GREEK PARLIAMENT

1923 – 1998

75 YEARS AFTER THE TREATY OF LAUSANNE

ATHENS, 1999

THE CONSTANTINOPOLITAN SOCIETY

Established in 1928

Member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

115-117 Demosthenous Street, 17672 Kallithea

Tel. 0109517072, 0109560611, Fax 0109598967

E-mail: cpolitan@otenet.gr

75 YEARS AFTER THE TREATY OF LAUSANNE

The discussion before the Standing Committee of National Defence and Foreign Affairs of the Greek Parliament, which took place in the Parliament Senate Room on Wednesday, June 3, 1998.

APPENDIX I

Institutional framework for the protection of the Greek minority in Turkey (document pertaining to the address of Dr.Stamatis Georgoulis, Professor of International Law, Hellenic Army Academy)

APPENDIX II

The violations of the Treaty of Lausanne by the Turkish Republic, in chronological order, from 1923 to 1998

APPENDIX III

Attending Members Of Parliament – Members Of The Standing Committee Of National Defence & Foreign Affairs of the Greek Parliament

Introduction & Reports

Today’s session is similar to the one which had taken place three years ago in regard to Imvros (Gokce ada) and Tenedos (Bozca ada), and will revolve around the violations of the Treaty of Lausanne against the Greek population of Constantinople in the 75 years from the signing thereof. The last days of May coincide with two sad anniversaries for Greeks: The genocide of the Greek population of the Black Sea on May 19 and the fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, anniversaries which were again this year honored by the Greeks, anniversaries which together with the disaster of Asia Minor are wounds, still bleeding and hurting the psyche of each and every Greek.

After the last disaster, the treaties which determined WW1 and the many acts of the International Community, such as the UNO Charter, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of Minorities, the UNESCO Treaty and the UN Convention on the elimination of racial discriminations, established rights which, as of the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, had made everyone hope that we had passed into another period.

However, we have witnessed Turkey’s constant violations of the Treaty of Lausanne. The Constantinopolitan Society has submitted a request to this Committee for the review of these violations on the basis of facts. The Presidency of the Committee admitted the request and submitted it to the Committee, which approved it.

The Committee will initially hear the reporters, appearing as witnesses, who will then answer the Committee’s brief questions. A political conversation will follow, according to the standard rules of procedure of the Greek Parliament, in order for the Committee to reach its findings.

The Constantinopolitans (Greeks from Istanbul) have suggested four speakers, who will present the framework, texts and facts on the basis of which violations have been noted during the last 75 years, and the current status of the Greek population living in Constantinople is the result of the non-compliance with the international agreements and non-implementation of the International Rules of Law on the part of the Turkish Republic. Mr.Georgoulis is invited to speak.

To me it is the utmost honour that I was assigned by the Athens Constantinopolitan Society the difficult and at the same time graceless task to present the legal framework of the protection of the Greek Orthodox minority of Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos. I will not refer to any witness testimonies, after all I come from Thrace not Constantinople, I was born and raised in Evros Prefecture, near Adrianopolis,(Edirne) and I was happy to gaze with the eyes of the soul from my father’s home, indistinctly in the distance, Constantinople the reigning capital.

The legal framework of the protection of the Greek National Minority was determined through a difficult course, which resulted to a catastrophic for Greece war, which had imbued the grand idea and attempted to carry Greece over to far horizons. The events are known and this vision was not realized in the end, collapsing instead under the defeat of the war in Asia Minor. Immediately after that, at the negotiating table, we come across a Greek delegation headed by Venizelos, his morale low, and on the other side a Turkish delegation, with raised morale, which tries to impose uncompromisingly its own terms.

These terms are eloquently imprinted in the texts of the Treaty of Lausanne, which is a multilateral International Convention, placed under the protection of Turkey, on the one side, and the protection of England, France, Japan, Italy, Serbia, Romania and Greece, on the other side. This text refers explicitly to Turkey and its obligation to respect the human rights of the Greek minority in Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos.

Article 14 refers to the respect of local administration and the protection of persons and property in Imvros.

Next, Article 37 sets forth that this text has an increased formal effect against any other law, regulation or domestic official action which might become effective in Turkey. Therefore, Turkey was required not to pass any laws and regulations contrary to the Treaty.

Articles 38 to 44 actually contain all the protective framework of human rights, the equality among all Turkish nationals, whether they are Muslim or not, the right to acquire property, the right to the free use of language, the right to establish religious institutions, schools and establishments for instruction and education, the right to the protection of religious beliefs etc.

Greece only appears in the last Article (45), because there was no fear that Greece would violate any human rights. This Article sets forth the principle of reciprocity, providing in simple words that all the rights conferred by Turkey on its non-Muslim populations in Constantinople, Greece will also implement on the Muslim populations on its territory.

One wonders, wasn’t this framework effective enough to adequately protect the Greek Orthodox minority, which was once thriving, so that we are forced today to resort to other institutional texts for the protection of human rights, meaning all the texts and the declarations of the United Nations since 1945, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which establishes equality among all human beings, the 1966 Covenant on Civil and Political Rights etc? Furthermore, there are the protective texts, which Turkey itself has signed, in the framework of CSCE for instance.

There is also the 1975 Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose 7^th principle is clear and talks about the equality of all human beings and the protection of all persons, wherever they may be, and makes no distinction between minorities or non-minorities, which is explicitly binding on Turkey.

Of course we then have the protective framework of CSCE, today OSCE, mainly as a moral pressure to all member states signing that Convention, such as the 1991 Geneva texts, the 1990 Copenhagen texts, where minority rights are clearly and comprehensively described (education, self administration, religious protection, protection of cultural identity, equal treatment, participation in public life, elimination of discriminations, self-determination of minority identity etc.)

All these are international texts, which the Turkish Republic, even though having declared it would respect, blatantly violated even before the ink of its signature had dried.

Furthermore, there is the Council of Europe, which has more powers of imposition in regard to legal matters, forcing a country violating human rights to respect them, through the proceedings of the Court of Human Rights. It is clear that the respect of any minority must be the apple of the eye of any democratic country. However, none of my Turkish colleagues, young scientists, finding him or herself in my position in the respective Turkish Parliament, would find unblushingly even one positive word to say in favor of Turkey, because the list of violations is indeed long and exceedingly aggravated.

This institutional framework is, in my opinion, clearly established and formulated, and I leave you to consider why indeed we failed to wonder – apart from Turkey’s obligations – as Greeks and as scientists, whey indeed we failed to demand in necessary circumstances that these basic principles be respected.

