Address at the event 19 May 2010, 12.00 noon at Bowling Greek Park New York at the 91^st memorial of the Greek Genocide by the Ottoman Turks

Adress by Fanoula Argyrou*

Dear all,

I am indebted to the Pan-Pontiac Federation of USA and Canada and the co-organisers of this event for their kind invitation to be here today and participate to the 91^st Memorial Anniversary of this Greek Genocide. And in doing so I pay tribute to the man who initiated this historical duty back in the 1980s, the Greek politician Michalis Charalambides.

At the time his articles began appearing in the Greek Press sometime in the 1980s they appeared as an oasis to all of us who do not forget the Turkish atrocities, uprooting, massacres and barbaric extermination tactics,  so violently executed against all Greeks in the whole of the Ottoman empire and upon all Christians to that matter, Armenians and Assyrians, by the Neo-Turks of Kemal Ataturk and their mercenaries.  My father and his family being among the victims, from the shores of Asia Minor…

91 years on and Turkey is still escaping punishment for those unprecedented crimes of the past century. Refuses to acknowledge those crimes, refuses to apologise, the least expected of her, compromise with history and come to terms with it.

Μodern Kemalist Turkey has been created over the dead bodies of hundreds of thousands of Christian Armenians,  Greeks and Assyrians,  who were “ethnically cleansed” to pave the way for the new state of Turkey. It is an established fact that modern Turkey evolved out of the ashes of one of the most horrific Genocides recorded at the beginning of the 20^th Century.

According to the British Archives, Ziya Bey, who was the founder of the “Young Turk Society”, came from Diarbakir.  Gradually the doctrinaires proposed to strengthen the Turkish nationality in Anatolia by so called education and reform. The method of the “Young Turks” had been to exterminate the non-Turkish nationalities I) the Armenians and 2) the Greeks and to give their land and houses initially to Muslims brought in  from provinces lost in 1912-13 partly Turks from the Balkan peninsula and other parts.

Great responsibility for Turkey’s refusal therefore lies on the shoulders of the so called civilized society and protectors of Human Rights worldwide who shelved the truth for decades.  Because had Turkey been convicted long ago -if not by the failed and doomed League of Nations – by their replacement body in 1948,  the  United Nations of which  the United States of America became a powerful member, and other international bodies for all the injustices and crimes she committed,  she would not have been at ease to carry on with her same crimes and massacre half of Cyprus in 1974.

Greece and Cyprus have since long adopted the 19^th of May as the official annual commemoration day of the Pontiac Genocide.

On March 4, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee recognised the Armenian Genocide. A week later the parliament of Sweden recognized the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides by the Ottoman Turks.  All in all, more than two dozen states, including France and Russia, have recognized the Armenian Genocide to date, which helps the promotion for recognition of the Greek and Assyrian Genocides as well, as they were all executed almost at the same time by the same executioners for the same reasons.  And Just weeks after the Swedish Parliament’s recognition of those horrific Turkish crimes, against the Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks in World War One, the struggle for recognition has reached the European Parliament.

Hundreds of listeners gathered in the European Parliament to listen to a panel of specialists. One of the aims was for the European Union to follow in Sweden’s footstep and recognize the Genocide against Christians in the Ottoman Empire during WWI.

Lastly, we hear that the Israeli parliament is also discussing the very subject with view to recognition.

Germany has apologized to the Jewish nation. Russia opened her secret files for the 1940 massacre of Polish officers by order of Stalin at Katyn Forest. Yet, Turkey not only does not accept the worldwide evidence as confirmed by the world authority, the International Association of Genocide Scholars who passed a resolution in 2007 affirming that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire, including the Greeks was genocide,  but Turkey refuses to revoke its notorious Article 301!  Which punishes anyone within Turkey who dares speak out of those or any other Turkish crimes. And even more, Turkey provocatively and shamelessly attempts by fear and intimidation to impose the provisions of that Article to the rest of the world. A country which is so forcefully demanding to become a member of the European Union… And lately we hear that Turkish Prime Minister has or will demand from the Greek Government the withdrawal of any references to the Greek Genocide in the Greek text books.

