#Attaturk's mother

[jeannereames]

Hello Professor Reames! How has the Macedonian Question influenced the historiography around Alexander?

The Macedonian Question & Ancient Macedonian Studies

(or, Come study ancient Macedonia! We cause riots!)

I’ll begin by explaining, for those unfamiliar, the “Macedonian Question” centers on who gets to lay claim to the name “Macedonia” and (originally) the geographical region, which is ethnically diverse but majority Slavic. It arose during the First and Second Balkan Wars of 1912-13, then returned after the breakup of Yugoslavia, from 1989 on.

I’ve been a bit chary about replying to this simply because it is (still) a hot topic, if not what it used to be even 10 years ago. Also…expect maps. Let me lead with three points:

1) The ancient Macedonians certainly weren’t Slavic. Slavs didn’t arrive in the area until the 6th century CE (AD), a millennia after Alexander lived. No ancient historian claimed they were Slavs, although some Slavic Nationalists used carefully edited quotes from ancient historians to support their own claims to the ancient Macedonians.

2) A lot of different peoples have passed through the Balkans and northern Greece (and even southern Greece) between now and 2300+ years ago. The Balkans have continued to be an ethnically contested area from antiquity to modernity, and who was “in charge” depended on what century it was.

3) Ancient concepts of Greek ethnicity didn’t ossify until around the Greco-Persian Wars. Prior to that, Greeks were more aware of/concerned with their citizenship/ethnicity in specific city-states (poleis) and/or language family groupings (Ionic-Attic, Doric, Aeolic).

Furthermore, these views were based on MYTH. To be Greek (Hellenic) meant to be descended from the mythical forerunner, Hellen, son of the equally mythical Dukalion (who survived the Flood…e.g., Greek Noah). There were other children of Dukalion, including a daughter Thyia. Thyia became the mother of Makedon, the mythical progenitor of the Macedonians.

So, by ancient criteria, Macedonians weren’t Hellenes (Greek). But they were kissing cousins. The ancients took these things seriously. That’s why I wanted to explain, so when the ancient Greeks said Macedonians weren’t Greeks, it didn’t mean what we’d consider it to mean today.

Back to the Macedonian Question … the issue of the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians got tied up in modern politics when Yugoslavia fell apart. During the First Balkan War and the division of Macedonia in 1913, “Macedonian Studies” didn’t exist yet. By the Third Balkan War (collapse of Yugoslavia), they did. And history was suddenly being pressed into the service of modern political agendas.

Now, let me back up and explain—as briefly as I can (so expect some judicious epitomizing)—the emergence of modern Greece and the First and Second Balkan Wars.

The Ottoman Empire began to collapse (not just decline) in the 1800s, and was essentially kicked out of Europe entirely by the First Balkan War and World War I. The last of it fell apart with the rise of Attaturk and the Young Turk Revolution, so Modern Turkey emerged in 1923.

Greece was part of that. The Greek War of Independence started in 1821, and Greece secured statehood in 1829/30, then became the Kingdom of Greece in 1832/3, which lasted until the military junta abolished it in 1973, after which it became the [Third] Hellenic Republic. From independence until the end of WWII, Greek borders expanded (see map below). Fun detail, the late Prince Philip, Elizabeth II’s husband, was a Greek (and Danish) prince.

The First Balkan War began in 1912, which was the Ottoman’s last gasp in Europe. The Austro-Hungarians wanted to make the Balkans a subject state, Russia wanted more control over the Black Sea, and Greece wanted to push north towards Thessaloniki and “Constantinople” (Istanbul). Ignoring Austro-Hungary, Serbia wanted to reconstitute “Greater Serbia” (14th Century Serbian empire)—which included a good chunk of Greece. And Bulgaria, with the strongest regional army, was eying the whole area south to the sea.

Oh, and let’s add in a dose of religious difference (Muslim vs. Orthodox Christian) just for snorts and giggles.

But this was basically about SEA TRADE access. So, for the three allies against the Ottomans, e.g., Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, Thessaloniki, Jewel of the Aegean, was the prize.

