The Hellenic spirit still lingers in Smyrna, writes Alexander Billinis (neoskosmos.com)
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There is something about travel to our lost homelands that creates
spectral yearnings in me. I have had the great fortune to visit and to
experience nearly every country bordering Greece, or where the Byzantine
legacy still remains in culture or edifice. Nowhere were the ghosts
more numerous than in my visit to Smyrna last autumn.
This is probably because Byzantine and Hellenic legacy is officially
expunged from the record in Izmir, whereas in Constantinople there is
still a tiny Greek community and the Patriarchate of Constantinople
maintains a slipping grip on the spiritual legacy of Byzantium, and over
all Orthodox. It could be, too, that what the city represents simply
transcends the grave for Byzantine descendents.
Whatever it was, even Constantinople did not stir up the same whirl of spectral emotions as Smyrna.
No family ghosts are there for me. My lineal family is all from the Western side of the Aegean, unlike so many of my fellow Greek tourists on this particular trip.
We arrived after a brief flight from Athens, and proceeded into the city of Izmir, whose upper town, crescent shaped harbour, and seaside highway immediately brought Salonika to mind. It was not just topography talking - many of today's Izimiris were Salonikans, and today's Salonikans were Smyrnans, the human legacy of the exchange.
On the highway to Izmir, we rounded a bend where a huge rock carving
bore the likeness of another Salonikan, Kemal Attaturk, the founder of
the Turkish Republic.
Izmir greeted us cloaked in Turkish flags, as we arrived on Republic Day. Never had I seen so many flags, not even in post-9/11 America were so many flying, and at sizes ranging from toddlers with paper jobs, to six story buildings totally draped. Shakespeare's phrase about "protest[ing] too much" came to mind.
Izmir greeted us cloaked in Turkish flags, as we arrived on Republic Day. Never had I seen so many flags, not even in post-9/11 America were so many flying, and at sizes ranging from toddlers with paper jobs, to six story buildings totally draped. Shakespeare's phrase about "protest[ing] too much" came to mind.
In Izmir itself, a Greek seeking many ready reminders of Greek Smyrna
will be frankly disappointed. The Greek quarter was consumed by fire
and ploughed under for parkland.
Some structures do remain, including a couple of formerly Greek high schools in a high neoclassical style now appropriated by Turkish universities, and some stately homes with gabled second stories known in the Balkans as Turkish houses and in Turkey as Rum (Greek)-style houses. In today's Izmir the greatest enemy to remaining Greek architecture is not the erasing efforts of Turkish nationalism, but a far greater enemy and one well known to Athenians: 'progress'. Builders arrive with cash and promises of apartments, and mansions of a bygone era come down.
Then there are the Smyrnans of today, the Turkish Izmiris. Absent the veiled women, relatively few in number in this city, one easily sees the faces of Athens, Salonika, Sofia, Skopje or Belgrade. Or Iraklion.
Some structures do remain, including a couple of formerly Greek high schools in a high neoclassical style now appropriated by Turkish universities, and some stately homes with gabled second stories known in the Balkans as Turkish houses and in Turkey as Rum (Greek)-style houses. In today's Izmir the greatest enemy to remaining Greek architecture is not the erasing efforts of Turkish nationalism, but a far greater enemy and one well known to Athenians: 'progress'. Builders arrive with cash and promises of apartments, and mansions of a bygone era come down.
Then there are the Smyrnans of today, the Turkish Izmiris. Absent the veiled women, relatively few in number in this city, one easily sees the faces of Athens, Salonika, Sofia, Skopje or Belgrade. Or Iraklion.
At a cafe in Smyrna's upper town, where Turkish couples sipped beer
in fashion and form no different from their Balkan neighbours, a fellow,
hearing us speak Greek, opened a conversation. He spoke an unsteady
Greek filled with Cretan idioms, astonishingly similar to the Cretan
dialect I heard from Old Timers from the Greek community in my Salt Lake
City, Utah hometown. Switching to his more fluent English, he informed
me that his grandparents were Cretan Muslims, that there were hundreds
of thousands of Cretan descendants in Turkey, and that "Greeks and Turks
are brethren". We met others, in the course of our trip, including an
elderly cafe proprietress who shared a Cretan mantinada with a fellow
tour member, a professor born in Crete. Few eyes were dry.
