Dr Dimitris Kamouzis, researcher at the Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, will present an online lecture entitled Constantinople and the Megali Idea: From unification with Mother Greece to the creation of an Ionian State (ca. 1918-1922), on Thursday 12 May 2022, at 7pm, as part of the Greek History and Culture Seminars, offered by the Greek Community of Melbourne. The seminar is online only and will be broadcast live via the Facebook and Youtube.
The period preceding the victory of the Kemalist forces and the “Asia Minor Catastrophe” (September 1922) constitutes a turning point for the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Orthodox Greeks of the Ottoman Empire. The aim of the lecture is to provide an overview of the political identification of the Patriarchate and the Constantinopolitan Greeks with Eleftherios Venizelos and the Greek irredentist plan of the Megali Idea (Great Idea).
Initially the lecture will focus on the endeavours of the religious and lay leaderships of the Greek Orthodox millet (ethno-religious community) to sever their ties with the Porte and propagate the unification (enosis) with ‘Mother Greece’ from the signing of the Mudros armistice (30 October 1918) until the loss of Venizelos in the Greek elections of November 1920. Afterwards it will cover the second and most dynamic phase of the Greek nationalist movement in Istanbul, which in terms of political goals was characterised by a shift from the unification with Venizelos’ Greece to the creation of a separate state for the unredeemed Greeks in Asia Minor.
About Professor Kamouzis
Professor Dimitris Kamouzis is a Researcher at the Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Athens. He completed his PhD in History at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, King’s College London. He has been a scholar of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, a Research Fellow of the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation and the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens and a Teaching Fellow at King’s College London.
He has participated in numerous conferences and has published several journal articles and book chapters on the Greek Orthodox populations of the Ottoman Empire/Turkey. His latest book is entitled Greeks in Turkey: Elite Nationalism and Minority Politics in Late Ottoman and Early Republican Istanbul (Oxon & New York: SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East, 2021). He has also co-edited the forthcoming volume: Greek Soldiers and the Asia Minor Campaign: Aspects of a Painful Experience (In Greek, Ekdoseis Vivliopoleion tis Hestias, 2022).
When: Thursday 12 May, 7pm
Where: Online only
Platforms: Facebook and Youtube
