May god have mercy on their souls...Th Greek Papades...
NEW STATESMAN:
August 20 2000
The ayatollah replaces Zorba
by Helena Smith
A row over identity cards is giving the powerful Orthodox priests of Greece a chance to exploit a dangerous nationalism, reports Helena Smith
Strange things are going on in Greece. The country is wrestling with an identity crisis and the Eastern Orthodox Church, feeling wronged, appears to have gone mad.
Where you think you spot a priest, you invariably discover an activist - men in black with stovepipe hats denouncing the "dark forces" behind Athens's unusually progressive government. The enlightened call them Orthodox ayatollahs.
It's worrying stuff, the sort of thing that might make Pericles really writhe in his grave. The cause of such rancour? The removal of any reference to religion on civilian identity cards. For a country in which 97 per cent of the population is Christian and Eastern Orthodox, it would seem an innocuous enough move. But in Greece - the European Union's only Orthodox state - it has had an unexpectedly explosive effect: all at once, Hellenes have had to ask themselves who, and what, they want to be. And they are doing it in a way that is not showing them in the best of lights.
Greece's spiritual leaders - the self-styled protectors of Hellenism through 400 years of Ottoman rule - retain an influence on civil life unknown in any other part of the west: they officiate at the swearing-in of governments, the inauguration of public and private projects and the blessing of private homes. In recognition of those close ties, clerics receive state salaries. In their view, the Greeks are caught up in their toughest fight yet to remain a cut above the rest; to preserve their Christian Byzantine roots from the "meat grinder" that is the EU.
Drop religious affiliation from identity cards - originally introduced by a military dictatorship in the late 1930s - and, the clerics argue, you sound the death knell of a single nation state.
The Greek prime minister, Costas Simitis, has tried to counter all this by insisting that the reform brings Greece into line with its European partners, and that "the declaration of one's religious affiliation is not only discriminatory, but offensive. It insults the right of every individual to privacy and religious freedom."
The Church, however, remains adamant. Greece's bearded clerics regard the "identity crisis" as the sort of thing that could drag the nation into "civil war". In June, more than a million Greeks (one-tenth of the population) flocked to hear Archbishop Christodoulos, the Church Primate, denounce the measure as the first step in a sinister plot to de-Hellenise Greece. "Our faith is the foundation of our identity. If you abolish one, you abolish the other," the archbishop thundered, as the crowd of rumbustious flag-wavers cheered. The scenes were reminiscent of the fundamentalist fervour that once ran riot in Iran.
Increasingly, human rights groups have begun to wonder whether Greece is a nice place, after all. Over the past ten years, Athens has been repeatedly condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for violations involving all of its religious minorities. Away from the warm, taverna-terraced beaches, fun-loving Zorbas and tourist-trampled temples, Greeks treat those who dare to be different with red-hot contempt.
Try being a Jew, Catholic, Muslim or Protestant, and you will not get far - as the ranks of the Civil Service, diplomatic corps and army so amply prove. Try being an immigrant, and you are viewed as the reason for unemployment and crime. Try mentioning ethnic minorities - officially, they do not exist, bar communities of Muslims and Roma - and you may be labelled "sick in the mind", to quote Theodore Pangalos, the country's feisty former foreign minister. Try taking a different tack in public on the country's so-called "national issues", the ones involving Turkey and other neighbours, and it is likely that you will be branded a traitor.
"Modern Greece is an ethno-nationalist state par excellence," writes the commentator Takis Michas in his forthcoming book, Ethnic Totalitarianism. "'Others' are viewed as a source of potential danger to the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Greece."
Twenty-six years after the collapse of the colonels, the fracas over the identity cards smacks of "the Greece of Christian Greeks", the rebarbative slogan that those petty officers used to give their rotten regime an acceptable allure. It also proves that liberty and equality, the values that drive democracy, are still in short supply in this, the birthplace of democracy.
I write this with a heavy heart. I am not a "mishellene", a Greek-hater, although I know I will be cast as one when this comes out. I have happily lived in and reported from Greece for the past 14 years. I think I can say that it is a magical place with some magical people.
The problem is that there are two Greeces: one that is western, modern, open, reform-minded, civic, competitive, risk-taking and international; and one that is eastern, traditional, parochial, phobic, unskilled and introverted.
The country, mercifully, is now in the hands of the former. But they are a minority - a "group of angels in a sea of devils", as one wry observer recently put it. The political spectrum is replete with members of the "other" Greece, who see civic society, with all its talk of fundamental freedoms, as reeking of anti-nationalism.
