Secular Greek Nationalism

Could a secular Greek nationalism that incorporate Muslim Greeks instead of labeling them as Turks arise in the early 1800s

What would be the impact on Greece and would it lead to a more successful Megali Idea

What would be the impact the neighboring nationalist movements
 
Very hard.

"Turk" was a synonym for the Ottoman Muslim community; and it was used that way in the Balkans for centuries, long before the rise of the Greek national movement. Non-Turkish Muslim communities identified as "Turks" themselves extremely often (if not always)...it was not (just) Christians who labelled them that way.

And that's neither strange nor unnatural, when you consider that the Ottoman legal system operated on the basis of religious differences. It was religion that determined your rights and obligations, your opportunities and dangers, your social and legal networks. Native language, by comparison, meant very little. So Muslims overwhelmingly identified with the Muslim millet and the Ottoman state, and Christians overwhelmingly identified with their own millets and/or their revolutionary projects.

Under those circumstances, getting nationalism and national identity to truly cross religious lines would be a borderline impossible task. It's no wonder almost no one pulled it off.

Also, Greek nationalism was generally not fundamentalist or theocratic, so it was already "secular" in the broadest sense. But I realize that's not the question here.
 
Under those circumstances, getting nationalism and national identity to truly cross religious lines would be a borderline impossible task. It's no wonder almost no one pulled it off.
How did the Albanians do it ? and could the same be applied to greeks
 
How did the Albanians do it ? and could the same be applied to greeks

Modern Albanian Christians are mostly Catholics, there wasn't a Catholic Millet, the Orthodox Albanians outside Albania was pretty much assimilated by their Orthodox neighbours. So if you want a Greek national identity unconnected with Orthodoxy, you need a large Greek population outside the Millet system. Maybe we could see Venice keep Crete and gaining Morea and keep it through the 18th century. Only for it to gain independence as a Kingdom, Duchy or Principality (under a western Prince) after the fall of Venice to Austria. As such we have minor Orthodox Greece with a small but important Catholic minority. As such Greekness becomes defined by language primarily.
 
How did the Albanians do it ? and could the same be applied to greeks

The Albanians just barely managed to do it. Even after 1912 many Muslim (and Orthodox) Albanians would reject Albanian nationalism for years.

What helped Albanian nationalism (eventually) cross religious lines is that it was "late to the party": Albanian nation-building took place at a time when political and cultural ties between the Albanian Muslims and the whole Ottoman Muslim community were weakened.
 
How much did Greek Muslims identify as Greeks themselves? Religious diversity works fine as long as national identity trumps religious identity for BOTH the minority and majority groups.
 
I'll give my two cents on this very interesting and complicated topic. I do not claim to be an expert.

First off, "secular nationalism" is very difficult. It is so much easier to use religion as a basis for a national identity. Now the country might call itself secular but the bedrock is the religion, and the culture flows from that. So many ethnic groups in OTL used this kind of nationalism to I feel it is kind of how ethnic nationalism works. There are a couple exceptions, like the Germans, but so many countries use religious identity as the basis of their identity, it is kind of a rule.

It terms of identity, the Greeks have a historical continuity going back thousands of years, but I feel that "modern" Greeks have a restricted sense of identity, we might call this a "Athenian Identity" and contrast it with a "Byzantine Identity" or a "Macedonian Identity." The most familer Greeks to the western world were the Athenians so that was what western-educated Greeks focused on when they regained their independence. However, to a Greek in Byzantium, being "Greek" was so much more than just being Athenian. When the Greeks regained their independence from the Turks, the nebulous definition of "Greek" started to be used in contrast to the Ottomans. Being "Greek" meant being a Christian, so a lot of Muslim Greeks got alienated and went along with the Turks.

To create a secular Greece means avoiding alienating the Muslims, which requires, I am sad to say, forcing their hand by destroying the Ottomans. Entirely, suddenly, and all at once. And in the ashes creating a new Byzantine Empire where every Greek IS a Greek, regardless of religion. That is the hard part, because it it is difficult to get all the Great Powers of Europe accepting of that. The "Greek Plan" by Catherine the Great is a example that had some promise but it was becoming less popular and feasible after 1800 rolled around. However, it is not ASB that Alexander could have implemented his Grandmother's plan had the circumstances lined up in Europe.
 
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I'll give my two cents on this very interesting and complicated topic. I do not claim to be an expert.

First off, "secular nationalism" is very difficult. It is so much easier to use religion as a basis for a national identity. Now the country might call itself secular but the bedrock is the religion, and the culture flows from that. So many ethnic groups in OTL used this kind of nationalism to I feel it is kind of how ethnic nationalism works. There are a couple exceptions, like the Germans, but so many countries use religious identity as the basis of their identity, it is kind of a rule.

It terms of identity, the Greeks have a historical continuity going back thousands of years, but I feel that "modern" Greeks have a restricted sense of identity, we might call this a "Athenian Identity" and contrast it with a "Byzantine Identity" or a "Macedonian Identity." The most familer Greeks to the western world were the Athenians so that was what western-educated Greeks focused on when they regained their independence. However, to a Greek in Byzantium, being "Greek" was so much more than just being Athenian. When the Greeks regained their independence from the Turks, the nebulous definition of "Greek" started to be used in contrast to the Ottomans. Being "Greek" meant being a Christian, so a lot of Muslim Greeks got alienated and went along with the Turks.