At the same time, we are all, as Hellenism, given a historic chance to offer from the floor of our national delegation our apologies because why did not act as we had the duty and obligation to act in regard to the Greeks of Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos.

Mr.Chairman, Members of Parliament, I consider it a great honour to stand hear before you in order to give my personal testimony and the testimony of the Greek Orthodox Community of Constantinople, where I belong, with regard to the violations of the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne, which refer to the protection of non-Muslim minorities. I would like, in advance, to stress three points, which I consider necessary in order for the problem to be comprehended in depth. The first point is that the Treaty of Lausanne is the first and perhaps the only revisionist Treaty after the end of WWI. We use the term Revisionist Treaty to denote that this was a Treaty, which reversed the conventional results of WWI. WWI had ended with two Treaties, the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Sevres. Hitler attempted unsuccessfully to reverse the Versailles Treaty. Mustafa Kemal and his associates reversed the Treaty of Sevres, and thus reversed the results of WWI. This led Europe to WWII. I say this, because the Treaty of Sevres, which mainly referred to the other nationalities of Asia Minor, was reversed and principally with regard to the 6% of the territorial grounds of current Turkey which concerned Greece. Meaning that Greece acquired 6% of the territory of Turkey under the Treaty of Sevres. I want emphatically to stress that despite the reversal of the Treaty of Sevres, the only provisions which are almost identical to those in the Treaty of Sevres are those regarding the protection of minorities. This means that the provisions on the protection of minorities contained in the Treaty of Lausanne are almost identical to those contained in the Treaty of Sevres. This happened because the persecutions of non-Muslims by the Young Turks were still fresh and the great European powers insisted on the particular protection, which should be afforded to non-Muslims. This was the first point.

Second point. The revisionist nature of the Treaty of Lausanne is dynamic, not static. Meaning that it was the dynamics of a constant revision in favour of Turkey and at the expense, of course, of Greece mainly.

The third point I would like to make is the following: The Treaty of Lausanne establishes a very delicate balance, which has been disturbed to the disadvantage of Greece and the advantage of Turkey.

A clear element of this violation, the disturbance of the balance between the two sides, is manifested in the issue of the minorities.

Members of Parliament, I have with me a book, which was published in 1996 in the United States and refers to Turkey. It was written by Philip Marshal. In page 437 he gives some statistics about the population of Constantinople. I refer to Marshal because 10 years ago, and specifically in 1986, I had given similar statistics in one of my books.

35% to 40% of the population of Constantinople in the years from 1477 to 1927 was Greek – these numbers refer to the administrative boundaries of Constantinople because the respective numbers for the Municipality of Constantinople were 37% to 39% - meaning that Constantinople had a proportionately larger Greek population compared to a large number of Greek cities today, historically and in the course of time. The other populations were 17% Armenians, and this after a period of time, 5%-8% Jews, while the remaining populations include, from 1829 to 1830, 16% to 17% of Greek citizens from Greece, who are characterized as other populations, which means that the percentage of ethnic Greeks is much larger than that appearing in the statistics. The percentage of Greeks starts from 34% to 35% in 1477 and reaches 40% to 42%. In 1927 we have 22%, in 1950 we have 12%, in 1965 we have 3%, in 1980 we have 1%, in 1995 we have 0.0001%! The Armenians from 17% go down to 0.005%, and the Jews also go down to 0.002%.

Therefore, there is a devastating evaporation not only of the Greek Orthodox minority, but also of all non-Muslim minorities. I say this because the balance established by the Treaty of Lausanne is numerical. If one studies carefully the records of the Treaty of Lausanne, two things become apparent:

The first one is that the Turkish delegation has insisted that firstly there are no ethnic minorities in Turkey, only religious minorities, and that is why we make reference to Muslims. This is a contractual obligation on the part of Greece. These provisions have an effect which exceeds that of the Constitution for the countries signing the Treaty of Lausanne. In the first place because the minorities are religious and not ethnic. The Turks insisted on that point firstly because of the religious view of ethnic groups and secondly because if they had referred to ethnic minorities they would have included the Kurds, and they did not wish to recognize any rights to the Kurdish ethnic group.

The second is that Riza Nour insisted on the numeric balance between minorities, meaning the minority of Constantinople and the minority of Muslims in Thrace, which were excepted for special reasons.

At this formal occasion I consider it my obligation to recall the late Ioannis Zigdis, who in 1977 was the first to place before the Hellenic Parliament the matter of the disturbance of the numerical balance established by the Treaty of Lausanne. Indeed, that reminder, which was accompanied by my proposal for a bill for the naturalization of those Constantinopolitans who had found refuge in Greece in the municipal rolls of Thrace, had alarmed the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had made statements to the effect that the Treaty of Lausanne had indeed been disturbed with regard to this point, but that there were other points of disturbance as well, obviously referring to the fact that Greece acquired the Dodecanese.

I would like to point out that the document you are holding is a summary of the Articles. Articles 37 to 45 are a lot more detailed. If one should read the Articles one after the other, and what I am to say is incredible, one would establish that all the Articles, without exception, have been violated by Turkey!

Commencing from Article 14, which refers to Imvros and Tenedos, it is a well-known fact that the basic principle which provides for local administration. Article 39 and paragraphs 2,3 and 4, impose the employment of Turkish nationals belonging to non-Muslim minorities in civil service. This has never been implemented in Turkey. Neither has the use, for example, of the Greek language in public establishments or in the courts.

The elective legislation of Greece, for instance, includes a provision of the basis of which the Muslims of Western Thrace vote with the assistance of an interpreter. This is something unheard of in Turkey. The only exception was the case of the reverend Ecumenical Patriarch Athinagoras, who testified before court in 1961 through an interpreter. At that time this had been an issue, how the Patriarch had been allowed to use an interpreter. Which provisions should I mention first? Should I mention the provisions setting forth the protection of churches, cemeteries, which still remain the target of cruel attacks without any of the culprits ever being arrested or indicted to stand trial? In 1955, as it was later revealed, churches, schools, institutions were destroyed on the basis of an organized plan prepared by the government itself and the armed forces of Turkey.

Under Article 42 paragraph 2, schools and charitable foundations are financed by public funds under the State, Municipal and Local budgets. Not only this never happened, but the contrary took place, meaning that churches and foundations were required to pay special taxes, the audit tax and the Vakuf tax. Therefore, these provisions are subject to shameless violations.

