Dr. Ozan Örmeci and Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis at Bilkent University on 9 March 2012
1 - Kitsikis's interview to Turkish Media
Interview originally
published here
UPA: Professor
Kitsikis, thanks for accepting our interview proposal. Although you are a
celebrity in the academic world, could you please tell us about your life and
your academic career for our young readers?
Prof. Dimitri
Kitsikis: I was born in Athens. My grand father, Dimitri was born in Lesbos
(Midilli) in 1850 and I liked to say with pride that from Lesbos came also two
celebrities, Sapho and Hayreddin Barbaros. Having later published many books of
poetry and my poems being part of a Greek anthology of Lesbian poets from Antiquity
to the present day, I was proud to say that the greatest female poet of
Antiquity, Sapho, also came from Lesbos. The second Lesbian celebrity was
Hayreddin Barbaros, a Greek janissary, who build up the Ottoman fleet. My
mother was born in Herakleion, Crete (Girit) and her Cretan family settled in
Cairo, Egypt, as successful businessmen. Her mother, in Cairo, originated from
Trieste, the main harbor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The parents of this
grand mother of mine, were Greco-Italians. Her father had a title of nobility,
being called count Antonio and her mother, being French, had 16 children: 8 of them were
baptized Christian Catholics, while the other 8 (including Corinna, my mother’s
mother) were baptized Christian Orthodox. So, my mother was a Cretan Christian
Orthodox. When her father died in 1915, back in Crete from Egypt, in the Cretan
city of Herakleion, her mother, Corinna, who was 30 years younger than her
deceased husband, decided to live with the family’s lawyer, Aristides
Stergiadis, from Herakleion, who thus became my mother’s step father.
Stergiadis was the best friend of the Cretan Eleutherios Venizelos. Both of
them were freemasons. In 1919, Venizelos, as prime minister, sent Stergiadis to
Izmir conquered by the Greeks. Stergiadis was specialized in Ottoman law and in
Crete, was the lawyer of prominent Cretan Turks. He was also considered
outrageously pro-Turk and this is why Venizelos chose him to be in Izmir
Greece’s high commissioner or, as he became known, the “dictator of Ionia”.
Stergiadis was hated by the Greeks of Izmir because he systematically defended
the Turkish population against the brutalities of the local Greeks. When in
1922, the Greeks lost, he took refuge in France, in the southern city of Nice,
where he died, never going back to Greece, where all Greeks accused him of high
treason in favor of the Turks. My mother, who was 12 in 1919, was living at the
time with him in his headquarters in occupied Izmir. His tragic fate influenced
me a lot and helped me to better understand the Turkish people.
My father, Nikos, was
a Liberal Senator of the Venizelist party in the interwar period, a professor
and later rector of the Athens famous Polytechnic School. During the war as
rector of the School, he organized the EAM Greek resistance among his students
against the German occupation. Under the influence of my mother, Beata, who
became an officer in the ELAS Communist guerilla army in 1944, he also joined
the KKE, the Communist Party of Greece. After he was ousted from the
Polytechnic School by the anticommunist government in 1946 and after my mother
was arrested and condemned to death by a military tribunal in 1947, I was sent,
at the age of 12 in France, in a boarding school by Octave Merlier, the head of
the French State Institute of Greece. Thus, I became a French citizen and later
married my first wife, a British girl, daughter of a British chief justice in
the British colonies, from which I had my two first children from a total of
four.
In Paris, in 1950, at
the age of fifteen, sleeping in the school’s dormitory, I saw a very strange
dream: An angel appeared to me who said: “Dimitri, you have to reunite the two
sides of the Aegean Sea”! When I woke up I decided to consecrate all my life to
the one and only aim: The formation of a Greek-Turkish Confederation which
would revive the Ottoman Empire, the most perfect and just empire in the whole
history of humanity.
In 1968, teaching at
the Sorbonne, I actively took part in the Parisian May revolt as a Maoist. I
had been specializing in Chinese History and had visited China. I had
personally met with the Chinese communist leaders. The result was that I was
expelled from all French Universities. I was then invited by the University of
Ottawa as a regular professor and this is how I settled in the Canadian capital
in 1970.
