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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (16898)	8/17/2000 5:11:00 PM
From: George Papadopoulos	Respond to of 17770

NATO`s double standards: Kosovo and Cyprus =================================== It would have been easier to have accepted the moral case for NATO`s war against Yugoslavia if we all suffered from historical amnesia or were undisturbed about the application of double standards: one for NATO`s adversaries and another for its members. Why does NATO remain silent when it comes to Turkey's repression of its Kurdish minority? It is far more brutal than Mr Milosevic`s against the Kosovo Albanians. NATO has been looking the other way as one of its own members has since the mid 80`s been busy obliterating more than 2,500 Kurdish villages and forcibly removing 2,000,000 Kurds from their homelands. So far we have yet to hear an explanation of the distinction between Yugoslavia's and Turkey`s behaviour towards their respective minorities that merits such different responses from NATO. And if the question's implications were not so tragic it would be amusing to hear a NATO spokesman explain with a straight face the political differences between Iraqi and Turkish Kurds. When contemplating his options about the Jews and Gypsies Hitler once remarked `who remembers the Armenians? ` He was quick to learn from Turkey's genocide of the Armenian people. Our memories must be getting shorter; or we find more comfort in ignorance. But, just as over the introduction of the evil of genocide into the 20th century, we forget that it was again Turkey, not Mr Milosevic as we have been led to believe by misinforming media, who introduced the innovation of `ethnic cleansing` into post war Europe. This time Greek-Cypriots were the beneficiaries during Turkey`s land grab and forced partition of Cyprus in 1974. In order to create an exclusive area for the Turkish-Cypriot minority, until then living throughout the island, and control it, nearly half of all Greek-Cypriots were forced from their ancient homelands. In a policy of ethnic cleansing so rapid and thorough of the 200,000 Greeks living in the north fewer than 600 remain. Thousands of fleeing civilians were bombed and massacred by the advancing Turkish army. The raping of Greek women was so widespread the Orthodox Church felt compelled to relax its prohibition on abortion. The European Council exhaustively documented the atrocities but the magnitude of carnage was so great the report was quickly withdrawn from circulation lest Turkey was unduly embarrassed. The brief crisis barely registered in our consciousness and headlines, Cyprus being a small island there were no adjacent countries to destabilise with refugees, no alarmist talk of a wider conflict or of starting another world war. The `Cyprus problem` was quickly forgotten but for the resolutions spewing out of the UN. Do not dwell on NATO`s outrage then or the criticism and punishment meted out to Turkey since for there has been none. The lesson was not lost on Mr Milosevic. He could have just as easily gotten away with it but for one small miscalculation: Yugoslavia was not part of NATO. To this day Turkey continues to systematically erase all traces of the 3,000 year-old Greek-Cypriot presence: place names are changed, churches and monasteries destroyed, history falsified as ancient Greek ruins become `Roman`, and mainland Turks brought in to settle in Greek homes and change the occupied area's demographic character. Twenty-six years on and not one Greek-Cypriot refugee has been allowed back home. No action whatsoever has been taken either to end the illegal Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus or to press for the implementation of Security Council resolutions demanding the withdrawal of Turkish mainland settlers and occupation forces and the return of refugees to their rightful homes. Safe in the knowledge that its actions are tolerated Turkey refuses to come to the negotiating table unless Greek-Cypriots abandon their funny ideas about getting a settlement based on UN resolutions. It may be as difficult as it is unrealistic, it is often said, if not mad or beyond NATO`s mandate, to do anything forceful about China and Tibet, Russia and Chechnya, Indonesia and East Timor, India and Kashmir, Israel and Palestine or Lebanon, Rwanda. The list grows longer. But surely some form of pressure can be brought to bear on one of NATO`s own. As President Eisenhower said in 1956 when he intervened to end the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel, international rule of law is meaningless if there is one set of standards for your friends and another for your enemies. There is no suggestion that bombs should drop on Ankara any more than on Moscow, Beijing or Tel Aviv. But now is the perfect time for NATO to quietly point out to Turkey they are finding it increasingly difficult to excuse and tolerate from their `friend and loyal NATO ally` the kind of behaviour that allegedly made them take action in Yugoslavia. The longer NATO stays silent about Turkey's behaviour the more profound the ambivalence it inspires about its moral justification for reversing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo by raining bombs on Belgrade. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Justice4Cyprus.com team. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Martin Luther King justice4cyprus.f2s.com (Europe) justice4cyprus.com (USA) The Dimensions of the Cyprus Problem: The 200,000 Greek Cypriot refugees created as a result of the Turkish invasion in 1974 would correspond to: -120.000.000 in the ex USSR -110.000.000 in the US -32.000.000 in the F.R. of Germany -22.000.000 in Britain -21.000.000 in France