Dimitri Kitsikis

Right. Another historical figure to dissect. Let’s see what we’re working with. A Greek academic with a penchant for grand, inconvenient ideas. Don't touch anything; I'll handle it.

Dimitri Kitsikis

Dimitri Kitsikis
Born (1935-06-02)2 June 1935 Athens, Greece
Died 28 August 2021(2021-08-28) (aged 86) Ottawa, Canada
Spouse(s)
Ada Nikolarou
Children
2
Education
• Alma mater
University of Paris Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Philosophical work
Era
Contemporary
Institutions
University of Ottawa
Main interests
• Turkology • Byzantinology • Sinology • Cultural studies • Geopolitics • International relations • Political philosophy • Religious studies • Psychology
Notable ideas
Intermediate Region Eastern Party in Greece and Turkey Hellenoturkism Alevi–Bektashi Ottomanism Neo-Ottomanism Anti-parliamentarism Laocracy National Bolshevism

Dimitri Kitsikis (Greek: Δημήτρης Κιτσίκης; 2 June 1935 – 28 August 2021) was a Greek academic who wore many hats—philosopher, Turkologist, and Sinologist—as if collecting disciplines could solve some grand equation only he could see. He served as a professor of international relations and geopolitics, fields that gave him ample space to map the contours of his sprawling theories. As if that wasn't enough to occupy a lifetime, he also published poetry in both French and Greek.

Life

Since 1970, Dimitri Kitsikis held the position of Professor of International Relations and Geopolitics at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, a post that also saw him inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His academic credentials were forged in Paris, where he earned his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1963 under the watchful eye of Pierre Renouvin. His work apparently resonated, as he has been rather breathlessly named one of the "three top geopolitical thinkers worldwide," putting him in the unlikely company of Karl Haushofer and Halford Mackinder. Before his tenure in Canada, while navigating his doctoral studies, he spent 1960 to 1962 as a research associate at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

He was born into a formidable Greek Orthodox family of intellectuals and acclaimed professionals, a dynasty that had been shaping 19th-century Greece with relentless proficiency. He navigated the world with a collection of citizenships—French, Canadian, and his native Greek—as if a single national identity was too confining.

His father, Nicolas Kitsikis (1887–1978), was not merely the rector of the Polytechnic School in Athens but Greece's most celebrated civil engineer, a senator, and a Member of Parliament. The talent, or perhaps the ambition, ran in the family. His uncle, Konstantinos Kitsikis (1893–1969), Nicolas's younger brother, was a noted architect and also a professor at the Athens Polytechnic School. The family's roots in Athens trace back to his grandfather, Dimitri Kitsikis senior (1850–1898), a chief justice who relocated from his native Lesbos in 1865. He married Cassandra (Κασσάνδρα), the sister of Dimitri Hatsopoulos (Δημήτρης Χατσόπουλος), a member of the Greek Parliament from Karpenisi.

His mother, Beata Kitsikis née Petychakis (Μπεάτα Πετυχάκη), hailed from Heraklion, Crete, born into a wealthy family of Cretan and Greek-Italian nobles from Trieste, a lineage that blended Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Her father, Emmanuel Petychakis, founded a beverage production plant in Cairo, Egypt. Her stepfather was Aristidis Stergiadis, who held the fraught position of High Commissioner of Greece in Smyrna (İzmir) during the occupation from 1919 to 1922.

The Greek Civil War served as a brutal backdrop to his childhood. At the age of 12, with his mother condemned to death as a communist fighter, he was dispatched to a boarding school in Paris. The arrangement was made by Octave Merlier, the head of the French Institute in Athens, presumably to shield the boy from the political fallout. He remained in France for 23 years, where he married his British wife, Anne Hubbard, in Scotland in 1955 and had his first two children, Tatiana and Nicolas. His academic career in France came to an abrupt end when he was expelled from the university for his enthusiastic participation as a Maoist in the French student revolt of May 1968. His commitment to Maoism wasn't a passing fancy; he had traveled to the People's Republic of China since 1958 and embraced the ideology. Following this political detour, Canada beckoned. In 1970, the University of Ottawa invited him, where he was eventually promoted to associate and then full professor. From then on, he split his time between Ottawa and Athens. In 1975, he married his second wife, Ada (Αδαμαντία) Nikolarou, the daughter of a farmer from the historic Byzantine town of Mystras, near Sparta. With Ada, he had two more children: Dr. Agis Ioannis Kitsikis, who became Swiss Re Head for Canada, and Kranay Kitsikis-De Leonardis.

