National flag of Trabzon, seen as a unifying symbol of modern Trabzonian nationalism.
Trabzonian nationalism is a nascent form of Pontic nationalism that promotes a unique cultural identity and unity tied to the Second Empire of Trabzon and the historical region of Pontus. In its modern form, Trabzonian nationalism first rose to prominence in the mid 2000s as Trabzon's military regime sought to counter a revived militant Turkish nationalism in the neighboring Sultanate of Turkey. The current Trabzonian nationalist idea may be regarded as an example of the political opportunism of the country's military elite, rather than a political awakening prompted by popular will.
Some contemporary scholars have described Trabzon as a newly "nationalizing" state, uncertain of its identity but wary of renewed cultural and political domination from abroad.
History[]
Precursors[]
The term "Pontic" is derived from the Greek word "Pontus", meaning the "sea", and refers to the population that lived in the Black Sea coastal cities of northeastern Anatolia. The first settlements appeared in the region as early as 800 BC. Trabzon, historically known as Trebizond and Trapezus, was founded as a Hellenized city in ancient Pontus. Trabzon was originally populated by Greek colonists, and remained heavily influenced by the Greek language and culture long after the conquest of the region by the Ottoman Empire. The first Pontic nationalist organization, the Pontus Society, was formed in 1904 by Greek Orthodox Christian separatists. The Pontus Society enjoyed significant support among the region's Greek minority but did not appeal to the wider Turkish or Armenian population. Greek Pontic separatism was largely squashed by Turkish pogroms during the 1920s, and the majority of the local Greeks resettled in Greece and Russia.
In 1921, Turkish republicans executed a number of Pontic Greeks, including former Ottoman parliamentarian Matthaios Kofidis, for supporting an independence movement in Pontus. The brutal treatment of the Pontic Greek population was opposed by prominent members of Trabzon's Turkish population such as Ali Şükrü Bey, who was executed by republicans as well. The region was not an enthusiastic bastion of support for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, and declined to furbish arms or support for the republicans during the Turkish War of Independence. When Atatürk dispatched republican officials such as Topal Osman to obtain weapons from Trabzon, they were expelled by irate locals.
In modern Trabzonian historiography, Kofidis and the Pontus Society are both acknowledged for their early role in promoting Pontic nationalism, although the ethnic and religious nature of their conflict with the Turkish state are notably omitted. Trabzonian nationalists argue that this early Pontic separatism was based in a secular regional nationalism rather than narrow ethnic goals or Christianity.
Post-Doomsday[]
Hagia Sophia of Trabzon, where the emperors of medieval Trebizond were crowned. This structure is of enormous significance to Trabzonian nationalists as an icon of the region's imperial past.
From 1983 to 1987, the Trabzonian proto-state which emerged following Doomsday continued to use the flags and insignia of the Republic of Turkey. After only four years as Trabzon's de facto military ruler, General Altan Sahin dissolved the remnants of the Turkish civil government in the region and declared it a monarchy, the Empire of Trabzon. Sahin deliberately exploited old imperial symbols from Trabzon's past from the beginning. At his coronation, the self-styled emperor addressed the population of Trabzon from a military vehicle decorated with an unfamiliar flag of white and black stripes. This flag was based on the heraldry of the Megas Komnenos dynasty, which ruled the (first) Empire of Trebizond between 1204 and 1461, and featured an upturned crescent and an eight-pointed star. The eight-pointed star has a long history of symbolism in the Pontic region, with variations being used by the Mithridatic dynasty of ancient Pontus, in addition to the Komneni and some of the earliest Turkic settlers during the medieval period.
The new flag naturally became the first symbol of modern Pontic nationalism, emphasizing the imperial pretensions of old Byzantine Trebizond and Mithridatic Pontus coupled with the Muslim, Turkish-speaking culture of new Trabzon. It also became a focal point for a Kemalist revolt and attempted coup d'etat against Sahin in 1987, with many of the rebels flying the flag of the Turkish Republic in defiance of Sahin's new imperial symbolism. The coup was crushed, in no small part because the military elite which backed Sahin no longer saw any reason to defend a philosophy at odds with their personal enrichment and accumulation of power under the new regime. In the months that followed, the banner of white and black stripes began appearing over the administrative buildings of towns across Trabzon's interior. Like any symbolic act, the adoption of the new flag would have practical implications for the new state that went far beyond new iconography. The symbol was a first of many steps to incorporate the ancient and medieval past into a narrative of Trabzon as a regional power, with its own identity and claims to greatness.
