page_title: Hellenoturkism
section_title: From Empire to Confederation
hierarchical_section_title: Hellenoturkism / From Empire to Confederation
caption_attribution_description: English: 克兹科斯教授于1990年在土耳其共和国总统办公室
context_page_description: Hellenoturkism is a political concept that encompasses two things: a) "a fact of civilization i.e. the co-habitation and interdependence, since the 11th century A.D., of the Greek and Turkish peoples and cultures"; and b) "a political ideology based on the above civilizational phenomenon, which aims at establishing a Greek-Turkish political ensemble".
context_section_description: According to Dimitri Kitsikis, from the time of the Persian Empire and Alexander the Great, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century A.D., the Intermediate Region has been covered by an ecumenical empire that had common civilizational characteristics, despite the fact that it passed into the hands successively of the Persians, to the Greeks, to the Romans, to the Byzantines and, finally, to the Ottomans. This central civilization of the Intermediate Region, existing since the time of Cyrus the Great, bore the characteristics, since the 11th century A.D. and for the last thousand years, of Greek and Turkish cultures. The Ecumenicity of the Empire was Hellenoturkism.
  In the 15th century, a Greek philosopher, George of Trebizond, 1395-1484 (the date of his death varies from 1472 to 1486 depending on the sources), who aimed at synthesizing Turkish Islam in the form of Bektashism and Christianity in the form of Greek Orthodoxy, is considered by supporters of Hellenoturkism as the founder of their ideology. He addressed the new ruler of the Empire, Mehmed the Conqueror, in a letter of 1466, as the legal emperor of the Romans and of the whole Universe and also as the common emperor of both Romans and Turks.
  In the 20th century, the ideology of Hellenoturkism was revived by the historian Dimitri Kitsikis who since 1966, in his numerous books, articles and conference papers, as well as with his political activity in both Greece and Turkey, as adviser of Greek President Konstantinos Karamanlis the Elder and Turkish President Turgut Özal, has striven to establish the basis of a Turkish-Greek Confederation.
  According to endorsers, a bilingual "Greek Turkish Confederation" (East Mediterranean Confederation) between Greece, Turkey and Cyprus (with national capitals in Athens, Ankara and Nicosia, and Confederation parliament in Istanbul) would (to an extent) be a reincarnation of the Byzantine/Ottoman Empires; thus filling the political, cultural and economic vacuum that's left behind by the absence of these two historic superpowers in the East Mediterranean region. It would have the largest economy and military in the area covering the Balkans, the Middle East, the East Mediterranean, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and become one of the key global great powers due to its geographic location. During the 2010-2015 Greek financial crisis, the Greek-Turkish Confederation idea was brought back with renewed insistence in Turkey as well as in Greece
caption: Dimitri Kitsikis at his office inside the Çankaya Köşkü Presidential Mansion in Ankara, Turkey, 1990, when he was an adviser to Turkish President Turgut Özal.
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