by Capricorner.
The proud and defiant Greeks have spent centuries under the Turkish occupation, because it was not really bad. The ruling classes in Turkish occupied Greece had established their own accommodating relationship with their Turkish Masters, who even turned to Greek specialists of sorts, from medical doctors to bankers, when they needed their expert services, with some even serving in the court of the Turkish Sultans. The other Greeks ? In those days there were but two classes of Greeks. The Ruling and the subservient. Very comfortable for the Ruling classes, who saw to it that the Lower class stayed “low” in everything, primarily in education, but, the Greek Orthodox Church did not play ball with the privileged Greeks. The priests, who had received their education in monasteries and in theological institutions, created ad hoc schooling groups and schooled Greek children in hiding, later known as the secret schools. According to History it was the Turks who wanted to tone down/erase the ethnic consciousness of the Greek people by keeping them uneducated and ignorant of the tenets of their nationality and language. History was recorded by Greeks after Greece won its independence, so it had to be presented as the bad Turks who did not want the Greeks schooled (not the Greeks who wanted to keep the other Greeks in intellectual darkness) and thus easy to handle. The Greeks in their mentality have not progressed much since their independence from Turkey. Their political concepts have made little progress. They created a state which is in the image of the Turkish empire, under whose authority they have lived for centuries, an authoritative powerful state. As such it had to have a ruler. The “Sultan” was a king, later a Constitutional monarch. Republics of sorts were tried but did not flourish.
The Horizon of the Greeks through the centuries of Turkish occupation was limited. The place where they lived was somebody’ fiefdom. To the subservient Greeks he, his family , were the leaders. With the exception of mariners people spent their lives by and large were they were born and raised and their livelihood was there. Their idea of “world” was their impressions from narratives and for those who were literate the few books available to them. Subsequently their interests were confined to their locality, to were they were struggling to survive and their “guides” were the local gentry. When Greece became an independent state in the minds of the Greeks the structure of the state and their political set up was an extension of what they were conditioned to. The local leaders who “guided” them were the local politicos. They followed them. The local politicos shaped their thinking. Example : The Peloponnesians were unconditionally pro-monarchy. The Cretans unconditionally anti-monarchy. Different parts of Greece represented on the national level by the local politicos meant that these politicos had to agree, to collaborate, to think nationally. The tumultuous history of Greece, since its independence illustrates the fact that a unified approach to the country’s challenges was not always possible. Nonetheless the country gradually came to have a national conscience, but local politics and their “operators” were paramount.
After 1974 when Greece was rid of the army junta (a seven years parenthesis to its history) modern Greece began taking a political shape and the 1985 Constitution exemplified the conditioning of the Greek mind to subjugation, adherence to familiar concepts. The head of the party that wins the elections is the absolute monarch of his party, his Government. The heads of the Judiciary are Government appointees. The doctrine of separation of powers ? What’s that? The leadership of the armed forces is selected by the minister of defense with the approval of the Prime Minister. The Governor of the Bank of Greece is selected by the finance minister with the approval of the PM. In short he rules over the Legislative, the Executive, the Judiciary, an absolute monarch with constitutional restraints evolving from contemporary political doctrines. In effect he is a Constitutional Monarch. Constitutional Monarchies function through institutions. So does the Greek Constitutional Monarchy. The Political Parties have pervaded the entire existence of Greek life. They provide the function heads of the Greek political, economic, educational and “everything” systems. They are the Gate keepers for entry into every system. Their substance and structure are the Unions and the Party organizations which in reality are the breeding grounds for the political professionals, the people who make politics their profession, a lucrative profession since theirs is the party and the parties are omnipotent and omnipresent. The people of Greece? They still turn to their local leaders for guidance, to which “service” is now an additive. They keep on voting for them. Their relationship with the local politicos is unswerving. The chieftains of the Turkish occupation era are now the local politicos. They are in good terms with the “rulers”, the all pervading political parties which have replaced the Turkish “lords” so they are followed single mindedly. The Sultan is the Prime Minister.
Everything the way it has always been. To who we trust is Persons not institutions. This is the Greek motto.
