THE MIRACLE
A True Story |
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Having occupied 40% of Cypriot territory by force and
with the political tolerance of the western world, Turkey
began to put its familiar formula into practice: first, by
means of murder, torture and intimidation, persecution and
terrorism, the Turks drove most of the Greek-Cypriot
population out of the territory they had occupied; indeed,
the Greek-Cypriots were obliged to submit an application
for "voluntary emigration"!
What lack of imagination, to insist on implementing the
same methods that have been used over and over again for
the past 100 years!
The result, of course, was that 200,000 Greek-Cypriots
were made refugees in their own country. Of the island's
total population of 650,000, half a million were Greek-Cypriots.
Half of these became refugees through the so-called "peace"
brought to Cyprus by the Turks. The territories illegally
occupied by the Turks were suddenly full of statues of the
"Father" of the Turkish people, Kemal Ataturk.
In 1980, six years after the invasion of Cyprus, the Turkish
foreign minister, Ihsan Sabri Çaglayangil, made it quite clear
what Ankara's future plans for Cyprus were when he stated:
"We have a specific mission to carry out in Cyprus: to make
it part of our homeland." How this was to be achieved had
been explained, in the initial stage, two years earlier in the
German magazine, Der Spiegel, on 17th July, 1978: "The
Turkish-Cypriot population will be modified in the ratio of
two Turkish settlers from mainland Turkey for every Turkish-Cypriot.
The total Turkish population will be over a quarter
of a million."
The Turks applied this strategy to the letter. In November,
1983 Ankara's stooge, Rauf Denktash, proclaimed himself
president of the self-styled Turkish-Cypriot "state".
The Turkish invaders maintain that "Cyprus is Turkish" and
are waiting patiently for a suitable opportunity to arise over
the next fifty or a hundred years to fulfill their obsessive
desire to seize and plunder and make the island completely
Turkish.
The Kurdish Question. This is yet another treacherous,
hypocritical and dark side of Turkish policy.
"There are no Kurds, only Turks" has always been the firm
position maintained by Turkey. The former Turkish prime
minister, Yildirim Akbulut, was quite revealing when he
expressed similar views on 31st July, 1990: "I declare quite
unequivocally that there are no Kurds in Turkey, only Turks.
All those who live in this land are Turks. They are by obligation
Turks!"
It is precisely for this reason that it is forbidden for anyone
to declare Kurdish identity in Turkey. If, for example, a pupil
says he is a Kurd, he is expelled from school. Any shopkeeper
or farmer who dares to mention that he is of Kurdish descent
will find his credit is cut off or the seeds he needs for his
crops are no longer available.
In Western Thrace, on the other hand, there was an
unprecedented storm of protest, with many crocodile tears
shed over the alleged violation of human rights by the Greek
state, when it moved to punish Ahmet Sadik and Ahmet
FaÏkoglu, two Greek citizens acting as agents for Turkish
separatist propaganda who brazenly call themselves Turks.
In Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, whole villages are being
torched and demolished by the Turkish army; household
utensils, mattresses, beds, food supplies, crops, barns and
sheds have all been reduced to ashes. Hounded out of their
villages and uprooted from their homes, the Kurds end up
losing touch with their homeland and their national identity.
Just as in 1600, under Sultan Mehmet, the Turks issued
edicts enabling them to round up the children of the Christian
population and create the Janissary Corps, now here they
are in the twentieth century, rounding up Kurdish children to
turn them into little Turks. By applying systematic brainwashing
techniques they are endeavouring to make the Kurds ashamed
of their origins and to want to shed them as being something
disgraceful. The extent to which this policy is methodically
applied knows no bounds.
In the spring of 1960, the then president of Turkey, Cemal
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