Dear all,

We  have an obligation to remember. We have a duty to carry on the fight for justice – for recognition of the Genocides by the Turks, we owe it to those who suffered and do not have a voice of their own to carry on the fight.

Finally, and in the light of the  raising of the Greek and Pontiac flags, in memory of all those Pontiac Greeks 353, 000 or so of them,  who perished in the hands of the Ottoman Turks I would like to remind you of another Pontiac Greek hero, Constantinos Koukides in order to demonstrate to you the importance of the national flag. On 27 April 1941 Koukides was on duty as the guard of the Greek flag at Acropolis. And he decided to fall to his death from the Holy Rock (Ieros Vrachos) with the flag,  rather than surrender himself and the flag to the invading German army.

In Memory of them all.

Thank you.

Speech delivered on 17 May 2010 to a gathering of young Greek audience mostly of PontiacNorwalk, Connecticut.

From the Greek Genocide to the occupation of Cyprus.

Ethnic cleansing is a term introduced during the Bosnian war, as if it occurred in history for the first time. Ethnic cleansing, in my opinion, is a “diplomatic” description for Genocide. In fact all it takes is a glance in the most distinguished world dictionaries -the meaning of the noun “genocide” is ultimate: “Extermination of a race”. (Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary). And Ethnic cleansing was executed by the Ottoman Turks and the Kemalists against all Christian populations in the beginning of the 20^th century long before the extermination of the Jews by Hitler.

According to the British Archives, Ziya Bey was the founder of the Young Turk Society. He came from Diarbakir.

The doctrinaires proposed to strengthen the Turkish nationality in Anatolia by so called education and reform. The method of the Young Turks has been to exterminate the non-Turkish nationalities I) the Armenians and 2) the Greeks and to give their land and houses initially to Muslims brought in from provinces lost in 1912-13 partly Turks but partly Slavs from the Balkan peninsula and other parts.

On October 1911 at a Young Turk Congress the following resolution was passed:

“ The character of the Empire must be Mohammedan and respect must be secured for Mohammedan Institutions and Organisations for decentralisation and autonomy are treason to the Turkish Empire. The nationalities are a negligible quantity. They can keep their religion but not their language. The propagation of the Turkish language is a sovereign means of confirming the Mohammedan supremacy and assimilating the other elements”.

This was the basis of the doctrine Mustafa Kemal followed in his brutal method to keep Turkey together after the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, when the latter, who fought on the same side as Germany in World War 1, was defeated.

In other words, modern Kemalist Turkey has been created over the dead bodies of hundreds of thousands of Christians, Armenians, Assyrians and  Greeks, who were “ethnically cleansed” to pave the way for the new state of Turkey that the then alliance (and western powers), of Britain and France had in mind.

It is an established fact that modern Turkey evolved out of the ashes of one of the most horrific Genocides recorded at the beginning of the 20^th Century.

The released British documents in the British Archives, include a plethora of references covering the Turkish persecutions against the Christian Greek populations, in the Pontiac region and Asia Minor as well as the latest Turkish barbaric “achievements” in my native country Cyprus and for which Britain has a lot to answer for.

In a most incriminating report (Memorandum) for the Turks dated 20 March 1922, Mr. G. W. Rendel, a high Foreign Office official wrote the following:

“… The conclusion of the armistice with Turkey on the 30 October1918, seems to have brought about a temporary cessation of the persecutions of the minorities by the Turks which had gone on all through the war. In the course of those persecutions, it is generally agreed that about 1,500.000 Armenians perished in circumstances of extreme barbarity, and that over 500,000 Greeks were deported, of whom comparatively few survived… It is necessary to refer to these pre-armistice persecutions, since there is now a strong tendency to minimise or overlook them,  and to regard those which followed the armistice as isolated incidents…

