Eurocentrism

[Kyriakos]

^

Ok, no comment. Really..
Sworn to the hypocritic oath for life.

 

[Plotinus]

Moderator Action: If this conversation can't be kept civil it will be closed. I'm really tired of reading the same old nationalist attacks time and again.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Tahuti]

Oh I'm sure both sides have their complaints. My point was merely that the main thing that separated an ethnic Greek from an ethnic Turk was their religion. In the Great People Swap of 1923, it was primarily Orthodox Christians to Greece, Muslims to Turkey. There's still villages in Anatolia that are Greek speaking, but were allowed to stay because they practiced Islam.

I take it that most modern Turks are actually descendents of Byzantine Greeks.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Racist gibberish.

Is it now racist to say that Europeans, Arabs, and Asians are visually distinct? The point I made in conceding that I was wrong about the Greeks is that in my experience, all the Greeks I've known have been visually indistinct from others from western Europe. They looked more generically white.

Ancient Greece was a lot more than just Athens, and Athenian democracy was actually quite a bit less democratic than modern American democracy, and much more comparable to the American system in the late 18th century. [...]

Third, the Greeks, like most people, are a mixed bunch in terms of genetics and appearance, and while some may appear Western European, others are a little darker-skinned and dark-haired, like other people from around the Mediterranean. The same can be said of the Lebanese, Syrians, some Berbers, and so on.

Fair enough, and thank you for the considered response. I'll admit my appreciation of the Greeks is idealized and mythic, but in this day and age, when man is crushed underneath the machines of aggregated capital and the state, we need reason to hope. I can be aware that the inhabitants of Greece were by and large as impoverished in spirit as they were in resources, just as I can be aware that the founding fathers were real men whose noses ran and who often did ignoble things, but they're a lot more useful as sources of inspiration. If you know of a book on the realities of life in ancient Greece, however, I would welcome it. Myths can consume the mind if not warded off with a splash of cold water every now and again.

 

[History_Buff]

I take it that most modern Turks are actually descendents of Byzantine Greeks.

If you want to call them that, yeah. The Turks that moved into Anatolia didn't leave much of a genetic impact on the people there, so I suppose they didn't do much intermarrying? The current inhabitants of Anatolia seem to be mostly descended from the people that were living in Anatolia 1000 years ago.

 

[Tahuti]

You'd be wondering why there is no movement in Turkey that seeks to revive the Byzantine Empire.

 

[Takhisis]

Fair enough, and thank you for the considered response. I'll admit my appreciation of the Greeks is idealized and mythic, but in this day and age, when man is crushed underneath the machines of aggregated capital and the state, we need reason to hope. I can be aware that the inhabitants of Greece were by and large as impoverished in spirit as they were in resources, just as I can be aware that the founding fathers were real men whose noses ran and who often did ignoble things, but they're a lot more useful as sources of inspiration.

Such myth-building is usually done by authoritarian regimes, but do go ahead and tell people lies to make them feel better about themselves.

If you know of a book on the realities of life in ancient Greece, however, I would welcome it. Myths can consume the mind if not warded off with a splash of cold water every now and again.

If I may quote myself…

Robert Flacelière's Daily life in Athens in the time of Pericles…

I take it that most modern Turks are actually descendents of Byzantine Greeks.

If you want to call them that, yeah. The Turks that moved into Anatolia didn't leave much of a genetic impact on the people there, so I suppose they didn't do much intermarrying? The current inhabitants of Anatolia seem to be mostly descended from the people that were living in Anatolia 1000 years ago.

Hmm, yes… and those were Hellenised Anatolians to a degree, too.

 

[Masada]

The Turks that moved into Anatolia didn't leave much of a genetic impact on the people there, so I suppose they didn't do much intermarrying?

The simple fact is that there were never that many Turks to begin with, so of course there wasn't a huge genetic impact. Moreover, they almost all intermarried with Orthodox women something that is really well documented.

 

[Takhisis]

And they were polygamous, weren't they?

 

[Masada]

Yep. The children were also raised as Turkish Muslims. Conversion also had some attraction too. So it wasn't totally due to that. I think there was also quite a bit of Turkish in-migration over-time.

 

[Takhisis]

Well, Turks in the wider sense of the word (as well as Bulgars, Khazars, Magyars, etc. who spoke related languages) were imported as mercenaries by all Levantine factions for long before the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks conquered Anatolia. There were several other 'Turkish' states (White Sheep, Black Sheep, etc.) to the East and South but they haven't retained the name. And the 'Turks' in those places don't look much like the 'Turks' near the Ægean, but they can be counted as such… anyway, what were we discussing?

 

[Masada]

Racial superiority?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Such myth-building is usually done by authoritarian regimes, but do go ahead and tell people lies to make them feel better about themselves.

That is a very unfair attack of Smellincoffee, since to me it very much seems that myths are the standard of establishing collective identities. Or probably even individual identities. And I think it a too quick conclusion that because they are not really or at all true that they are hence somehow fundamentally "evil" or something like that. Identities are essentially myths after all. But identities can make people or societies better. Or worse. Depending.
Smellincoffee seems to think that the myth he refers to fosters a beneficial identity.

 

[gay_Aleks]

You'd be wondering why there is no movement in Turkey that seeks to revive the Byzantine Empire.

Because they're probably trying to revive the Ottoman Empire? First Kurdistan, then Iraq, and then the worl- Middle East!

 

[Tee Kay]

The Ottoman Empire is basically the Byzantine Roman Empire, just Islamic.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Oh, except I dunno, the shariah and a bunch of laws, including "chimney taxes for infidels".

 

[Kyriakos]

Pretty sure the phrase 'it is not dead that which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die' was alluding centrally to the rebirth of the Byzantine Empire in our times Cthulhu is really just Constantine Palaiologos XI preserved in marble, it's elementary

 

[gay_Aleks]

I dunno. I mean, there's Byzantine politics, but, you see, if you had the powers to extinguish all life in Universe, I doubt some fellow with a turban would have destroyed the Byzantines.

Or perhaps he did. Maybe that's why he got that oversized cannon, just in case...

 

[Kyriakos]

^He was just a pawn in the game of larger, elder, cosmic powers

 

[Tahuti]

The Ottoman Empire is basically the Byzantine Roman Empire, just Islamic.

The Ottomans did use Greek as language to communicate with foreign powers.