BLAMING TURKEY, DOES IT HELP?
By George Gregoriou
Greek News
me=News&file=article&sid=7485
Oct 15 2007
New York
Maybe we are doing it for our own consolation. Ankara has not changed
its policy on Cyprus for more than half-a-century, nor its claim on
the Aegean Sea and Air Space. With more violations, the Greeks become
more defensive, and the more we shout at each other and appeal to the
powers that be to put a leash on Ankara. The Turks have the military
power to carry on the occupation in Cyprus and the violations in
the Aegean. This policy has the support of Washington and London,
both powers being critical in the Aegean confrontation and a Cyprus
settlement. This support is in the form of billions of dollars
in economic aid and weapons, to make Turkey a strategic regional
power/ally to control the oil resources in the Middle East and the
Cold War (II) to encircle Russia.
Criticism is fine when dealing with a civilized people who readily
respond to criticism because the insults become more insulting when
they are repeated. The ruling circles in Ankara show no such signs.
They are not troubled by criticism nor insulted by the insults. Take
the genocide of the Armenians in 1915. The response of Ankara to
any Turkish intellectual referring to the genocide in 1915 as a
historical fact is criminal charges and imprisonment for insulting
Turkishness. In the case of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, not
only he was charged with committing a crime, he was assassinated by
a young Turk, who in his words: "I killed a non-Muslim." The new
president and foreign minister of Turkey want a new makeover for
Turkey, to improve her image for the EU. I will not hold my breath,
even if there are changes in Article 301. The silencing of critics
and threats to foreign governments will go on for a long time.
Anyway, why limit the charges of genocide against the Armenians
in 1915? For the first time The New York Times referred to the
Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1918, not just 1915, on October 4,
2007. How about from the 1870s to 1918? This genocide includes not
only Armenians, but Greeks, Assyrians, and other Christians, since
the beginning of the 19th Century. The genocide was intensified
when the Empire was on the verge of collapse, from the 1870s to the
1920s. At Lausanne, the Allies gave the Turks general amnesty for the
political and criminal crimes committed from 1914 to 1922. Why? The
Allies were interested in securing the territorial plundering of
the Ottoman Empire, have Turkey on their side against the new enemy,
the Bolsheviks, and the smell of oil in the Middle East.
A research on the genocide of the Greeks is being assembled for
publication in Europe. Why is this research important? It is part
of a larger movement to force Ankara to recognize the butchering of
these subjects and pay reparations for loss of life and property, to
the descendants, or stay out of Europe. What makes this issue even
more important is that the political winds in the European Union
are against Turkish membership, for a variety of reasons, include
the genocide of the Armenians. The genocide of Greeks, Assyrians,
and Kurds will be added to the list.
The solution to the Cyprus problem is part of this struggle. There
is only one message that needs to be conveyed to Ankara, from Nicosia
and Athens. This message has to be conveyed, loud and clear. Without
a Cyprus settlement, there will be no membership in the EU. I would
go a step further. There will be no naval bases for the United States
in Greece. Let Ankara and its enablers in Washington and Europe worry
about the effects of shutting the door to Turkey¹s membership in the
EU. Turkey will be in trouble. So would Washington, its geopolitical
strategy to control the oil in the Middle East. Turkey, with the soft
Islamists in power could easily turn on into a hard-core Islamist
country. This would be a big headache for Washington, already in
trouble in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and the Middle East. Washington can
understand where the nail pinches in the shoe.
Thirty-three years of occupation in Cyprus is more than enough. The
daily violations of the Greece¹s airspace and territorial waters in
the Aegean has to end, or at least settle it according to the existing
international legalities and practice. The denial that genocide was
committed against Christians (Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Slavs,
and other Christian groups) for over 100 years will not make it go
away. It requires recognition and closure, for the descendants of
those deported and/or massacred, 33% of the Ottoman population in
1900. Over 100,000 of these Christians are in Turkey today. Not only
the Europeans do not want Turkey in the EU, Cyprus and Greece have
the veto as a last resort.
Being nice and toeing the Washington line by holding the hand of Ankara
to the EU doorsteps at Brussels did very little for the Greeks. Even
the koumparato of Costas Karamanlis with Erdogan or changing the
history books to be more Muslim-friendly on the deportation and
massacre of Greeks at the turn of the last century and the burning
of Smyrna did not modify Turkish behavior.
Turkish government behavior is friendly until the ink on the signature
dries. It happened at Lausanne in 1923 and the rapprochement between
Venizelos and Ataturk in 1931. The 100,000 Greeks in Istanbul,
unaffected by the forced exchange of population after the defeat in
Asia Minor, are now 2,500-3,000. The tax law in 1942, the pogroms,
and the expulsions in the 1950s and 1960s forced these Greeks (plus
Armenians, and Jews) to pack up and leave with their suitcases. Enough
is enough!
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