by halil » Fri Sep 11, 2009 9:24 pm
WOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW
What do u say about this article by Alkan CAGLAR
Are Turkish Cypriots the lost sons of Venice?
The question is not meant to be provocative; rather it is simply an invitation for debate following what appears to be a general denouement of this very matter. While some circles of Turkish Cypriots have already an accepted this theory, others have resisted with zeal. Admittedly, those affected in this debate are not the entire Turkish Cypriot community by all accounts but rather those originating for generations from such villages as Louroujina, Potamia, Monarga and the Tylliria region.
Traditionally bilingual, these Turkish Cypriots as well as being able to converse fluently in Cypriot Greek (Kypriakos Dialectos or the phonetically correct Gibreiga) frequently had Italian surnames or at least used to. This fascinating group, the descendants of the Linobambaki or Crypto Christians to give it its less derogatory term are clearly the creation (not anomaly) of living on the front line of two great abrahamic religions.
Sadly as a result of the lingering Cyprus question, which has forced minority communities to make choices, whether they want to be ‘Greek or Turkish,’ the former
So who were the Crypto- Christians? According to M de Cesnola who visited the island under Ottoman rule, many Linobambaki were originally Roman Catholics who converted to Islam and not Greek Orthodox as thought. Another Latin Jerome Dandini makes a similar claim after visiting the island on the way to Terra Santa in the 17th century. Are these Roman Catholics telling the truth? Or is there some Catholic bias here? Whatever the case, such news often delights some Turkish Cypriots keen on romanticizing their heritage, particularly a time when Cypriots all look to Europe for their inspiration.
Time and time again, I heard people from Louroujina (Laurentia), Monarga (Monagria), Potamia and even Ayios Sozomenos near the tomb of Queen Catherine Cornaro talk casually about a lost Venetian or Frankish heritage, while attributing everything from their facial features to their business acumen to their ancestors. An idea that emanated from one anonymous Louroujina man who on account of his fair hair and blue eyes claimed to be of Latin decent; He claimed that was about to take the current Italian Republic to court for abandoning him in the 16th century. I think he was pulling my leg!
Perhaps this is wishful thinking by a group of vainglorious Cypriots trying to resurrect a false past or perhaps is there some truth in this?
According to oral history passed down for generations, the name Louroujina, Louroudjina or the Turkish spelling ‘Luricina’ (today known as Akincilar) was named after an Italian maiden called Lorenza or Laurentia who fell over and died on its very spot. Laurentia supported a mostly Latin populace before the Ottoman conquest with numerous estates belonging to Italian and French families. Were these estate holders murdered after the 1572 Ottoman conquest or did they convert to Islam to save their lives?
In our secular world, we would argue that they proselytised to Islam, but perhaps religion was so important to them that facing the sword as Brigadino himself did was natural. If we accept this argument, one is still compelled to ask, if Louroujina became Muslim after 1572, then how comes the inhabitant spoke Greek for so long?
For those who believe Louroujina is insignificant in the Turkish Cypriot community, they would be surprised to learn that Louroujina was one of the largest and most important Turkish Cypriot villages of the island with over one thousand five hundred souls during the time of the 1960 population census. Nestled beside a hill, the village with its yellow stone houses amid empty plots of land with farm equipment and rusty steel windmill looks like any average Cypriot village that has suffered from the war, but many of the most influential and most successful Turkish Cypriots come from there. There are over 7,000 Louroujina folk among the British diaspora alone.
But Louroujina’s history is an unusual one, where religious rivalry resulted in the beheading of the local priest by the imam followed by mass conversion of an entire populace within a few generations to Dar al-Islam. Another Louroujina resident Ali, who speaks excellent Cypriot Greek, informed me that his grand parents spoke Greek to him, his parents were bilingual. Turkish he claims was taught in the 1940s when teachers were shipped from Turkey to serve in the village.
However, Cyprus is a complicated place, knowledge of the Cypriot Greek vernacular does not necessary mean they were originally Greek Orthodox Christians. Latin and Maronite Catholics long spoke Greek in the Near East, even before the Ottomans arrived. Even in neighbouring Lebanon, Greek was the liturgical language of the Maronite Church. In multi-cultural Cyprus, where nothing is as it seems, there is often a paradigm way of thinking, where if one speaks Greek then that means they are Greek. If they were Greek Orthodox previously, then why were the neighbouring villages of Athienou, Pyroi and Lymbia not also converted to Islam? Could it be it was because Louroujina was Catholic?
Furthermore as I mentioned above Cypriot Greek much like the Cypriot Turkish dialect has borrowed many loan words from Italian, enough to perplex an Athenian or Istanbulite. Although there seems to be some ignorance of this, as people would only rightfully recognise that the words are Italian if they knew Italian. Terms like “Fundana” come from the Italian Fontana (Fountain), while “Borta” stems from Porta (Door) and “Estrada” whose roots derive from the Italian word for Street – Strada. Even in the 1518, there seemed to be bilingualism on the island, silk merchant Jacques Le Saige who visited Cyprus noted that even in church at one end the pilgrims chanted in Latin but in the middle they chanted the choir in Greek.
Nineteenth century British visitor to Cyprus RLN Michel who wrote “The Muslim-Christian Sect in Cyprus” in 1908 reported that while most Catholics were “wiped out, small remnants of the community adopted Islam, faced slavery or death.” Citing the village of Monarga as Linobambaki, he estimated that rather than face death, “relatively larger numbers avoided persecution by the adoption of Islam.”
But not everybody is enthusiastic about the theory, one elderly gentleman called Yusuf who once worked in the British Civil service and who spoke impeccable English did not seem too hot on the idea of the phenomena of Crypto-Christians. In fact when I took out a paper on Louroujina, where he was from, after having perused its content, said “Ne mutlu Türküm Diyene” (Fortunate am I to call myself a Turk) the man threw the paper down before looking haughtily into a different direction. I had clearly offended him.
Such die-hard attitudes are widespread in Cyprus where Greekicisation and Turkicisation has narrowed the minds of Cypriots leading to selective national history. Rather than accept and embrace our very diverse heritage, we instil a false history, one claiming to be from the most Turkish part of Turkey and the other from fruits of the Ancient Greek loins with no room for anything else. Whatever your ancestry, it is your ancestry, you have no control over it in the same way that one has no control over one’s birth, however what it shows is just how diverse each Cypriot community is. For those still sceptical of this diversity, Cyprus is far too rich and complex to be solely a Greco-Turkish affair, perhaps the answer to my previous question is, we may well be the lost sons or daughters of Venice, but don’t all rush to apply for your Italian passports!