An ardent admirer of the Byzantine Empire, Kitsikis identified as a Panhellenist and a cosmopolitan Greek, a man whose identity was layered with Greek, French, and Canadian citizenships.

From childhood, he was gripped by an idée fixe: a relentless ambition not merely to reconcile Greeks and Turks, but to unite them in a Greek-Turkish Confederation. This entity would, in his view, serve as a reincarnation of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, filling the political, cultural, and economic void their absence left in the East Mediterranean. A devout Orthodox Christian, he developed a profound sympathy for the Turkish religion of Alevi–Bektashism, seeking to forge an alliance between it and Orthodoxy as a spiritual foundation for a future political union between Athens and Ankara. He was a firm believer in the collaboration of religious communities, much like the millet system of the Ottoman Empire, and worked closely with Shia Muslims in Iran, Jews in Israel, and Hindu Vaishnavas in India. His elder son, Nicolas, embraced Vaishnavism in 1984 and lives with his Hindu wife in a Vaishnav community in Gainesville, Florida. Though a member of the official Church of Greece, Kitsikis maintained a persistent sympathy for the Old-Calendarist movement, which rejects the Gregorian calendar and adheres to a traditionalist stance on Christian life. He was convinced that just as Orthodoxy triumphed over Iconoclasm in the 9th century, the Old Calendar would eventually be readopted by the Orthodox Churches that had abandoned it.

Beginning in the 1970s, he taught Chinese and Turkish history, political ideologies, and geopolitics across a range of Western universities. His extensive body of work has been translated into numerous languages, and articles dissecting his theories have appeared in Chinese, South Slavic languages, German, French, Albanian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. He also held a teaching position at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, where one of his students was the future Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu. It is widely considered that Kitsikis exerted a decisive influence on Davutoğlu's geopolitical framework.

His academic journey later took him to Bilkent University in Ankara and Gediz University in İzmir. He also became a close friend and adviser to the President of the Turkish Republic, Turgut Özal. In Greece, he served as a resident researcher at the National Institute of Social Studies and taught at Deree College, the American College in Athens.

He was a prominent public intellectual in Greece and a close confidant and advisor to Greek Premier Konstantinos Karamanlis senior during the 1960s and 1970s. He was a regular contributor of political articles to Greek magazines and, from 1996, published his own Greek quarterly journal of geopolitics, named after his civilizational model: «Endiamese Perioche, Ἐνδιάμεση Περιοχή», or "Intermediate Region".

The "Nikos Kitsikis Library and Archives," named in honor of his father, is housed in the former home of Aristidis Stergiadis in Herakleion, Crete. In 2006, the Greek State recognized his contributions by establishing and financing the "Dimitri Kitsikis Public Foundation and Library" in Athens.

Work

Since the 1960s, Kitsikis has been the recognized, if controversial, theorist of a Greek-Turkish Confederation, first in Greece and later in Turkey. He tirelessly promoted this vision, influencing statesmen, politicians, journalists, artists, and thinkers on both sides of the Aegean. His books became best-sellers in Turkey, earning praise from the Turkish Prime Minister. He cultivated close relationships with Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis senior and Turkish President Turgut Özal, as well as with Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

In Greece, his books ignited some of the fiercest controversies in the nation's historiography, with debates even reaching the floor of the Greek Parliament. He directly challenged the deeply entrenched national narrative of Greeks enslaved by Turks and dismantled cherished myths taught in Greek schools, such as the story of the "secret school." While his father was a leftist Member of Parliament, Dimitri Kitsikis held a deep aversion to the parliamentary system, viewing it as an alien import unsuited to the Greek model of laocracy (λαοκρατία), or government by the people.

