Talk:Cretan Muslims

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Turkish plural forms aren't relevant for an encyclopedic article. Could someone who knows the issue reduce the lead so that it includes only the relevant term(s)?

Peter Isotalo 17:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


the Cretan Muslims remained under siege in the four coastal cities and there was considerable ethnic cleansing in the eastern part of the island (Sitia; Estiye for the Turks), which has been well-documented, aside from the Ottoman and other state archives, also by some well-known authors like Henry Noel Brailsford and Pierre Mille (the French Kipling) who were present in the island at the time. [1] Pleas for help from the western powers were consistently ignored and many had to flee to Anatolia

~ I believe that this is an over statement ... "ethnic cleansing", perhaps more than one citation or source should be used in order to justify this term.

--Sarissa 19:16, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Estimates of 19th century population

The article reads:

The majority of contemporary estimates calculate the number of Muslim Cretans remaining at the eve of the 20th century at 30,000, 9% of the island's population.

but there are no sources given for these "contemporary estimates". Are there good sources after the 1881 Ottoman census? --Macrakis 20:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conversions

Miskin, you removed the following well-sourced paragraph

...On the other hand, many Cretans converted to Islam—more than in any other part of the Greek world. Various explanations have been given for this, including the disruption of war, the possiblity of receiving a timar (for those who went over to the Ottomans during the war), Latin-Orthodox dissention, avoidance of the head-tax (cizye) on non-Muslims, the increased social mobility of Muslims, and the opportunity that Muslims had of joining the paid militia (which the Cretans also aspired to under Venetian rule).[2]

and reverted to the less complete and less well-sourced:

A minority of the population (local Greek notables) converted to Islam, so that the Cretan ruling class would remain Greek-speaking. <!-- M. Glenny - The Balkans -->

Though Glenny is a fine journalist, he is hardly a specialist on 17-18th century Crete; indeed, the full title of the referenced book is The Balkans 1804-1999: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, that is, it doesn't cover the period just after the Ottoman conquest at all, and Crete is only a small part of his topic. (There is also no page reference given so the reader can look up what his actual words were.) Greene, on the other hand, has worked in the Cretan (Vikeleia Library), Ottoman, and Venetian archives (and many other sources, of course), and is a history professor at Princeton with a joint appointment at the Program in Hellenic Studies. Her book is specifically about the transition from Venetian to Ottoman rule.

You also removed the passages:

It is difficult to estimate the proportion which became Muslim, as Ottoman cizye tax records count only Christians: estimates range from 30-50%.[3]
By the last Ottoman census, in 1881, Muslims were only 24%, concentrated in the three large towns on the north coast, and in Monofatsi.[4]

which is sourced to a Harvard Ph.D. dissertation (later published in Greece as Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος 1864-1910 Η διάπλαση ενός εθνικού ηγέτη, Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece, 1992). I left in the sentence:

The majority of contemporary estimates calculate the number of Muslim Cretans remaining at the eve of the 20th century at 30,000, 9% of the island's population.

and tagged it with {{fact}} since there was no source given for it.

Could you please explain your deletions? Thanks. --Macrakis 22:15, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

PS It appears that Glenny speaks German, Czech, and Serbo-Croat[1], while Greene reads Greek, Italian, French, Ottoman Turkish and Turkish[2]; Greene's languages seem a lot more useful in writing a history of Crete....

  1. ^ Macedonia, H.N.Brailsford. I saw with my own eyes young Moslem girls who had escaped mutilated from these horrors.
  2. ^ Greene, pp. 39-44
  3. ^ Greene, pp. 52-54
  4. ^ Macrakis

Point taken Macrakis, you should go ahead and restore that information. But please don't revert my version because I also made copyedits which had nothing to do with the above. Miskin 20:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Popular usage is Cretan Turks, let's not craft names for our pleasure

This page has to go under the Cretan Turks title. "Turco-Cretans" -wikipedia gives nearly no results in Google.--Doktor Gonzo 19:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't dispute that Cretan Turks is the most common term to refer to Cretan Turks. However, Cretan Muslims > Cretan Turks, not Cretan Muslims = Cretan Turks. Please understand this. The problem is that your Cretan Turks article claims that all Cretan Muslims are Cretan Turks, including those who don't speak Turkish, don't have a Turkish national identity and don't live in Turkey. In other words it reflects only the Turkish nationalist POV.--Domitius 19:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
then the Cretan Turks article should be fixed to allow for this. This is no reason not to merge, the two articles having virtually the same scope. dab (𒁳) 13:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
"then the Cretan Turks article should be fixed to allow for this"
Easier said than done. Check the revision history of the Cretan Turks article. Any edit attempting to fix that is reverted, no reasons assigned other than "you must get consensus first" or something like that. What's interesting is that it is by users who clearly don't know what the dispute is about. User:Artaxiad has never edited the talkpage and his only edits to the article are reverts. Mardavich posted one highly uninformed post which clearly demonstrated that he hasn't got the faintest idea what the dispute is about nor what he was reverting. It makes you wonder whether someone asked them to revert (I have a term for such arrangements: "revert goons"). What can be done when unread administrators are also floating around (not you, I'm thinking of someone else) who selectively warn and block people for reverting? Well there's nothing else that can be done, because the people reverting don't explain why, posts on the talkpage remain unanswered yet they continue reverting (present company excluded)!--Domitius 14:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Strong merge the two articles as both pertain exactly to the same community. Girit Türkleri (Cretan Turks) is not a popular definition of the community in Turkey. This naming is used by individuals or circles who want to emphasise a Turkish heritage. They are simply known as Giritliler (Cretans) as most people in Turkey would not have the opportunity to encounter a non-Muslim Cretan. This is also the name these people usually prefer to call themselves. On the other hand, "Turco-Cretan" seems to be a literal translation of Τουρκοκρητικοί, the name the community has been known by Christian Cretans. However, it is obvious that in the historical context, being Turkish did not refer to ethnic Turkish origins but being Muslim. Behemoth 12:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Please see the discussion in Talk:Cretan Turks. Among other things, the Google statistics for "popular usage":

What is an appropriate name for the Muslims of Crete while they were living in Crete? The possible names seem to be "Cretan Muslims", "Muslims of Crete", "Turco-Cretans", or "Cretan Turks".
  • Google sometimes gives useful guidance, though it needs to be treated with caution:
  "cretan muslim(s)" |
"muslim cretan(s)" |
"cretan moslem(s)" |
"moslem cretan(s)"		 "cretan turk(s)" |
"turkish cretan(s)"		 turco-cretan(s) |
turcocretan(s)
Google Scholar 42 10 2
Google Books 102 36 7
Google -wikipedia 145 131 14
Note: To get correct figures, you need to go to the last page of results.

This shows a small (possibly statistically insignificant) preference on the Web in general and a very significant preference in Books and Scholar (probably the most reliable) for "Cretan Muslims" and its variants. (Of course, "Cretan Turks" may also refer to their descendents in Turkey.)

I trust this is useful. --Macrakis 14:02, 22 April 2007 (UTC)