Re: Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs


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Posted by MERT-TURK on November 27, 2001 at 11:27:28:

In Reply to: Re: Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted by Victor on July 16, 2001 at 17:33:48:

WHAT ABOUT THE TURKISH GENOCIDE IN THE BALKANS?

Recently, there seems to have been a concerted effort by some elements in the Greek communities worlwide, to once again defame all things Turkish and to misrepresent Turkish history to the unsuspecting recipients of their hateful message. This observation is based on three events which took place at about the same time but in places as far apart as Greece, Australia and the United States of America. According to a news article in The Turkish Times (June 1, 1998 - page 1), Athens New Agency ("ANA") had reported that those Greeks in Selanik (Thessaloniki) whose grandparents migrated from Black Sea areas of present day Turkiye (Turkey) and call themselves "Pontians" now advocate erection of an anti-Turkish monument to "...commemorate the 1914-1923 genocide of the Pontians by the Young Turk movement of Kemalist forces..." Then, also according to ANA, there would be a conference entitled "The Turkish government and Ethnic Cleansing" in New York between June 6 and 8, 1998, hosted by the Greek Federation of Pontic Societies, among others. Last but not least, according to an e-mail message received from Sydney, Australia, a new course, "Greek genocide" is now offered at Macquire University , thanks to the fund raising efforts of some Greek groups there. If all of the above news articles are true, then Turks are up against yet another vilification and defamation campaign worldwide., which must be dealt with in some way.

These allegations above, simply put, add insult to injury. Take it from me. Look at my last name: Kirlikovali. It means "a person from Kirlikova" in Turkish. Kirlikova is the name of a little village near Selanik, which was under Turkish rule prior to the bloody balkan wars and which is now under Greek rule. This village was populated by ethnik Turks, like thousands of other villages around at the time. Turks clearly constituted the majority of population there. And yet, all I know about my grandparents, whom I never met or even known to have existed, thanks to Greek butchery and wholescale massacres, is this: In the year 1912, trains full of "Turkish babies" with few babysitters were making what turned out to be their last scheduled runs to Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire at the time. Among these tiny passengers was my father... A little hand-written note was pinned on his tiny shirt: Akif's son Ratip. Born 1911. Kirlikova. " This is all I know about my father's side... All the moms and dads, of course, stayed behind to defend their country against

blood thirsty Greek invaders who betrayed against their motherland... in a time of war, no less! This treason of the most shameles kind was unfortunately rewarded by the Greek success in "ethnically cleansing" Turks of the area between 1911-1914... Turkish babies and young children were saved only by the grace of those "trains of compassion"... All able bodied civilian men and women chose to make one last stand, not unlike "Alamo" if you have to compare it to the American history, and, sadly enough, none made it back... My father was cared for by the Turkish State. He was taken to "Dar-Ul Eytam" (in ottoman Turkish, which means "Yetimler Evi" in modern Turkish, and which translates into English as "Orphans' Home") in Bebek, Istanbul. Then he attended public schools in Istanbul and Bursa. Finally he was accepted to Istanbul University, Forestry Department, created and staffed by Jewish professors fleeing Greek persecution in Selanik and Nazi persecution in Germany. My father graduated in 1939 as a Forest Engineer and served Turkiye with distinction for 34 years before passing away in 1973. He married my mother in 1940 in Bursa and together they had 8 children. One of those children, born in 1952, is writing this article right now... My mother's story is also connected to the unspoken and little known "Balkan Genocide of Turks", but it involves the brethren of the Greeks, the Serbians, who are equally brutal when it came to ethnic cleansing...

I was never surprised , for example, as to why the Greeks were the only ones supporting the Serbians during the unspeakable horrors of the Bosnian Genocide of 1992-1995, when the whole world was against the Serbians.. Serbians and the Greeks, after all, seem to share "the same values"... I was also not surprised when the Serbians started burning the part of Sarajevo they were forced to surrender to Bosnians as a result of the Dayton peace accords... After all, their brethren, the Greek invaders, did exactly the same to Izmir back in September of 1922, when their ruthless and bloody invasion was bravely repulsed by the Turkish independence effort... The Greeks torched the beautiful port city of Izmir, because, they reasoned, "If I can not have it, Turk should not enjoy it"...

But I must say I was quite startled when the descendants of those invading barbaric Greeks made and recently aired a film at PBS which deliberately misrepresented this tragic part of history to unsuspecting viewers when they claimed in their "documentary" that the Turks were the ones who torched Izmir...

Unfortunately, to some "biased" minds, this was totally acceptable, because the Greek can never do anything wrong and that Turk must have done what the Greek is saying... Those "biased" minds never once asked themselves the most logical question "why would a victorious force trash its wins? Why would a person burn his own home?" What Greeks did in Izmir in 1992 was exactly the same thing as the Serbians did in Sarajevo in 1995: if you can not have it, torch it... If you can not bend it, break it... If you can not cleanse it, kill it...

What Greeks perpetrated in the Balkans in 1911-1914, in Western Turkiye and Izmir in 1919-1922, and in Cyprus in 1963-1974, are parts of the same jigsaw puzzle that "pro-Greek West" seems very reluctant to put together... What Russians did to Crimean Tartars in 1852-1868, and Caucasuian Turks in 1877-1895, and what Serbians did to Bosnians in 1992-1995 are not totally unrelated... They are all part of an even larger jigsaw puzzle that can best be put togeher after reading the book "The Ottoman Turks", by Professor Justin McCarthy of the University of Kentucky. Without knowing the backdrop against which the history unfolded would be a travesty of truth and justice. It would also be unfair, unethical, unwise, untrue, and inhuman... Adjectives which best describes the actions of some Greeks who want to erect that anti-Turkish monument today .. They are taking a slice of history, "whiting out" the backdrop, edit it in a manner best fitting their distorted truths, and shoving them down the throats of unsuspecting public. My advice to anyone who hears Greeks make accusations against Turks is simple: please do yourself a favor and hear the other side of the story... After all, Greeks are the people who torched Izmir and then told the world Turks did it.... Need I say more?

As for me, I do not hate Greeks...Never did, never will... That is because we were never taught to hate anyone, like some Greeks or Armenians are taught to hate Turks... That is a fact... Take it from me, whose paternal grandparents were totally decimated by Greeks in 1911-1914... I grew up in Izmir... My childhood was as pleasant as one can imagine...Every 9th day of September, there would be processions celebrating independence of Izmir... But to a kid growing in Izmir, it meant free candy, flags, hats, toys, etc... It meant fun...Not hate for Greeks... In Turkish schools, we were taught these sad episodes in history, but never to hate Greeks or anyone else...We grew up with Ataturk's principles: "Peace at home, Peace in the world"... This motto is engraved in every Turks heart and mind... (That is probably why Turks never retaliated against Armenians during 1973-1985 when Armenian terrorists assassinated more than 70 innocent Turkish diplomats and their families or friends... Who can argue against such restraint? That is the direct result of years and years of indoctrination with Ataturk's principle on peace at home and abroad...)

It baffles me, therefore, when some of Greeks come up with stupid ideas like erecting an anti-Turkish monument... Who are you kidding? Clean up the blood stains in your hands first, and then talk about erecting monuments... If Turks start erecting monuments about Greek atrocities, every corner of the Balkans and Anatolia would have to be covered with anti-Greek monuments...

As to why these Greeks want an anti-Turkish monument after what they did to Turks of Selanik? I have no idea...

It's all "Greek" to me!...

Sincerely,





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