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TURKIC-SPEAKING ORTHODOX GREEKS:
THE CONFLICT OF FAITH, MENTALITY AND LANGUAGE
Tou kukXov za yvptojuaza Erotokritos The turns of the will Erotokritos
1. Introduction
Something compels us somewhat desperately to emphasize our otherness — we are in constant need of showing that we are somehow different in order to feel that we exist. At the same time, we are inclined to demonstrate that we belong to a closed society based on some strict criteria. But as we will attempt to show in this article, these criteria are quite often pseudo criteria. Where is this dialectic link rooted and why do we need continuous confirmations of our existential reality? And last but not least — what is the role of language in this process of self-identification? It is evident that we are dealing here with yet another aspect of the problem of human memory, definitively and brilliantly expressed in Marcel Proust’s novels.
The anthropological research of the last decades has been focused on the enigmatic concept of ethnicity and national identity. The ideas formulated by Evgenii Golovko, Nikolai Vakhtin and Peter Schweitzer in their book on Russian old settlers of Siberia [Vakhtin et al. 2004] provide an important insight into this problem. The Starozhily of Siberia and Far East do not consider themselves either Russian or autochthon Siberian. They created their unique culture, and every Starozhily group considers itself to be an independent people. The detailed analysis of the mentality of the Starozhily presented by the above-mentioned authors in their book allows us to begin to understand the essence of the concept of ethnicity, its components and mechanisms of its formation.
Some details seem to be of special interest — various idioms of Siberian Starozhily (Pochodsk, Russkoe Ustje and Markovo idioms) are regarded by the autochthon population as independently existing
and not transparent for the speakers of Russian. The field research nevertheless showed that the idea of otherness in the case of these idioms is based on a very limited number of words, specific for the idiom or rather vague ideas about specific phonetic peculiarities [Vakhtin et al. 2004: 127]. Apparently in this case one can speak about symbolic function of the language.
These ideas offer new approaches to the problem of ethnicity and have been instrumental in my own analysis of the conflict of language and mentality which exists in the community of the Turkicspeaking Orthodox Greeks.
This paper is an attempt to compare the two different strategies adopted by communities while abandoning their mother tongue and switching to a different one. It seems that in both cases we deal with a kind of conflict with a mother tongue. As it will be shown below, the circumstances of these conflicts vary considerably.
Our research is based on field studies carried out in Tsalka and Tetritskaro region of Georgia in 1988-1992, in Krasnodar region (Southern Russia) in 1998 and in Marioupol region of Ukraine in 2002-2005.
Both groups (Pontic Greeks of Georgia and Marioupolitic Greeks) have their rather complicated history of wanderings.
Pontic Greeks came to Eastern Georgia from Asia Minor (Kars and Trapezund regions of Turkey) after The Peace Treaty of Adri-anopol. The resettlement began in 1830 and was followed by several migratory waves in subsequent decades.
As for Marioupolitic Greeks, they moved from Crimea to the Azov region, following Catherine the Great’s ruling. There they founded the town of Marioupol and around 20 villages. The names of the villages were replicating the Crimean place names — Yalta, Ur-zuf, Old Crimea (Eski Krim), etc. The first Greek colonies started appearing in Crimea in the 8 c. BC but little is known about their history. So we do not know when and where from the forefathers of Mariou-politic Greeks came to the peninsular.
In both cases we are dealing with the enclave Greek population, which partly continues to speak Greek, partly switched to Turkic languages — Turkish and Crimeo-Tatarian. In both regions the situation is extremely interesting from the socio- and ethnolinguistic point of view. Here we have the case of Greek speakers with Greek selfidentification, whose first language is Turkic (Turkish and Tatarian) and
who seem to be in some kind of conflict with their own language. We will analyze this situation at the linguistic level including ethno-and sociolinguistic parameters.
In Tsalka and Tetritskaro regions of Eastern Georgia Greekspeaking and Turkic-speaking Orthodox Greeks live compactly in neighbouring villages. The Weltanschauung of Turkic-speaking Orthodox Greeks of Eastern Georgia, reflected in their language, ethnography, legends and memories, folklore and traditions, is compared with the parallel situation of Urums (Tatar-speaking Greeks) living in the Marioupol region.
The Turkic-speaking Orthodox Greeks of Georgia can be characterized as a permanent and profound conflict which is reflected in the way they perceive their language, their mentality and selfidentification. (Interestingly, they call their language in Turkish bizim dil ‘our language’ and Musulman dil ‘Moslem language’).They seems to be absolutely aware of the Turkish origin of their mother tongue and in a certain way are hostile to it. In this paper I analyze how this “opposition” is reflected on different linguistic levels.
It appears that the Urums of Marioupol in spite of being in a similar situation (possessing deeply Greek mentality and being Orthodox, they speak Tatar language) have chosen different strategy in dealing with their own Musulman dil. One gets the impression that they just tend not to notice that their language is not actually Greek. They claim to be speaking a language that is certainly Greek but for some reason differs from the Greek spoken by their neighbors. In the article we will try to show how this belief is expressed on the linguistic level.
