The Janissaries: An overview from the Greco-Roman Byzantine side

Talking about the Islamization of the Byzantines of the Balkans and Anatolia is still a taboo in the society of today's Turkey
The current inhabitants of Turkey have forgotten their Christian Greco-Roman past to such an extent that today they consider the Greeks foreigners and their enemies. In essence, however, the only thing they have in Turkey today is the ancient Greek Byzantine culture in an Islamic packaging.

Of course they do not wish to re-hellenize, as most do not care if their ancestors were ever Romans, but even if they remember, they are indifferent, as they do not belong to the Greek nation and do not identify with the Greeks.
They consider themselves a great racial mixture, although they boast that they come from ancient Turkish tribes.
Christianity may have more charm for some than Hellenism, but even this has little appeal…
Is there philhellenism in Turkey? Minimal! It must be a subdivision of some percentage that is difficult to detect, with the only notable exception being the Turkish Cypriots who identify significantly with the Greek Cypriots and are separated from the Turks in Turkey.
Of course, the Turks in Turkey also like the Greeks, but the sympathy remains in the expressive movements, in the singing, in the dancing, in the food and in the music, as the two peoples differ radically in the rest, as in the case of the Greeks you have a European people, while in the case of the Turks you have a Middle Eastern people, with all that this entails.

[LondonPower]

Byzantium was a commonwealth of free cities that maintained their autonomy and the Greek organization of the City with the popular assemblies, while Constantinople was Cosmopolis, the queen of the Cities! So when in 1453 the Sultan of the Turks asked for the city from Constantine, he refused and said that he could not give him something that did not belong to him because the city belonged to the entire Greek people who voted in the popular assembly to resist until the end..

The dominant culture was the Greek, the soul of the empire was Greek and the Byzantines were once and admirable successors of the Greek culture! Of course there were foreign emperors if we judge Greekness by hematological criteria, but all these kings were continuations of the Greek way of thinking and culture..
The Latin language was considered barbaric and there was no creditable reference to them except for the Roman Empire as a state institution which Constantine the Great gave to the Greeks by moving the capital to Constantinople!
The empire was called Byzantine from that time because Constantinople was built on top of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium! Just as Rome gave its name to the Roman Empire, so did Byzantium give its name to the Byzantine Empire, so it happened when there were no national states! Athens gave the name Athenian Republic, Sparta was named after the sovereign city, Thebes, Marseilles in Gaul.
So when the Byzantine Empire had this organization that resembles a direct democracy, the West was in feudalism a more despotic system than the kingdom of the pharaoh in Egypt or the Sumerians in the Mesopotamia!
So the struggle of the French revolution was to bring Europe to the people, not freedom but individual rights. This was achieved with representative democracy, a form of elite dictatorship

[aris]

Thank you for creating this. I learned so much. My heart is heavy.

[southface]

Most Greeks remained in Turkey as Muslims who changed their religion in the Ottoman Empire and then with Kemal Ataturk they were completely Turkified. The largest number of today's Turks are of Greek origin and have Greek DNA, which is why they drink alcohol, have Byzantine dances and customs, their food refers to Greece, but also their physical characteristics.

[anastasiathiraiouyerostath]

This is tragic, because the enslaved nationalities, were deeply rooted in Asia Minor for millenia, and had developed great culture and civilization, whereas the Turkic warriors came from the steppes of Far East, nomads who conquered lands just for looting and plundering

[manm]

Wallachia and Bulgaria state never existed, there was only Bulgarian empire and later on Wallachian principality. Thats it

[denizucar]

Yes there are nothing like Turks, it is a historical mystery how Anatolia overwhelmingly become Turkish😂

[TRASH]

Mistake one: There never was a state called "Byzantium" and therefore there never was a "Byzantine" nation or people. You are obviously referring to the eastern Roman empire, whose inhabitants referred to themselves as "Romaniotes" or "Romans". The Eastern Roman Empire therefore had two cohesive features, the common Greek language and the Christian orthodox religion.
Mistake Two: There are no "fake" nations. During the Ottoman Empire, its inhabitants were divided into "miliets", i.e. religious (and not national) communities.
From these "milliets" emerged the nations that emerged through the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. For example. a Greek Muslim was considered a "Turk" (since he belonged to the dominant religious community) while an Orthodox Christian ethnically Turkish was actually considered a "Greek" since he belonged to the oppressed community.
The Arabs with the strong Shiite element also formed a different consciousness of their own, etc.

The Turkish nation is therefore not "fake" at all, since it was formed on the same basis as the ethnogenesis of all the peoples of the former Ottoman Empire, and which was the community of religion first and language second.

Characteristic examples of this are the Muslims of Bosnia who even today are considered by the Serbs to be "Turks" when they are simply converted Serbs, while the same has happened with the numerous Greek Muslims of Crete, who after the union of the island with Greece, were deported as "Turks".