U.S. NATO CHIEF BLAMES TURKEY FOR ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING’ OF GREEKS, INCLUDING OWN FAMILY
By Amir Oren
Ha’aretz
Thu., October 15, 2009 Tishrei 27, 5770
U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis, the senior American officer in both
the U.S. European Command and NATO, blames Turkey for violence against
its Greek minority, including his own family, almost 90 years ago.
In a first-person book he published last year, before he took over
as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), Stavridis termed
Turkey’s moves "ethnic cleansing" and a "pogrom," whose victims
included his grandparents, expelled from their hometown of Izmir,
and his father’s uncle, who was killed by violent anti-Greek Turks.
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Fighter planes from United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and
other elements under Stavridis’ command were to have taken part in
the Anatolian Eagle exercise, from which the U.S. withdrew earlier
this week, after Turkey barred Israel from participating. Stavridis
is closely supervising the upcoming American-Israeli Juniper Cobra air
and missile defense exercise, and is scheduled to visit Israel soon.
After being nominated to his current position, a mere year after
publishing these charges against Turkey, Stavridis dropped the
negative reference to Turkish treatment of his family and other ethnic
Greeks. His current, sanitized version depicts Turkey as a starting
point for a one-stop journey west to America.
Stavridis, a 1976 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, was born in
Florida and hardly speaks any Greek. As a child, he lived for two
years in Athens, where his father, a U.S. Marine Corps officer, served
in the American Embassy alongside a U.S. Navy officer whose daughter
Stavridis later married. The four-star admiral is widely acclaimed as
a brilliant officer, with a Ph.D. in international relations and an
impressive record of command and staff positions. Currently, he wears
two hats: In addition to his job at NATO – of which Turkey is a member,
with forces serving in Afghanistan and working to prevent terr across
its border with Iraq – he heads the U.S. European Command (EUCOM),
which includes Greece, Turkey and Israel among its dozens of countries.
A prolific writer of books and articles, with his own blog ("From
the Bridge") on the EUCOM web site, Stavridis kept a journal of
his experiences during the 28 months he commanded the destroyer
USS Barry, from early fall 1993 to December 1995. During that time,
the Aegis-class warship, armed with powerful radar and anti-missile
missiles (of the sort taking part in Juniper Cobra), was deployed in
crises the world over – off Haiti, in the Mediterranean and in the
Persian Gulf.
In 2008, before he learned he would be appointed NATO’s military chief
– the first ever from the navy – he published his 1990s journal as
a book, "Destroyer Captain: Lessons of a First Command." Thus the
manuscript he authored in his late thirties, as a relatively junior
Commander, was launched into the public domain more than a dozen
years later, when he was five ranks higher.
In "Destroyer Captain," Stavridis does not try to be diplomatic. "In
the early 1920’s," he wrote, "my grandfather, a short, stocky Greek
schoolteacher named Dimitrious Stavridis, was expelled from Turkey
as part of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (read pogrom) directed against Greeks
living in the remains of the Ottoman Empire. He barely escaped with
his life in a small boat crossing the Aegean Sea to Athens and thence
to Ellis Island. His brother was not so lucky and was killed by the
Turks as part of the violence directed at the Greek minority."
The "most amazing historical irony I could imagine," according to the
author, was when a multinational NATO exercise off the coast of western
Turkey brought him to the place his grandfather was forced out of: "His
grandson, who speaks barely a few words of Greek, returns in command
of a billion-dollar destroyer to the very city – Smyrna, now called
Izmir – from which he sailed in a refugee craft all those years ago."
In an interview about "Destroyer Captain" on the U.S. Naval Institute
web l let others decide if it’s a good book, but I truly believe it
is an honest book."
He was, however, less than fully candid last March, during his Armed
Services Committee confirmation hearing. The ethnic cleansing he
sharply rebuked in the book (and which he contrasted with U.S. efforts
worldwide to prevent) underwent some semantic cleansing. "It’s probably
worth noting that although I’m ethnically Greek, my grandfather was
actually born in Turkey and came through Greece on his way to the
United States," he said, as if equally proud of his double origin,
much like the child of divorced parents boasting that he now has two
families rather than only one.
Last July, having visited Turkey as NATO and EUCOM chief, he again
chose similar words to describe his personal connection to the country
that ill-treated his grandparents. "Turkey is a vital and important
NATO ally," he blogged, "and for me it was a chance to return to the
nation from which my grandfather and grandmother emigrated to the
United States, after stopping briefly in Greece."
The Turkish military is not in the habit of ignoring criticism,
even from fellow officers. Last February, when Haaretz reported the
stinging attack on Turkish actions in Cyprus and against Armenian
civilians voiced by Israeli Ground Forces commander Maj. Gen. Avi
Mizrahi, the uproar in Ankara made Israel Defense Forces Chief of
Staff Gabi Ashkenazi call his counterpart, Gen. Ilker Sasbug, to
distance the IDF from Mizrahi’s "personal" opinion.