Re-establish Byzantium?

[Palaiologos]

And dudes there can be no smoke without a fire. Why isn't anything heard by the genocides conducted by lets say Lithuania, China or whoever.

We mostly hear about the Turks. Greek and Armenian propaganda can't just have invented all these things.
The reason why the Turks are considered barbarians and evil its simply because they DID CONDUCT genocides at an unprecedented rate.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

That's an interesting approach, to excuse the actions of one nation based on those of other nations of the time. Do we not criticise the Christians for failing to adhere to the teachings of their own moral code they professed? If so, why should we play a different rule for the Turks?

Unfortunately for your little theory, the fact remains I didn’t excuse them, I simply pointed out the basic flaw in paiktis’s statement.

And I thought we were dealing with law and punishment- not religiously based moral codes.


By what criteria is he judging the Ottoman Empire?

By modern day standards?

If so, then they were cruel, along with the Italians, English, Dutch, Spanish, French, Iranians, Chinese and so on.

In point of fact, the death penalty was extended as a punishment for more crimes in English law during the Enlightenment and after, especially crimes relating to property.

In Continental Europe, where the law was different, torture was a commonplace method of ‘extracting’ the ‘truth’ in criminal proceedings, and there was no trial by jury in many instances.

So were the Ottomans cruel by the standards of their times?

In the 15th century? No.

The 16th century? No.

And so on.

You’re going to have to be much more specific if you’re going to say why the Ottomans were cruel, and in comparison with whom, and when.

I’m so tired of the sloppy comparisons between supposedly 'civilized' Europeans and ‘cruel’ Asiatics, between the West of the Enlightenment and the backward Orient.

As for paiktis harping on about Christian babies being snatched from their mothers- oh, give me a break.

That might work on some awful tearjerker revisionist history of the Ottoman Empire, produced for a fervently chauvinist Hellene audience, but unless Greek women have unnaturally large wombs, or strangely lengthy pregnancies, an 8 year old does not qualify as a baby!


I notice King Fez of the Hellenes has yet to produce a date for this supposed ‘Greek’ reoccupation of Istanbul.

Well, I can wait.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Eight was the minimum age. You need to forget the propaganda you learned in school. All of us outside Greece who have studied the history of the area disagree with you, regardless of the country we are from. Thus, the problem seems to be you.

The age (which was hard to define accurately at those times) was such so as the child would have shown to be "worth taking" but not so old to actually be able to retain any significant memories of his roots.

I don't see you disagree with me. Anycrean colaborated what I simply point out and you always have the luxury to visit any library of your choice and confirm it yourself.

Forgive me if I don't hold random people on an internet forum to be experts on Ottoman history. However the "paidomazoma" as the snatching of babies was called is widely recognized so I'm mildly surprised by your opposition to it.


If it makes you feel bad, or you think I'm a nationalist in order to avert that feeling, as said, there are always good books to turn to. Please do.

[Palaiologos]

Contantinople was briefly occupied by a greek regiment as part of the allied occupation of the city after WW1.
But a Greek occupation on its own-that never happened.

It was our reward for sending the Greek army to fight off the Bolsheviks in the Crimea.

There was a plan by general Metaxas to storm and occupy Contantinople in retaliation of the reinforcement of the Turkish navy that could threaten our naval dominance of the Aegean. We would then demand that the two newly built Turkish battleships be given to us and then withdraw from the city. unfortunately Venizelos screwd up by threateing turkey with such a move instead of keeping it secret, alerting them. That was in 1914 though. Then WW1 broke out and the English adopted Metaxa's plan in the Gallipolis expedition.

[CharlesBHoff]

Serfs all over Europe have than very hard time of it getting by. They own they little plot of land so they wherenot landless people who should be evit from the land easy without major legal action in the Courts. The land was in pawn for rent paying and taxes and other fees. It the noble lord son was being Knight the serf can be hit with than extras tax to pay for it equall to a month or more of rent. They did backbreaking work on they land and them have to work the noble land with the pay going toward the rent and taxes they owned and fee they have to pay. They came with the land and where bound to the land untril the day they die. They where not slave persay but they where not free either. The Serf under the Ott Empire where more like the yeoman of England free not bound to the land. Most serf would rather be poor but free under the Ott Empire.
In Europe there where noble man of young age with nothing better to do but go round rapeing female serf by threaden to harm they parnet or forceing then off the land.

[Palaiologos]

Sorry paiktis but i have to agree with the others about the paidomazoma. Not only Bulgarian and Serb children were preffered but these children-the future janissaries-were consious of their ethinicity. They are reffered to history books written AT THE time with their ethnicity.
f.e Bulgarian janissary admiral etc.. Something a historian would have had hard time to discover if the kids were taken at infant age.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by paiktis22
I don't see you disagree with me.

