THE MIRACLE
A True Story |
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seventeen years earlier by the Turkish journalist, Resit
Ascioglu , when he wrote an article entitled "Where are we
going? To the Aegean?" which was published in the
newspaper, Günaydin, on 7th July, 1977.)
The Greek prime minister, Andreas Papandreou, resigned
from office and on 18th January, 1996 Kostas Simitis was
sworn in as the country's new prime minister. Nine days
later, on 27th January, Turkish agents posing as journalists
for the newspaper Hürriyet (the long-standing anti-Greek
weapon operated by the Turkish government's National
Security Council) landed on Imia and replaced the Greek
flag flying there with a Turkish flag!
Three days after this, during the night of 30th January,
Turkey increased the tension and the two countries found
themselves on the brink of war. Military conflict was avoided,
but the Turks have persistently called into question Greece's
clearly-defined sovereignty over the Imia islets. Shortly
afterwards the Turkish ambassador in Rome warned his
government in a confidential report of the existence of
documents that proved Greece's sovereignty over the rocky
islets in question. The documents, he said, came from both
Italy and Turkey itself! The Turkish government totally ignored
the ambassador's warning since its aim was to create an
issue where one did not exist. Expansionism and the call for
a fresh demarcation of the border between Greece and
Turkey gave rise to a new Turkish theory of "grey areas" in
the Aegean (that is, areas disputed by Turkey). When Greece
proposed recourse to the International Court at The Hague,
Turkey pretended not to understand why this course of
action should be taken.
The task of law courts is to administer justice, and Turkish
expansionism has nothing whatever to do with justice. Turkey
therefore called for "dialogue" and "unconditional negotiation
aimed at settling all outstanding issues in the Aegean as a
whole" (Mesut Yilmaz, Turkish prime minister, 25th March,
1996). In other words, Greece was being asked to "negotiate"
with Turkey concerning the sovereign rights granted to it by international treaties, whether over the islands, air space or
the continental shelf!
Turkish aggression has always had the backing and
tolerance of the major powers; indeed, Turkey has been
turning this tolerance to good account for over 600 years,
ever since the Fall of Constantinople and the collapse of
the Byzantine Empire, when the people of Asia Minor were
reduced to servitude.
The Muslim Bow in the Balkans surrounding Greece. In
the early 1990s, the conflicting interests of the major powers
in the Balkans brought about the dissolution of the Yugoslav
Federation into a number of small states. The abolition of
communism, the civil war in Yugoslavia, the enforced
liberalisation of Albania, the most fascist and most racist
regime in Europe, created a new framework in which Turkey
was not slow to find a role.
The Albanians were suddenly described as "brothers" by
the president of the Turkish republic, Süleyman Demirel, the
Bulgarians were controlled through the Muslim minority that
supported the Bulgarian government and the leader of the
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, was
showered with promises by the hungry Turks.
The aim of all this was, of course, to exploit the conflict
that existed in relations between these countries and Greece.
Greece's problems with Albania began with the Greek
Revolution of 1821, when Greece wanted to free Ipiros, a
region inhabited almost exclusively by Greeks which in the
eyes of Greece is Greek. Italy and Austria, however, wanted
to establish an Albanian state and when the Greek forces
reached Chimara in November, 1912, and Tepeleni in March,
1913, the Italians issued Greece with an ultimatum,
demanding that they should not proceed to Avlona and the
Adriatic coast. On 29th May, 1913, the London Conference,
under intolerable diplomatic pressure from Italy and Austria,
set up the Albanian state, thereby granting autonomy to a
people that had never even asked for it!
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