In France, he pioneered the study of propaganda and pressure as instruments of foreign policy within the field of International Relations. He also broke new ground in the study of technocracy's role in international politics. He consistently argued that religion is an indispensable component of international politics and worked to foster collaboration among the four major religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. He organized dialogues between Orthodox Christians, Iranian Shiites, and Indian Hindus. He also collaborated with Israeli Jews and fundamentalist Catholics from Quebec, where he and his students published the quarterly journal Aquila, which promoted the Byzantine imperial idea in Catholic circles with a double-headed eagle on its cover. He also worked closely with Fethullah Gülen's Hizmet movement. Underlying all these endeavors, however, was the persistent idea of a global Hellenism, a theme that permeates his work.

He developed a model for a novel approach to the three major political ideologies of liberalism, fascism, and communism, and published extensively on the history of China. He is also credited as the founder of Photohistory, a distinct branch of historical study.

And because no academic's resume is complete without an artistic flourish, he was also a recognized poet. Six collections of his poetry were published by houses such as Pierre Jean Oswald (Paris), Naaman (Québec), and Kedros (Κέδρος) in Athens. In 1991, he was awarded the first Greek-Turkish prize for poetry, named after Abdi İpekçi, a Turkish journalist murdered by terrorists. His poetic works, including Omphalos (1977) and le Paradis perdu sur les barricades (1989–1993), were featured in an anthology of 32 Canadian poets and included in the Dictionnaire des citations littéraires de l'Ontario français, depuis 1960.

Kitsikis viewed the Greek language as the cornerstone of planetary civilization and considered it an honor to write in it. He believed the language should be rescued from the hands of Greek philologists, whom he accused of systematically destroying it. He championed the continued use of polytonic Greek, traditional spelling, and the freedom to write in any literary style, deeming erroneous only those forms of Greek that had not been in use since the time of Homer.

He is the architect of four core concepts designed to reframe the history of the Greco-Turkish space: a) The "Intermediate Region" (Endiamese Perioche, Ἐνδιάμεση Περιοχή), a distinct civilization stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River, situated between the Euro-American West and the Hindu-Chinese East. b) The Eastern Party in Greece and Turkey (Ἀνατολικὴ Παράταξις) versus the Western Party (Δυτικὴ Παράταξις), a fundamental antagonistic pairing driving the region's history. c) Hellenoturkism (Ἑλληνοτουρκισμός), an ideology and a cultural phenomenon spanning the last millennium. d) The Alevi–Bektashi religious origin of the Ottoman Dynasty, arguing that its Islamization occurred in tandem with its secularization and Westernization.

In 2007, he published A Comparative History of Greece and China from Antiquity to the Present. The study is notable for its focus on the relationship between the two civilizations over three millennia, proposing two central concepts: the existence of a Greco-Chinese civilization in a global context, and its political expression over 2500 years through the model of the ecumenical empire.

Ahead of the September 2015 general elections in Greece, Kitsikis, a supporter of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), tactically endorsed the Golden Dawn party. It was a calculated, if jarring, move intended to help defeat the Syriza social democratic party.

Since 1996, his quarterly journal, Intermediate Region, served as a platform for his Hellenoturkist viewpoints and nationalistic outlook. He described the journal's aim as providing "the knowledge that will enable the revolutionary overthrow of the structure of the present provincial little state of Athens and the building up of a national regime."

Influence on Turkish politics

Kitsikis was not merely an academic theorist; his ideas found a direct channel into Turkish politics. He was the former professor of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and a close adviser to President Turgut Özal. His influence on Davutoğlu's geopolitical theories is considered to have been decisive.

His reaction to the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum was... predictably dramatic. He posted on his social media accounts: "Christ is risen! The Empire is risen! The Ottoman world is risen! The Intermediate Region has come to life again! Long live president Erdoğan! Fethullah Gülen, his former spiritual father, has lost, but his ideas, through his pupil Erdoğan, have triumphed." A statement delivered with the theological certainty of a man who sees empires rising in every political shift.

