304 | The Multiple Personae of Pavlos Carolidis
He leaves no doubt that the reason he was involved in politics was not so much
the interests of Hellenism in the empire in general as it was the possibility of an
unfortunate outcome of the struggle in Macedonia, where interethnic violence
between Greeks, Bulgarians, and Macedonians had been ongoing on several
years.
Many contemporary politicians and journalists placed Macedonia and the
Slavic danger at the top of their agendas. Especially for those who strongly advo-
cated joint action between the Greek Orthodox and Turkish Muslims, the cohe-
sive element of their discourse was always the Macedonian Question. Carolidis
tried to convince his Muslim interlocutors that he was not acting as an agent of
the Hellenic authorities. He hoped that he would be given a free hand to act on his
own will, as “a representative of Hellenic Smyrna and Hellenism and the Hellenic
mind and academia and the Hellenic national interests, but also political honesty
and enlightened patriotism.”
After he obtained the necessary documentation, Carolidis visited the metro-
politan palace, where both administrative bodies of the local Greek community,
the elders council and the central committee, had gathered in his honor. After the
ceremony was concluded, he left for the harbor, walking through the European
Quarter, inhabited almost exclusively by Christians, among whom there were
many Greeks. There, according to the professor’s narrative, all the windows and
streets were full of people holding Greek flags. Carolidis described this day as
the peak of the triumph of “Hellenic Smyrna.” However, in a demonstration of
his political acuteness, he confessed that this triumph could have a political and
moral value only in the past, when the atmosphere was not so politicized, and
not in the present. In the present, all it could do was irritate the Turkish Muslim
element of Smyrna and Istanbul.
An Ottoman Greek in Istanbul
Carolidis gradually alleviated the initial suspicions against him. During parlia-
mentary debates he fiercely criticized policies promoted by the government, but
he was one of the few Greek Orthodox deputies who, in the long run, retained
the esteem of his Muslim colleagues, mostly thanks to his knowledge of Otto-
man culture and history. (See figure 21.2.) A very good example of this is offered
by the parliamentary debate on the Macedonian Question, in which Carolidis
expressed his ideas on the position of Hellenism in the empire. As he reiterates
in his memoirs, he argued that the so-called Macedonian revolution or struggle
was in reality the result of foreign intervention, first by the Pan-Slavic agents of
the Bulgarian government and then by the Great Powers, who legitimized their
actions by proclaiming support for Macedonian Christians suppressed by both
the Ottomans and the Greek Orthodox patriarchate. Carolidis suggested that
the Macedonian Question could be resolved only if such intervention ceased,