To create a secular Greece means avoiding alienating the Muslims, which requires, I am sad to say, forcing their hand by destroying the Ottomans. Entirely, suddenly, and all at once. And in the ashes creating a new Byzantine Empire where every Greek IS a Greek, regardless of religion. That is the hard part, because it it is difficult to get all the Great Powers of Europe accepting of that. The "Greek Plan" by Catherine the Great is a example that had some promise but it was becoming less popular and feasible after 1800 rolled around. However, it is not ASB that Alexander could have implemented his Grandmother's plan had the circumstances lined up in Europe.


I really really doubt Christians in Greece are going to get along all hunky dory with the Muslims if the Ottomans are destroyed. The Byzantine Empire was a Christian state that ethnically cleansed Muslims in the territories in re-conquered. A national identity drawing from that provides little push to create a multi-religious state. What incentives do the Christians have to forgive the people who had aligned themselves with the Ottoman regime?
 
The Byzantine Empire was a Christian state that ethnically cleansed Muslims in the territories in re-conquered
You could portrait it as Greeks vs the central Asian hordes or something like that and primarily focus on the Ancient Greeks for a national identity
 
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The Byzantines were Christian yes, but I feel that even if the Greek peninsula had somehow become 100% Muslim, a resurgent Byzantine identity would still be on a collision course with the Turks in the same way that a resurgent Iranian state would be on a collision course with the Arabs.

Old cultures have more potential to co-opt things like a new religion and not lose their historical heritage. This is in contrast to newer cultures, where that is much more difficult. It does not always happen, like in the case of Egypt, but the Greeks at least could have created a Islamic Greek identity because of how prestigious being "Greek" was in the eyes of the rest of Europe.
 
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You could portrait it as Greeks vs the central Asian hordes or something like that and primarily focus on the Ancient Greeks for a national identity

They could but there's no reason to do so. Ethnic hatreds that are formed through centuries of second-class citizenship don't go away unless there are large incentives to make them go away. The Greek identity was always about Christianity even when it was based on Ancient Greece in OTL.

The Byzantines were Christian yes, but I feel that even if the Greek peninsula had somehow become 100% Muslim, a resurgent Neo-Byzantine identity would still be on a collision course with the Turks in the same way that a resurgent Iranian state would be on a collision course with the Arabs.

The Ottoman regime before the Late 19th century was not based on Turkish ethnic supremacy. Why would Islamic Greeks rebel if they were treated as first-class citizens equal to any other Muslim? What makes them more likely to rebel than any other Ottoman Muslim?
 
The best bet may be to get larger swaths of the Ottoman ruling classes to identify as Greek, but even that will establish multiple 'Greek' nationalities if all else is held constant.
 
How much did Greek Muslims identify as Greeks themselves? Religious diversity works fine as long as national identity trumps religious identity for BOTH the minority and majority groups.

Lets take as an example the so called Turkocretans ie the Muslims of Crete. Turkocretans were interesting in a multitude of ways. First their population consisted almost in its entirety of Islamicized Greeks, there was no outside settlement to the island of any significance. Second their conversion was very late, starting during the siege of Candia and for the most part taking place during the 18th century. They still spoke Greek with a Cretan dialect (many of their descendants still do), had mostly the same customs, including a tendency to still drink alcohol to an extend outside Muslim observers often considered scandalous. For good measure many of them knew their families had converted in recent memory and sometimes even knew of increasingly distant Christian cousins that more often than not might be in the farm next door.

So arguably if a Muslim population still felt Greek, this would be the poster child for it. Instead by all accounts they oppressed their Christian cousins to the extend of the Porte being forced to take active measures in IMS 1812 to protect the Christians against them and the Christian population calling the pre-1821 period "the time of the jannisaries" and contrasting it unfavorably to direct Egyptian and Ottoman rule after 1830. Add to this the Muslims invariably siding with the Porte in all the Greek revolts in the island in 1690, 1770, 1821 and afterwards nd their relationship to the Greek population of the island would best compare to that between Irish Catholic nationalists and Orangists in north Ireland... with a propensity for vendettas thrown in.

Two interesting though minor notes to this. There was a small number of Turkocretans that identified with the Greek side, most notably the Kourmoulis clan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michalis_Kourmoulis who in 1821 rose an masse. Interestingly enough though they self-identified as cryptochristians not actual Muslims.

Second after Cretan autonomy and then union with Greece there was an increasing number of Muslim Cretans that started identifying as Greeks while others kept identifying as Turkish (and increasingly leaving the island). Both the Greek government then under Venizelos, a Cretan himself, and leading figures of Greek nationalism like Ion Dragoumis tried to foster this and also use Muslim Cretans as teachers to schools for the other group of likely Greek Muslims the Vallaads of Western Macedonia, How this would evolve if not cut short in 1922 is an open question. But quite possibly you could end up with two smallish populations of Muslim Greeks in Crete and West Macedonia.
 
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