In 2000, the revival of modern Turkish nationalism was heralded by the electoral victory of a nationalist coalition led by the New Turkiye Party in the Sultanate of Turkey. The Sultanate subsequently embarked on several military campaigns waged against other Turkish states such as the Republic of Hatay and State of Elazig. Its conquest of both those states were celebrated as the ultimate show of Turkey's resurgence. The new generation of Turkish nationalists identified the Sultanate as the legal and spiritual successor of the defunct Republic of Turkey, and viewed the arising of separate national identities in other post-Doomsday Turkish states with disdain. In their rhetoric, states like Hatay, Elazig, and Trabzon were simply historical parts of the Turkish nation that needed to be restored under the Sultanate, and lacked a legitimate claim to independent statehood.
After the fall of Hatay, Trabzon's military regime - formerly preoccupied with its rivalry with the Greater Patnos and New Erzurum - realized that the Sultanate's imperial ambitions to restore the territories of the old Republic were a far more serious existential threat. Sahin buoyed this case with speeches arguing that the very idea of a unified Turkish statehood was fiction, and this reality was being suppressed by irredentist "illegal securocrats" in the Sultanate. Sahin, and others in the country's military leadership, simultaneously began claiming that Trabzon had been endowed with a historical sense of statehood which predated the modern Republic of Turkey and even the Ottoman Empire, harking back to the days of the medieval Empire of Trebizond and the ancient Kingdom of Pontus. This idea emphasized the pre- and extra-Turkish experience of the Pontic region, depicting the modern Trabzonian nation-state as a unique cultural entity juxtaposed to the old Republic and the neo-Ottoman Sultanate. Sahin phrased his nationalist message to imply that he was in the process of restoring the national rights of a nation that had existed in the pre-Ottoman past (though in fact, the Trabzonian nation had not existed - at least, in anything resembling its modern form, prior to Doomsday).
Although the initial nationalist propaganda was crude, and largely driven by geopolitical realities rather than conviction of ideology, over time it became more sophisticated in articulating the separation of "Trabzonianness" from Turkish national ideology and culture. The objective of Sahin and his propagandists was to empower their own nationalist ideology through a step-by-step deidentification of Trabzonian identity with Turkish mass consciousness. To that end, pre-Ottoman and pre-Republican icons were bundled together and fused into a peculiar new framework of nationalism, mythology, and patriotism. The unspoken unifying trait of Trabzonian nationalism was opposition to the Sultanate and everything it glorified about the Ottoman and Republican past; so the new nationalist idea was built on open confrontation with Turkishness and with the Turkish nation, framed as an appeal to historical Pontic statehood. Sahin and his propagandists presented themselves as political archaeologists rediscovering and reinterpreting the communal past in order to regenerate the nation. By emphasizing the ancient Pontic and medieval Trapezuntine legacy, the state offered its own alternative national mythology juxtaposed to Turkish nationalism.
Statue of Atatürk being removed in Rize, 2017.
In 2017, an updated law on "de-Kemalization" was passed, enforcing the removal of monuments and memorials to individuals and events that symbolized Turkish nationalism, republicanism, or anything associated with the defunct Turkish Republic. For example, statues of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk were removed from Trabzon, Rize, and a host of smaller towns and cities. Alongside the de-Kemalization campaign, streets and public centers were renamed after various figures from the post-Doomsday era, or figures from pre-Ottoman and pre-republican history. Trabzon's main square, previously known as Atatürk Alanı, was renamed Sahin Alanı. The capital's Yavuz Selim Boulevard, named for Ottoman sultan Selim I, was renamed Mithridates Boulevard after the Mithridatic dynasty of ancient Pontus. The campaign even extended to geographic features, such as the Sultan Murat Yaylası, a plateau named for Sultan Murad IV. In a deliberate affront to the Ottoman imperial legacy, the plateau was renamed Trabzon imperatorları Yaylası; a memorial to Ottoman soldiers at the site was also demolished. In 1973, the Turkish government had renamed 72% of hamlets and villages in Trabzon as part of a deliberate campaign of "Turkification" aimed at effacing Greek, Latin, Armenian and other foreign-sounding names from settlements; by the end of 2022 all these had been reverted to their previous names. Some pre-Ottoman Turkish settlement names were also restored; for example, the town and district of Vakfıkebir (named for the mother of Sultan Selim I) reverted to Büyükliman, which dates back to the early medieval period.
