Education in the Turcophone Orthodox Communities of Anatolia during the nineteenth century

Abstract

From the second half of the nineteenth century onwards the Turcophony of the majority of the Orthodox population of Anatolia became to be treated gradually as an anomaly that has to be corrected. The ecclesiastic leadership of the Orthodox millet and the secular leadership of the Ottoman Greeks became increasingly more sensitive and anxious towards the dominance of Turkish in the Anatolian Orthodox communities. The present study claims that just like the Ottoman state authority, the leadership of the Ottoman Greek millet adopted a siege mentality. In this specific historical context modern education acquired an adversarial nature and educational competition fueled both state led and the non-Muslim educational endeavors. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century a new language hierarchy emerged and consolidated. According to this new linguistic hierarchy Greek started to represent progress, advancement, prosperity and a break away from the existing backwardness. The plain Turkish that is spoken is despised and is treated as an oriental sign of backwardness and poverty. The present study attempts to demonstrate the complex interrelationships between different actors in shaping the educational and communal affairs of Turkish speaking Anatolian Orthodox. Rather than a homogenous entity what we find is a socially, economically, culturally, linguistically and ideologically fragmented community in which different actors tries to assert themselves and to direct this process through factional politics. This study claims that education stopped and reversed the process of social and cultural integration of the Turkish-speaking Anatolian Orthodox to their Muslim compatriots and created a sense of Greek national identity and feeling among the younger generations. Despite the occasional expression of a local or Anatolian Orthodox conscience inside the Ottoman Greek millet, most of the time in response to defamatory arguments concerning their Turcophony, a political and cultural program that will emphasize their ethnic distinctiveness from the Rum millet in the sense of Bulgarian or Albanian examples never took hold. Until the “exchange of populations” the cultural and ideological program of integration to the Greek Orthodox millet/nation retained its hegemonic position and remained as the most convincing program for achieving progress and prosperity.