2. The Pontic Myth and Diasporic Mentality
Greeks are one of the main peoples of Diaspora. The story of prnjuioavvn is the story of exodus, persecutions and revivals [Fann 1991]. Life in diaspora inevitably determines the use of different linguistic and cultural strategies — a permanent balancing act between the threat of assimilation and the danger of conflict with another culture. Greek language is a valuable object of investigation — it is a unique example of a language with a continual written tradition recorded over three and a half thousand years. In spite of the fact that Greek is one of the most well attested languages in history, its development presents us with a whole number of enigmatic cases. One such
case is switching to a different grammar. This linguistic phenomenon received its description and explanation in the theory of language contacts.
The valuable evidence recorded during Dawkins’ field research in 1910 in Cappadocia [Dawkins 1916; 1933] allows us to observe the process of switching by a community to a different grammar. The lexicon of the texts recorded by Dawkins is mostly Greek but the grammar becomes increasingly and clearly Turkish. One can anticipate a full assimilation as the next stage of this linguistic development. But what actually happens to a people and to a certain individual when they change their language to a different one? The interaction language — thought, language — mentality is the main point of interest in cognitive studies. The theory of language relativity of Benjamen Whorf and Edward Sapir states that the language we speak acts like a net we put on the world — so we see the world through and by means of the languages we speak. If, for example, in a certain language there is only one word to describe green and blue, or green and yellow we will see only one color and it will be impossible for us to see the difference. Experiments that followed this theory have demonstrated that the rule works consistently.
The developments in the history of Greek language prove that there were situations where, while managing to preserve their language, Greeks nevertheless lost their ethnic identity. In the uniqueness of each situation one can try to search for rules, to understand what mnemonic devices the people of diaspora use to preserve their past and thus to foresee their future, just as it was done by the heroes of Germanic epic poetry or Russian fairy tales, who are put to sleep on the bank of a river by some magic force and forget forever their beautiful bride — or, as in the case of the language death, become the victims of assimilation.
What are the mnemonic devices, these knots we tie in order to memorize something?
Below we give lamentation songs sung today by Pontic women. I recorded them in the village Vitiazevo (Krasnodar region).
AnaOema ke ta makra Be cursed you — the far-off land
Pu den ki paj laUa Where no voice reaches
Ta matja-m eskotmepsan Despair darkens
Apo apoOem^a. My eyes because of despair
Ah, anaOema su Kazahstan Be cursed you, Kazakhstan,
Ki efae tin kardia-m You ate my heart
Ta hron’a m^kos tesera In four years
Esprman ta malia-m My hair turned white,
Na foa ke oy6 tihUm If I had good luck
Na foa ton patera-m If I had my father
Ke so kolhoz ke duleva I would not work in kolkhoz
Oyo k ’enan imeran A single day
To Vitazov to Vitazo[v] Vitiazevo, Vitiazevo
Ena trano horio A big village
Steko apano oksoKa I am standing high
Ke payosa son krio And I am frozen
These songs word for word repeat the ones collected and recorded by Melanofridis in his book H ev ndvrrn еХХцуіщ yXrnooa [Ms^avo9p^5n 1910]. One can compare these verses which were recorded during the filed trip to Krasnodar region in 1998 [ibid.: 111]:
Tpvymva ^ ’eyiayXiaePav та щХа та pao^a
, 1
mvm та крьа та vepa каї ovp Tqv juavaoia .
‘On all sides I am surrounded by high mountains
I am drinking cold water and I prolong my solitude. ’
AvaOe^a, ауа6є\>аат6 то ^eviriav
’Ато то тооХ, то epmuov ^ ’enowev тцv xepo^av.
‘Let be cursed the wandering in the far off land
This desert and solitude made me a widow. ’
Comparing the two texts, one can see that the verses are virtually identical, the only difference being that while repeating these songs the Greek women of Vitiazevo are changing the word £evma /ksenitia/ to metrically similar Kazakhstan. One can easily imagine that in other situation some other geographical name, metrically equivalent to it, can be put in instead of Kazakhstan. The same substitution occurred in the famous historical songs commemorating the Fall of Adrianople (1353), Constantinople (1453) and Trapezond (1461). These songs-laments share many common feature and similar themes are repeated — the keys of the churches being given into faithless hands, a swallow or some other bird, flying to spread the sad
1 The examples preserve Melanofridis’s orthography.
news, the church bells ringing mournfully. The word ndXig, traditionally used to designate Constantinople, on the new turn of history referred to as Trabizund and Pm^avia as Pont.
The stability of the folklore tradition, the models and cliches which are permanently repeated, seem to be one of the mnemonic devices used by Greeks. Thus an enduring folklore tradition becomes an instrument of the Fate-Tu^ or Moipa. Strong memory of the past is able to determine the future and a familiar pattern is reproduced in ever changing situations
It is imposible to forget the reserved yet poignant singing of the Pontic women of the Vitiazevo village. Were they foreseeing the future or evoking memories of the remote past? Perhaps both. The murmur of the Black Sea was bringing back the memories of Pontos and it seemed that history was being repeated — the turns of the wheel... It has to be said that almost all these women went to exile in Kazakhstan with their parents when they were 5-10 years old. When they returned from exile, they had forgotten Pontic — their mother tongue. At present they speak Pontic fluently and are very much at ease with the Greek folklore tradition. It seems that in their case stable folklore tradition acts as a kind of mnemonic device. But how is this problem resolved by the Turkic-speaking Orthodox Greeks of Georgia?