I would like to close with a personal testimony. A number of those present inside the room are familiar with each other’s personal history. My expected biography, judging from my struggles in my school and student days, would be to be on the floor of the Turkish parliament, representing my community. I am the only person, perhaps, since 1922, to have had a political history in the Turkish political parties. My colleagues in the struggles of those days were already telling me that I would have a bright future in Greece. This means that it was considered a certainty that the ethnic Greeks of Constantinople, and I amongst them, would have to leave.

With this I want to emphasize that the uprooting of the Greeks of Constantinople has taken place on the basis of a pre-determined plan. If you examine the records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you will see that the Hellenic Governments were criminally negligent. This negligence can be interpreted. A lot of times, the Hellenic Governments obeyed to the recommendations coming from across the Atlantic for the appeasement of the situation and this resulted to this kind of negligence.

Members of Parliament, the whole problem is focused on a dignified foreign policy, which must be based on law, the protection of human rights and mainly dignity. The sense of dignity is a sense which has been totally trivialized. I thank you.

Mr.Chairman, Members of Parliament, I feel the obligation to thank you, because you are the first committee of MPs after 75 years to deal spherically with the violations of human rights in Constantinople. Our association, with the other Constantinopolitan societies, reached this point after strenuous and long efforts. Unfortunately, you come in third.

Our voice of protest was first heard by the senate of the United States, then by the Organization for security and cooperation in Europe, and now our voice of protest is heard through your Committee. We, as Constantinopolitans, will remain always at the disposal of any representative of the Hellenic or other parliaments, to provide information.

The Greek errors commenced not only with the long-term unwillingness of the Parliament to deal with the problems of the ethnic Greeks of Asia Minor, but also with the lack of preparedness of the members and collab Speakers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot deal with Turkey, with a staff consisting of only 4 or 5 persons, when that country is the first and foremost problem of Greece. However, our independence struggle did not end in 1821.

Greece had no Turkology institute and it is only three years ago that a Turkology chair was established at the University of Crete. How is it therefore possible for you to know proximately the thoughts and tendencies in Turkey? Your certainly know that have to know thy enemy in order to deal with him. The word ‘enemy’ may sound harsh for some of you. Unfortunately, however, Turkey views Greece as an enemy and the word is well-known to us, since all the Constantinopolitans here have finished Turkish high schools. A number of us have served in the Turkish armed forces as Turkish nationals, and we are very well aware of how Turks think about Greece. They are always afraid – even though there are no signs of such a case – that Greece will take back Constantinople, Smyrna (Izmir), Asia Minor. Even this fear alone makes them hostile against us, so that they begin an anti-Greek propaganda from the first grades of Turkish school.

The extermination of the Greek Orthodox community – and I would like to ask you not to use the word ‘minority’, because maybe those who left Greece and went to Germany or the United States were a minority, but we were hundreds of thousands of natives and now there are only 1,500 of us left – began with the plan put into effect from 1908 on in Thessaloniki by the Young Turks and led to the results we all know. Thus, we must know Turkey well in order to be able to deal with it, without of course advocating wars or conflicts.

Turks have a wise saying: ‘a friend tells things bitterly’. If there are persons in the Greek community and on these benches who love Turkey, and want its cooperation and prosperity, they will have to tell the truth, they will have to talk ‘bitterly’ to Turkey. When they humor Turkey and say that it is a democratic state, the results is that things deteriorate, and this is constantly proven in the last fifty years. From 1940, when I was born, to this day the infringements of all the international obligations of Turkey are unfortunately constant.

I thank you for hearing me and I hope that today is only the beginning. The Association remains at your disposal.

Mr.Chairman, Members of Parliament, with the capacity of those who were born in the fatherlands of Asia Minor and experienced painfully the Turkish policy with regard to Hellenism, we will try to give you as concise as possible an image of the strategy and actions of the Turkish Republic after the signature of the Treaty of Lausanne, which brought the Greco-Turkish war to an end and solved the Eastern question.

Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne without the slightest intention to perform its commitments. Its sole objective was to turn to its maximum advantage all that the Treaty offered it, in order to gain time until the suitable conditions occurred, which would allow it to achieve in fact what it had failed to achieved in the negotiating table.

On the contrary, Greece implemented a constant policy of good faith, meeting its obligations with consistency and honor. This different approach of the two countries to the meaning of their obligations had devastating effects on the ethnic Greeks who remained in turkey after the Treaty of Lausanne was signed.

In the course of the 75 years that lapsed from the signing of the Treaty until today, the actual facts recorded in history reveal the infringement and manifest violation of all the obligations of the Turkish Republic to respect the minorities under the Treaty of Lausanne and at the same time Turkey’s strategy to impose, following the reason of violence, accomplished facts as irreversible.

Turkey’s methodical and planned steps in the direction of the infringement of its obligations under the Treaty of Lausanne commenced on the day after the singing thereof and are still going on.

At this point of the report, we will attempt a brief review of Turkey’s most characteristic actions, which consist a violation of its obligations under the Treaty of Lausanne and took place during the period from the signing of the Treaty, in July 1923, until the end of WWII.

Immediately after the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, Turkey arbitrarily characterized 40,000 Greeks, who had temporarily taken refuge outside Turkey for reasons of safety, as personae non grate. At the same time, Turkey removed their citizenship and confiscated their properties with summary procedures. Greece’s appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague and its vindication on February 21, 1925 had no practical effect, since the Turks had already achieved their target, meaning to get rid of a significant number of Greeks, who had been agreed to stay in Turkey.

Simultaneously, Turkey rushed to restrict the civil and political rights of ethnic Greeks, with the result that Banks, public services of all forms and categories, and big enterprises immediately let go from their employ all persons of Greek descent.

Law 2525 forced all persons of Greek descent to turn their last names into Turkish, because all those who tried to register names with Greek roots, were rejected.

A huge racist campaign was launched, which culminated in the 1950s and 1960s under the central slogan ‘Vatandas Turkce konus’, meaning ‘Citizens speak Turkish’, with the result that anyone daring to speak his mother tongue in the street was abused and fined.

Law 2007 prohibited Greeks to exercise 30 professions in an undisguised attempt to force them to leave their hearths. The banned professions covered a broad spectrum, from itinerant seller, barber, musician, and photographer to carpenter, tailor and waiter. This was followed by the prohibition of more professions, and thus the ethnic Greek residents of Constantinople were compelled to make a painful decision: to either remain unemployed, work illegally or emigrate from their land.