As early as May 1919 reports of renewed persecutions of Greeks all over Anatolia and Pontus began to come in. Some 1,300 Greeks were shot on the 15^th or 16 August 1921 in about two and a half hours…

They continued to be sent out in groups of 800 to 1,000, until all Greek men from Samsoun had been deported. They were sent, in five groups. All of them were robbed, even to the detail of gold teeth, the first at Kavak, 40 miles inland, and the third at Jumbush Khan, about 15 miles from Samsoun. An estimate of 200 killed in each place out of a group of 800 to 1,000 would be very conservative…”

(Note: I referred to these so incriminating for the Turks references made by Foreign Office official G.W. Rendell (and others) in my speech at the Pan-Pontiac Conference held in Boston between 30.4.1999 – 2.5.1999 to which I was invited to speak. I believe it was the first time that British evidence for the Greek Genocide was out in the open, or so I was told,  and it is with regret that ever since I see these references mentioned by various other researchers or posted on internet sites without giving the original source of research).

In another report dated 10 May 1922 the British Ambassador in Constantinople Sir H. Rumbold wrote:

“The Turks appear to be working on a deliberate plan to get rid of minorities. Their method has been to collect at Amasia, Ottoman Greeks from Pontus from region between Samsoun and Trebizond. These Greeks are marched from Amasia via Tokat and Sivas as far as Ceasarea, and then back again until they are eventually sent through Kharput to the east. In this matter a large number of deportees die on the road from hardship and exposure. The Turks can say that they did not actually kill these refugees, but a comparison may be instituted with the way in which the Turks formerly got rid of dogs at Constantinople by landing them on an island where they died of hunger and thirst”.

Large numbers of women and children were included; the Turks were trying to exterminate the population before the peace settlement.

Perhaps the following extract dated 11 May 1922 is another outspoken criticism against the Turks recorded in the British Archives:

“ There can no longer be any possible doubt that Ankara is deliberately exterminating all Christian minorities and that they will not hesitate to extend the system to the Smyrna area. Their counter-propaganda is intended to shield themselves.  We have clear proof and evidence that the Turks are as unfit as ever to govern themselves or others. I do not see how we can hand Smyrna unless the Greeks and Armenians have first been removed. And I do not see why they should be. As the Turks are incapable of conforming to the most elementary standards of civilisation they must take the consequences. We cannot sacrifice the rights of living Christians to the rights of dead Turks. Once Turkish rule is restored it will be impossible probably to protect the minorities. The only safeguard as the Greeks say, is the Greek Army”.

(Just as the Greek Army was indeed the only safeguard for the Greek-Cypriots in Cyprus in 1964 but by 1967 in a concerted effort the British, Soviets and Turks -finally with American consent -arranged for its  humiliating return  to Greece to pave the way for the pre-arranged Turkish invasion which was to follow. And they did sacrifice the rights of living Christians to the rights of “dead Turks”, as they put it).

Another report made from information given by John Eyfremides and George Isaridi, refugees from Pontus, dates November 1921.

It refers to systematic persecutions against the Greeks of Pontus under the direction of a Turkish Committee set up for this purpose. Osma Aga and Noussat Bey at Kerassoun and Etem Bey at Trebizond, and also several other Turks were members of that Committee. Under the order of that committee, Nicolas Karacassides was murdered at Kerassoun, Basil Alvanides and his wife were assassinated in their own home at Trebizond while other victims were, Charalambos Lavassas, Monoftalmos and Tapetsaris and several others of the same town.

In August of 1920 the male population of Trebizond was imprisoned and then deported into the interior in groups of 50 to die of hunger and exhaustion, whilst their houses were pillaged and families maltreated.