3. Turkic-speaking Orthodox Greeks
Turkic-speaking Greeks call themselves Urums “Greeks”. Etymologically this means the inhabitants of the Roman Empire. It is the same word as Rumeos (< Pm^aiog ‘the inhabitant of the Roman Empire’) but with different vocalism. This is how the Pontic-speaking Greeks refer to themselves. Yet, they never call their language urum-dza ‘Greek’ which would have been logical: urumdza in their language means ‘Greek’ (the language of their Pontic-speaking neighbors).
A spontaneous text produced by the inhabitants of the village of Tsalka, Turkic-speaking Greeks, serves as the best introduction of the problem.
Biz urumlar jasijirih. Gurdzustanda Tsalka rajonda. Onbes kovdur. Bazi kov sojlujer urumdza, bazi kov urum dildze sojlujirler, simdi biz gazijirih, ogranijirih dilini. Urum dilini biz bilmijirih, ama hristianeyi, ajorlari, kisselerimiz var. Usahlar vaftis edijerih, kissede
stefanos olijelar. Siz de coh say olun, orgedijirsiz bizi urumdza, dzan sayleye size, usayэza, odzayэza, selamet qalin.
‘We, Urums (Greeks), are living in Georgia in the region of Tsalka. Fifteen villages. Some villages speak Greek, some speak our language. Now we are enjoying our life (literary “going for a walk”), learning Greek. We are Christians, we celebrate the days of Saints, we have churches. Be safe and sane, teach us Greek, let your soul be at peace, let your children be healthy’.
This text reveals a lot about the mentality of the Turkicspeaking Greeks and the issue of their self-identification. To begin with, it is evident that linguistically we are dealing here not with a product of assimilation or language death, but merely with an idiom of Anatolian Turkish.
The speech was delivered spontaneously as a response to the request to say something in bizim dil (Turk. ‘our language’). In few sentences the speaker captures the Weltanschauung of the Turkishspeaking Orthodox Greeks, emphasizing their conservatism, devotion to traditions and faith. Characteristically the speaker calls her people urumlar which has to be translated as ‘Greeks’. Yet she says that some villages speak urumdza — here it means ‘in Greek’, and she is describing the language of Pontic (Greek) speaking neighbours. It is worth mentioning that the speaker (Fulova) says that Romei — Pontic-speaking Greeks — speak urumdza which can be translated ‘in Greek’. Pontic-speaking neighbours of Urums, Romei, call their language romeika and sometimes aplos ‘simple’ and pontos ‘Pontic’. It would be logical to expect that Urums would have to call their mother tongue urumdza. However, they call it bizim dil ‘our language’ or musulman dil ‘Moslem language’. Importantly, for the Orthodox Turkish-speaking Greeks the definition “Moslem language” has a negative connotation, while the bizim dil ‘our language’ is a kind of euphemism.
This speech features a number of Greek borrowings, pertaining to the religious sphere, ajorlar ‘saints’ < ayiog ‘saint’; kilise ‘churches’ < SKKXnaia; stefanos olmak ‘to marry in the church’.
It is interesting to compare bizim dil of Turkish speaking Orthodox Greeks of Georgia with the urumdza of Marioupol Urums. Statistical study [Aklaev 1989] showed that 36% of the Turkish-speaking Greeks of Georgia claim that Greek is their mother-tongue even
though they don’t speak and don’t understand this language. 96% expressed their desire to learn Greek. It is important that their Ponticspeaking neighbors always stress the religious conservatism of the Turkish-speaking Orthodox Greeks. They say that they are convinced that Urums’ traditions and faith are much stronger.
4. The Urums of Marioupol
The Urums of Marioupol are also Orthodox (their language is based on the Crimean Tatar) In 1778-1779 obeying the orders of Catherine the Great the Crimean Greeks moved from Crimea to Azov region. Some historians view this action as deportation. On the shores of the Azov Sea they founded 19 villages which replicated the names of the villages in which they lived in Crimea. We have already mentioned this method which can be interpreted as an interesting mnemonic device used by diasporic people in order to preserve their historical legacy. It is worth mentioning that as far as Azov Urums are concerned, this mnemonic strategy failed.
Urums of Azov follow a specific and somewhat extravagant strategy in analyzing their language. Nobody doubts their Greek origins. They are Greeks (Urums) and consequently they speak urumdza ‘Greek’. So in their language urumdza is used for description of their own Tatarian language and not of the Greek of their neighbors as it was in the case of the Orthodox Turkophones of Georgia. Interestingly, the Urums of Marioupol are well aware of the resemblance of their language to the Azerbajdzhan, Turkish, Tatarian and other Turkic languages. But they never draw the pessimistic conclusion that they speak Musulman dil. They state things quite differently. “I have been to Turkmenia. There they speak as we do here, by the Black sea”, observes an elderly lady. Then follows an interesting speculation that “in Turkmenia they pray in our Christian way; only we make the cross and they make a gesture as if they are washing their faces”. The prevailing opinion among the Urums is that as a consequence of their contacts with the Crimean Tatars their language acquired a lot of Tatar features and because of that began resembling it. In any case, they have no doubt that their language is actually Greek (see [Baranova 2010]).
