Jovanka Broz, the last Yugoslav Icon

The death this week in Belgrade of Jovanka Broz, the widow of Yugoslavia’s former communist ruler, Josip Broz Tito, stirred surprising emotions in me, as in many others. Jovanka, a teenaged partisan during the Second World War before becoming Yugoslavia’s First Lady, had been abominably treated after the death of her husband, expelled from her home without most of her belongings, and placed under house arrest in a shabby dwelling. She had been left in poverty on a miserable pension. She had often been the butt of jokes, denigrated by many as a simple peasant girl. Elizabeth Taylor had reportedly felt peeved when, visiting Tito on the island of Brioni with Richard Burton, who had played the dictator in a World War II partisan movie, she was left in the company of Jovanka, while Burton enjoyed the company of the famously charming Tito. But for others, Jovanka was glamorous. A Kosovo Albanian lady told me how women going to the hairdressers had asked for the Jovanka style.

Jovanka Broz in her prime, with Tito

For years, Jovanka had been largely forgotten. Journalists occasionally wrote of how poorly she had been treated. Some in Croatia argued that she should be brought home to her Croatian motherland (she was in origin a Croatian Serb), given a decent pension and treated with the respect she was due.

But in death she was granted a state funeral, and her passing was reported in international media. Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dačić spoke movingly of her: ‘She was an important part of history, a history we gave up on, a history we forgot… This is the departure of Yugoslavia’s last icon.’ Thousands attended her funeral, many travelling to Belgrade from other parts of former Yugoslavia.

For many who can remember what Yugoslavia was, a serious, if ultimately failed attempt to build a multi-national community with a common identity transcending its peoples’ diversity, Jovanka was perhaps the last link with a past for which some still feel nostalgia. For all its obvious faults and contradictions, Yugoslavia had something. In its cultural diversity there was a richness, a vibrancy that at times produced brilliance. While the successor states may feel unburdened in their independence, and while they are certainly freer, it is hard to argue that the sum of the parts adds up to what Yugoslavia once was. Above all, Yugoslavia represented a dream of a common life for peoples who had once been at each others’ throats. It was surely better than the squalid nationalism and reversion to mutual destruction that followed the state’s demise. For those that mourned her, the death of Jovanka perhaps rekindled a memory of that dream, of hopes for something better.

Xanthi, a beautiful town in Western Thrace

Continuing eastwards from Kavala, I reached Xanthi, in western Thrace. Xanthi has a well preserved, beautiful old town. Many of its old buildings have been sensitively renovated. Ottoman-style houses, with their first floors built out over the narrow streets, as if reaching out to touch each other, are interspersed with grand mansions more in a European style, built by rich 19th century merchants. Streets lead into little tree-shaded squares with stylish cafés. Xanthi has a bohemian atmosphere. Sculptures, fashioned out of metal, are dotted around the old town.

The region of Xanthi was known for the quality of its tobacco, and the city’s mansions were built by the mainly Greek merchants who prospered from it. Especially impressive is the house of Vasilios Kougioumtzoglou, built in 1877, with its colourful, decorated exterior. The Kougioumtzoglou family also owned another large house on the same street, which today houses Xanthi’s folklore museum. Inside, the visitor can walk through rooms depicting the life of a period Greek home of the 19th century. The family also owned a house in Plovdiv (Philippopolis in Greek), in present-day Bulgaria, indicating the one-time interconnectedness of the region.

Kougioumtzoglou mansion, Xanthi

Xanthi was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912, when it was taken by Bulgaria during the first Balkan War. Together with the rest of western Thrace, it became part of Greece after the First World War, and, apart from a period back under Bulgarian rule during World War II, it has remained with Greece since then. More than anywhere else I have been, in Xanthi I could see vestiges of the prosperity and accomplishment of the Ottoman Greeks. The once great cosmopolitan cities of the eastern Mediterranean, Smyrna, Salonika, Alexandria, have been devastated by the tragic events of the 20th century, destructive fires and war, which have left only traces of their past glory. But, on a smaller scale, Xanthi has been preserved, and some flavour of that past era can be sensed today, walking among the mansions of this once flourishing town.

The Ottoman Greeks enjoyed levels of prosperity and development far beyond those of the independent Greek state in the 19th century. Greek Levantine merchants and financiers spread their wealth and power around Europe. Their educational establishments and cultural achievements were widely admired. In the fine little town of Xanthi this has left an echo which has largely been lost in most of the rest of the region.

The Muslim quarter, Xanthi

Xanthi also offers a reminder of the cosmopolitanism of so many eastern-Mediterranean towns before the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the onset of the narrow nation state. When Greece and the newly established Turkish republic agreed, by the Treaty of Lausanne, on the population exchange which in 1923 ended centuries of co-existence between Greeks and Turks, two exceptions were made. Muslims (Bulgarian speaking Pomak and Romany Muslims as well as Turks) would be allowed to remain in Greek western Thrace, and Greeks could remain in Istanbul. Most of the Istanbul Greeks were driven out in the 1950s, leaving only a tiny remnant today. But the Turks of western Thrace are still there.

Life has not always been easy for them. At the beginning of the 20th century, Muslims formed a significant majority in Xanthi, but, following the settlement of Greek migrants from Turkish eastern Thrace and Anatolia, and outward migration by local Turks, they are now very much a minority. Events outside Greece have sometimes had negative repercussions for them. Following the 1955 pogroms against Istanbul Greeks, Greece retaliated by introducing a law depriving Muslims who left Greece of their citizenship. And in response to the declaration of independence by Turkish north Cyprus in 1983, the Greek government adopted a policy of referring to ‘Greek Muslims’, no longer recognising a Turkish minority. Greek courts outlawed the term ‘Turkish’ in reference to the community in western Thrace.

Achrian Mosque, Xanthi

Such treatment no doubt made Turks in western Thrace feel less than welcome, and there were protests. But they clung on. And now, as far as can be seen, they rub along with their Greek neighbours, much as they have for centuries. Walking around Xanthi, women in headscarves go about their business. At one end of the old town, climbing up the hill, the old Muslim quarter remains just that. At the top of the hill, the Achrian Mosque, built after 1850, has notices outside in Greek, English and Turkish. People greet each with ‘as-salaam alaikum’, and chat away in Turkish. Children kicking a ball around shout to one another in Turkish.

I liked Xanthi, a town that has preserved its heritage, architectural and communal. Here, unlike almost anywhere else in either Greece or Turkey, the history of co-existence between Greeks and Turks has been preserved, and it seems to work.

Kavala and Mohammed Ali Pasha

To the east of Thessaloniki, on the Macedonian coast, Kavala is an attractive little town. The old town climbs up a hill above the bay, its narrow streets lined with Ottoman-era buildings, with their enclosed balconies reaching out across the road. The roads lead up to the Byzantine fortress, which was extended by the Ottomans. Beyond the hill is an aqueduct, built during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, in the 16th century. I enjoyed an evening meal at a restaurant owned by Greek migrants from Georgia, some of the many Black Sea Greeks who have moved to Greece since the end of the Soviet Union, the final extinction of a community going back nearly three millennia. Looking through the menu, I spotted khinkali, a kind of big Georgian ravioli, filled with seasoned minced meat, and a delicious broth that has to be slurped out. It is a Georgian dish, explained the waiter, who then told me that he and his family came from Tbilisi. The khinkali were not bad either. Not the best to be had, but not bad, so far away from Georgia.

Kavala was part of the Ottoman Empire from the late 14th century until 1912. One of its main claims to fame is that it was the birthplace of Mohammed Ali Pasha, father of modern Egypt, which he ruled for the first half of the 19th century. He founded a dynasty that reined until Nasser’s revolution in the 1950s. In 1801, Mohammed Ali had gone to Egypt as second-in-command of an Albanian contingent of an Ottoman force sent to restore authority after Napoleon’s brief occupation. By a mixture of military campaigning, cunning and ruthlessness, he managed to seize control of the whole country. At its height, his power eclipsed that of the Sultan, and for a time his rule extended over much of the Near East, almost reaching Istanbul itself.

