The selection of (world) heritage is the selection of history; it is where people come from and what they are. Although it is a highly political matter, the outcome of this process is supposed to be a reflection of the history of all the Greeks. The way in which this is chosen and what is in the first place called heritage; what is preserved and what is listed (but also what is erased and denied for listing) is therefore a very important issue. Especially in Greece, which is seen as the foundation of European civilization, this selection is crucial, for it determines what the past, present and future of the Greeks looks like. Since not all history can be turned into heritage, decisions that have been made throughout the years about what histories to preserve and what histories –and therefore memories– to erase and how and by who these decisions and selections have been made will shed light upon the way Greece has been portraying and perceiving itself as a nation.

In Murat Çizakça and et. all. Europa Bottom Up, Arbeitspapiere zur Europaeischen Zivilgesellschaft (München/Berlin: Maecenata Stiftung, Europa Bottom up No. 18, 2017), pp. 39-46.

A geopolitical issue of South-East Europe became of very importance for the scholars, policymakers, and researchers with the question of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire as one of the most crucial features of the beginning of the 20th century in European history. A graduate collapsing of the one-time great empire was accelerated and followed by competition and struggling by both, the European Great Powers and the Balkan national states, upon the territorial inheritance of it. While the European Great Powers have the aim to obtain the new spheres of political-economic influence in South-East Europe, followed by the task to establish a new balance of power in the continent, a total collapse of the Ottoman state was seen by small Balkan nations as the unique historical opportunity to enlarge the territories of their national-states by unification of all ethnolinguistic compatriots from the Ottoman Empire with the motherland. A creation of a single national state, composed by all ethnographic and historic “national” lands, was in the eyes of the leading Balkan politicians as a final stage of national awakening, revival and liberation of their nations which started at the turn of the 19th century on the ideological basis of the German romanticist nationalism expressed in a formula: “One Language-One Nation-One State”.

The purpose of this collective volume is to examine in depth the new geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean with particular focus on the various aspects of the emergent trilateral partnerships of the Greece-Cyprus-Israel and Greece-Cyprus-Egypt. The authors are particularly interested about the individual and collective drivers and motivations that brought these countries together, as well as the strengths, weaknesses and prospects of these partnerships. Moreover, the volume aims to shed light on how regional and global powers shape the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean, and how they view the trilateral partnerships. At the same time, the prospects and pre-conditions of success for these partnerships are also examined in light of the common interests of participating states, areas of cooperation and third party inclusion or reactions.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive presentation on issues related to Muslim Ottoman subjects who during the First World War who moved from Romania to the Ottoman lands. After centuries of Ottoman control, Romania gained its independence after the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-1878. Two years after the beginning of the First World War, Romania, in order to balance the allied powers that at that time formed the balance of power, entered the war on the part of the Entente powers to protect its own political interests. This political movement was received with restlessness by the Muslim Ottoman subjects living on the Romanian territory. In order to avoid the risk of massive destruction of the Muslim community by the Romanians, thousands of Ottoman subjects from civil servants, women and elders emigrated to Ottoman territory from settlements such as Galați (Romanian spelling), Bucharest, Brăila (Romanian spelling), Balchik and Sulina (Romanian spelling). This study provides some valuable information about Muslims who migrated from Romania to the Ottoman state during the war, about their settlement, and about the long and difficult process of adapting to new conditions of life. In this context, in our study we used the correspondence and reports changed between the official institutions of the Ottoman state regarding these immigrants. This research is based on both quantitative and qualitative analysis for which we used some documents which are part of the heritage of the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (The Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office).