The present identity crisis has shown how far there is to go if the twain are to meet. Greece's troublesome priests show no sign of backing down soon. Archbishop Christodoulos may say he does not want to turn his flock into "fanatics", but he has seen that demagoguery works. Indeed, his fighting spirit has sent shivers down the spine of the governing Socialists.
The "eastern" Greeks, who support the archbishop's stand, can still relate to the notorious declaration of the Byzantine commander Loukas Notaras (uttered days before the sacking of Constantinople in 1453) that it would be better to see the Turkish turban in the city than the Roman cardinal's mitre. For these people, civic society is still a dirty word. They believe that they have nothing to gain from globalisation, least of all the punishing reforms required to take the nation into Euroland's new economic order. Passions are clearly on the rise. In the Church, the easterners see the embodiment of Greece's defensive national identity, the only bulwark left against the creation of a threatening, multi- cultural, open society.
"There is a very big underdog coalition from which the Church can draw its strength - Greeks who feel very insecure about the phenomenal pace of change in this country," says Professor Nikiforos Diamantouros, Greece's ombudsman and a political scientist.
Many Greeks are now praying that the identity crisis will eventually lead to a full separation of the secular and ecclesiastical spheres. "This, I hope, will be the beginning of the formal separation of church and state," says Nikos Dimou, the author of the bestselling book The Misery of Being Greek. "The Church is the wealthiest institution in this country, and it has far too much control. Greeks vote according to church dioceses, the constitution is in the name of the Holy Trinity and, even if they want to, they cannot die without it because the Church has ensured that civil burials don't exist."
There have already been calls by bishops for civil disobedience. As the government prepares to print the new ID cards, the Orthodox Church, clearly girding its loins for battle, says it will encourage people not to take possession of them.
Come 1 September, churchmen will begin collecting millions of signatures for an "informal referendum" on the issue.
Every European state is afflicted to some degree by the twin evils of populism and racism. As the only country in the EU not to border another member state, Greece differs only in the way that it perceives its own watertight identity. It remains the EU's poorest member, badly in need of crucial economic and social reforms. Within the 15-nation bloc, Greece still has the biggest labour force of civil servants and small-time self-employed.
The Greeks have experienced more years of authoritarian, right-wing rule than perhaps any other nation on the Continent. The generation born since the restoration of real liberty in 1974 is the first never to have experienced war, civil strife or major economic convulsions. Understandably, it feels more secure - as the unprecedented enthusiasm for recent rapprochement between Athens and Ankara has shown.
Now that the identity crisis is out in the open, and with this new generation in mind, it is hoped that the Greeks will finally be able to accept the idea that their own homogeneity is a myth. Already, taboos have been lifted, not least around the once sacred subject of the role of their Church.
There are few who are saying such things aloud. But, one way or another, good may come of the madness.
Helena Smith has been awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University for her coverage of Greece and the Balkans as the Athens-based correspondent for the Guardian and the Observer.
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David Howarth ! ......Greek barbarity as depicted in his book called the "Greek Adventure"
The truth which lies behind Greece's slanders against Turkey in the presence of the world is that they aim to plunder Aegean, Cypriot and Turkish lands. Yes! In the year 2000, Greece is still living with the "Megali Idea" dream.
Now let us take a look at GREEK BARBARITY.
The Greeks cannot endure books that show them in a bad light. One of the books that make them furious is the "Greek Adventure" written by the English author David Howarth. Howarth examined the 1821 revolution on the scene of the event and wrote this book after examining one by one the books, articles and journals written by British, Italian, French and German officers and journalists after returning to their respective countries.
The true events recorded in David Howarth's book "Greek Adventure" are disgraceful and loathsome.
Those who read below the several paragraphs extracted from the book in question, which divulges Greek barbarity to the world in the clearest terms, will acquire ample knowledge about what the Greeks are.
"In the summer of 1821, rebellion against the Turks erupted against the Turks. The conflagration spread so rapidly that no one can say where, why and by whom the first Turks were killed. According to official records, the rebellion was first led by the Church. The first cause of the war could be described as a religious and sacred war.
Bishop Germanos of Patras called the populace to arms by raising his cross. In those days, Patras was a prosperous and beautiful city. It was open to the outside world and a large number of Turks lived there along with the Greeks. On hearing that a crowd of people from the mountains was approaching, they withdrew to the city castle to defend themselves. Even before Bishop Germanos and the insurgents arrived in the city, Muslims and Greeks had begun killing each other in the streets. The Greeks welcomed Germanos as a saviour. The new arrivals had already begun looting the homes of the Turks. The insurgents erected a cross in the main square of the city with a ceremony. The words uttered by their leaders were: "Peace to Christians, respect to consuls and death to Turks!"
