Moreover, the order of the regime “about the re-establishment of a single language”, that substantially was the prohibition of the speech of any other language than Greek, included of course the prohibition of the speech of the Turkish language. Despite all these efforts, a lot of people, mainly women that came from Pont in relatively older age (above 15-20 years), did not ever learn the Greek language. However, the language was not related with some myth of different origin than that of the rest of the Greeks. It did not create ever a powerful nationality bond. On the contrary, the language functioned more as a default that should be eliminated if they wanted to feel satisfaction and pride for their identity. Thus, the result was that, today, the third generation of Turkish-speaking people of Pont ignores completely the Turkish language, and, in certain cases, it ignores even the fact that the previous generations were Turkish-speaking. However, if for the language that they spoke they could accept the charges, for their faith in the Orthodox Christian religion they did not allow any doubt. The intense projection of their religiosity constitutes, inter alia, a rational strategy of a team that concerns for its past as much as for its future. Summarising, the identity of the Pont’s Turkish-speaking inhabitants was shaped basing, from the one side, on the sense of common past and, from the other side, on the particular characteristics of their integration in the Greek national main part. The ignorance of Greek language and the speech of Turkish language were one of these particular elements that contributed in the strange way of integration of this particular team in the national state.
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Up to the Second World War, their political identity did not differ from the majority of the refugees of Northern Greece and, generally, of the country. The Second World War, German, Italian and Bulgarian possession will change dramatically the fate of this demographic team. Here, however, another story begins.
WHEN THE EAST CEASED TO INSPIRES SONNETS ..........................................................................................
Demosthenes Kourtovik
*The impact of the Minor Asia destruction in the Greek prose The Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 in the Minor Asia and the consequent exit of populations to and from Greece convulsed the Greek society; their consequences were dramatic and permanent. Almost one and a half million of seedy refugees was added in the population of a small and poor state, while roughly half million, Muslim mainly, but also Bulgarian speaking people, followed the reverse way. Apart from the ethnological composition, the social structure of the country changed deeply as well. How did the Greek literature record, how did it process and did it interpret these events? The writers are focused mainly in the drama of Greeks of Minor Asia after the defeat of 1922 or depositing his personal experience, as in Ilias Venezis’ Number 31328 (1931), or recording the oral narration of others, as in Stratis Dukas’ A Prisoner’s Story (1929). However, we should not forget that to these texts Greeks speak that, as they admit repeatedly in their narration, they had lived until then peacefully with Turks. It’s remarkable that half a century later, in 1978, when this book was transported in the cinema by Nikos Koundouros entitled as 1922, the mood was totally different. Here all Greeks are innocent victims and all Turkish cruel beasts. Of course, the Turkish invasion in Cyprus was very fresh then and the film had a clear political target. In the decade 1960 a second wave of literary texts comes, mainly novels that refer to those incidents. These books are also written by authors of Minor Asia origin, the same generation with those of the first wave. The majority among them have a left orientation. The peaceful living together with Turks before the expedition in Minor Asia is described with bigger emphasis than in the texts of the first phase. However, the most interesting difference is that now a political interpretation of destruction 1922 is attempted. Ilias Venezis’ Number 31328 begins with the, ironic, proposal “1922. The East, always very sweet, for sonnet – or something like that”. *
Population Exchange
Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe