The Hellenic Literary Society at Constantinople between Ottomanism and Greek Irredentism

Abstract

"… the Turks, public servants or soldiers, remained in sum what they’ve always been, Barbarians making a life out of plunder and robbery..." The above statement reveals how one of the finest institutions of Ottoman Greek letters and sciences, the Hellenic Literary Society at Constantinople, described the Turks in a petition to its honorary members, academics, university professors, and learned societies in the Allied countries and in those that had remained neutral during the Great War, just a month into the deliberations of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The picture of the Turk as a barbarian permeates the petition and juxtaposes that of the Greek as the bearer of civilization. In this way, the society attempted to elicit the support of Western intellectuals in favor of Greek irredentism. Such an approach was not unique to the Ottoman Greeks, as Armenians also employed a similar distinction between the Turks and themselves to enhance their national aspirations.2 Yet, such a snapshot of the society in the post-Armistice period can be misleading as to its sixty-odd year-long lifetime. The society had remained, for the most part, in favor of Ottomanism, and its endorsement of Greek irredentism tells us more about how and why multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empires can fail rather than providing an accurate depiction of the society throughout its existence.