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December 10, 2005
Dear Sir,
The
following letter is in response to your article on Turkey. It is hardly
surprising that
Turkey
is undergoing an Islamic Revolution from within. The United States and
the
NATO
alliance have over the past fifty years completely overlooked Ankara's
unreasonable claims to Cyprus that were put forward in 1955 and which
were carried
Out in
1974. The United States also completely ignored the ethnic cleansing of
the
Greek
Orthodox Community of Constantinople since 1955 and the systematic
destruction of Christian shrines, Churches, and holy places.
Overlooking Turkey's systematic human rights abuses against political
dissidents and
the
destruction of over 3,000 Kurdish villages over the decades, Washington
continued
To
unconditionally arm and support Turkey. The result today is that an
Islamic
Revolution is under way in Turkey, and Ankara is adopting an
increasingly hostile
Posture
towards the United States. Despite the glorification of Mustafa Kemal,
Turkey
has never broken from its Islamist Ottoman past.
Reform
in Turkey could never be achieved in so far as Turkish governments
continued
with the
support of their American supporters to defeat all Congressional
Resolutions
To
recognize the Armenian Genocide. The failure of the world at large to
take notice
of the
Greeks and the Assyrians who also fell victim to Turkish Genocide did
not help
Ankara
to establish democratic foundations. The Turkish Republic was after all
built
over the
ashes of the great Christian City of Smyrna which was burned by the
troops
of
future dictator Mustafa Kemal.
The
morality of America and the Western alliance was compromised by this
alliance
With
Ankara. The rise of Islam should have been foreseen decades ago. Kemal's
Revolution began to crumble under the regime of Adnan Menderes who
supported
Islamic
groups in Turkey, and who subsequently encouraged them to wage a
ferocious pogrom on the Greek minority in 1955. The Turkish invasions
of Cyprus
which
were accompanied by the rapes, killing, and ethnic cleansing of 200,000
Greeks
should have raised alarms in Washington.
Washington along with various think tanks and others were quite vocal
in condemning
The
destruction of Buddhist statues by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Those of
us of
Greek
Orthodox faith and Hellenic ancestry have been mourning the destruction
of
Greek
Churches and Monasteries in the occupied territories of Cyprus which
have
been
carried out with no discernible protest from American authorities.
Numerous
Churches
in Cyprus that have been converted into Mosques demonstrate full well
that
Turkey has underneath the facade of make believe secularism promoted the
Islamization
of Cyprus.
At the
present time, Islamic extremists and Turkish ultranationalists are
conducting violent demonstrations outside the Ecumenical Patriarchate
in
Constantinople. Over the past decade, the Greek Patriarchate has been
bombed
or
attacked by arsonists on at least six occasions. Turkey has been wiping
out
all
vestiges of Christendom from its soil and there seems to have been no
protest
Whatsoever from the Western alliance. The activities of Islamic
extremists gained
brief
attention two years ago when two Synagogues were bombed, but if anyone
had
bothered to look at the bomb attacks against the Patriarchate, they
would
Have
noticed that the secular facade was crumbling.
The
failure of America and NATO to contain Turkish aggression against Cyprus
and
the
Kurds, and the failure of the US media to expose Turkish atrocities has
Contributed to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It is time to alter
policy towards
Turkey
and to support democratic and moral principles in Cyprus by restoring
full
sovereignty to the Republic of Cyprus which can only come about by a
full
Withdrawal of all Turkish troops and settlers. Ankara should also be
pressed to
compensate those Greeks who were ethnically cleansed over the past
fifty
years
and to respect the rights of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and those few
Greeks
still left in Turkey.
Respectfully,
Theodoros Georgiou Karakostas |