Dr. Pipes and Cyprus

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), May 16, 2007 at 10:05

Dr. Pipes i.al. stated :

> Erdoğan and his team (...) displayed competence at governing, handling well (...) Cyprus .

Personally , I am quite unable to follow all the abstruse and tortuous paths that led Dr. Pipes to this laudatory conclusion . I only suspect he visibly shares Erdogan's standpoint and approves of his measures on Cyprus politics .

These measures don't differ in any way whatsoever from what the militarists (="secularists" in his terminology ) did . Cyprus is another example where the 'bad Islamists vs good Secularists' story doesn't hold water. Churches are changed into mosques or stables with chapels and monasteries plundered , defiled with Islamic-Kemalist symbols and/or levelled to the ground . All place-names have been Turkified . Almost all traces of Hellenic civilizations on the island are obliterated . A 30.000 strong well-equipped occupation army controls all Northern Cyprus . In every village new mosques are built and imams play a major role in local life . Masses of Anatolian peasants have been imported and settled there and the puppet pseudo-state run and fianced by Anacara - the only other state that has recognized Northern Cyprus is Turkey of course - presents them to the naive world as genuine "Cypriote Turks" whose rights must be papramount in any future solution of the Cyprus issue .

True , the borders have been opened and the Greeks can travel to see their places of birth and recollections - if they have courage enough . But even if they do, what they see there is not part of their civilization . It's a copy of Turkey with all its notorious attributes . Seas of Ottoman flags , statutes and portraits of Gazi Mustafa Kemal everywhere , jingoistic slogans and despise of the Turks towards the yunanlilar (the Greeks) and all they stand for .

If nonetheless Dr. Pipes calls it "handling well Cyprus" , then I can only admire his ingenuity in applying the word "well" in this context .

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