The war began October 8th, and by November 8th (1912), the three Balkan allies all hurried their armies to converge on Thessaloniki as the Ottomans withdrew. The Greeks got there mere hours ahead of the Bulgarians.

"Θεσσαλονίκη με κάθε κόστος!" (Thessaloniki, at all costs!) E. Venizelos

The war itself ended the next year (in part thanks to the Greek fleet in Thessaloniki), and Greece kept the city, and with it, still controls a lot of shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean. Shipping remains Greece’s second most profitable industry (after tourism).

Following the war’s conclusion, several issues arose, including how to partition the land—particularly the geographical region of Macedonia. The 1913 Treaty of London split it up between Bulgaria (smallest part), Greece, and Serbia (biggest part). Again, Greece and Serbia wanted to keep Bulgaria, with the most powerful army, from gaining substantially more land.

World War I intervened, and then the rise of Attaturk in Turkey and the “Megali Idea” in Greece. The Megali Idea, proposed at the Paris Peace Conference after WWI (map below), got Greece in trouble. It would have involved retaking not just the islands off Turkey’s coast, but chunks of the Turkish mainland, to match ancient Greek land claims. All THAT led to showdowns, with ongoing human rights abuses on both sides (including the Armenian Genocide earlier, which wasn’t related to Greece).

In 1923, Greece/Hellas and the new Republic of Türkiye agreed to an exchange of populations. So, Ottoman Turks/Muslims in Greece retreated to Turkey (were kicked out), and Greeks in Turkey retreated into Greece (were kicked out). About half those Greek refugees landed in Athens, whose population exploded overnight, creating an economic crisis. Many of the rest ended up in areas of northern Greece, where land from fleeing Muslims was to be had. Ergo, many new immigrants had very strong pro-Hellenic, anti-Muslim/anyone else feeling, and hadn’t been living for ages next to their (Macedonian) Slavic neighbors, who began to feel unwelcome. It also had negative effects on their Jewish neighbors, too. (The loss of Jewish life in WWII in northern Greece, especially Thessaloniki, is both shocking and heartbreaking.)

Keep in mind that the refugees on both sides had been living in their original countries not for a few decades, but for a couple centuries, or even longer in the case of the Greeks in Anatolia/Turkey. The first Greek colonies there date to the 700s/600s… BCE. There’s a good reason the Greeks and Turks hate each other, and it’s not just Cyprus. The atrocities at the beginning of the 20th Century were awful. Neither side has clean hands.

Anyway, there was a second Balkan War in 1913, which I’m ignoring, except for the map below. It amounts to Bulgaria getting pissy about their short shrift in the earlier Macedonian land division.

Then came fallout from World War II, when Greece got the Dodecanese from Italy, et al. But I want to fast forward to the collapse of The Berlin Wall in Eastern Europe, November 9, 1989, and Yugoslavia’s dissolution shortly after. That ushered in the Third Balkan War, or Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

Compared to the Bosnian Genocide and other shit going down with Milosevic, the return of the Macedonian Question seems minor. It involved the Yugoslavian province of Macedonia asking to be called “Macedonia” and Greece having a very public, international melt-down.

The entire dust-up confused much of the rest of the world. The number of times I’ve had to explain it to (non-Greek, non-Slavic) people, who just boggled…. I’ve also seen tourists stand in polite perplexity while Greeks went on a hand-waving tear about how Macedonia has been Greek for 4000 years!!! [I’ve got a t-shirt with that on it.] Btw, 4000 years dates before the first Helladic peoples even migrated into the peninsula. Anyway….

