Maybe we are doing it for our own consolation. Ankara has not changed its policy on Cyprus for more than half-a-century, nor its claim on the Aegean Sea and Air Space. With more violations, the Greeks become more defensive, and the more we shout at each other and appeal to the powers that be to put a leash on Ankara. The Turks have the military power to carry on the occupation in Cyprus and the violations in the Aegean. This policy has the support of Washington and London, both powers being critical in the Aegean confrontation and a Cyprus settlement. This support is in the form of billions of dollars in economic aid and weapons, to make Turkey a strategic regional power/ally to control the oil resources in the Middle East and the Cold War (II) to encircle Russia.

Criticism is fine when dealing with a civilized people who readily respond to criticism because the insults become more insulting when they are repeated. The ruling circles in Ankara show no such signs. They are not troubled by criticism nor insulted by the insults. Take the genocide of the Armenians in 1915. The response of Ankara to any Turkish intellectual referring to the genocide in 1915 as a historical fact is criminal charges and imprisonment for insulting Turkishness. In the case of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, not only he was charged with committing a crime, he was assassinated by a young Turk, who in his words: "I killed a non-Muslim." The new president and foreign minister of Turkey want a new makeover for Turkey, to improve her image for the EU. I will not hold my breath, even if there are changes in Article 301. The silencing of critics and threats to foreign governments will go on for a long time.

Anyway, why limit the charges of genocide against the Armenians in 1915? For the first time The New York Times referred to the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1918, not just 1915, on October 4, 2007. How about from the 1870s to 1918? This genocide includes not only Armenians, but Greeks, Assyrians, and other Christians, since the beginning of the 19th Century. The genocide was intensified when the Empire was on the verge of collapse, from the 1870s to the 1920s. At Lausanne, the Allies gave the Turks general amnesty for the political and criminal crimes committed from 1914 to 1922. Why? The Allies were interested in securing the territorial plundering of the Ottoman Empire, have Turkey on their side against the new enemy, the Bolsheviks, and the smell of oil in the Middle East.

A research on the genocide of the Greeks is being assembled for publication in Europe. Why is this research important? It is part of a larger movement to force Ankara to recognize the butchering of these subjects and pay reparations for loss of life and property, to the descendants, or stay out of Europe. What makes this issue even more important is that the political winds in the European Union are against Turkish membership, for a variety of reasons, include the genocide of the Armenians. The genocide of Greeks, Assyrians, and Kurds will be added to the list.

The solution to the Cyprus problem is part of this struggle. There is only one message that needs to be conveyed to Ankara, from Nicosia and Athens. This message has to be conveyed, loud and clear. Without a Cyprus settlement, there will be no membership in the EU. I would go a step further. There will be no naval bases for the United States in Greece. Let Ankara and its enablers in Washington and Europe worry about the effects of shutting the door to Turkey¹s membership in the EU. Turkey will be in trouble. So would Washington, its geopolitical strategy to control the oil in the Middle East. Turkey, with the soft Islamists in power could easily turn on into a hard-core Islamist country. This would be a big headache for Washington, already in trouble in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and the Middle East. Washington can understand where the nail pinches in the shoe.

Thirty-three years of occupation in Cyprus is more than enough. The daily violations of the Greece¹s airspace and territorial waters in the Aegean has to end, or at least settle it according to the existing international legalities and practice. The denial that genocide was committed against Christians (Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Slavs, and other Christian groups) for over 100 years will not make it go away. It requires recognition and closure, for the descendants of those deported and/or massacred, 33% of the Ottoman population in 1900. Over 100,000 of these Christians are in Turkey today. Not only the Europeans do not want Turkey in the EU, Cyprus and Greece have the veto as a last resort.

Being nice and toeing the Washington line by holding the hand of Ankara to the EU doorsteps at Brussels did very little for the Greeks. Even the koumparato of Costas Karamanlis with Erdogan or changing the history books to be more Muslim-friendly on the deportation and massacre of Greeks at the turn of the last century and the burning of Smyrna did not modify Turkish behavior.

Turkish government behavior is friendly until the ink on the signature dries. It happened at Lausanne in 1923 and the rapprochement between Venizelos and Ataturk in 1931. The 100,000 Greeks in Istanbul, unaffected by the forced exchange of population after the defeat in Asia Minor, are now 2,500-3,000. The tax law in 1942, the pogroms, and the expulsions in the 1950s and 1960s forced these Greeks (plus Armenians, and Jews) to pack up and leave with their suitcases. Enough is enough!

By George Gregoriou
www.greeknewsonline.com