Your Greek Friends Stand Beside You!

[imported_Strabo]

I don't know where to start.

I sometimes think Turkey is so lucky having such stupid, clueless and obedient citizens.

And all the Turks the Greek Cypriots butchered, raped, tortured, all the children and families they killed prior to Turkish invasion

Prior to the Turkish Invasion ? Rubbish! The last inter-communal killings were in 1967. The killings in 1974 started the same day Turks started killing Greeks. NOT BEFORE!

You Turks claim that hundreds of thousands of Armenian women and children starved to death "by accident" and ALWAYS focus on the Armenian rebels. But when it comes to Cyprus, you continually focus on the women and children. Out of 500 deaths in 1963/4, 20 were children. But you don't assume they were killed in the crossfire or by accident. You ALWAYS assume they were deliberately murdered!

Armenians should familiarize themselves with the Turkish narrative and arguments regarding Cyprus. And Greeks should do the same regarding the AG. The double standards, omissions, emphasis, and hypocrisy is very eye-opening.

Simple example,
"Turks are entitled to ALL of Western Armenia because they were the majority................. but on Cyprus the Turkish minority (18%) is entitled to 50% political power"

Makarios led coup

Hitite, this is such an incredibly stupid thing to say, it honestly scares me. It reveals some of the propaganda induced delusions and imagery you have in your mind.

A coup is an undemocratic takeover of executive power.

Makarios was democratically elected to executive power, and was President of Cyprus in July 1974.

So you are saying Makarios, who had executive power, led a coup to take over executive power.

It's like saying G.W. bush launched a coup to make himself President of the United States.

If you knew the facts, you would know the coup was instigated by Greek Officers in the National Guard, under instruction of the Junta in Greece. The Junta and it's supporters tried to assassinate Makarios because he had abandoned Enosis. Everybody, (Except Turks!) know this.

Now what the hell do you mean by "Makarios led coup" my deluded friend ?

[bell-the-cat]

...my deluded friend ?

It is not appropriate for a person who has made only 10 posts here to go around insulting and being sarcastic to other members.

[Gavur]

It would not be appropriate,only if it was not true!

[imported_Strabo]

It is not appropriate for a person who has made only 10 posts here to go around insulting and being sarcastic to other members.

Sorry Bell,
but the Turks have had at least 10 years of exposure to the Internet. And it seems simple verifiable facts have still not had any impact on that society. It is not the first time I have read the assertions that hitite has made.

As I wrote above, Greeks started killing Turks on the same day Turks invaded, NOT BEFORE! But Turkey has lied to her own people by pretending the Greeks started killing Turks FIRST and Turkey invaded AFTER to rescue them.

It is not the first time Turks have used "Timeline distortion" to cover their crimes. Turks use the murder and ethnic-cleansing of Muslims in 1918 to claim the Genocide of 1915 was a Civil war or mutual-Genocide.

[imported_MariaDolores]

[QUOTE=Strabo;28413]Sorry Bell,
but the Turks have had at least 10 years of exposure to the Internet. And it seems simple verifiable facts have still not had any impact on that society. It is not the first time I have read the assertions that hitite has made.

As I wrote above, Greeks started killing Turks on the same day Turks invaded, NOT BEFORE! But Turkey has lied to her own people by pretending the Greeks started killing Turks FIRST and Turkey invaded AFTER to rescue them.

It is not the first time Turks have used "Timeline distortion" to cover their crimes. Turks use the murder and ethnic-cleansing of Muslims in 1918 to claim the Genocide of 1915 was a Civil war or mutual-Genocide.[/QU


Oh yes !!! May 2008 will mark the 89th anniversary of the Pontian Genocide that occurred in present day Turkey. Between 1916 and 1923 over 300,000 Pontic Greeks living in along the Black Sea coast and Asia Minor were systematically exiled or killed along with one and a half million Armenians and 700,000 Assyrians Christians. The Pontic people lived in Turkey from ancient times for over 3000 years and are descendants of Greek colonists who arrived there long before the ancestors of present day Turks.

These atrocities should not be forgotten. The young Turks of today's Turkey should demand for some answers and explanations from their Turkish Government. Those that do not know what history teaches us are doomed to repeat it.

[hitite]

A coup is an undemocratic takeover of executive power.

Makarios was democratically elected to executive power, and was President of Cyprus in July 1974.

So you are saying Makarios, who had executive power, led a coup to take over executive power.

It's like saying G.W. bush launched a coup to make himself President of the United States.

