Karamanlides
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Post from ioannis to 07.06.2010 16:06:26
@ Rum, well my claim of the blondness of the first Greeks sits on the Homeric lyrics that present the Doreans and in particular Achilles and other leadership of the Trojan expedition as blond. That could imply that the proto-Greeks that came in the region of Greece may have been blond, and the leaders of them, since they were married only royals did not mixed immediately with the previously Mediterranean inhabitants of Greece.
Other than that,in my opinion the ancient Greeks as we refer them today are the mixture of the proto-Greek tribes with the already Mediterranean (but also with other indoeuropean non-Greek) people, that at the time of the descent were living in Greece. I.e. the Greeks of the classical antiquity are the product of a fermentation process (lasting one or two thousand years, before 800 BC) of many cultural and biological human elements. And the good is that Greeks still have the potential to ferment and produce excellent "spirits".
Post from Rum to 05.06.2010 21:06:54
Ioannis you are wrong: the myth of blond indoeuropean Greeks is a nordist myth of the 19th century. Greeks were not blue eyed blond, they were mostly like what they are today. About ancient greek sources: they all agree that Greeks had the best skin color as the medium between black and white, even in Homer blondness is refered to as the exception worth mentioning... At the rest I agree. I also agree with Danny K., that's the main idea of what happened here in Balkans...
Post from ioannis to 30.05.2010 16:05:55
@ Danny, you mean people from what area? In historical terms, the ancient Greeks were an indoeuropean tribe that came at about 2000-3000 BC at the region of todays Greece, and in a way enslaved and assimilated all previously indigenous people leaving at the time in Greece. Those first Greeks were (by all ancient inscriptions blond).
The indigenous people leaving in Aegean and the rest of Greece, were mostly Mediterranean type.
In the course of 5000 years, the blond strain has significantly reduced, because of the mixture of the people -blond and brown- but also due to the natural selection of the sun. That is the susceptibility of lighter skin people to melanoma cancers ( I admit that this is an explanation of mine - but I believe does have some scientific truth in it).
Bear in mind that infants are more susceptible than adults, and thus light skin infants would have more chances of getting melanomas than adults and thus not having the chance to pass their light skin and colors to their ancestors, because they were dying before reproduction maturity.
Post from Danny K. to 27.05.2010 17:05:58
I am also curious about the origin of these people. Are they Turks? Armenians? Vlahs? Greeks?
After casually reading materials based on the history of Macedonia, I am coming to the conclusion that "Greek" and "Bulgarian" (and maybe even "Serbian" and "Macedonian") were national and/or religious terms as opposed to referring to a single homogeneous people (i.e. they were not ethnic descriptions). It would be interesting to know what tribes were there as the people from that area look different from the people in the south of Greece.
Post from ioannis to 16.04.2010 22:04:43
Throughout the history of Ottoman empire there are examples of Greek, Bulgarians, Albanians, Bosnians, Armenians that were converted to Islam, either because the Ottoman state were forcing them (by sword or intimidation), or by offering carrots, i.e. offering them careers in the Ottoman administration or army (or exception from taxes) and therefore wealth, power and a better life. At that time, being Muslim was the credential of loyalty to the Ottoman state.
After the national awakening of the Balkan people, the credentials of being loyal to the new Turkish state were those of being Turkish (or pretend to be Turkish, or become Turkish).
Therefore, many people of Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian, Assyrian, Georgian or Armenian descend that they did not consider the preservation of their cultural identity as a higher priority than the preservation of their current status of life, their wealth and be put into a deadly process of relocation with an uncertain future, they decided to pretend to be Turkish, or Muslims or both. After all in the old Ottoman empire situations like those were not permanent and after a while life was returning to normality. Alas, they were wrong...
I can give many examples of famous Greeks that converted into Islam in the Ottoman times. I cannot see any reason why the same shouldn\'t happen in the times of the rise of the new Turkish state, but this time converted into “Turkish”.