The Imaret, Kavala

But Mohammed Ali did not lose contact with his roots in Kavala. He commissioned the building of the Imaret, a Muslim theological college. Nowadays it has been renovated as a luxury hotel. From the outside, stretched along a hillside overlooking the sea, it is an impressive sight. It has been described as the best preserved Ottoman-era building in Greece. Unfortunately, it was closed for renovation when I visited, so I was unable to see the interior.

Mohammed Ali Pasha’s home, Kavala

Close by the Imaret is Mohammed Ali’s family home, preserved as a museum. Upstairs, a large living room has been restored in the style of a traditional Ottoman haremluk, surrounded by low divans, covered with cushions, a low round table in the middle, and a conical fireplace on the back wall. I had seen such recreations before, in Albania, but what I had not seen before was a restored privy and washroom. I confess I was fascinated. In concept, it was not much different from the outdoor hole in the ground toilets I have encountered in rural areas in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

In a square next to the house is a statue of Mohammed Ali on a horse, in the act of either drawing or sheathing his sword, a rare example of a Greek town honouring one of its sons who was a Muslim, and who was not Greek. But what was Mohammed Ali? I had understood he was Albanian, like the troops who were the backbone of the army he led to Egypt. When, in 2011, I visited the Alabaster Mosque in Cairo, which was commissioned by Mohammed Ali and which contains his mausoleum, my Egyptian guide too described him as Albanian (see post of 5 January 2012). But the young Greek guide at Mohammed Ali’s house in Kavala told me this was disputed, and that in Turkey he was claimed as a Turk. It was claimed, so he told me, that the notion that Mohammed Ali was Albanian was a misunderstanding caused by the fact that the troops that he led to Egypt were Albanian. The issue could apparently inflame passions. The young man told me of an occasion when parties of Turks and Albanians visiting the house at the same time had a fierce row over the matter.

Mohammed Ali Pasha, Kavala

In the Ottoman period, the question of Mohammed Ali’s nationality would have been of secondary importance. He was an Ottoman Muslim, and that was what counted. Although he ruled over Egypt, he never learned Arabic, and the language of his court was Turkish. Some contemporary diplomatic visitors claimed his native language was Albanian. But indeed, he might in any case have known the language of his soldiers. The young Greek at Mohammed Ali’s house in Kavala told me that at the time of his birth, in 1769, the population of Kavala was almost entirely Turkish, with just a very small Christian population. He thought there would have been very few Albanians there, apart from the soldiers of the garrison. Yet there were Albanians almost everywhere in Greece during the Ottoman period, including nearby Salonika. With the information I had, I could not conclude either way. I had liked the idea that an Albanian, a chancer from one of Europe’s smaller nations, had become ruler of an Empire in Egypt, Sudan, western Arabia and the Levant, and one of the most notable historical figures of his day.

The Yeni Tzami, Salonika's Esoteric Mosque

The last mosque built in Salonika, in 1902, the Yeni Tzami, or ‘New Mosque’, is also one of the city’s few Ottoman-era mosques to survive to the present. And it is one of the most unusual mosques in the world. It was built by an Italian architect to serve the city’s Dönmeh, or ‘convert’ community. The Dönmeh were descendants of Jews who had converted to Islam in the 17th century.

They were follows of Sabbatai Zevi, a Jewish mystic from Smyrna, who proclaimed himself the Messiah. He attracted a huge following among the Jews of Europe and the Levant, antagonising the Jewish establishment in the process, and, with his claims of earthly kingship, attracting the wrath of the Sultan. Finally, he was brought before the Sultan in Edirne in 1666. Offered a choice between conversion to Islam and impalement, he chose the former. Many of his followers reverted to Jewish Orthodoxy, while some continued to believe in their Messiah. Still others, the Dönmeh, followed Zevi’s example and converted to Islam.

The Yeni Tzami, Salonika

Salonika became the main centre of the Dönmeh, where some of them were prominent merchants. While outwardly Muslim, they retained many Jewish practices and continued to speak Ladino, the dialect of the Spanish Jews. Disapproved of by both Jews, for whom they were apostates, and strict Muslims who rejected their crypto-Judaism, until the late-19th century they practiced endogamy, marrying only within their own community. They were politically active, and were prominent in the Young Turk revolution of 1908, which originated in Salonika. As Muslims, they were included in the population exchange in 1923. In the early years of the Turkish Republic, they continued to play an important role, as merchants and as supporters of Ataturk’s secular, modernising reforms. However, during the 20th century many of them have gradually assimilated into the broader Turkish society.

Their remarkable, eclectic mosque in Salonika reflects the complex, ambiguous identity of the Dönmeh. A hybrid of European and Islamic styles, fusing Baroque, neoclassical, and Byzantine, it also contains Jewish features. Walking up the road towards it, the initial impression is one of extraordinary oddness. As well as a Mihrab, pointing towards Mecca and the direction of Muslim prayer, the six-pointed Star of David is repeated around the exterior and interior of the mosque. The mosque did not function as such for long. Scarcely 20 years after it was built, its faithful departed for Turkey under the Lausanne Agreement. Some tried to claim they were not in fact Muslims, hoping to be excluded.

The Dönmeh never really fitted. Only in the diverse, cosmopolitan atmosphere that was Salonika before the Balkan Wars did they find their place. Perhaps that was why they supported Ataturk, hoping that they could find a new home in a modern, secular state. They were to be disappointed. Ataturk’s vaunted secularism was in reality a sham. The very core of the new Turkish identity was in fact based on religion. At the start of the new republic, Turks were defined as Muslims, and a Turk could be a Muslim from anywhere in the Balkans, no matter whether he had spoken Turkish or not, so long as he identified with the Turkish nation. A Christian from Turkey, by contrast, even if he spoke only Turkish, could not be accepted as part of the new Turkish nation, and had to be expelled to Greece. The aim of Ataturk’s secularism was to keep religion in its place, out of the sphere of government, so that he could set about building his modern republic unfettered by competition from institutions that had held immense power and importance under the Ottoman order. But within the state, one religious community, Sunni Islam, was given a privileged position, under firm state control, but favoured over any rivals, be they non-Muslim or other branches of Islam. In this world, the Dönmeh, with their esoteric brand of Islam, their fusion of different faiths, were decidedly suspect.

Museums in Macedonia

Among the new buildings going up along the River Vardar as part of the Skopje 2014 project are a couple of grand new museums, the neoclassical Museum of Archaeology and the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle. This is not just about building a grander capital. These buildings form part of the government’s endeavour to shore up the identity of a nation in face of the denials of its existence by some of its neighbours. The nearly finished Museum of Archaeology, like the statues of Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon, asserts the continuity claimed for the modern Macedonian nation with Macedonian antiquity. The Museum of the Macedonian Struggle focuses on the fight for freedom and independence of the Macedonian people during the late-19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. As was apparent from some of the exhibits, the struggle portrayed here relates to the whole of historic Macedonia, including northern Greece. But Thessaloniki, capital of Greek Macedonia, also has its Museum of the Macedonian Struggle. It gives a very different perspective of the same period, and the Macedonian people whose story it tells is not the same Macedonian people with which the museum in Skopje is concerned.

Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Skopje

Under Ottoman rule, Macedonia was a jumble of ethnicities, Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Jews, Albanians and others. It gave its name to a mixed fruit salad, a Macédoine. This all came to an end with the catastrophes of the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and the population exchange that followed the Greek defeat in Anatolia in 1923. Following the carve-up of Macedonia among the emergent Balkan states, the Slavs (and Albanians) of north-west Macedonia found themselves incorporated into Serbia. After World War II, Tito gave them their own republic. They were not to be Bulgarians, although their language was almost identical to Bulgarian. The new museum in Skopje commemorates their struggle. It barely acknowledges that, at the start of the 20th century, many Macedonians saw themselves as Bulgarians. Yet it is hard to ignore this. Among the exhibits from the Balkan wars are the banners of the irregular Macedonian detachments from Bitola and Ohrid, with the red, green and white of Bulgaria. Also exhibited is a photograph of irregulars marching under the Arch of Galerius in Salonika. They are described as Macedonians, although it was Bulgarian forces that entered Salonika one day after the city was surrendered to the Greek army. Leon Sciaky, who grew up in Salonika in the early 20th century, and spent summers in the Slav-inhabited villages to the north of the city, was in no doubt; he described them as Bulgarians.

