged after the Middle Ages - before that the political commitments of most people were to the king or emperor rather than any idea of ‘nationality’. Thus the conquests of middle age empires should not be seen with the same lens with which we see today’s aggressions towards sovereign nations. The people of the time had no concepts such as democracy, statehood and nationality.

The remarkable conclusion as regards to Greek national myths, is that there never was any great heroic achievement of managing to maintain their unique identity, culture, and religion through centuries of a foreign Ottoman rule. The remarkable irony is that the Greek people have been played exactly as the policies of the emperors that ruled them dictated, despite modern feelings. The Greeks have got it backwards. It was exactly the policies of tolerance of the Ottoman Empire that allowed Greek identity as it emerged after the fall of Byzantium to maintain itself. Yet what was that identity? It was in fact Byzantine conservatism, intolerance, and prosecution, that did in fact change the character of the Greek people into what is somehow today considered as the ‘natural’ one which survived the Ottomans. Modern strong belief in Greek-Orthodoxy is a direct result of Byzantine prosecution and intolerance. The character which in fact ‘survived’ the Ottoman occupation, and was shaped by Byzantium, is in fact much the opposite of that of ancient Greece. Whereas ancient Greeks were socially and sexually liberal, polytheistic and accepting of other religions, individualistic and independent, open minded, and with more commitment to an idea of the city-state, if not the individual, rather than any concept of nationalism, the identity which emerged after Byzantine rule was a strict monotheistic belief in Greek-Orthodoxy, intolerant of other religions and committed to the church, nationalist, and socially conservative. Thus the Greeks in fact failed to ‘heroically’ maintain their identity. In fact the success of the empire that controlled them was so complete in eradicating said identity, that it was by that time seen as their natural one- though it was the Byzantine and not the Ottoman empire that did so. Hellenistic culture, as is understood the set of cultural values and beliefs which are thought to be the basis of Western society, begun by the Greeks, and followed by the Romans, was in fact eradicated by the advent of a much more conservative monotheistic Christianity (amongst many other external factors of course), and in the case of the Greeks, the Orthodox variety embodied by Byzantium. These values were of course only to re-emerge in the West after the Dark Ages, and especially after the enlightenment, and after the power of the church there was reduced and challenged.

That these ideas and histories, are completely twisted in modern Greek-Cypriot though is not unexpected. Most peoples have their own myths, legends, and attempts to create a sense of national pride and identity in their ‘achievements’ and in their victories against lesser enemies. These concepts are so ingrained in wider society that it is difficult for them to be changed or challenged without being branded an outcast – they are taught in primary schools and passed on as ethnic legends from parents to children. I will continue later on examining Greek-Cypriot national myths, by examining the concept of the Devshirme and the 1821 independence war.

(Humphreys, 2005), ‘From Imperialism to New World Order’, Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age,2005 edition University of California Press, Los Angeles.

(Cleveland, 2004), A history of the Modern Middle East, 3^rd edition, Westview Press, Oxford.