A SURVEY OF HELLENISM IN ASIA MINOR

Asia Minor is the country which, more than all others, recalls the highest development of Hellenic civilization. Its deeply indented coast formed a chaplet of Hellenic democracies which reached out into the interior and actually attacked the Persian civilization, upon which they imposed their own stamp. These democracies constituted the first rampart of the civilized world of that time, holding back Persian barbarism. Their history is one of continual struggle between these two civilizations, a struggle that was terminated at Salamis and at Platæa, where the Persian ambitions were definitively buried and Greek civilization saved.

The wise men, the thinkers, the philosophers, that these democracies produced, were numerous, and the influence of their teachings was very great. These even today are radiant with a sublimity that has never been excelled.

It was in this Greek element and among the populations Hellenized by them that Christianity first germinated. It was the Greeks of Asia Minor who first offered their blood for the triumph of the new faith. The foremost Church Fathers, John Chrysostom, Saint Basil and very many others, were born there or taught there.

Throughout the Middle Ages the Byzantine-Greek civilization flourished in these lands. It formed the most powerful barrier against the wave of barbarism which threatened to inundate the civilized world. The desperate resistance offered by Hellenism permitted the West, by its contact with Byzantine Hellenism, to acquire those requisite elements which have formed the basis of Western civilization.

When the powerful tide of Turkish invasion, coming after so many other barbarian inroads, completely submerged Greek culture there, the Hellenic idea which this element represented was so strong that it survived everything. It was in vain that the fierce conquerors, as the tradition states, cut out the tongues of the inhabitants in order to cause this people to unlearn its language; it was in vain that they carried away their children to make of them fierce and cruel janissaries, who became exterminators of their own people. The Hellenic idea, the attachment to national traditions, was never submerged.

As soon as the fury of the conqueror was somewhat appeased, and at a time when that part of the Balkan Peninsula where Hellenism first arose and from which later it radiated over the then known world all the brilliance of its beauty was no longer showing any sign of life, the Greeks of Asia Minor founded the first Greek school of modern times, that of Cydonia (Aïvali). This school produced the first real ecclesiastics, the first genuinely educated men. Smyrna, called by the Turk himself “the infidel city,” because of its preponderant Greek element, followed her example. The graduates of these schools formed the nucleus from which the idea of the Greek renaissance sprang forth. From this source have come the men that have sacrificed their lives and their fortunes in order that Hellenic culture, which seemed forever to have disappeared, might again be revived.

It is this country of which we are going to study the ethnological composition.

Its boundaries are, on the north, the Black Sea; on the east, the Russian frontier traversing the snow-covered mountain range of the Taurus and Antitaurus and continuing to the Gulf of Alexandretta; on the south, west and northwest, the Mediterranean, the Ægean Sea and the Sea of Marmora.

Its area is 534,550 square kilometers; it is traversed by numerous watercourses and is one of the richest countries in the world. If well administered, it could support tens of millions of inhabitants.

It is divided for purposes of administration into eight provinces, Sebastia, Trebizond, Kastamuni, Konia, Angora, Aïdin, Broussa, Adana and four independent provinces, Chryssioupolis, Nicomedia, Balukiser, Vizi or Dardanelles.

To determine the importance of the Greek element in the population let us examine each archbishopric from the ecclesiastic as well as secular point of view.

The following table presents statistics as to the numbers of churches, priests, schools, etc., supported by the Greeks of Asia Minor:

MetropolisChurchesPriestsBoys’
Schools		TeachersPupilsGirls’
Schools		Women
Teachers		Pupils
1.Smyrna401143524111,055272027,651
2.Crine467534653,96514322,055
3.Heliopolis5377411004,36019492,120
4.Pisidia465418532,68510311,235
5.Philadelphia202215261,060816723
6.{Ephesus}
Magnesia12617710028615,9406515010,150
7.Cydonia
8.Broussa242713402,9757201,045
9.Nicæa294123633,1558251,210
10.Chalcedon4310028996,97025704,230
11.Nicomedia767577833,4796201,120
12.Cyzicus81128721958,11525672,630
13.Proconnesos263313482,280819790
14.Amassia33044128658617,00069873,910
15.Ancyra8135208402 7260
16.Iconium50102421596,91523502,070
17.Cæsarea4498581335,07516491,778
18.Rhodopolis6586571203,300
19.Chaldia2112591893809,70525160
20.Trapezus250161952038,53511351,679
21.Colonia120140931823,840
22.Neocæsarea30040015030011,30015362,100
——————————————————
1,9882,5231,4443,382132,54936097046,916

