Dimitrios Karatasos



Dimitrios Tsamis Karatasos (Δημήτριος Τσάμης Καρατάσος, 1798-1861), was a Greek armatolos, the son of Anastasios Karatasos who had proclaimed the Greek Revolution in the Naoussa area in 1821.

Karatasos was born in Dihalevri, Imathia, Macedonia in 1798. He fought during the War of Independence, alongside his father, first in the Naoussa area and, after the destruction of Naoussa, in Rumeli. In 1828, he was a leading figure in the final phase of the war to rid Rumeli of all Turkish military presence.

Like his father, Dimitrios was a supporter of a Greek-Serbian Entente in order to relieve the Balkans from the Ottoman occupation. During the period 1844- 1853 he ventured in the Serbian communities in Trieste and in Skopje in order to find support for a common cause. His assignments were semi-official and one could state that he was a kind of modern day political agent trying to forge alliances within the realm of secret diplomacy.

After Greek independence, Tsamis Karatasos continued the struggle to liberate his native Greek Macedonians taking part in an 1854 liberation movement in Chalkidiki. He was one of the prime instigators of the revolt known by the epithet Yero (Greek: "γέρο" meaning "elder one"), as Yero-Tsamis or Yero-Karatasos. The insurrections of the Macedonian Greeks had the support of King Otto of Greece who thought that "liberation" of Macedonia and other parts of Greece was possible, hoping on Russian support. The revolt, however, failed in its part having deteriorated the Greco-Turkish relations for the years to come.

Karatasos strongly believed that only a Greek-Serbian agreement could accelerate the process of driving the Ottoman presence from the Balkans. In 1859 he made his claims public by writing articles in a Greek newspaper, whilst cajoled the representatives Serbian community in Greece in order to get support and advice for his goal. The Bavarian born king Otto, was affirmative and promoted Karatassos contacts. Therefore in 1861 he ventured to Belgrade in order to sign the first official treaty between the two states. During his stay there he died from unspecified reasons, presumably form an illness, when he was planning another uprising for the Serbs and Greeks. A few months later King Otto would be expelled from the country due to a popular uprising and the Greek-Serbian agreement will have to wait 25 years until the Greek Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis and his Serbian counterpart, sign the first agreement in 1887.