It has to be noted that in both cases switching to the language of the privileged class was relevant only for the urban population. Switching to Tatar and Turkish (the languages of the rulers) in the Ot-
toman Empire and Crimean Kaganat was necessary only in the cities. It is not by chance that Greek speaking Rumei are calling Urums of Marioupol bazariots < bazaar ‘town’ while they are calling their Greek speaking neighbours tatlar [Grigorovich 1874: 56].
Vlada Baranova, who conducted a sociolinguistic study of the Azov Greeks, offers interesting data concerning the appraisal of the Tatarian-speaking Urums and Greek-speaking Rumei of the languages strategies deployed by their neighbors. Baranova quotes the comments made by an elderly woman, an Urum-speaker, who explicitly states that Urums are more urbanized and educated than Rumei. They are more polite, more educated, speak better Russian and never speak their language in the presence of other people, while Rumei speak their language in the presence of Russians on the bus or in shops dhendeler ‘like gypsies’ [Baranova 2010: 14]. One can assume that that observation is linked not so much to the fact that Greek Rumeika is better preserved than Turkic Urmdza (which is not the case) but that Urums use language strategies which evolved in the multilingual urban society, while Rumei developed in the monolingual village society. The elderly Urum-speaker, quoted above, defines Romeis as dhendheler. Etymologically, it is a very interesting, regarding its inner form. The negative connotations of the form seem to be evident. The ethnonym is derived from the Greek negative particle Ssv /dhen/ with reduplication and the Turkic affix of plurality -ler. So it could be translated somehow like ‘nonoes’. Tatarian-speaking group seems to have become more urbanized in Crimea, while the Urums who came from Bakhchisaraj in Azov region, founded the town of Marioupol. It is also known that Crimean Tatarian became the Lingua Franca after the Marioupolitic Greeks had settled in the Azov region. Later, though, it has been forgotten by the Greek-speaking Rumei.
According to the legend common among the Urums of Georgia, long before they left Turkey, the Orthodox Greeks were forced to make a choice between their language and faith. Being devout Christians, they chose to keep their Orthodox faith and thus relinquished their language and were forced to speak Musulman dil. This version of events is accepted by all Greeks of Tsalka without exception. It has also been accepted by some historians of Pontic origin [Angelov 1989]. There is no doubt, however, that we are dealing here with some kind of myth.
It is obvious that in the Ottoman Empire this scenario was impossible. The history of Turkey quite often offers opposite examples. From time to time mass islamisation of certain regions in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Albania was indeed carried out, but in the process of it the language was not lost. Theoreticians of the Bulgarian Enlightenment often regarded the language of pomaks — the Islamized Bul-gar — as an example of a perfect literary norm. Perhaps this view is somewhat subjective, but it is nevertheless a telling situation [Grannes 1987].
According to Anthony Bryer’s data the Greek population of Trapezund region includes about 215 thousand inhabitants with 200 000 of them being Christian; by 1910 this figure reached 13 000 000 while 1 000 000 000 of them were Moslems [Bryer 1980, 1991]. The description of Pontic idiom of Of in the Trapezund region by Peter Mackridge [Mackridge 1987] can be viewed as a mirror image of the same situation. At present this region is characterized by complete islamisation. It was known for the devotion of its inhabitants to Sunni version of Islam and a large number of imams that were born and brought up here. On the other hand everybody (including the young generation) is bilingual and until recently women often spoke only Pontic. Traditionally Turkish administration was obliged to use interpreters in legislative procedures in this region. In spite of preserving Pontic as home language the inhabitants of Of have rather vague idea that their language resembles the one spoken in Yunanistan (Greece) and would never accept the idea of their Greek origin. All said above proves that the Tsalkian situation described above is far from being trivial.
The historical context of switching to Turkish by the inhabitants of Kars or Trabezund is interesting. It is evident that the choice “language or faith” was not characteristic for the Ottoman Empire and resembles some kind of folk etymology. A different explanation is more likely — the urban population was forced to switch to Turkish, while in more remote districts, in villages people continued speaking Pontic.
Still one should take into account that the idea that Turkish administration forced Greeks to make the choice — language or faith is the version of events accepted by all Tsalkian Greeks (Pontic-speaking and Turkic-speaking). This interpretation of the situation has obvious
psychological roots. Pontic-speaking Greeks consistently maintain that their Turkic-speaking neighbors are “stronger in faith and traditions”.
It should be mentioned that there is no similar legend, explaining the switch of Urums of Crimea to Crimean Tatar language. As it was mentioned above, they find the way out of the conflict with their mother tongue by just “ignoring” the fact that they do not speak Greek. They claim that the language they speak is Greek and explain its resemblance to Tatarian by historical contacts. It is interesting that Turks are not perceived as conquerors in this situation. The manager of the local kolkhoz mentions that he felt “at home” at the Istanbul bazaar, as if he was among by the old men of his village. As a matter of fact, some informants express an idea similar to the one accepted by contemporary Turkish historiography that they are partly the descendants of the great conqueror Genghis Khan, partly the descendants of ancient Greeks. It is worth mentioning that one version does not come into a contradiction with the other.
