by Uzay Bulut • February 28,
2018
§ Turkish
propagandists also have been twisting facts to try to portray Greece as
the aggressor.
§ Although Turkey
knows that the islands are legally and historically Greek, Turkish
authorities want to occupy and Turkify them, presumably to further the
campaign of annihilating the Greeks, as they did in Anatolia from 1914 to
1923 and after.
§ Any attack
against Greece should be treated as an attack against the West.
Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that Turkey "gave away"
Greek islands that "used to be ours" and are "within
shouting distance". "There are still our mosques, our shrines
there," he said, referring to the Ottoman occupation of the islands.
(Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
There is one
issue on which Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and
its main opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), are in complete
agreement: The conviction that the Greek islands are occupied Turkish
territory and must be reconquered. So strong is this determination that
the leaders of both parties have openly threatened to invade the Aegean.
The only
conflict on this issue between the two parties is in competing to prove
which is more powerful and patriotic, and which possesses the courage to
carry out the threat against Greece. While the CHP is accusing President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP party of enabling Greece to occupy Turkish
lands, the AKP is attacking the CHP, Turkey's founding party, for
allowing Greece to take the islands through the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne,
the 1932 Turkish-Italian Agreements, and the 1947 Paris Treaty, which
recognized the islands of the Aegean as Greek territory.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment