The Interviewees
Interview with Michael Cottakis - April 2022
1- You come from the island of Chios which faces the Turkish and suffered heavily from Ottoman atrocities during the Greek War of independence. Do you think the vulnerability, and yet resilience, of this island can apply to some extent to these two port cities?
Chios is an island and different in morphology to cities like Smyrna or Salonica. But in Chios too, history inhabits the present in a variety of ways. There is the distinctive commercial identity, one drawing on an earlier medieval past in which Chios was, perhaps, the original Levantine port. There is the awareness of past grandeur and of a buccaneering maritime tradition. There are the Italianate names of the merchant families who still tend the orange orchards, and the swarthy complexions of the ‘Nenitousi’ – descendants of Barbary pirates who made the village of Nenita their East Aegean redoubt. Chios, like Smyrna and Salonica, has historically been an ‘open society’, one defined by its connections with other places. Open societies are always vulnerable, since they prioritise relations with the outside world over their own security; and because they rely on links with abroad that are fragile and easily destroyed. Wars, nationalism, persecution: these are bad for open societies. On the flipside, such openness imbues places like Chios, Smyrna, and Salonica with much creative and commercial potential. Societies that are syncretic – in other words formed of several cultures – tend to be more dynamic.
2- The dominant population of Salonica were Sephardic Jews who were invited to settle in the port by the Ottoman sultan. Was this Jewish population able to maintain a strict neutrality at the times of the Balkan Wars when the city passed hands to the Greek state, or were ethnic tensions stoked during this period?
The Jews were indeed the dominant population of Salonica, and the incorporation of the city into Greece caused much anxiety. Jews feared what would become of their wealth, their industries and their enterprise. They feared the rotting of those institutions long underpinning their success: the millet system of confessional governance, the multi-lingual chamber of commerce, and the system of hybrid guilds. They feared the rigidity and torpor of the Greek administrative state, and the economic straitjacket it would likely impose. Above all, however, they worried for their safety. The Greek government spoke ominously about Salonica’s eternal ‘Hellenism’, a language of ‘liberation’ and ‘restoration’ asserted with muscular gusto in the centres of Greek power. In the days following the Greek conquest of Salonica, there was a real fear that violence could erupt. Some Jews departed immediately, mostly for Constantinople. They left in trains with great numbers of local Turks, among them Zübeyde Hanım (mother of Kemal Atatürk), adamant as were their Muslim compatriots that they would not become subjects of the Greek king.
Most Jews, however, remained. For all their suspicion of the new regime, Salonica was resolutely their home. Four centuries of continuous residency would not be given up easily. Thus, many Jews sought to adapt. Most learned Greek. Shopkeepers wrote their store signs in European letters. Ladino newspapers published Greek editions. By the 1940s, the Jews that lived on included prominent Greek patriots. The image of Salonican Jews at Auschwitz, queuing up for the gas chambers whilst hoisting a Greek flag made of old camp rags, is seared on the modern Greek consciousness – a symbol of popular resistance. Whatever ills Greek nationalism portended for Salonican Jews, these were largely not borne out by events. It was a more dangerous form of nationalism, the Nazi one, that ultimately put paid to the city’s Jewish heart. But for the events of the 1940s, the Jewish community of Salonica would probably have survived in some form.
3- The Balkan Wars created a patchwork of squabbling states, fresh tensions, and new militarised borders. Did this curtail the trade flows in and out of Salonica, or was the city able to recover commercially when new populations of Greeks from Anatolia replaced the departing Muslim population?
Salonica never recovered the relative trade volumes it enjoyed in the Late Ottoman period. There were attempts by the Greek government to restore the lost Balkan trade through the establishment of a ‘free zone’ in the Salonica port. This provided a ‘tariff free’ régime for merchants from other Balkan states, though it was largely unsuccessful. The truth is that borders matter and their erection rarely benefits commerce. You can compare this to developments in Britain since Brexit. Trade between Britain and the continent has been reduced by some 15% despite a ‘tariff-free’ regime. More important to trade volumes are the so-called ‘non-tariff’ barriers that mushroom together at physical and regulatory borders. These involve legal obstacles to human interactions, such as limits on free movement. The freedom of individuals to interact, when curtailed, can have extremely damaging effects on business. In the case of Salonica, the stymieing of travel among the Balkan peoples – now encamped behind their hard borders – shot the potential of Salonica to act as a regional trading hub.
Wider regional horizons became narrower national ones. Bulgaria looked economically to Sofia, Serbia to Belgrade, and Romania to Bucharest. In Greece, the internal market was dominated by Athens and its own petit Levant – Piraeus. Piraeus was no Salonica in the cosmopolitan sense, but it became, and remains to this day, a leading Mediterranean port – the centre of Greek shipping and gateway to Greece. With the Balkan trade routes obstructed and Piraeus ascendant among Greek ports, Salonica began to diminish in commercial importance. That does not mean the unique commercial instincts of Salonica disappeared, however. Despite its relative fall from grace, the city remains home to more entrepreneurship per capita than anywhere else in Greece. This legacy of the Ottoman past is something Greek and European policy makers should bear in mind when determining regional investment strategies.
4- The Greek invasion of Western Asia Minor led ultimately to the extinguishing of the Greek presence in Smyrna and whole region. Do you think this was a cause of Smyrna / Izmir not being able to capture the trade it enjoyed earlier?
If Salonica was dominated by Sephardi Jews, in Smyrna the Greek element was strongest. The loss of Greek trade devastated Smyrna in several ways. Above all, it suppressed the commodity and shipping trades upon which the city had grown rich, and shriveled the connections with other port cities bejeweling the Levant, in which large Greek diaspora populations resided. The success of Greek commerce was founded on interpersonal, usually familial, networks. These were not replaced in any significant way after 1922, either with the arrival of European Muslims, or with settlers from the Anatolian interior. Without the Greeks, the orbit of Smyrna was infinitely smaller.
A note here must be made about the Levantines of the city. These were fewer in number than the Greeks, though equally influential. The Levantines had a longer history in Smyrna than any other Christian people, with origins in the 17th century trading boom. If the Greeks rode on their networks, the Levantines brought their capital to bear in the economy of Smyrna. The success of the city relied in great part on the fusion of both. With the fall of the Empire, the Levantines shuttered their grand residences in Bournabat and Paradise, heading west in search of newer and safer ‘Levants’ – Paris, London, and New York. Their departure was a blow to Smyrna’s history equal to the loss of the Greeks.
5- In both cities, following their incorporation into their new nation states, there were opposing strands within the business community, with some preferring full integration with the state, and others a free port or looser economic arrangement. Do you think these strands are still pertinent in both cities today?
Yes. You witness this tension during major political developments, with citizens debating the type of future their city should have. History is emboldened in such episodes. Take for instance, the entry of Greece into the EEC in 1981. One can read much debate in local newspapers about how Salonica should look to harness the common market and how, in so doing, it might revitalise its earlier trading routes. But peppered amongst such references are others highlighting how EEC membership should be used to assert Greek dominance over its Balkan neighbours, evoking the Macedonian Struggle and the Balkan Wars. Both views are endogenous to Salonica, though they have crystallised into broadly liberal and conservative political factions. Interestingly, the liberals of Salonica are former refugees. Ironically perhaps, the conservatives tend to descend from those late Ottoman Macedonians who knew the city in its most dynamic phase. It is the refugees, those without deeper ancestral memories of the locale, who feel the strongest affinity with its past. The pattern is repeated in Izmir, many of whose modern inhabitants descend from Cretan Muslims, and who retain an openness redolent of their urban antecedents’. Business elites in both cities tend to be strongly antagonistic towards the capital. Witness the furore over the possibility Athens could pinch the Thessaloniki International Trade Festival in the 1950s, or the militantly secular demonstrations over the years in Izmir.
6- The generation that witnessed the Population Exchange is gone, so do you think that amongst the youth there exists a genuine interest in the language and culture of 'the other'? Do you think this is likely to continue and perhaps new bridges such as direct ferry links could be resumed in the future?
Yes, I witnessed this in the East Aegean where I have spent time, and particularly during a sporting initiative involving Chios and Izmir in which I took part. This involved the completion of an historic football match – the first of its kind between Greek and Turkish football teams, organised at the behest of Venizelos and Atatürk as part of the rapprochement of the late 1920s. The match, between Lailapas FC of Chios and Karşıyaka SK of Izmir, had been started in November 1930, but called off after three minutes thanks to a thunderstorm. In May 2014, when I was in Chios during my gap year, I brokered an agreement between the modern clubs, to play the remaining 87 minutes of the match in Chios. There was great interest in the event, which even made the front page of Hürriyet. Dignitaries on both sides donned the jersey of the opponent and sung the other’s national anthem. In perhaps the match’s crowning action, the mayor of Karşıyaka, Hüseyn Mutlu Akpınar rounded the keeper and scored a cheeky lob for Lailapas, to the delight of a rapt crowd.
Here is a link to a documentary showcasing the initiative:
The first ferry link between Chios and Izmir was established for the event, which saw an unprecedented 3,000 Turks descend on the island. There was a very real sense that business and tourism ties would take flight in its aftermath, such was the good feeling. Alas, the refugee crisis and energy tensions in the Aegean compromised local efforts to establish deeper relations. The symbolic twinning of Izmir and Chios municipalities, discussed at the time, has been pushed back some years. National politics have a way of stifling local dynamics that would crystallise organically in their absence. But the future can be a bright one, so long as the present can enable it to flourish. Hundreds of Izmirlis speak Greek. Increasing numbers of Chians learn Turkish. The former light candles in churches. The latter visit mosques. Locals on both sides consider the ‘other’ kin, closer to them than their compatriots inland.
Interview conducted by Craig Encer