"Neighbouring Bulgaria" project

In a previous blog post, I went through Shishmanov's listing of erstwhile Bulgarian villages in Asia Minor, and tried to map their location—to get a sense of how isolated Kızderbent was, and whether that would account for the heavy Turkicisation that Trakatroukika reportedly underwent.

Stoyan Shivarov, of the Ottoman Archive in the Bulgarian National Library, has been in touch to ask about my sources, and that has made me aware of his own ongoing research into the Anatolian Bulgarians. Shivarov and his colleagues Georgi Zelengora and Konstantin Panayotov have been undertaking archival research as well as visits to the sites of the villages; so his own Google map of the villages is going to be rather more reliable than my own.

Here's my uninformed map (blue = Bulgarian villages, red = Kızderbent):

View Anatolian Bulgarians in a larger map
And here's his well-informed map, with notes on the identifications if you click through:

View bulgarian villages in anatolia in a larger map
Shivarov has a blog about the "Neighboring Bulgaria" research project. He has just come back from his second field trip, and he is finding new villages not previously reported, as well as identifications of previously reported villages. He has also found some Bulgarian still spoken in the region (Kocapınar), by Pomaks.From this post, it looks like Pomaks were already settling the region in 1878, and more came after 1922 from Drama.

So Christian speakers of Bulgaro-Macedonian settle in Bithynia between the 1500s and 1875, mostly from southern Bulgaria, though also from Kastoria and probably Ohrid. Muslim speakers of Bulgaro-Macedonian settle in Bithynia from 1878 on, also from southern Bulgaria but also from Greece. Most of the Christians ended up going back to Bulgaria. Some Christians ended up going to Greece instead. So you can speak Bulgarian, but your descendants, depending on your credal choices, end up Bulgarian, Greek, or Turkish. Yes, ethnicity in the Balkans is a complex thing.

As to why the Pomaks came to Bithynia, maybe the Ottomans decided to settle them where there was already Bulgarian spoken, maybe they chose the location themselves. I'd be fascinated to find out about how the Christian and Muslim Bulgarian-speakers of Kocapınar got along: finding themselves together in a strange place, similar but not the same.

Like the Trakatroukides and the indigenous villagers in Polypetro, say.

You'll see that Kızderbent looks rather more isolated in his map than mine, although I was uncertain about the villages closest to it. That is circumstantial evidence for why the language of Kızderbent was so Turkicised, although I still don't have a real sense of how its Turkicisation really worked.
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Slavophone refugees to Greece

To check further on Kızderbent, I got hold of the 2001 book Γλωσσική Ετερότητα στη Ελλάδα [Linguistic Otherness in Greek], to see what it said about Trakatroukika. The book is a transcription of a series of panels on linguistic minorities in Greece. Most sessions passed without incident, except for the Vlach session (which the organisers unwisely held in situ in Thessaly, instead of in Athens).

The session on "Slavic dialects of Greece" includes a four page presentation by Leonidas Empirikos (son of the surrealist writer), reporting on a survey he did with Lambros Baltsiotis on the geographical distribution of Slavonic in present-day Greece. Trakatroukika is mentioned on p. 155. I give the citation here, because Kızderbent turns out not to be the only settlement of Slavonic speaking refugees to Greece:

I should also note that this is a large contiguous region [where Slavonic is spoken]; by that I mean that it is a continuous population of rural origin, to this day. A survey of Slavophony in Greece would not be complete without mentioning at least five special cases:

1. The Slavonic-speaking Muslims of Western Thrace, who were not subject to the population exchanges and are called Pomaks;
   
2. A few people in some of the Nestus villages of Stavroupoli, Xanthi;
   
3. The "Trakatroukides" with refugee origins (Slavonic-speakers from Nicomedia in Asia Minor, settled here and there in various regions of Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace);
   
4. The few Slavonic-speaking Patriarchists from Eastern Thrace who chose to settle in Greece;
   
5. Slavonic-speaking Patriarchist refugees, mainly from Strumica (who settled in Kilkis), but also from Petrich, Startsevo and Nevrokop [= Gotse Delchev] (who settled in Eastern Macedonia, from New Petritsi/Veterna to Drama, Iraklia and Prosotsani).

