 I would like to thank the organisers for accepting me because, to be honest, I come from a totally different background. I'm a prehistorian and I'm mostly interested in political perspective of archaeology and the uses of the past. In Greece we don't even call it Islamic archaeology. We don't use the term Islamic archaeology for our Ottoman past. So I hope you find it interesting. Maria Todorova in her book Imagining the Balkans has stated that the Balkans are the Ottoman legacy. Also, and probably because of it, the other of Europe. The Ottomans ruled in the biggest part of the peninsula for more than five centuries. Modern nation states of the Balkans emerged during the nineteenth and the early twentieth century from the decaying Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman heritage is still visible in different aspects of social, economic and cultural life and to a certain extent in the built environment. A heritage though not always accepted by the people of the Balkans. My case study is on the management of the Islamic architectural heritage in the region of Macedonia. The area was absorbed into the Greek state in 1912-1913 as an outcome of the Balkan Wars. In the first Balkan War, in 1912, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro joined forces against the Ottoman Empire. The second Balkan War started immediately after the first in 1913 and it was conducted between the ex-allies of Greece and Serbia against Bulgaria. In the beginning of the twentieth century Macedonia was a typical Balkan area, multicultural, multinational, where Muslims, Greeks, Jews, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Vlax, Gypsies and other ethnic groups lived together as subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The dominant group in the administration were the Ottoman Turks. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire came after the First World War where the Empire took sides with the Central Powers. The Muslim presence in Macedonia ended with the Treaty of Lausanne which was signed after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 but followed the First World War and ended with the defeat of the Greek Army. The most important term of the treaty was the forced exchange of population of the Muslim population of Greece with the Christian population of Turkey. Approximately 400,000 Muslims and one and a half million Christians abandoned their homes. More than half of them settled in Macedonia. The arrival of the refugees and the departure of the Muslims changed the demographic map of the area. The Greeks, for a few years ago, had taken over the administration after the population exchange became the majority for the first time in Macedonia. In Thessaloniki, until the arrival of the refugees from Asia Minor, the Jews were the biggest community in the city. The choice of the Greek government to settle great numbers of refugees in Macedonia was determined by the availability of buildings and land left by the Muslims. But it was also a political decision, part of the state efforts to homogenize and Hellenize the area in which large populations of Slavic speakers with a non-Greek identity lived at the time. My research interest is in buildings dating to the Ottoman period, secular or religious, public or private, bearing Islamic architectural features that existed in 1912 and 1913 when the area became part of Greece. Usually, Islamic architectural features like the characteristic pointed arches are found in public buildings like mosques, hammams, basestands, medraces and chesmers. The first question I have examined was if these buildings still exist and if not, when and under what conditions were they destroyed? My second question was how these buildings were used until the destruction and regarding those that still exist, how were they reused in the recent past and what is their condition and use today? My sources were limited because up until the 1980s there was no scientific interest about the Ottoman past in Greece. It is mostly in the last two decades that books and articles on the Ottoman architectural past of Greece were published in both Greece and Turkey. There is almost no documentation or record about the Islamic monuments destroyed during the 20th century. My main source of information about these monuments was, my main source of information about these monuments were state archives, monographs and websites of towns and villages along with field study. Through my research I have realized that the Ottoman Turks had left a strong material imprint on the area. Other questions raised were if this abandonment of the Islamic past was part of an organized plan, a state policy or the result of a hostile or indifferent attitude of the local communities. My final question was what was the result of the loss of the Islamic material past from the rural and urban landscapes from Macedonia? What was the impact in the collective memory of the people, the memory of the landscape and finally in the way the whole country perceives, interprets and narrates its past? Modern Greek state is a conception of European romanticism. After the creation of the Greek state in 1830 the Greeks and their land had to also be constructed in a way that would prove that modern Greeks are the legitimate heirs of ancient Greece. This is the reason why Athens was chosen to be the new capital. All the non-Greek place names, even birth names, were changed to ancient Greek and neoclassicism in architecture became the only style for public and private houses. The ancient monuments were cleansed from any further from the classical period constructions. The classical period was selected as the arch-door of the new state. On the sacred, as it is called, rock of acropolis, buildings from the Ottoman period, a francus, a medieval tower and a mosque inside the Parthenon were demolished. In the process of nation building, oblivion placed as an important role as does memory. In Greece and I think in most Balkan countries, nation building included the erasure of parts of the past that were not suitable to the official narrative. Tankable or intankable evidence of otherness of non-Greekness had to vanish. Frankish, Slavic and the Islamic monuments par excellence were considered the monuments of the others, material remains of the conquerors that had no place in the new purified Hellenic topos. As a result, the majority of the mosques and all the minarets in the newly established state were demolished. When the Greek army invaded Macedonia, most of the population in the city was Muslim. After six centuries of Ottoman rule, the urban centers were organized and looked like typical cities of the east, with narrow streets, complex street planning, poor sanitation and minarets dominated from a distance. The first destructions of Islamic monuments started with