Aegean or "Sea of Islands"?

A Summit, A Proposal, A Question

Last week, at the "Maritime Summit" I attended, one of the most valuable literary figures this country has produced was on the podium. The name was Prof. Dr. İskender Pala. For readers who may not be familiar with him, I would like to briefly remind you. Mr. Pala is the person who brought divan poetry down from the dusty shelves of academia and made it beloved by a wide audience. Moreover, he is not a stranger to the sea. In his youth, he joined our Naval Forces, wore a uniform for many years, contributed to the compilation of archives of our maritime history, and authored valuable works on Ottoman naval history. His novels have reached hundreds of thousands of readers, and he was also awarded the Grand Prize for Culture and Arts by the Presidency in 2013. In short, the person before us is not ignorant of the sea, history, or the power of words. On the contrary, he is someone who perhaps understands the power of words better than any of us.

This knowledgeable figure made a call from the podium that day to an esteemed audience from the maritime community, from shipowners to captains, from academics to bureaucrats, and said, "Let us not call this sea 'Aegean'; our ancestors referred to it as the 'Sea of Islands'; let us call it that." As expected from him, he made his call with eloquence that had been filtered through his historical and literary knowledge, and applause rose from the audience. I confess, I respected the sincere emotion within those applause. The desire of a nation to own its own history, language, and nomenclature is a noble sentiment, and it would be unjust to belittle it. However, as the applause subsided, questions began to accumulate in my mind. Because I was not only present in that hall as a literature reader and a humble writer. I was sitting there as a captain who has spent his life at sea, a mariner educated in maritime law, and a researcher who has been working on the maritime jurisdiction issues in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean for years. And my professional reflex was trying to tell me this: The name of a sea is not just a word. Especially if that sea has become the very embodiment of a web of disputes that has lasted for half a century between two states, extending from territorial waters to continental shelf, from airspace to the demilitarized status of islands.

The most prominent of my questions were: Is the name "Sea of Islands" a return to our history, or is it an unintended contradiction that has crept into the language of our current legal struggle? Whose sovereignty do the islands belong to today? Does defining this sea "through the islands" imply giving an indirect title to the current owner of the islands? Does international law consider the name of a sea? Should a historian's rightful sensitivity become a state's foreign policy preference, or can a historian present it that way? What filters must they pass through to be able to do so?

This article will pursue these questions. Let me state from the beginning that my aim is not to enter into a polemic with Mr. Pala. I have full respect for him due to his maritime background, which I consider as a professional elder, and his contributions to our cultural life. My aim is to examine the proposal he articulated with the elegance of a cultural figure with the seriousness it deserves. Because the greatest respect that can be shown to a proposal is not just to applaud it, but to think about it.

The Socratic Method

If the reader expects a definitive judgment from me at the end of this article, let me warn you in advance that you will not find it. This is not an escape from confrontation but a conscious choice. I had written in the preface of my book titled "The Eastern Mediterranean Problem." Just as the wise Socrates connected his knowledge to his interlocutors by asking them questions rather than presenting it directly, my fundamental criterion in this writing is to provide the infrastructure that will help the reader form their own opinion rather than merely stating my own. Moreover, I pay attention to this in both my speeches and writings. Because it is easy to sell opinions, but it is laborious to lay the groundwork for forming them. I always choose the laborious path that encourages people to think and helps them meet their own preferences; this article will not be an exception.

As a requirement of this method, throughout the article, I will try to present both views in their strongest forms. While defending the arguments of those who say "Let the name remain Aegean," I will also present the arguments of those who advocate for "Sea of Islands" with the same fairness. Wrestling with a weak opponent and winning is not considered a feat. We will bring every view to the ring in its strongest form; the referee will be the reader themselves.

I would like to point out one more thing. This discussion did not originate solely from that summit hall last week, as some might think. At the International Aegean Islands Symposium jointly organized by the Turkish Historical Society and Dokuz Eylul University in 2017, it was decided to use the name "Sea of Islands" instead of "Aegean." It has been recorded in the sources of our Naval Forces that the historical name of the sea is "Sea of Islands." The Atatürk Research Center has published works under the title "Sea of Islands." Finally, the Ministry of National Education included the expression "Sea of Islands" instead of "Aegean Sea" in its new curriculum, and the then Minister of National Education defended this choice by stating, "When the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, there was no concept of the Aegean Sea." It should also be noted that this step was met with harsh reactions in the Greek press, characterized as "propaganda." In contrast, names like Retired Rear Admiral Alaettin Sevim, a maritime academic from Piri Reis University, wrote serious warnings about the potential drawbacks of the name change from the perspective of international maritime law.

Thus, we are faced with a lively and layered political debate that is not merely the nostalgic whim of a literary figure. There are historians, admirals, lawyers, educators, and diplomats among the parties to the debate, and such a discussion deserves reflection, not slogans.

So let us begin this reflection. And like any solid reflection, let us start from the beginning: What has this sea been called throughout history?

