DAYDREAMS ARE UNPRODUCTIVE
\nONLY THE FACTS COUNT
\nMahmut Esat Ozan<\/p>\n
In this day and age of the INTERNET revolution, the web sites have
\nbeen swarming the computer screens. They are everywhere. It’s almost
\nimpossible to ignore them. Most of these web-sites are designed to
\nfulfill a necessary and beneficial function. Others are truly the
\nepitome of the expression ‘junk mail,’ or the paradigm of the word
\n‘trash.’ Yet they proliferate uncontrollably. Some of them are very
\nconspicuous, to say the least. At times their graphics are bleeding
\nwith discordant colors, almost always with gaudy hues. They seem to
\nscream at the browsers, daring them to disregard the challenging
\nmessages cleverly hidden within the bowels of their enticing, but
\ndeceptive verbiage.<\/p>\n
GREEK SOUL, GREEK ACTION
\nOne such web-site caught my attention recently. The following
\nmessage was displayed in large letters on the screen:<\/p>\n
“HELLENES
\nThe struggle for the liberation of the last enslaved Greek lands:
\nNorth Epirus-(Albania), North Macedonia, East Thrace-(Turkish Trakya),
\nAsia Minor-(Anatolia), North Cyprus-(TRNC) has started.
\nThe brilliant progress of our Greek ancestors has to continue in
\nthe same manner. A historical responsibility has passed on upon us.”
\nOUR GOAL IS GREAT HELLAS. OUR CENTER IS CONSTANTINOPLE.”<\/p>\n
Following these outrageous statements, a Greek Military Evzone-like
\ncartoon character appears and walks towards the Turkish flag, which is
\nspread out on the ground, and begins to urinate on it. This disgusting
\nevent repeats itself continuously, on a loop, every three or four
\nseconds, until one decides to change the web site, or turn off the
\ncomputer.
\nThere have been other similar cases: In their typical fashion, even
\nthe official members of the Greek government cannot help but use the
\nmost pejorative words to describe their fellow diplomats, the Turks. It
\nis quite ironic that right after Turkey was admitted to the European
\ncustoms union, the Greek government’s official spokesman Telemahos
\nHytiris used the most friendly words he could muster and said the
\nfollowing: “The Hellenic government ‘dropped’ the veto without securing
\nany compromise by the Turkish government. At the same time, Hellas was
\nopening the door of civilized Europe for the BARBARIC MONGOLOIDS, the
\nTurks.”
\nHere’s another gem of a statement I was able to glean recently. It
\nsaid, “…many web sites were created by Turkish “students” throughout
\nthe world. And in their amateurish ways, they try to present liberated
\nThrace in Hellas as a place where Turks are oppressed. But what can we
\nexpect from a MURDEROUS BUNCH, who have even ‘converted’ the genocide of
\n2.5 million poor Armenians, into a massacre of Muslims and Jews.”<\/p>\n
WHERE DOES THIS HATRED COME FROM?
\nIt is not a well-kept secret that Greeks and Turks did not get
\nalong too well in the past. Of all the nationalities integrated under
\nthe aegis of the Ottoman rule, the Greeks and to a certain degree the
\nSerbs were most resentful of not being independent. It is only natural
\nthat the governed should resent their rulers and the Turks were their
\nrulers for 400 years, until the middle of the 19th century.
\nTurks were also victorious in a fairly recent war in 1919-1922, a
\nGreek invasion instigated by the then British Prime Minister Lloyd
\nGeorge, and the First Lord of the British Admiralty Winston Churchill.
\nThis senseless intrusion onto Turkish soil in Anatolia, and their
\nhumiliating defeat at the hands of their former rulers, the Turks, could
\nbe counted as the prime source of their frustration. This, of course,
\nled to the Greeks’ unbearable inferiority complex.
\nThere was a period of relaxation of tensions on both sides. A
\nrapprochement of sorts was initiated by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk during the
\nearly Thirties. This lull lasted until the end of the Second World
\nWar. I remember during those feverish days of the war Turkish
\ngovernment-owned cargo ships smuggled tons of wheat cut from their
\nmeager supplies of food stuffs, maneuvering through the hazardous,
\nmine-infested waters of the Aegean Sea to reach Greece, so that their
\nneighbors would not starve. In the process Turks lost scores of their
\nown citizens and vessels.
