What is really.....?.....? Part II

Day 1,675, 15:41 • Published in North Macedonia North Macedonia • by BlackMK













After eMacedonia apeared on eRepublik we eMacedonians were called with a lot of insulting names from our dear south neighbours. Skopians, Vardarskian etc.

As I always say before you insult someone you need to take a look first at your court and find who you are and what is your past. Good example is the picture above. In this article I will try to explain who are those kids on the picture (maybe grandparent of our beloved new eMacedonian Smee Again is one of them you never know) and why Greeks learn Greek language in early 20th century.

In 1923, after the Greco-Turkish War of Thrace, was signed an agreement between Turkey and Greece for population exchange based upon religious identity. All Orthodox Christians of Turkey were deported to Greece, and all Muslims of Greece were deported to Turkey, regardless of ethnic identity. Following this treaty 1/3 of the Aegean



Macedonians who were Islamized moved in Turkey and on their place came the Karamanlides.

Karamanlides or simply Karamanlis are Orthodox Turks who lived on the territory of Asia Minor. They formed the first Turkish sultanate, Karaman; belonging to the Turkish tribe Bozdoğan, which belongs to the people of Oghous, part of the Turkish nation. The Karaman sultanate exist as an independent sultanate between 13-15 century when Seljuq Turks conquered them, but besides most of the Karamanlides retained their Christian faith.

Karamanlis were subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which attempted to assimilate all its subject into Greeks. The policy of the Patriarchate was simple: each patriarchal subject is Greek.Therefore, the Karamanlides and rest of the Orthodox Turks separated in a separate Turkish Orthodox Church from the late 19th. Eftim Baba, Pope of the Orthodox Church in Turkey strongly opposed the deportation of Karamanlis In Greece, because they were solely ethnic Turks, Orthodox, and not Greeks.
About 850,000 Karamanlides have moved in modern Greece, contrary to their desire to stay in Turkey. (December 4, 1922, “The New York Times” Page 16, Col. 3)
Turkey, as predominantly Muslim country wanted to get rid of the Turkish Christians, and to receive the Balkan Muslims in their society. Greece, the Orthodox Turks always identified as Greeks, though their native language was Turkish. (E.Z.Karal "Osmanli Tarihinde Turk Dili Sorunu", "The Turkish Language Problem in Ottoman History
See the above photo ( Tragedy Stalks Through the Near East as Greece and Turkey Exchange Two Million of their People, in The National Geographic Magazine. Volume XLVIII, No. 7-12, July- December, 1925.)
Most of these Karamanlides 638,253 or 52% of all Immigrants settled in Aegean Macedonia, to neutralize the Macedonian population. These Orthodox Turks, are now the biggest Greeks and
Karaman claim to be the “true” Macedonians. Of course, they make this claim partly as a consequence of the Greek aggressive propaganda of the last century, but also from the fear their properties which the Greek state gave them, and belonged to the expelled Aegean Macedonians, to be confiscated.
The so-called "Greek-Macedonia" is a fabrication, an artificial creation that serves as the basis for territorial and historical claims of the Greek side. The real ones and the only Macedonians are denied and repressed in order for Greece to have a foreign territory and to steal someone else's history.
However, the repressive assimilation measures adopted by the Greek authorities that were used in the past for the Macedonians, covered also these settlers from Asia Minor. Namely, they were prohibited from any trip back to Turkey, threatened with removal of their Greek citizenship if they did. They were also prohibited by the Greek law to identify as Turks. (Martin Baldwin-Edwards,"The Asia Minor atrocities and the ‘Exchange of Populations")

In 1925, Salvanos Chief of Staff of the Tenth Army Division located in Western Macedonia had a task to make ethnological research of the Florina region which should serve for orientation in the further displacement of settlers.He wrote that those with pure Greek national consciousness are insignificant minority, while the “Slavophone” population is divided into three groups: first, in which predominates the Greek sentiment, the second in which prevailed the Bulgarian sentiment and the third group that was indifferent in terms of nationality and were only interested to keep their daily lives. The latter, a third group, stressed Salvanos, constitutes the majority of the population and call themselves as Macedonians. They consisted of between one half and three-quarters of the total population in a given village, while those with Bulgarian sentiment no more than a quarter, and last, slavophone group with Greek sentiment was only from one to five families within a village. (Minorities in Greece" by Richard Clogg, 2002, page 129)
The best commentary on the end of the second part of “The Making of Greece” will be the one of the Bishop of Florina, Augostinos Kandiotis who sai😛"If the hundreds of thousands of refugees had not come to Greece, Greek Macedonia would not exist today." (Anastasia N. Karakasidou,“Fields of wheat, hills of bloo😛 passages to nationhood in Greek Macedonia1870-1990“, page 141.)