Fwd TURKEY DREAMS TO SEIZE THE ISLANDS AND WE ARE CALM
writes Konstantinos Konstantinidis Amphiktyon
The Greek people until 1974, when Turkey’s illegal invasion of Cyprus took place, had not realized that the Turks never stopped openly or secretly projecting visions of “living space” on the Aegean islands. At that time, the main concern of the Greek Governments was maintaining good relations with Turkey because this promoted the Atlantic Alliance, i.e. the harmonious cooperation between Greece and Turkey at all costs. And of course, Turkey has never been willing to make concessions or sacrifices. These were always done by Greece to be “the good boy of NATO and the USA” And let’s not forget that at that time Turkey was the best ally of the USA and did whatever it wanted in the region. And only the presence of the Greeks at the LANDSOUTHEAST allied headquarters in Smyrna gave priority to the Turkish plans in the region. Turkey did not respect that Greece was its ally and in 1955 carried out the criminal and humiliating persecution of the native Greeks from Constantinople. The Karamanlis Government, even when the thugs of Ankara committed atrocities against the Greek Officers and their families in Smyrna, did not permanently withdraw the echelon in order not to disrupt the NATO South Wing. I will quote fascist statements of Turkish officials about the islands:
1/ Turkish Foreign Minister Feriddum Cemal Erkin in London in 1964 to the Greek Foreign Minister “Cemal’s first mistake with the Treaty of Lausanne which accepted the annexation of the Aegean islands to Greece” “The second time, when Greece annexed the Dodecanese at the Paris Conference in 1946-47, it did not give half to Turkey”
2/ The Turkish Foreign Minister Turan Gunes in the official CUMHURIYET 3/6/1974 “The bottom of the Aegean and the islands located near the continental shores are an extension of Asia Minor”
3/ Statement of the then leader of the opposition Suleyman Demirel in the famous Millyet 9/6/1974: “…Our disagreement with Greece was presented because the islands that are very close to Turkey belong to Greece and not to Turkey.” They are a part of Anatolia and for centuries belonged to the state that had the sovereignty of Anatolia”
4/ Statement of Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit on 30/6/1974 “The defense of the Aegean islands should be undertaken jointly by Greece and Turkey as an ally within NATO”
5/ Statement of the Turkish Minister of Defense Hasan Icik to the Christian Science Monitor on 1/8/1974: “Turkey has continuously surrendered territories to achieve true peace, Thessaloniki after World War I and the Dodecanese after World War II.” PI . Turkey’s generosity was apparently misinterpreted by Athens” (Only that they lost Thessaloniki in the war of 1912 and we got the Dodecanese from Italy and not from Turkey)”
6/ Turkish Prime Minister Sadi Irmak’s statement in Iconium to the famous Hubriyet: “I will not cede the Aegean to anyone. Half of the Aegean belongs to us…. If the interests of the Turkish nation are threatened, we will crush the enemy’s head”
7/ Statement of the Turkish Minister of Defense Semih Sancar in the Turkish magazine YANKI 22/1/1975: “In the Aegean the balance of power is clearly in favor of Turkey … and in fact to such an extent that apart from the balance of power and the looks and thoughts of the 1 / of Turkish old inhabitants of the islands are directed towards their settlement on the opposite shores which are only a few miles distant”
8/ Statement of the Permanent Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Melih Esenbel in the National Assembly of Turkey during the discussion of the P/Y of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 22/1/1975: “In the Aegean we must necessarily follow a dynamic policy. The conditions today are different from the conditions of 1923. Turkey’s power has grown. When we talk about the need for a dynamic policy, we do not mean that the army must act immediately and that we must occupy the islands. Economic interests must be secured in the Aegean… Cyprus is the first step towards the Aegean”
9/ Statement of the Turkish general Suat Aktulga commander of the 2nd Army in Iconium on 25/!/1975: “The Greeks cannot become friends with the Turks, as long as they do not abandon the Great Idea. That is why the issue of Dodecanese and Western Thrace must be raised”
10/ Ergun Gose columnist of the famous Tercuman, commenting on what was said by the commander of the 2nd Army Suat Aktulga that the issue of the Dodecanese should be raised, writes: “The Cyprus issue is not the only problem. There is the problem of Western Thrace, territorial waters, the continental shelf, fisheries, and airspace, in other words the Great Idea and its offshoots. Among them, the problem of the Dodecanese comes first. We must without further ado take these islands from the Greeks. The first step in this direction is their demilitarization”
11/ Article by Ambassador Nuri Eren in the famous Milliyet on 21/3/1975 “The political history of the islands is governed by their geographical
It was always necessary to remain united with Asia Minor. During the negotiations between Italy and the Allies we did not object to the concession of the islands to Greece. The Peace Treaty, however, recognized the strategic importance of the islands for Turkey in the second paragraph of Article 14, which provides for the permanent disarmament of the islands.
12/ Article by professor Ahmet Sucru Esmer in the famous Baris on 22/5/1955 he writes: “The Aegean has become a matter of more serious disagreement between Greece and Turkey than the Cyprus issue. And if the rigid position of Greece does not change, it will be difficult to avoid war. Greece is using the islands that are part of Asia Minor to isolate Turkey from the rest of the world is … through the reoccupation of the islands. In order to achieve this, we will definitely have to go to war. The Greeks provide pretexts for this every day.”