The Turkish authorities supported with every means the establishment, in September 1923, of the so-called ‘Turkish Orthodox Church’, which was founded by father Efthym Karahisarides Erenerol, a priest from Keskin, Anatolia, who was the blind instrument of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, head of the Young Turks. The Turkish strategy of downgrading and humiliating the Ecumenical Throne of Orthodoxy became obvious with the series of acts that followed:

With the undisguised support of father Efthym’s bold attempt to occupy the Patriarchic Mansion, which led to a serious incident.

With the issue of a decree, which characterized the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople as a simple Turkish institution and determined that the Patriarch was to be elected by priest having the Turkish citizenship and already serving in Turkey.

With the occupation by father Efthym and his Turkish supporters of the historic church of PanHaghia Kafatiani in Galatas and the church of Sotiras Christos.

With the unprecedented eagerness of the Turkish courts to fine the Ecumenical Patriarch because he had caused mental anguish to pseudo-priest Efthym, when the Patriarchal Holy Synod had unfrocked him and excommunicated him as an apostate and shameless traitor of the orthodox faith.

With the barbarous invasion of the Turkish police in the premises of the Patriarchate, the arrest of Ecumenical Patriarch Constantinos VI and his expulsion with the invented excuse that he was ‘exchangeable’.

With the institution of criminal proceedings against the Ecumenical Patriarch and all the Holy Synod on the grounds that they had held a session in the premises of the Theological School in Halki (Heybeli ada) and not in Phanare (Fener), where the administrative seat of the Patriarchate.

With the passing of Law 2596, whereby all Christian clergymen are prohibited from donning cassocks outside the church. The only exception in this rule manifests the Turkish intention to lower the Ecumenical Patriarch to the level of the neo-Turk’s agent pseudo-priest Efthym Karahisarides Erenerol, given that the Turkish law set forth that only the Ecumenical Patriarch and pseudo-priest Efthym, under his capacity as head of the Turkish Orthodox Church, and self-acclaimed founder and leader thereof, were allowed to don cassocks outside the church.

The fact that Turkey could not unilaterally oust the Ecumenical Patriarchate from Constantinople, which is what it would have done for any foundation governed by the domestic Turkish law, and was compelled by the parties co-signing the Treaty of Lausanne to accept that it would remain in Constantinople as a purely Religious Institution with world-wide radiance, shows the dimensions of all this Turkish arbitrariness.

In the islands of Imvros and Tenedos, where, cumulatively, more than 90% of the population was Greek, Turkey flamboyantly ignored the special local administration, which the two islands should have enjoyed, as granted by the British in the framework of the Treaty of Lausanne. They rushed to appoint a Turkish governor and they placed Turkish officials in the administration of justice, in the customs, police and port authorities, dismissing all the elected local officials. Law 1151 passed by the Turkish National Assembly officially abolished the local government status of the islands of Imvros and Tenedos, shut down on various pretexts the Greek School, prohibited the teaching of the Greek language and placed Christians under persecution until they were fully exterminated.

In the field of education 104 teachers of Greek descent and 52 Greeks were dismissed, because they were arbitrarily deemed ‘unfit’ to teach in minority schools. The Turkish Government, aiming to exclude teachers coming from Greece from teaching in Turkey required them to pass examinations in the Turkish language in order to be approved a new teaching license. Initially, most courses in Greek schools were obligatorily taught in the Turkish language. The Turkish authorities doubled the salaries of Turkish teachers appointed in minority schools and forced the population of Greek descent to pay them!

Later on, all the courses, with the exception of the Greek course, were obligatorily taught in Turkish. The military education course was added, taught by an officer of the Turkish army. A Turkish deputy principal was appointed to all minority schools, who was answerable to the Turkish Ministry of Education, and who gradually became the sole and dominant power in minority schools.

The operation of the historic Greek Literary Club was terminated and the books of its invaluable library were scattered among the various state libraries of Ankara and Suleymaniye and in the Turkish language and Turkish History societies.

On the occasion of the introduction of the civil code in Turkey, a legal framework was put in place which did not allow minority institutions to acquire any new real estate, either by property transaction or by donation or inheritance, while the Ecumenical Patriarchate was not recognized any more as a legal entity, something which created serious impediments in the management and representation of the huge Patriarchal estate.

From the 1930s the Turkish authorities started to intervene openly in the elections of the administration boards of minority institutions. They started with the minority hospital of Valoukli (Balikli Rum Hasthanesi) and the community of Pera (Beyoglu), which had large estates.

Law 2762 on Vakufs, which was passed by the Turkish National Assembly, placed minority communities under the control and supervision of the General Directorate of Charitable Foundations (Vakuf) and required them to submit statements in regard to their incomes and properties. The administration of minority institutions and schools was assigned to a commissioner, appointed by the Turkish authorities.

In the same period, the Turks appointed the infamous Zihni Ozdamar, who was pseudo-priest Efthym’s right arm, as commissioner to the Valoukli Charitable Foundation, causing an uproar in the Greek minority.

In 1939 all minority sports clubs were required to merge with Turkish sports clubs, so that they progressively shrank and lost their Greek identity.

During WWII, Turkey found a wonderful opportunity, from the safety of its neutrality, to strike heavy blows on the ethnic Greeks of Turkey. The circumstances were ideal, given that Greece was paying a heavy price in blood to the struggle for the ideals of freedom and justice, at the side of the Allied forces. Thus Turkey, in a treacherous and methodical manner, performed leaps ahead in its long-term strategy to annihilate the ethnic Greeks living there.

In May 1941 the Turkish Government mobilized the prefectures in Eastern Thrace, starting from the prefecture of Constantinople. The enlistment offices were ordered, by way of a ciphered footnote under the mobilization decision, to summon selectively the reservists from the Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities. This way, the Turks dragged to the Turkish army all Christians aged 20 to 45, whom they scattered in the depths of Asia Minor to construct roads and military buildings under the most adverse circumstances.

On September 21, 1941 ‘unknown’ arsonists threw on the wooden roof of the Ecumenical Patriarchate rags which they had immersed in gasoline and put on fire. The Patriarchal Building burnt to ashes, taking with it records, paintings of Patriarchs and valuable relics of the Greek population. For decades the Turkish Government refused to grant a permit for the repair of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, until a few years ago, when it was reconstructed with the donation of a well-known Greek benefactor.