On the 3 of March 1922 the British authorities managed to get a copy of a confidential communication sent by Fethi Bey on the 14^thAngora, read as follows: February, from Samsoun, to Mustafa Kemal, requesting permission to carry more deportations. The communication to Mustafa Kemal Pasha, president of the Great National Assembly at Angora, read as follows:

“We were ordered by Your Excellency to travel over the areas infested by the brigands of the Pontus on the shores of the Black Sea in order to study the question of public security, this question being of vital importance to our government.

In accordance with this order, issued for reasons stated in the secret assembly of 23^rd January, we travelled to Samsoun… I am of the opinion that it would be advisable to take active steps before spring in order to settle this matter… I beg to be supplied with the necessary authorisation to carry out deportations on a more expeditious and larger scale than hitherto. This would improve the security both of the army and the nation”.

Signed Fethi Bey Commissary of the Interior, Samsoun, February 1922.

On the 22^nd March 1920 Admiral de Robeck transmitted a document  in which it was emphatically noted that: “…the proceedings lacked none of the ruthless and insensate brutality which hitherto have characterised Turkish outbreaks of massacre”.

(Sir John Michael de Robeck, born 10 June 1862  died 20 January 1928,  was an admiral in the British Royal Navy who commanded the Allied naval force in the Dardanelles during World War I. De Robeck was born in Naas, County Kildare, Ireland, the second son of John Henry Edward Fock, fourth Baron de Robeck (1823-1904), to a family of Swedish origin, long settled in Ireland).

The following extract of Rendel’s Memorandum reflects in more detail the Turkish barbarism. It refers to the destruction of the famous town of Nicaea (Isnik) by Nationalist bands, through a report compiled by a British officer attached to General headquarters, British Army of the Black Sea and dated 7 October 1920.

“From information in the hands of the Smyrna Division, which is confirmed by a previous report, the whole Greek population of Isnik has been massacred. Apparently the majority of the massacres took place at the end of August – the remainder of the population were killed before the Greeks took the town i.e. at the end of September. The number of killed is said to be about 130 families, or about 400-500 men, women and children.

I myself was taken around to some of the places where the remains of the bodies lay. Lack of time prevented me from visiting every scene of the massacre. I was assured, however, by the Greek officers that there were other such places.

At the foot of the mountain east of Isnik, about 300 yards outside the city wall,, is a large cave. In this the burnt and mangled bodies had been thrown, a few odd bodies lay about outside, though it was difficult to judge very accurately owing to the state of decomposition. I should say there were at least 100 dead at this spot alone.

All the bodies I saw had been mutilated , apparently they had first had their hands and feet cut off, after that they were either burnt alive in the cave or had their throats cut. I clearly recognised the bodies of women and children among them – apart from the mutilated remains, odd bones which lay about proved conclusively that the bodies had been cut up.

Djemal Bey is said to be responsible for these massacres. The ancient Greek church at Isnik, which dates from 332 A.D. has been thoroughly smashed up, only the walls remaining. The images, carvings, etc., were all broken up, and the church literature taken outside and burnt in a pile. It is said that a number of people were massacred inside the church. The Greek soldiers, who have every opportunity of visiting these places, are not unnaturally bitterly enraged about it.”.

G.W. Rendel’s report concluded with the following:

“ …The Nationalists regard the minorities as having been the cause of unending trouble in the past, and have decided that the best way to prevent the recurrence of this trouble is to put an end to the existence of the minorities. They want Anatolia for the Turks… and they would be perfectly prepared to subscribe to any arrangements made by the Allies for the protection of minorities, but that whatever these arrangements were, there would be no intention on the part of the Kemalists of ever seeing them fulfilled”.

Reports on crimes committed by Turks in Pontus against Greeks since the Armistice continued to pile up in the Foreign Office.  One such report was prepared by the Pontiac Association in Athens dated 17 July 1921, written in French and signed by its President Margaritis Evangelides, Professor at the Athens University and its Secretary Th. Teophylactou.

In another file I found a MAP which was published in the “Eleftheros Typos” in Athens, in November 1917, showing the extent of a country which the Pontiac Greeks desired to include in a “Republic of Pontus”.

