The European Union has just published a briefing paper on minorities in Turkey. The fact that the European Union is addressing issues of minorities in Turkey is itself positive, but utterly useless without the imposition of sanctions upon Turkey. To the average observers of the current plight of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek minority in Turkey, the conclusions of the European report about their problems and the prospect that the Patriarchate itself may be doomed to extinction is not exactly a new revelation.

Quite problematic is the fact that the European report only addresses the question of the Greek minority in Turkey emanating to the signing of the Lausanne Treaty. The persecution and slaughter of the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor were begun as early as 1914 under cover of the First World War. It is in the midst of these genocidal policies that Greek Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos put forward claims on the territory of the dying Ottoman Empire. It is important to mention here that several members of today's European Union, along with the United States were instrumental in assisting the subsequent rise of Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal, the horrific slaughter of Greeks and Armenians at Smyrna in 1922, and legalized through the Lausanne Treaty the ethnic cleansing of Greek populations throughout Asia Minor under the obscene phrase "exchange of populations".

The Italians, the French, and the British all supplied the Turkish nationalists of Mustafa Kemal with arms while simultaneously imposing an embargo on the Greek Army in Asia Minor. These European powers all prevented Greece from winning what should have been a war of liberation for the oppressed Greeks of the collapsed Ottoman Empire. At the Lausanne Treaty, the man who was to become the dictator of the Turkish nation (Mustafa Kemal) practically dictated the terms of "peace" and all the European powers accepted the human sacrifice of one million Greeks who were forced from their ancestral homelands.

The Lausanne Treaty was in itself an abomination that legitimized the inhuman measures of the Turkish Nationalists. That even this Treaty that ceded everything to the Turkish nationalists was violated from its inception speaks volumes about the European powers and the international political and legal system which refused to challenge Turkey's mistreatment of its minority populations. Turkish leaders from the time of the signing of the Lausanne Treaty proceeded to continually harass the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek minority, without any discernible protests.

To its credit, the report of the European Union makes reference to the policies against the minorities in Turkey during the Second War, and to the anti-Greek pogroms of September 1955. These policies however were the continuation of the genocide that was undertaken between 1914 and 1922 against the Greek populations of Asia Minor. The Turkish invasions of Cyprus in 1974 were the continuation of the events of the 1940's and 1955.

Turkish leaders have come to comprehend that the Western world values Ankara's borders at all costs, including the lives of minorities in Turkey which have absolutely no value whatsoever to the so called "international community". The Turkish diplomatic and military leadership despite their public denials, understand full well what their predecessors did to the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks of Anatolia. The United States and three European powers (Great Britain, France, Italy) were present when the Greek civilian population of Smyrna was slaughtered in 1922.

The NATO alliance was entirely indifferent in the midst of the anti-Greek pogroms in Constantinople in 1955, and during the 1960's when thousands of Greeks were driven from Turkey. Now, in fairness to the United States and the European Union, there are today protests against the mistreatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the closure of the theological Seminary on Halki. But these protests are quite likely too little, too late.

The time for analysis of the problems facing minorities in Turkey is past. Ankara will not consider such reports, especially when Islamic fundamentalists and Turkish nationalists alike bitterly oppose ceding any rights to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Turkish officials have in fact been feeding the rage of extremists in Turkey by refusing to acknowledge the Patriarch's title of "Ecumenical".

Therefore, the only conclusion to be made is that any serious report on the mistreatment of minorities must proceed to recommend serious sanctions against Turkey. Turkey must be made to pay heavily for its persecution of Christian and other minorities by being officially barred from joining the European Union. The United States in turn will remain a hypocrite by continuing to bestow military and economic assistance upon a country that so disregards the lives of its minority populations. In short, Turkey must be treated as any pariah country that so blatantly violates religious freedom and human rights.

Both the United States and the relevant European countries must come to terms with the roles they played in the destruction of Christianity in Asia Minor. The United States continues to encourage Turkey's persecution of Christianity. Eight present and former Secretaries of State actively lobbied to block a Congressional Resolution that would have recognized the Armenian Genocide last year. It would be very difficult to improve the plight of Christian minorities in Turkey today, while simultaneously expressing support for Turkish genocide denial when Turkish instigated genocide is the very reason why Christians in Turkey today are endangered.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate is endangered because of what transpired in the past. The difficulties of the Ecumenical Patriarchate preceded the Treaty of Lausanne. Historically, it may prove to be that the Treaty of Lausanne was a death warrant for the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Christianity in any land or territory under Turkish rule.

By Theodoros Karakostas
www.globalpolitician.com