From Aigaion to Archipelago

Geographical names, like the maps they are written on, age, wear out, and change. The sea we today call "Aegean" has perhaps been one of the seas that has changed names the most throughout history. Each of these names carries the trace of a worldview of a period, the sphere of sovereignty of a state, or the everyday language of a seafaring nation.

Ancient Greek sources refer to this sea as "Aigaion Pelagos." However, there has been no consensus on the origin of the name since antiquity. The most common narrative is mythological. King Aegeus of Athens, believing he had received news of his son Theseus's death on the expedition to Crete, threw himself into the sea, which then took its name from this unfortunate king. Another view connects the name Aegean to the Greek word "aiges," meaning "waves." A third view seeks to recall the memory of the Pelasgian people who lived in this area before the Greeks, based on the word "pelagos." A fourth and interesting thesis from a linguist suggests that the name "Aegean" cannot be explained in Greek and may be a remnant of the language of the Luwians, one of the ancient peoples of Anatolia. According to this thesis, the Aegeus myth is a later fabrication to explain a name whose origin has been forgotten, and there are many examples of this in our geography. As can be seen, even at the outset, the established narrative is being disrupted. The title deed of the name "Aegean" is not as definitively held by Greek mythology as it is thought to be.

By the time we reach the Middle Ages, another name emerges: "Arcipelago." This word, derived from the Greek "arkhi" (chief, main) and "pelagos" (sea), interestingly does not appear in pre-Medieval Greek documents. The word was popularized by the Italians of Venice and Genoa, who established trade colonies in this sea. Even more interestingly, although "archipelago" is now a generic term meaning "group of islands" in world languages, its original and primary meaning referred directly to this sea, today's Aegean. Indeed, when the word appears alone and capitalized in foreign sources, it refers to the Aegean Sea; other archipelagos are always referred to with an adjective, such as "Indonesian archipelago" or "Canadian archipelago." In other words, the world learned the concept of "archipelago" from this sea. Let us note that this etymological detail will gain legal weight in the later sections of this article.

Here, it is also necessary to recall the unique logic of the Turkish maritime naming tradition. Our ancestors often referred to seas by colors: the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea. According to a common view in linguistics, these colors not only denote the color of the water but also carry the ancient Turkish directional symbolism. Black is the color of the north, and white is the color of the south. "Bahr-i Sefid," meaning White Sea, is the Ottoman equivalent of this logic and in the usage of that time, often encompassed not only today's Mediterranean but also today's Aegean. In other words, in our ancestors' mental map, today's Aegean was not so much a separate and independent sea but rather the northern part of the Mediterranean adorned with islands; it was like a salon where salon and saloon were once fashionable; the Mediterranean was the salon, and the Aegean became the saloon in this analogy. The name "Sea of Islands" is also an internal designation that points to this saloon. This detail may seem insignificant, but it softens the assumption that "our ancestors had a single and unchanging name for this sea." Our ancestors had not just one name but an intertwined system of names.

What about our sources? In his immortal work, Kitab-ı Bahriye, Piri Reis writes about these waters, "It should be known that the place called 'between the islands' is referred to as 'Erso Pelago'"; researchers believe that this "Erso Pelago" is the Turkish pronunciation of "Arcipelago." If one pays attention, our great navigator refers to this mid-latitude area filled with islands as "between the islands," considering the entire sea as a part of the "Mediterranean" in the language of that day. Katip Çelebi also uses the expression "this area is called the Sea of Islands" for the region between Crete and the two capes that hosts most of the islands in his 1656 work, Tuhfetü'l-Kibâr fî Esfâri'l-Bihâr. These records teach us an important nuance: the Ottoman mariner's term "between the islands" or "sea of islands" sometimes referred not to the entire sea but to the mid-latitude where the islands are concentrated; the entirety of the sea was often thought of under the umbrella of "Mediterranean" or "Bahr-i Sefid." This is the first sign that we need to use a sensitive scale when referring to history: The phrase "our ancestors used to say so" is true, but what exactly our ancestors referred to is a more layered question than it seems.

The Six Hundred Years of the "Sea of Islands"

Aside from this nuanced record, we must acknowledge this historical fact. From the moment the Turks became acquainted with this sea, the name they gave it has been "Sea of Islands." According to some sources, in 1081, during the time of Chaka Bey, the Turks who ventured into this sea named the scenery before their eyes. A sea adorned with hundreds of large and small islands. This name has lived on for centuries in the sources of the Aydınoğulları Principality and later the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Historical Society's Dictionary of Historical Terms still defines "Sea of Islands" as "the sea currently known as the Aegean Sea." This sea area between the eastern coasts of the Peloponnese and Thessaly and the western coasts of Anatolia has been referred to as "Sea of Islands" in the Ottoman language for more than six hundred years.