Events followed the same course in the Peloponnese. The Greeks had risen all over the peninsula and murdered their neighbours the Turks. They had done this perhaps in the name of Christianity or freedom, but above all else they had done it to despoil the Turks, to take revenge and because of the Church's jealousy and personal vengeance.
Once the massacres had begun they did not need to search for a reason. They were all thirsty for blood, that was why they were murdering. It was known that in the month of March of that year, 25 thousand Muslim families were living outside the cities in the Peloponnese and were occupied in farming. In April, as the Easter celebrations were continuing, not a single individual of these people was left alive. The corpses were left among the flowers in the fields, on soil warmed by the Spring sun. With the arrival of Summer heat, they rotted away.
This frenzied genocide perpetrated by Germanos and the other Church leaders had caused horror. Throughout the war, other leaders joined Germanos and were madly applauded.
Kolokotronis was also a leader sought by the peasants and the nobles. He had made his wealth selling horses to the British army. In return for his services, the British had awarded him the rank of major. When Kolokotronis joined the uprising he was fifty years old. He commanded a 6,000-strong special unit. His first battle ended in fiasco. His troops were routed by a Turkish cavalry force of 500. Kolokotronis ran along with his men, and he ran so fast that he left his weapons behind.
It was a tradition of the Greeks to run when the course of battle turned against them. The Greeks neither adopted a battle order like the European armies nor fought face to face with their enemy. The first thing they sought in order fight was someplace behind which they could defend themselves; this would generally be a boulder. And if they couldn't find one, they would build themselves a small wall of rocks, behind which they would seek safety, and then start firing. As they fought, they shouted obscenities at their enemy, uttered words of contempt at them and derided them. As they fired, they held their weapons at the hip and as they pulled the trigger they closed their eyes and averted their faces. They could therefore kill only a few of their enemies and when a random bullet killed someone, they forgot they were in a battle and ran to the dead person to rob him, emptied his pockets and then severed his head from his body. The economic resources of the revolutionaries were the robberies and plunders carried out by their chiefs.
The city of Monenvasia fell five months after the outbreak of the rebellion. This city and its castle were built on sharps cliffs rising from the sea. The Turks living in the city; the soldiers, state officials and traders and their families, and the other Turks from the nearby villages, had sought refuge in the castle. There was terrible starvation. Their only food was sea moss and plants. They even sallied forth desperately from the castle at night to capture and bring back a corpse. They knew the tragedy awaiting them if they surrendered to the Greeks. The Greek bandits were waiting patiently to slaughter and rape the Turks and plunder their properties. The Greeks declared to the Turks besieged in the castle that if they surrendered their lives would be spared. The priests even promised them that if they surrendered they would be put on boats and sent to the Turkish coast. Only 500 Turks were put on the boats. These 500 Turks never set foot on any land and nothing has been heard of their fate. As for the thousands of Turks left in the castle, as soon as the gate was opened, they were set on by the Greeks, were slaughtered and their possessions plundered.
This is the truth about the victory announced in Europe as "The Greek Miracle." It was not the triumph of Greek arms and Christianity in the sense understood by the Europeans.
The second fortress to fall was that of Navarone. The Turks had been promised that if they surrendered they would be taken to the North African coast and set free. The Greek who made the agreement boasted to an English colonel that: "The agreement had a single copy and I have torn it up. No one can claim any rights now." The Turks opened the castle gates, either because they believed this promise or because they had no other way out.
The Greeks immediately rushed in and massacred all the inhabitants of the city numbering some two thousand. A priest who witnessed the event later recounted how the women were undressed, taken to the seashore where they were raped then drowned; how children were beaten to death or killed by knocking them against rocks. Greeks greatly enjoyed cutting off the arms and legs of their victims. Foreigners who visited Navarone months later found it hard to endure the stench of corpses that permeated the whole city and saw dogs, rats and crows feed on corpses along the castle walls whose arms and legs had been cut off. As for the Greeks, in order to demonstrate their power to the visiting foreigners, they told them the numbers of the Turks they had killed and how they had killed them; they also presented the visitors with the Turkish boys and girls they were keeping in the ruins. They had spared the lives of these children, naked and mad with fear, to satisfy their sexual appetites.