Such questions of the complexities of national identity are not reflected in the museum in Skopje. That is not what it is about. It is a one-sided presentation, displaying the struggle of only one of the nations that had inhabited Macedonia, and had fought over it. It is also partly motivated by modern politics. The ruling party which initiated Skopje 2014, VMRO-DPMNE, claims succession from the older VMRO, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation, which led the struggle of the Macedonian Slavs, be they Bulgarian or not, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Furthermore, the museum presents the sufferings of Macedonian opponents of communism under the Tito regime. The link is plain. Those who suffered were from VMRO, whereas today’s main opposition party, the SDSM, is the successor of the former communists.

Greeks too have known how to use history selectively to underpin national goals. The fact that northern Greece, including Epirus and Thrace as well as Macedonia, was not predominantly Greek-inhabited before the Balkan wars and the population exchange with Turkey was awkward for the nationalist narrative of Greek history for much of the 20th century. The expulsion of non-Greeks, the Bulgarian and Macedonian Slavs, Turks and Albanians, and their replacement with Greek refugees from the emergent Turkish Republic, was a matter of policy, to strengthen Greece’s hold on its newly acquired territories. It was a policy that continued long after the Second World War. In the 1980s, Greek communists who had fled the country following the civil war in the 1940s were allowed to return, in a gesture of national reconciliation. But non-ethnic Greeks from northern Greece, and perhaps half of the communist-led Partisans were Slavs, were excluded. I went to an exhibition at the Yeni Tzami (New Mosque) in Thessaloniki devoted to the Greek communist diaspora in Eastern Europe following the civil war. Among all the recipient countries, the display did not include Yugoslavia, still less Macedonia, although some Greek communists, and many Slav Partisans from northern Greece, went there. The exhibition perhaps reflected a coming-to-terms with a painful episode in the country’s history. But if so, it is only a partial coming to terms. It does not include non-ethnic Greeks.

The White Tower, Thessaloniki, as it was

Yet museums in northern Greece do reflect the multi-ethnic past of the region. The White Tower, an Ottoman-era edifice on the Thessaloniki seafront that once formed part of the city fortifications, and which has become a symbol of the town, now houses a museum of the city. The photographs and exhibits portray the cosmopolitan diversity that was the city’s richness, its Jewish merchants, its mosques, the hustle and bustle of one of the Mediterranean’s great ports. It tells the story of a city that is no more, most of its people having been driven out or, in the case of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, murdered. And most of the city itself was physically destroyed by the great fire of 1917 and by the depredations of post-World War II town planners. But that the story is told might suggest a more relaxed attitude of today’s Greek inhabitants towards the past of the city they inhabit. Some Ottoman-era buildings and monuments are now being restored, cared for and valued in a departure from the practice of several decades past.

One of the most poignant museums in Thessaloniki is the small Jewish museum. With photographs and text, as well as artefacts, the museum tells the story of the community that was once the city’s largest, accounting for around one-half of the population. The community was descended from the Spanish Jews expelled in the 15th century by the most Catholic and most intolerant of Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. At the start of the 20th century, they were still speaking their Spanish dialect, Ladino. Sultan Bayazit II had ordered that Spanish Jews arriving in the Ottoman Empire be made welcome, reportedly observing that King Ferdinand could not be a wise monarch when he thus impoverished his country, and in so doing enriched Bayazit’s Empire. Spanish Jews settled in many Ottoman towns, but made their greatest mark in Salonika. But, as described in Leon Sciaky’s marvellous memoir, Farewell to Salonica, that world largely came to an end following the city’s incorporation into Greece in 1912. The city’s Jewish quarter was particularly ravaged by the 1917 fire, and many Jews, including Sciaky, left after that. Most of the rest were deported and murdered during the World War II German occupation. The city’s vast Jewish cemetery was destroyed by the occupiers, not just a wanton act of vandalism, but a deliberate attempt to erase centuries of Jewish history in the city. Several of the tombstones that were recovered are now displayed in the museum. Though a tiny remnant of what it once was, a small Jewish community remains in Thessaloniki.

Monument to the Battle of Kilkis

Having read Sciaky’s account of his final, tragic visit, with his grandfather, to the small town of Kilkis, to the north of Salonika, immediately after the Greek army’s victory over Bulgaria in June 1913, and the flight of the entire Bulgarian population of the region (see post of 10 December 2012), I decided to visit the town. Modern Kilkis is a non-descript town of characterless blocks. And it is a Greek town, its former Bulgarian identity rubbed out a century ago. On the edge of the town is a monument and a small museum dedicated to the battle. A couple of soldiers standing guard outside what appeared to be a military headquarters helpfully pointed me in the right direction. A sign on the main road leading to Thessaloniki pointed me to the ‘Sacred site’ of the battle. Having read the report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on The Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, with its description of the Greek army’s murderous campaign in the Kilkis area, its burning of the town and the butchery and rape of the Bulgarian inhabitants who did not get away fast enough, I found this assertion of sanctity hard to stomach. In some ways, the monument itself, no doubt unwittingly, is a more fitting commemoration of the terrible events. A Greek soldier, holding a fallen comrade in one arm, another at his feet, points his pistol at the ground, to all appearances in the act of shooting a defenceless person in front of him. The museum contains numerous photos, as well as letters, maps, uniforms and weapons. It was difficult for me to form much of an impression, as the text was in Greek only. This museum was not aimed at foreign visitors. But it appeared to give a relatively even account of the battle, with photographs of Bulgarian forces as well as Greek. What it did not appear to show at all was the massive civilian tragedy of the rape of Kilkis by the Greek conquerors.

Museums can have many purposes. They are supposed to record and document past eras and events. But sometimes they reflect the times in which they were built as much as the times they portray. They are not always neutral or dispassionate. The museum in Kilkis, opened in the 1960s, records an important victory in establishing the frontiers of modern Greece. In this narrative, the Bulgarians were a military foe. That they were also the majority population of that region, displaced after the battle, is not the theme for this museum. Still less is the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle in Skopje about giving a full picture of the many-sided battle for Macedonia. The politics of identity in this beleaguered little country is too raw for that at the moment. But the museum of the city of Thessaloniki is an example of what a good museum can be. In bringing to life the great city of the past, it educates its visitors, and helps reconcile the modern city with the cities that were once there, but which have been washed away.

What are they doing to Skopje?

As I was driven from the bus station to my accommodation, the taxi driver asked me when I was last in Skopje. Four years ago, I replied. Oh, you will see a lot of changes. I knew something about the transformation Skopje was undergoing under the government’s ‘Skopje 2014’ project. I knew it was grandiose, and I knew it was controversial, and had elicited much criticism. I had come to see for myself. Do you like the changes, I asked? Yes, he replied, very definitely. I heard such positive responses from others during my visit. Some were clearly pleased at the prospect of a more monumental capital. Others I spoke to reserved their judgment, saying it would take time before a proper evaluation could be made. Others simply loathed the whole thing.

Skopje suffered a huge earthquake in 1963, which destroyed the majority of the city. Poignantly, the hands of the clock on the broken façade of the old railway station, now the city museum, still stand at the moment the earthquake struck. It was the city’s misfortune to be reconstructed in the style of 1960s and 1970s communism, all hideous concrete, now crumbling and decomposing. The result was a famously ugly city centre.

Even more unfortunate, the city became increasingly divided along the Vardar River, which bisects the city. On one side, the ugly modern town, mainly populated by Macedonians; on the other, the old Ottoman-era bazaar, with a largely Albanian character, and the Romany district of Shuto Orizari on its furthest outskirts. The old bazaar district has its charm. There are some fine Ottoman era buildings, several mosques, and Turkish baths (now an art gallery). And the low buildings, the shops selling baklava and other sweet Turkish cakes, the kebab places, the cafes with men drinking sweet tea and playing backgammon. Sadly, that charm had been largely unappreciated and neglected by city governments uninterested in Albanian quarters of the city.

Yet despite all this, I liked Skopje. Many others liked Skopje too. I first visited the city in 1988, when it was still Yugoslavia. I was there for only 24 hours, a very memorable 24 hours.