Post from Rum to 14.04.2010 13:04:51
Yes ioannis you are right, there is a possibility that some Karamanlides were influenced by neoturkish propaganda, and I am aware of all those you write and Papa-Efthim and also the Ergenegon connection with his granddaughter...
I just think it was too little time to change identities from the Neoturkish revolution in Thessaloniki since they departed from Turkey. That's a possibility and to be honest it was the first time I heard that a Karamanli had believed he was turkish... That's why I was so interested...
Post from ioannis to 13.04.2010 21:04:52
\"... Karamanlides were exchanged in 1923 before Atatourk\'s propaganda prevailed in Turkey...\",
Now that is a funny thing to say. The movement of new Turks had started long beffore 1923. And the attempts to \"coerce\" the Greek orthodox of Anatolia into the Turkish consience goes back in the Ottoman times...
The Karamanlides were eventually expelled from Turkey because they were resistand to the panturkism propaganda (they didn\'t buy it), and because they were considered untrustworthy by the Turkish state.
In the attempts of the Ataturk to affiliate the Karamanlides was the creation of the Turkish Patriarchate(not the Ecumenical Greek Orthodox patriarchate). They made a fonny Turkish patriarchate, they instaled a dummy person as the head of it, and allas, the grand daughter of that person (A patriarchate with a daughter and grand daughter!!!) today was charged with alegations of being the head of the Ergenecon organisation.
http://www.atour.com/~aahgn/news/20040123b.html
It is true, this is not so simple.
Post from Rum to 19.03.2010 08:03:33
eastara I don't think this is so simple... Karamanlides were exchanged in 1923 before Atatourk's propaganda prevailed in Turkey... and most of them (in fact all of them as far as I know) feel Greeks no matter their turkish language. So, if there is even one family that believes that they are Turks it is very interesting for me.
I think that it has to do with the Ottoman consiousness, i.e. perhaps some Karamanlides would like to feel they are Turks meaning the rulers of the Ottoman Empire just with different religion. But anyway it is an interesting issue since there are some theories that they are turkomans, but I think this is not a strong case...
Post from eastara to 19.03.2010 02:03:10
No wonder, the same story as the Gagauz.
Last century they used to identify as Bulgarians or Greeks, depending which Orthodox church they belonged to.
Nowadays after Turkey spends lots of money on pan-turkic propagana among these people they "rediscover" their Turkic origin. Belonging to Great Turkey seems more glorifying to them.
Post from Rum to 17.03.2010 21:03:25
Dear Karamanlidou,
I am very interested in your story since it is the first time I hear that a Karamanlis had a turkish national consiousness. Ottoman consiousness was common, and many felt Ottomans muslim or christians, but it is the first time I hear of turkish consiousness. Could you give me more information about that? I am really interested...
Post from ioannis to 17.03.2010 18:03:29
Well, you are a proof that the Ataturks propaganda towards Turkish speaking christians had some effect...
Read the historical events conserning the attempts first of the Ottoman empire, and then the Kemalist movement to "persuade" christian Turkish speaking people that they were Turkish in origin. It is unfortunate that the majority of people don't know the sinister details.
It even has worked on people that spoke pontic Greek and they were muslims, wouldn't it work to people that were speaking Turkish and they weren't muslim?
Having said that, doesn't mean that some families in Karaman may have been of Turkish origin and converted to Christianity or the other way round, but the majority of the Turkish speaking Christians in Karaman had greek consience.
Post from Karamanlidou to 06.03.2010 12:03:50
Hello,
my grand grand parents are also Karamanlides, sent away to greece.
I have to tell a diffrent story than the people befor. My famaly was swearing for the theory that they where origin turks, Christianiced because they came long befor the ottoman, seldchukian turks came. The took the religion of the people living there..and the letters.
This is what my family still is believing. They are proud ortodox people living in greece but feeling turkish.
