THE MIRACLE
A True Story |
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dispatch to the forced labour battalions;
the selective imposition on the minority populations, in
1942, of punitive and excessive taxes that were aimed at
ruining them economically, notably the infamous property
tax (Varlik Vergisi);
the pogrom that was organised by the Turkish government
itself against the Christians and their property on 6th
September, 1955; in a single night 4,340 Greek shops,
2,600 Christian homes, 73 churches, 26 Greek schools,
110 restaurants, 21 factories, 27 pharmacies and the 3
Greek newspapers still operating of the nine that had
been in existence in 1923, were all destroyed, burned and
looted;
the mass deportations carried out in 1964, when a total
of 50,000 Greeks were summarily and quite inhumanely
turned out of their homes;
the closure of the Theological School on Halki, aimed at
stifling religious freedom and undermining the Ecumenical
Patriarchate in Constantinople;
the confiscation of Greek properties in Constantinople
through a secret decree passed in 1964, denying people
of Greek descent the right to buy or sell property.
The Muslims who live in Western Thrace today are mostly
Pomaks and Gypsies, yet Turkish propaganda invariably
describes them all, collectively, as "Turks" and goes to
enormous lengths to complain about alleged "oppression".
The Turks are waiting for a suitable opportunity for another
success, such as when Alexandretta was annexed one year
after the Turkish army had entered the town, with the
tolerance of the French, on 5th July, 1938. The fact that the
region's Turkish inhabitants were in the minority, compared
with the local Arab population, was a mere "detail". Similarly,
the fact that the land of Orpheus and Dimocritos has been
Greek for centuries and is inhabited by Greeks is a mere
"detail" to the Turks.
As long as Greece refuses to revoke the clause concerning mutuality contained in Article 45 of the Treaty of Lausanne
in order to harmonise the number of Muslims living in Western
Thrace with the Christian population in Constantinople, Imvros
and Tenedos, the Turks will continue, with impunity, to prepare
the ground for conditions that will allow them to fulfill their
expansionist ambitions when the right moment presents itself.
Already those responsible for the massacre of entire
peoples and the cold-blooded implementation of inhuman
methods which wiped out hosts of innocent people have
caused buckets of crocodile tears to be wept on account of
the alleged "ill-treatment" of Greek Muslims. Having turned
them into blindly obedient agents of the Turkish state and
persuaded them to carry out separatist activities through
unprecedented irredentist propaganda, they conveniently
forget that the primary obligation of a minority, in accordance
with international law, is to respect the sovereign rights and
territorial integrity of the host country. They "forget" that
when the Turks carried out their cold-blooded genocide of
the Kurds in south-eastern Turkey, they themselves had
invoked Article 8 of their anti-terrorist law which states:
"Any activity that aims at violating the indivisibility of the
Turkish state and nation is forbidden, regardless of the
purpose or motive behind it."
Yet Turkish agents are permitted to move about freely in
Greece and proclaim "This is Turkey!" If they are called to
account for their actions, in the context of a favourable
European state, a veritable chorus of hypocritical voices
can be heard, complaining of the alleged "oppression" of
Greek Muslims.
Greek Islands in the Aegean. Greece's islands in the
Aegean are the next target of Turkish expansionism. On 9th
August, 1976, Süleyman Demirel (who was later to become
president of Turkey) told the newspaper, Hürriyet: "I would
rather call them Aegean islands, not Greek islands." Two
years earlier, on 9th June, 1974, he had spoken even more
revealingly, as leader of the opposition, about Turkey's
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