POLITIKI KOUZINA

A Touch of Spice (or Politiki kouzina) is a 2003 Greek film directed by Tassos Boulmetis and

starring Georges Corraface as the character of the adult Fanis Iakovides. The character of Fanis

Iakovides as a child is played by Markos Osse and the supporting role of Fanis's grandfather,

Vassilis, is played by Tassos Bandis.

The original Greek title is Πολίτικη Κουζίνα (Politiki Kouzina) which means Cuisine of the

City and refers to the Cuisine of Constantinople. However, in the film's promotional material [1],

the word Politikiof the title is depicted in capital letters, therefore allowing an alternative reading

of the title, as Πολιτική Κουζίνα (Politiki Kouzina) which means Political Cuisine signifying the

important role that politics played in the lives of the main characters.

Fanis Iakovides, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, recalls his childhood memories from

growing up in Istanbul. When Fanis was 7 years old, his grandfather Vassilis was an owner of

a general store with a specialty in spices. He was also a culinary philosopher and his mentor.

Fanis grew very attached to his grandfather who would assist with his homework using

imaginative techniques. For instance, Vassilis would teach his grandson the planets of the Solar

System by showing an illustration of it and replacing the planets with spices. Cinnamon took the

place of Venus since according to Vassilis, "like all women, cinnamon is both bitter and sweet".

Fanis also fell in love for the first time in his grandfather store's upper floor with a young

Turkish girl, Saime.

However, beginning with the Istanbul Pogrom in 1955, through 1978, the ethnic Greek

community of Istanbul was reduced from 135,000 to 7,000 by a series of government

orchestrated riots, pogroms and deportations.[1] Most of Fanis' family is deported in 1964 with

the Ankara government decision to renege on the 1930 Greco-Turkish Ankara Convention,

affirming the right of Greek etablis (Greeks who were born and lived in Istanbul but held Greek

citizenship) to live and work in Turkey, and most Greek citizens who lived in Istanbul were

deported to Greece,[2] despite most never having previously resided there. Since Vassilis was not

a dual citizen, he was able to stay behind while his grandson Fanis and his parents were deported

to Athens.

Fanis had trouble initially adapting in Greece, constantly trying to spend his time in the kitchen

cooking, as it was the only link between him and his homeland. However, this would upset his

mother who was afraid that the boy was either severely depressed or a homosexual. Fanis grew

from childhood to adulthood, preserving his culinary talents and often offering his secrets of the

Politiki Cuisine to those that ask for his help.

As the years passed by, and the tension between Turkey and Greece resolved, grandfather

Vassilis made several promises to visit his grandson in Athens but failed to keep them. The

reason for the final incompletion of this engagement was his rapidly declining health.

Consequently, Fanis returns to Istanbul after three decades to visit his near-death grandfather and

also runs into his old love, Saime, who is now married. Together, they reflect on their lives and

the way politics managed to change everything.

Fanis will eventually realize that contrary to what his grandfather had taught him, he forgot to

put a little bit of spice in his own life.

The main characters easily fit into a parallel metaphor - Saime, the old love of Fanis, a beautiful

Turkish girl and multi-lingual tour guide, represents Istanbul (a cosmopolitan city called a "she"

in Greek), Fanis is modern Greece, one that is still deeply in love with Istanbul and nostalgic for

the past, while Saime's husband is a Turkish military doctor who represents a modern, pragmatic

Turkey.

Greek family from Constantinople, expelled in 1964. It’s a good film. Hermes and I had

a small exchange about it here. In the clip, Savvas relives the worst five seconds of his life when

the Turkish police told him that he and his family were to be deported from Constantinople and

that he could avoid this fate if he were to become a Muslim. So in love with the City was Savvas,

so distraught at the prospect of leaving it, that for five seconds, Savvas says, he thought about the

Turk's offer.

Watching Politiki Kouzina reminded me of something I wrote quite a few years ago on the

Greeks of Constantinople following the publication of a Human Rights Watch report

called Denying Human Rights and Ethnic Identity: The Greeks of Turkey. I dug the article out

and am reprinting below:

“Today’s Greek community in Istanbul is ‘elderly and frightened,’ their fear related to an

‘appalling history of pogroms and expulsion’ suffered at the hands of the Turkish government.

Their numbers have declined from 110,000 at the time of the signing of the Lausanne Treaty in

1923 to about 2,000 today.

These statistics of long-term ‘ethnic cleansing’ are cited by the US human rights organisation

Human Rights Watch in its recent report on the plight of the Greek population in Istanbul and on

the islands of Imvros and Tenedos.