If you knew the facts, you would know the coup was instigated by Greek Officers in the National Guard, under instruction of the Junta in Greece. The Junta and it's supporters tried to assassinate Makarios because he had abandoned Enosis. Everybody, (Except Turks!) know this.

Now what the hell do you mean by "Makarios led coup" my deluded friend ?

I had Sampson in mind but Makarios came out. I guess you are proud of what he has accomplished. Personal hero maybe????

Prior to the Turkish Invasion ? Rubbish! The last inter-communal killings were in 1967. The killings in 1974 started the same day Turks started killing Greeks. NOT BEFORE!

Isn't 1967 "PRIOR" to 1974???

Strabo what I was trying to say was that when people like doctor13 come lashing out about how Turks raped and murdered they shouldn't think they are immune to the same ailments. Just be honest about it. When it comes to Cyprus I personally do not deny the TMT and their killings, so the Greeks should not deny their own attrocities.

Turks and Greeks in general have come to an understanding about each others wrong doings hence the recent small signs of peace between the two countries. Cyprus I hope will also be resolved as a continuation of this new Turco-Greek era as I like to see it.

[hitite]

As I wrote above, Greeks started killing Turks on the same day Turks invaded, NOT BEFORE! But Turkey has lied to her own people by pretending the Greeks started killing Turks FIRST and Turkey invaded AFTER to rescue them.

It is not the first time Turks have used "Timeline distortion" to cover their crimes. Turks use the murder and ethnic-cleansing of Muslims in 1918 to claim the Genocide of 1915 was a Civil war or mutual-Genocide.

Turkey did not invade Cyprus because the killings were continuing, the invasion was because it was feared the new dictatorship under Sampson would instigate further killings of Turks. Geostrategic reasons also played its part since an Enosis achieved would have meant serious vulnerability with Greek encirclement. Greek atrocities in the 60's, "PRIOR" to the invasion was justification enough to feed the Turkish people. I cant blame Ecevit for his propaganda, since the early days of Makarios and the "peace-keeping" activities of EOKA were not quite on the lines of Winnie The Pooh.

Ok, so are you saying Greeks started killing Turks in 1974 and not before?

[Joseph]

http://globalpolitician.com/24443-greece-turkey

The Greek Minority of Turkey

Theodoros Karakostas - 4/6/2008

Last July, Army officers in Turkey were arrested for planning the assassinations of Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios I and Mesrob II, Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The targeting of the spiritual heads of these two ancient Christian communities is symbolic considering the genocide of Armenians and Greeks in Anatolia by Turkish regimes earlier in the twentieth century. Human rights abuses against the Christians of Turkey, harassment, and violations of religious freedom continue unabated in Turkey. What is just as appalling as the relentless assault on Christianity in Turkey, is the silence and lack of diplomatic protests emanating from the international community.

It has become a matter of dogma for the foreign policy establishment and much of the American media that Turkey is a "secular democracy". On the basis of strategic considerations and mythical views about the alleged moderation of Turkey, the Western world has stood by and tolerated acts of terror and violence against peaceful Christian communities that would have been denounced and opposed had they occurred elsewhere. A case in point are the notorious September 6, 1955 pogroms that occurred in the historic Christian City of Constantinople. For most of the world this tragic date has no significance, but for Greek Orthodox Christians this date remains forever locked in our consciousness and represents heartbreak and mourning over the final stage of the destruction of Greek Orthodox civilization in what was once the Capital of Christian Byzantium.

Heartbreak also because of the realization of younger generations of Orthodox Greeks born and raised in America years after these events that neither the United States, nor Europe, nor the NATO alliance acted to defend democratic and moral values. On that terrible September night, the Turkish government actively encouraged its criminal and extremist elements to attack the Greek community. Turkish police stood by while mobs of rioters physically assaulted Greek men, sexually assaulted Greek women, and enthusiastically destroyed Orthodox Churches while violating their sanctity in the most appalling manner. A 90 year old Greek Orthodox priest was doused with gasoline and set on fire. There were dozens of deaths, and in the aftermath of this evening of terror thousands of Orthodox Greeks fled from their ancestral homeland in terror.

