The Turks , the Greeks, the Russians, the Americans

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Aug 25, 2010 at 08:06

Hello , Y. !

Yours is a very interesting comment. I agree with you concerning Nasser . Probably he couldn't win against the Turks but he could at least frighten them back into common sense. Behind him and Makarios stood the USSR which did inspire panic among the Turks , didn't it ?

Now you write :

> D. It is crazy to place Greece on the same side as the Russians. Until the generals were overthrown, it was fanatically anticommunist. An obvious result of the Greek civil war.

I can hardly agree and definitely not because without the Russian help in 1947-1948 Israel would have never been born.

First, there are hardly two closer nations in terms of history, faith and culture than the Greeks and the Russians. There was always a deep respect for the older Orthodox Greek brothers in Russia. And during all those centuries of the Ottoman yoke the Greeks had one hope - that of the Russian help which in th end did materiliaze with the Russian navy in the Aegean during Catherina II's wars with Turkey and the Russian troops camping at the gates of Constantinople in 1878.

Second, "civil war" is hardly a right term to describe what was going on in Greece between 1944-1949. When the British bomb Athens, fortify the Acropolis and train a local army to rout other Greeks according to secret arrangements arrived at in Yalta and Potsdam, then it doesn't look exactly like a civil war, does it ? It was a foreign [Anglo-American] military intervention and the Soviet passivity that shaped the conflict . The Greeks were just puppets in the powerful hand of others.

Now the CIA-backed colonels with Papadopoulos organized their coup d'etat in April 1967 to prevent the foreseeable election victory of the left-centre coalition. They acted in order to "save" Greece from communism or rather out of fear that the new government would no longer slavishly follow the guidelines coming the US embassy in Athens and will rather prefer Greek national interests to the American interests.

Frankly , what did Greece win by becoming an American protectorate ? When Stalin was preparing to settle old scores with Turkey in 1945-1947 America jumped in with its nuclear bomb to protect it. And the pro-American Greeks instead of siding with the Russians supported their worst enemy because of their new masters' perfidious policy. Greece which went through the ordeal of the Nazi occupation , was betrayed in 1974 , lost Cyprus while Turkey - a former Nazi sympathizer - became more powerful , aggrandized territorially and her aggression was rewarded by her protector !!!

Why do you think the Greeks hate America so much ? Why did Greece leave NATO in 1974 ? You can't support , arm, enrich , idenify with his genocide denial lies and expect that the Greeks , the Armenians or any other decent people on this planet who care for our history and civilization will like you for that , can you ? Allying oneself with Turkish barbarity should be rewarded with love from the victims of this barbarity ? So contrary to what American ideologues keep telling us it's no irrational hatred at all . It was caused by the shameul acts of America in Greece and against Greece.

Another thing that shows that your assertion that "It is crazy to place Greece on the same side as the Russians" can't be quite correct is Makarios himself. He visited Moscow, he befriended Russians, he sought Russian help . . He was both a man of church and was supported by the massive leftist pro-Russian public opinion in Cyprus. And he was right . The only tanks the Cypriot National Guard could move against the US-made NATO weaponry of the Turk were the modified Soviet T-34 tanks. Had he not been hindered by virulent American propaganda campaign against him [ He was called "the Fidel Castro of the Mediterranean". ] he would have armed his forces much better to face the Turkish barbarians in 1974. Then history might have been quite different and Cyprus a much happier island . Yet, he was stupid enough to take American "sensitivities" into account. The Greeks lost because they trusted their enemies and were cheated into treating their potential friends as enemies.

> E. Ultimately, the main responsibility for the Greeks' problem is their own internal divisions, and not any plotting of other powers. These divisions do not only generate civil war and phenomena like EOKA B, but are a major source of corruption, as the opposition has to be bought off.<

I am afraid you're wrong here. Turkey was also very corrupt and her prime minister Menderes was even hanged on the charges. The internal divisions in Turkey were also enormous then as they are now. Yet , the CIA was never interested in either enlarging or profiting from them. So they remained dormant in the shadow of Turkish militarism . The Turks were staunchly anti-Soviet and that gave them a big advantage .

In the case of Greece the story was quite different. The Greeks were traditionally pro-Russian. Where did the 1821 movement of liberation come from ? Despite the brain-washing pro-Russian sympathies and memories could never be eradicated and Greeks saw with dismay how the US was making her arch-enemy stronger and stronger every day. The only way to control the Greeks was therefore by sharpening and amplifying their internal divisions , by supporting all , even insignificant, anti-Russian forces against the bulk of the population. This is why the colonels were first put into office by the CIA and could develop such an all-embracing terror against the left . Later when they did their dirty job they were dropped. Surely, they were cheated too as the US promised them to support them against the Turks and betrayed them too in 1974. The US needed Turkey , not Greece , to play its global game.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".