There is further interesting evidence illustrating this phenomenon. According to the family memories of the inhabitants of Viti-azevo, when they arrived to the place of their present habitation on the shores of the Black Sea, they had to be baptized because coming from the remote villages of Turkey they had lost every association with the official Orthodox religion. For this reason a great number of families came to have the name Papadopoulo. Legend has it that they were baptized by a priest called Popov, so he simply gave all the villagers his own name.
There is a Pontic fairy tale, which was recorded by me in the same village. It describes how a thief stole the golden cross, decorated with precious stones worn by a priest while he was baptizing the inhabitants of the village. Stories like this are a further proof of the fact that in the case of remote districts of Turkey we often have to deal with the phenomenon called “folk orthodoxy” or just with the break of orthodox tradition.
The theme of the naive history of Urums and Rumeis and of their own perception of the history of their settlement in Azov region is dealt with in Elena Perekhvalskaya’s article. She reports that some elderly inhabitants of the village Yalta could not answer the question: “Where did the Azov Greeks come from and what was their origin?” At the same time they were explaining the etymology of toponym
Yalta (village named after the town of Yalta in Crimea) by the Greek yialo ‘shore’. They obviously had no idea of the connection of their village name with the Crimean topography. Some of the informants knew nothing about the existence of the city of Yalta in Crimea, and being told about it saw no connection with the name of their own village [Perekhvalskaya 2006: 7-8]. This is a striking fact because in their Odyssea Pontic Greeks usually called their new places of habitation after the names of the places they had left. The names of the villages of eastern Georgia are usually repeating the Kars place names. The same mechanism worked in the Greek villages in the Azov region; Greeks were replicating the names of the villages left behind in Crimea. But oddly enough this mnemonic device — a kind of knots to memorize your past — did not work this time. The fact that the Crimean Greeks never perceive their position in Crimea (and later Azov) as an exile could be a plausible explanation of this. Importantly, for a very long period of time they did not feel they were in a foreign land. As a result they became less “diasporic”. In these circumstances forgetting some details about your past stopped meaning “losing the ability for self-identification”. On the hypothetic level we can presume that later, when the Greeks became aware of being surrounded by other ethnic groups, the revival of their memory started. In any case, even now the myth of Odysseus, the motive of eternal wandering is not as relevant for the Mariupol Greeks as it is for their Pontic counterparts. In the oral tradition of the Azov Greeks the memories of the “Land of Forefathers” (Ancient Greece or Crimea) have been lost.
In this context an episode, described by Elena Perekhvalskaya and Alexander Novik is very telling [Novik, Perekhvalskaya 2004: 293]. The members of the popular Urum musical group Birtayfa were asked to translate the first verse of a popular Urum song Alushtadan esker yerler ‘The Old Places of Alushta’. This song was in the repertoire of the group and the musicians told their interviewers (the students of the dialectological expedition, organized by the University of St. Petersburg), that they were deeply moved by this song, and it brought tears to their eyes every time they performed it. But as it turned out, none of the musicians was able to translate the first verse. They offered most fantastic versions of a possible translation from unhappy love story to death in exile. The stumbling block they could not overcome appeared to be the first line: Alushtadan. This is the
Crimean toponym Alushta — well known in the context of former Soviet Union and Russia. To the young Urums it meant nothing and they found it impossible to translate.
Below it will be shown that Turkic-speaking Greeks of Tsalka hold their family history in high regard, preserve the memory of their great-grandfather’s switching from Pontic to Turkish, and remember exactly which village in Kars their ancestors’ birthplace was.
The Greeks of Azov seem to be much more relaxed about their history. They are Greeks, therefore they do not have to prove anything. It seems that when there is an awareness of the conflict with one’s mother tongue, history receives special attention. On the other hand, lack of such conflict, or should we say closing your eyes on such conflict, allows you to ignore some historic details and bring Genghis Khan and Ancient Greece together.
5. The History of Migration and its reflection in Family Oral Tradition (Turkic-speaking Orthodox Greeks of Georgia)
There are 24 villages in Tsalka and Tetritskaro regions with a compact Orthodox Christian Turkic-speaking population [Volkova 1974]. The names of the villages are telling as they mostly replicate the names of the villages left behind in Asia Minor. Barmaksiz, Olenk, Akhalik, Karakom, Kala, Gunya Kala, Khadyk are some examples. It is interesting that in spite of the absolutely transparent inner form and obvious etymology of the toponym Bashkoy (Turk. ‘main village’) the Turkic-speaking inhabitants of the village stick to rather extravagant folk etymology: they claim that their village is named after General Paskevitch, a renowned General-Governor who became famous during the Russian-Turkish wars. The endeavors to explain Turkish place names by any possible Greek or Russian etymology is very characteristic of Turkic-speaking Greeks. The village called Akhalyk is often called Posht. Legend has it that in the 19th century, a garrison of Russian soldiers was posted there.
A certain number of villages have name which are of Turkish origin but have Orthodox meaning: Chiftkilise (Turk. ‘a pair of churches’), Tek Kilise (Turk. ‘one church’), Kizilkilise (Turk. ‘Golden Church’), Edikilise (Turk. ‘Seven Churches’). The word Kilise is a Greek borrowing in Turkish (compare Greek SKKXyoia).