On November 11, 1942, the Turkish Government with its Law 4305, using as criteria religion and ethnicity, imposed an enormous emergency property tax, which aimed at the financial extinction of Christians in Turkey. The Law, which came to be known as “Varlik Vergisi”, required the payment of the tax arbitrarily imposed by the tax inspector within 15 days, without the right to appeal. Four weeks after the imposition of the tax, failure to pay resulted to the confiscation of the taxpayer’s property, his arrest and displacement to forced labor camps in Askale, the Turkish Siberia. In total, 1,869 illustrious members of the minority population saw their properties suddenly confiscated and themselves exiled to the Askale Siberia, where they built roads in order to settle their debt to the Turkish State. Their daily wages were 2 Turkish pounds, out of which one was deducted for the rudimentary meals they were given and the other one deducted with regard to their debt to the Turkish State. Most of them, in order to settle the debt arbitrarily imposed on them, would have to work from 200 to 300 years!

In January 1943 the Turkish Government confiscated the properties of the Holy Monasteries of Athos Megisti Lavra and Koutloumousi in Imvros and started to relocate settlers from Asia Minor to the island in order to alter the population composition of the island, a method implemented about thirty years later in the occupied section of Cyprus.

Towards the end of WWII, Turkey seeing that the Greece’s stand during the war, at the side of the Allies – in contradiction to its own ‘cunning neutral’ position – had given rise to a negative conjunction of circumstances against it, rushed to apply its fixed tactics, which consists in taking two steps ahead and one step back. The step back, which Turkey was forced given the situation to take, was certain actions towards meeting its obligations under the Treaty of Lausanne. The forced labor camps were emptied of those who had managed to survive. The victims of the notorious ‘Varlik Vergisi’ were set free. The conditions were noticeably improved for the ethnic Greeks in Turkey for a period of time. A period of prosperity for the long-suffering Greek minority in Turkey brought new hopes and dreams for a peaceful coexistence. All this was only temporary. It only lasted until the suitable conjunction of circumstances occurred again, permitting Turkey to proceed with its long-range plan to exterminate those Greeks still daring to remain in their hearths. And these circumstances soon came and offered Turkey the chance to achieve the uprooting of the majority of the ethnic Greeks in Turkey.

But it is the next speaker, Mr.Nikos Atzemoglou, who will cover Turkey’s ways, practices, planning and actions in the period of the last forty years up to this date. Thank you.

Mr.Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am a former Chairman of the Constantinopolitan Society and I represent Constantinopolitans in international organizations. I took refuge in Greece in 1966.

Two were the main facts which contributed to the flight of the ethnic Greeks from Constantinople. The first took place in 1955, with the vandalisms you are all familiar with, when the Turks destroyed houses, churches, factories, cemeteries, and left nothing standing. The second significant fact was in 1964, when the Turkish authorities deported approximately 12,000 Greek citizens, born in Constantinople, who were protected by the Treaty of Lausanne. They took with them three times their number in relatives and friends. Therefore, in the years 1964 to 1966, about 48,000 Greeks were forced to abandon their ancestral homes, without any serious reaction on the part of Greece, without the international community taking notice of it and without this stream being characterized as a stream of refugees by the United Nations.

This flight was of course intensified and completed with the intrusion of the Turks in Cyprus in 1974. Thus, the policy of ethnic catharsis imposed by Turkey against the ethnic Greeks was at the same time a policy of violations and infringements of the international conventions, including not only the Treaty of Lausanne but also those treaties guaranteeing human and minority rights and fundamental freedoms, such as the principles of the United Nations charter, the charter of Paris, the other agreements in the framework of CSCE and OSCE, so that since 1923 there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of Greeks in Constantinople.

Specifically, from approximately 110,000 Greeks still living there at the time of the exchange of populations, today there are less than 2,000. From those 300 are in the Greek Home for the Old.

I will now refer to the violations, which took place in the last 40 years and to the situation today. The Greek community today is subjected to systematic, humiliating harassments, state terrorism and policy threats. Acts violating the rules set forth in the European Convention on Human Rights, which Turkey has of course signed.

Specifically, minority members are often visited by police officers or summoned to the security, are investigated and terrorized. Senior state officials, the Turkish Press and other authorities threaten to convert to a mosque the museum of Haghia Sofia, which be many is considered the symbol of the Orthodox faith. That they will evict the Ecumenical Patriarchate and much more.

The universal declaration of human rights, Article 19 of the international covenant on civil and political rights and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights provide the necessary guarantees as to the freedom of expression and the right to information, without any restrictions and regardless of frontiers.

Moreover documents issued from time to time by the organization for safety and cooperation in Europe offer similar guarantees. However, despite all these guarantees, the Turkish authorities deny the Greek community these rights. The two Greek newspapers, which enjoy a small circulation, are censored. Furthermore, the sale and circulation of Greek newspapers and magazines is prohibited, while the use of the Greek language is very limited.

Freedom in education: The international agreements signed by Turkey offer equal rights to all those living in the country.

Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights sets forth that the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in that Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, color, language, religion etc. CSCE documents offer similar guarantees for equal treatment. Additionally, the Treaty of Lausanne guarantees equality before the law to the Greek minority, as well as equal civil and political rights to those enjoyed by the majority.

Article 40 of the Treaty of Lausanne guarantees the minority the right to establish, manage and control, at its own expense, schools and other establishments for instruction and education, with the right to use their own language freely. However, in the field of Education, despite all these national and international guarantees, clear discriminations are observed against the Greek minority in matters of teachers, schoolbooks and curricula. Turkey still prevents to this date the free management and control of Greek schools by the minority itself.

Also, Turkey does not permit the appointment of teachers and principals of Greek descent to minority schools, prohibits morning Christian prayers in schools and forces children, every morning, to recite the Turkish national anthem, Kemal’s sayings and other nationalistic slogans.

The result of all these counter measures, the attempt to brainwash, alter the children’s ethnic Greek consciousness and these psychological pressures, is the forced flight of ethnic Greeks from Turkey and as a consequence the noticeable reduction in the number of students attending Greek schools.

From 15,000 students in 1923, they were reduced to 5,000 in 1954 and today there are only 200.

With regard to religious freedoms, Turkey has signed the Greco-Turkish Protocol of 1968, the European Convention on Human Rights and all the agreements in the framework of CSCE, which guarantee such freedoms. However, Turkey constantly violates them. In 1971 it banned the operation of the Theological School in Halki, it pulls down churches on the pretext of opening roads, while the Greek churches and cemeteries are constantly being broken in and destroyed, a unique phenomenon worldwide. For instance I would like to mention the demolition of the Holy Water of Haghios Nikolaos, the break-in and fire in Haghios Therapon and the murder of the verger, the fourth in a row break-in in Haghios Nikolaos of Phanare (Fener), from where even the last icons have now been stolen.

