From: han@anadolu.michigan.com (hasan.b.mutlu)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.history
Subject: 'Greece:' An Exemplary Model For Decaying Countries.
Date: 25 Aug 92 21:35:35 GMT





<BtLx9M.Mqw@news.cso.uiuc.edu>
ptg2351@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Panos Tamamidis )

>>So you're all wearing cowboy hats and chewing on kitchen matches,
>>picking your teeth. And these are hard-core bull-goose 'wolf'
>>whippers. Are you half-drunk? History shows that within the last 
>>170 years, Greeks played that game twice: They used Istanbul Patriarch 
>>Grigorios in 1822 to instigate the Morea rebellion that resulted in 
>>the massacres of the Muslim people. Again, the Orthodox Patriarch 
>>Constantine V invited the Russian Czar Nicholas II to invade the 
>>Ottoman Empire 'in the name of Jesus,' and save his flock from Ottoman 
>>rule. 

> Your logic(?) says that Greeks should just ask the Turks:
> Greeks: Excuse me guys, could you please let me leave free?
> Turks: Sorry guys, but you are free.  Ottomans are protecting you.

'Palikaryas' and 'tamtams' just sit there. Even kicking doesn't 
always help. The basic document regulating Turkish-Greek relations 
is the Peace Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which is still in force. In
the 'balance among equals' provided by this international treaty, 
three areas are most noteworthy: Western Thrace, the Aegean Sea and 
Cyprus.

Western Thrace is a piece of land in Greece between the Evros
(or Meric) River in the west and the Nastos (or Karasu) River
in the east. The Muslim Turkish minority, which totaled 129,120
in 1923 and owned 84 percent of the land, was given every 
kind of minority rights to maintain its national culture by the
Lausanne Treaty.

The balance in the Aegean Sea rests on the demilitarization
of the Greek islands which are very close to the Turkish
coast. Cyprus, on which Greek and Turkish communities
have been living for centuries, remained under British
sovereignty in 1923. the 1947 Italian Peace Treaty 
ceded the Dodecanese, previously seized from Turkiye,
to Greece. These twelve islands, also very close to
the Turkish coast, were demilitarized by the postwar
Paris Peace Conference in an effort not to disturb the
balance between Turkiye and Greece.

The people of Turkiye believe that in the early 1950s
Greece started shaking two of the three important
pillars of balance between the two countries. Greece
simultaneously exerted pressure on the Turkish Cypriot
community and suppressed the treaty rights of the
Muslim Turkish minority in Western Thrace.

It is well known that Britain, Greece and Turkiye agreed
in 1959 on a formula for settling the Cyprus problem.
After full consultations with the leaders of the two
Cypriot communities, the Zurich and London Agreements
were drawn up. The two national communities were to
become co-founding partners of the Republic of Cyprus.
'Enosis' (Union with Greece) was prohibited and guaranteed 
against. A functional federation was established by the 
two communities after having worked together for 18 months 
to prepare the Cyprus Constitution.

The Republic of Cyprus cannot be looked upon as a 
'Greek state' ignoring virtually all Turkish rights
in the Constitutions. But some Greek politicians 
made no secret of their intentions to annex Cyprus
to Greece. They identified the Turkish Cypriots
as the main obstacle to their aspirations. The 1963
Greek Cypriot onslaught on the Turkish community
of Cyprus was the inevitable result of this dream.
It was the Turkish intervention (1974) that effectively
prevented the implementation of this Greek scheme
against the treaties and the Constitution. To a 
Greek assertion at the Copenhagen meeting that
the Turkish intervention in Cyprus is not based on
a treaty right, Ataov has indicated that it rests
upon Art. 4 (2) of the Treaty of Guarantee.

The emergence of the continental shelf problem in the 
Aegean was another development that shook the third pillar 
of the Turco-Greek regional balance, which I will address 
in the future.

Hasan B-) Mutlu

                     'Kill Turks and Kurds wherever you find them 
                      and in whatever circumstances you find them. 
                      Turkish children also should be killed as 
                      they form a danger to the Armenian nation.' 
                                     (Hamparsum Boyadjian - 1914)

Xref: sparky soc.culture.turkish:9243 talk.politics.mideast:18995 talk.politics.soviet:7216 soc.culture.greek:7899 soc.culture.europe:7620 soc.history:7615