In Athens the British Ambassador asked the Greek Foreign Minister what he knew about the question. Mr. Politis, the then F.M. said that the Greek Government regarded the efforts of these co-nationals with every sympathy, as was but natural, but that they had absolutely no official connection with the movement, and he assured his British colleague that the last thing the Greek Government contemplated at the time was any future extension of Greek sovereignty in those regions.

However, the British documents are also highly critical of the attitude of the Greek Patriarchate in Constantinople in that they believed the Patriarchate  was largely to blame for the suffering of the Pontiac Greeks. This is what  noted on receipt of numerous petitions and Memorandums by the Patriarchate for the persecutions.

“ One would like to reply by asking the Patriarchate if they themselves are not largely responsible for the executions and deportations of the Pontic population by the fact that they have not ceased to encourage the latter to hope and plot for independence… I think very likely the political inaptitude of these prelates with the cynical un-morality of Greek politicians have together encouraged the bestial nature of the Turks to commit atrocities. But I do not think, it would be wise or useful to start a polemic with the Patriarch. It would cause misunderstanding and misrepresentations and would not trade him any wisdom”.

This is how G. Rendel rounded up the Patriarchate involvement in his report:

“ There is no doubt that the Greek ecclesiastical authorities in Constantinople had fostered a Greek national movement in this district, and that the hope of liberation from Turkish rule, whether under the Peace Treaty or through the expected victories of the Greek army in Anatolia, encouraged the ill-informed Greek population of Pontus to take a renewed and dangerous interest in politics. Ostensibly for the purpose of quelling this political movement, which, if the Greeks were as small a minority as the Kemalists claim, can hardly have been a very dangerous one, the Angora authorities resorted to wholesale deportations, continuous persecutions, and frequent massacres.”

Reading through these lines the British, who seemed to be, as always,  in a good position to know what had taken place, decided not to expose the position of the Patriarchate prelates, who evidently bore considerable guilt and although the Greeks were persecuted in their hundreds of thousands the position and existence of the prelates  was satisfactorily safeguarded after the Lausanne Treaty to this very day. Although that of the thousands of Greeks in Asia Minor, Constantinople and the Greek islands of Imbros and Tenedos has not…And as a last example of that, I would add, that of the Greeks in Cyprus…

Finally, we come to the Lausanne Treaty and its preparations in 1922. The exchange of populations effected by the Lausanne Treaty naturally had infuriated the Greek refugees from Pontus, Asia Minor and Thrace, scattered in hundreds of thousands all over Greece and a small number in British occupied Cyprus.

Hand written petitions, one after the other were handed to the British and other foreign Legations in Greece all expressing in the strongest terms their objection to the rumoured exchange of populations.

Eleftherios Venizelos however, had written to Dr Fridjof Nansen High Commissioner of the League of Nations for Refugees on the 13 October 1922, urging him to begin the transfer of population before the treaty was signed. Venizelos wrote in his letter:

“Total number of refugees who by recent events were forced to leave their homes and who will take refuge on Greek soil and ask for shelter and means for livelihood will exceed million by far. The Greek state which is just emerging from ten years period of war and is exhausted is not in a position to meet these colossal demands”.

In my book for the Pontiac persecutions by the Turks titled “Genocide” published in 1998, I included a number of these British Documents together with the Black Book for the Tragedy of Pontus between 1914-1922 published in Athens in 1922 in English and French which I found in the Archives.

In the same book I also referred to the Soviet persecutions of the Pontiac population from the Caucasus during the 1940sJoseph Stalin’s policy of extermination and ethnic cleansing was equally brutal and ruthless as that initiated and systematically followed by the Kemalist Turks aided at the time by feudal Kurds who acted as mercenaries working for Kemal Ataturk. because I believe

As it is stated by British officials vis-a-vis the extermination by the Turks of dogs in Constantinople, the Russians may claim that they did not follow a policy of extermination of the Greeks or kill those hundreds of thousands of Greeks but to uproot them and  drive them to the point of death is equally incriminating as shooting them or cutting them to pieces. The Soviet policy of ethnic cleansing of the Pontiac Greek population was identical in purpose with the Kemalist policy and objective. And if the Pontiac persecutions are to be properly addressed, they must be addressed in their entirety and not selectively.

