THE MIRACLE A True Story strategic goals with blind and unquestioning obedience.    In Komotini, with the indifference and tolerance of the Greek authorities, Celal Bayar founded a high school named after him that would "turkify" the Muslim children attending it - in the name of so-called "Greek-Turkish friendship"!    The next stage of the plan had been laid down several decades earlier: the Muslims of Western Thrace would organise themselves and make constant protests - for no reason whatsoever - about the supposedly oppressive conditions under which they lived in Greece. Turkey would then invoke the "Greek-Turkish friendship" and call for agreements to be signed that would recognise Turkey's right to have a say regarding the minority it had created in Greece. Finally, Turkey would "intervene" at the appropriate moment - which could be in ten, thirty or even a hundred years' time! If Celal Bayar were alive today, he would no doubt be extremely satisfied to see that his plan was working excellently.    By exercising a suitable education policy, which was criminally ignored by the Greek state, pawns of the "glorious Turks who reigned supreme in three continents" were established in Western Thrace which blindly obeyed the orders of their Turkish masters. The region was inundated with Turkish agents who, whether as employees of the Turkish Consulate in Komotini or as teachers or clerics posted to serve in Western Thrace, systematically incited a nationalist fervour amongst the Muslim population. The clerics embarked on an intensive propaganda programme, with the result that, from a total of 85 in 1920, the number of seminaries in Western Thrace had by 1996 reached 320. The Turkish organs in Greek Thrace now no longer feel the need to make the slightest effort to cover up their plan, which is proceeding according to schedule and is at present at the stage where issues concerning real or imaginary situations are constantly created; indeed, if there are no grounds over which to create an issue, they have no difficulty in inventing them!    Under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne signed between Eleftherios Venizelos and Kemal Ataturk in 1923, it was agreed that the approximately 80,000 Muslims living in Western Thrace would remain in Greece, and that roughly 120,000 of the 315,000 Christian Greeks living in Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos would stay in Turkey. By 1993, seventy years later, the number of Muslims in Western Thrace, many of whom had "acquired" a Turkish consciousness as a result of Turkish propaganda, had increased to 150,000, while the number of Greeks in Turkey had dwindled to only 5,000.    In order to effect this deliberate and pre-meditated reduction of the Greek population in Asia Minor, despite its clear commitments under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Turkey devised a series of schemes that were methodically put into action. These included: The slogan "Vatandas Türkçe konus" (i. e. "Citizens, speak Turkish") and the notorious legislation about insulting Turks and Turkey, which had terrorised the Christian population for decades to the extent that they dared not utter a single word of Greek in a public place lest they were accused of insulting the Turks or the Turkish flag; the law prohibiting Greeks from practising certain professions, which was aimed at strangulating the Greek minority's prospects for economic growth; another law imposing a special "surveillance" tax on the institutions of the Greek community, in order to weaken them economically and restrict their activities; the intolerable pressure placed on the Greek schools with the appointment of Turkish deputy head teachers, and the refusal to appoint (or delay in appointing) Greek head teachers so that the schools were, in fact, run by Turks; the banning of the school prayers said by Greek pupils and the restriction of any kind of activity or event which might be displeasing to the Turks, even indirectly; the obligatory mobilisation in 1941 of the Christian population with an age-span of twenty years, and their 121 and 122 Leonidas Koumakis THE MIRACLE A True Story If you prefer a hard copy of the book, please send an email to HEC-Books@hec.greece.org Previous Page | Initial Page | Site Map | Next Page (123th of 204) © For Internet 2001 HEC and Leonidas Koumakis. Updated on 19 June 2001.