Some twenty Europeans witnessed the barbarity of the Greeks as they attacked the fortress of Tripolitsa. One of them was Colonel Thomas Gordon from Scotland. The Colonel was a sensible, experienced and honest soldier and knew Greek well. He found the events he witnessed at Tripolitsa so horrifying that he wanted these disgraceful events to be remembered to eternity. Even today, it would be better if the stories the witnesses have recounted were not repeated. I think saying this much should be sufficient. Within two days not a soul was left alive in the city where ten thousand Turks had been living. Most of them had been murdered by cutting off their heads, arms and legs. Following this massacre, thousands of Greeks returned to their villages to hide the plunder which had by their standards made them rich. The price of slaves had dropped so low that no one wanted to own them. Because no one had buried the dead, an unbearable stench permeated the whole city, the drinking water was contaminated and a cholera epidemic broke out.
"PHILOTIMO" is a Greek word. It means "Honourable" and it is an ethnic title for the Greeks. The Greeks have, until the recent past in any event, conducted their lives on two levels: one of them being the normal world where we all live, and the other the dream world of ideals they themselves created. The first of them is the life of reality they lived in, the other the world of dreams created by themselves. A Greek may reject the facts and events known, seen and believed by everyone and may insist that they had never been or occurred. For example, it is this characteristic of the Greeks which make them exalt and praise bandits and raise them to the level of courageous knights, the defenders of noble Greek traditions. In fact, they all know by experience that the bandits and pirates they have presented as national heroes were in reality mangy, filthy, insatiable and hardened thieves. But the fact is that for the Greek, these two aspects are of equal value.
When a Greek's "Philotimo" is in question, he can never accept the facts as they are. As Lord Byron has said, "The Greeks lack the capacity to comprehend reality. Every Greek has an exaggerated opinion about Greeks."
A traveller like me who has an open mind cannot help but feel admiration for them. This may be a result of sensitivity. In the face of their amenability I felt myself indebted to the Greeks. I thought about what the cause might have been that had all of a sudden turned their ancestors into monsters one hundred and fifty years ago. The general explanation for this was the hatred they felt for the Turks after living for centuries under Turkish oppression. They had avenged themselves. But I think something else lies behind the event. Turkish rule, as is known, was not bad. Hatred cannot be an excuse for turning into monsters. I think the cause is just the opposite of what it is thought to be. Once the Greeks loved the Turks very much. They had been under the influence of the Turks for 350 years. The only thing that separated them from the Turks was the Church. In spite of being Christians, the Greeks had remained more oriental than western in their traditions and behaviour . I don't think that even today they have rid themselves of the influence of the Turks.
Only a handful of foreigners lived in Greece at the time of the 1821 revolution. Therefore Europe did not know what was happening in Greece. Because the reports sent outside Greece were written by enlightened romantics who had not taken part in the war, they were penned to reflect the Greeks' ideals. Therefore as the Europeans condemned the Turks, they were unaware that it was the Greeks who were perpetrating barbarities and had started the slaughter. While all foreign countries recognised the Greeks as citizens of the Ottoman Empire, the European public applauded them as Christians heroically waging war against Muslims.
The reason for the European's siding with the Greeks was not only their being Christian; it was also their history. In those days, education was classically orientated. Language, philosophy and ancient Greek arts were the foundation of this education. Meanwhile, a group of people known as the "Philhellenes" was guiding the Europeans' beliefs about Greeks onto a wrong path. These Philhellenes comprised scholars of classical literature, idealists, poets and conservative and romantic politicians who had spread all over Europe. They were spreading all around them a new ethnic concept the Greeks had never even thought of. According to them, the Greeks were the progeny of ancient Greeks and maintained invisibly the intelligence and heroism of the ancients.
For five whole years, the Philhellenes not only died for this delusion, they also spent vast amounts of money. This idea championed by the Philhellenes has never been correct. The present day Greeks are as close to the ancient Greeks as are the present day English to the Saxons. The blood of both nations has been mixed and adulterated by migrations and invasions over thousands of years. The ancestors of the modern Greeks, even if we discount the Turks, were the Romans, Albanians, Goths, Venetians and Slavs.
There is no doubt that the genius of ancient Greek forms the foundation of European culture, but this genius was virtually forgotten in Greece. The Greeks did not want to remember it. When they looked back, they only saw the Byzantine Empire and prided themselves on that.