I do disagree with you. You say they snatched babies from the mother's breast. I say that isn't the case. I say that the children were AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS OLD! That is not an agreement. That is a disagreement.

And guess what, you will find experts on the Ottoman Empire on anninternet forum, so suck it. I've spent the last two years studying the Ottoman Empire in minutia, because I'm trying to write events for Europea-Universalis II. Since I want it to be accurate, I have to study and research and so on.

I don't have an axe to grind. Neither does molly. You, however, do. You are biased. We are not.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
Sorry paiktis but i have to agree with the others about the paidomazoma. Not only Bulgarian and Serb children were preffered but these children-the future janissaries-were consious of their ethinicity. They are reffered to history books written AT THE time with their ethnicity.
f.e Bulgarian janissary admiral etc.. Something a historian would have had hard time to discover if the kids were taken at infant age.

I think that the paidomazoma happened all over the Christian population territories but I can't say if there was a preferance. It certaintly happened to the Greeks as well at any case. Recollection of their ethnicity maybe was retained I simply state that all attachments to their roots were (or tried to be) eradicated.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I've spent the last two years studying the Ottoman Empire in minutia, because I'm trying to write events for Europea-Universalis II.

I really need to try that game out sometime. Anything that can inspire such pedantic past times has to be good.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


I do disagree with you. You say they snatched babies from the mother's breast. I say that isn't the case. I say that the children were AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS OLD! That is not an agreement. That is a disagreement.

And that has been asnwered.

And guess what, you will find experts on the Ottoman Empire on anninternet forum, so suck it. I've spent the last two years studying the Ottoman Empire in minutia, because I'm trying to write events for Europea-Universalis II. Since I want it to be accurate, I have to study and research and so on.

I don't have an axe to grind. Neither does molly. You, however, do. You are biased. We are not.

Really? Well I suggest your research needs some serious work. Although I repeat that you have no disagreement with me except your opinion of me and supposedly I'm trying to achieve. I do hope you study harder though, or simply re-read what Anycrean has written. Without anti - paiktis bias this time

[Bereta_Eder]

molly bloom, sorry I didn't see your post.

Well you may be tired of the "stereotype" of the civilized West versus the barbaric Orient, but that doesn't make much difference. Your silly revisionist tricks are also of no importance.


Here's but a little expert from one of your compatriotes, Stokes' Europe I bothered to find on the net in an instant of exceptional boredom. It propably won't be reapated very often.


Ottoman forces would raid Christian villages, and kidnap boys, who were then brought to Constantinople as slave-soldiers, and forcibly converted to Islam. They were banned from intimate relations with women, except when they attacked an enemy town or village, at which point they could pillage and rape for three days.
This continued until 1700, after which membership became hereditary, and finally ended with the abolition of the Janissaries, after a rebellion.

Other Christian children were kidnapped into slavery as palace officials, eunuchs and concubines. It is practices like these that have left dark memories in Balkan peoples and Armenians about the long years of Muslim rule.

Not only was Christian liberty under the Khilafah limited, Christian dignity was also frequently disregarded. Until the time of the Great War and their ethnic cleansing in 1915, Armenian Christians dressed their young girls as boys to prevent their rape or kidnap (or both) by Ottoman Muslims. In fact, any child was in danger of being kidnapped. A typical example of Ottoman Muslim contempt for Christians is supplied by a consideration of the burial-permit issued by a qadi (Muslim official) in 1855 for a deceased Christian: 'We certify to the priest of the church of Mary, that the impure, putrefied, stinking carcass of Saideh, damned this day, may be concealed underground.' [11] Undoubtedly, Muslims would regard such sentiments made in regard to a Muslim corpse to be bigoted and insensitive; they should not be surprised that Christians would react similarly, and find it difficult to credit that the Khilafah was indeed a Utopian regime.




That is just to prove the obvious, the constant insane anguish under which Christian mothers were living under and their attemps to save their sons.
Please ignore all other as this is not meant to incite old flames or anything, it's ridiculous.


There are other recounts of many other tricks Christian mothers did to hide and protect their children from being abducted by the Ottomans like the building of intricate roads connected underground to the their houses, it's really breathtaking what mothers thought of to save their kids, maybe the most powerful feeling of all, but maybe later.


And keep reading Che

[The Vagabond]

Russia came close to liberating Constatinople in the 1870s. But the Brits threatened with war and the offensive had to be halted.