With a young American companion, I had an excellent dinner in the old bazaar, for what seemed an absurdly low price. Having no other means of communicating with the waiter, we simply pointed at our mouths, indicating ‘food’. It was a weekend, and, while bottles of wine were placed on restaurant tables, indicating that they were reserved, swarms of young people stood in the streets, all dressed up, chatting and laughing. It seemed, given the lack of means of Skopje’s young people, such street gatherings were the main form of socialising. Skopje was a fun city.* During later stays, I spent wild nights in some of the town’s frenetic live-music venues. There were excellent restaurants, second to none in former Yugoslavia. The river front, alongside the Vardar, was faced by lively cafes and bars. Excellent cocktails. Skopje even had an openly gay scene, quite original in a region otherwise blighted by homophobia. In short, Skopje was cool.

Alexander the Great in Skopje

The new makeover for the city is astounding in its ambition. It is as if the planners wanted to transform Skopje into the grandest, most splendid city in Europe, and set about doing it in three or four years. Massive new monuments litter the town centre. At its heart is a huge statue of Alexander the Great on the main square, sword in hand on a rearing horse, all atop a massive platform. Over the elegant Ottoman-era stone bridge across the Vardar stands an even more massive statue of Alexander’s father, Phillip of Macedon. Such monuments, although they are not officially named for Alexander and Phillip, are clearly intended to poke the Greeks in the eye. Athens insists that Alexander and Phillip are exclusively Hellenic figures, and that raising their statues in Skopje, as well as naming the airport, the football stadium, and the main north-south highway after them, amounts to a usurpation of Greek history. In part, the erection of such monuments reflects Macedonian despair at Greece’s persistent blocking of the country’s integration with NATO and the EU. Opposition criticisms of Skopje 2014 say such monuments needlessly antagonise Greece, and set back the country’s hopes for joining the European mainstream. But Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski seems to have concluded that, given Greece’s recalcitrance, and the weakness of the rest of Europe in face of it, the integration promise is, for the foreseeable future, a chimera. So all this emphasis on Alexander and Phillip is a big ‘Ya Boo Sucks’ to Greece. It is of course utterly puerile, and stoops to the Greeks’ own fatuous level. But it is just a little understandable given Greece’s unreasonableness.

A stronger reproach against Skopje 2014 is its lack of architectural or aesthetic merit. The whole project reflects the ambitions and tastes of megalomaniac politicians. Its guiding spirit is nationalist aggrandisement. The sheer bombastic bulk of the Alexander statue is bad enough, but it really comes into its own at night, when the fountain it sits above is irradiated by a multi-coloured lights show. In many cities you can find horrendously kitsch souvenirs, but in Skopje they decided to create the original champion of kitsch. The city is being turned into a pastiche of the great capitals of Europe. There is a triumph arch to compete with Paris, a higher concentration of statues than London, and several new neoclassical buildings, or old buildings being given a neoclassical facelift. There are new bridges, one of them with statues along it, reminiscent of Prague. Even the new buses have been copied from London, red double-deckers clearly styled on the beloved old Routemasters.

Giving Skopje a makeover was perhaps not a bad idea in itself. Other drab post-communist capitals in the region, Tirana, Podgorica, Prishtina, have made efforts to smarten up. But no other city has attempted anything approaching Skopje’s ambition. A transformation on such a scale is difficult to digest in such a short timeframe. Some elements are surely positive: the revamped stadium; the improved infrastructure; the rebuilding of the national theatre destroyed in 1963. Some of the new buildings are of a more contemporary design, notably the Philharmonic Orchestra hall. Skopje had the chance to build contemporary buildings of note that might have put the city on the map.

Church of St Clement, Skopje

It has done it before. The Church of St. Clement of Ohrid, Skopje’s Orthodox cathedral, finished in 1990, is a remarkably adventurous and interesting building. With its domes, it is identifiably an Orthodox church, yet its design is modern, an updated take on the traditional Byzantine model that most new Orthodox churches continue slavishly and boringly to follow. The fountain in front of the church, presented by the city’s Islamic community, was also a remarkable symbol of unity in a city divided along ethnic and religious lines.

But, one or two buildings aside, the present revamp of the city does not follow such a path. The buildings and monuments being erected are not bold, not original, not interesting. There is no vision beyond a bland reiteration of the worn out styles of other cities and of bygone eras. As I looked upon all of this, I wondered whether the old cool Skopje could possibly survive? The bars along the Vardar are still there. The Cuban bar still fizzes in the evenings. But I couldn’t escape the view of the new buildings across the river. Is it possible that in the future this view could be impressive?

The view across the Vardar, Skopje

Across the Vardar, in the first stretch close to the riverbank, I was in a building site. New statues: the one of Phillip nearing completion; Cyril and Methodius, the Greek Macedonian evangelists of the Slavs. Beyond that, the old bazaar area is much as I remember it. It was a sunny weekend at the start of spring when I was there. People were sitting outside the cafes, drinking tea or beer, eating grilled meat or sticky cakes. It’s all on a more manageable scale than the colossal new city going up a hundred metres away. Here it is still possible to relax. But there are plans for this end of town as well.

Albanians, who make up some 20 per cent of Skopje’s population, had objected that all the new statuary reflected Macedonians’ history and Macedonian heroes of no relevance to them. In response, a few notable Albanians were added to the list of statues. Among them is Skanderbeg, the greatest of all Albanian heroes, who held out for 20 years against the Ottoman advance in the 15th century. A much more modest statue than most of the others going up, I rather liked it. In contrast to the monuments in Tirana and Prishtina, his sword is sheathed. He looks less ferocious, more approachable perhaps, if that is what one wants from a Skanderbeg statue. At the moment, the statue is in an odd position on the edge of the bazaar district, looking out over the highway that runs through the city. But he is to have a square of his own. One of the objections raised by a Macedonian friend to the city’s makeover is that, rather than uniting the city, it reinforces its division. In future, Macedonians will have their square, and Albanians will have theirs.

And how much is it all costing? This is another source of controversy. Critics accuse the authorities of a lack of transparency or public consultation. To someone used to the planning process in the UK, the years of debate and argument involved in any public infrastructure project, the speed with which the transformation of Skopje is being pushed ahead is astounding. Macedonia is a poor country. Economic activity was already focused to a considerable extent on Skopje. Does it make sense to undertake such a vast, expensive vanity project? And does it make sense to focus so much investment on the already privileged capital city? So much of Skopje city centre still looks slightly grubby and unkempt, parks not properly cared for, pavements crumbling. Does the plan include such details that go to make a city beautiful? Might not an effort to revamp the city have focused on such details? My worst fear is that, in a few years’ time, the new monuments and buildings may start to look the worse for wear as well. Oh dear, Skopje, what have they done to you?

*Later that night, while searching for a bar that was still open, we met a young woman who spoke English. She said she was from Zagreb, and was herself visiting Skopje. She suggested we hop in her car, and that she would find an open bar. She was clearly very drunk, and getting in a car with her was surely a bad idea. But we were quite drunk too, beyond the point of responsible decision-making. It was terrifying, racing around, ignoring traffic lights, barely maintaining control. The car was a Yugo, not such a bad car at the time. In my fear, I gripped the inside door handle so tightly that it, and the whole interior lining of the door, came off in my hand. Suddenly she lurched to a stop, for no apparent reason. The American and I took our chance and jumped out.

We were close to the railway station, and from somewhere nearby we could hear music. Still thinking about finding more booze, we walked towards it. On a piece of waste ground, tables were laid out, piled with food and drink. A makeshift stage had been erected, and musicians were playing. The people were Romany. They welcomed us, offered us a seat at their table, gave us bottles of beer, thrust food in front of us. They couldn’t talk to us, but then the crazy drunk woman from Zagreb turned up. She interpreted for us, and explained that the celebration was to mark the circumcision of a young boy. It was a happy atmosphere.

Then a policeman arrived. He sat down next to us, and was offered food and drink by the solicitous Romany hosts. He could speak a little English. He asked us what we were doing there, where we were staying? It all seemed quite friendly. And then suddenly, he said ‘you go now; go home.’ We were confused. Why would we want to leave? We were having fun. We stayed put. And then a couple of minutes later, this time firmly, an instruction, with a tone of warning: ‘Leave now; go home.’ We got up smartly and left, leaving the girl from Zagreb with a beer in her hand. Walking back to the youth hostel, we were bemused. What had been going on? Did the policeman know or suspect something we did not? Were we not safe there? Was something afoot? Twenty-five years later, my memories of that evening are as clear as ever. But I never understood what happened.

