Hellenism in Asia Minor

by Karl Dieterich

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.