Posted on 12/09/2024 2:24:30 PM PST by nickcarraway
Platani is a beautiful village on the Greek island of Kos in the Dodecanese complex, where Christians and Muslims coexist in harmony. The village has remained untouched through the years and continues to attract visitors with its diversity.
A Jewish cemetery and a Muslim one, a Christian church, a Mosque and the residents’ houses, make the picturesque scenery of the village Platani.
The village is located next to the town of Kos, right before the archaeological site of Asclepeion. In this village live most of the 1,500 Muslims of the island. A mosaic of diversity and harmonious coexistence of civilizations, Platani, stayed intact in time and still fascinates the tourists of Kos.
Mixed marriages between Christians and Muslims are a common phenomenon there, as well as common companies.
The president of the Turkish Muslim Association of Kos, The Brotherhood, Mazlum Payzanoglu, who is a close friend to Muslims and Christians, stresses that the Association’s dance and music groups participate in the Ippokrateia Festival in Kos, while the Turkish-speaking and Greek-speaking residents of the village live and have their shops and cafes side by side.
Grecian Delight supports Greece Racism is out of bounds in the Greek Village of Christians and Muslims “Civilization makes a country rich,” Payzanoglu told the Athens Macedonia News Agency (AMNA). He also mentioned that in this village the Muslims of Kos have been celebrating for a long time both the Turkish Bayram and the Christian Easter. Words like “racism” and “discrimination” do not exist in their vocabulary.
The Turkish-speaking Muslims, who have Greek nationality, are mainly residents of Kos that were not included in the exchange of populations imposed by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, because the Dodecanese were then under Italian occupation.
Until 1964, the name of the village was Kermentes, but the Greek authorities changed it to Platani, as part of the general policy in Greece at the time to replace the Turkish names of places with Greek ones.
In 1971, the dictatorship closed all the mixed schools, where, apart from Greek, the Turkish-speaking children also learned Turkish. Since then, these schools have not reopened.
Serif Karavetzir owns one of the traditional taverns in the village square. Lahmacun, adana kebab, ismir kofte, yaurtlu, ekmek kataif, kazan dibi and many other delicacies constitute the gastronomic experience that a tourist or a local should not miss.
Karavetzir says that the relations between Christians and Muslims were always excellent. Back in 1960, when he opened his tavern in Kermentes, there were much fewer people in the village than today and they were almost all Muslims. Now, the population of the village has very much increased and it is rather equally divided between Christians and Muslims.
Mixed marriages These changes are the result of mixed marriages and, secondarily, of the fact that many Greek-speaking people from Kos moved to Platani.
“Moreover, many Muslims from Kos went to Turkey, while Greek-speaking Cretan Turks as well as some Turkish-speaking people from Bodrum in Asia Minor came to Platani,” Karavetzir explained.
Karavetzir, Payzanoglu, and all the Turkish-speaking people in Kos have relatives and friends in Asia Minor and visit Turkey very often. Bodrum is just a half-an-hour distance from the Kos port.
One of the basic requests of the Muslims of Cos is, according to Payzanoglu, the establishment of bilingual schools. To fill the gap, the Turkish Muslim Association of Kos ran a Turkish language school.
But, as he says, “It is not the same with the ordinary school where children go anyway. They could integrate the Turkish language classes into the schedule, like in the past. Now, the non-Christians cannot attend the religious course, if they wish to.”
Kos and the rest of the Dodecanese belonged to Italy from 1912 to 1947, when they became part of the Kingdom of Greece.
The Greek Reporter did not mention the total population. The history of much of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean had Muslim and Christians living together, and the "new" influence of militant Islam -- Wahhabi rooted -- has changed much, including tearing apart different Muslim groups over what we might think of as less-than-signfiicant differences.
The small population itself may have played a part in coexistence.
Until 1922 Smyrna had the same reputation.
You found an anomaly?
Now do Constantinople…
There are Jews who still live in Iran and Ethiopia.
It never lasts. There can only be one god!
I remember hearing about these “ live side by side” villages in Iraq. It lasted until the militant Islamists took over these villages. Then the “neighbors” were pointing out where the Christians were.
what rate is the jizya tax ?
you know, the infidel tax non muslims pay ?
And that’s why it’s relatively peaceful.
Moslems can live in harmony with others as long as they are treated fairly and from a very small percentage of the population. Given the nature of Islam (there cannot be a separation of the religion from the state body politic), it is very unusual to have this harmony once the percentage exceeds a certain amount. The Asian countries come to mind but then again there are violent separatist movements there too (Thailand, Philippines). Islam is a religion of conquest, and only then peace of some fashion (sometimes) once firmly established.
End of story. The Koran literally instructs moongod mooseslimes where they don't have the numbers and no violent means to overthrow, lay in wait, encourage invasion, and breed like rabbits.
F Greece annd F Turkey.
In the Balkans if a person became a Mohammedan for whatever reason, he was said to have “gone Turk” and essentially became called a Turk despite his/her ethnicity.
I’m going to guess that a lot of these Muslims are actually of Greek heritage, not TurkiC
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