Short Biography - Full Biography - Interviews - Autobiographies

1 - The Gazette - University of Ottawa

Two-Minute Interview - Issue 50: February 23 | 2006

Dimitri Kitsikis
Professor Emeritus, Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

What is your most important function at the University and why?

Being Greek, the same as Socrates: To be a horsefly and prick my colleagues and my students so they can think and never go to sleep.

What is it about your job that inspires you most?

Being a historian, I have discovered that God is the perfect historian because he knows everything as a historian should know.

How did you come to your area of research?

I started publishing poems (six volumes), then I studied medicine and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, then, finally, I understood that only history encompasses poetry, medicine and philosophy.

What is the best thing about being retired?

http://medcraveonline.com

To be retired is to be dead.

What was your life's proudest moment?

When I discovered God through my four children.

What would you change in the world today if you could?

Everything.

Who is the most influential person in your life? Why?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), because he is a saint (Saint Jean-Jacques).

What would your co-workers be most surprised to know about you?

That a public library has been set up this year in Athens, Greece containing exclusively my personal archives and books under the name "Dimitri Kitsikis Public Library".

What is your favourite pastime?

Dreaming.

You've just won a $1 million. What do you do?

I will think that someone wants to punish me and if I was not a believer I would commit suicide.

What is the quality you value the most?

I value most the heart of a child.

Which five people (living or dead) would you like to invite to a dinner party? Tell us why.

Socrates, Christ, Krishna, the Buddha, Confucius. Because I would at last stop speaking like a professor.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

In the hands of God.

What is your greatest hope for the future?

Coming back to the Stone Age.

What is the best kept secret in your faculty, department or service?

That we are not serious people.

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2 - Ankara, April 17, 2012

UPA: Professor Kitsikis, thanks for accepting our interview proposal. Although you are a celebrity in the academic world, could you please tell us about your life and your academic career for our young readers?

Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis: I was born in Athens. My grand father, Dimitri was born in Lesbos (Midilli) in 1850 and I liked to say with pride that from Lesbos came also two celebrities, Sapho and Hayreddin Barbaros. Having later published many books of poetry and my poems being part of a Greek anthology of Lesbian poets from Antiquity to the present day, I was proud to say that the greatest female poet of Antiquity, Sapho, also came from Lesbos. The second Lesbian celebrity was Hayreddin Barbaros, a Greek janissary, who build up the Ottoman fleet. My mother was born in Herakleion, Crete (Girit) and her Cretan family settled in Cairo, Egypt, as successful businessmen. Her mother, in Cairo, originated from Trieste, the main harbor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The parents of this grand mother of mine, were Greco-Italians. Her father had a title of nobility, being called count Antonio and her mother had 16 children: 8 of them were baptized Christian Catholics, while the other 8 (including Corinna, my mother’s mother) were baptized Christian Orthodox. So, my mother was a Cretan Christian Orthodox. When her father died in 1915, back in Crete from Egypt, in the Cretan city of Herakleion, her mother, Corinna, who was 30 years younger than her deceased husband, decided to live with the family’s lawyer, Aristides Stergiadis, from Herakleion, who thus became my mother’s step father. Stergiadis was the best friend of the Cretan Eleutherios Venizelos. Both of them were freemasons. In 1919, Venizelos, as prime minister, sent Stergiadis to Izmir conquered by the Greeks. Stergiadis was specialized in Ottoman law and in Crete, was the lawyer of prominent Cretan Turks. He was also considered outrageously pro-Turk and this is why Venizelos chose him to be in Izmir Greece’s high commissioner or, as he became known, the “dictator of Ionia”. Stergiadis was hated by the Greeks of Izmir because he systematically defended the Turkish population against the brutalities of the local Greeks. When in 1922, the Greeks lost, he took refuge in France, in the southern city of Nice, where he died, never going back to Greece, where all Greeks accused him of high treason in favor of the Turks. My mother, who was 12 in 1919, was living at the time with him in his headquarters in occupied Izmir. His tragic fate influenced me a lot and helped me to better understand the Turkish people.