The Greek revolutionaries' capture of the Turkish garrison in Corinth is also a black stain on Greek history. The fortress rose on the hills behind the city. The siege of the fortress lasted a long time. The Turkish families who had gathered in the castle were suffering horribly from hunger and thirst. As in Navarone and Tripolitsa, the Greeks had promised the Turks that if they surrendered the fortress, they would be ferried across to the Anatolian coast. The Turks, having no other option, accepted the offer and when they left the castle to go to the coast, a new chapter was added to the book of horrors. The Greeks, setting upon the defenceless people, slaughtered everyone except the young boys and girls. They did not harm the young ones because of their evil lust and their intention of selling them.
This cruel, bloodthirsty genocide by the Greeks was also extremely idiotic. As an Italian by the name of Brengeri wrote in his memoirs, "One incident is sufficient to make one understand a lot of things..." On his way to Corinth, Brengeri comes across a murdered Turk. A little further on are the man's wife and baby in a wretched condition. To help the starving woman and her baby Brengeri collects a few pennies from his companions and hands them to the woman. Brengeri leaves the woman and he has not gone a hundred meters along the road when he hears two gunshots. When he looks back, he sees that Greek rowdies who had seen him hand the money to the woman have murdered the woman and her baby to rob her of the money.
Brengeri is one of several foreigners who witnessed the genocide in Corinth. Brengeri watched with disgust as a Turkish family of a man, his wife, two children and their servants, who had been cornered, were murdered by the Greeks in his presence. Before killing the children's mother, the Greeks tore the veil off the woman's face to see what she looked like. When Brengeri pled with the Greeks to release the woman, he was told: "Give us fifty piastres and we'll release her." Leaving his companions with the Greeks and the woman, Brengeri went to a grocer he knew and borrowed the fifty piastres to give to the Greeks. Then the Greeks said: "We'll hand her to you but naked," and stripped the woman naked before releasing her. Hundreds more Turkish women were thus sold to foreigners by the Greek bandits.
The Acropolis in Athens was the most renowned of the citadels in Greece. For more than a year, 1150 Turks had been forgotten and left to their fate among the ruins of this sacred temple. No one bothered these wretched people but for the "Greek Admirers" force set up by Europeans who admired the Greeks. The "Philhellenes", who wanted to capture the Temple of Acropolis, the treasure house of Greek civilisation, from the Turks and hand it to the Greeks, attacked the citadel one night but were routed. When the Turks looked below from the Acropolis, they could see people prepared to cut their throats with pleasure.
It was lack of water that defeated this handful of Turks whom no siege or orderly assault had been able to vanquish. The winter of 1821 had been unusually dry. The cisterns cut out of rocks had dried up. By June, the Turks did not have a drop of water to drink. Taking advantage of this, the Greeks set down their conditions for the capitulation of the citadel. What they demanded was that the Turks leave their arms and half of their money to the Greeks; in return they would be allowed to board ships and go to Turkey.
When on 22 June 1822 the gates of castle opened, those who came out were not warriors but wretched people begging, "A drop of water...a drop of water.." and trying to crawl. Only 180 of them were men of an arms-bearing age. The rest were made up of the elderly, the crippled and women and children from neighbouring villages who had sought refuge in the castle. There were no ships waiting to take them away. The Turkish captives were put in the courtyard of Hadrian's Temple on the slope of the Acropolis. No one bothered them there for two days. Then the attack of Greek rowdies began. They threw the Turks out of the places where they had hidden and began to chase them in the streets. 400 people, most of them made up of ill and weak women, were murdered. Those who survived were taken under protection by the foreign consuls in Athens.
In the ten-year period from 1821 to 1832, events continued to occur at the same speed. Much Turkish blood was shed on the Greek peninsula. The events might have been viewed from a different perspective if the blood shed was the blood of only the Turkish soldier. A soldier fights and he either kills or dies, that is his duty. But if the shed blood belongs to helpless people such as women, children and the elderly, then it is called a "massacre" or "butchery" We learn from foreign sources that the Greeks carried out not just butcheries but mass butcheries. And again the same sources write how the Greeks deceived world public opinion into swallowing their butcheries as a triumph of Greece and Christianity.
As Greece accuses the Macedonians, Albanians, Bulgarians and Turks of barbarity, it should not forget that it owes them a debt of blood.
The Greeks ruthlessly murdered tens of thousands of Turks, Bulgarians, Albanians and Macedonians with the aim of adding the Balkans and Anatolia to their borders. They may have forgotten these murders that they committed, but cannot delete the fact from the pages of history.
If we were to turn these pages and transfer Hellenism's mass murders to our pages, we would have to write volumes of books.