Several villages have double names: official, Greek one, appearing on the map and Turkish, unofficial, being in actual use. Turkic-speaking village Imera (Greek n^epa ‘day’) is called Yayla (Turk. ‘pastry’); Livad (Greek. XifidSi ‘valley’) is the official name of the village called now by a Turkish toponym Olenk. One of the possible explanations of this phenomenon is that when these villages were founded, the population was speaking Greek but later the inhabitants switched to Turkish, the Lingua Franca of Caucasus.
The memories of the migration from Turkey to Georgia are preserved in family oral tradition. Most of informants could recount their family history, in some cases going back several generations to the time of the exodus from Turkey. Below is a fragment from the genealogical tree of Turkish speaking family Fulov.
Anastas
I
Nikolaos Konstantinos
|
Anastas Lazaros Nikolaos
|
Georgios Odiseus Anastas Dimitris
|
Valerij
The Fulovs remember that Anastas died in Turkey. His sons Nikolaos and Konstantinos came to Georgia at the age of 15 and 16 and built a house in the village Bashkoy, with the date 1850 carved on the foundation stone. They were speaking Pontic (on their tomb-stones their name is still inscribed in Greek: 0ovXiSn). Only the next generation of the Fulov family, while already in Georgia, switched to Turkish. In those days this was a common occurrence because Turkish has been the Lingua Franca, the language of the bazaar. Later this function was adopted by Russian.
The mass migration of Greeks from Turkey to Caucasus took place after 1828. It followed the signing of The Adrianople Peace Treaty [Xanthopoulou-Kyriakou 1991: 358]. When Russian troops entered Turkey, they were enthusiastically met by the Greek population of Asia Minor. As a result special Greek brigade was formed. According to The Adrianople Treaty, Russia returned to Turkey a part of Akhalcikh Pashalik, the cities of Kars, Erzurum, Bayazit with its pa-
shaliks. Greeks, who lived in those regions, realized that it would be impossible for them to escape the revenge of Turks. About 42,000 of Greeks (one fifth of the Greek population of Turkey) followed the Russian troops. The biggest party came from Erzurum pashalyk. For their settlement they chose the ruins of old Georgian villages, using their stones for building their new houses. They also resurrected from the ruins old Georgian churches. The memories of this period are reflected in the epic oral tradition of Turkic-speaking Greeks. Below we
cite a passage from one such poem, family in the village of Bashkov.
Amaktar gurdzy vurdu taruyu Am unaru aldu, am bariaruyu Aksi tamal dasunda Xarabanun basunda
Al xaskas ic aklar bajarda bitar Ichinde bulbular sajarda otar Birus ajaz zajmarun basunda boj yar jayar xarabanun basunda
Gacti jillar oldum tamam jasumda Sejrib ayardi sac basumda Mevlem em savucumda, amda atasumda
Bani yondur xarabanun basunda Indi bele oldu bene zulum Irax dusdu bu ellardan Insan ucundur bu dujnede olum
Bir arzum var, ax divan yarsunda Mevlem dzanim al bir tak Xarabanun basunda Bu jerlaru ben gazardum gunde Ma garasu var dibinde Usaxtag ojnardum cimer gunasunda Xarabanun basunda, xarabanun basunda
recorded while studying the Fulov
The energetic Georgian struck fire from history.
Talent is left and the skill The old stone as a base On the old ruins of Haraba Red flowers grow in spring The nightingales sing in the morning
The freezing cold in January winter
Big snow falls on the ruins Years went by, I became old Became sparse and white the hair on my head
My God, in happiness and in grief (lit. in fire) bring me to these ruins Now trouble befell me Far from these places is my path Only death is waiting for a man in this world
One wish I have when facing the Highest trial
God, give rest to my soul on the old ruins
Once I walked in these places One cave was here below Here I played in the sunny valley On the old ruins of Haraba,
Dzajal dzivan dostlar vaxtunda Kim olmadu sevdeker taxtunda Al janaxlu surmalu gasunda
When one is young Who is not on the throne of love With red cheeks and brows painted by surma
I saw my beloved on the old ruins of Haraba.
Ban jarumu gordum xarabanun Basunda
6. The Folk Orthodoxy of Greeks
In the context of the Russian-Turkish wars the question of the new settlers’ faith was becoming especially important. There is a widely accepted opinion that Turkish-speaking Orthodox Greeks never stopped to practice Orthodoxy in Turkey and were even more conservative in the questions of their faith than the Pontic-speaking Greeks. The comment made by the Pontic-speaking Greeks about their Turkic-speaking neighbors is particularly pertinent: “They are stronger than us in faith”. Archive data of the 19th century can suggest another interpretation of the situation we are investigating. The report of the British Consul Palgrave is of interest in this respect. He wrote that in Trapezund there were nine Greek churches and three Greek schools and there was no doubt that the Greek population of Trapezund strictly followed the Byzantine type of Orthodoxy. But in isolated and more remote places with multiethnic population the situation seems to have been different. Palgrave notes that 1436 Greeks living in Arkhava region of Lazistan are Laz: “Having accepted Christianity in the Byzantine period they are practicing it in their way” [Palgrev 1882: 60]. In his notes Palgrave provides further evidence concerning the “Krumli” sect, which he describes as something between Christianity and Islam. According to Palgrave there are about 12 000 representatives of this sect in the region of Machka of the sandzhak of Trapezund and some 8 500 more in the region of Surmene [Palgrave 1882: 49-50]. It is highly likely that the Krumli sect can be linked to the Karaman tradition [Eckmann 1964].