The regime's use of symbols and iconography adopted from the medieval Empire of Trebizond, and identification with a peculiar brand of supposedly ancient Pontic nationalism, seems to have a clear and growing basis in Trabzonian public opinion. Identification with Trabzonian national identity, often rejected by the older generation which predated Doomsday, began to increase in the mid 2000s after the Sultanate's annexation of Elazig. Sociologists have noted that even prior to Doomsday, the life space that the peoples of northeastern Turkey tended to construct was inward-looking compared to the parts of western and central Turkey where the population was much more politicized and urban; this was partly a result of the region's geographic isolation and low levels of industrialization and development. Doomsday and the fall of the Turkish Republic further strengthened the insular trend. When asked what place they most closely identify with by independent researchers in 2022, most Trabzonians name their home town as their first or second choice, with a significant percentage also citing the Empire of Trabzon. Aside from the very elderly and elderly urban dwellers in particular, few still identified with the old Republic or any greater sense of pan-Turkish nationhood.
Current status[]
In early 2023, General Cengiz Akyüz - Trabzon's Minister of Interior and Public Security - assumed the reigns of power after a failed coup d'état against Sahin highlighted the ailing monarch's political weakness and inability to continue in his role as head of state. Although Akyüz had a conservative track record and was expected to continue many of Sahin's policies, he showed no interest in questions of historical reinterpretation or appeals to historic Pontic greatness. In his public comments, Akyüz preferred to fall back on the narrow criticism of Turkish nationalism and the imperialist politics of the Sultanate. He has rejected the notion of Turkey as a civilizational state, and attacked the invocation of the Ottoman past to justify and legitimize the Sultanate's current foreign and security policies. Akyüz claimed that imperial colonization and conquest by force were the objectives of modern Turkish nationalism; thus, outward military expansion was a defining characteristic of the Sultanate's identity, and made it an ongoing threat to stability in the region.
Akyüz's blunt realpolitik language worked well with ethnic minorities and friendly foreign governments that had long feared a Turkish imperial resurgence, but was also perceived by some of the military elite as less effective than Sahin's strategy of promoting home-grown patriotism to undermine the potential spread of Turkish nationalism among Trabzon's domestic population.
In a speech made in July 2024, Akyüz apparently sought to reaffirm the regime's commitment to Trabzonian nationalist discourse, or at least allay fears by his supporters that he was abandoning the nationalism strategy. He commented that Trabzon's neighbors were unwilling to tolerate its continued independence, because of their difficulty in accepting Trabzonians as a distinct nation and Trabzon as a distinct homeland. Akyüz also acknowledged the importance of local nationalism as a bulwark against the "Great Turkish chauvinism" espoused by the Sultanate.
Trabzonian nationalism and Turkish identity[]
Trabzonian nationalism has sought to anchor Trabzon in its own sphere politically, while also underscoring the supposed differences between Trabzonian and mainstream Turkish values, ways of development, and historical and geopolitical profiles. The regime's revisionist interpretation of history set medieval Trebizond and ancient Pontus sharply apart from the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, and blamed the latter for the region's social and economic woes prior to Doomsday. The Ottomans and Young Turks were accused of using Turkish statehood as discursive tools of power politics, being defined exclusively through titular ethnicity and its corporate rights, rather than the common legal rights of all citizens. The lopsided structure of Ottoman imperialism and the Republic were also emphasized, which ostensibly generated huge power imbalances between the center of power in Istanbul (later Ankara) and the periphery, which included Trabzon and the Caucasus borderlands. References to the Turkish War of Independence led by Atatürk from 1919-23 have also been struck from the curriculum of Trabzonian schools.
If the current Trabzonian state is the true heir to an ancient and medieval Pontic statehood, Trabzon emerges as somehow alien to the Ottoman and Republican traditions. Insisting on the uniquely Pontic roots of modern Trabzon means striking out most early history it shared with the rest of Anatolia and the Turkish nation, and substituting it with the history, traditions, and values of a reimagined historic Pontic nation. The regime has used this logic to outlaw popular forms of Turkish nationalism, and the notions of local Turkish cultural and national interest as at least theoretically distinct from the greater Trabzonian one are discouraged.