All the same, let us recall a few of them:
On 4th July 1913 during the 2nd Balkan War, the Greeks attacked Kilkish. The city was defenceless with only women, children and the elderly present. The first targets attacked by the Greek artillery were the orphanage and the hospital. The greater part of the children and patients in these two buildings died in the shelling. Meanwhile, the Greek troops who had occupied the city looted and burned the houses and murdered their occupants, just like they did in Anatolia, Macedonia, Albania and Cyprus.
During this occupation, they raided forty villages, burned down 4,725 houses and bayoneted to death 74 people, eleven of them babies and most of the rest women and elderly people.
In the village of Akangeli they had occupied, the Greeks told some 400 villagers that they would transport them to some other place, took them to the forest where they murdered them and then stole their money and other valuables.
In the Bulgarian villages they attacked, Greek troops not only murdered anyone they came across but also raped the women and stole their money. According to official records, in three days Greek troops slaughtered 365 Bulgarians and Muslim Turks.
In the presence of a group of foreign journalists, Greek troops gathered two hundred Bulgarians of Macedonian origin in a square where they murdered them, they then loaded the corpses onto lorries and carried them to the forest where they buried them in a mass.
Also included in the report prepared by the "Carnegie Foundation Research Centre" on these mass murders committed by the Greeks are also excerpts from letters sent to their families by the Greek soldiers who had committed these murders.
Here are a few of them:
· "Here in the villages we occupy, we kill all the Bulgarians, not caring whether they are women or children."
· "Under the orders we have been given, we kill every Bulgarian we come across and burn their houses."
· "The orders are to the effect that we should kill them by cutting their throats and burn their houses. We obey these orders."
· "We bayoneted every Bulgarian we captured and cut off his head."
· "Of the 1200 Bulgarians we captured in Negrita, only 41 who were in prison stayed alive."
· "We did not leave a single Bulgarian alive in every place we passed through; we exterminated them."
· "We gouged out the eyes of five Bulgarians we had captured, and they still would not die."
The following excerpts, taken from books written by Greek officers who in 1919 attempted to occupy Turkish lands, reveal in very clear terms what the Greeks are in their own words.
Excerpts from Nikos Vasilikos's book "The War Diary":
· "Akcakoy is surrendering. A dreadful scene." P.72
· "The Turkish villages on our route are being subjected to real disasters." P.74
· "All the Turkish villages on the plain are being burned by Greek troops. With the passage of Greek forces through these places, all sides are being illuminated with the light of civilisation (flames)" p.108
· "All the villages are burning furiously. In order not to get roasted, the occupants of the villages are running out of their homes like rats." P.113
· "Afyon is being abandoned to the flames." P. 175
· "We are rapidly advancing to the village of Burnaz. The village was set on fire amid the maledictions of the Turkish ladies running about naked in the gardens to escape the fire."
· "We arrive at a town burning from one end to the other." P.187
· "Large numbers of Turks are being killed along the route. One of us advancing in the van put the muzzle of his weapon against the Turk's neck and when he fired, the Turk's head flew fifteen meters away." P.181
N.VASILIKOS, "Dairy", p.57
"We are given the task of guards in the transportation of 150 Turkish captives. All along the route, the cavalry troops are tormenting the captives; some of them are striking the captives with rifle butts and whips. The captives' attempts to protect themselves by hiding in each other's arms present a dreadful picture. It is as if they are trying to turn into a single body. Many of them pass out as we advance and we make the others carry the ones that faint."
P.APOSTOLIDES: We read the following lines in pages 20-21 of his book "MY Recollections 1900-1969".
"The elderly, the women and children had hidden in the mosque. Some of our soldiers became aware of this. Because they lacked courage like all worthless people, they were afraid of the crowd and therefore did not dare force the door of the mosque to rape the women. They started a fire by throwing dry grass they had collected from here and there through the windows. The people inside began to come out, choking with the smoke. It was then that those worthless wretches aimed at the women, the children and the elderly and murdered them. Some others related to me how they had seen the application of another method of infernal torture. Very large nails were driven into the ground. The plaited hair of the women were passed around these nails, so that the women, unable to move, were raped in groups.
An instance of Greek barbarity witnessed by historian Arnold Toynbee is told on page 298 of his book "The Western Problem".
"At 13.00 on Friday, the 24th of June 1921, three days before the Greeks evacuated Izmit, the men of two Turkish quarters called Bahcecesme and Tepekhane were taken to the cemetery and shot in groups. I was present when on 29th June two of the graves were opened. I saw that the arms of the corpses were tied behind them. Some 60 corpses were estimated to be in those graves. A total of around 300 people were missing."