the Balkan wars during the advance of the Greek army as recorded in memoirs of Greek soldiers and in the Carnegie reports and international commission that inquired into the causes and conduct of the war. The sacred for the Ottoman Turks city of Yenica was bombed and partly destroyed in the first Balkan war. The Muslim area of Serbia, a small town in Macedonia, was burned by the Greek army and local people. Many Muslim and Slavic-speaking villages were burned by the Greek army and their inhabitants were forced to migrate. The town of Kilkis was destroyed by the Greek army at the second Balkan war and Ceres, another important for the Ottoman Turks city, was burned by the Bulgarian army. After the war in 1915, a fire destroyed the predominantly Muslim town of Drama. The biggest catastrophe, though, was a great fire of the Saloniki in 1917. Approximately 1.2 million square meters of a densely occupied built area with houses, shops and public buildings were completely destroyed. The Muslim community, which was the second in population after the Jews, with the Greek being the third, lost 12 mosques and other public and private buildings. The fire of the Saloniki resulted in a drastic change in the architecture, the urban plan and the character of the city, but until that time was considered by Greek and foreign travelers as a typical Turkish city of the Orient. Soon after the war, the Greek government set out to rebuild the destroyed towns. It was also an opportunity to gentrify and Hellenize them by removing the Islamic material traces. New city plans, according to the standards of Western capitalism, were applied. Many Islamic monuments were demolished during this process because they were considered unimportant. Memories of a disturbing past, remains of decadence. The new architecture promoted was neoclassicism, like in South and Greece, but also a new style was introduced in Macedonia, Neobisantinism. Macedonia was far from the centers of classical antiquity, so the Byzantine past, which in Greece is considered the continuation of ancient Greece, was thought as more appropriate. Before the exchange of populations, the Greek authorities confiscated nine Byzantine churches from the Muslim community of the Saloniki that during the Ottoman period, centuries ago, were transformed into mosques and transformed them again into churches by removing all the Muslim religious symbols and all the Islamic architectural features. On public buildings of the Ottoman administration, Turkish baroque decorative architectural features were replaced with neoclassical ones. After the forced migration of the Muslim population, the Greek state used the abandoned Muslim buildings to resettle the Greek refugees from Turkey. The vaquives, the religious properties, passed into the jurisdiction of the National Bank of Greece that sold it to citizens. In 1925 the state directed the local authorities and the refugees to transform the mosques into churches. There is a turba. Most minarets and other Islamic features were removed. The same year 1925, the municipal of the Saloniki proceeded in the demolition of the 27 minarets of the city except one. After the great fire and the new city plan, the demolition of the minarets was the most dramatic intervention in the character of the Saloniki. A very symbolic act of destruction since minarets are landmarks, the symbol of Islam. For Greeks, the minarets were the metonymy of the Turkish rule and presence. During this period before the war in the Saloniki, the local press was urging the local authorities to exempt the city from their from the remains of the barbarous past, the Hamams and the mosques. In 1931 there was even a suggestion for the demolition of what later became the symbol of the city, the White Tower, but it was finally saved because of the high cost of the demolition. After the Saloniki, many cities followed and before the second war war Macedonia had already lost a great part of its Ottoman heritage. In Florida, another city in Macedonia, in 1926 the five mosques of the city were demolished. In Castorgia, another town, four mosques had been demolished before the war. Important monuments like Attic Cermi in Seres were destroyed in 1937. Until the 1980s, only a small number of Islamic monuments, less than ten, mostly monumental constructions in cities, were recognized by the state as protected. But other than that, no efforts were made to expropriate them from their owners, restore them and find an appropriate use for them. The Ottoman past was neglected. Islamic buildings were used as warehouses, stables, shops, houses. During their reuse, most of them were damaged. On the other hand, this was probably the reason they were not demolished. First restorations started in the 1980s and 1990s from the city of Saloniki, but they were increased after 2000, even in small towns, evidence of which attitudes started to change. Still though, most surviving Islamic monuments in Macedonia are deserted and in bad condition. Some concluding remarks. The period when most monuments were destroyed was from 1912 to World War II. The period after the war and until the 1980s and 1990s could be characterized as a period of neglect of the Islamic material past. Most buildings were abandoned, tend into ruins and many collapsed. Today, most surviving Islamic monuments in Macedonia belong to the state. However, most are in bad condition and in danger. In my research, I have concluded that there was no organized plan or decision of the Greek state for destruction of the Islamic architectural heritage, but at the same time, with a few exceptions, there was no real intention to protect it. It is a political decision which material past should be protected and which not. The distractions were conducted by local authorities as part of gentrification projects, but mostly from their owners. The majority of the Islamic monuments that existed in 1912 have now vanished. Actually, a very small number have survived and most of them are in direct danger because they haven't been restored. My last conclusion has to do with the results of the loss of the Islamic material past of Macedonia. During the 100 years of Greek rule, the cultural landscape of the area changed dramatically. The material evidence of the Muslim presence were erased. The material memory of the landscape and the collective memory of the modern inhabitants of Macedonia have been altered. The destruction of the Islamic monuments of Macedonia has been one of the most important aspects of the process of Hellenization of the area. Many would argue that since most Islamic buildings are now protected and many are being restored, Greek society has changed, has become more tolerant to the other. Is this true though? Does a restoration of a monument really means acceptance of the other? I remain skeptical. Thank you.