The Turks refuse to recognize the Ecumenical nature of the Patriarchate. After Patriarch Vartholomeos was installed, they started to exercise psychological violence with bomb attacks against the Patriarchate, such as the attack with a grenade in December 1997 which resulted to the injury of verger Nektarios.

Article 40 of the Treaty of Lausanne offers the Greek minority the right to establish and control charitable institutions. Despite all the international guarantees, the operation of the institutions remains problematic. The Turkish Government has prohibited since 1935 the donation of legacies to these foundations. In 1964 it banned the operation of a Greek orphanage, which had been operating since 1953, and it is now arbitrarily selling its property. In 1967 it ceased to recognize the institutions’ real property and imposed a 5% tax on the income of community organizations. In 1991 it clearly intervened in the intra-community elections, which were allowed after 22 years.

With regard to real property, this is classified in 3 categories: a) the personal property of Greeks having the Greek nationality, b) the personal property of Greeks having the Turkish nationality, c) the property of charitable institutions.

Concerning the first category, up to 1988 the notorious secret decree, which denied Greeks the right to property, even the right to inherit, was in effect. This resulted to the seizure of their properties. After the first Greco-Turkish summit meeting in Davos, this decree was supposedly abolished. However, it is now again in effect. Greeks in Constantinople are not entitled to acquire real estate by virtue of their right to succession. Greeks do not have the right to freely sell real property, and most of those properties have been occupied by the Turkish State itself. Their owners have been deported and must now get involved in long and costly court proceedings in order to save their properties. In 1994 the European Parliament, on the initiative of Member of the European Parliament Mr.Alecos Alavanos, condemned Turkey’s practice in this matter. Furthermore, Members of the European Parliament Ms Ekaterini Daskalaki and Mr.Nikitas Kaklamanis also posed questions on the same matter. The Turks, however, invoking the principle of reciprocity hold on to their practice. With regard to the second category, no buying and selling transactions were permitted up to 1988. Until then, a sale had to be authorized, pursuant to the opinion of a committee meeting in Ankara. Since 1988 the sale of properties is free, only if the property belongs to a citizen of Greek descent, its value is reduced to the minimum. As to the third category, Turkey challenges the ownership of that property. The properties donated to charitable institutions after 1936 are not recognized and are deemed to belong to the Turkish State.

Greek communities are not entitled to manage freely or sell their real properties, as they are supposed to under the various CSCE agreements, which have been also signed by Turkey, as well as under Article 40 of the Treaty of Lausanne.

Finally, there is the matter of our cultural heritage, with regard to which the Turkish Government has the clear tendency and policy of altering historic Byzantine and later post-Byzantine monuments, buildings and churches, which are torn down for the opening of roads or the construction of communal parks. There have been various protests, led by the report of Europa Nostra, including those of a large number of Turkish archaeologists.

The ethnic Greeks of Constantinople request the actual support of the Hellenic State and ask for the following:

First, a complaint against the Turkish Republic in International Organizations, in all the members of the European and American Parliamentary Assemblies for the manifest violation of the Treaty of Lausanne and other, more recent Agreements.

Second, an imperative demand that Turkey respect all of its obligations under its contractual commitments with regard to the Greeks remaining in Turkey, by way of the abolishment and lawful quashing of all the laws, decrees and decisions of the Turkish authorities referring to them and violating their freedoms and human rights.

Third, a more effective protection and guarantee of the necessary conditions for the unimpeded operation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as the venerable head of Orthodoxy, towards the achievement of its high ecumenical mission.

Fourth, a demand for damages with regard to the properties of the ethnic Greeks of Turkey, which they were forced to abandon as a result of the anti-Greek measures adopted in 1964.

Fifth, a demand for the safeguarding of the lives and properties of ethnic Greeks still living in their hearths and the rescue of the huge community property.

Sixth, the rescue and preservation intact of the invaluable cultural heritage of Hellenism.

Finally, the immediate adoption of decisions by the competent instruments to the end of recognizing September 6 as the day to remember the uprooting of he Constantinople Hellenism, of recognizing the refugee status to the ethnic Greeks of Turkey who were forced to leave their hearths in the recent decades and reviewing the bureaucratic naturalization procedure of the Turkish nationals of Greek descent who wish to be naturalized, is deemed absolutely necessary.

We will always assist, at the side of the Hellenic State, in the protection of the rights of the ethnic Greeks of Constantinople.

IOANNIS VARVITSIOTIS: Mr.Chairman, I appreciate your initiative for the hearing of witnesses and the political discussion with regard to the violations of the Treaty of Lausanne by Turkey during the last 75 years. I would like to thank the gentlemen, who responsibly and based on documentation posed the problem in all its dimensions.

Some years ago, a similar discussion had taken place upon my recommendation, with regard to the persecutions of ethnic Greeks in Imvros and Tenedos. As the Parliamentary Committee is neither a research center nor a historic society, being instead a political body, which cannot exhaust itself in discussions without a specific objective, I propose that the Parliament, upon our Committee’s research, undertake the issue of a Black Book in most of the spoken languages in the world concerning the violations of the Treaty of Lausanne, which will then be sent to all the members of all the parliamentary assemblies worldwide and to all the International Organizations. Thus, I believe, it will become apparent in an official manner that Turkey is a State which does not respect the international law and order and holds in undisguised contempt its international obligations.

ELEFTHERIOS VERYVAKIS: Mr. Colleague, I already have in my hands a note by colleague Mr. Vrettos, saying that the Committee should issue the proceedings of these meetings in a special volume and see that they are circulated everywhere.

STYLIANOS PAPATHEMELIS (Special Speaker representing PASOK): Waiting for our turn and according to the order of procedure, this question would have been placed by the Special Speaker representing PASOK. I do not claim to be original, but this is our issue.

IOANNIS KAPSIS: These days the French Senate and the French National Assembly approved a resolution – and correctly – with regard to the persecution of the Armenians. Thus, to limit ourselves only to the persecution occasioned by the Varlik Vergisi would be perhaps an error, because in that way we would ignore the great genocide of the ethnic Greeks of Asia Minor. If we wish to publish a Black Book, this will have to include all the chapters, with foremost among them the slaughter of 1.5 ethnic Greeks of Asia Minor.