The Greek has shown his barbarity everywhere he has gone, as it happened in Cyprus in 1974...
According to an official report published in the British "The Guardian" newspaper on 2nd April 1988, 25 Turks in hospital went missing from their hospital beds during the July 1974 events. According to the report prepared on the findings of British intelligence officer Lieutenant Martin Packard, the Turkish patients had their throats cut by the Greek Cypriot nurses, their corpses were loaded onto a lorry and taken to a farm in the north of the city, where their flesh was separated from their bones, ground in a mincing machine and thrown into the sewers.
Another instance is the horrifying event Salahi Hilal, who is still alive today, went through. This is how Salahi Hilal, whose flesh was cut with a knife and his blood sucked, relates Greek cruelty:
"The Greeks and Greek Cypriots who had captured me began to cut my arms and the fleshy parts of my shoulders with the daggers they had pulled from their belts. Meanwhile a Greek officer approached them and asked the Greek Cypriots, "Is there anyone among you who hasn't drunk Turkish blood?" Some of them shouted, "We haven't," whereupon ten to fifteen people along with the Greek officer began licking the blood oozing from the cuts on my arms and shoulders. I was about to pass out when I was taken outside, I saw a friend of mine captive in their hands. His legs and arms were tied. Then a Greek Cypriot pulled the safety pin from the grenade he had taken from his belt and threw the bomb at the Turkish soldier. My poor friend was blown to pieces. I didn't want to live any more."
The Tsamourian Albanians whose lands were occupied by Greeks should not be forgotten either.
The genocide movement whose aim was the ethnic cleansing of the Tsamourian Albanians began on 27th June 1944. 2900 young and elderly men, 214 women and 96 children were murdered by the EDES bands commanded by General Napoleon ZERVAS; 745 women were raped, 76 women abducted, 32 children under the age of three put to the sword, 68 villages razed to the ground and 5800 houses and places of worship destroyed.
The Greek has always kept low in the presence of the powerful but put on a show of strength only in the presence of the weak.
This is the true blood-smeared face of the Greeks who think that they will gain something by deceiving the world with lies in order to present the Turks as "Barbarians".
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BORZA
Historian and Professor Eugene Borza who is credited as "Macedonian specialist" by the American Philological Association, and who have done extensive studies regarding the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians, had also presented in-depth analysis on the modern Greek position which claims that the ancient Macedonians "were Greek". In his In the Shadow of Olympus (p.91-92) Borza writes:
"Thus, long before there was a sufficient ancient evidence to argue about the ethnic identity--as revealed by language--of the ancient Macedonians, there emerged a "Greek" position claiming that the Macedonian language was Greek, and that thus the inhabitants were Greek."
The modern Greeks have therefore, developed a position that the Macedonians were Greek, long before there was sufficient ancient evidence to argue about their ethnicity. Yet although modern historiography had long abandoned this prematurely established "Greek" position, modern Greeks are still its most zealous defenders despite the overwhelming evidence available today, which overwhelmingly shows that the Macedonians were not Greeks but a distinct nation. Borza continues:
"For example, recent work describes the funerary stelae found in the tumulus covering the royal tombs at Vergina. These stelae date from the fourth and early third centuries, and the preponderance of names are Greek The excavator of Vergina, Manolis Andronikos, in a useful summary of the epigraphic evidence, writes: "In the most unambivalent way this evidence confirms the opinion of those historians who maintain that the Macedonians were a Greek tribe, like all the others who lived on Greek territory, and shows that the theory that they were of Illyrian or Thracian descent and were hellenized by Philip and Alexander rests on no objective criteria." Manolis Andronikos Vergina:The Royal Tombs, 83-85."
Here is Borzas answer to the Greek archeologist Manolis Andronikos:
"This argument is true enough only as far as it goes. It neglects that the hellenization of the Macedonians might have occurred earlier then the age of Philip and Alexander, and can not therefore serve as a means of proving the Macedonians were a Greek tribe."
Indeed, not only Andronakis was obviously wrong to conclude that the Macedonians were Greek, but also notice how the Greek archeologist does not point that the Macedonians might have been a separate nation. Instead he prefers to call it if not Greek, either Illyrian or Thracian, two ancient nations that can not be associated with the Balkans politics surrounding Greece, resulted from the 1913 partition of Macedonia (see below). Also notice how Andronikos used the term "like all the others who lived on Greek territory". Its like he wants to convince the reader that Macedonia has always been a "Greek territory", which is exactly what he uses as a base for his inaccurate conclusion.
