The Halkidikeon Association Aristotle the Stageritis in collaboration with the Halkidikeon Elderly Citizens Club held a special commemoration event for the 1821 uprising in Halkidiki.
The rebellion, under the leadership of Emmanuel Pappas, while unsuccessful, marked the first of many heroic attempts by locals to gain their freedom from the Ottoman empire.
READ MORE: “Did the Greek Revolution of 1821 really happen?”
Following a service at Northcote’s Axion Esti Monastery in Melbourne on Sunday, a wreath-laying ceremony took place.
Service at Axion Esti was followed by a wreath-laying ceremony. Photos: K. Deves
In attendance were also Greece’s Consul General in Melbourne Emmanuel Kakavelakis, Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs Neil Angus.
The 1821 rebellion in Halkidiki was mainly confined to the Kassandra and Mt Athos peninsulas. It was quickly squashed by the Ottomans with devastating repercussions to the local populations.
Nevertheless, the act of resistance is considered to have contributed to the overall Greek struggle for liberation by allowing rebel forces in the South to giana numerical advantage against the Ottomans, for the period they had troops deployed in the north.
Other rebellions followed in Halkidiki in 1840, 1876 and 1896.
But it wasn’t until the Balkan wars of 1910, 1912 that Halkidiki along with the rest of Macedonia and other parts of the Greek worlds were actually united with the Hellenic Republic.
