The chief adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed on television that today's Greeks have no relations to their ancient forefathers and that there was no democracy in Ancient Athens.
Speaking on CNN Türk, İbrahim Kalın said: "The ancient Greeks and today's have no special relationship because then Greece was different."
"Also, the claim that ancient Greece was the cradle of democracy and the place where democracy appeared is a Eurocentric historical distortion," he continued.
"In fact, it is nonsense because in Athens there was a Democracy with its own characteristics, because there cannot be a democracy in a place where there are slaves," Kalın said, adding: "After all, they also executed the greatest philosopher and thinker, Socrates."
It is recalled that in 2020, Kalın had again questioned whether the Greeks of today are connected to the ancients.
"We have to examine whether the Greeks today have a relationship with the Greeks of the past," said Erdoğan's spokesman. "To what extent the Greece that produced Plato, Socrates and Aristotle has anything to do with the Greeks of today."
At the time, Greek Minister for Development and Investment Adonis Georgiadis hit back at Kalın's ridiculous statement by saying there is a "continuation".
"I remember some of the left-leaning professors at the university saying the same thing. Greece is proud of its history. Let Kalın burst. We are Greeks, we were Greeks, we are a continuation of the ancient Greeks, we defend our history and in this history we do not go back. The Turks came here much later," he said.
Genetic testing conducted in a peer review process and analysed by several American hospitals have confirmed that there is a clear link between the Ancient Greek Bronze Age civilisations of the Minoans and Myceneans, and the Greeks of today.
Kalın of course does not have an interest in science as it could turn his whole hypothesis around and bring to question the genetics of Turkish citizens. Turkey is paranoid as millions of their citizens are Islamised and Turkified Greeks and Armenians, even if their own people do not know this fact yet.
A famous case is Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı, born Ibrahim Yaylalı. Yannis is a former Turkish ultra-nationalist who was proud of his enmity to Kurds, not to mention to other indigenous peoples of Asia Minor.
However he soon discovered he was actually Greek, became Christian and then became an activist for minorities in Turkey despite originally joining the Turkish Army to kill them, as reported by The Armenian Weekly.
It is also becoming a trend for Turks in the diaspora to do DNA tests and post their results on YouTube. Many of them become “shocked” to find out that their DNA is 50% Greek or more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86RLzOPOB-0
Ancestry.com highlighted that many Turkish citizens are mostly unrelated to Turkic peoples from Central Asia and are rather native Anatolian people that have been Turkified.
The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world noted that after the Ottoman conquest of Pontos in today’s Turkey’s southeastern Black Sea coast, the “Pontian Greeks adopted Turkish language and culture, and many converted to Islam in order to have greater opportunities in Turkish society.”
Because of this, the so-called Turkish DNA Project called for a boycott in a now deleted tweet.
Ancestry.com also highlighted that another round of Turkification of Pontian Greeks occurred after the second Russo-Turkish War (1828-29).
Uzay Bulut, a Turkey-born journalist, also responded to the call by the Turkish DNA Project to boycott Ancestry.com.
“Why are Turkish nationalists so terrified of the truth? Because if they face it, the lies they’ve come up with will be shattered to the ground,” she said on Twitter.
“Through these lies, hatred has grown which made them commit so many crimes against Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews and others,” Bulut said.
“Then they will realize that by destroying those peoples, they’ve actually destroyed their own ancestors and cultural heritage,” the journalist said, adding: “The truth will set us all free and bring much needed peace to the region.”
Then they will realize that by destroying those peoples, they've actually destroyed their own ancestors and cultural heritage. The truth will set us all free and bring much needed peace to the region.
— Uzay Bulut (@bulutuzay_) May 31, 2021
READ MORE: Professor Celal Şengor: Anatolians only have 7% genes from Central Asia, we are Rûm (Greek) Muslims.