For Nikolaos Atzemoglou, president of the Constantinopolitan Society in Athens, who was

forced to leave the city Greeks still refer to as Constantinople in 1966, the report ‘puts an end to

Turkish attempts to distort the facts by alleging that the Greek Orthodox minority left its

homeland voluntarily and that they are welcome to return if they desire to do so’.

The exodus of Greeks from Turkey is usually associated with the events of 1955 and 1964.

In 1955, on September 6 and 7, violent anti-Greek riots took place in Istanbul. The American

Consul-General informed the US Department of State that the destruction was completely out of

control. ‘I personally witnessed the looting of many shops while the police stood idly by or

cheered on the mob,’ he said.

A British journalist reported that the Greek neighbourhoods of Istanbul looked ‘like the bombed

parts of London during the Second World War’.

Fifteen Greeks were killed and damage estimated at US$300m was inflicted on Greek property.

George Lefkaros, then a 10-year-old, recalls that ‘the front of every Greek house was marked in

chalk with a cross. Excited groups of 100, 200 people were trying to break into our homes, our

schools, our churches. They were shouting against Greeks. The next day in the street, there was a

carpet one metre deep of debris and goods from Greek shops’.

The next major event in the lives of the Greeks in Turkey occurred in 1964. On March 16, the

Turkish government began expelling ethnic Greeks who had Greek citizenship, on the grounds

that they were dangerous to the ‘internal and external’ security of the state. These people were

Greeks who had been born in Turkey but who had elected to retain Greek citizenship; some had

never been to Greece.

In the years that followed, thousands of other Greeks who held Turkish citizenship left the city

and settled in Greece or other parts of the world.

As well as pogroms and expulsions, the Turkish authorities tried to challenge the ethnic identity

of the Greek community, choosing education as the battlefield.

Lefkaros recalls the methods used by the Turkish state trying to enforce its authority in Greek

schools. ‘Before the start of the school day, Greek students from the ages of six to 18 were

obliged to sing the Turkish national anthem. When the Turkish teacher came in to the classroom,

we had to stand up and sing another anthem; very militaristic, that “we are Turks, we are the first

in the world, nobody can stop us”’.

History lessons, always given in Turkish by a Turkish teacher, were, according to Lefkaros, ‘a

propaganda exercise. We were taught that all races were derived from the Turkish race, that the

Turks were the first people in the world, that every civilisation is a Turkish civilisation. Even

Homer was a Turk. Alexander the Great, we were taught, was a Turk.’

Today, according to Lois Whitman of Human Rights Watch, the Greeks in Turkey are still

subject to police harassment, restrictions on free expression and are denied religious and ethnic

rights.

‘Not since our first report into Turkish human rights in 1982 have we encountered so many

people afraid to talk to us, or who would talk only anonymously. This is the first report we have

issued on Turkey in many years in which we have had to disguise the identity of almost every

person who talked with Human Rights Watch,’ Whitman said.

Greeks in Istanbul who met the Human Rights Watch team looked over their shoulders

apprehensively, afraid their conversations were being observed. A principal of a Greek school

continually asked a teacher to lower her voice as she described the problems faced by the Greek

children. A businessman shook with fright as he related conditions and concerns. Some Greeks

who were asked by intermediaries to meet Human Rights Watch in Istanbul spoke of being

harassed by police, called in and threatened.

One businessman reported that he had left Turkey in 1980 because of psychological pressure.

‘The chief of police called me into his office in Istanbul and gave me coffee and cigarettes, then

said: “It would be better if you leave, since you have a daughter. We won’t shoot you, but maybe

a car will hit you while you’re out walking.”’

Human Rights Watch found that such intimidation continues. One man reported being visited

recently by a member of the secret police, who put his gun on the table in front of him and

questioned the man for three hours about the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the committee for the

Greek hospital.

Education is still subject to Turkish interference. Orthodox priests are banned from entering

Greek schools. Morning prayer is outlawed. Greek textbooks and encyclopaedias are not

permitted in classrooms.

According to Lois Whitman: ‘The Greek children who attend Greek schools cannot speak Greek

freely or learn about Greek history. The teachers who are supposed to be allowed by the Treaty

of Lausanne to come from Greece to Turkey are either not allowed in, or come late in the year.’

However difficult life was, and still is, for the Constantinopolitans, loyalty to their ancient Greek

city is intense. Greeks had lived in the city for 2.000 years before the Turks arrived and

Constantinople is still the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, spiritual leader of the world’s

300m Greek Orthodox Christians.

Constantinopolitans on being forced out of Turkey had to abandon homes and businesses. Bank

accounts were frozen. They arrived in Greece as refugees. But most have flourished in their

adopted country. Barred from public service in Turkey, most brought with them business skills

that have stood them in good stead.”