Greeks consider the name Macedonia theirs, on historical grounds. They didn’t object to the new country, but wanted it called Skopje, after the capital, or something, anything not “Macedonia.” Meanwhile, the (Slavic) Macedonians were enormously insulted and pointed to the fact they lived in a region called Macedonia, and their ancestors had been living there for centuries, so why couldn’t they call their new country by the name of the region it occupied? Stated fears of actual territorial expansion by either side were largely scare tactics and fringe rhetoric. It really was all about the name. But increasingly, that began to include claims on the ancient Macedonians, or cultural appropriation. The new Macedonian state (FYROM, then) didn’t do itself any favors with their choice of the (ancient) Macedonian sunburst for their flag and naming their airport after Alexander, et al.

That’s how ancient history got sucked into all of this in a way it didn’t the first time.

Now, let me repeat. The ancient Macedonians were not Slavs. The Thracians were not Slavs either, nor the Paionians, nor the Illyrians, nor the Celts north of them. You won’t find the Thracians called “Slavic” in Bulgarian Museums, even while they take very good care of their regional history.

By the 1990s, Macedonian history had emerged as something more than just “Alexander the Great and Philip,” and questions arose about who these people may have been. Were they Greeks like the Thessalians and Epirotes to their south and west? Or were they non-Greeks like the Thracians, Paionians, and Illyrians to their north? This was an academic (not modern political) question, and involved: 1) what did Makedoniste (“to speak in the Macedonian manner”) mean? Was that a dialect or a different language?; and 2) to what degree did ancient Greeks really consider them non-Greeks (e.g., barbarians)? The fact we had so little epigraphy from the area complicated the language question. And ancient Greek politics complicated the second question. Were the angry repudiations by Demosthenes & Friends a real, widely held sentiment…or just ancient Athenian nationalism and anti-Philip propaganda?

This was mostly nerdy stuff that should have remained safely ensconced at dull specialist panels at academic conferences.

Except …. Manolis Andronikos had found the Royal Tombs at Vergina in 1978, and Greece was bursting with pride (as they should have been). Macedonia was back on the map! Tourists still largely stuck to the Greek south, but The Greek Ministry of Culture and Sport saw an opportunity, even back then, to capitalize on tourism, so you can begin to see why it was important for “Macedonia” to remain Greek. Can’t have a country calling itself Macedonia and maybe confusing people about who Alexander and Philip had been, and where they’d lived (and syphoning off possible tourism dollars).

That may sound unduly cynical, but I’m actually with the Greeks on this, even if I’ve always rolled my eyes over the name thing. And, as noted above “Macedonia” was laying active claim to Philip and Alexander as if there was direct continuity between the ancient Macedonians and the modern ones. See below, the giant Alexander statue erected in Skopje (2011), the biggest in the whole city. It’s formal name these days is “Great Warrior,” by agreement with Greece in order to get to call themselves “Northern Macedonia” in NATO. But it’s Alexander.

Like I said, they weren’t doing themselves any favors, although those arguing in their defense liked to point out that Greece had started it, over the name.

Of course the increasingly heated rhetoric around the name, and ownership of Alexander and Philip, enveloped ancient history like the ash cloud from Vesuvius smothered Pompeii and Herculaneum. By the mid-1990s, “middle ground” wasn’t allowed. If one expressed any doubt about the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians, that was heard as, “You’re siding with the Skopjans!” This dispute was still going strong to the point there were riots and protests at the Balkan Studies’ 7th International Symposium on Ancient Macedon in Thessaloniki on October 16, 2002. These protests erupted over the presence of Kate Mortensen, Ernst Badian, and Daniel Ogden, albeit the protests involved different objections for each scholar. Badian, along with Peter Green and Gene Borza (not present), had long been in the crosshairs of the vehement “Macedonia was Greek!” crowd. But poor Kate got targeted because of her paper, “Homosexuality at the Macedonian Court,” and Daniel had the temerity to present about witchcraft at Philip’s court (UnChristian things!). There were some 40 police called in to protect the presenters. You cannot make up this shit.

