SANCTIONS MUST BE IMPOSED ON TURKEY
By Theodoros Karakostas
Assyrian International News Agency
June 2 2008
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.