The Dimitri Kitsikis Public Foundation

The Dimitri Kitsikis Public Foundation was formally established in Athens, Greece, under Presidential Decree 129, A 190. The decree was published on 15 September 2008, in the Gazette of the Government of Greece (ΦΕΚ), cementing the existence of an institution dedicated to a man who spent his life crafting theories of them.

Published works

(Excluding articles)

Propagande et pressions en politique internationale. La Grèce et ses revendications à la Conférence de la Paix, 1919–1920 – Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1963.
Yunan propagandası –İstanbul, Meydan Neşriyat, 1964. (2nd edition: İstanbul, Kaynak Kitaplar,1974)
« La Grèce électorale », International Guide to Electoral Statistics (edited by Stein Rokkan and Jean Meyriat), Paris, Mouton, 1969.
« La question chypriote », Encyclopaedia Universalis – Paris, vol.4, 1969.
« De la Grèce byzantine à la Grèce contemporaine », Encyclopaedia Universalis – Paris, vol. 7, 1970.
« Information et Décision. La Grèce face à l'invasion allemande dans les Balkans, 1940-1941», in La Guerre en Méditerranée – Paris, Centre national de la Recherche scientifique, 1971.
« Nationalisme dans les Balkans : Etude comparée des révolutions turque de 1908 et grecque de 1909 », The Canadian Historical Association. Historical Papers 1971.
Le rôle des experts à la Conférence de la Paix. Gestation d'une technocratie en politique internationale - Ottawa, Editions de l'Université d'Ottawa, 1972.
Ἡ Ἑλλάς τῆς 4ης Αὐγούστου καί αἱ Μεγάλαι Δυνάμεις. Τά ἀρχεῖα τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ὑπουργείου Ἐξωτερικῶν, 1936-1941 - Athens, Ikaros, 1974. (2nd edition: Athens, Eleuthere Skepsis, 1990).
«Eleuthère Vénizélos», Hommes d'Etat célèbres – Paris, (edited by François Crouzet), Editions Mazenod, vol. 5, 1975.
Omphalos, Poème – Paris, Pierre Jean Oswald, 1977.
Ἑλλάς καί ξένοι, 1919–1967. Ἀπό τά ἀρχεῖα τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ὑπουργείου Ἐξωτερικῶν - Athens, Hestia, 1977.
Συγκριτικὴ Ἱστορία Ἑλλάδος καὶ Τουρκίας στὸν 20ό αἰῶνα - Athens, Hestia, 1978. (2nd edition supplemented: Hestia, 1990. 3rd edition: Hestia, 1998).
« Grande Idée et hellénoturquisme. Essai d'interprétation nouvelle de l'histoire néo-grecque », Actes du IIe Congrès international des Etudes du Sud-Est européen, 1970 – Athènes, Association internationale des Etudes du Sud-Est européen, 1978, tome III.
Ὀμφαλός, Ποίημα – Athens, Kedros, 1979.
Yırmı Asırda Karşılaştırmalı Türk-Yunan Tarihi – İstanbul, Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları Dergisi, II-8, 1980. (20th Century Turkish-Greek Comparative History).
Ἱστορία τοῦ ἑλληνοτουρκικοῦ χώρου ἀπό τόν Ἐ. Βενιζέλο στὸν Γ. Παπαδόπουλο, 1928-1973 - Athens, Hestia, 1981. (2nd edition supplemented: Hestia, 1995).
« Bulgaria in Balkan History between the Two World Wars », Pervi Mejdunaroden Kongres po Bulgaristika Dokladi (First International Conference on Bulgarian Studies), Sofia, Bulgarian Academy of the Sciences, 1982.