Btw, by no means were all Greeks, especially not all Greek scholars, hostile to the (largely Anglophone) Macedoniasts who questioned the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians. Olga Palagia and Gene Borza remained friends and even wrote articles together, but Olga was retired and had a certain freedom from pressure. Manolis Andronikos and Gene also remained friends until Manolis’s death in 1992. But there was an Official Party Line that had to be maintained, or risk losing an academic job or other position in the Ministry. This also got tied into the identity of the occupants of Royal Tombs I and II at Vergina. Greece’s official position is that these are Amyntas III and Philip II, respectively. This is far from a settled matter, however, especially outside Greece.

For more detail from somebody right in the middle of especially the early parts of the quarrel over who’s buried in “Philip’s Tomb” and the ethnicity of the Macedonians, check out Peter Green’s chapter 10, “The Macedonian Connection,” in Classical Bearings.

To return to the question about how it’s affected historiography, other than resulting in hostility towards non-compliant ancient historians (having their work essentially banned in Greece) and the occasional riot at an academic conference (!!), it also resulted in the production of TWO quasi-competing “Companions” to ancient Macedonia at the end of the first decade of the 2000s.

The original proposal (A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, Roisman and Worthington, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) had meant to include a number of high-profile scholars of both Greek and non-Greek background. But one of those was Loring Danforth (The Macedonian Conflict). When it came out that he was writing the chapter on modern Macedonia, the Greek contributors revolted en masse. (Some were genuinely furious, others had to, to keep their jobs.) Another Companion was put together with Robin Lane Fox at the editorial helm (Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon, Brill, 2011), and the Greeks (and a few others) jumped ship. That was a nice break for some younger Macedonian scholars, incidentally, who were then tapped to write chapters for the Roisman/Worthington volume—and very good chapters, I might add. But the end result is one heavily archaeological Companion (Lane Fox) and one heavily historical one (Roisman/Worthington), and which still has Danforth.

Between the arguments of the 1990s and now, however, one important shift has occurred: enough epigraphical data has emerged, and not just later [Hellenistic], to argue the ancient Macedonians did speak a form of Doric Greek. Many/most of us are now a lot more comfortable agreeing that the ancient Macedonians can be called “Greek” without feeling as if we’re selling our academic souls--even if we may still argue that’s not Philip in Royal Tomb II...an identification that some of the younger Greeks also aren’t sold on. And Philip in Tomb II was never the highly charged political issue that the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians was. It just got tied up in it for coming up around the same time. One Greek friend put it succinctly (paraphrased), “It felt like the non-Greeks, especially the Americans and Aussies, were trying to take away Philip and Alexander from us. Tomb II wasn’t Philip, and the Macedonians weren’t even Greeks.”

That may be a bit hyperbolic, but feelings don’t necessarily respond to logic, and Greece would like to have their bona fides.

So, a chunk of the tension from the 1990s has subsided. The Greekness of the ancient Macedonians is largely a non-topic in Macedonian studies today. We’re more interested in new and exciting things like revelations from recent archaeology regarding the sophistication of the Macedonian kingdom well back into the Archaic Age, the real impact of Persia and how early, and what exactly was going on up there before (and after) the Greco-Persian Wars. Or at least, those are certainly my burning questions about the Argead Kingdom up to Philip and Alexander.

[redrcs]

Zübeyde Hanim

Retrospective, Turkey 2010, The Bosphorus

[arcticwolfpatrol]

Mustafa

January 20, 2057

  Today has been a whirlwind of experience and I have decided I need a few moments to myself on this historic day. My name is Mustafa Benjamin Maharib and my story begins 40 years ago on a cold January day. 

  My father, Harun, was a 25 year old PhD student from Yemen who was returning to NYU from his winter holidays. Unbeknownst to him, an overnight executive order was going to prevent him from entering the airport where hundreds of protesters, journalists and lawyers had descended to his (and many others’) defense. After several hours of patiently waiting, my father and his fellow passengers were told they would be able to enter the country thanks to the work of the lawyers and activists. My father decided he wanted to meet one of these brave lawyers and thank them in person. When he exited the plane, he quickly found the lawyers huddled en masse in a corner typing or writing away. He realized they must be busy and he shouldn’t disturb them when he turned and bumped into one who had been sprinting to bring the others coffee.