On the 19^th of May, 1998, I wrote to my (then)  European Member of Parliament Socialist Pauline Green. I told her that both GreeceCyprus by act of their respective Parliaments had recognised the 19 of May as the Day for Remembrance of the Genocide inflicted on the Greeks of Pontus and all Greeks to that matter in the Ottoman Empire by the Turks. and

I enclosed a copy of my book on the subject and asked her to promote in the European Parliament the recognition of the Genocide. She refused to get involved. Socialist Pauline Green sent me a reply dated 22 May 1998. In clear terms Mrs Pauline Green  not only refused to promote the issue but distinctly dismissed it as one “which the European Parliament should not engage in”.

(Later Pauline Green was forced to resign and ever since disappear from politics as it was revealed she was embroidered in a political scandal).

However, as years went by and as the campaign intensified thanks to the actively persistent Armenian lobbies, Assyrians and Pontiac Greeks following suit (although late comers I should add),  the Genocide of the Christian populations by the Ottoman Turks to the fury of Turkey is gaining ground in the international fora. As a result of which only weeks ago and for the first time, those actsof barbarism were heard in the European Parliament thanks to the efforts of the Assyrian lobby.

The Pontiac, Asia Minor and Thracian Greek genocide is a fact, an ethnic cleansing of the worst kind, a Kemalist policy followed to-date by many ruthless leaders all over the world, and exercised recently in 1974 in occupied Cyprus with British and American help and supervision and Soviet acceptance. Because as long as such crimes against humanity pass by unrecognised and unpunished, those who carry them out are free to strike again and again… The Greek genocide is documented by hundreds of historical analysis prepared by people of distinguished authority and undisputed integrity and it must be officially and universally recognised. The State Department Archives I am sure, also contain a vast amount of testimonies and evidence.

To this end I refer to Nikolaos Hlamides’ extensive Research Note, titled “The Greek Relief committee: “American’s Response to the Greek Genocide” which is a well documented paper of an introduction to the Greek Relief Committee, a New York City-based organisation that worked alongside other relief organisations from 1917 until 1921, administering aid to the Ottoman Greek population.  And who as I, strongly believe that it was a mistake to split the request for recognition to Pontiac, Asia Minor and Thracian victims,  instead of a collective demand  indeed for recognition of “A Greek Genocide” which actually was. All evidence from all archives confirm that it was a deliberate act of genocide against all Christians. A collective approach would have by far a much better chance of success in getting results.

The criminal acts by the Ottoman Turks of that barbarous waste of hundreds of thousands of human lives be they Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Jewish, during those years, be it due to lack of decent policies or conscious negligence on the part of the Allies -who whilst trying to dissolve the Ottoman Empire were also trying to partly keep it alive for their economic interests-, must be recognised. If not for anything else, for historical reasons, in memory of all those perished and the justification of research, truth and hope for a better world. If that still means anything in this mechanical and so called modern and civilised world we had the fortune or misfortune, (this is debatable) – to live in today.

The evidence from the British Archives in London form a dossier of indictment of its own for the campaign to get the Genocide recognised. Which I was eventually asked to prepare by the Pontiac Association of Toronto and which I did and forwarded to them soon after my speech in Boston and later in Toronto and Montreal. My report was titled “The Greek Genocide”.

