17 January 2003 

SYMPOSIUM ON CYPRUS 

ANKARA, TURKISH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY BUILDINGS,

SENATE HALL

 SPEECH BY HARRY SCOTT GIBBONS

I am the author of the book called "The Genocide Files," written in English. It describes in horrifying detail the several attempts by the Greeks of Cyprus to exterminate their fellow countrymen, the Turks, in the 11 years from 1963 to 1974.  

Over the past five years it has been bought and read by tourists to the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, which means that people in Europe, particularly Britain, have been learning more about the events that have led to the present state of affairs than Turks have themselves. This is simply because all too few Turks can speak English, despite the desire to enter the European Union, where English has become the common language.

To rectify this, and to bring to the Turkish public - people, politicians and military - what they should know about Cyprus before any decision is made on its future, a Turkish language edition of the book has now been published, with the title "Kıbrıs'ta Soykırım," (Genocide in Cyprus) and I see that many of you have the very first copies of this book with you today. 

I shall tell you something about this genocide, a summary only, but the book has all the horrifying details. First of all, let me make it clear that I support Turkey and North Cyprus, but I do not believe the European Union has any good or honest intentions towards Turkey or the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus regarding the admission of the whole island of Cyprus into the Union.  

I happened to be living in Cyprus just after its independence in 1960, while travelling the Middle East for a famous London newspaper, and was actually in Nicosia when the first shots were fired on December 21,1963, the shots that murdered two innocent Turks and injured several bystanders, the shots that signalled the opening of the first genocide attempt.

The background to this was that the island's first Constitution following independence contained safeguards for the Turkish minority, a minority that nevertheless owned 35 percent of the land, much of it in the most productive agricultural areas. These safeguards had to be written into the constitution because of the openly stated hatred of the Greeks towards the Turks, dating from the pre-independence years when the Greek terrorist group EOKA mutinied against British colonial rule, demanding ENOSIS (union with Greece) and the Turks, also under attack from EOKA, sided with the British.

The safeguards were agreed and signed by the three guarantor powers, Britain, Greece and Turkey, as well as the island's inhabitants, Greeks and Turks. Two of these protective conditions are highly relative to today's situation regarding the entry of both Turkey and Cyprus into the EU.

One was that Cyprus could never have ENOSIS. The British and Turkish view was that the Turks of Cyprus would not long survive such a union, given the almost pathological hatred of Greece towards Turkey. An example of this is the treatment of the Turks in Greece's Western Thrace.

The second was that Cyprus could not join any international organisation unless Greece and Turkey were already members. It was these restrictions that the Cyprus Greeks had to get rid of in order to attain ENOSIS, a promise they had continued to make after independence, despite having signed away their right to this; it was very soon to be shown that a Greek signature is worthless.

Just three years after signing the new constitution, the Greeks announced that it didn't work, and launched an unprovoked and murderous all-out attack on the Turks, hoping to silence them or wipe them out altogether, whichever came first, and then declare ENOSIS.

Unfortunately for the Greeks, the Turks were valiant fighters and fought back, giving time for Britain to send in troops to bring the massacre to a halt. This was when the first Green Line was ever drawn on a map, drawn across the city of Nicosia to keep the Greeks from continuing the slaughter, a line that was 11 years later extended by Turkey across the whole width of Cyprus to give the Turks their own safe haven.

If Turkey surrenders to European Union and UN demands, this famous first Green Line, two words now used all over the world to denote protection from oppression, will be removed, allowing the Greek Cypriots to cross into Turkish territory in the North and turn the Turkish occupants once more into refugees, to be dispersed with no work, no lands, no homes. This is the Kofi Annan plan.

What the Greek Cypriots could not achieve by force of arms, by genocide, the European Union and the United Nations will do for them.

What I saw in December, 1963, and the weeks and months that followed horrified and disgusted me, accustomed as I was to see death in the many wars I had reported in the Middle East. I witnessed the carnage of those first days, the brutal murders of women and children, the exhuming of Turkish families who had been bulldozed into shallow graves, the hounding and hunting down of terrified Turks fleeing their villages.