According to the archive materials of Krasnodar region, Greek settlers often had no priests and churches. The archives have no evidence of baptizing, weddings etc. Irina Raevskaya believes that before the migration, in the Greek villages in Turkey Christianity was maintained by the forces of community and family. Greeks practised it “in their own way”. Raevskaya describes a very interesting case of
M. G. Guzeva, a Greek woman from the village Vitiazevo, which illustrates the same problem. Guzeva’s grandfather, whose name was Papadopoulo, was one of the first Pontic Greeks who came to the village. According to Guzeva, her grandfather — an Orthodox priest — baptized almost all the villagers because none of them had been baptized before coming to Vitiazevo. After baptizing he issued them with the documents all of which carried his own name. As a result many of the villagers are called Papandopoulo but they do not consider themselves to be relatives [Raevskaya 1986].
This story seems to be supported by a fairy-tale which I recorded in in 1994 in Vitiazevo from Ivan Papadopoulo, The story was told to him by his grandmother who came to Vitiazevo from Turkey. The story is about a village where grown-ups and children were avap-tiga ‘not baptized’. One of the inhabitants of the village, a thief, steals the golden cross decorated with precious stones, worn by the priest, who baptized him. This can serve as further proof of the fact that in the case of remote districts of Turkey we often have to deal with the phenomenon called “folk orthodoxy” or just with the break from the Orthodox tradition.
So once more we realize that the idea that Greeks in the Ottoman Empire were forced to make the choice “Faith or Language” is a classic case of a myth.
7. Modern Greek lexical borrowings in the Turkish of Tsalka
Borrowings from Modern Greek present a special interest from the point of view of mutual penetration and influence by two cultures. The Turkish of the Orthodox Greeks includes a sizeable layer of lexical borrowings. Most of the borrowings have been phonologically and morphologically adapted and only few of the borrowings sound like direct quotation from Greek (compare Tsalk. Xristos anesti, alitos anesti < Greek Xpnoxoq aveoTq, aXndrng aveovn ‘Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!’).
One of the examples of the interference on the lexical level is the parallel proverbs in Turkish of Tsalka and Pontic of the neighboring villages:
Turk. Ekmeginevden al, joldasin kovden — Greek To spomin par apo to spit, ton filon epar aso xorio ‘Take your bread from your home, and your friend from your village’.
Turk. Gelin evde ev japar — Greek I nifi so spit spit xtiz ‘The bride builds the house in the house’.
Turk. Gorx gorzmazadn, otan otanmazdan — Greek Fogase ton afo-gato, endropjajs to anendropo ‘Be afraid of the fearless, be ashamed of the shameless’.
Borrowings related to the ecclesiastic sphere are quite numerous; they are phonologically and morphologically adapted, compare Tsalk. ajos ‘saint’, Greek dyiog /ajos/ ‘saint’; Tsalk. ajor ‘the day of the Saint’, Greek Ayia yiopzy; Tsalk. vaptis ‘baptizement’, Greek fid-prian; Tsalk. kliros ‘choir’, Greek KXtfpog; Tsalk. kandil ‘big candle’, Greek KavriXi; Tsalk. lampada ‘lampade’, Greek Xa^ndSa; Tsalk. Ave-des, Greek apsvvng ‘Lord’ (< Turk. effendi < Greek avOevzyg).
There are also borrowings, which relate to the sphere of education: Tsalk. sxoli < Greek axoXtf; Tsalk. melani < Greek ^sXavi.
Constructions which are verbal phrases with the verb etmek ‘to do’, olmak ‘to become’, almak ‘to take’ are extremely productive in Turkish. There is a number of verbal expressions in the Tsalkian idiom, which relate to church and religion. Compare ginana olmax ‘to receive communion’ < Greek Koivmvia ‘communication’; Tsalk. vaftis olmax ‘to be baptized’ < Greek fidpnon ‘baptistery’. There is another expression which is a Turkish calque suja chakmak ‘to put into water’, stafanos olmax ‘to be married in church’ (Greek axspavog ‘crown, wreath’).
Some words belong to the layer of Turkish religious vocabulary but they too should be mentioned because they changed their meaning on the Orthodox basis: compare keys ‘priest’ < Turk. seyh (with a metathesis); namaz ‘prayer’ < Turk. namaz; Tsalk. mum ‘candle’ < Turk. mum.