Skopje’s placid exterior belies tensions beneath the surface between the different ethnic communities. Visiting the city shortly after the 2001 Albanian insurgency, a young, very articulate Albanian working for one of the western embassies told me that the next time, Albanians would go the whole way, and take all the territory that was rightfully, historically theirs, including Skopje. No matter that Albanians made up barely 20 per cent of the city’s population. But he was from Tetovo, the overwhelmingly Albanian city in the north-west of the country, commuting daily to work in the capital. Despite its tensions and divisions, Skopje had always been more relaxed. A few years later, I visited a radio station, which doubled as a bar, and broadcast in both Macedonian and Albanian.

Macedonia: Time to tell Greece to stop

Travelling down by bus from Chişinău to Odessa in July 2022, my first visit to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, I was not sure what to expect. I had been following the news from Ukraine compulsively. I knew there was a night-time curfew, and that there were frequent air raid alerts. I had heard life in Odessa had normalised somewhat since those first fraught weeks when the threat of a Russian assault on the city from the land or the sea had seemed very real. The tank traps on the city streets had largely been removed. But how was life in the city? How were people coping? Having previously lived in Odessa, I had a huge attachment to this beautiful city, with its unique spirit and its frenetic nightlife. A largely Russian-speaking city with a significant pro-Russian element among its population when Russia began its aggression against Ukraine in 2014, Odessa had briefly appeared at risk of going the same way as Donetsk and Luhansk. How had the city fared in face of the new Russian onslaught?

Another year, another recommendation from the European Commission that EU accession talks be opened with Macedonia, and another veto from Greece. This time Greece was joined in its veto by Bulgaria, a cynical, opportunistic move condemned by many Bulgarians, including three former presidents. But there is little doubt that Sofia’s objections could be easily overcome. Indeed, Skopje had already agreed to the conditions set by Sofia shortly before the key European Council meeting on 11 December, making the Bulgarian move all the more baffling. It is Greece that remains the key blockage to Macedonia’s EU hopes.

Greece’s dispute with Macedonia over its name has dragged on for more than two decades. While Athens elicits very little sympathy in the world for its stance, it has been able to use its membership of the EU, as well as NATO, to bully its little neighbour and try to force it into submission. Sporadic diplomatic efforts try to find a way around the impasse. In the past, they had some success, for example in enabling Macedonia to join the United Nations under the provisional name the ‘former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’. This was never a long-term solution, and the Greek habit of referring to the country using the acronym ‘FYROM’, and even to its inhabitants as ‘FYROMians’, is understandably taken by Macedonians as an insult – ‘Don’t FYROM Me, Call Me by My Name’, went one campaign a few years ago.

In the last few years, the main international effort to bridge the gap between the two sides has been focused on the UN mediator, Matthew Nimetz, most recently in his suggestions presented in November. His doggedness in pursuing his mandate, despite persistent lack of success, may be admirable, but, given the lack of political will in the two capitals to reach a compromise, has been fruitless. Diplomatic efforts are usually about trying to achieve the possible, rather than about principle. Without greater international will to push for a satisfactory outcome, Nimetz has done the best he could in the circumstances. Unfortunately, such diplomacy of the possible often finds no place for the concept of right and wrong. Diplomats are too frequently blind to the question of where right lies, trying to pull the sides towards some central position on which agreement can be reached. It is pragmatic, but it is often not just, especially to the weaker party. And often as not, a side that believes strongly that justice is on its side refuses to play the game, instead holding out for its cause.

Greece objects that the name ‘Macedonia’ implies a claim to its northern region of the same name. It is a preposterous claim. Firstly, historic Macedonia includes both Macedonia and Greece’s northern region, as well as a smaller area in present-day Bulgaria. None has exclusive right to the name. Secondly, Skopje has persistently disavowed any claim to Greek territory. Thirdly, there are a number of other cases of provinces of one country having the same name as a neighbouring country, including the province of Luxembourg in Belgium and Brittany in France. If others can accept this without complaint, why not Greece? And fourthly, the notion that little Macedonia could represent any kind of territorial threat to Greece is risible.

But, as recently suggested by the EU Enlargement commissioner, Stefan Fuele, Macedonia’s progress on EU integration should be decoupled from its dispute with Greece. A year ago, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found in favour of Macedonia’s claim that Greece, by blocking the country’s NATO accession, had breached its undertaking in the 1995 agreement that enabled the country’s UN membership, that it would not block the country’s accession to international organisations under the provisional name. Yet Macedonia remains in limbo, still blocked by Greece from entering either organisation. Greece’s disingenuous argument at the ICJ that it had not blocked Macedonia’s NATO accession, but that it had been the joint decision of the NATO membership, was rejected by the court.

The prospect of Macedonia’s EU membership, as well as the process of fulfilling the accession criteria, is important. Enlargement has been the EU’s key strategy for stabilising a troubled region and binding the countries into a virtuous cycle of democratic development, improved governance, economic prosperity and good relations among states that have only recently experienced conflict. This applies to Macedonia too, which experienced a short insurgency by members of its large ethnic-Albanian minority a little over a decade ago. While much progress has been made since then in integrating Albanians and satisfying their legitimate demands, Macedonia remains unsettled, the Macedonians nervous about the future of their state. Greece’s blocking of the country’s progress in joining the EU and NATO is risky and irresponsible, as is the EU’s weakness in going along with it.

Of course, other EU members cite the need for unanimity in agreeing to the accession of new states. So, year after year, European Council meetings trot out the need for Macedonia to resolve its disagreement with Greece before its accession negotiations can get underway. The need for good neighbourly relations as a condition for EU membership is raised. But what hypocrisy! The need for good neighbourly relations has rightly been a requirement for Balkan countries that have recently been at war with one another. But in the case of Macedonia this requirement has been abused by Greece to give it an advantage in its dispute with a weaker neighbour. That the rest of the EU has gone along with this bullying of a small, poor, fragile country in need of the union’s help is to the huge discredit of the whole union, not just Greece itself.

Such behaviour by Greece, abusing its EU membership to give it an advantage in its bilateral relations, has been persistent and unashamed. EU officials say they do not want to import the dispute between Greece and Macedonia into the union. In truth, the EU imported many of its worst headaches when it admitted Greece. The EU was blackmailed by Greece into agreeing to the accession of Cyprus without the prior settlement of that country’s longstanding division, because otherwise Athens threatened to block the entire enlargement process for the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. Thus, thanks to Greece, the EU imported the Cyprus conflict, but also thanks to Greece, is blocked from admitting Macedonia because it would mean importing a dispute – a dispute, that is, of Greece’s making.

When it entered the union, Athens did not face anything like the conditionality that would-be EU members have to face now. Greece’s utter disregard for the rights of indigenous minorities within its own borders, whose very existence it denies, would be inadmissible for a country wishing to join the union today. Greece continues to get away with behaviour that any pre-accession country nowadays would face huge pressure to correct.

The relationship between Greece and the rest of the EU has too often looked like the tail wagging the dog. But now Greece itself is in dire need of help. Its economy in free-fall, utterly unable to pay its debts, Greece will need far more than the bailouts it has already received. If Greece is to be rescued from the mire, and if Greeks are to be given some hope for the future, a much more substantial part of its debt will sooner or later have to be forgiven. Reforms to make its economy more competitive, to slash its bloated state, and curb corruption and tax evasion are necessary. But in a climate of excessive austerity, without growth, and without hope, they will not resolve Greece’s problems. This is politically difficult, especially for Germany, which will have to foot the lion’s share of the bill. But the continued pretence that Greece will in time be able to reduce its indebtedness just prolongs the agony.

In return for receiving help, other EU members rightly impose conditions on Athens. The country must not return to the days of free-spending and covering up the extent of its indebtedness with false statistics. But what about on the political front? If Greece’s delinquent mismanagement of its economy is no longer to be tolerated, what about its persistent trouble-making in the EU’s relations in the Balkan region? What about Greece’s obligation to good-neighbourliness? Greece is in desperate straits. It should receive the help it needs. But it should not be allowed to continue benefitting from the largess of its fellow EU members while abusing its membership of the union to stymie the crucial efforts to integrate Macedonia and build stability in the Balkans. The next time the EU considers the opening of accession talks with Macedonia, Athens should be told firmly to stop it.