The purpose of recollecting these horrors emanates from the fact that the last vestiges of Greek Orthodoxy in Turkey are still under attack as a result of the policies of the Turkish government. In late 2007, a Greek Monastery on the island of Heybeliada was demolished, and an editor of a Greek minority newspaper was beaten by thugs. The Ecumenical Patriarchate is the victim of State sponsored discrimination and is unable to operate the only Seminary inside Turkey that would enable this historic Church to survive. The Western democracies took no action to protest or condemn the Turkish pogroms of September 1955, and that has been the active policy of the Western governments up to the present day. Between 1993 and 2004, there have been at least five arson attempts or bombings at the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Less than a century ago, Anatolia was populated with millions of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians. The genocide of these Christian peoples has been well documented by foreign diplomats, missionaries, relief workers, and many others. In September 1922, while American, British, French, and Italian warships were docked in the harbors of Smyrna, the Greek and Armenian populations were slaughtered by the armies of Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal. The future Turkish dictator Mustafa Kemal is well known in the West and is falsely represented as a liberal, despite his responsibility for the mass exterminations of Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian Christians throughout Asia Minor.

There are many heroes and martyrs who deserve to be remembered by free societies everywhere. Among them is the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Chrysostom of Smyrna who sacrificed his life for his flock, and was subsequently murdered in the most horrific fashion on the orders of a Turkish General named Noureddin Pasha. There are a great many Americans from this period such as Consul General George Horton and relief worker Edward Hale Bierstadt who were present in Asia Minor during this tragedy and have left behind documentary evidence about the destruction of the Christians in Asia Minor.

Unfortunately, official US policy toward Turkey has taken an indifferent position toward the Christians, and this remains the case up to the present day. Greek Orthodox Christians pray and hope for the security of the Ecumenical Patriarch, and for the last vestiges of Greek Orthodox faithful in Turkey who continue to live under excruciatingly difficult conditions even as their numbers dwindle to the point of near extinction. Furthering the devastating attacks on Greek Orthodoxy is the Turkish occupation of Cyprus where 200,000 Greeks have been ethnically cleansed by the Turkish Army, and where over 550 Orthodox Churches have been desecrated or converted into Mosques.

If democratic principles are to mean anything in reality, Ankara must begin to receive serious scrutiny from Western media and the democracies led by the United States must begin imposing serious sanctions on Turkey for ongoing atrocities.

[Joseph]

http://globalpolitician.com/24480-turkey

Turkish Revisionist Claims on Thrace

Ioannis Fidanakis - 4/11/2008

Recent events taking place in the Balkans surrounding the push for an Independent Kosovo, has many eyes now turned towards Western Thrace (Thraki). Recently, Bruce Fein of the Turkish Coalition of America released an article about the supposed Human Rights abuses facing the Turkish minority in Greece. As President of the Pan Thracian Union of America ‘Orpheus’, I find it my duty to speak out openly to prevent the spread of a Turkish smear campaign, which is more laughable then a true scholarly concern for Human Rights.

Mr. Fein’s sad attempt to paint a picture of an evil oppressive Greek state towards its Muslim citizens is an irresponsible misuse of the truth. “Greece’s decade’s long campaign of cultural repression, ethnic and religious discrimination and economic marginalization of its Turkish minority”, could be nothing farther from the truth. What Mr. Fein and his Turkish friends so conveniently omit is that fact that the Muslim minority of Greece has flourished since the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, while Turkey’s Greek Orthodox minority has slowly disappeared. I use the terms Muslim and Greek Orthodox minorities, because unlike what the Turkish lobby would like Westerners to think, these are the proper terms that should be used as set by the Treaty of Lausanne. This treaty and the population exchange between these two countries were based solely on a religious principal. The populations exchanged and those allowed to continue to reside in each respected nation were between religious and not ethnic minorities.

Against Turkish propaganda, which calls the whole Muslim minority of Thraki as strictly Turkish in origin, the currently Muslim minority is divided into several different ethnic origins, Turkish, Pomak, and Roma ethnic lines. Turkish revisionists declare that although each of these groups has their own language and culture, they represent one National identity, because the Treaty defines them as one Muslim minority rather then three separate ones. However, to forcefully push a Turkish ethnic identity upon the Pomak and Roma communities, in and of itself, is an act of ‘cultural repression’ and ‘ethnic discrimination’, in which the Turkish lobby declares to be against such an action. At present, the Greek states fulfills it’s international obligation by recognizing Greek citizen’s of the Islamic faith as a religious minority of diverse origins, rather then forcefully committing cultural genocide by forcing one cultural identity upon them.