When world opinion denounced the Greeks, they callously declared they were simply engaged in a “police action” to suppress a Turkish uprising. The Turks, in other words, were responsible for their own murders. One of the many examples of this "police action" was the murder of 21 Turkish patients in Nicosia's General Hospital who were then taken to a field outside the city and fed into an agricultural shredder and turned into fertilizer.

I had no doubt at that time that this was genocide in action and this was confirmed some years later when the Greek newspapers reported that before December, 1963, a set of instructions was issued by the government to the Greek police and public outlining how to carry out the ethnic cleansing of the Turks. This became known as the "Akritas Plan," and the aim was to declare ENOSIS before Turkey had time to intervene.

But the Greeks were unable to complete their plan before the world was alerted, and I like to think that I was responsible in part for this, because it was my first dispatches that brought foreign newspaper reporters rushing in by plane.

But even in the full limelight of the foreign press, the killings continued throughout the island, and Turkey did threaten to intervene if the Greeks didn't stop. Because of this threat, the United Nations sent in a so-called "peacekeeping force". The Greeks were quite happy about this, for it was thus under UN "protection" that, for eleven years up to 1974, the new, heavily armed Greek Cypriot National Guard were able, free of outside interference, to torment, murder and loot their hapless enemies, the Turks.

Years after the first genocide attempt, the UN admitted that in 1964 some 22,000 mainland Greek troops had been smuggled into the island to help with the cleansing of the Turks. But according to U Thant, the then Secretary General, the UN troops were unable to prevent this because the landings by ship on the east coast were made "secretly" at night and were therefore not actually seen!

In 1974, Greece invaded again. This time it was to carry out a coup d'état and overthrow the president, the murderous priest Archbishop Makarios. An infamous killer of Turks and Britons, Nicos Sampson, was installed in his place. He admitted later that his sole job was to declare ENOSIS.

But civil war erupted between pro-Makarios and pro-mainland Greek forces and thousands died within a few days. Sampson broadcast a radio message to the Cyprus Turks that the fighting had nothing to do with them and that no harm would come to them. As he was talking he ordered, in true Greek fashion, that slaughter of the Turks to begin. As the Turks fled from their homes and farms in the south, road blocks were set up by a mixture of National Guard, mainland Greek soldiers and heavily armed Greek Cypriot civilians. This motley, murderous army held up the fleeing columns and looted the luggage of each person.

Then they demanded cash to be allowed to pass safely to Nicosia in the north or the British bases in the south. The hapless Turks who could not pay were dragged from cars and buses and cold-bloodedly shot to death at the roadside, their relatives and friends could only look back in horror and despair as they were ordered to drive on by the Greek killers.

This is how the Greeks of Cyprus treated their Turkish minority. Is there any reason to believe they will not treat them the same way again if the Turks surrender their northern republic and once more become a minority at their mercy? Greek Cypriot president Glafkos Clerides says the Turks will become a "protected" minority. The very fact he uses the word "protected" proves what kind of a future he has in store for them, for it will be the Greeks they will need protection from.

But by this time Turkey, after 11 years watching helplessly from the mainland, could take no more, and sent in its forces.

While Britain, the United States and the United Nations did everything to oppose and prevent the Turkish action, its troops landed in a brilliant air, land and sea operation and secured on the first day a bridgehead on the north coast and linked up with the beleaguered Turks in Nicosia (Lefkoşa), and agreed to a ceasefire.

Then that unholy trio of the UK, the US and the UN, now demanded that Turkey withdraw its forces back to the mainland, though Turkey knew that to do so would simply return the Turks to the merciless Greeks. While talks went on, the Greeks, united now against the Turkish forces and their civil war put aside, made full use of the lull in fighting to bring up reinforcements and start to squeeze the bridgehead. Knowing the Greeks intended to attack, the Turkish forces erupted from the bridgehead and went east, west and south, and three days later had occupied the northern part of the island, called a second, and final, ceasefire, and gave the Turks of Cyprus a safe haven, the first real peace and safety they had tasted since independence, 14 years before, a peace and safety they hoped would last forever. Turkey rightly called its intervention a "peace operation."