[Bereta_Eder]

I know. Although your contribution to Navarino was certaintly very important

And since I see Sava's online, he'd be pleased to know that the first significant revolt which was promptly followed by the Greeks was done by the Serbs. I guess they had some objections about the "utopian ottoman empire" thingy too. Well I can't say I blame them

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by Elok


Seriously though, suggesting that ideological flaws are the chief cause of all human misery is at least as naive as anything spewed out by the far right. The Turks might have been a wonderful example of light and unity in Ottoman times, but a few centuries earlier they were a bunch of nomadic Scythian barbarians distinct from the distantly related mongols only by their lack of team spirit and even lower standards of cleanliness. And the Muslim Caliphate that gave us algebra and lateen sails eventually degenerated into the whackos who bombed the WTC. And Mother Teresa's church is descended from the "pornocracy" of the late first milennium. Evidence dictates, to my eyes at least, that it's the individual participants of any given society that affects its nature, and the high-minded words they babble don't matter half as much as the extent and fashion by which they follow them.

Elok, please forgive me if I failed to catch the sarcasm in this quote if that's what you intended (if so, ignore this)

A few centuries earlier than the Ottomans, Turks had another Empire, called the Seljuks, which was able to scale down the Byzantians and could only be pushed back by the fervor of the combined forces of European Christianity, aka Crusades (...what was it? Lack of team spirit? Team spirit was the essence of nomadic Turkish tribes, man Just check out the history of Central Asian Turkish Empires).

As for lower standards of cleanliness, you certainly can't be meaning Europe was the place for cleanliness, can you? Taking a bath was almost declared a sin (we are talking about the times before Ottomans), and even the nobility took pride in NOT taking a bath (we are talking about during the Ottoman times), since after all they never got dirty as royal people are supposed not to

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Ancyrean,
at last someone recognized the brutal beyond belief Ottoman practice of snatching the babies from their mothers at regular intervals and encompassing a vast population of Christians.

I never said the Ottomans did it to "terrorize", they did it to bolster their units but the result was terror of the worst short.

However I see you fail to condemn it meaning that as it was not affecting the Ottomans themselves, it was alright.

I see a similar attitude concerning the denial of the Armenian genocide.

You know that the carricature that molly bloom in his frustration tried to pin me with is laughable, however I do find it disturbing this relunctance to facing up to old deeds. Some of them no so old at all.

I can't see how we are going to live peacefully if we simply choose to disregard the attrocities between eachother. Facing up to them, admitting them, admitting how outrageous they were (and some are still) I think is the only way forward.

That holds for the Armenian case as well not just the Greek one. Nevertheless, happy to see you collaborate what I said and it was not meant as an "attack" but more as a defence of the truth, which is after all what will set us both free

Well, we are not discussing here if the idea of taking a kid from his family is an adorable act. We are discussing whether this act stands as a primary proof that the Ottomans were crueler compared to their contemporaries, if this act alone (as you mentioned none else) would make us to classify the Ottomans as 'savage and barbaric' compared to others of the time.

You miss the point totally. It is fundamentally wrong to try to label people or events of history out of their context. Make comparisons with contemporaries and then your labels have a meaning. That's what in a nutshell we are trying to say. That's why any approach of "Turks snatched babies from mothers! People built roads in the mountains to escape this! This is such a horrible act to endure! So admit that the Turks are the top barbarians of all time!" is not an arguement at all, both in substance and in letter.

I more have the impression that you might be defending your points from conviction standing on years of exposure to folk tales (babies snatched -paidomazoma-, Janissaries were rapists and wanton killers, Christians lived a life of "daily horror" etc)

As for admitting each other's atrocities, you probably would agree with me that nobody has a monopoly on pain and suffering. Armenians died in the hundreds of thousands but they do not admit they killed as much Turks on their quest to create a country for themselves. They choose to make sense of their suffering by putting it in a context of a grand conspiracy to kill them off. My grandfather is from the city of Van. You really wouldnt want to know the collective memory of those years about Armenians there. Why would we admit we are as evil as Nazis, when the other guys don't even bother to admit they killed a single Turk (figuratively) back then.

What about the exploits of the Greek army in "Asia Minor"? Do you think they just threw around flowers as they conquered territory? I was in Greece for three years but I never heard anybody talk about it. It was an army of saints. Come on...

I usually wouldnt prefer to come this close to rubbing sensitivities. I have many Greek friends, and I have the good fortune to have talked about these things with them with no ill will. Instead, what I'm saying is, we should stop trying to mortgage our future peace on the forceful acceptance of our version of history by the other. Nobody, including you, will pay for peace in such a currency. Please think about this (I mean not only you, of course, I mean people who might be thinking along similar lines with you) next time a rush of indignation against any country in the Balkans comes over.

Peace