  Coffee spilled everywhere, and my father quickly dashed to clean up the displaced mocha lattes. He quickly apologized to the young lawyer who introduced herself as Jennifer, and offered to buy the replacement coffee. While they bought coffee my father learned she was also attending NYU for her law degree and was only an unpaid intern that was here because the cause motivated her to help anyway she could. She and my father talked for hours that day before he finally summed up the courage to ask her to dinner. Little did he know, that she was my mother.

  My father and mother had been dating only a few months when they found out she was pregnant with me. They immediately told both sides of the family and everyone was ecstatic. My parents quickly got engaged and were married on November 16, 2017 in a small ceremony outside my father’s apartment (I was told it was actually really nice as far as urban Manhattan weddings go). I came into this world on March 5, 2018 weighing an even 8 lbs 8 ounces. My father named me Mustafa after the first leader of Turkey, and my mom coined Benjamin after her father.

  Growing up, I had an amazing childhood filled with love and joy. My parents were very different from each other but were the closest couple I’d ever seen. My father a Yemeni Sunni Muslim and my mother as devout an Irish Catholic as possible, but they were perfect for each other. I always had a love for sports frustrating my academic parents to no end. Basketball was especially fun and came easy to me. My parents came to every game, and I swear they screamed louder than the other parents. I was a born leader on the court quickly earning the nickname of my namesake: Attaturk. I played basketball until the end of high school before accepting an athletic scholarship to Columbia to play point guard for their basketball team. Admittedly, my grades and test scores were not the best out there, but Columbia wanted to revive their athletic programs to be good again and graciously accepted me.

  While at Columbia, I began to study Environmental Law while still juggling basketball. For four years I slugged out both getting my grades and maintaining my starting position on the team. I averaged a double double my senior year, and I began to see pro scouts at our games. When we were eliminated in the Sweet 16 my senior year, I started getting asked by everyone if I was going to go pro. Finally, after much thinking I decided to enter the NBA draft.

  I was drafted 22nd over all in the 2040 NBA draft by the Honolulu Tsunami, and, after saying goodbye to my parents and 3 siblings, moved west to settle into my new life. I played in Honolulu for 5 seasons before being shipped around the league for another 5 years. After a memorable retirement season, I was approached to run for political office. I was living in Seattle and had recently gotten married to my wife Maria and needed a new job. I said I would think about it, but by the end of the night i was running for senate. 

  Thanks to name recognition and likability I emerged as the Democratic senate nominee with no challengers. In November, I swept my opponent by 22 percent scarcely 8  months after retiring from basketball. I packed my expecting wife and all our belongings in our SUV and drove to Washington to be a senator. I had big plans for helping a troubled country, but did not know how far they would go. My wife, a journalist for the ACLU, and I had met while attending a fundraiser in Seattle in 2047 and had been together since. Our daughter Fatima was born February 8, 2051 in Washington D.C. My goals for our country changed after that, and I began to get much more involved in politics. In 2055, I was approached by the DNC about running in 2056 for president. After a lot of thinking and talking to my wife, I accepted the offer and began my campaign.

  When I began my campaign, I was a nobody. 6 years in the Senate and 10 years in the NBA afforded me little name recognition. But I was determined. In 5 months, I had a plurality of the vote and most challengers were still finding a foothold. I emerged as the front-runner for the party and quickly drummed up support from the fallen candidates. I was going to lead a new progressive movement to the White House. The incumbent was terribly unpopular and I quickly won the general election in 40 state landslide.

  So now we come to today. This is the day where I thank every single one of those lawyers, activists, journalists, and students. 40 years ago you gave me life whether you know it or not. My father would often say he can remember the various races, religions, and ethnicities chanting, “No Ban, No Wall”.

So thank you. Without you I would not be here today oh happiest of days.

At the end of the hall, a door opens and a man in Judge’s garb holding a Quran walks into the room and says, “We’re ready for you, Mr. President”.

“We’re ready for you, Mr. President”.

I could get used to that.