When history re-enters political debate, it rarely does so neutrally. A recent article published by Türkiye Today offers a contemporary Turkish interpretation of Ottoman history and the identity of the Greek Orthodox communities historically known as Rum. Appearing amid renewed diplomatic and geopolitical activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, the piece reflects how the past is being revisited and reframed to serve present-day narratives.
At its core, the article frames the Rum historically as a religious and cultural community rather than as an extension of modern Greek national identity. From this perspective, applying contemporary national categories to the Ottoman past risks obscuring how identity functioned within an imperial system organized primarily around religion.
Rum identity as religion and culture
According to the article’s framing, identity within the Ottoman Empire was structured mainly around religion rather than nationality. The Rum were Greek Orthodox Christians tied to the legacy of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, world. Their collective identity was shaped by faith, ecclesiastical institutions, and local continuity rather than by a nation-state that did not yet exist in its modern form.
The article emphasizes that Rum identity, rooted in Byzantine heritage rather than modern Greek nationalism, cannot be fully understood through contemporary national categories. In discussing terminology, it notes that English-language publications sometimes use the term “the Rums” in ways that risk flattening or obscuring this historical distinction. At the same time, it acknowledges that established terms such as “Greeks of Turkey” may more clearly convey geography and citizenship in modern contexts.
The millet system as a means of coexistence
The article presents the Ottoman millet system as evidence of coexistence, emphasizing that non-Muslim communities were permitted to manage their own religious, educational, and communal affairs. This structure is portrayed as allowing religious identities to persist over centuries rather than suppressing them.
Reforms of the 19th century are framed as part of an evolving effort to modernize the empire and introduce legal equality among subjects, reinforcing the argument that Ottoman governance developed mechanisms of inclusion within a multi-religious society.
Autonomy within hierarchy
What remains unexamined mainly in this framing is the hierarchical structure that underpinned that autonomy.
Historically, coexistence within the Ottoman system operated alongside legal inequality. Non-Muslims were classified as dhimmis under Islamic law and were denied equality before the law. They faced restrictions in court testimony, were subject to the jizya tax under unequal conditions, and encountered limits on how status could be displayed publicly, including prohibitions on bearing arms or assuming visible parity with Muslims.
These were not marginal or occasional practices. They were structural features of the system. Religious autonomy existed precisely because political and legal subordination was codified. By omitting this hierarchy, the article presents religious categorization primarily as protective, without fully addressing how power was distributed or enforced.
This omission matters because it obscures how religion later became an effective administrative category for exclusion.
Religion and the modern nation-state
When the population exchange was formalized under the Treaty of Lausanne, religion, not nationality, was the decisive criterion. Greek Orthodox Christians were classified as Rum and sent to Greece. Muslims were classified as Muslims and sent to Turkey. Language, self-identification, and centuries of rooted local presence mattered little by comparison.
Although the Rum of Istanbul were exempted from the exchange, religious identity continued to define their position as conditional. That vulnerability became unmistakable during the Istanbul pogrom of September 1955, when Greek Orthodox homes, churches, and businesses were targeted in an organized wave of violence. The events marked a turning point, accelerating the decline of a community that had survived imperial transitions but could not withstand the pressures of modern nationalism.
Selective memory is not one-sided
While the Turkish article critiques Greek and Greek Cypriot reinterpretations of Ottoman history, selective reframing has occurred on all sides.
The Turkish state itself has repeatedly reshaped Ottoman history to serve contemporary political needs. In Cyprus during the 1950s, Ankara supported the formation of the Turkish Resistance Organization, explicitly encouraging Turkish Cypriots to adopt a modern “Turkish” national identity as a counterweight to Enosis. Older Ottoman, local, and communal identities were deliberately displaced in favor of a nationalist framework.
More broadly, Turkish historiography has undergone sharp ideological shifts, from early republican efforts to distance the new state from the Ottoman past to later neo-Ottoman reinterpretations under governments such as the Justice and Development Party. Ottoman history has been alternately minimized, reclaimed, and re-symbolized to support evolving forms of Turkish nationalism and political Islam.
Seen in this light, the issue is not whether history is politicized, but whose narratives gain legitimacy, endurance, and institutional authority.
A contested past, shaped by competing frames
Religion is presented in the Turkish article as a historically meaningful organizing principle. Yet history also shows that it was the very category used to expel Rum populations under Lausanne and later render those who remained vulnerable, most visibly in Istanbul in 1955.
This does not negate the complexity of Ottoman governance or deny periods of coexistence. It does, however, underscore why historical categories cannot be separated from their consequences. For many Greek and Greek-American families, these debates are not abstract. They are inherited memories shaped by displacement, rupture, and loss.
The Rum question remains unresolved, not because the past is unclear, but because it continues to be filtered through competing national frames. For communities shaped by forced movement and erasure, history is not merely debated. It is lived.
Editor’s note: This article analyzes contemporary interpretations of Ottoman history and the Rum question. It is presented as historical context and analysis, not endorsement.