But that peace had a high price. As the Greeks, mainland and Cypriot, fled from the Turkish forces, they took revenge on Turkish civilians. The entire male populations of several villages were taken away, shot, and bulldozed into enormous, prepared graves. In other villages, women and children met the same fate. Women were raped - more than I am sure you would imagine - and little children slaughtered in the streets. Thousands were held in concentration camps or hounded down in the hills like animals And casualties among the Turkish landing forces were high.

Much has been said about the Turkish intervention to show that it was legal under the terms of the Cyprus Constitution and the Treaty of Guarantee. But what, sadly, is never mentioned is that the intervention prevented the carrying out of the second genocide operation by the Greeks, a plan that was interrupted by the Greek coup d'état and then defeated by the Turkish Peace Operation.

For it was when Turkish troops spread throughout the north that they discovered highly detailed Greek Cypriot military orders describing how each National Guard unit was to go about "cleansing" Turkish villages. It was these orders that gave the title "Genocide Files" to my book. They were codenamed "IPHESTOS," the Greek for Volcano, and the orders had been signed by the military junta in Athens.

So here was proof, written and signed proof, that the genocide of the Turks of Cyprus had been planned by the Greeks of Athens and Nicosia in collusion. The world had ignored the discovery of the "Akritas Plan," the first genocide attempt 11 years earlier. Would proof of this second attempt be also ignored? Unfortunately, it has been, for it was never brought to the attention of the United Nations, to the European Union which is so eager to accept Greek Cyprus, with its blood-stained guilt, or to any human rights organisation. Turkey has allowed it to be ignored.

If Turkey had not intervened in 1974, the evidence is that Britain would have recognised the presidency of Nicos Sampson and the subsequent union of Cyprus and Greece. And would have turned a blind eye to the genocide that would have followed, when the "Iphestos Plan" was put into operation. In fact, it does appear that "Iphestos" was actually being carried out as the Greeks retreated, with the mass murders of Turks.

There is still time to press the charge of genocide against the Cyprus Greeks, though such an action would not help Turkey's chances of joining the European Union. Even today, Turkey does not appear to fully understand the pro-Greek, anti-Turkish stand of the UN and the EU. Some years ago the UN's representative on Cyprus, Dame Ann Hercus of New Zealand, stated openly that the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus would never be recognised by the UN. And the EU representative in Turkey, Karen Fogg, declared on May 4, 2002;

"The Turks of Cyprus, in order to be able to make the correct decisions, should get rid of Turkey and Denktash. They should fill the streets, sit in the streets, and not get up until they are no longer a colony (of Turkey)!"

And this is exactly what the UN and the EU have been trying to do with their non-stop propaganda. Between them, and goaded by Greece and Greek Cyprus, they tried to starve North Cyprus into submission by a world-wide embargo. They have tried to punish this tiny republic in every way possible simply for daring to have a safe haven and for trying to live in peace. But despite the tremendous odds, North Cyprus did not collapse, thanks to Turkey's financial support and military protection. This situation remained deadlocked, with the Cyprus Turks still safe from their mortal enemies the Greeks, and it certainly looked like it would remain so.

Then, in what I see as a thoroughly Byzantine trick - a Greek manoeuvre, perhaps - the European Union encouraged Turkey to apply for membership. Immediately it did, Turkey exposed its weakness and the West saw its opportunity to move in for the kill - to return North Cyprus to the Greeks while keeping Turkey and its mighty army at bay.

I now come to the main point of my speech, with my opinion on what can happen next in Turkey's seemingly headlong and unseeing rush to join the EU (the weakness 1 have just mentioned), and what could be its disastrous consequences.

First of all, the EU is not impressed by the gentlemanly approach that Turkey is making. The EU seems to be a grouping of nations whose creed is bullying, corruption, greed and stab everyone in the back. In the EU, gentlemen finish last!

