THE MIRACLE
A True Story |
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Yugoslav republic clearly sought to trade on the Greek name
for expansionist purposes in the future and cultivate a
mentality of irredentism in the younger generation.
And naturally Turkey was the first country to rush headlong
to recognise the fake name of the new republic whose
inhabitants are an amalgam of Slavs, Albanians, Gypsies
and Serbs with a small number of Greeks.
Geographically speaking, 70% of the land of ancient
Macedonia belongs to Greece, 11% to Bulgaria and the
remaining 19% to the former Yugoslavia.
Turkish officials go backwards and forwards regularly with
a wealth of promises that have no security, expecting to
create one more link in the Muslim Bow against Greece
that runs through the Balkans. Albania, the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria form the basis of this
bow which the Turks aim to establish in the name of peace
and friendship between Balkan peoples. The Turks make
hypocritical use of the pretext of peace and friendship
whenever it suits them. They still have no hesitation, when
circumstances dictate, in making a big song and dance
about the need for "Greek-Turkish friendship", inventing and
proposing to Greece whole packages of carefully designed
initiatives to this end.
However, whenever Turkey starts to talk about Greek-Turkish
friendship, Greece can be quite sure Turkey is merely
paying lip-service to the idea and that it is a tactical
manoeuvre.
The phrase used by Ismet Inonu, with reference to
Eleftherios Venizelos, after the signing of the Treaty of
Lausanne and proclamation of the Greek-Turkish friendship
(" The fellow believed us!"), has gone down in history.
Zorlu and Menderes also spoke of Greek-Turkish friendship
prior to launching the pogrom against the Greeks on 6th
September, 1955.
The same thing had happened only a few months earlier,
in March, 1964 when Turkey denounced the Trade,
Establishment and Shipping Agreement signed by Greece and Turkey on 30th October, 1930; the result was the
persecution and deportation of the Greeks who had stayed
on in Constantinople.
Before the Turks invaded Cyprus, they again came out
with the same patter about Greek-Turkish friendship to
persuade the man at the head of the Greek junta, Giorgos
Papadopoulos, to withdraw the Greek regiment stationed in
Cyprus in order to facilitate the Turkish invasion that ensued.
He believed them too!
In 1996, immediately after the major crisis engineered by
the Turks over the Imia islets, Turkey began once more to
beat the big drum about the need for Greek-Turkish friendship,
offering up sweet and hypocritical words that had no
substance. Their purpose was to get Greece to lift the veto
it had imposed on any progress being made in the customs
association agreement between Turkey and the European
Union in April the same year.
Thus it is has been historically proven that whenever Turkey
speaks of Greek-Turkish friendship, it seeks to achieve a
specific goal and then, once this has been attained, it reverts
to its abiding aggressive nature and its unshakable intention
to put its expansionist strategy into effect.
Pan-Turkism: The Ideology of Turkish Expansionism.
The phenomenon known as "Pan-Turkism", which first
manifested itself at the beginning of the twentieth century,
was to determine the course of Turkish diplomacy right up
until the present day. According to this ideology, which is
identified with the policy of irredentism in respect of lands
inhabited by Turkish-speaking peoples, "Greater Turkey" should
be established in territory in the Crimea, the Caucasus,
Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Turkestan,
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Western
Thrace, Cyprus and, of course, the Aegean islands.
Although officially embraced only by the regime of the
Young Turks after the 1908 revolution, the ideology has had
considerable influence on Turkish policy, either overtly or
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