| QUOTE ("Summary of Culture of Pontos") |
http://www.omerasan.com/eng/summary.html The first serious attempt to document information about the OF language has been carried out by Omer Asan in this volume. [Not the Turkish universities bastions of Kemalism, the ideology of brotherly love.] This is the first study about the Pontos culture published in Turkey. Through the publication of this book, the Pontos people, who have apparently undergone a natural process of cultural assimilation, are in a better position to review their current situation in relation to their historical roots. [Wow, 80 plus years of Kemalist progress in social research coming to a sad end.] |
| QUOTE ("Preface By Peter Mackridge") |
http://www.omerasan.com/eng/preface.html Christian Pontic has been more exhaustively studied than any other dialect of modern Greek. By contrast, no one had workd on Muslim Pontic for more than a hundred years until I carried out some linguistic fieldwork in the Of dictrict in the 1980s. I was greatly struck by the ancient and medieval features of the Of sub-dialect, such as the use of the ancient negative particle ou where the other Pontians use ki and the other Greeks use kai. Ömer Asan's book is the first study of the history, culture and language of the Pontus to have appeared in Turkey. It is also the first book ever published to contain a survey of the vocabulary and grammar of the Pontic Greek sub-dialect of Of. I was both delighted and astounded when I learned that Asan was about to publish the original version of his book in Turkey. In a country that, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, officially prides itself on its ethnic homogeneity, for anyone to publish a study of the history, culture and language of a linguistic minority there seemed daring, to say the least; it also seemed extraordinary that a Turk should be interested in investigating the non-Turkish aspects of his local culture. Asan has thrown himself with great passion into the study of the history, culture and language of his village and its surrounding region. I have learned a great deal from his book, not only about the folklore and customs of his village, but about its language, and it has been fascinating to compare the vocabulary and grammar of Çoruh, as he records them, with the linguistic material that I and others have collected from other villages in the Of district and from other parts of Pontus both before and after 1922. The variety in vocabulary and grammar between one village and another just a few miles away is extraordinary, and we would ideally like to have such a study of every Greek-speaking village in Pontus. |
| QUOTE ("Omer Osan") |
http://www.omerasan.com/eng/trabzonGreek.html On 13 November 1925 the headline “Education Committees in Maçka” appeared on the first page of the Trabzon newspaper Yeniyol [Tarakçıoğlu, p. 82]. This referred to a visit to Maçka by the Information Committees of the Türk Ocağı and the Muallimler Birliği (Teachers Association). One section of the delegation addressed a gathering in Cevizlik, while another section addressed meetings in the Maçka villages of Ispela, Meksila, Hortokop and Kizera, where they also addressed the people. These public addresses by the Türk Ocağı and the Muallimler Birliği referredto the following points: 1) The views of the government on civilisation, 2) Malicious propaganda against the Turks in Europe and America, 3) The wearing of the hat was not contrary to religious principles, 4) Islam is the most modern of the religions. ... In the Republican period, the most important role in teaching literacy was played by the Halkevi (People’s Institutes) and Halkodası (Culture Centres). When the Democrat Party closed these centres down in 1950, there were 477 halkevi and 4,332 halkodası operating in 63 provinces, with libraries in 330 of the halkevi. At the present day, inhabitants of Of-Erenköy of 60 or over first learned to read the new alphabet from books such as Karacaoğlan, Köroğlu, Emrah and Kerem and Aslı and various other books published by the MEB (Ministry of Education) they found in the local Halkodası library. After the closure of the Halkodası in 1950, the same books were burned and destroyed by these same villagers in accordance with a political decision. In the past, similar motives had led to the destruction of the Greek books in the archives of the Sumela Monastery, while, in the years following the proclamation of the Republic, Arabic and Persian books were destroyed as reactionary elements. Thus, written culture would seem to have been regarded by the local population as the price to be paid by the people for every change in administration, and a heavy burden that was the first to be thrown off. ... Of and Rize were the first communities to pro-*test*-('") against the Şapka Devrimi (Headgear Reform), which was generally regarded as a symbol of Republican modernisation. Immediately after the passing of the Headgear Law on 25 November 1925 a rebellion broke out in Rize that had to be suppressed by the military. After a trial lasting three days, the Istiklal Mahkemesi (Independence Tribunal) set up on 11 December condemned 8 of the accused to death, 14 to fifteen years imprisonment, 22 to ten years and 19 to five years. The executions were immediately carried out in front of the Dalyan Mosque. The eight people sentenced to death were the following: the Ulucami imam Hafız Şaban Hoca, the Mahalle Muhtarı (village elder) Sergeant Tarakçıoğlu Yakup, the İslâhiye imam Hacı Hasan Efendi, the municipal watchman Kadir Agha, Muhammed Peçelioğlu, Hafız Mahmut Kamburoğlu and the nakshi seyh Numan Sabit Tarakçioglu Efendi [Rize Tarihi, p. 211). ... In the 1950s, there was not a single politician in Turkey who would admit the reality of the[ir] mother tongue. ... Of the various Greek dialects in existence at the present day, Trabzon Greek, the language closest to ancient Greek and which, according to some, still retains some vestiges of the language of Homer, has been sacrificed to religious, national and political intrigue and impotence. Although there is no prohibition of any kind in place, Trabzon Greek, labelled by religious bigots as a “giaour” language, by nationalists as an “enemy” language and by bureaucrats and politicians as a “separatist” language, has the misfortune of being listed at the head of merely local, not national, languages. “Although a small number of elderly people can be found in the districts of Of, Sürmene and Maçka as well as in the Tonya bucak of Vakf›kebir who speak a language resembling modern Greek, the younger generation de-*test*-('") the idea of speaking this language.” No need, however, is felt in the book to explain why it is that the younger generation “de-*test*-('")” a language resembling modern Greek in this way. ... That Trabzon Greek, which has long been a member of the group of disappearing languages, should have become the victim of a veritable phobia at the present day is due to a campaign of disinformation. For example, in an article written by two teachers of theology and published by an official state university we find the following: “While, in the 90s, there were fewer than ten Christians in Trabzon , in the year 2000, ten thousand are said to have received a Christian education. The fact that this activity is being carried on in close association with Pontic national identity shows that our fears are fully justified” [Arslantürk, Usta]. This totally unscientific work of so-called research on the subject of Pontic culture entitled Doğu Karadeniz’de Kültürel Kimlik (Cultural Identity in the Eastern Black Sea Region),completed in 2002, was published in a book full of nationalistic, racist and separatist theories. The outlook behind the foreword, written as a guide to the researchers by Mustafa Erkal, the director of research [Head of the Istanbul University Faculty of Economics Department of Sociology and Head of the Association of Intellectuals] is apparent right from the beginning in the manner in which he indulges in so-called “scientific” assertions that the teachers are using language as a means of creating ethnic fragmentation (whatever that may mean) and separatism in the Eastern Black Sea region as well as in Turkey as a whole.[p. VI]. The aim is to teach the pupils an artificial language and to create an identity compatible with it, while at the same time perverting their identity by means of a process of Hellenisation, by distorting some of the local traditions and by forming a link to Pontic culture.” [p. 10]. This so-called field research on the language of the “learners” comes to the conclusion that “communication with the inhabitants of villages such as Çaykara and the country town of ‹skenderli in the Trabzon district of Tonya, who speak a dialect known as local Greek (Rumca) is very difficult and restricted These dialects are not known to have any written source.” [p.69]. In fact, the conclusions reached by researchers quite ignorant of Trabzon Greek as regards the communication, identity and culture created by the language is worthy of being the subject of a quite separate study. Unfortunately, in Turkey, all local languages apart from Turkish are regarded as a threat. It is perhaps true that English and French, with their expansionist-interventionist discourse, may form such a threat, but local languages can scarcely be regarded as dangers to be included in “national defence strategies”. For example, Trabzon Greek, which forms the subject of this study, has never caused the sligh-*test*-('") harm to Muslim identity throughout the whole period of its existence. On the contrary, its speakers have employed it as missionaries for Islam. Right up to the present day, the same language has never at any time formed an obstacle to an official national identity, and examples prove that the fears that Trabzon Greek could possibly pose a political threat at any time in the future are utterly groundless. The only factor that can convert a language into a political problem is the desire for national, historical and geographical independence. But there is no such desire and no need to create it. |
| QUOTE ("Peter Mackridge") |
http://www.omerasan.com/eng/peter.html ... Recent developments Trouble began for Ömer about six weeks ago, when his name was mentioned during a programme broadcast live on Saturday nights on Turkey's ATV channel, hosted by Hulki Cevizoglu. This channel has close links with the nationalist MHP Party. On this programme Zekeriya Beyaz, a professor of theology at Istanbul University, referred to Ömer's book and accused him of being a traitor. Beyaz claimed that Ömer Asan was a friend of Greece and was associating with Pontic Greeks who wanted the derelict Byzantine monastery of Panagia Soumela, near Trabzon, to be restored to Orthodox Christians. On the same programme, on 5 January 2002, Ömer's name was mentioned again, and he tried without success to contact the presenter so that he could respond to the charges against him. On 12 January Professor Beyaz appeared once again on the programme, accusing Ömer of working not only for the Greeks but also for the Kurdish PKK party, which is banned in Turkey. He also falsely accused Ömer of claiming in his book that there are Orthodox Christians living in Pontus. This time Ömer was allowed to defend himself by telephone. On 19 January Ömer appeared in person on Cevizoglu's programme for a discussion with the presenter and three other people, including the Member of Parliament for Ordu, Cemal Enginyurt, who is a member of MHP. During the course of the programme similar accusations were made against Ömer, while Enginyurt made the absurd claim that Ömer's book had been written by Greeks and simply published in Ömer's name. Ömer was asked why he had spent a few months in Greece, and he replied that he had gone to improve his Greek. The presenter, Hulki Cevizoglu, quoted out of context from the preface to Ömer's book by the Greek historian Professor Neoklis Sarris (who was born and bred in Istanbul), in which there is a reference to the landing by Kemal Ataturk at Samsun in Pontus in May 1919 - an event that is taken by Turkish historian Dogan Avcioglu (Milli Kurtulus Tarihi [History of the War of Liberation], 1974) to mark the beginning of the nationalist struggle that led to the founding of the modern Turkish state. Cevizoglu accused Ömer of allowing Sarris to insult the memory of Ataturk. The other three participants in the discussion expressed their agreement with the accusations, and Ömer eventually walked out of the studio. |