Sadness in Salonika

I was a bit out of spirits when I arrived in Thessaloniki. I had been robbed in Athens the previous day. Foolish of me. Eleni had issued stern warnings about taking good care of my things. But sitting on a rock near the Acropolis, reading a book, I did not pay attention. I didn’t realise anyone was near me. I didn’t hear anyone. But of course, thieves are quiet. My bag was gone: passport; money; cameras; ipod touch. Arriving in Thessaloniki, I was not yet over the trauma. And it was raining; miserable, grey. And the gyro I ate that first evening was a disappointment. They put mustard and ketchup on it! Over the next few days I realised this was normal in Thessaloniki. Back in Athens a few days later, I grabbed some gyro before boarding the ferry for Crete. I asked the waiter not to add mustard and ketchup. He looked puzzled. No, we put tzatziki. With mustard and ketchup is not Greek. In Thessaloniki they add mustard and ketchup, I told him. Ah well, maybe in Thessaloniki, he said, as if anything were possible there, but it is not Greek.

The White Tower, Thessaloniki

I forced myself out into the drizzly morning, more out of stoical determination than inclination. Perhaps I was not in the right frame of mind to give Thessaloniki its due. But actually I was not expecting a lot. I knew today’s Thessaloniki to be a big, modern city, with some ancient remains and a large number of medieval, Byzantine churches. I also knew that a once fine city, a thriving, multi-ethnic metropolis, a rich mosaic of overlapping cultures and multiple languages that had existed only a hundred years ago, was no more. For my arrival coincided with the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the Greek army in Ottoman Salonika during the first Balkan War, in 1912.

Following the city’s incorporation into Greece, the Turks and Bulgarians had gone. And then the Jews, the huge Spanish Jewish population, whose forbears had been expelled from Spain in the 15th century, and that had at one time made up half the population. Those of them who did not leave after the end of Ottoman rule were destroyed in the Nazi holocaust. The departed populations had been replaced by hoards of Greeks expelled from Turkey as part of the population exchange (what a horrible sanitised description of the mass expulsions of populations from their homes) that followed Greece’s Asia Minor disaster after the First World War, its failure to carve out a new Byzantine Empire in Anatolia. Salonika, Selanik to the Turks, Solun to the Bulgarians and other Slavs, now reverted to its ancient name, Thessaloniki, and was a Greek city.

I had read the wonderful memoir by Leon Sciaky of his formative years in a Jewish merchant family, growing up in Salonika. Its title, Farewell to Salonica, not only reflected his own departure from his native city, when he emigrated to America, but a farewell to the city itself, to a civilization, a way of life that had been obliterated, never to return. Salonika had gone the same way as several other great multi-ethnic metropolises on the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea seaboards: Alexandria; Smyrna; Trieste; Odessa; Constantinople, that had not survived the onset of the nation state in the twentieth century, with its intolerance of all that was other, all that did not conform with the homogenising national idea.

Sciaky’s beautiful book evokes a bygone era through the life of a close-knit family. Walks with his grandfather; the little world of the living room where the family would gather in the evenings, sitting on the divans, and where neighbours would visit; the streets around their home, with their tradesmen and beggars; the office of the family business, and the characters, merchants, farmers, Jews, Turks, Bulgarians, who would visit, smoke, drink coffee and while away their time; his days at school, and his contacts with pupils from other ethnic groups; summers in the countryside with the Bulgarian and Turkish peasants so beloved of his grandfather, who bought their grain and took care of their worries.

It is a charming picture, but Sciaky was never naïve about the stresses facing this intricately woven multi-ethnic society, in which different peoples lived alongside one another, rubbed shoulders and greeted each other, but for the most part lived separate lives. His is a deeply personal account, but he was also a shrewd observer of the politics of his region. He was all too aware of the contrary aspirations of Turks, Bulgarians and Greeks for nationhood. And the Jews, who had by and large fared well in the tolerant atmosphere of the Ottoman Empire, for whom Salonika was their home, and who, unlike the Greeks or the Bulgarians, had no neighbouring national homeland. The battle for Salonika and for Macedonia would hugely impinge on their lives, yet the Jews could be hardly more than bystanders to the unfolding events.

It is clear that Sciaky, like his grandfather, loved the Bulgarian and Turkish farmers in Salonika’s hinterland with whom his family did business. He was all too aware of the heavy burden placed on the Bulgarian peasant: ‘The Turkish landowner, whose domain included whole villages, treated him as a conquered slave. He staggered under the load of iniquitous levies and burdensome taxes, and smarted under the insult of enforced labour. Time and again he abandoned his fields, put aside his plough and fled to the mountain fastnesses where he could be free.’ But while excoriating the cruelty of many of the Turkish beys, he wrote with warmth of the kindness of the Turkish peasants, and his appreciation of the Muslim obligation of hospitality towards guests, and the relative tolerance of the Ottoman, Muslim order, in comparison with Christian Europe.

Of the Greeks, Sciaky had less to say. He understood the resentment of the Bulgarian peasant towards his fellow Orthodox believers: ‘Toward the Greeks he nurtured a hatred as implacable as the one he bore towards the Turkish bey, his oppressor. Had not his Christian brothers tried to Hellenize him and his children? Had not the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, under whose spiritual jurisdiction the Turks had placed him, sent him priests to conduct services in his church in a tongue he did not understand? Had they not burned his books and forbidden the teaching of his mother tongue in his own schools?’ Forced assimilation was the Greek policy towards other national groups even before the end of Ottoman rule.

For most of Sciaky’s happy childhood the clouds of doom were gathering over his fragile world. His telling of the multiple bomb attacks in Salonika in 1903 is poignant, seen through the eyes of a little boy. The attacks were carried out by a group of radical young Bulgarians on the fringe of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (VMRO), to which many of the Slavs in Ottoman Macedonia belonged. The young Sciaky was brought face to face with the terrible human consequences of the clash of nations in Macedonia, when, in the aftermath of the attacks, the frantic Bulgarian milkman hammered on their door, begging refuge from the indiscriminate Turkish reprisals against the Bulgarian population.

As a young man, Sciaky witnessed the tragedy of the Balkan Wars at close hand, when he went with his grandfather to visit Kilkish (Kukush), the small Bulgarian town to the north of Salonika where he had spent happy childhood summers. Sciaky’s grandfather knew the peasants of Kilkish and the surrounding area, and was deeply attached to them. Throughout his life he had bought their grain, he had helped them out through years of drought. His father had known their fathers and grandfathers. He felt protective towards them.

In the first Balkan War, in 1912, while the Bulgarians took most of the burden of driving the Ottoman forces out of the Balkans, Greece and Serbia divided up most of the spoils. Salonika was the greatest prize. When the Bulgarian army arrived the day after the Greeks, the Ottoman commander explained that he had only one Salonika, and he had already surrendered it. For several months two armies, Greek and Bulgarian, uneasy allies, co-existed in Salonika, glaring at each other, sometimes fighting each other. When the fraying alliance finally rent apart in 1913, and the Bulgarian army was driven away from Salonika, the Slav peasants fled northwards with them, leaving a denuded countryside, emptied of its inhabitants, many of the Turks having fled the previous year.

News of the fall of Kilkish to the Greek army, the end of the world he had known throughout his life, was a terrible blow to Sciaky’s grandfather. He had to go there, and his grandson went with him. They travelled through a largely deserted countryside, desolation all around. Kilkish itself had been burned.

In 1914, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a report on The Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, written by an International Commission made up of eminent figures from several European countries, as well as Russia and the United States. It was a seminal publication, which sought to establish accountability, and to document the excesses perpetrated on all sides.

