Dr. Hercules Millas

Hercules Millas was born in 1940 and raised in Turkey; he presently lives in Greece. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Ankara University in 1998 and a B.Sc. in civil engineering at Robert College, Istanbul, in 1965. His Master’s degree is on 19th-century Greek history and the related Turkish historiography, and his Ph.D. thesis is on national images, national identities, and the “other” as presented in Turkish and Greek literature and was both published in Turkish and in Greek.

From the years 1968-1985, he worked as a civil engineer in Turkey, Greece, Bahrain, Qatar, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia, where he held various managerial positions and established his own consulting and soil investigation company. Since 1985, he has focused on cultural activities. He published various books and articles, mostly on interethnic perceptions, and completed his education in political science.

During the period of 1990-1995, he contributed to the establishment of the Greek literature department at Ankara University, teaching Greek language, literature, and history. Later, he taught Turkish language and literature at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki and at the Aegean University in Rhodes, Greece (1999-2003). He taught Turkish literature and Turkish political thought at the University of Athens (2003-2008). From 2009-2010, he taught Greek-Turkish relations with respect to literary criticism and conflict resolution at Işık and Bilgi Universities in Istanbul.

He operated as a moderator for the Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue Project supported by the European Commission (2002-2004). From 2006-2012, he participated in an EU sponsored program where he helped organize the teaching of Turkish to Greek teachers of Turkish-speaking minorities in Western Thrace (Greece). The number of teachers varied from between 350 and 650. Together with Nefin Dinç, he prepared a documentary, The Other Town, on how Greeks and Turks perceive each other (2011).

Dr. Millas has participated in various international conferences and meetings in Greece, Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, England, the USA, Croatia, France, Sweden, Hungary, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Spain, and Cyprus. He has published articles on Greek-Turkish relations in various Greek and Turkish journals and newspapers (such as To Vima, Avgi, Ta Nea, Toplumsal Tarih, Athens Review of Books, etc). From 2002-2016, he published weekly articles in Zaman (Istanbul) and monthly in Today’s Zaman, Agos (Istanbul), and Azınlıkça (Western Thrace).

Dr. Millas twice received the Abdi Ipekçi Peace Award, first in 1992, and again jointly with the Greek-Turkish Forum in 2001. He also won the “Dido Sotiriou” award of the Hellenic Authors’ Society in 2004 and the Free Thinking and Expression award from the Publishers’ Association of Turkey in 2005. The documentary The Other Town won the following awards: The spectators award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2011; special award of the Turkish Film Festival in Boston in 2012; and the Best Historical Documentary at the Greek Film Fest in Chicago in 2012.

He has translated more than twenty books, mostly Greek and Turkish poetry, and published more than thirty articles on literature. Among his translations are the complete works of G. Seferis and K. Kavafis and two books about the Turkish poetry of Yunus Emre and Can Yücel. He participated in the preparation of a voluminous Greek-Turkish dictionary (1994), directed the publication of a Turkish textbook, Türkçe Kitabımız (2008), for Western Thrace, and a Catalogue of Common Greek-Turkish words, expressions, and proverbs (2008/2012).

Dr. Millas has also published various books on the historic dimension of Greek-Turkish relations in Turkish, Greek, and English. His books include The Images of Greeks and Turks; Textbooks, Historiography, Literature and National Stereotypes (in Greek), 2001; Do’s and Don’ts for Better Greek-Turkish Relations (in English, Greek, and Turkish), 2002; The Imagined ‘Other’ as National Identity – Greeks & Turks, 2004; The ‘Other’ and Identity in Turkish and Greek Novels (in Turkish), 2005; The So-Called Innocent Nationalism (in Turkish and Greek), edit., 2000 and 2010; Nations and Identities – The Case of Greeks and Turks, 2016; New Turkey from Inside (edit. in Greek), 2019; The Family Grave (a novel in Greek and Turkish), 2020.

Dr. Millas has also published approximately thirty articles in various academic books/journals in Greece, Turkey, England, France, and Germany on schoolbooks, interethnic perceptions, and national images in literary texts and on Greek-Turkish relations.

Dr. Millas speaks Greek, Turkish, and English and has a working knowledge of French. In his youth, he was a champion in the 100 and 200 meters dash and a member of the Turkish varsity team. At the Greek Veterans’ competition, he was the 100-meter champion in 2016 and the 2019 high jump champion.

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Anatomy of a Populist Speech March 8, 2021.