It is a well established fact that if one does not learn from lessons of history then history is likely to repeat itself. Power overpowers reality, truth and justice and this has been the core of all evils and the controlling element of power balance everywhere in the world from ancient times to-date. Humanity only had short intervals of decent living. Truth, pragmatism and real justice are rare commodities in the corridors of power where the value of ordinary lives disappears into oblivion. Which makes it even more  imperative for the guilty party to be named and shamed in order to prevent repetition.  In this I agree fully with the Jewish thinking that “forgiveness is a Christian invention. A person must be punished for his crimes whilst living”.

Occupied Cyprus is the most recent repetition of barbaric Kemalist Turkish policy of exterminating a race for the sake of Turkish expansionism and Turkish Kemalist policies.  Once again with the help and consent of the super powers of East and West…

Turkish preparations to take over Cyprus began in the 1950s under the instigation of the then occupying power in Cyprus, Gt. Britain. It was the British who invited Turkey back as an interested party in the future of Cyprus during the so called “Tripartite” Conference held in London end of August 1955 in order to promote their allied secret agendas of partitioning Cyprus. Primarily in order to stop the Greek majority of Cyprus of achieving Union with Greece for their own interests…

The Turks, well known to the British for their expansionist and ethnic cleansing policies especially against Christian populations, lost no moment and immediately after the Tripartite Conference when with the acceptance of Greece Turkey returned as an interested party in the future of Cyprus,  the  Turkish Government commissioned Professor Nihat Erim in Ankara to prepare a plan which was characteristically named “ Recapture of Cyprus”. (See “Bloody Truth” for details. Those plans were originally revealed by Professor Neoclis Sarris in Athens in his book “The Other Side – Η άλλη πλευρά»).

Under orders, finance, arms, ammunition, training  and planning by the Turkish Government terrorist groups were formed in Cyprus (Volgan and TMT) executing murders of Greeks as well as Turkish Cypriots, bombing mosques in order to create communal unrest and animosity in Cyprus, blame the Greeks and give the fabricated impression to the outside world that the Greeks and Turks in Cyprus cannot live together therefore partition was the only solution.

Of course partition was the first step towards the “Recapture of Cyprus” according to Nihat Erim’s plan which is strictly followed and executed to this very day.

In short, Ankara proceeded with full speed and created those conditions with Turkish atrocities against the Greeks carried on relentlessly well after the Independence of Cyprus in 1960. Reaching their climax in December 1963 when the Turkish Cypriots with British assistance (the British drew the Green Line, London decided not to intervene even if Turkey invaded) attempted the first coup against the Republic of Cyprus with the aim of dissolving it and creating in its place a “two state” federal new state.

Yet, they failed to achieve their objective. The United Nations recognised the Republic of Cyprus as the only legitimate government in Cyprus. The Turks, however, did not give up and continued their para – state activities as a result of which they invaded Cyprus in 1974…When their ethnic cleansing policy was brutally put into force during the invasion with thousands of Greek Cypriots being massacred by the Turkish forces but also by the Turkish fighters as they were called, one of whom, by his own admission,  was Mehmet Ali Talat.

Hundreds of our women even grandmothers and young girls were savagely raped by them. The official figure exceeds 800 women – to the extent that the Cyprus Government at the time had to ask for medical assistance from the British hospitals in the British bases in Cyprus.

The Turks continued their policy of extermination. With the gradual and systematic killings, suppression, rapes and expulsions of the remaining Greek Cypriot enclaved in the Karpasia peninsula.  In 1974 they numbered almost 20,000, today they are merely a few hundreds with an “expiry date” on them, as most of them are old people who just refuse to abandon their homeland.