Since the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, the Muslim minority of Thraki has grown from 86,000 in 1922 to 120,000 today, compared to its Greek Orthodox counterpart in Turkey, which in 1922 was roughly 200,000 and today is merely 5,000. For a country and its lobby who have obviously work towards the diminishment of their own Greek Orthodox community inside their homeland to declare such a statement, while the Muslim Minority has nearly doubled in Greece boggles the rational mind.

Today in Thraki the Muslim minority is protected against discrimination and promised religious freedom in the Greek constitution under Articles 5 and 13. Thrace is home of 3 muftis, roughly 270 imams and 300 functioning mosques. Politically speaking as recent as 2002, 250 Muslim municipal and prefectural councilors and mayors were elected in local elections. The same cannot be said politically for the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey. Yet the Turkish Government and its political puppets in Thraki have the gull to complain about their political and religious situation. Declaring that the manner in which their Muftis are elected violates the Treaty of Lausanne. The Greek government instead maintains that the state-appointments of muftis is widespread in the Republic of Turkey, and hence its adherence in Greece only goes to strengthen the Greek commitment to protecting Islamic cultural traditions, as set by the Treaty of Lausanne.

One of the major differences between Greece and Turkey’s respect for the Treaty can been seen in the educational life of the Muslim and Greek Orthodox communities. In Thraki today, there are 215 primary schools, where Greek and Turkish languages are used, as well as 2 secondary schools. There are also 2 Islamic theological seminaries in Thraki, yet in Turkey the main school of theology of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Halki seminary remains closed since 1971, which is a direct contradiction to religious freedom promised in the treaty. The Republic of Turkey even goes as far as to tamper with religious affairs, not recognizing the ecumenical status of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, and tampering in the very process that patriarchal elections are held, affecting not just the religious freedom of Greek Orthodox Christians still living inside Turkey, but also millions living outside of Turkey.

Lastly, the Muslim minority of Thraki unlike the Greek Orthodox community of Turkey has never been subjected to ethnic cleansing of any kind, politically, religiously, or economically. While the Muslims of Thraki have lived in peace inside the Greek state, except for sporadic acts of violates perpertrated by the Muslim community themselves, against local Thracians (Thrakiotis) in Thraki, most recently a month ago, where a Greek teacher was beaten by Turkish parents, this minority of Greece has never felt the stress of being a subjected people. I wish I could say the same for the Greek Orthodox community living in Turkey. Since the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek Orthodox minority inside Turkey has been on a constant alert for the next wave of violate ethnic cleansing thrusted upon them by the Turkish state. Without going in depth of the violations committed by the Turkish state, one can merely glance over a short list of the acts of political and religious genocide that has truly been committed against a minority. In 1926, just two years after the signing of the treaty, the Turkish government revoked the right of special administrative organization of the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. The drafting of non-Muslims into labor battalions during World War II affected not only the Greek Orthodox community, but also the Armenian and Jewish communities as well. Let us not forget the Varlik Vergisi ‘Fortune Tax’ enforced mostly on non-Muslims and the parliamentary law which barred Greek citizens from several trades and professions, like medicine, law, and real estate to name a few. The most violate example of the discrimination suffered by the Greek Orthodox community is without a doubt the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955, which echoed the days of Nazi Germany’s actions against its Jewish community. When the then 150,000 strong minority suffered unspeakable acts of violence, orchestrated by the government of Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and his Demokrat Parti, acts of violence, which bus loads of local party members, police, and even Muslims from Greece participated in.

It is up to the free thinking minds of those residing here in the United States to look at these allegations and decide for themselves if the Muslim minority of Thraki is truly facing the prejudice they claim to be, or if its just another act in a long line of misleading propaganda perpetrated to be used as a screen of smoke and mirrors to keep our eyes away from the true persecuted minority from the Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek Orthodox Minority of Anatoliki Thraki (Eastern Thrace).

[Greekaiser]

And all the Turks the Greek Cypriots butchered, raped, tortured, all the children and families they killed prior to Turkish invasion, and the whole Makarios led coup who had a major Enosis agenda as a continuation of the somehow neverending Megali idea were all a product of Turkish propaganda I guess??? Why don't you give us some examples of Greek atrocities in Cyprus so we can believe you have some character.

Megali idea??
what dumb the turks are!
Megali idea is the idea of restoration the byzantine empire
if cyprus was inhabited by 15% greeks and we believed that its greek ,then this would be 'Megali idea'
it was inhabited, and still is by 82% greeks.
you should think that maybe you have expansionist goals, when all grey wolves really think that cyprus is turkish island. I want to ask why?