View Greek Slavophone refugees in a larger map

The last couple of populations need explanation. Modern Bulgarian nationalism started out as an assertion of ecclesiastical independence, with the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate within the Orthodox church. Identity in the Ottoman Empire was credal under the Millet system, and the local bishop administered the Orthodox Christians; if Bulgarians wanted to not be Greek under that framework, they had to have their own bishops. This led to contention between Exarchists, aligned with the newly autonomous Bulgarian church, and Patriarchists, remaining loyal to the Greek Patriarch.

Linguistic or ethnic identity did not necessarily align with credal identity—as in so many instances in the Ottoman Empire; so people could speak Bulgarian (or Macedonian Slavonic—or for that matter Aromanian), but be Patriarchists. I don't know of reverse cases, native speakers of Greek being Exarchists, but I wouldn't rule anything out. After all, not all the Greek-speakers of Eastern Rumelia left for Greece in 1919, either.

The dispute between Exarchists and Patriarchists turned violent in Macedonia, culminating in the guerilla conflict that Greeks call the Macedonian Struggle. But from Shishmanov's survey, the dispute had also spread to Asia Minor, with several villages reported as containing Grecomans (the Exarchist disparagement for Patriarchists: the term is intended to mean "wannabe Greeks"). We would in fact expect the dispute to have spread anywhere in the Ottoman Empire where Slavonic-speaking populations had a Greek clergy. There was no force field between Sofia and Nicomedia, to prevent people coming across to convince the locals they were Bulgarians, and not just Christians.

I think that's the subtext to surprise at Kızderbent that I perceive from the Bulgarian Wikipedia. Bulgarian researchers found out about the other Asia Minor villages in the 1860s, and went over to encourage their Bulgarian national sentiment; Kızderbent was known about in the West fifty years earlier, and a Bulgarian national sentiment does not seem to have taken root.

(Greeks reading this should not get too smug: blogger Doctor has posted at Sarantakos' blog reports from Greek officials in Eastern Thrace, annoyed that they too had to work on the locals' national sentiment, and convince the locals they were Greeks and not just Christians.)

So when time came for the population exchanges with Bulgaria and Turkey (and the preceding violence in Turkey), the criterion for who chose to go to Greece was not linguistic but ecclesiastical. Patriarchists, who were derided as wannabe Greeks, wanted to be Greeks, and chose to go to Greece. That applied to Bulgaria—Empirikos' fifth group. It also applied to settlers from Bulgaria and Macedonia in Turkey: Eastern Thrace, Empirikos' fourth group, but also the Trakatroukides, Empirikos' third group. From Shishmanov's survey, several other Bulgarian villages of Bithynia chose Greece as well, though they don't appear to have got attention.

I don't know anything about Empirikos' second group, btw, but populations did move around in the Ottoman Empire; there's a village of Albanian Christians in Serres prefecture (Koimisi, in Irakleia municipality), for example, who are refugees from Eastern Thrace—like Empirikos' fourth group. So the Stavroupoli Bulgarians would have moved there from elsewhere in the Bulgaro-Macedonian continuum.

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Trakatroukika on YouTube

First up, thank you again to Butcher of Yore—and now Stazybo Horn as well—for sending me links continuously about Kızderbent. There is a lot to go through and assimilate, so this blog is going to turn into Kızderbent Central for the next week or so.

[You will note btw that I keep saying Macedonian Slavonic instead of Macedonian (or "Skopian"). I hope you appreciate why (see for starters Macedonia (terminology), Macedonian language naming dispute, and the relative numbers agains the flags on the sidebar.) If you don't appreciate why, well, it's my blog, and it's your right; but I have to pick which constituency to offend the least among my readers.]

Because the YouTube video is being asked for, I'm posting it first. The video doesn't have any context, and as I said in comments it has been exploited for interminable online debates about Macedonia; comments on the video are disabled, so I'm translating the Greek forum link to it.