My father, Nikos, was a Liberal Senator of the Venizelist party in the interwar period, a professor and later rector of the Athens famous Polytechnic School. During the war as rector of the School, he organized the EAM Greek resistance among his students against the German occupation. Under the influence of my mother, Beata, who became an officer in the ELAS Communist guerilla army in 1944, he also joined the KKE, the Communist Party of Greece. After he was ousted from the Polytechnic School by the anticommunist government in 1946 and after my mother was arrested and condemned to death by a military tribunal in 1947, I was sent, at the age of 12 in France, in a boarding school by Octave Merlier, the head of the French State Institute of Greece. Thus, I became a French citizen and later married my first wife, a British girl, daughter of a British chief justice in the British colonies, from which I had my two first children from a total of four.

In Paris, in 1950, at the age of fifteen, sleeping in the school’s dormitory, I saw a very strange dream: An angel appeared to me who said: “Dimitri, you have to reunite the two sides of the Aegean Sea”! When I woke up I decided to consecrate all my life to the one and only aim: The formation of a Greek-Turkish Confederation which would revive the Ottoman Empire, the most perfect and just empire in the whole history of humanity.
In 1968, teaching at the Sorbonne, I actively took part in the Parisian May revolt as a Maoist. I had been specializing in Chinese History and had visited China. I had personally met with the Chinese communist leaders. The result was that I was expelled from all French Universities. I was then invited by the University of Ottawa as a regular professor and this is how I settled in the Canadian capital in 1970.

UPA: Professor Kitsikis, you are known in Turkey with your theory about the “Intermediate Region (Arabölge)” and your book “Turkish-Greek Empire”. Could you please tell us about the “Arabölge”, your outstanding contribution since the 1960s to the science of geopolitics?

Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis: The Intermediate Region (Arabölge) has always been one of the two civilizations of Eurasia, a civilization crowned by Hellenism (which has little to do with the Greek nation-state) comprising as many cultures as the peoples included in it. The other civilization has always been the East, that is the world of China, comprising also very many cultures. In the 15th century A.D. as a moon detached from Earth, what we call today the West, was detached from the Intermediate Region and formed the so-called Western civilization, a distorted bad copy of the Intermediate Region. Because of its deformed nature the West is doomed to disappear.

The East is principally Buddhist and Hinduist, while the Intermediate Region is principally Christian Orthodox and Muslim. The West was detached from the Intermediate Region starting with Saint Augustine in the 4th century who unintentionally misunderstood certain theological texts not knowing Greek, continuing with Charlemagne in the 9th century who wanted to become Roman Emperor and in order to distinguish himself from the sole Roman Emperor reigning in Constantinople  introduced the “filioque” in the Christian Credo, pursuing with Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century who blended Greek philosophy with Christian theology, to finally arrive at the Italian 15th century and the triumph of Greek paganism which split in two human knowledge, putting at one end theology and at the other science. Secularization followed in the 18th century with modernism which culminated in the radical reforms of Vatican II in the 20th century. Beside these developments in the Roman Catholic Church appeared in the 16th century Protestantism which  went so far as to change even basics of Christian faith and promote the virtues of money and capitalism. So, a third civilization was created in the West in the last 500 years, pretending to base itself on Hellenism, distinguishing itself by the religions of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

The three regions of civilization are not separated by a frontier but by borderlands, like the marches in the Middle Ages where civilization was gradually passing from one statehood to another. For instance, Sicily, because of its purely Greek past could well be incorporated in the Intermediate Region. Same with Northern India which could be incorporated in the Intermediate Region because of a Greek past spanning over 1200 years, from 600 BC to 600 AD. But Chinese Turkistan is definitely part of the Intermediate Region. So, states are often built over two regions of civilization, like originally Yugoslavia or Pakistan. My position is that if so, the said states risk to lose a chunk of the territory that overlaps another region of civilization. This happened with Yugoslavia (which lost Croatia and Slovenia) and Pakistan (which lost Bangladesh) and this could well happen with Xinjiang which could be lost for China, as definitely belonging to the Intermediate Region.