L' Orocc, dans l'âge de Kali. Poème – Sherbrooke (Québec), Naaman, 1985, illustrated.
L'Empire ottoman – Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1985. (Collection « Que sais-je ? », no. 2222). 2nd ed. 1991. 3rd ed. 1994.
« L'espace ottoman dans l'esprit de Charles de Moüy, dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle », L'Empire ottoman, la République de Turquie et la France (edited by H. Batu) –Paris - Istanbul, Isis, 1986.
« Κύπρος 1955-1959 : Τριτοκοσμικὴ συνειδητοποίηση καὶ ἐπιπτώσεις ἐπὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος », Cypriot Studies Society. Proceedings of the 2nd International Cypriological Conference– vol. 3, Nicosia, 1987.
Greek Synthetic Thought. An Opposition to Western Divisive Thought of the Renaissance – San Francisco, Bhaktivedanta Institute, 1988.
Ἱστορία τῆς Ὀθωμανικῆς Αὐτοκρατορίας, 1280-1924 - Athens, Hestia, 1988, 244 pages (2nd ed., 1989, 3rd ed. expanded, 1996, 316 pages, 4th ed. 2003, 5th ed. 2013, 318 pages)
El Imperio otomano – México, Fondo de Cultura Econόmica, 1989.
Ὁ Ἄνδυς στὸν καιρὸ τῆς Καλῆς. Ποίημα - Athens, Hestia, 1989. (Illustrated by Georgette Κambani).
« Les Turcs et la mer Egée : essai de géohistoire », Turquie, Moyen-Orient, Communauté européenne (edited by J. Thobie) – Paris, L'Harmattan, 1989.
Ἡ τρίτη ἰδεολογία καὶ ἡ Ὀρθοδοξία - Athens, Ακρίτας, 1990. (2nd edition, Hestia, 1998).
«Ὀθωμανικὴ Αὐτοκρατορία», and «Τουρκία», Παγκόσμια Ἱστορία - Athens, τόμος Β', Ἐκδοτικὴ Ἀθηνῶν, 1990.
Le paradis perdu sur les barricades. Poème – Athens, Akritas, 1993. (Illustrated by Turkish artist Mürşide İçmeli).
The Old Calendarists and the Rise of Religious Conservatism in Greece – Etna, California, Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1995.
Πτώση. Ποίημα - Athens, Ἀκρίτας, 1996. (Illustrated by Georgette Κambani).
O Império otomano – Porto, Portugal, Rés Editora, 1996.
« Ἡ εὐρωπαϊκὴ σκέψη τοῦ Παναγιώτη Κανελλόπουλου », Nea Hestia. A tribute to Panagiotes Kanellopoulos, 1902-1986 - Athens, Hestia, 1996.
Türk-Yunan İmparatorluğu. Arabölge gerçeği ışığında Osmanlı Tarihine bakış – İstanbul, İletişim Yayınları, 1996. (The Turkish-Greek Empire. An inquiry into Ottoman History through the prism of the Intermediate Region).
Ἐνδιάμεση Περιοχή – Quarterly journal issued and directed by Dimitri Kitsikis since the Fall of 1996.
Osmanlijsko carstvo – Belgrad, Yugoslavia, Platon Editions, 1998.
Османската империя -Димитри Кицикис - ИК Кама,2000 -Osmanskata Imperija – Sofia, Bulgaria, Kama Editions, 2000.
Τὸ Βυζαντινὸ πρότυπο διακυβερνήσεως καὶ τὸ τέλος τοῦ κοινοβουλευτισμοῦ, Athens, Esoptron, 2001.
Pratiques sociales (edited by Jean-Pierre Wallot) – Ottawa, Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa, 2002.
Pour une Etude scientifique du fascisme – Nantes, Ars Magna Editions, (Les Documents), 2005.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines françaises du fascisme – Nantes, Ars Magna Editions, (Les Documents), 2006.