The Turkish insistence not to allow us, the Greek Cypriot refugees, the legitimate owners of our land and properties in the occupied areas of Cyprus to return and by filling in the vacuum left by the uprooting of the Greek Cypriots with the influx of tens of thousands of Turkish Anatolian squatters into our homes which started in early 1975, in order to change the demographic character of the area and population, clearly constitutes a WAR CRIME. But it  in line with their Kemalist policy. That of exterminating the Christian populations and taking full control. Just as they did in the 1900s  with the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks…

The Turkish policy is still in full swing and in line with the various solution plans purposely prepared by the British with American backing. The British began its promotion days after the invasion of Cyprus, on the 16 August, 1974 to be precise with the bioregional federation i.e. bizonal bicommunal federation. Primarily based on the original Turkish demand of the racist bizonal bicommunal federation, demanded by Turkish Cypriot leader Raouf Denktash in Geneva on 12 August 1974… Ironically this Turkish demand, thanks to pro-Turkish and vigorous British promotion, shamefully  assisted by pro-British Greek Cypriot politicians,  has been turned over to become the…  Greek Cypriot side’s flagship of a solution to the ultimate benefit of Ankara’s ambitions!

But the people of Cyprus in their very first ever plebiscite offered to them for their future on 24 April 2004, overwhelmingly rejected this racist apartheid solution (a 79% NO to the Annan Plan confirmed their rejection of the bizonal bicommunal federation – as the back bone of that solution).

The fact that the leadership in Cyprus refuse to acknowledge that result and unconstitutionally choose to ignore the significance of that public mandate against this solution is the very core of the situation and the very reason they are unable to impose such a solution. Unfortunately the Greek Cypriots have been systematically victims not only of Turkish policies but also of negligent, poor and at times strong pro-British leaderships subservient to our ex- colonial rulers to the detriment of our national interests…

Admission by Turkish Defence Minister

Almost a century on, and although to this very day Turkey vehemently denies those crimes, its own Defence Minister speaking in Brussels  (where he had gone to attend a NATO Defence Ministerial meeting) at an event at the Turkish Embassy on the anniversary of Ataturk’s death, in November 2008, admitted the extermination of the Christian populations when he wondered whether “Turkey would have been the same ethnic state had the Greeks and the Armenians remained in various parts of Turkey”. In his own way he confirmed exactly what many historians, the Greek diaspora and many Armenians support, i.e. that modern Turkey was based on the ethnic cleansing, the forceful and systematic extermination of the non muslim minorities. (This I also stressed in my speeches in Boston, Toronto and Montreal in 1999). (12.11.2008 Simerini newspaper, by Costakis Antoniou).

I should also refer you at this stage to what the present Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet  Davudoglou wrote among others about Cyprus«Stratejik Derinlik. Turkiye’nin Uluslararasi Konumu»),  issued in Constantinople in 2004 but with the Greeks only recently being awaken to the significance of this man and his policies.

He wrote that “… even if there was not a single muslim Turk in Cyprus, Turkey would be obliged to have a Cyprus problem. No country can stay indifferent against such an island, which is situated in the heart of its own vital area…” (www.efylakas.com 06 August 2009).

.I would like to end my contribution today,  with reference to the revelation by a British archaeologist, Michael Sanders, who claimed that  the site of the most famous building in history, the biblical  Tower of Babel, is not located in Mesopotamian Babylon,  in north of Baghdad in Iraq, but in the Pontus region of the Black Sea coast of Turkey. This is supported by new satellite photographs from NASA and a reinterpretation of ancient biblical texts which suggests that the mythical tower actually existed in the Pontus area according to an article published in “The Sunday Times” in London on  4 April 1999.

“I was amazed, said Sanders, that after I decided that Pontus was the most likely location that several modern academics make  this place the origin of all the modern languages for the West. Not Africa, not Mesopotamia, but right there, where I believe the Tower of Babel was”.

The Pontus area is surely a place of great historical significance from biblical times and we Greeks must not let the world forget to whom it really belonged and how and why the  Pontiac Greeks were ethnically cleansed from their homeland.

Just as we must intensify the campaign for the “Bloody Truth” regarding the true facts about the Cyprus tragedy and the Turkish crimes committed in my island  to be known to the world and eradicate the cover-up and shielding of notorious Turkish lies, distortions and crimes.

Fanoulla Argyrou is a Researcher-Journalist-Author