Thessaloniki, Greece, November 2015 - Emerging from Denial?

I am writing this whilst flying back from Thessaloniki to Manchester – via Istanbul with flights of Turkish Airways.  When I mentioned this routing to someone a couple of weeks ago they were incredulous at the thought of direct flights between Turkey and Greece.  But times have changed – or perhaps I should say they are changing: there may be some way to go yet.

I have been to Thessaloniki many times over the last 15 years or so.  It is Greece’s second largest city – and perhaps the second largest city of Greeks in the world.  I was recently in the city that claims to have the third largest Greek population: Melbourne.

Thessaloniki is a fascinating place with an amazing history covering many epochs and empires.  Alexander the Great possibly knew the site (though I am not going to get drawn in to the Macedonian debate about who he was and who might claim him).  Aristotle was born nearby.  Cicero lived here.  St Paul wrote letters to the people of the city.  Methodius, the creator of the Cyrillic alphaber, was born here.  The founder of modern Turkey – Mustafa Kemal – was also born in Thessaloniki.  The Romans came and went as, later, did the Ottomans.  It was at one time possibly the city with the biggest Jewish population anywhere in the world.  The elimination of Thessaloniki’s Jews during the Holocaust, and reprisals against partisans, involved a young Austrian soldier who later became the General-Secretary of the United Nations, and who was then vilified when his wartime roles were exposed – Kurt Waldheim.

But some of the history and connections I have identified in that previous paragraph have been – deliberately or accidentally – omitted from the public personality of Thessaloniki over the years.  Instead Thessaloniki is today generally imagined, at least by Greeks, as a great and historic Greek city.  Yet when I first visited it there must still have been a number of residents who had been born there as subjects of the Ottoman Empire.  Thessaloniki only became Greek in 1912.  In many ways Thessaloniki has for many years denied those aspects of its history that are not Greek.

I have in front of me a leaflet for a bus tour and suggested walking routes in the city.  In total it identifies 61 places of interest.  Only three of them mention the Ottoman period, and one further site is Jewish (a museum).  The Rotonda, an amazing circular building, built in characteristic brick, larger in diameter than the Pantheon in Rome, is mentioned in relation to its Roman origins – yet one of its most distinguishing features is its minaret, and signs round the entrance demonstrate that at one time or another this has been a place of importance for all three of the monotheistic faiths: Christian, Jewish and Muslim.  The major Ottoman bath complex – the Bey Hamam - is shown on the map as ‘Ancient Baths’, suggesting a Hellenic or Roman origin: but it is not on either the bus tour or the walking routes.  Most remarkable of all is the fact that the house where Mustafa Kemal was born is not shown as a place of any interest at all on the map.  In the eastern suburbs beyond the line of the old city walls there are a remarkable series of villas built in the late nineteenth century by Ottoman landowners – these are not advertised to visitors at all.

The restitution of Thessaloniki to modern Greece was of vital importance to that state – yet arguably Thessaloniki only really became Greek during the 1920s when large numbers of Greeks expelled from the new Turkey settled here and in the rest of northern Greece.  Even before the Ottomans arrived in the middle of the fifteenth century the city had had a very diverse population drawn from all over the Balkan region – and beyond.  Perhaps it was the Greekness of the refugees of the 1920s that led to the imagined story of Thessaloniki as an eternally Greek settlement becoming embedded – more so after the loss of the Jewish population two decades later.  There is a wonderful book on the history of Thessaloniki – ‘Salonica: City of Ghosts’ by Mark Mazower.  Yet Mazower is something of a controversial figure in Thessaloniki because he sheds light on the multiple ethnic dimensions of the city’s evolution over the 500 years from 1450 onwards.  Just as the tourist maps supress many of the tangible manifestations of that evolution, so the city powers, the Orthodox church, and wider city society have in the past tended to do the same.  

Thessaloniki is, as it is, a beautiful, lively and exciting city.  Yet it could be a much greater tourist destination on the basis of a wider celebration of its diverse cultural history and the major forces and groups that have had connections with it over the centuries.  My taxi driver to the airport was of the opinion that many more Turks would visit as tourists if only they did not need a visa first.

But I have titled this blog ‘Emerging from denial.’  The very fact that I have left Thessaloniki aboard a Turkish plane represents something of a rapprochement with the city’s past.  Much of the credit for this must go to the city’s current far-sighted mayor, Yiannis Boutaris, who sought to open Thessaloniki up to the world via Istanbul and who persuaded Turkish Airlines to run a twice daily service into the city.  Given the major hub status of Atatürk Airport in Istanbul – Turkish Airlines flies to more countries around the world than any other airline – and certainly in comparison with Athens, the major international entry route to Thessaloniki now lies through Istanbul (or Constantinople as some still refer to it).  Thessaloniki could get by without Athens.  Boutaris has also put Thessaloniki on the map in many other ways, and in 2012 was given the accolade of the best city mayor in the world.  Whilst in Thessaloniki over the weekend I attended a lunch, following a graduation ceremony, attended by senior academics, politicians and business people from at least 7 countries around the Balkans. I personally spoke to attendees from Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia (or to the Greeks, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Bulgaria and Romania  - as well as (of course) Greeks.  With the removal of the Iron Curtain and, later, the end of the Yugoslav conflict (temporary though that sometimes seems to be), Thessaloniki has regained its position as the major city of the whole southern Balkans, with a hinterland for trade and education that reaches far into the other countries of that region.  Bit by bit, Thessaloniki is once again becoming a multi-ethnic metropolis.

So perhaps Thessaloniki is starting to emerge from its period of denial of the diversity of its past, a denial that was more strongly felt when I first visited nearly 15 years ago.  But I suspect that it will take a very long time for the Ottoman past to be celebrated in any meaningful way.  A couple of years ago I was in Ronda in Spain, and visited the Moorish bath complex there.  I was very struck by something said at the end of the film commentary, that indicated that the Moorish past was now being validated as part of the city’s history – ‘We should remember that the Moors were here for 500 years: this was their city and we should remember that.’  I suspect it will be a long time before there is a similar sentiment towards the 450 or so years of Ottoman presence in Thessaloniki.