Amir’s Reviews > State-Nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Turkey: Orthodoxand Muslims, 1830-1945 > Status Update

"The Greek authorities did not abolish Muslim religious schools as neighboring Turkey did. This is because the Greek state was obliged by international treaties and, at the same time, wanted to preserve the religious character of its Muslims with the view
that preservation of Islamic religiosity could curb the penetration of secular
nationalism emanating from neighboring Albania and Turkey."

"For example, the Greek
census of 1928 records the existence of 72 Spanish-speaking, 16 Armenian-
speaking, 2 Macedonian-speaking and 3 Vlach-speaking Muslims,4 while the
census of 1951 records 32 Kirkasian Muslims in the district of Evros."

"...when Ankara decided to adopt the Swiss Civil Code... Religious leaders, both Muslim and non-Muslim, were not supportive of the idea. Especially in the case of the minorities, the new Civil Code contradicted article 42 of the Lausanne Treaty that clearly stipulated that issues related to family law or personal status would be settled in accordance with the customs of the minorities.

For example, the Bulgarian-speaking Patriarchists were considered as Rums by the Ottoman authorities and by the Patriarchate, as Greeks by the supporters of Greek nationalism, but as Bulgarians by Bulgarian nationalists. The Greco-Bulgarian national conflict in Macedonia and southern Thrace in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century made use, among other elements, of the confusion between millets and nations.

In general, it could be
argued that by the end of the Tanzimat period the Ottoman Empire no longer
represented a multi-religious, but rather a multi-ethnic state.

"The content and aims of this education were not determined in Istanbul,
but in Athens. The liberation and incorporation of the outside Greeks into a
greater Greek state would form the basis of an ambitious political plan, the
Megali Idea (Μεγάλη Ιδέα, Great Idea)."

"Therefore, the Bulgarians would eventually demand the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian church congruent with the language of the Bulgarian ethnoreligious community.
Through the creation of their own separate millet they would be able to
nationalize the traditional religious identity of the Slav-speaking Orthodox
Christians."