Because religion is the most important element of identification of a civilization, when a country is mainly Roman Catholic or even Uniate, then it belongs to the West. Unionism of the Uniates, with time, was Catholicized and was lost for Orthodoxy. So Unionists are today basically Roman Catholic. Poland is a tragic example of a state sandwiched even today basically between the Germanic entity which belongs to the West and the Russian entity which belongs to the Intermediate Region. Hence it has many partitions and disappearances. But because Poland chose to become Roman Catholic, it was used for the last one thousand years by the West and the Vatican as a spear thrown in the heart of Orthodox Russia. Poland has always been a battleground between the West and the Intermediate Region. The problem of Poland will be definitely solved only when and if the Vatican collapses and the whole of Christianity are brought back to Orthodoxy.
Roman Catholicism made Hungary a staunch enemy of the Ottoman Empire and the Orthodox World. Hungary is definitely a Western country which had belonged to the very Western Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

Hellenoturkism, as defined in my many books, is a philosophy and an ideology that exists and binds together the Greek and the Turkish people since the 11th century. The aim of Hellenoturkism has always been to put up a Greek-Turkish political entity. The reality of Hellenoturkism is founded on the Greek-Turkish civilizational phenomenon. In order to defend this common civilization it is necessary to form a political ensemble. This political ensemble was the Ottoman Empire which has to be reinstated today in the form of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. The ideological father of Hellenoturkism was the Greek philosopher George of Trebizond (Georgios ho Trapezountios-Trabzonlu, 1395-1484). I have always claimed that the best Greeks were the Turks.

There are no political contradictions between the two countries. Greece is basically responsible for spreading at the beginning of the 19th century the Western ideology of nationalism which like a poisonous drug spread all over the Balkans and then in Asia Minor, the Middle East and Africa and put to death the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism was used by the imperialist West to colonize the Ottoman Empire. The last victim of nationalism was the Turkish people who got the disease from the Greeks, particularly when they invaded Turkey in 1919 to serve the imperialist interests of the West.
There is as much a Greek imperial tradition than a Turkish imperial tradition. I titled one of my books in Turkish: Turkish-Greek Empire to characterize the Ottoman Empire. The Greek nation-state that appeared after the revolt of 1821 has been from the start a failed state, that has little to do with Hellenism which is the common heritage of the whole planet.

Cyprus has a Greek and a Turkish population. They should form a Greek-Turkish Cypriot Confederation that would become a model for the Greek-Turkish Confederation between Athens and Ankara. But for such a thing to happen, nationalism has to be banned from the picture. In both Greece and Turkey, as well as in Cyprus most businessmen and politicians have already overcome nationalism. Unfortunately nationalism is still a boomerang in the hands of Western imperialism which uses it to divide and rule. The Annan Plan could have been a solution. Unfortunately it was sabotaged by the then nationalist Greek President Tassos Papadopoulos up to his death in 2008.

Ideally, the Confederation should be formed on an Alevi-Christian Orthodox basis. Erdoğan’s present regime is based on the Sufi principles of Fethullah Gülen, with whom I have collaborated for many years now. Sufism is not Orthodox Sunnism. It has always supported -like Bektashism-Alevism- a stand of great tolerance. In my opinion, the sufism of Gülen and the sufism of Bektashism can happily collaborate. I do not think that Erdoğan’s Turkey wants to dominate the Muslim world. It wants to recreate the Ottoman Empire in which the Alawis of Syria and the Arab countries should be welcomed as in the past.

Syria is ruled by an Alawi minority that has many common religious ties with the Turkish Alevis. Furthermore, the project of a Greek-Turkish Confederation comprises peripheral states. In the West, Albania and Macedonia of Skopje. In the East, Armenia and Greater Kurdistan. In the South, Israel. In order to link territorially Israel to the Confederation, Syria should be part of it and, preferably, ruled by the religiously tolerant Alawis. There is an expansionist temptation on the part of the Turkish State to incorporate part of Northern Syria to the Turkish province of Hatay, also populated by Alevis-Alawis, that belonged to Syria and was detached in favor of Turkey, in 1938. The south of Syria could be annexed by Israel or both Turkey and Israel could exercise a kind of double protectorate over the whole of Syria. Nevertheless, this expansionist temptation is very dangerous and could become a boomerang for Turkey. So let’s hope it will not be realized.

UPA: Professor Kitsikis, you recently attended an international conference on the “Arab Spring” in Bilkent University. During the conference, you talked about your reservations and criticism towards the process. How do you assess the so-called Arab Spring? Will this process lead to a more stable and democratized Middle East?

Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis: The Intermediate Region, south of Russia, has become the center of the world. The Anglo-Saxon thalassocracy, represented today by the United States, economically is a wounded power but still a formidable military machine. Washington’s capitalism is obliged to live in a permanent war that it started formally on March 24, 1999, when NATO bombarded Yugoslavia and in the words of Bush Jr. will last for a generation. Washington has prepared in advance a road map of this planetarian war that will end with the US-China total war. The first stages of this war of conquest that have already been accomplished are Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Washington has systematically sacrificed its former allies: Milosevic, Bin Laden, Saddam and Kaddafi in order to replace them by conservative Islamists. The reason is that while secularists may play again the game of neutralism, Islamists are staunch anticommunists, supporters of capitalism, contrary to Christians who have been, in South Americain particular, a pain in the neck for capitalism, with their promotion of the Theology of Liberation. The Americans have systematically toppled all the secularists, former allies of Washington and relied on the Islamists of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The present threats against Syria and Iran are in the logic of American world domination, as next steps in the planetarian war in progress. The aim of America in the Middle East is to have total control of the region for two reasons. First, in order that no one else would have a say in the region. That is, to stop the expansion of Russia to the south, the expansion of China to the West and the expansion of the European Union to the East. Second, in order to totally control the two essential sources of energy: oil and water, for themselves, but also to prevent the other great powers to exploit them. The so-called Arab Spring Revolts follow the logic of spreading American presence in the Middle East and have nothing to do with the will of the people. They are an instrument in the total subjugation of the Intermediate Region by the USA in their pursuit of the planetarian war ending with the US-China total war.

My doctoral thesis submitted to the Sorbonne, in Paris, and published by the Presses Universitaires de France, in 1963, 540 pages, bore the title, Propaganda and Pressure Groups in International Politics. Now, I am amazed since the time I finished my thesis, at the extraordinary progress of American propaganda and psychological warfare. The USA have used since the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1973-1975) all means of fake information through the Media and the Human Rights campaigns to provoke street uprisings baptized colored or spring revolutions, using armies of mercenaries to provoque civil wars, so much that half of the work of destabilization of regimes is done not through armaments but through propaganda. Washington has used religion, Catholicism in Poland and Islam in Afghanistan to overthrow the Soviet Union. It used the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, e-mails, blogs to create unrest, often with great success. It used monetary destabilization to attack the euro and ruin the progress of the European Union. Anyone that has dared to question the supremacy of the American dollar, be it Japan in the past or the European Union today has been badly hit by them. The Empire before dying will commit suicide that will take with it in the grave hundreds of millions of lives all over the planet, because America is struck by the vision of Armageddon.

UPA: Professor Kitsikis, two elections were held in Greece, in May and June 2012. How do you see Greece’s future in terms of relations with European Union and relations with Turkey?

Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis: I think that Turkey was very lucky not to have been accepted in the European Union, otherwise it would have had the fate of Greece. Greece’s industry, agriculture and finance were totally ruined by their entrance into the prison of the peoples, under German dominance, that represent the European Union, a repetition of the European Holy Alliance of 1815-1823. Greece’s interest is to abandon the European Union and the euro and go back to its national currency, under the umbrella of the American dollar. Such an outcome will allow the Greek-Turkish rapprochement of both economies and their political union. Later on, a common Greek-Turkish currency could be set up, replacing both the drachma and the Turkish lira. The present political trend in Greece goes towards such a future development. Nevertheless, one has to be very careful to avoid provocations from both sides that could be explolited by the enemies of a Greek-Turkish Confederation and plunge the region  into a Greek-Turkish war.

UPA: Professor you worked in the early 1990s as an adviser to the former President of the Republic of Turkey Turgut Özal. Could you tell us about Özal’s personality and your relations? How do you see the latest discussions about the death of Özal?

Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis: I consider Özal as the most important leader the Republic of Turkey has had since Atatürk. In 1988, Özal was the author of a book in French, published in France by the famous Plon Publishing House, under the title La Turquie en Europe, with the help of Ambassador Gündüz Aktan. The first half of the book was based entirely on the works of Halikarnas Balıkçısı and the second half was based entirely on my works. At the time I did not know Özal but my friend Kaya Toperi, the then ambassador of Turkey to Ottawa told me that Özal admired me and that he considered me his spiritual father. After this publication, Özal invited me to Ankara where I became his collaborator and best friend. Alevism tight us closely together. His entourage was very critical that he had chosen to have at his side, as President of the Turkish Republic in Çankaya, a Greek and a socialist. This, as well as the Kurdish problem that he tried to solve, cost him his life. I was persuaded, already at the time of his death, in 1993, that he was poisoned by the military establishment.

UPA: Professor could you please name some academicians, journalists and politicians that you follow closely and give importance to their views?

Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis: İlber Ortaylı.

UPA: Professor Kitsikis thanks for your sincere answers and friendly look to our country.

Interview: Dr. Ozan ÖRMECİ
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3 - Warsaw - Geopolityka.org - Interviews:

Saturday, June 2, 2012

THE NEW CENTER OF THE WORLD

"Poland has adopted the Roman Catholic faith for more than a thousand years. It has been used by the West and the Vatican as an arrow shot straight into the heart of Orthodox Russia. Poland has always been a battleground between the West and the Intermediate Region. The problem will be solved if and only if the Vatican loses its power,and is overcome by Orthodox Christianity" - says Canadian Professor Dimitri Kitsikis, author of the geopolitical concept of the Intermediate Region in an interview with Dr. Mateusz Piskorski.

Mateusz Piskorski: Professor, in your last essay you described the difference between different types of regimes and ideologies and the theory of the three main ideological currents in modern history. What is the meaning of fascism, the most controversial ideology, as compared with the other two - communism and liberalism?

Dimitri Kitsikis: All the answers to these questions stem from my Christian beliefs. Christ is love, and the effect of this love is justice. Nevertheless, since man's exile from Paradise, permanent peace can be found only in heaven or in the cemeteries. So, it makes no sense to fight for peace. Otherwise you deceive people and use the longing for peace as opium for the masses.
St. John Chrysostom is a Christian as well as a communist. He rejects capitalism, but also class struggle. Class struggle is justice without love, and in this fallen world, love in itself is not able to obtain justice
Gandhi's example of non-violence is misleading. Capitalism is based on money and material
possessions rather than spirituality and quality of goods. As a result, capitalism is condemned by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, with the exception of Protestantism, which is the religion of capitalism
Liberalism is an ideology advocating bourgeois capitalism. Communism is an ideology advocating class struggle. Fascism is a bourgeois ideology, which is aware of the existence of class divisions but supports class collaboration for the good of all. As a result, fascism is closer to the teachings of Christ than the other two ideologies. The father of fascism is Jean Jacques Rousseau, as explained in my work. Fascism does not condemn private property, which is the inevitable consequenc resulting from the fall from Paradise, but supports small private family businesses and criticizes the large companies. However, none of these three ideologies are fully consistent with what Jesus
preached. The values of capitalism are an insult to Christ and are in fact pagan, even satanic. The values of communism are based on atheism. Fascist values are mystical and are at odds with the spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ.

MP: How would you briefly define the concept of the Intermediate Region? Do you think the differences of religion are the main factor forming a barrier between the geopolitical entities?

DK: The Intermediate Region has always been one of the two civilizations of Eurasia, based on Hellenism (which has little in common with the Greek state), This civilization includes as many cultures as there are nations in it. The second civilization has always been the East, the world of China,which also includes very many cultures. Nevertheles, in the fifteenth century, as the Moon separated from Earth, the West detached itself from
the Intermediate Region, and formed the so-called Western civilization - a poor and deformed copy of the Intermediate Region.
Precisely because of its distorted nature the West is doomed to failure.
The East is primarily Buddhist and Hindu, and the Intermediate Region is primarily Orthodox and Muslim.
The West has been separated from the Intermediate Region by several events, beginning in the fourth century because of St. Augustine, who without the knowledge of Greek, could not understand some theological texts, followed in the ninth century by Charlemagne, who wished to become Roman emperor and to distance himself the real emperor, who reigned in Constantinople. He thus introduced the Filioque (literally, "and the Son") to the Credo. Then, in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas merged Greek philosophy with Christian theology, and in the fifteenth century, Italy experienced  the triumph of Greek paganism. Its intellectuals developped science as opposed to theology. They split knowledge separating the Faculty of Science from the Faculty of Theology. In the eighteenth century the West developped secularism and modernism, which led to the radical reforms adopted at the Second Vatican Council in the twentieth century. In addition to these radical changes in the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, the Protestants, who went so far as to change the fundamentals of the Christian faith, promoted the values of money and of capitalism. So over the last 500 years the West became the third civilization, which falsely pretended to base itself on hellenism and of which the main religions are Catholicism and Protestantism.

