(AINA) -- On the eve of 554th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to Turks, the Turkish Daily News has published the findings of a sample survey, which reveals that a large section of Greeks still believe that Turkey is Greece under Muslim occupation. Greek Political and Research Centre (KPPE) had conducted a sample survey amongst 2,000 Greeks between March 22 and 31, 2007 on the question whether there are still some Hellenic lands waiting upon liberation beyond present Greece's border. The KPPE's website, unfortunately, has no English version, and hence 'Greek and Latin' to non-Greek knowing readers. But the Turkish Daily News, Turkey's English daily of 46 years of standing, has reproduced the findings reported in Athens-based newspaper Kathimerini. According to it 37.9 percent respondents believed that Constantinople (now Istanbul) awaited liberation, 36.2 percent described Aegean Coasts (ancient Ionia), 31.2 percent "coastal region of Turkey along the Black Sea", and about 59.9 percent felt Cyprus should belong to Greece. An unspecified number also felt that Macedonia and southern part of Albania should also belong to Greece.

This reflects a clash between sentiments and pragmatism. But somewhere we can only mourn the great tragedy of Hellenic history, which Greece has overcome but not forgotten. There is no getting away from the fact that Turkey (Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor) is Hellenic, later Byzantine land, under Turkish occupation. Turks, unlike Greeks, are not Mediterranean people. The Turks were plain invaders from central Asia who showed up in the region some thirty years before the First Crusade. The Byzantine Empire lost most of Asia Minor to Turks in battle of Manzikert (August 26, 1071).

The land upon which Turkey stands was a part of the Byzantine, earlier called Eastern Roman, Empire with its official language as Greek and official religion as Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Byzantine Empire, was the Christian legatee of the ancient Hellenic lands in Asia Minor. The region of Asia Minor was called Anatolia, meaning land of sunrise, in Greek. As early as 800 BC, twelve Ionian Greek city-states in the region had joined themselves in a confederacy called Ionian League (or Panionic League). The earliest school of Greek philosophy viz. Ionian school of Philosophy (with its masters like Thales of Miletus, Aximander, Aximenes) evolved in this region.

The Greeks, despite being overrun by the Turks, had maintained their presence at Smyrna until their extermination by Kamal Ataturks' forces in 1922 (vide The Blight of Asia by George Horton, 1926). This precipitated the compulsory exchange of population between Greeks in Turkey and Turks in Greece in 1923 under the aegis of the League of Nations.

It might be noted that once upon a time (1456) the entire Greece, barring the Ionian Islands, had gone under the Turkish rule. The Turks had also imposed their hegemony of greater part of the Balkan Peninsula extinguishing the lights of Christian kingdoms. Cyprus, which was ruled by the Venetians then, was conquered in 1571, a few months before the Catholic coalition cobbled by Pope Pius V halted Islam's westward expansion at sea battle of Lepanto. Fortunately, Greece, Cyprus along with other Christian countries like Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro are today free. Almost every Aegean island, which had been annexed by Turkey, has returned to Greek fold. But Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, due to its massive Muslim presence, a legacy of Turkish rule, may again erupt into Jihadi violence as during the disintegration of former Yugoslavia in early 1990s.

The problem today is thus of demography, and not merely history. The present day Greece has built up its geographical shape, in several phases, between its independence in 1829 to First Balkan War (1912-1913). One of the policies of the Greece in 19th century was to join the Russo-Turk wars on the side of the Russians, who were their fellow Eastern Orthodox brethren, and reap the fruits of territorial conquests from a declining Ottoman Empire. This policy, of Hellenic irredentism, was popularly referred to as "Megali Idea" (The Great Idea). The primary objective of the Megali Idea was the wrest back Constantinople (simply referred to as Polis, or the City).

Constantinople could have been Greece's in 1827 itself, if the Ottoman Sultan had decided to continue his Jihad, when the Czarist army was knocking at the gates of the great city, which had become the capital of Ottoman Turks in 1453. The Sultan-cum-Caliph gladly dropped rest of Greece like hot potato, in time, only to save Constantinople from Russians. Greeks lost their last opportunity to reclaim Constantinople and Smyrna in 1919-1922, when its army was positioned in Asia Minor, before Kemal Ataturk ousted them. The hope of reclaiming Constantinople, like rest of Asia Minor, was lost. Ataturk changed its internationally notified name from Constantinople to Istanbul, which Ottoman Emperor had failed to effect. This was a semantic burial of Christian history.

This is all history, and no doubt a great amount of Greek sentiment is attached to Asia Minor. Constantinople, the Holy City, of Eastern Orthodoxy, will be to Greek souls what marrow is to a Greek body. Yet, we have to accept the verdict of history. Greeks should be happy about what they recovered and not merely rue what they lost out permanently.

Today, the principle problem is not of history but demography. If you recover territory, you'll also have to accept its hostile population. Even damned 'ethnic cleansing' would come for a prohibitive price. The Turks are six times as populous as Greeks, and militarily better equipped. If Greeks recover what was once Hellenic or Byzantine land but with Turkish population, we would be back to 1923 problem. The issue of Cyprus glares before our eyes. The sovereign island of 82 percent Greeks (Christians) and 18 percent Turks (Muslims) failed to coalesce into a nation. Its journey as an independent sovereign island between 1960 and 1974 often erupted into inter-communal flames leading to Turkish invasions of 1974. This was only because the wisdom of Lausanne, 1923 Treaty of 'exchange of population' between mainland Greece and Turkey was not followed in Cyprus.

The growing Muslim population threatens to rip apart the civilizational fabric of Europe as a whole. Thus today it is not possible to pursue the Megali Idea. Only a handful of Greeks are left in Turkey and vice-versa. In 1974, it was insistence of the Greek military establishment -on enosis or Cyprus' unification with Greece (an offshoot of Megali Idea)- which carried out coup against Archbishop Makarios-III's government that Turkey responded with invasion. Megali Idea's last echo ended in wilderness. Today Cyprus is more prosperous than both Greece and Turkey because it is independent.

On the fateful day of Constantinople 's fall (May 29) let us recall history, but not repeat its blunders. I hope the other section of respondents in the survey understood it.

Priyadarsi Dutta is based in New Delhi, India and writes on Islam and allied subjects in the national news daily The Pioneer.