Another Greek writer, Michael Sakellariou, in his Macedonia 4000 years of Greek History, 44-63 (quite questionable of accuracy title to begin with), "proves" that the "Macedonians were Greek" although he purposely avoided all evidence that does not suit such conclusion. Borza has a line for him as well:
"It is indicative of the strength of Badians case that his critics have succeeded only in nit-picking: e.g., Sakellariou, Macedonia, 534-35 nn. 52.53" (Borza, In the Shadow of Olympus p.96.)
Borza is talking about Ernst Badian from Harvard University who in his extensive research Greeks and Macedonians presented all evidence and soundly concluded that the Macedonians were distinct nation from the Greeks, which neither considered themselves to be Greeks nor were considered by the Greeks to be Greek. That is precisely what the Greek writer Sakellariou had completely and purposely avoided, and lacking any base for a well-balanced criticism, choused instead to nit-pick Badian's argument.
We can see a trend among the Greek scholars (Andronicos, Martis, Daskalakis, Kallaris, and Sakellariou) who desperately want to show the world that the Macedonians "were Greeks", though unsuccessfully. Martis' Falsification of Macedonian History was handed out to the foreign journalists in Greece and translated into many languages. Sakellarious Macedonia 4000 years of Greek History was even donated for free to the libraries throughout the United States. This exposes a well-developed propaganda strategy, to influence all those unaware that the "Macedonians were Greek." Yet the Greeks are showing the world that the "Macedonians were Greek" by avoiding all ancient and modern evidence that does not suit their purpose, and in that process they try to pass books so full of historical errors and distortions:
"The fullest statement of the "Greek" position, and also the most detailed study of the Macedonian language, is by Kallaris, Les anciens Macidoniens, esp. 2: 488-531, in which alleged Greek elements in the Macedonian language are examined exhaustively. A more chauvinistic (and less persuasive) point of view can be found in Daskalakis, Hellenism, esp. pts. 2. and 3. The most blatant account is that of Martis (The Falsification of Macedonian History). This book, written by a former Minister for Northern Greece, is an polemical anti-Yugoslav tract so full of historical errors and distortions that the prize awarded it by the Academy of Athens serves only to reduce confidence in the scientific judgment of that venerable society of scholars. The most sensible and scholarly Greek position is that laid out by Sakellariou, in Macedonia, 44-63. Lest it seem, however, that the "Greek" position is held only by modem Greeks" - (Borza, In the Shadow of Olympus p.91)
It is ironical that the book of the former Greek politician Nicolas Martis is named The Falsification of Macedonian History, when in fact he is the one who is falsifying the history of Macedonia with his historical errors and distortions. It is worrisome that the students of the countries who have nothing to do with the modern Greek politics, must be exposed to the Greek historical fabrications against one of the most dynamic powers of the ancient times - the Macedonians. But why is Greece doing this, what is behind it, why do they steal the history of the ancient Macedonians, and attempt to appropriate it as theirs?
The answer lays in the year of 1913 when Macedonia was partitioned after the Balkan wars and Greece swallowed the biggest part - 51%. There was nothing in Macedonia then that connected that land with Greece, apart from the small 10% Greek minority scattered in southern Macedonia among the overwhelming majority of Macedonians who lived throughout the country (for complete statistical evidence see the "Macedonian-Greek Conflict"). Since in 1913 it acquired foreign territory populated by non-Greeks, Greece had to provide a link that would justify its claim on that half of Macedonia. That is exactly why the Greeks claim that the ancient Macedonians "were Greek", so that if in ancient times there was a Greek tribe (Macedonians) living in Macedonia, then that land therefore is Greek (just like Andronikos points above). What is not disputable however, is that since 1913 till today, the modern Greek state continues to oppress the ethnic Macedonians who now find themselves living in Greece (see Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International evidenced in the "Macedonians in Greece"). The other northern part of Macedonia, todays Republic of Macedonia, broke out of Yugoslavia and became independent in 1991. That brought addition fuel to the Greek nationalists who are afraid now that one part of the ethnic Macedonian nation is independent, the partition of 1913 can be seen as illegal, which could lead to eventual loss of their Greek Macedonian part and subsequent reunification of one Macedonia. That is exactly why they claim that there is no modern Macedonian nation, not in Greece not anywhere, and continue to deny the basic human rights of their Macedonian minority through politics filled with paranoia, politics which without the revision of the ancient history could not breathe.
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