In and around Kilkish, the defeat of the Ottomans in 1912 gave free reign to local Bulgarian bands, the comitadjis referred to by Sciaky, some of whose members he had met during an earlier stay in Kilkish. The Carnegie Report describes terrible atrocities against local Muslims, as well as against disbanded Ottoman troops who, having surrendered, were on their way to Turkish held territory. Hundreds of them were reportedly massacred in the Kilkish region. Men, women and children were murdered, some burned alive in their mosques. The band leader held most responsible for the massacres, a certain Donchev, was afterwards sentenced to death by VMRO for his crimes. VMRO, although its adherents were Slav, had called for an autonomous Macedonia for all Macedonians. The report was critical of the Bulgarian military authorities for not initially establishing control in the captured areas, leaving only small garrisons as they marched on to Salonika. But it acknowledged the later efforts of the Bulgarian army to restore order, end the excesses, punish the perpetrators, and gain the trust of local Muslims.

When Kilkish fell to the Greek army the following year, its Bulgarian population fled en-masse, as well as from the surrounding villages. As described in the Carnegie Report, the conquering Greeks set about methodically burning the town, as well as at least 40 Bulgarian villages in the surrounding area. The purpose was clear; this area was now Greek, and the Bulgarians would never be allowed to return. Those Bulgarians who were unable to flee, or who were too slow, were, in the words of the report, subjected to ‘indiscriminate butchery’ by the Greek army. One Greek cavalry unit was described as ‘slaughtering Bulgarian peasants at sight’, sparing neither women nor children. Amid the wanton killing, numerous rapes were also committed, the report noting that ‘the Greek troops gave themselves up openly and generally to a debauch of lust.’ In a Greek baggage train captured by the Bulgarians, letters home by Greek soldiers were discovered, which the commission members were satisfied were genuine. Some of them boasted of the wholesale slaughter, butchery, rape and torture they perpetrated against the Bulgarian population. The report concluded that ‘from Kukush to the Bulgarian frontier the Greek army devastated the villages, violated the women, and slaughtered the noncombatant men.’

When Sciaky and his grandfather arrived a short while later, there was almost no one left. His depiction of a meeting with a fleeing Bulgarian peasant they met on the road, leading a small child on a donkey, an individual example among hundreds of thousands, vividly portrays the horrible human cost of the war: ‘The misery, the look of dread and utter agony in the small blinking eyes of the pock-marked face with the yellow straggly beard were the very embodiment of human fear and despair. No, not human. It was the animal dread of cattle at the slaughterhouse, the wild glassy stare of terror in a cornered animal. It was a look which, once perceived, made one cringe with shame and humiliation, the shame of its having been in a human eye.’

So what of the modern Thessaloniki I had arrived in? Apart from the eradication of its once rich multicultural life, much of the old city was destroyed in a fire in 1917. A modern city rose in its place. Some districts survived, notably Ano Poli (the Upper Town), which rises up the hill, partially enclosed by surviving sections of the city walls, culminating at the Byzantine era fortress, the Heptapyrgion. Wandering through its narrow, stone-paved lanes, its little squares, and its numerous surviving Ottoman-era houses, most of them restored, it is the most charming part of Thessaloniki.

The city has numerous Byzantine churches, most of which survived Ottoman rule as they were converted to mosques. Having reverted to Christianity, many were severely damaged in the 1917 conflagration, but have been restored. The Hagios Demetrios basilica, named after the city’s patron saint, had to be completely rebuilt. Finest of all is Hagia Sofia basilica.

The Rotonda, with Heptapyrgion fortress in the background

The White Tower, the emblem of the city, is perhaps a symbol of sorts of continuity with the Ottoman past. Standing by the seafront, this late-15th century construction once formed part of the city walls, demolished in the 19th century. In that century, it had been known as the Bloody Tower, or the Janissary Tower. In Ottoman times, Salonika had been a centre of the Janissaries, elite troops originally recruited from among the conquered Christian nations of the Balkans. But by the beginning of the 19th century, the once mighty Janissaries had grown slack and become an over-powerful interest group, and a brake on the Empire’s efforts to reform and create a modern, European-style army. In what was known as the ‘Auspicious Incident’, they were bloodily suppressed in 1826, thousands of them being massacred in Salonika. The name ‘White Tower’ originated in 1890, when it was whitewashed by a prisoner in exchange for his freedom. Nowadays, the tower houses a museum of the history of the city.

As well as the restored Byzantine churches, Thessaloniki contains several ancient archaeological sites, including the Roman forum, and the ruins of the palace of the Roman Emperor Galerius, with some well-preserved mosaic floors. Close-by the palace is the Arch built by Galerius to commemorate his victory over the Persians in 297 AD. And a little beyond that is the Rotonda, designed by the Romans as a mausoleum, later used as a church and then as a mosque. Unusually, its restored minaret still stands.

The Bey Hamam

Surviving Ottoman-era buildings have not been as well cared for as the Byzantine churches. A century after the end of Ottoman rule, many of them are in a poor state of dilapidation and neglect. But that may now be changing, and restoration efforts might indicate that the city is coming to terms with a period in its history it had preferred to forget. Among the best preserved is the 15th century Bey Haman, the first Ottoman bath house built in the city. It was in use until the 1960s. Nearby is a many-domed covered market, the Bezesten. In Ottoman times, valuable goods were sold there, including fabrics and precious stones. Nowadays it houses jewellery shops. Across the road, the 15th century Hamza Bey mosque was one of the few purpose-built mosques in Salonika, most of them having been converted churches. When I visited, it was covered in scaffolding, undergoing restoration. A much better preserved mosque is the Alaja Imaret, which takes its name from the poorhouse that stood next door. Nowadays, it houses exhibitions, and when I was there it had an exhibition of artworks commemorating the Greek conquest of the city a hundred years earlier.

The centenary of the conquest was much in evidence during my stay. Greek flags festooned buildings throughout the city. The Greek army accepted the Ottoman surrender on 26 October, the feast day of St. Demetrios, the day of my arrival. Crowds queued patiently outside the basilica of the city’s patron, waiting their turn to kiss a holy icon, Greek flags hanging inside and out.

The exhibition in the Alaja Imaret was a feast of jingoism. Paintings showed the Ottoman surrender watched over approvingly by saints and angels, and by the Virgin Mary, with the infant Jesus on her knee. One showed a map of Greece, with different colours marking its gradual expansion, stage by stage from independence in 1832, with a saint overlooking. The paintings had no artistic merit, just crude, gaudy nationalistic pastiches. The placing of such an exhibition beneath the graceful dome of a 500-year old mosque appeared staggeringly inappropriate. I could not share the celebration of the city’s conquest, could not stomach this portrayal of a divinely ordained victory. As with so many celebrated military victories, the horrors described by the Carnegie report, and the terrible loss depicted by Sciaky could not but take the lustre off any notion of glory in the conquest of Salonika and the dismemberment of Macedonia.

One very well preserved Ottoman-era building is the house once lived in by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, father of modern Turkey, and a native of Salonika. At the beginning of the 20th century Salonika spawned the nationalist Young Turk movement among the Ottoman military. The house is managed by the next-door Turkish consulate. Normally, it is possible to visit the house, which contains a small museum. But when I was there the building was being renovated. Surrounding the consulate and house is a high, tightly-meshed steel wall, testimony to the still fraught relations between the neighbouring countries. During my few days in the city, each time I walked past there was a bus load of Greek police outside. Whether this was a precaution during the centenary of the conquest of the city, or whether such a level of security was normal, I did not know.

The Galerius Arch

Overall, I was depressed by Thessaloniki. Probably my bad mood after the robbery in Athens had not helped. Despite all the ancient and Byzantine monuments, the surfeit of UNESCO World Heritage sites, I found the city ugly. The destruction of the 1917 fire could not be helped, but what had risen in its place seemed unworthy. And not all the destruction can be blamed on the fire. Next to the Galerius Arch is a board with pictures showing it at different points in the city’s history. A lithograph from 1831 shows the arch passing over a street of typical Ottoman-style low-level buildings. Photographs from between the two world wars and from the 1950s show a still attractive scene, of a street with old, low buildings. The text beneath one of them describes how, in the 1950s and ’60s, the old buildings around the arch were demolished, to make way for the ‘regeneration’ of the district. Now, like most of the old monuments in the city centre, the arch sticks out like a forlorn memory of better days among the nondescript 1960s blocks that crowd around it. Regeneration? The city has been devastated by the ill-judged town-planning of the post-World war II era. Thessaloniki was the European City of Culture in 1997. Surely a cruel joke.