The videos came up in the discussion thread Ένα τραγούδι, πολλές ιστορίες Jovano Jovanke ("one song, many stories: Jovano Jovanke"), about a South Slavic song, and how it is used by a host of speakers of Slavonic languages with different national identities. The original poster, dna, has a good chuckle about the Bulgarian/FYROM argling over the song on YouTube:

Στη συνέχεια στα σχόλια μπινελικώνονται Βούλγαροι και κάτοικοι της ΠΓΔΜ.
- "γιατί τραγουδάτε μακεδονικά τραγούδια αφού δεν μπορείτε να τα πείτε καλά"?
- "έλα ρε, βουλγάρικα είναι, και εσείς βούλγαροι είστε, τι παριστάνετε τώρα"?
- "ουστ αποδώ μογγολοτάταροι, να πάρετε τον πρόγονό σας τον Ασπαρούχ και να πάτε στο Ταταρστάν, εμείς είμαστε
α)γνήσιοι σλάβοι
β) γνήσιοι μακεδόνες
Thereafter, Bulgarians and inhabitants of FYROM start flaming each other:
"Why are you singing Macedonian songs when you can't speak it properly?"
"Oh come on, they're Bulgarian songs, and you're Bulgarian too, stop pretending."
"The hell with you, Mongol Tatars, take your ancestor Asparukh and go back to Tatarstan, we're (a) genuine Slavs and (b) genuine Macedonians."

To my mind, the discussion on the forum quickly degenerates to that level anyway. But by way of rebuttal, poster kukos says the following (my comments in square brackets):

So, friend dna69, the people dancing and singing in this video:

are members of the Kizderventiot Association of Thessalonica. In the next video:

Mr "Christos" [I think he means Sotiris], who was singing, chats to some ladies also descended from the same region of Asia Minor (Kızderbent), and who ARE NOT LOCALS, as is erroneously subtitled. [Subtitled on the YouTube clip—i.e. they are not indigenous speakers of Macedonian Slavonic. "Local" (ντόπια) is the preferred way of referring to Macedonian Slavonic within Greek Macedonia.]
The guy who subtitled it in English is somewhat confused, so he draws wrong conclusions.
The lady speaking the most clearly states, of course, that "… I am Greek". So when she says "our language matches theirs" but "we count in Turkish", she means that the REFUGEE dialect matches the "local" dialect. [i.e. that Trakatroukika is similar to the indigenous Macedonian Slavonic of the village of Polypetro, where these Trakatroukides have settled].
But this local dialect is not used as a main language. The proof: the lady in question does not know how to count over four in "Bulgarian". Whereas I have spent long enough among Yugoslav tourists [who have long been visiting Greece, and Chalkidike in particular], and I can count as much as you want: devet xiliante tsetrista dvananteset (9412)
[Followed by a history of the village of Polypetro in Kilkis, and of Kızderbent, copypasted from elsewhere.]

For my part, I'll comment that no, the lady in question knowing only 1–4 in Slavonic does not prove that Bulgarian wasn't their main language; it proves that their Slavonic was heavily Turkicised. Large numbers as opposed to small are the province of the marketplace rather than the hearth, so it's common for languages to borrow large numbers from the local trade language, which would certainly have been Turkish.

So, turning to the video itself. Stazybo Horn has done detective work on Google through Wikipedia deletions—a curse on them; and he mailed me about the programme that featured this after I wrote the first draft of this post: it is from «Κάθε τόπος και τραγούδι» "A song from every region", a Sunday programme on ET3 (State TV, Northern Greece), presented by Giorgos Melikis, and this episode was shown on Jan 21, 2007. From Googling, I see Melikis' show does feature other languages of Northern Greece. Butcher of Yore tells me that Κυριακή στο Χωριό "Sunday in the Village", on the same channel, has done so as well. Here's the thread where the YouTube user announces he has posted it on the same day: his posting confirms Kukos' surmise that he didn't realise they were refugees from Turkey.

The video starts with 45 seconds of chat in Trakatroukika. Please God, someone who knows Bulgarian or Macedonian Slavonic, do tell me how Turcisised this sounds.

The English subtitles are pretty much correct, though summary. Sotiris (the man talking to the women at the start) is from Thessalonica: the host Melikis says so at 0:53. I don't know if that means Sotiris is a native speaker of Macedonian Slavonic (in which case it is mutually intelligible with Trakatroukika), or that he is also a Trakatroukis. The Trakatroukides count up to four in "Bulgarian" (notice the chuckle when the B-word is spoken at 1:32); at Sotiris' village they count in Slavonic at least up to six. That, and his initial question, make me suspect Sotiris is not a Trakatroukis.