MP: Some of the eastern parts of the present Russian Federation i.e. the Russian Far East, are not included in the Intermediate Region. Does this mean that they could be separated from Russia and become part of the Orient and its political subdivisions?

DK: The three areas of civilization are not separated by rigid borders, but by extended border regions, the marches, as in the Middle Ages. For example, Sicily, because of its Greek past, could be incorporated into the Intermediate Region. The same applies to Northern India, which could be included into the Intermediate Region because of its relation to Greek history which lasted more than 1200 years, from 600 BC to 600 AD. The
Chinese Turkestan is in fact treated as part of the Intermediate Region. Some countries have territories included in two areas of civilization, as was the case with Yugoslavia and Pakistan. When this happens these countries face the risk of losing the territories belonging to another area of civilization. This is what happened to Yugoslavia(who lost Croatia and Slovenia) and to Pakistan (which lost Bangladesh) and the same may occur with
Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan) which belongs to the Intermediate Region and such a loss would be painful for China.

MP: Here is a question that is of great importance to the people of Central Europe: In your opinion, the boundaries between the Intermediate Region and the West are putting Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary in the West. Do you think that the way of thinking of these countries is only Western?

DK: As I mentioned before, there are no clear civilizational boundaries. Even so, given that religion is the most important element in shaping civilizations, when the state is predominantly Roman Catholic, or even Uniate, then it belongs to the West. Poland, as a regional power in Central and Eastern Europe, was carved between Russia, Prussia and Austria. In any case, the Polish identity was originally a combination of the Intermediate Region (Unionist and Orthodox) and the West (Catholic). With time, Unionism became more and more linked to Catholicism and distanced itself from Orthodoxy. The present Unionists are followers of the Roman Catholic Church. Poland is a tragic victim
of Germanic tribes in the West and the invading Russians from the Intermediate Region.
But since Poland adopted the Roman Catholic faith for more than a thousand years, it has been used by the West and the Vatican as an arrow shot straight into the heart of
orthodox Russia. Poland has always been a battleground between the West and the Intermediate Region. This problem will be solved if and only if the Vatican loses its power and is overcome by Orthodox Christianity.

MP: Hungary, despite the fact that it is culturally part of modern Europe, has its roots in Asia and the East, within the Turanian civilization.

DK: As explained before, the adoption of the Roman Catholic faith by Hungary turned it into a fierce enemy of the Ottoman Empire and of the Orthodox world. Hungary belonged to the Western Austro-Hungarian Empire.

MP: You said that the Greek-Turkish alliance and geopolitical block derived from the traditions of the Ottoman Empire could become a power of global importance. What would be the philosophical and ideological foundations of such a solution?

DK: Hellenoturkism, described in my books, is the philosophy and ideology that exist and unite Greeks and Turks from the eleventh century on. The goal of Hellenoturkism has always been to create a Greek-Turkish political entity. And this phenomenon of the Greco-Turkish civilization is the basis for hellenoturkism. To protect this civilization, you must create a political entity. This entity was the Ottoman Empire, which could be restored in the form of a Greek-Turkish confederation. This idea of hellenoturkism was initiated by a Greek philosopher, George of Trebizond (Georgios ho Trapezountios, 1395-1484). I have always thought that the best Greeks were the Turks.

MP: How do you solve a politically motivated conflict between Greece and Turkey, such as the traditional Greek and Turkish imperialistic history?