ORESTES KOLOZOV (Special Speaker representing KKE): Mr.Chairman, I too in my turn would like to thank all those who contributed to this update. I would like to address myself to Mr.Sarris, whom I heard very carefully. In addition to the scientific account of the issues I saw that his report contains elements of a political assessment of the events.

I would like to make an observation and pose a question. The observation regards the statistics of the American writer you gave us. I do not think that this method is correct, because it may be disputed. Relative numbers always depend on the increase of the population, the area examined. Absolute numbers would be best. These show the actual reduction of the population and the extent of the persecutions taken place.

My question is the following. In your address you made an implication with regard to our allies from across the Atlantic, that they made certain suggestions, which the Hellenic Governments probably accepted. My question is if such an implication can be substantiated. Is it simply a conclusion? If there is specific information, it must be given here. So, we too will learn what exactly happened during that period.

ALEXANDROS PAPADOGONAS: Mr.Chairman, I will respect the time allocated for questions. I will try to limit myself to this sense of posing questions.

It is usually said, in the media, press etc., that the peoples of Greece and Turkey are friends, that one loves the other, and that it is Turkey’s military establishment or military and political establishment that are to blame for causing every time the problem, which have been correctly reported.

I have visited Constantinople a long time now and I have observed the downfall you described. Whatever the government in Turkey, the same measures are adopted. This makes me think that this might emanate from a feeling of the Turkish people, which is satisfied by the governments of Turkey. I would like to ask the following: Is it the fault of the Turkish Governments or is it the fault of a feeling more common amongst the Turkish people, characterized by animosity towards the Greek people and Hellenism in general. This is a major issue and it should be clarified on the Greek side, in order for a correct policy to be established in actually dealing with this tendency to annihilate Greeks. I have monitored these issues, as I told you, during a long period of years. I would like to come to a close with one more question.

Mr.Chairman, unfortunately today we come across the policy followed in Constantinople and more widely in Turkey in the Greek Thrace area as well, with another approach, while the results pursued are in fact the same. These are the dwindling of the Greek population and increase of the Muslim population, according to the Treaty of Lausanne, or Turkish population according to the Turkish MPs.

Therefore, those present here who are familiar with the issue should recommend to us and recommend to the Hellenic Governments, which are the measures we should adopt in Thrace in order to stop the actual genocide taking place there by other means, whether these means are called propaganda or measures adopted by the Turkish side.

CHRISTOS KIPOUROS: It is the honourable thing that the President of the Republic apologized to the Hellenism of Imvros, Tenedos and, by extension, to the Hellenism of Constantinople. It is an example to be followed. It opens new routes. Retrospectively, all political officials should offer the same apologies. If they do, they will have no political standing to repeat Davos, Brussels, Madrid etc.

Both we and you seem to leave some voids in the advancement of our positions and the account of the tragedies. What must be done? There is a processed proposal submitted by Mr.Sarris, which was the specialized version of a proposal first made by Mr.Tenekidis. The Parliamentary Committee of Foreign Affairs and Defense could adopt that proposal. This is the proposal for the recourse of Greece to the International Court of Justice for the prevention of the commission of fresh offences by the fascist and racist Turkish State and for the restitution of the offences perpetrated against the last remaining ethnic Greeks in Asia Minor.

Do you agree with that proposal? I say that, because you must be summoned to answer as witnesses, since I had posed a similar question to the delegates of the ethnic Greeks of Imvros and Tenedos, so that if the conclusions are positive they may be included in the adoption of this proposal. This would honour our Committee as well.

CHRISTOS VYZOVITIS: In Mr.Atzemoglou’s report the phrase ‘reciprocity’ was heard in connection with Turkey. I would like you to clarify what is the reciprocity invoked by Turkey with regard to the properties of the ethnic Greeks of Constantinople.

NEOCLES SARRIS: I would like to offer a spherical answer, because a significant side of the problem has not yet been touched upon.

The problem has its origins in the exception from the compulsory ‘exchange of populations’. In essence, what took place was the purging of an ethnic population, not the exchange of populations. The population was ousted and later on it was decided that this would be called an ‘exchange of populations’, by way of equalizing the one point five million of persons of Greek descent still surviving in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace to the three hundred and sixty thousand Muslims at that time. I say this because the exception will provide the stigma of the persecutions.

The ethnic Greeks of Constantinople were excepted for two reasons. The first was mainly financial. Because 70% of the Turkish economy was concentrated in Constantinople. And 70% of the economy was in the hands of the Christian population. So that if those Greeks, and the Christian populations in general, had to leave, the Turkish economy would be left in suspense. The new forces of economy and society in general were the Christian populations. The various ethnicities had their own rate of social modernization within the framework of the Ottoman Empire. Social modernization in Turkey took place by way of ethnic purging. This means that instead of making them partners in the political power – this being Kemal’s movement – they eliminated them, took possession of their production means and appropriated them by way of stealing.

In Constantinople, the English felt alarmed because it was the ethnic Greeks that held the economy in their hands and because they represented mainly foreign firms, English and French, and asked that the ethnic Greeks remain there until the Turks have the chance to study near them and finally learn the capitalist way. All the persecutions of the ethnic Greeks in Constantinople coincide in time with the development of Turkish capitalism. Meaning that during the growth of the Turkish urban class, a persecution accompanies every phase when the economy took off. In 1930 certain professions were prohibited to Greeks, because it was the first year Turkish professionals had graduated from the technical schools established by Kemal.

The exchange of populations was based on a proportion of populations and numbers. This is the answer to Mr.Kolozov’s question with regard to the use of American’s method. If you read the proceedings of the Treaty of Lausanne you will see that the reasoning behind it is a numerical and statistic proportion. When the proceedings commenced in Lausanne in October-November, 396,000 Greeks were in Constantinople. When in July, that is after 6-7 months, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, only 150,000 Greeks were left there.

I will refer to the persecutions and the fact that they were hushed up by the transatlantic confederation. At a young age, I served as the political adviser of the reverend Patriarch Athinagoras, who is known to have been connected with a personal friendship with Truman and Kennedy. We all know that in 1955 in particular, there was an intervention by John Foster Dalles with the Hellenic Government and at the same time an intervention with the Turkish Government, equalizing culprits and victims.

For the common interests of NATO they had to put aside their differences, and therefore whatever was done was for the best. The same interventions had taken place with Patriarch Athinagoras, so that no issue would be made out of the situation and no voice of protest would be raised by the ethnic Greeks of Constantinople. But this was not independently promoted from the American side.