UPA: Professor
Kitsikis, you are known in Turkey with your theory about the “Intermediate
Region (Arabölge)” and your book “Turkish-Greek Empire”. Could you please tell
us about the “Arabölge”, your outstanding contribution since the 1960s to the
science of geopolitics?
Prof. Dimitri
Kitsikis: The Intermediate Region (Arabölge) has always been one of
the two civilizations of Eurasia, a civilization crowned by Hellenism (which
has little to do with the Greek nation-state) comprising as many cultures as
the peoples included in it. The other civilization has always been the East,
that is the world of China, comprising also very many cultures. In the 15th century
A.D. as a moon detached from Earth, what we call today the West, was detached
from the Intermediate Region and formed the so-called Western civilization, a
distorted bad copy of the Intermediate Region. Because of its deformed nature
the West is doomed to disappear.
The East is
principally Buddhist and Hinduist, while the Intermediate Region is principally
Christian Orthodox and Muslim. The West was detached from the Intermediate
Region starting with Saint Augustine in the 4th century who
unintentionally misunderstood certain theological texts not knowing Greek,
continuing with Charlemagne in the 9th century who wanted to
become Roman Emperor and in order to distinguish himself from the sole Roman
Emperor reigning in Constantinople introduced the “filioque” in the
Christian Credo, pursuing with Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century
who blended Greek philosophy with Christian theology, to finally arrive at the
Italian 15th century and the triumph of Greek paganism which
split in two human knowledge, putting at one end theology and at the other
science. Secularization followed in the 18th century with
modernism which culminated in the radical reforms of Vatican II in the 20th century.
Beside these developments in the Roman Catholic Church appeared in the 16th century
Protestantism which went so far as to change even basics of Christian
faith and promote the virtues of money and capitalism. So, a third civilization
was created in the West in the last 500 years, pretending to base itself on
Hellenism, distinguishing itself by the religions of Roman Catholicism and
Protestantism.
The three regions of
civilization are not separated by a frontier but by borderlands, like the
marches in the Middle Ages where civilization was gradually passing from one
statehood to another. For instance, Sicily, because of its purely Greek past
could well be incorporated in the Intermediate Region. Same with Northern India
which could be incorporated in the Intermediate Region because of a Greek past
spanning over 1200 years, from 600 BC to 600 AD. But Chinese Turkistan is
definitely part of the Intermediate Region. So, states are often built over two
regions of civilization, like originally Yugoslavia or Pakistan. My position is
that if so, the said states risk to lose a chunk of the territory that overlaps
another region of civilization. This happened with Yugoslavia (which lost
Croatia and Slovenia) and Pakistan (which lost Bangladesh) and this could well
happen with Xinjiang which could be lost for China, as definitely belonging to
the Intermediate Region.
Because religion is
the most important element of identification of a civilization, when a country
is mainly Roman Catholic or even Uniate, then it belongs to the West. Unionism
of the Uniates, with time, was Catholicized and was lost for Orthodoxy. So
Unionists are today basically Roman Catholic. Poland is a tragic example of a
state sandwiched even today basically between the Germanic entity which belongs
to the West and the Russian entity which belongs to the Intermediate Region.
Hence it has many partitions and disappearances. But because Poland chose to
become Roman Catholic, it was used for the last one thousand years by the West
and the Vatican as a spear thrown in the heart of Orthodox Russia. Poland has
always been a battleground between the West and the Intermediate Region. The
problem of Poland will be definitely solved only when and if the Vatican
collapses and the whole of Christianity are brought back to Orthodoxy.
Roman Catholicism made
Hungary a staunch enemy of the Ottoman Empire and the Orthodox World. Hungary
is definitely a Western country which had belonged to the very Western
Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
Hellenoturkism, as
defined in my many books, is a philosophy and an ideology that exists and binds
together the Greek and the Turkish people since the 11th century.
The aim of Hellenoturkism has always been to put up a Greek-Turkish political
entity. The reality of Hellenoturkism is founded on the Greek-Turkish
civilizational phenomenon. In order to defend this common civilization it is
necessary to form a political ensemble. This political ensemble was the Ottoman
Empire which has to be reinstated today in the form of a Greek-Turkish
Confederation. The ideological father of Hellenoturkism was the Greek
philosopher George of Trebizond (Georgios ho Trapezountios-Trabzonlu,
1395-1484). I have always claimed that the best Greeks were the Turks.