The woman talking describes their party as Trakatroukides (right at 1:00—"he asked us, how you are here in the village, the Trakatroukides"). She says their languages "*almost* matches" the indigenous Slavonic; and their odam matches "local" vode "water". (Another woman interjects at 1:15 "We talk the same [language]" and "We get along very well"—which suggests Trakatroukika and the Macedonian Slavonic of Polypetro are mutually intelligible anyway.) They explicitly claim Trakatroukika is not mutually intelligible with Turkish, and is partially mutually intelligible with Bulgarian, Serbian, and the Macedonian Slavonic of Gevgelija, on the FYROM side of the border. (Sotiris at 1:52 says, after Serbian is mentioned, "they'd catch the odd word".)

"And one last question" (at 2:00)—"to come back to our songs and dances", because this is a folklore show—but the question is not about songs or dances. "How do you feel inside?" "What, about our language?" one man says. Another realises where this is going, and says: "Our homeland is Greece"—straightforwardly. (It's not like, if they felt differently they could very well say differently on Greek State TV—but Butcher of Yore informs me that has indeed happened, e.g. with a show by Maya Tsokli on villages in Florina, and that has made it to YouTube too.)

"Not just Greece", the host adds expansively. "Greater Greece!" (Μεγάλη Ελλάδα). Um, somewhat unsophisticated of the host, in my opinion (and I'm not looking forward to discussing why I think that). He shouldn't have to solicit proof of loyalty from Greek citizens who happen to speak a Turkicised Slavonic, and the phrasing is reminiscent of the irredentist Megali Idea. But anyway, it's great that we have this document.

If we have to discount Sotiris' language as not Trakatroukika, admittedly we have far less than 45 seconds' worth; and if these Trakatroukides have lived for three generations together with Macedonian Slavonic speakers, their language will be much less Turkicised, and more similar to the local dialect. So it's not pristine Trakatroukika (if it's even meaningful to speak of such a thing). If you're looking to avoid interference from other dialects of Bulgarian or Macedonian Slavonic, your best bet is in fact New Triglia, in Chalkidike.

Or Roditis. Roditis (formerly Proktio) is in Rodopi, 5km from Komotini, and Rodopi also is home to Pomaks, who are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. But it is unlikely there has been any real contact between the Trakatroukides and the Pomaks. As an acquaintance from Komotini reminds me, the Pomaks were subject to travel restrictions until 1992; as he put it, "the Pomaks this side would come down to market in Komotini every Tuesday; the Pomaks that side would come down to market in Xanthi every Saturday—and that was it." Moreover, as a Christian village Roditis would have had no contact with the Muslim ethnic Turks of the region either; and the village is now a suburb of Komotini.

One last thing: one of Pontus and the Left's (Πόντος και Αριστερά) regular commenters, Partizana, is from the same village of Polypetro. Comment #36 in this thread is about how moved she was to discover her grandmother's language documented elsewhere.
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Language minorities of Bithynia

The Wikipedia articles on Anatolian Bulgarians, English and Bulgarian, imply that Kızderbent was far away from the other settlements where Bulgarian was spoken. That's why Bulgarians in Bulgaria became aware of the bulk of settlements in the 1860s, but Kızderbent was documented since the 1800s—and Shishmanov discusses Kızderbent in a separate chapter from the other settlements, as най-известното на европейците българско село в Мала Азия—"the most renowned European Bulgarian village in Asia Minor" (I think).

To test this out, I'm plotting the documented Bulgarian-speaking villages in Asia Minor on Google Maps. There are three listings:

• Kănchov's list, from Wikipedia
  
• Dorosiev's list, also from Wikipedia
  
• The list from Dimitri Shimshanov 2001. Необикновената история на малоазийските българи, Sofia: Пони—available online
  

I haven't been able to identify all the villages with modern-day Turkey: some villages will have been renamed, or no longer exist. Moreover, the English Wikipedia makes a laudable effort to guess the Turkish spelling of the villages from the Cyrillic, but has made some mistakes.