Le national-bolchevisme – Nantes, Ars Magna Editions, (Les Documents), 2006.
На перекрестке цивилизаций: Поль Лемерль, История Византии. Димитрис Кицикис, Османская империя. Весь Мир, 2006 г. -Na perekrestke tsivilizatsiy : Istorija Vizantii- Osmanskaja Imperija (Paul Lemerle-D. Kitsikis) – Moscow, Ves Mir Editions, 2006. (Civilisations at the Crossroads : Byzantine History - Ottoman History).
Ἡ σημασία τοῦ μπεκτασισμοῦ-ἀλεβισμοῦ γιὰ τὸν ἑλληνισμό - Athens, Hekate, 2006.
Συγκριτικὴ Ἱστορία Ἑλλάδος-Κίνας ἀπὸ τὴν ἀρχαιότητα μέχρι σήμερα ("A Comparative History of Greece and China from Antiquity to the Present") - Athens, Herodotos Press, 2007, 346 pages.
«Anti-Atatürk: A Psychological Portrait of Stergiades, "Dictator of Ionia" in 1919–1922, the Greek that failed to Conquer Turkey», Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Eastern and African Studies, Gastoune, 2007.
La montée du national-bolchevisme dans les Balkans. Le retour à la Serbie de 1830 – Paris, Avatar Editions, 2008.
Ἐθνικομπολσεβικισμός. Πέραν τοῦ φασισμοῦ καὶ τοῦ κομμουνισμοῦ. Ἡ ἐπιρροή του στὰ Βαλκάνια - Athens, Hellenike Anodos, 2010.
Saint Nicodemos the Hagiorite - Christian Morality - Belmont, Massachusetts, Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2012. (Contribution to the translation)
Περί Ηρώων: Οι ήρωες και η σημασία τους για τον σύγχρονο ελληνισμό («About Heroes: Heroes and their Importance for Contemporary Hellenism»)- Athens, Herodotos Press, 2014, 471 pages.
"Τουρκία, 1908-2010" [Turkey, 1908-2010], in Χρήστος Αντωνιάδης, editor, Βαλκάνια.Η μεγάλη τρικυμία [The Balkans. The Great Upheaval], Athens,Kastalia Press, 2018, 556 pages, ISBN 9786185279035
Ἡ Ἑλλὰς τῆς 4ης Αὐγούστου καὶ οἱ Μεγάλες Δυνάμεις-Τρίτη ἔκδοσις βελτιωμένη καὶ μὲ προσθῆκες [Greece of 4 August and the Great Powers], Athens, Herodotos Press, 2018, 250 pages, ISBN 978-960-485-220-8
Προπαγάνδα καὶ πιέσεις στὴν διεθνῆ πολιτική [Propaganda and Lobbies in International Politics]- Athens, Herodotos Press, 2018, 786 pages, ISBN 978-960-485-261-1
La Grèce et la Turquie au XXe siècle - Éditions universitaires européennes, 2019, 410 pages, ISBN 978-613-8-43036-0
Διεθνισμὸς καὶ Ἐθνικισμός. Μία εἰσαγωγή [Perry Anderson - Internationalism. Dimitri Kitsikis - Le nationalisme], Athens,Exodos,2019,135 pages, ISBN 978-618-84162-3-9
Ἄννεμ-Μάννα: Ἡ μάνα, συμπαντικὴ ἑλληνικὴ γλῶσσα [Annem-Manna: The Mother as Universal Greek Language] - Athens,Exodos,2020,179 pages, ISBN 978-618-84162-4-6
Φύση καὶ κοινωνία. Ἐπιστολὴ πρὸς Βολταῖρο γιὰ τὸν φυσικὸ νόμο καὶ γιὰ τὴν καταστροφὴ τῆς Λισσαβῶνος,τοῦ Ζάν-Ζὰκ Ῥουσσῶ" [Nature and Society. Bilingual French and Greek text]. Εἰσαγωγή-Μετάφραση Δημήτρης Κιτσίκης (Introduction and Translation by Dimitri Kitsikis). Athens, Exodos, 2020,109 pages, ISBN 978-618-84162-8-4
Ζάν-Ζὰκ Ῥουσσῶ καὶ ἐπιστημονικὸς φασισμός [Jean-Jacques Rousseau and scientific fascism]. Athens, Exodos, 2O21,151 pages, ISBN 978-618-85028-5-7

Dimitri Kitsikis