There are no political
contradictions between the two countries. Greece is basically responsible for
spreading at the beginning of the 19th century the Western
ideology of nationalism which like a poisonous drug spread all over the Balkans
and then in Asia Minor, the Middle East and Africa and put to death the Ottoman
Empire. Nationalism was used by the imperialist West to colonize the Ottoman
Empire. The last victim of nationalism was the Turkish people who got the
disease from the Greeks, particularly when they invaded Turkey in 1919 to serve
the imperialist interests of the West.
There is as much a
Greek imperial tradition than a Turkish imperial tradition. I titled one of my
books in Turkish: Turkish-Greek Empire to characterize the
Ottoman Empire. The Greek nation-state that appeared after the revolt of 1821
has been from the start a failed state, that has little to do with Hellenism
which is the common heritage of the whole planet.
Cyprus has a Greek and
a Turkish population. They should form a Greek-Turkish Cypriot Confederation
that would become a model for the Greek-Turkish Confederation between Athens
and Ankara. But for such a thing to happen, nationalism has to be banned from
the picture. In both Greece and Turkey, as well as in Cyprus most businessmen
and politicians have already overcome nationalism. Unfortunately nationalism is
still a boomerang in the hands of Western imperialism which uses it to divide
and rule. The Annan Plan could have been a solution. Unfortunately it was
sabotaged by the then nationalist Greek President Tassos Papadopoulos up to his
death in 2008.
Ideally, the
Confederation should be formed on an Alevi-Christian Orthodox basis. Erdoğan’s
present regime is based on the Sufi principles of Fethullah Gülen, with whom I
have collaborated for many years now. Sufism is not Orthodox Sunnism. It has
always supported -like Bektashism-Alevism- a stand of great tolerance. In my
opinion, the sufism of Gülen and the sufism of Bektashism can happily
collaborate. I do not think that Erdoğan’s Turkey wants to dominate the Muslim
world. It wants to recreate the Ottoman Empire in which the Alawis of Syria and
the Arab countries should be welcomed as in the past.
Syria is ruled by an
Alawi minority that has many common religious ties with the Turkish Alevis.
Furthermore, the project of a Greek-Turkish Confederation comprises peripheral
states. In the West, Albania and Macedonia of Skopje. In the East, Armenia and
Greater Kurdistan. In the South, Israel. In order to link territorially Israel
to the Confederation, Syria should be part of it and, preferably, ruled by the
religiously tolerant Alawis. There is an expansionist temptation on the part of
the Turkish State to incorporate part of Northern Syria to the Turkish province
of Hatay, also populated by Alevis-Alawis, that belonged to Syria and was
detached in favor of Turkey, in 1938. The south of Syria could be annexed by
Israel or both Turkey and Israel could exercise a kind of double protectorate
over the whole of Syria. Nevertheless, this expansionist temptation is very
dangerous and could become a boomerang for Turkey. So let’s hope it will not be
realized.
UPA: Professor
Kitsikis, you recently attended an international conference on the “Arab
Spring” in Bilkent University. During the conference, you talked about your
reservations and criticism towards the process. How do you assess the so-called
Arab Spring? Will this process lead to a more stable and democratized Middle
East?
Prof. Dimitri
Kitsikis: The Intermediate Region, south of Russia, has become the center of
the world. The Anglo-Saxon thalassocracy, represented today by the United
States, economically is a wounded power but still a formidable military
machine. Washington’s capitalism is obliged to live in a permanent war that it
started formally on March 24, 1999, when NATO bombarded Yugoslavia and in the
words of Bush Jr. will last for a generation. Washington has prepared in
advance a road map of this planetarian war that will end with the US-China
total war. The first stages of this war of conquest that have already been
accomplished are Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Washington has
systematically sacrificed its former allies: Milosevic, Bin Laden, Saddam and
Kaddafi in order to replace them by conservative Islamists. The reason is that
while secularists may play again the game of neutralism, Islamists are staunch
anticommunists, supporters of capitalism, contrary to Christians who have been,
in South Americain particular, a pain in the neck for capitalism, with their
promotion of the Theology of Liberation. The Americans have systematically
toppled all the secularists, former allies of Washington and relied on the
Islamists of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The present threats against
Syria and Iran are in the logic of American world domination, as next steps in
the planetarian war in progress. The aim of America in the Middle East is to
have total control of the region for two reasons. First, in order that no one
else would have a say in the region. That is, to stop the expansion of Russia
to the south, the expansion of China to the West and the expansion of the
European Union to the East. Second, in order to totally control the two
essential sources of energy: oil and water, for themselves, but also to prevent
the other great powers to exploit them. The so-called Arab Spring Revolts
follow the logic of spreading American presence in the Middle East and have
nothing to do with the will of the people. They are an instrument in the total
subjugation of the Intermediate Region by the USA in their pursuit of the
planetarian war ending with the US-China total war.