Post from Rum to 25.01.2010 16:01:14
Let me say what Karamanlides are because I read a lot of crazy staff about Karamanlides on the internet and since my grandmother was a turkish speaking Karamanlu (the turkish name for the greekified Karamanlides): this is not an umbrella term, they were the Rum Orthodox people from a certain district of Asia Minor around... Karaman (that's why they were called Karamanlides). Karaman is a city near Konya and Cappadokia and it used to be a big centre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaman. It was captured by the Turks since the 12th century and in Konya the Sultanate of Rûm(!) was established long before the Ottoman Empire (where Mevlana Rumi lived). The fact that it was captured long before the Ottoman Empire and the introduction of the milliet system had as a result that many Romans (i.e. Byzantines) that lived there before and were Orthodox (i.e. Rum Orthodox as called afterwards after the Rum Orthodox milliet as all the Orthodox Christians) to adopt the turkish language, BUT not all of them, there were still Greek speaking villages but as a minority.
The surprising thing is that although they adopted the turkish languge, they kept using the GREEK ALPHABET and not the Arabic one (at that time turkish was written with the arabic alphabet) to write turkish, and more important the kept their religion and customs, thus another view about the origin of their name (apart from the city) was that the Turks called them Karaman (Kara in turkish means black and man something like sould or heart) because they thought that they were too stubborn that they did not get islamized, i.e. turkified.
Well, modern scholars knowing that the ethnogenesis in the Balkans and Asia Minor took place after the religion and the milliet thought that since Karamanlides were speaking turkish they should be of turkish origin Christians and they started proposing several hypothesis, i.e. that they were not Byzantines etc.
In my opinion, these hypothesis are a little bit crazy: it is much more logical that they just adopted the turkish language (since most Rum Orthodox were bilingual in any case) and thus kept Greek alphabet and the Orthodox religion that to believe that they were muslim Turks that became Christians and (most crazy) decided to use the Greek alphabet to write their language! This is crazy especially if you think that they lived in Konya were they could became dervish, or Alevi, Mevlevi etc. religion in some between Orthodoxy and Suni Islamism, instead of becoming Orthodox.
So it's also for sure (at least for me that know all this from the "inside") that Karamanlides are just turkish speaking Romans population of the same genetic stock with the rest Rum Orthodox people of Asia Minor.
Remember that in Cappadokia (which is even more to the East than Konya and Karaman) was the centre of Orthodox theology even from 4th century, and also that the previous Prime Minister of Greece name was Karamanli. Did you see any Turkish characteristics at him? I don't see any at myself...
Unfortunately this grandmother of mine was my father's mother so I won't be able to check this further by a mtDNA test... but it is common sense and moreover history told from "father to son".
Btw, I am not a racist and I would have no problem to have some turkish "blood" in my veins. For me it all has to do with culture and culturally Karamanlides were more Rum Orthodox than most...
Post from Anton to 06.01.2010 02:01:05
>>Karamanlides is the umbrella term for the people that left Anatolia in 1923 in the big turkish greek trade to live in Greece.
Very curious about this ethnic group??
Karamanlides is an umbrella term for Turkish speaking Christian Greeks from inner Anatolia. They are not the same as the Greek speakers from the west coast of Asia minor and the Pontus. They all came over in 1923. Greeks from Istanbul came over in the 1960s.
Post from eastara to 03.01.2010 12:01:35
Unfortunately all Greek DNA testing goes into a common pool, while the Anatolian and Islanders shoulds be put seperately. They have very different origin than Continental Greeks.
Recently they had a study testing people from Greek Macedonia, not paying attention most Greek people there were Anatolian refugees, who took the homes of the displaced Bulgarians, Macedonians and Turks. Western geneticists should pay more atatention to recent people movements on the Balkans.
Post from iGENEA to 23.12.2009 13:12:33
Dear fetacheese,
unfortunatly we have no special data for this ethnic group.
Roman C. Scholz
iGENEA
info@igenea.com
www.igenea.com
Post from fetacheese to 22.12.2009 23:12:54
any research results of this ethnic group??
Karamanlides is the umbrella term for the people that left Anatolia in 1923 in the big turkish greek trade to live in Greece.
Very curious about this ethnic group??