Walking along Izmir's waterfront, full of swanky apartments every bit
the kin and peer of Waterfront Salonika or Glyfada, I expected to feel
ghosts, for before arriving I had reread several accounts of the last
days of Greek Smyrna, and horrors endured by hundreds of thousands of
Asia Minor Greeks and Armenians, caught between fire and sword on the
land, and the sick indifference of allied ships in the harbour. A quick
stroll down the strand was enough. The blackness of the sea, and the
lights of the city easily remind of the countless thousands who met a
watery grave. As I was with my new Turkish friends at that particular
moment, whose kindness and hospitality easily compares to the best of
the Greeks, the ghosts beat a diplomatic retreat.
The nearby ruins of Classical Ephesus conjure images of Greek
civilization, and the very font of Christianity, clearly antecedents
confirming Asia Minor's Greek Christian past and the Turks as latecomers
and awkward inheritors of its present and future. Here, again, were
ghosts of the past, but of an earlier era, lacking the nearness and
intimacy of those more closely associated with our era.
It was, rather, the villages near Smyrna, less impacted by modernity, more readily and visually connected to our Greek present, where the ghosts came out in force. There was the village of Urla (Vourla) now nearly a suburb of Izmir, with global chic from the city annexing the charms of a once Greek fishing village. Greece's Nobel Laureate poet, George Seferis, was born, and the Turks celebrate this native son with a street and restaurant adorned with Greek and Turkish flags.
It was, rather, the villages near Smyrna, less impacted by modernity, more readily and visually connected to our Greek present, where the ghosts came out in force. There was the village of Urla (Vourla) now nearly a suburb of Izmir, with global chic from the city annexing the charms of a once Greek fishing village. Greece's Nobel Laureate poet, George Seferis, was born, and the Turks celebrate this native son with a street and restaurant adorned with Greek and Turkish flags.
Breaking away from the tour, as I often do, I walked the quiet
streets of the town, not much changed since the Greeks left these same
houses in haste. Then I walked to the small port, in every way the same
as a thousand such seaside towns in Greece, and a Turkish sailor sat in
the late autumn sun, burned the same crimson as his counterparts in my
home island, Hydra, cleaning his nets with the help of a big toe for
leverage.
North of Smyrna, the town of Foca beckoned. Known until recently as Phocea, its citizens founded the city of Marsailles in France almost three thousand years ago. The Greek presence here ended abruptly in 1922. One of my fellow tourists recalled that his grandfather owned several factories here, sighing the sigh of fate and futility I have so often witnessed on both sides of the Aegean or anywhere in the Balkans, when recalling such things.
North of Smyrna, the town of Foca beckoned. Known until recently as Phocea, its citizens founded the city of Marsailles in France almost three thousand years ago. The Greek presence here ended abruptly in 1922. One of my fellow tourists recalled that his grandfather owned several factories here, sighing the sigh of fate and futility I have so often witnessed on both sides of the Aegean or anywhere in the Balkans, when recalling such things.
Again, we arrived to a port every inch Greek, settling in a fine
restaurant eating barbounia at a price and freshness hard to come by.
Out at sea we could just make out a hazy silhouette of Lesbos, and over
the Karaburun peninsula opposite Chios would have been visible, all
linked together in a web of commerce and culture, until the tragic
events of the 1920s. Well sated and on unsteady legs from too much raki
and nostalgia, we then took to the back streets of Foca, where the
ghosts readily walked the narrow alleys, whose houses had not changed
since the 1920s and door lintels often had faded inscriptions in Greek.
The exchange might have happened yesterday, from the town's aura, and so
it was just a blink in the eye, relative to the millennia-long history
of Hellenism here.
Though Greek Christianity was officially expunged from Asia Minor, its aural presence remained, and physical traces abounded, hidden in plain sight.
Though Greek Christianity was officially expunged from Asia Minor, its aural presence remained, and physical traces abounded, hidden in plain sight.
The DNA and features of the people told a similar story, as did the all
too often facility with the Greek language due to pre-exchange ties
which still held. This part of Turkey is a must see, not only for what
is seen, but more importantly what is not seen, but rather felt.
Alexander Billinis (neoskosmos.com)
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