Though motivated by self-interest on the part of the military regime, Trabzon's scramble to distance itself from Turkey resembles similar efforts of the one-time overseas subjects of the colonial empires in the wake of World War II. If, as some regime propagandists have argued, the imperial analogy is at all applicable to the Ottoman Empire and the modern Sultanate of Turkey which claims its descent, a post-imperial syndrome was bound to surface eventually. Trabzon, they point out, has not been unique in its campaign to forge a new national identity through opposition to a culturally close and historically dominant center of power.
Outside Trabzon, most Turks have not taken Trabzonian nationalism quite seriously, and Turkish nationalists in the neighboring Sultanate fed the expectation that Trabzon would sooner or later be "returned" into the embrace of a greater pan-Turkish nation. Most political voices in the Sultanate, regardless of which party they represent, continue to call for the total annihilation of Trabzon's independence and incorporation of presently Trabzonian lands into a greater Turkish state - a trend which of course influenced the regime's attempts to wholly manufacture its own domestic brand of nationalism. For Turkish nationalists, the problem of Trabzonian nationalism is at the very heart of the post-Doomsday Turkish nation- and state-building dilemma; while some Turkish states such as the Elazig were weak enough to be absorbed into the Sultanate by military conquest, and others such as Greater Patnos cultivated as fraternal allies committed to a peaceful union, Trabzon stood out as an irritating enclave in the post-Doomsday Turkish political, social, and cultural space that was both well-armed and insular enough to resist political overtures or easy conquest. Turkish nationalists among the political elites in both the Sultanate and Greater Patnos continue to view the Turkish-speaking population of Trabzon as people who wish to be part of the greater Turkish world, but are prohibited from doing so by an illegal regime. Trabzonian nationalists are portrayed as alien to the "real Trabzon" which is rightfully part of the Turkish nation.
Some Turkish academics acknowledged that the Sultanate's belligerent policies towards Trabzon and its attempts to reclaim all the territories of the former Republic had minimized mainstream Turkish cultural, social, and political influence within Trabzon, thus pushing it - more or less inadvertently - into the Georgian and Armenian spheres of influence. Others have ascribed to what regime propagandists frequently decried as the Turkish myth of Trabzon - the idea that all the old Republic's successor states were naturally part of a bigger Turkish nation and destined to remain this way - and Trabzon was fated to follow in the footsteps of the greater pan-Turkish nation as if by its own will.
Trabzonian nationalism and ethnic minorities[]
Prior to Doomsday, the Republic of Turkey's policies wwere to represent the entire country as a homogeneous Turkish community, and of others as enemies. Nationalism and ethnocentrism had always gone hand in hand, and ethnic and religious minorities were either isolated and oppressed, or their very existence was not acknowledged as they were considered a fifth column within a state which strived to achieve and convince itself of ethnic homogeneity for most of the twentieth century. The collapse of the Republic did lead to the significant public reemergence of ethnic and religious minorities, especially along Turkey's old periphery, and this was reflected in the politics and society of Trabzon.
Modern Trabzonian nationalism has always deliberately emphasized geography and regional history rather than ethnicity or religion. While ethnocentric elements of Turkish culture provided the cornerstone of Turkish nationalism, Trabzonian nationalism used the state itself, as well as appeals to a historic Pontic nationhood, as the main principle upon which the regime based its legitimacy. Through the cultivation of nationalism in school, day to day contacts with the state bureaucracy, the mosque, or military service, Trabzonians have been inculcated with the unproblematic continuity and sacredness of a Trabzonian state without reference to a single dominant culture or ethnicity.
Abkhaz militia in northeastern Trabzon.