I saw what happened after the Copenhagen summit last December, Britain's prime minister Tony Blair gave what he said was "wonderful news" about Turkey's entry.

"Turkey has been given a firm date," he announced gleefully to the TV cameras. The impression he sought to give was that this was a firm date for Turkey's entry. It was no such thing. The date he mentioned was for two years later, December, 2004. And it was not for entry, but simply a meeting to examine Turkey's application, a meeting at which, Blair explained, Turkey would have to prove it had ceased its alleged "human rights violations" - unspecified, of course - which are continually complained about by Greece and Greek South Cyprus and various leftwing and communist organisations. “The Turkish army,” Blair said, “would also be forced to stay out of politics”. In most countries, the constitution establishes the army. In Turkey's case, it was the army which established the constitution and has been its protector ever since. Does the EU intend to alter the Turkish constitution? Or is that just another Byzantine ploy to prevent entry.

But before it can even be considered seriously for entry, Turkey must give up North Cyprus. And this is where the great doublecross and stab-in-the-back will take place. For it has been decided that Cyprus - the whole of Cyprus, including the Turkish north - will become a member of the European Union in May, 2004, SIX months before Turkey's application will even be considered! Where will that leave Turkey? At that point, OUTSIDE the EU.

For almost 40 years, the UN has been demanding a solution to the so-called Cyprus "problem." But the moment Turkey asks to join the European Union, the UN, in the shape of its Secretary-General Kofi Annan (or should he now be called Annanides?) miraculously produces a solution and tells Turkey and Turkish North Cyprus they have one week only in which to sign. It must be noted here that when Annan put forward his plan, Turkey was without a government and Rauf Denktash, the North Cyprus president, was seriously ill in New York. Coincidence? I also learned that the plan was first leaked to the Greeks, who were able to make adjustments in their favour before it went into its final form.

What exactly is this plan and its solution. Well, it is essentially a Greek plan, and it is so long and complicated (over 150 pages) that nobody seems able to understand it completely. But from the outline I have read, the concept is simple - the Turks of North Cyprus hand over lots of territory, including 49 whole villages, to the Greeks, and in return the Greeks hand over absolutely nothing to the Turks. And the "solution" describes how the Greeks can legally, over the ensuing years, slowly but surely spread all over the North until it is all theirs.

But this will be difficult while the Turkish army continues to protect North Cyprus. That is why the most important clause in the deal is that Turkey must withdraw its army. That is what the Greeks - fully backed by the EU - are really after. When the Turkish army goes, Cyprus, all of it, will be theirs, for the Greeks will not wait for the plan to take its course but will act immediately to overrun the North.

Once the solution plan is signed, it is final, it cannot be altered or rescinded, and Turkey will never again be allowed to send its army to protect Turkish Cypriots, no matter what happens to them, genocide included.

This is not a solution to me. This is plain surrender.

The inducement to North Cyprus to sign the plan is that they will be able to join the EU in May, 2004, and enjoy all its benefits - unspecified, of course. And once Cyprus is a member, will Turkey be allowed to follow? In my opinion, no.

It is Cyprus the EU wants, to satisfy the Greeks, who will then of course have two votes - mainland Greece and Cyprus - and become very powerful member partners, if they are not that already.

I believe Turkey must think most carefully before signing anything without ironclad guarantees about the future of the Cyprus Turks and its own EU entry. Remember that Turkey is a vast, powerful country, the size of the EU’s leading members, Germany, France and Britain. And it has the largest army in Europe. It should not knock gently at the EU door, politely asking for entry.

Why not kick the door down and announce, "Turkey is here! We have heard your demands, now hear ours!" And the first demand should be that Turkey must be allowed to join the European Union at the same time as Cyprus - not one day, not one hour, later!

Let me end my speech by saying, "Long live Turkey, long live Turkish North Cyprus, and long live Rauf Denktash."

And I would exhort Turks, in the face of this confrontation with Europe, to remember what a very famous man, Kemal Atatürk, said, and never to forget it:

"Ne mutlu Türküm diyene." How proud it is to be a Turk!