So herewith the listing. Villages without an "Actual Turkish" entry, I have not been able to match with modern-day locations—although they are mentioned in Turkish in Pars Tuğlacı. 1984. Bulgaristan ve Türk-Bulgar ilişkileri. Cem. The identifications may not all be correct…

Cyrillic	Wikipedia Romanisation	Actual Turkish
North-Western Anatolia [Bithynia]
Къз-дервент	Kız-Dervent	Kızderbent
Коджа бунар	Kocabunar	Kocapınar
Мандър	Mandır	Mandıra
Гьобел	Göbel	Göbel
Аладжа баир	Alacabair	Alacabayır
Тьойбелен	Toybelen	Toybelen
Ташкеси (Ташкесен)	Taşkesi	Taşkesiği
Ново село (Йеникьой, Къзълджилар)	Yeniköy (Novo Selo)	Yeniköy
Сьоют	Söüt	Söğüt
Хаджи Паункьой	Hacıpaunköy	—
Киллик	Killik (also Ikinlik)	Killik
Чалтик	Çaltik	—
Трама	Trama	—
Мата	Mata	—
Кубаш	Kubaş	Kubaş
Юрен	Üren	—
Читак	Çitak	—
Çanakkale, Lapseki, Biga [Troad]
Урумче or Дермендере or Дерменалан	Urumçe	Değirmendere
Чатал тепе	Çataltaş (also Çataltepe)	Çataltepe
Ново село (Чифлик)	Yeniköy [Çiftlik]	Yeniçiftlik
Стенгелкьой	Stengelköy	"20 km from Kerem near Biga"—ancient Parium, Greek Kamares
Маната	Manata	—
Симавла	Simavla	—
Байрамич	Bayramiç	Bayramiç

This is the Google map. Kızderbent is in red, the Bulgarian villages in blue. For jollies, I've added in the Tsakonian villages of Bithynia in green. I've plotted two Greek villages I know of in yellow (Demirtaş = Demirdessi, and Başköy (Μπάσκιοϊ), one of the Pistikohoria group), but there were a whole lot more.

View Anatolian Bulgarians in a larger map
Kızderbent does seem to be a way away from the other Bulgarian villages, which can explain its isolation. The only exception is Yeniköy/Novo Selo, 58 km away—if I've got the right Yeniköy. (The name, "Newville" in Bulgarian and Turkish, is fairly generic.) Then again, Söğüt and Mandıra (Greek Μάντρα, "paddock") look just as isolated.

Provided I've got the right Söğüt and the right Mandıra, of course.
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Where are the Tsakonian villages in Turkey?

I'm revising my paper on Tsakonian lexicostatistics, that I took a month off my PhD to write in 1997. (No idea what I'll do with it yet.) As part of that, I needed to provide an updated map of where Tsakonian was spoken, including the villages in the Propontis, Havoutsi (Χαβουτσί) and Vatika (Βάτικα) (aka Mousatsa Μουσάτσα). Of course, these were the Greek names, and they don't have Greek names any more. Costakis monograph on the villages has distances from towns and a sketch map, but no latitude/longitude (Κωστάκης, Θ.Π. 1979. Βάτικα και Χαβουτσί: Τα τσακωνοχώρια της Προποντίδας. (Βιθυνία 1) Αθήνα: Κέντρο Μικρασιατικών Σπουδών.) Google Maps doesn't speak pre-1922 either.

Luckily for me, a PDF of the Turkish Bulletin of the Mineral Research and Exploration 121 (1999) had an article on the geology of the Gönen (ancient Asepus) Delta, including a map in Fig.4 (p.8). So now, I know that Havoutsi is Havutça, and Vatika aka Mousatsa is Misakça. (Αs I would have found out in Costakis' monograph, had I kept reading.) After 1922, the Vatikiots ended up in Servia (Σέρβια), near Kozani. The Havoutsiots ended up in Hionato (Χιονάτο, at the time Garleni), near Kastoria.

This now lets me put a map of Tsakonophonie—also including Vatika, in far south Laconia, which sounds suspiciously like Vatika on the Propontis, and may be circumstantial evidence that Tsakonian used to be spoken far further south than it is now.


View Tsakonophonie in a larger map