In its attempts to emphasize the indiscriminate benevolence of the state, Trabzon's military leadership abandoned the pre-Doomsday Turkish policy of assimilating or purging minorities as part of a system that tagged all resident Sunni Muslims as Turks and resident non-Sunni Muslims as aliens. The pre-Doomsday narrative of attempting to form a mono-ethnic society on the basis of the titular Turkish ethnic group was publicly repudiated. Instead, the new state tags individuals with citizenship and ethnic nationality - for example, Trabzonian and Laz or Trabzonian and Turkish - encouraging an identity and experience in common among peoples who observe vastly different cultural traditions. The post-Doomsday state has essentially institutionalized multi-nationality in minorities through the codification of nationhood and ethnic nationality as social categories separate and distinct from statehood and citizenship. As a result, pre-Doomsday identities and expressions of minority groups have reemerged after a long period of suppression, and data is now freely available to be collected on the numbers of Kurds, Greeks, Abkhazians, Lazi, and other ethnic minorities. Regime propagandists were quick to remind minorities that the Trabzonian state had freed them from the ethno-racial exclusivity of pre-Doomsday Turkish chauvinism.
There are an estimated 5,000 Pontic Greeks in Trabzon, mostly residing in sixty rural villages. Some of the community's revered figures have been publicly recognized by Trabzonian nationalists, such as Matthaios Kofidis, who was acknowledged as an early forerunner of pre-Doomsday Pontic separatism. Many of the region's Greek Orthodox monasteries and churches were abandoned prior to Doomsday, but the Trabzonian state has permitted religious services at some sites to resume, namely at the Sumela Monastery in Maçka. Due to social contention over the community's identity, the state does not refer to them as Greeks but simply by the name of their dialect: Romeika.
Georgians and the related Lazi ethnic group, the main non-Turkish minority in Trabzon, have long been lauded as model minorities, and are viewed positively by the nationalist movement in light of their historic ties to Trabzon's closest military and economic partner: the neighboring Federation of Georgia.
Kurds in Trabzon are a recognized ethnic nationality distinct from Turks. The community had a difficult history in the region prior to Doomsday - beginning in 1979, Kurdish nationalists affiliated with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) carried out guerrilla attacks in several parts of eastern Turkey. As a result of Doomsday and the collapse of the Turkish military command, the PKK was able to achieve its objective of establishing an independent Kurdistan to the south of Trabzon. Public antipathy towards Kurds and Kurdistan in Trabzon has gradually declined in the post-Doomsday era due to the PKK's ongoing state of conflict with Greater Patnos, Trabzon's chief regional rival.
Dissemination[]
The dissemination of Trabzonian nationalist narratives - including the regime's interpretation of the region's political history - is believed to be centralized and supervised by various state organs, including secret sections of the State Security Service (DGH) and military intelligence. It is spread through an elaborate network of diverse sources, including official news sources, alternative platforms, exiles, and political actors. These include the various ministries of government, state-controlled domestic media such as Trabzon Radyosu and the daily newspaper Trabzon, state-funded political dissidents and organizations in neighboring states, state-subsidized non-government organizations (NGOs) and mosques, and the education system. Directives on various forms of nationalist messaging are passed by the DGH to editors, broadcasting staff, journalists, clerics, school superintendents, and informants in the diaspora.
Information and propaganda operations are funded directly from the state budget, as well as state enterprises and ostensibly private companies. Key nationalist messages are disseminated across these channels in a recurring loop which constitutes a fixed part of what the regime regards as information warfare necessary to its own survival. The intention of this loop is to construct, and then continually reinforce, a consolidated historical narrative stressing Pontic greatness and exceptionalism. Narratives are also repeated and reinforced on the supposedly hostile anti-Trabzonian intentions and policies of the Sultanate of Turkey, Greater Patnos, and their allies. Particular criticism is leveled at the Sultanate's refusal to recognize Trabzonian statehood and its perception of the region as a historical part of Turkey. The main targeted audience are the Trabzonian people and the citizens of neighboring states, particularly ethnic minorities who may be sympathetic to pushback against pan-Turkish imperialism.
The insular nature of the regime and society has played a key role in perpetuating nationalist themes and countering the Turkish nationalist narratives of the neighboring Sultanate and Greater Patnos. Turkish remains the predominant language of communication, and prior to Doomsday Trabzon was of course tethered to the Turkish-centered information space maintained by telephone, television, and radio, as well as trips to relatives and friends. The collapse of communications infrastructure linking Trabzon to much of western Anatolia after Doomsday provided the regime with ample opportunities to isolate the population, and keep it isolated through militarized borders as well as strict control of mass media, including restricting the ownership of personal radio receivers and a longstanding ban on television.
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