The administration of the Greek Orthodox Church is in the hands of twenty-two Metropolitans, or Archbishops, having under them a proportionate number of bishops and priests. The Metropoles, or Archbishoprics, are the following: Smyrna, Crine, Heliopolis, Pisidia, Philadelphia, Ephesus and Magnesia, Cydonia, Broussa, Nicæa, Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Cyzicus, Proconnesos, Amassia, Ancyra, Iconium, Cæsarea, Rhodopolis, Chaldia, Trapezus, Colonia and Neocæsarea, under the authority of the Œcumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.[1]

The number of Greek inhabitants is probably above 2,000,000. The Hellenic populations are chiefly concentrated in the provinces of Aïdin and Broussa, where out of a population of approximately 3,000,000 the Greek element is about 1,300,000, the coast regions, however, being inhabited almost purely by Greeks. The non-Greek inhabitants are largely Catholics, Armenians, Turks and Jews. On the coasts of the Black Sea, too, the Greeks are largely in the majority. It is to be noticed that in many villages of this region the inhabitants speak a language closely approaching the ancient Greek, from the point of view of syntax as well as of verb-formation.

For their religious needs they have 1,988 churches and 2,523 priests, and for the instruction of their children they maintain 1,444 schools for boys with 3,382 teachers and 132,549 pupils, and 360 schools for girls with 970 women teachers and 46,916 pupils.

We must remember that the churches and schools are maintained at the expense of the Greeks themselves, since the Turkish Government only intervenes in order to impede and destroy. Reckoning at $500 a year the pay of a priest or teacher, man or woman, we arrive at the sum of $5,000,000 a year, which must be multiplied by three in order to cover the expenses of the construction of churches and schools, their repair and upkeep, and the salaries of the inferior employees of all these establishments.

The number of pupils of both sexes constitutes nearly nine per cent of the whole Greek population (179,465 boys and girls). This is due to the fact that many of the Greeks, not included in the preceding enumeration, who live mingled with other populations, whether Armenian or Turk, and who do not possess the means of supporting schools of their own, send their children from great distances, in spite of the difficult communications, in order to attend these schools. Often the parents, who have lived for generations among the Turks, have lost the knowledge of their national language, but their national consciousness is nevertheless so strong that they expose their children to countless dangers in order to permit them to learn the language of their ancestors. These Turkish-speaking Greeks live chiefly in the interior of the country, even as far as the Persian frontier, and the greater part of these, lost among other more numerous peoples, are not included in the above statistics.

These numbers show that the people are loyally devoted to their language, their traditions and their religion, for the tremendous sacrifices to which they subject themselves for the sake of the maintenance of Hellenic culture evidence the tenacity with which they cling to their national sentiments.

They show equally that this people is eager for progress in civilization, for the number of educational establishments that it maintains and the large number of children that attend them, show that it wishes to acquire a higher civilization and thus become an agent of progress for the peoples whom the fate of conquest has established among them.

Sober, industrious, intelligent and honest, it demands only liberty in order to be able to give scope to its activity. Though conquered by the Turk, the Greek, in his turn, won the upper hand by his intellectual superiority. The Turk, who has become accustomed to the Greek way of living and thinking, and has adopted many of his habits, among the most prominent of which is the respect for woman and the sanctity of the home, will be happy to live under the administration of his Greek compatriot, with whom he was perfectly satisfied when the Turkish Government, before the chauvinistic Young Turk party had established its fierce tyranny, renounced the services of the Greek functionaries.

An interesting side of this dwelling together of Greek and Turk is the respect that the Anatolian Turk habitually professes for the Orthodox religion. Sometimes the Mussulman even has recourse to the offices of the Greek priest, either to have a mass chanted, or in order to touch the holy sacraments, the saints’ pictures, etc., so as to be cured of some illness, or to obtain some benefit which his ascetic religion does not afford him.

If the Turkish Government by its misrule had not provoked the driving out of the Mussulman populations of Europe (a course which has gradually reduced the territory of the Ottoman Empire), the uprisings experienced periodically would not have been so frequent. These numerous fanatics who had lived since the time of the conquest by exploiting the Christian populations, transported their methods to Asia Minor, and, seconded by a government whose materialism knew no limits, they undertook the extermination of the Christian populations of Asia Minor in order to rob them of their property.

When one realizes that, under an administration which existed only to mulct the worker by taxation, these populations have succeeded, in spite of numberless persecutions, in making so formidable an effort in order to secure their spiritual needs, it is easy to imagine what progress in civilization and wealth awaits this country, when an era of liberty and security shall be introduced under a paternal administration.

The Anatolian Mussulmans will be the first to profit by this. Patient workers, loving the land, and living in harmony with their Christian compatriots, they will be happy to secure the product of their labor, of which the Turkish functionary constantly robbed them, so that he finally made them dislike all labor, and urged them on into the path of crime.

This living together as friends, on a footing of equality, will perhaps make Christianity flourish anew in this land which was the first to be saved from paganism, and whose fruits, transplanted to the rest of the world, have caused the springing forth of that glorious civilization which Prussian megalomania is now staining with blood.