The state organization also followed this naming. When Suleiman the Magnificent appointed Barbaros Hayreddin Pasha as the governor in 1534, the name of the province established was "Cezâyir-i Bahr-i Sefîd": the Province of Mediterranean Islands. This province, which was placed under the command of the Kapudan Pasha, encompassed the island and coastal districts extending from Gallipoli to Rhodes, from Lesbos to Chios; it formed the administrative backbone of the empire's naval power. Ottoman geography classified this island realm within itself, and the Sea of Islands was thought of as five regions consisting of the Bosporus, Northern Sporades, Cyclades, Saruhan, and Menteşe islands. After the Tanzimat, the province was transformed into a vilayet; this vilayet, whose center was sometimes Rhodes and Chios, lived on as an administrative record of the islands being governed from Istanbul even in the last century of the empire. The lifespan of a name at the state level can only be this long and institutional! In other words, the islands were not just a geographical reality but the very embodiment of the Ottoman Empire's sovereignty at sea. This is very important: In that era, saying "Sea of Islands" meant "the sea of our islands." The innocence of names partly stemmed from this reality of sovereignty. When the island and sea were under the same flag, there was no harm in defining the sea by the islands.

Western cartography has also used a similar language for centuries. From the 1584 Ortelius map to the 1809 English and 1863 French maps, the sea has been marked as "Archipelago" or "Archipel." The emergence of the name "Aegean" as dominant in Western literature is relatively newer. Some of our writers see the influence of Greece in this transition and attribute the adoption of "Aegean" by Western maps since the 1940s to this influence. While the extent to which this claim is documented is a separate research topic, it is certain that naming preferences have never been entirely independent of politics in any era.

The geography books of the late Ottoman period also continued this tradition. Ali Tevfik's 1913 work, Memâlik-i Osmâniyye Coğrafyası, refers to it as "Sea of Islands." This usage continued in the early years of the Republic. In a naval history book published by the Naval Printing House in 1930, the term "Aegean" does not appear. The 1931 Perfect General Atlas names the sea "Sea of Islands." Even in a late date like 1938, in Faik Sabri Duran's high school geography book, two names coexist: "Aegean Sea" in the text, "Sea of Islands" on the maps.

Thus, the historians' thesis has a solid core, and we owe it to acknowledge this. "Sea of Islands" is not a fabricated name but the name of this nation's nine-century maritime memory. If we recall that even Article 12 of the Treaty of Lausanne refers to the islands of this sea as "Eastern Mediterranean islands," and that the name "Aegean" does not appear in that article of the treaty, we can see that the Minister of National Education's statement, "When the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, there was no concept of the Aegean Sea," is not unfounded. However, there is a page that this statement leaves out, and on that page, is the handwriting of the founder of this nation. Now, let us open that page.

The Republic's Choice: How Did "Aegean" Come?

A common narrative implies that the name "Aegean" was imposed on us in 1941 by a congress decision, almost as a fait accompli. The documents tell a richer story. The word "Aegean" likely entered Turkish through the French "Mer Égée" and began to appear in state circles from the early years of the Republic. From 1927 onwards, ships commissioned by the Directorate of Maritime Affairs were named "Aegean," "Izmir," "Konya," "Mediterranean," and so on. Even more strikingly, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk made a domestic trip at the end of 1930 aboard the Aegean Ship and personally wrote the following lines in the ship's guestbook: "At the end of 1930, I made inspection trips along the coasts of the Marmara, Aegean, and Mediterranean seas aboard the Aegean Ship." When the Surname Law was enacted, the captain of this ship, identifying himself with his ship, took the surname "Özege." Thus, the name "Aegean" was already living in the pen of the founder of the Republic and on the ship's registers ten years before 1941.

So why did Atatürk not say "Aegean" when he told the army during the Great Offensive, "Armies! Your first target is the Mediterranean, advance!"? The answer is simple and I have tried to explain it above. In 1922, the common name for that sea in the Turkish language was still under the umbrella of "Mediterranean." "Sea of Islands" and "Mediterranean" were used interchangeably. In other words, this famous command is neither a rejection of the name "Aegean" nor an endorsement of "Sea of Islands"; it is simply the language of the day.

Institutional standardization comes with the First Geography Congress held in Ankara from June 6 to 21, 1941. The congress, which was convened to unify the name of the sea in textbooks, maps, and official correspondence, designated the name of the sea as "Aegean Sea"; while dividing our country into seven geographical regions, it also named one of them "Aegean Region." In the following decades, the name deeply penetrated the fabric of the state and society: In 1955, Ege University was established in Izmir; in 1975, in the strategic climate following the Cyprus Peace Operation, one of our four armies was formed under the name Aegean Army; countless institutions, from exporter unions to development agencies, from newspaper names to football tournaments, have carried this name. Since that day, "Aegean" has become not just the name of a sea but also the name of a region, an army, a university, countless institutions, songs, poems, and ultimately the names of hundreds of thousands of our children. Is there a stronger evidence that a name has been adopted by a nation than this? People do not name their children "Archipelago," but they name them

Source: SeaNews Türkiye