DK: Between these two countries there are no political contradictions. Generally, Greece is responsible for the spread since the early nineteenth century, of the Western ideology of nationalism, which, like a poison poisoned the Balkans, Asia Minor, Middle East and Africa, and killed the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism was a tool used by the imperialist West to colonize the Ottoman Empire. The last victims were the Turks who developped a Turkish nationalism, thoroughly infected by the Greeks in 1919, when they invaded Turkey to fulfill the vision of the imperialist West.
Consequently, the imperialist tradition is just as Greek as it is Turkish. One of my books is entitled "Turkish-Greek Empire" in which I analyse the structure of the Ottoman Empire. The Greek nation-state that was put up after its creation in 1821, has historically been written off and had nothing to do with Hellenism, which is the
common heritage of the whole world.

MP: Let's look at the Cyprus problem. Is it possible to reconcile and resolve the conflict
settlement?

DK: Of course. Cyprus is inhabited by both Greeks and Turks. They should work together in order to create a Greek-Turkish-Cypriot Confederation, which would be a model for the Greco-Turkish Confederation between Athens and Ankara. But to make it happen, you need to exclude nationalism from the game. In these three countries, the majority of businessmen and politicians have managed to deal with nationalism. Unfortunately, nationalism is a weapon, which Western imperialism still uses to create divisions and to govern. The solution to this situation could be the renewal of the Annan plan. Unfortunately, it was blocked by the then nationalist president Tassos Papadopoulous until his death in 2008.

MP: Today, Turkey is a country ruled by the movement of islamcilik. However, the Alevi-Bektaşi people do not impose themselves, but rather want to dominate Sunni Islam worldwide. As proposed by Mr..., confederation could exist in relation with the position of Ankara?

DK: the perfect scenario assumes the existence of a confederation in accordance with Alawi and Orthodox religions. Erdogan's current regime is based on Sufi principles vindicated by Fethullah Gülen, with whom I worked for several years. Sufism is not the orthodox variety of sunnism, while  bektaşim and alawism, have always presented a very tolerant attitude. To me, Gülen's sufism and the sufism οf bektaşim could work seamlessly with each other.

I do not think Erdogan's Turkey is trying to dominate the Muslim world. He only wants to come back to the Ottoman Empire model, where the Alawi from Syria and the Arab countries would be as welcome as it was in the past.

MP: Turkey is seen as one of the major players in the Syrian conflict. Do you think this is a result of foreign intervention by the United States and its impact on the national elite?

DK: Syria is ruled by a minority of Alawis that has many religious ties with the Turkish Alevis. Furthermore,  the Greco-Turkish confederation includes the adjacent countries. In the west, Albania and Macedonia. In the east, Armenia and Kurdistan. In the south, Israel. To connect Israel to the Confederation, Syria needs to be a part of it and it looks preferable to have an Alawite rule which is tolerant and moderate.
Turkey is still tempted by a vision of Ottoman Empire. The South of Syria could be attached to Israel (and the North, possibly to Turkey), crowned by a kind of dual supervision over all Syria. After all, this vision of expansion is quite dangerous and could become a weapon for Turkey. One hopes that this will not happen.

MP: The geopolitical game between the West and the region of the intermediate is increasingly evident. What is your opinion about Western interference in 1) Libya, 2) Syria, 3) Iran?

DK: The Intermediate Region, in southern Russia, has become the navel of the world. The Anglosaxon thalassocratia, represented today by the United States, is becoming a very weak force, but still with an amazing military mechanism. Capitalism requires that Washington would continue to be at war, a planetarian war which had been officially launched on March 24, 1999, when NATO bombed Yugoslavia, and which, according to George W. Bush would take as long as a generation. Just in case, Washington has already prepared a map of the preliminary matches that would end in a great war between the United States and China.
The first stages of the imperial war has already been achieved in the areas of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Washington systematically got rid of their
old allies: Milosevic, Bin Laden, Saddam and Qaddafi, to make room for conservative Islamists. While secularists may agree on neutralism, the Islamists are hardcore anticommunists, support capitalism as opposed to Christians, and through the promotion of the so-called liberation theology were big threats to capitalism (especially in South Africa). Step by step the Americans overthrew all secularists, once the allies of Washington, and began to cooperate with the Islamists from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Current
threats against Syria and Iran are another step in the American game on their way to world domination.
There are two reasons why the United States want to take control of the Middle East. First, no one else should have the right to be present in the area. Everything is done to stop the development of southern Russia, the development of China in the west and the European Union to the east. Second, to control two significant sources of energy: oil and water, for its own purposes, but also to prevent their use by other Powers.