My doctoral thesis
submitted to the Sorbonne, in Paris, and published by the Presses
Universitaires de France, in 1963, 540 pages, bore the title, Propaganda
and Pressure Groups in International Politics. Now, I am amazed since
the time I finished my thesis, at the extraordinary progress of American
propaganda and psychological warfare. The USA have used since the Helsinki
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1973-1975) all means of fake
information through the Media and the Human Rights campaigns to provoke street
uprisings baptized colored or spring revolutions, using armies of mercenaries
to provoque civil wars, so much that half of the work of destabilization of
regimes is done not through armaments but through propaganda. Washington has
used religion, Catholicism in Poland and Islam in Afghanistan to overthrow the
Soviet Union. It used the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, e-mails, blogs to create
unrest, often with great success. It used monetary destabilization to attack
the euro and ruin the progress of the European Union. Anyone that has dared to
question the supremacy of the American dollar, be it Japan in the past or the
European Union today has been badly hit by them. The Empire before dying will
commit suicide that will take with it in the grave hundreds of millions of
lives all over the planet, because America is struck by the vision of
Armageddon.
UPA: Professor
Kitsikis, two elections were held in Greece, in May and June 2012. How do you
see Greece’s future in terms of relations with European Union and relations
with Turkey?
Prof. Dimitri
Kitsikis: I think that Turkey was very lucky not to have been accepted in the
European Union, otherwise it would have had the fate of Greece. Greece’s
industry, agriculture and finance were totally ruined by their entrance into
the prison of the peoples, under German dominance, that represent the European
Union, a repetition of the European Holy Alliance of 1815-1823. Greece’s
interest is to abandon the European Union and the euro and go back to its national
currency, under the umbrella of the American dollar. Such an outcome will allow
the Greek-Turkish rapprochement of both economies and their political union.
Later on, a common Greek-Turkish currency could be set up, replacing both the
drachma and the Turkish lira. The present political trend in Greece goes
towards such a future development. Nevertheless, one has to be very careful to
avoid provocations from both sides that could be explolited by the enemies of a
Greek-Turkish Confederation and plunge the region into a Greek-Turkish
war.
UPA: Professor you
worked in the early 1990s as an adviser to the former President of the Republic
of Turkey Turgut Özal. Could you tell us about Özal’s personality and your
relations? How do you see the latest discussions about the death of Özal?
Prof. Dimitri
Kitsikis: I consider Özal as the most important leader the Republic of Turkey
has had since Atatürk. In 1988, Özal was the author of a book in French,
published in France by the famous Plon Publishing House, under the title La
Turquie en Europe, with the help of Ambassador Gündüz Aktan. The first
half of the book was based entirely on the works of Halikarnas Balıkçısı and
the second half was based entirely on my works. At the time I did not know Özal
but my friend Kaya Toperi, the then ambassador of Turkey to Ottawa told me that
Özal admired me and that he considered me his spiritual father. After this
publication, Özal invited me to Ankara where I became his collaborator and best
friend. Alevism tight us closely together. His entourage was very critical that
he had chosen to have at his side, as President of the Turkish Republic in
Çankaya, a Greek and a socialist. This, as well as the Kurdish problem that he
tried to solve, cost him his life. I was persuaded, already at the time of his
death, in 1993, that he was poisoned by the military establishment.
UPA: Professor could
you please name some academicians, journalists and politicians that you follow
closely and give importance to their views?
Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis:
İlber Ortaylı.
UPA: Professor
Kitsikis thanks for your sincere answers and friendly look to our country.
Interview: Dr. Ozan ÖRMECİ
