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Galloping Historical Ignorance

Later, Fenerbahce fans unfurled a giant banner with the picture of Sultan Mehmet the Conquerer, the Ottoman ruler who captured Istanbul in 1453, ending the Byzantine Greek Orthodox Empire, which ruled from the city for centuries. “Since 1453, Istanbul,” the banner read. ~BBC News Via Enchiridion Militis. Nobody’s business but the Turks’? I wasn’t expecting […]

Later, Fenerbahce fans unfurled a giant banner with the picture of Sultan Mehmet the Conquerer, the Ottoman ruler who captured Istanbul in 1453, ending the Byzantine Greek Orthodox Empire, which ruled from the city for centuries.

“Since 1453, Istanbul,” the banner read. ~BBC News

Via Enchiridion Militis.

Nobody’s business but the Turks’?

I wasn’t expecting Turkish football hooligans to know their own history, but this display of ignorance does merit a couple remarks. Colloquially, the city of Constantinople was known in Greek simply as The City (Hi Polis), and Istanbul, so one story goes, was the Turkicised version of the simple directions “to the City,” which was “eis tin Polin.” Through a few changes in pronunciation, you can see how it might have become Istanbul. But Konstantiniye or Konstantinoupolis continued to be used until Ataturk had it officially changed to mark a break with the Ottoman and all other non-republican pasts. Pre-republican sources in any language would have referred to it as Constantinople (or some version thereof), which has been its proper name for the better part of 1600 years (with Byzantion a distant second at around 900). For what it’s worth, Polis remains the colloquial name for the city in Armenian to this day.

This seems worth mentioning not only to point up the ignorance of the Turkish fans on this point, but also to remind us that Constantinople was one of our cities for a lot longer than it has been one of theirs and Anatolia was “our East” (hence the name), to borrow a Greek slogan, for far longer than it has been theirs.

Update: Take a look at Josh Trevino’s comments on Turkish entry into the EU at Enchiridion Militis.

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