\nThis feeling of closeness and empathy toward one another slowly
\ndissipated. Through the demise of Ataturk, then of the elderly leader
\nof Greece, Eleftherios Venizelos, the short-lived d\u00e9tente between the
\ntwo nations was no more. Taking its place was now the Greek experiment
\nwith international Communism, which ended in 1946 with the inauguration
\nof the Marshall Plan, and by the full Nato membership of Greece and
\nTurkey in 1952.
\nThe Tri-partite treaty of 1959-60 among Great Britain, Greece, and
\nTurkey, granting the Turkish and Greek Cypriots an independent status,
\nfollowed by massacres, the Greek Army Colonels’ coup, then the Turkish
\nmilitary intervention to save the Turkish nationals, the 24 year-old
\nstalemate continuing on the island of Cyprus have all contributed to the
\npresent day state of affairs between the two neighbors.<\/p>\n
A LASTING PEACE IS NOT YET AROUND THE CORNER
\nAs long as the Greek-American lobby, the Greek Orthodox Church, and
\nthe ethno-centric Greek organizations operating as propaganda machines
\nare around us, there will be no chance for the cessation of hostilities
\nemanating from their side, targeting continuously the interest of
\nTurkish people everywhere.
\nThe website mentioned earlier, is but one of duzens of similar
\nsites spewing venom, Greek style, against anything Turkish, 24 hours a
\nday. Never mind the fact that Turkey is four times the size of Greece
\nand six times more populated than their country, the arrogance displayed
\nby the likes of Theodoros Pangalos in Greece and Glafkos Klerides in
\nsouthern Cyprus is incomprehensible at best.
\nA further striking example of unbelievable audacity is witnessed in
\nthe case of Greeks’ insistence in calling the city of Istanbul by its
\nprevious name of CONSTANTINOPLE, though its name was changed 537 years
\nago when the city was conquered by the Turks. Today no one in his right
\nmind dares to call New York by its old Dutch name of New Amsterdam;
\nLeningrad in Russia is now called St. Petersburg; the name of Stalingrad
\nis replaced by Volgagrad; In China the old Peking became Beijing; the
\nDominican Republic’s Ciudad Trujillo adopted the name of Santo Domingo:
\nZimbabwe’s old name was Rhodesia, and its capital, the former Salisbury,
\nproudly calls itself Harare. These changes have all been accepted
\nofficially by everyone in the world. However, Greeks are determined to
\ngive Istanbul the name of Constantinople.
\nJust to add a little color to this writing, let me give you a few
\nincomplete lines of a popular American song which dominated the HIT
\nPARADE TV programs for several weeks during the Fifties:<\/p>\n
“…Take me back
\nto Constantinople,”
\n“No, you can’t go
\nback to Constantinople,
\nNow it’s
\nIstanbul, not Constantinople.”
\n“Why did
\nConstantinople get the works?”
\n“That’s nobody’s
\nbusiness but the Turks’!”<\/p>\n
.ATTACKS ON WHAT IS
\nCACROSANCT FOR THE TURKS
\nAs if the above intransigence wasn’t enough, the Greeks now seem to
\nhave started a different agenda comprised of bold-face lies, and savage
\nattacks against a legendary leader whom every Turk considers being
\ninviolable.
\nNot so long ago, very laudatory words were spoken on the pages of
\nMiami’s prominent Spanish daily, EL NUEVO HERALD. The article was
\nentitled: ATATURK, TURKEY’S GREAT HERO, written by a Cuban born writer
\nand dramatist, Rolando Francisco Bravo. Mr. Bravo was criticizing the
\nGreeks and Armenians who had intimidated a film actor who had promised
\nto portray Ataturk in a movie. Mostly-Greek-Americans, who constantly
\nclaim to be the originators of democracy, human rights, and of fair
\nplay, alongside with their ideological partners, the Armenian-Americans,
\nunfairly flooded the actor’s office and his home with thousands of
\nletters, telegrams, e-mail messages and threatening phone calls. What
\nmade the author mad was their use of very pejorative ugly language
\ndescribing Ataturk. They were calling him a mass murderer and the
\nsodomizer of children. Mr. Bravo urged the British movie producer
\nTarquin Olivier, the son of the famous actor Sir Lawrence Olivier to
\nfind an actor worthy of his project and not to buckle under the pressure
\nof those ‘radical immigrants.’