13/ Statements of the Turkish Prime Minister “Suleyman Demirel” in the famous Le Monde on 20/3/75 “…. Take into account that we see the lights from one shore to the other (Greek islands-coasts of Turkey) We are not afraid that the Greeks they will occupy Turkey but, by fortifying and (nationalizing) the islands they violate the treaties”
There are many similar inflammatory and bigoted statements all in the same direction which means that the ground has been cultivated since 1952 when Turkey joined NATO until 1974 when it invaded Cyprus. This climate, instead of softening with the invasion of Cyprus, on the contrary increased Turkey’s appetite for more conquests and ended up in its current phase of the now official “Blue Homeland” and “Sea of Islands” policy.
Conclusions:
While these were happening in Turkey, in post-colonial Greece:
1/ No one knew what Turkey was doing against us and no one dealt with the threat, nor did they take care to equip the ED and the garrisons on our islands.
2/ The Intelligence Service ( KYΠ now EYΠ)_ instead of monitoring Turkey monitored the members of junta and oponents
3/ The Government and the parties in a witch hunt hunted the executives of the Hunta to do “de-junting”
4/ The Officers wore their uniform in the camp because they ran the risk of being insulted or lynched if they went out in uniform.
5/ They had set the Armed Forces against the wall, with morale in tatters, terrorism was raging, left-wing extremist and “revolutionary” elements were burning, destroying, questioning national symbols, etc. and disfigured with the tolerance of the state
6/ Education had been dissolved in the hands of the “revolutionary “councils” and no one was interested in learning, as long as you were a “revolutionary”
7/ Turkey was passing on its “Nazi positions” to the international community, without Greece putting up any resistance. The enemy for the post-colonialism was not Turkey but the “junta”
8/ The “national leader” K. Karamanlis said: “Cyprus is far away” and let the Turks occupy (from the 5% they had with the bridgehead) 36% of the island. After all, he himself agreed to side with the Turks in Tripartite Zurich-London (1959-1960), which opened Turkey’s door to Cyprus.
9/ The other “national leader” Archbishop Makarios called the two guarantor powers “Britain and Turkey” to the UN to expel the “Greek invaders”. When he returned to Cyprus, he immediately started talks with Denktas for the solution of the Cyprus issue based on the D.D.O. Thus we forgot the invasion and occupation.
10/ The “great” A. Papandreou squandered the loans to pay the “socialized” industries that K. Karamanlis had bankrupted earlier and gave money to the farmers
to uproot the trees and throw the produce in the landfill.
11/The Hellenic Armament Industry (EBO) was also their victim. No one raised the alarm about the aggressive Turkey.
12/ With the Mea Culpa of Andreas, all research and extraction of hydrocarbons in the Aegean was stopped, even within our territories.
13/ K. Mitsotakis gave the temporary name FYROM to Skopje, i.e. “Macedonia” in disguise. Of course, Tsipras gave him ethnicity and the non-existent Macedonian language and he brags about it, but no judge was found to put him on the bench and answer for it and for the Memorandums with George Papandreou(junior)
14/ K. Simitis, destroyer of the economy (theft of the Stock Exchange), handed over Imia without firing a gun. “What did you want? shall we make war?’ He put us in the EU with the most onerous conditions etc
15/ Everyone then sat at the table with the Turks and discussed our national issues. We have never raised any issue that harms Turkey, in order to stop its unilateral predation. The discussions concerned the division of one’s legitimate sovereign rights
16/ As long as the Turks saw the appeasing policy and willingness to surrender on our part, they raised their bar higher and multiplied their illegal demands.
17/ We did not follow up on the condemnation of Turkey in the international organizations for the invasion and occupation of Northern Cyprus. We forgot it like we forgot the 1650 Missing
18/ The balance of forces in the air and sea of the Aegean was numerically in favor of Turkey and only qualitatively we were superior. But since then, no one has proceeded to rearm the country
19/ We only recently managed to gain air supremacy in the Aegean with the Rafale and F-16 Vipers due to the US blocking Turkey from the F-35 program. Otherwise, we will be in dire straits today
20/ The H.N was left with aging ships and if it maintains the balance in the Aegean it is due to the seamanship of our sailors.
21/ During the Memoranda, the H.M.F. did not even take a screw. Only now that Turkey is armed to the teeth with mass production of its own weapons systems did our politicians wake up.
These decadent and evil post-colonial parties have been ruling us continuously since 1974. Faces change but rotten parties remain the same. Time for Change toward a Patriot Front
THE HELLENIC PEOPLE SAY “MOLON LAVE”(COME TO TAKE THEM” (7/7/24)
(Note The information was taken from the book “Molon Lave” by the distinguished lawyer and internationalist Thalis Mylonas, published by Grigoris)
Amphiktyon is the Major General Konstantinos Konstantinidis
Writer, Member of the Society of Greek Writers
amphiktyon@gmail.com
http://amphiktyon.blogspot.com/
https://amphiktyon.org
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