ABSTRACT
The Conclusion recapitulates the main findings of the book and assesses in brief the impact of Greek and Turkish nationalism on the lives of the Greek Orthodox minority of Istanbul. Emphasis is placed on the responsibility of the Greek nationalist elite with regards to the stigmatization of the Constantinopolitan Greeks as traitors and disloyal Ottoman subjects, and, later on, Turkish citizens. The main argument is that 1923 constituted for the Constantinopolitan Greeks the end of an incomplete national integration process into the Greek nation. Since unifying with Greece could not be achieved anymore, the only defensive option left to the minority in order to survive in an environment of suspicion and exclusion became the de-nationalization and re-ethnicization of their collective identity as a group, a sort of reverse transition from Greek to Rum. Back-pedaling to the more familiar pre-1918 habitus became a shelter which provided invisibility, security, safety and tolerance under terms in the public sphere and visibility and relative autonomy in private and communal life.