I hold responsible the Hellenic Governments from time to time, which in order to please obviously in a spirit of alliance have sold out the rights of Hellenism in general and the rights of the Greeks of the Metropolis of the Greek nation, which is Constantinople, in particular.

ALEXANDROS PAPADOGONAS: My question is: Does the responsibility lie with the Turkish Governments, or were the Turkish Governments following the widely spread and more general propensity towards animosity of the Turkish people?

NEOCLES SARRIS: Your question may be supplemented with the well-known refrain, which is repeated by the Turkish side: Greek people are good, they love the Turks, it is the politicians’ fault.

We cannot talk today of a ruling ideology, only of a dominant common ideology. The problem is theoretical. The various political stands in Turkey are sectarian with relation to the neo-Turkish ideology. This dominant ideology is diffuse all over the political spectrum, is supposedly officially expressed in the form of Kemalism and is clearly contrary to the preservation of any other foreign element in Turkey, apart from the Turkish element. It is based on the logic of Turkifying by force the Muslim population, including the Kurds.

Mr.Papadogonas, your question goes a lot farther. Meaning that the dominant ideology consists in the elimination of any ethnic, indeed cultural particularity, particularly in the elimination of Hellenism. There will be some ‘crocodile tears’ and ‘sobbing’, saying the following: We love you – and this was constantly repeated by the Turkish Governments – you must come back. What they say proves, Mr.Papadogonas, the correctness of your question, because this is the murderer who after murdering his victim then ‘washes his hands of the crime’. The relief following the departure of the ethnic Greeks from Constantinople is general.

Certain cycles in Turkey, which are progressive, want us Greeks – if they actually want us – as folklore, as the ‘last of the Mohicans’, to be placed in a Museum. We decline this role, because it does not fit our historic mission.

NIKOLAOS ATZEMOGLOU: Mr.Vyzovitis asked a question with regard to reciprocity, meaning how and why do the Turks invoke reciprocity and on the basis of that invocation refuse the ethnic Greeks the right to sell their properties. This means that certain Turkish nationals here cannot sell their properties. The reciprocity issue would have been posed from the beginning, when in 1963-1964 the expulsions of ethnic Greeks began. However, it neither was nor is the policy of Greece to do something like that.

The invocation of the principle of reciprocity, with regard to the cases of minorities, consists a violation of the minority rights, which under the international law is an action contrary to the principles of the United Nations Charter and the European Convention on Human Rights. No Muslim in Thrace is impeded from selling his property. However, this is falsely alleged by the Turks in order to appropriate the properties of ethnic Greeks.

STYLIANOS PAPATHEMELIS (Special Speaker representing PASOK): Mr.Chairman, we thank the representatives of the Constantinopolitan Society who managed today to perform an anatomy of the crime and unravel a crime which was committed constantly, repeatedly and concurrently against the ethnic Greeks who lived inside the Turkish and Ottoman territory. Turkey proves to be a country, which irresponsibly and shamelessly violates all the international law to which it is bound by official signatures. The international community has never imposed sanctions on Turkey with regard to these violations, infringements, the brutal, atrocious, blunt and cynical violation-trampling on the human rights, lives and properties of all the minorities. Turkey still is the West’s ‘darling’ and thus it is offered the right to repeat this crime, since it commits it with impunity.

We were abhorred to read yesterday about Brjejinsky, one of the ‘gurus’ of foreign affairs in the United States. In an interview he gave to a Greek newspaper, he recommends that we assist Turkey in its western orientation and that we furthermore assist it in restoring its national confidence. And he asks that of us, who as Greeks are the constant target of a genocide, which in this century may count hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of uprooted persons. This is Turkey and this is Turkish politics. What is important is how we respond to this behaviour from Turkey. We must resolve finally to demonstrate internationally the barbarous indeed face of that country, making use of indisputable records, which exist, working systematically and not scrappily. It is a significant fact that we, Greeks, remembered the genocide of the Hellenism of Pontus 80 years after it happened.

It is a significant fact that on the initiative of our colleagues from Pontus the recognition of the genocide of the Pontus Greeks reached the Greek Parliament, but the fact that we moved scrappily with regard to this matter too is not significant, and it does not do us honor. In addition to the genocide of the Pontus Greeks there is the genocide of all the ethnic Greeks of Asia Minor, there is the genocide of the ethnic Greeks of Eastern Thrace. The evidence of Turkey’s criminal behavior is infinite. Thus, we all talk about an international agreement, signed under special circumstances with regard to Hellenism, following the tragedy of Asia Minor, but where the negotiator was a man of the stature of Eleftherios Venizelos, who after the second day he appeared in Lausanne, according to the descriptions of Michael Theotokas who had accompanied him as an adviser during that period in the Swiss city, and having been treated as a loser, found the courage, after giving instructions to the revolutionary government of Athens, to reform out of the wrecks of the Asia Minor disaster the army of Evros and to declare that he was negotiating not as a loser but as a party in a state of war.

He finally succeeded in imposing this role, which resulted in a relatively decent treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne. He was the one who should have been thinking about its amendment, unfortunately, however, its amendment is being now discussed by the others, who never respected it. Today, the last vestiges of Hellenism remain in Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos. There is a huge issue, how can this country project these crimes in order to beautify even more the already beautified image of Turkey, which is constructed before the eyes of the international community and the foreign governments by a well-planned and effective propaganda mechanism.

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, this is of huge significance, whether a book of suffering is to be compiled or another action to be made indicating these atrocities on the part of Turkey. The point is to act and not to stay indifferent. These crimes must be presented constantly and ceaselessly and indeed in many languages, starting from English, which is an international language. They must never be forgotten. There was at a time a Black book prepared with the order of the then Prime Minister Constantinos Karamanlis. But it was again with the order of Constantinos Karamanlis that it was never distributed. I think it was turned to pulp.

Consequently, the first issue is the international presentation and constant invocation of the evidence to the crime.

The fact that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been treated by Turkey as an institution governed by the private domestic Turkish law, has been systematically humiliated and isolated all these years, in the persons of its officials, is unacceptable. Decree No 1092/1923 to that effect issued by the Prefect of Constantinople, prohibiting the right to elect and be elected in regard to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the absence of the Turkish nationality, is also unacceptable. The Ecumenical Patriarch, who represents millions of persons of the Greek Orthodox faith, must have the same authority lent by President Bush to the reverend Patriarch Dimitrios, when the latter visited the United States. On the contrary, today the Patriarch is deprived of his most elementary human right.