ABSTRACT
Accounts regarding the political choices of the Ottoman Greeks during the Second Constitutional Period (1908-18) have been heavily marked by the traumatic experience of the First World War, and the Greek-Turkish War of 1919-22 in particular. The prevalent view, put forth by prominent figures of the time like the Young Turk Celal Bayar, has been that the community was divided into two groups, those described as the Yunancılar (‘Greekists’), who advocated the incorporation of the ‘unredeemed’ Greek populations and territories into the Hellenic state, and those referred to as the Bizansçılar (‘Byzantists’), who supported the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, albeit with the explicit purpose of taking over its institutions from inside and transforming it into a Christian Empire.1 Both strategies, it has been argued, were related one way or another to the ‘Great Idea’, the Greek irredentist vision that was already being articulated in the 1840s.2 Ever since its emergence, this distinction has been reproduced in all relevant accounts in Ottoman historiography. It has also been largely reflected in Greek historiography. There, in contrast to what has prevailed in the Ottoman historiography, the involvement of the Ottoman Greeks in the politics of the Committee of Union and Progress (I·ttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti; hereafter CUP) during a turbulent period has been characterized as patriotic activity aimed only at protecting Greek interests. What has escaped both sides’ attention, however, is the fact that a number of Greeks, inspired by Ottoman patriotism and a sincere commitment to the necessity of cooperation with the Turkish-Muslim element in order to protect the integrity of the Empire, identified politically with the CUP in ways that do not fit the categorizations mentioned above.
