Posted on 04/15/2007 5:53:27 PM PDT by eleni121
“And, today, it’s in an overwhelmingly Moslem country. “
“Turkey” should only compriose Anatolia. The Turks are a bunch of Central Asian horse nomads who stole the entire COuntry from other people.
Constantinople is in Europe, not Asia anyway.
It was a cathedral from the sixth century, when built by Emperor Justinian, until 1453.
“Spartans never surrender. Spartans never retreat” - The 300.
“Molon Labe”
WE should emulate them
the greeks attempted to take asian turkey after ww1.
without even boots! they were poorly equipped.
my point was, they might have held constantinople.
but, ataturk pushed them out of anatolia.
As far as the Turks being a bunch of central Asian nomads, it's worth nothing that a small army composed of central Asian nomads had as its top leaders 4 men with clearly Gallatian names ~ still recognizable although the mother tongue has long evaporated. Without much more known about those fellows than that, it's hard to say how such an alliance was made.
This army became known as the Seljuk Turks. No doubt some degree of emigration from Central Asia occurred but the overwhelming majority of today's Turkish speaking people are descendants of the same population that has lived there for several thousand years.
Hungary and Estonia have a comparable history where Central Asian nomads came in, changed the native tongue, and generally left the original ethnotypes in place.
The Turks didn't "steal" someone else's country ~ a new ruling elite came in, imposed its language and someone else's religion, and the old elite moved to Italy ~ and by the time of the final fall, that was just a few thousand people. Odds are good most of their descendants live in Brooklyn and San Francisco these days. Not sure they'd want Anatolia back.
INteresting.
I didn’t know that.
Too bad they didn’t suceed. But my guess is they just wanted to take over that part of Anatolia inhabited by those thousands of ethnic Greeks since before the time of Cyrus the Great - you know - the ehtnic Greeks who were expelled from their ancestral homelands by the Turks in the mid 1950s.
I don’t think it is ever wise to bash the Turks. They are a secular nation, a good ally of Israel, and a bulwark against aggression from Syria and Lebanon. Colin Powell treated the Turks like a lapdog before we invaded Iraq 4 years ago, and it cost us a division, and an easier occupation. If we had balls as a nation, we would take out our true enemies the Ibn Saud mafia, take over the oil supplies, and put the Turks back in control of Mecca and Medina. When the Turks ruled the Muslim holy places, there was order on the Peninsula.
I thought the Turkish speaking civilization in Anatolia didn't start going after Bulgaria until the 1500s or so.
i didn’t know until this book that hemingway was there.
i agree with you. i wish the greeks had retained constantinople.
but, as it turned out, all of the greeks living in anatolia fled the turks, and crowded into greek cities.
Hmm, I remember reading about Britian attempting to invade the Dardanelles during WWI.
But I don’t recall at any time anyone besides the Turks owning Istanbul after 1453.
The present government of Turkey may be secular, but the same bunch of Islamic fanatics are fermenting around in the population as exist elsewhere. There have been attacks on Christians in Turkey.
As for the Iraqi War - hey screwed us good, by equivocating over whether or not they were going to let us use their territory to attack their Islamic brothers. Finally they said no and Fallujah was never flushed out.
I don’t like any Muslims. Some of them are worse than others, but their ultimate goal is the same - to take over the west and impose Islamic customs.
Right now, the Turkish army is supproting the secular government there. But they can be infiltrated and as soon as they are, they will turn on us. In the lng run they are as reliable as the Pakistanis and Saudis.
The Treaty of Lausanne, concluded on July 24, 1923, obliged Greece to return eastern Thrace and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos to Turkey, as well as to give up its claim to Smyrna. The two belligerents also agreed to exchange their Greek and Turkish minority populations.
http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/golf/greekturk1921.htm
“I thought the Turkish speaking civilization in Anatolia didn’t start going after Bulgaria until the 1500s or so.”
That was the Ottoman Turks and you are late by a few decades. I think Constatinople fell to the Ottomans in 1483.
PRIOR to the Ottoman Turks, another groups of Central Asian Horse nomads - the Seljuks - invaded Byzantine Anatolia and took it over, and threatened Constantinople several times.
THOSE were the savages which generated the Crusades. The Ottomans moved in later and went on to threaten Vienna.
Different names, different tribes and leaders, but motivated by the same goals - loot, plunder, land, slaves and forced conversions - typical Muslims. They haven’t changed in 1000 years.
Dynamite the minarets for stzrters.
“but, as it turned out, all of the greeks living in anatolia fled the turks, and crowded into greek cities.”
The Turks drove them our like they tried and still are trying to drive them from Cyprus.
They would make great skyrockets, wouldn’t they?
This is true and to think otherwise is foolishness. I have nothing against individual Muslims, and I think it is our responsibility to try to recognize them as human souls and convert them to Christianity. But to think that any Islamic country could ever be on our side is sheer stupidity. Not to mention lunacy.
My bad. You are correct. They should have stuck with the Western side of the Bosporus.
yeah.
but the repatriation of the greeks to modern greece has severe consequences for other minorities, such as the jews in salonika.
the jews were pushed out by the returning greeks.
you know, when you think about it, the ottomans were probably the among the most cruel occupiers in history. the way they kidnapped the children of the conquered, raised them, brainwashed the children, and returned them as overseers of their parents’ people, made for lasting bitterness in the balkans.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.