\nA few days later, a nasty reply entitled THE CRIMES OF ATATURK
\nappeared on the pages of the same newspaper where the Bravo article was
\npublished earlier. The letter penned by the Director of the AMERICAN
\nHELLENIC MEDIA PROJECT (AHMP), a lawyer of Greek origin “residing” in
\nsouth Florida. Our inquiries found him with no local address or phone,
\nand no local registration with Florida’s Bar.
\nHis letter was replete with every kind of stereotypical falsehoods,
\nslanders and out and out ridiculous statistics imaginable. Among the
\nmost unbelievable claims he had was the statement that the Turkish
\ntroops upon “invading” Izmir (their own city), and burning it to a
\ncrisp, had managed to “butcher 200,000 Armenians and Greeks.”
\nGiven the fact that this alleged monstrous massacre took place in
\nonly a single day boggles the mind. The Turkish troops recaptured the
\ncity on September 9, 1922. Since we are told that all remaining
\nforeigners left the port of Izmir during the next 24 hours, his
\noutrageous figure of 200,000 could have made the Turks the world’s
\ngreatest military logistic performers. What the Turks had accomplished
\nwould have been a super human miracle of sorts.
\nI happen to have an American-educated nephew who works at the NATO
\nheadquarters in Izmir. I asked him to do some research for me on the
\npopulation of Izmir at the time of the great fire, and the massacres
\nblamed on Turks. Cuneyt expeditiously sent me the following e-mail
\npertaining to the break-down of different ethnic groups living in Izmir
\n(census circa 1915. The 1922 records were not available, they had
\nperished during the fire.)<\/p>\n
Greeks……………….55,000<\/p>\n
Jews…………………..21,000<\/p>\n
Armenians……………10,000<\/p>\n
Osmanli(Turks) 114,000<\/p>\n
British,French,<\/p>\n
German,Italian………..50,000<\/p>\n
As one can see, the sum total is only 250,000 people. Since the
\nnumber of Greeks and Armenians did not go beyond 65,000 souls, in order
\nfor the Turkish military to be able to massacre 200,000 people of their
\nethnicity, they had to transport into the city of Izmir an additional
\n135,000 from other parts of Turkey so that they could comply with the
\nquota shown in the letter and ‘butcher’ them there. It is a mystery how
\nthey accomplished this Houdiniesque legerdemain and how theTurkish Army
\naccomplished this feat in such a short time and then magically disposed
\nof the bodies of those unfortunate victims of theirs. Oh! I almost
\nforgot, the Turkish armed force units are also accused, in that letter,
\nof snatching the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Izmir, the Metropolitan
\nChristosomos oout of his Cathedral while he was saying Mass and killed
\nhim and dismembered his body in the street. The perplexing question is:
\nWhy was he singled out? Wasn’t he and the others in the church part of
\nthe 200,000 to be ‘butchered?
\nThough all of this doesn’t make sense to us, it is logical to the
\nGreeks and Armenians who have lied so many times that they believe their
\nown fabrications. It’s that simple.<\/p>\n
Daydreams, or call them hallucinations, are unproductive. They
\ntend to make their perpetrators the laughing stock of true historians.
\nAs fiendish, diabolical and contemptible as they may be, they are
\nnevertheless as transparently deceitful. And as long as we allow them to
\npull the wool over the eyes of those who do not bother to search for the
\ntruth, the unsuspecting bystanders will be watching and approving,
\ninadvertently, their dishonest political charades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DAYDREAMS ARE UNPRODUCTIVE ONLY THE FACTS COUNT Mahmut Esat Ozan In this day and age of the INTERNET revolution, the web sites have been swarming the computer screens. They are everywhere. It’s almost impossible to ignore them. Most of these web-sites are designed to fulfill a necessary and beneficial function. Others are truly the epitome […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":782329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[794],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prof-mahmut-esat-ozan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}