Chalkida, a once fine city

Chalkida has little to commend it to foreign visitors. Within easy day-trip distance from Athens, it is a popular weekend destination for Athenians out for a fresh fish meal by the sea. But why would I want to go there? Eleni, whose flat I was staying in in Athens, seemed surprised. It is a modern, rather non-descript town, not very attractive. Yet in the Middle Ages, this town, known as Negropont, was perhaps the most important overseas possession of the Venetian Republic. It was the republic’s key naval base in the eastern Mediterranean, from which it controlled the Aegean, a vital outpost defending Venice’s crucial trading links with the east.

Venetian Negropont

Situated at the end of a spur of the Athens-Salonika railway line, a sign on the dilapidated train station gives the ancient name of the town, Chalcis. Chalkida is the main town of Euboea, a long, narrow island that stretches along the eastern coast of Greece. At Chalkida, the gap between the island and the mainland, the Euripos Strait, is less than 50 metres, and is spanned by a short bridge. Chalkida has long been famous for the crazy currents that race, swirling through the gap, changing direction every few hours. According to legend, Aristotle, who died in Chalcis, threw himself into the water, exasperated by his inability to explain the phenomenon. A tourist information sign by the bridge gives a technical explanation, which I struggled to understand.

Venice acquired Negropont in the aftermath of the sacking of Constantinople by a Venetian-Frankish force in 1204, along with other choice pieces picked off the body of the prostrate Byzantine Empire. Under Venetian rule, it was a heavily fortified town, surrounded by strong walls. But in 1470 the town fell to the Ottoman Empire. It was a huge blow to the republic, one of its greatest disasters in the long, steady expansion of the Ottomans into Europe.

The Sultan, Mehmet II, conqueror of Constantinople 17 years earlier, was one of the most energetic of all Ottoman rulers. He was noted for his meticulous planning and his attention to logistics. Having amassed a huge fleet and army, he ignored the bridge to the town, and built a pontoon bridge a little to the north. The siege began, Mehmet’s heavy cannon battering the walls. It soon became clear that a breach was imminent. Yet the Captain-General of the Venetian fleet, Nicolo Canal, kept his galleys out of the way. Finally, urged on by his captains, he ordered the fleet to sail down towards the pontoon bridge. Wind and tide were in his galleys’ favour, and they would surely have rammed through it. But Canal lost his nerve and ordered a withdrawal. The watching defenders saw that they had been abandoned. The following day, 12 July, the wall was breached and the Ottoman forces burst in. Still the defenders did not give in, raining roof tiles and boiling water on to the attackers. Their revenge was savage, almost the entire population being massacred. The governor, Paolo Enrizzo, surrendered on condition that he be allowed to keep his head. The Sultan obliged him by having his body severed at the waist.

On his return to Venice, Canal was arrested, tried and exiled. Many considered he was lucky not to be executed. He had had a long, illustrious career, mainly as a diplomat. He was not a military man. In any case, in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire, rampant and at the height of its power, seriously set out to seize an objective, no European power could stand against it. Mehmet the Conqueror had set his sights on Negropont, and he was not going to be denied.

The fall of Negropont, not long after the capture of Constantinople, left the whole of the eastern Mediterranean vulnerable to the expanding Ottomans. It was a catastrophe not only for Venice, but with wider significance for Europe. Gioachino Rossini wrote an opera based on the siege, Maometto II, first performed in Naples in 1820. Two years later, a revised version was performed in Venice, this time with a happy ending. In 1826, a new version was performed in Paris, no longer set in the battle for Negropont, but in the struggle between Ottomans and Greeks, under the name Le Siège de Corinthe. This was a shrewd move, nodding to the philhellenism current in Paris during the Greek independence war. It was also a homage to Lord Byron, a romantic hero for poets, artists and composers around Europe following his death in Greece in 1824. Byron had written a poem entitled The Siege of Corinth. The fall of Negropont had dropped out of European consciousness, superseded by later wars.

Chalkida became part of newly independent Greece in 1832. By the end of the 19th century, most of the old town of the Venetians and the Ottomans, as well as the surrounding walls, had been torn down. Very little is left today. In what is still known as the kastro district, despite the absence of the old walls, is the basilica of Ayia Paraskevi. Following the return of the Greek emperors to Constantinople, half a century after its sacking by the Crusaders, the seat of the Latin Patriarch in the east had been moved to Negropont. The western style is evident in the architecture of the basilica, a strange hotch-potch of Byzantine and Gothic. The building survived Ottoman rule because, like so many Byzantine churches, it was converted into a mosque under their rule. Facing the basilica is the former residence of the Venetian bailo, the governor, in a very dilapidated state, but in the process of restoration when I visited. I looked in the front entrance. Workmen were sitting around, having a break. But amongst the ruin, the high ceiling and arches running through the hallway attest to the one-time opulence of the building. Close-by the basilica is a closed 15th century mosque, without its minaret, as usual. In front of it is an ornate Ottoman fountain, which would be beautiful were it not covered in graffiti, typical of the degree of interest and respect for the Ottoman-era heritage in Greece.

On the hill on the mainland side of the bridge, across from the kastro, is the 17th century Karababa fortress, built by the Ottomans. As I walked in the gateway, a large pack of feral dogs resting under the trees raised their heads. Some of them began to bark and growl. As I stood their uncertainly, a couple of large beasts started to walk purposefully, menacingly towards me. I beat a retreat. But I wanted to look round the fort. I looked around for weapons. Armed with a heavy stick and a few rocks, I walked gingerly back in, but this time I made my way quickly away from the dogs, behind some buildings and a make-shift stage, presumably left over from some kind of performance. Out of sight of the dogs, I found a way up on to the ledge that went around the inside of the wall of the fort. Safe now, I walked along to the far end of the castle.

There, among the arches of the tower at the end of the fort, is a marvellous museum. It contains exhibits from the Byzantine, through the Venetian and Ottoman periods, ending with the early period of Greek independence (another museum in the town covers the ancient period). I was met at the entrance by a huge man, looking very much like a hairy biker type. He gave me a full tour. The exhibits were organised by period, with explanations in English as well as Greek. Belying his appearance, my guide quickly proved to be highly knowledgeable, as he explained to me the development of Byzantine architecture as revealed in the exhibits.

Most fascinating of all to me, in the Venetian section were several carvings of the Lion of Saint Mark, symbol of Venice. They had once been fixed into the town walls. The Ottomans, as elsewhere, were untroubled by the presence of the symbols of the former rulers, and had left them in place. Later, they had been saved when the walls were demolished. Some of them were very large, much larger than I had seen in most Venetian cities, indicating the importance of Negropont. But particularly extraordinary were two examples of lions that were unmistakably of Chinese design. Of course, Venice had trading links with China, strung out along the Silk Road. My guide told me that Marco Polo was believed to have visited Negropont. But I had never before seen such clear evidence of Chinese influence on Venice, and, no less, on the symbol of the republic.

Among the exhibits are engravings of Chalkida during the Venetian and Ottoman periods. Both show a fine city, surrounded by walls, the first with church steeples, the second with minarets. I asked my guide when it had happened, who had pulled down the walls and the fine buildings, was it the Turks? No, it was the Greeks! What had possessed them? The town today, a mixture of modern blocks and dilapidated wrecks, makes me almost despair. Not for the first, nor the last time in Greece, I wondered what moved people to trash so many fine old towns? When I mentioned it to Eleni, in Athens, she responded by recalling an interview she had seen with a leading politician from Venice. Asked what Venetians would do if their city was finally engulfed by the sea, he replied that they would build something else. For Eleni, this was a good response; the new replaces the old. Yet no one could persuade me that the travesty of modern Chalkida is an improvement on what came before, any more than I could look on the loss of Venice with equanimity.

The rich Venetian and Ottoman heritage that graces other parts of the Balkans has been effaced in much of Greece, its remnants left to decay. The relics of the ancient and Byzantine worlds are assiduously preserved, but little value appears to have been attached to the Venetian and Ottoman inheritance. Maybe the excellent museum in Chalkida is evidence of a change of heart. Certainly my guide was keen to preserve all of his town’s heritage, through all its stages. He had given me an outstanding tour, and was a font of expertise. As I left, I asked him whether he was an archaeologist by profession. ‘Oh no’, he chuckled, ‘I am just the security guard.’