There is another interesting issue arising while analyzing the religious vocabulary in the bizim dil of Tsalka. Comparing this vocabulary (quite homogenous in all the Turkish idioms of the region of Tsalka) with the other idioms of the Orthodox Urums of the Azov region, the Turkish-speaking Greeks of Krasnodar region, and Greek borrowings in the Gagauz language one should note the striking resemblance of all these lexemes. It is possible to suggest here the existence of a certain Lingua Franca. We are dealing with the same lexemes, the same phonetic shape which has been morphologically adapted in the same way. This phenomenon merits further investigation. Such similarities could be explained by the connection of this
lexical layer with the literature in Karamanlidika, texts in Turkish which are written in Greek characters. These include translations of The Old and New Testaments, lives of Saints, prayer books and various apocryphal stories, one of the most popular of which is the poem about the Martyr Aleksis (Aleksijoz). All of these and the Christmas choral Avedes (the Lord) Books in Karamanlidika seem to be quite wide-spread among the Turkish-speaking Orthodox. They were passed down generations and were considered to be sacred. Thus, in case of illness it was recommended to put such a book under your cushion.
In the beginning of 1930s in the library of the village Barmaksiz these sacred books have been seen for the last time. When in 1937 teaching of Greek in schools had been banned, the books were confiscated. They were presumed to have been burnt. According to another version of events they were buried in the ground. One way or other, they seem to be lost forever.
Nevertheless, the Turkish-speaking Pontians continue to perform the St. Aleksijoz choral and tell the paraphrases of the Old and New Testaments. Apocryphal stories, like the one about the fish which was brought back to life by Christ while it was being fried on the pan. According to the legend, this fish is half-black and is not to be eaten — it is poisonous because once it had not been fried thoroughly. The Turkish-speaking Greek women of Tsalka tell that Eve was seduced not with an apple but with a fig. Ever since the fig juice burns the skin and eating figs is a sin.
A Fragment from the Poem of Noah:
Noj Noah
Noja dedi alursun er xusun Said to Noah — let take
arkegi disisi Of each bird
ep dune su olazdax Male and female
ona ela soz geldi The whole word will become water
ona ela soz geldi Such a voice came to him
Here we touched upon a subject which merits a special research. Following the logic “in my end is my beginning” and referring to the beginning of this paper and the quotation from Hans Dreschwam, we have to return to the Karamans theme. Karamans was the name applied to the Turkish speaking Orthodox population which until the exchange of population between Turkey and Greece in 1924 inhabited Asia Minor to the West of the line Trapezund — Taurus —
Silifke. This included mainly the villages of Kaiseri, Nigde, Konya, Nevshehir, Budur, on the coast of the Black sea. Naturally they were also present in Istanbul and Izmir. There were also settlements of Karamans on the Balkan Peninsula, Syria, Crimea etc. Most of the Orthodox Turkish-speaking population lived on the territory of Kara-man principality, hence at certain point all Turkish-speaking Orthodox of Turkey started to be called Karamans. Karamans themselves never used this ethnonym. In the books written in Karamanlidika they called themselves AvamXtf xPiariavXaptf, AvamXtf OpOoSo^og, OpOoSo^oi, XpiariavXap or just AvarouXXdp. As for their language, they called it TovpKZe, Sare rovpKZe ‘Turkish, simple Turkish’. It should be noted that in Tsalka Turkish-Speaking Orthodox Greeks sometimes call their language anXog ‘simple’, turk, turkche tili (lisani) ‘Turkish language’.
Karaman Orthodox community made up part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Karamans were rather isolated and marriages were organized within the community.
The history of Karamans has not been written yet and the question of their origin remains open. There is a theory according to which at least in part Karamans are the descendants of Turks-Seldjuks, who reached Asia Minor in the pre-Osman period. They became mercenaries in the Byzantine army or were taken prisoners of war and as a result were Christianized. By the time the next wave of the Osmans happened, they were regarded as Rumlar, Christian Greeks — a view which is entirely in keeping with the thinking accepted in the Ottoman Empire.
The flourishing of Karaman literature is usually connected to the development of book publishing. The first Karaman book was published in Istanbul in 1718. A poem by Theofilos Magdalianov, who is known in Tsalka as usta Sefil and who comes from the village of Tekkilise can be viewed as an example of Karaman literature. The old residents of Tsalka say that in 1902 his poem “Theoharis and Anna” was published in Baroumi. It was published in Turkish but used Greek alphabet. As so many other Singers of the Tale, Magdali-anov was blind. He lost his vision after surviving smallpox. The poem describes the wanderings of Greeks who came to Georgia from Rur-key. In his article on Feofil Magdalianov in the Encyclopedia of Soviet Greeks F. Kessidi cites a fragment of a poem recorded by him in Tsalka [Kessidi 1994]. In it usta Sefil describes his visit to Athens:
Salamat kxal sen Afina
Na xos ijerd’a guruldun
sen aksi vatan urumlarun
senin filosoflarunun usuxlardular dunaji
Artsun, aksi senin adun
Stay peaceful, Athens
Based in such a marvelous place
You are the old capital of Greeks
Your philosophers enlightened all the world
Let be multiplied your word
Comparison between the Karamans and theTurkish-speaking Greeks of Georgia offers certain parallels. It is possible that a proportion of Tsalkian Turkish-speaking Greeks are descendants of Karamans. At the same time we should bear in mind that some Turkishspeaking villages as well as separate families switched to Turkish prior to their arrival in Georgia from Turkey. All said above makes us once more contemplate the relativity of the notion “ethnicity” and “ethnic identity”.
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