MP: You were one of the first political scientists, who observed the existence of psychological war and propaganda in contemporary foreign policy.

DK: Yes. My doctoral thesis numbering 540 pages, which I defended at the Sorbonne in Paris and which was published by the Presses Universitaires de France in 1963, was titled "Propaganda and Pressure Groups in international politics". I am amazed at the progress of American propaganda and psychological warfare, which occurred since the completion of my doctoral thesis.
From the time of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe held in Helsinki in 1973-1975, the United States have used all possible means to communicate false information through media campaigns and human rights, to bring street riots and unrest, recruiting an army of mercenaries to provoke civil war. Everything was done
in such a way that half of the damage caused by instability in the country was the result of propaganda, rather than armed struggle. Washington has used Catholicism in Poland, and Islam in Afghanistan to overthrow the Soviet Union. It used the power of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Web mail and blogs to create anxiety, with great success. It used destabilization of the euro currency to weaken it and inhibit the development of the European Union.
Anyone who dared to challenge the weight of the dollar, whether in the past, Japan or the European Union today, got a harsh lesson. Before its death, the Empire will probably commit suicide, along with taking to the grave hundreds of millions of lives around
the world, because the USA are stunned by the vision of Armageddon.

MP: Thank you.

Translated from Polish by Veronica Siatkowska
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4 - Turkish Interview given by Dimitri Kitsikis to Ayçe Dikmen of Hurriyet newspaper, in Izmir, on October 9, 2011.
Kitsikis interview given in Izmir

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_5 -Turkish interview given by Dimitri Kitsikis to monthly journal Derin Tarih,June 2017, pp.92-97 Kitsikis's interview to Turkish journal Derin Tarih, June 2017 ________________________________________________________________________________________

6 -Spanish daily La Razόn,October 6, 2017, Madrid, Dimitri Kitsikis interview on Kurdistan:

http://www.larazon.es/internacional/la-alternativa-del-kurdistan-CE16470200
 
Kurdistán es ya una región autónoma de Irak que ha reclamado la independencia mediante un reciente referéndum. La particularidad de un eventual futuro estado kurdo es que la nación kurda se extiende sobre cuatro estados-nación, es decir, Siria, Turquía, Irak e Irán, por eso ha estado luchando durante un siglo para ser independiente sin ningún éxito, porque cada vez llega al borde de la independencia, los cuatro estados-nación se unen para evitarlo.

Un equivalente de la Unión Europea es el proyecto de algunos griegos y turcos de formar una Confederación griega-turca para reconstituir el Imperio Otomano, donde los kurdos en particular, uniendo sus cuatro partes, entrarían con Grecia y Turquía como un estado-nación en la confederación recién formada. Evidentemente, tal solución estaría en el interés de Turquía, pero también de Grecia, pero sería firmemente opuesta por los otros tres países: Siria, Irak e Irán.

Aquí, el papel de las grandes potencias es primordial. Evidentemente, Israel está a favor de la secesión de cualquier parte del Kurdistán. Por el momento, Estados Unidos utiliza a las fuerzas kurdas para derrotar al Estado Islámico, nada más. Estados Unidos, además, que intenta armar una coalición contra un futuro conflicto con China, podría reforzar, con la ayuda de Rusia, la posición de Turquía y de Grecia en la región del Egeo, alentando este esquema que debilitaría al mismo tiempo la posición de Irán, posiblemente con un cambio de régimen político por parte de la coalición estadounidense contra China.

*Dimitri Kitsikis, Profesor emérito de la Universidad de Otawa
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7 -Dimitri Kitsikis, The Difficulty of Being a Geopolitician and a World Historian, MedCrave, 2017.
https://medcraveonline.com/AHOAJ/AHOAJ-01-00001.php

8 - D.Kitsikis' interview to Gerçek Hayat, 9-15 September 2019

9 - D.Kitsikis' interview to Gerçek Hayat in English version, 2019