kowtowing to Erdogan and his Islamists

Kowtowing to Erdogan and his Islamists

by Marios Evriviades , Assistant Professor, Pantion University, Athens, Greece

The kowtowing of the Americans to their “old and faithful allies” the Turks, appears to have no bounds.

And this inspite of the fact that the one and only time, since 1945, that the Americans truly needed the

Turks to deliver, in March 2003 for the planned two pincher attack on Hussein’s Iraq, the Turks told them

to go do themselves once over. As a consequence of this Turkish perfidy the American Plan A for Iraq

never took place. This has meant that the Sunni triangle, the so-called triangle of death in Iraq for both

the Iraqis and Americans survived the American attack. In the below-the-top echelon of the US leadership,

it is now firmly held and believed that Turkey’s Erdogan and his islamists have shown more solidarity with their

Sunni – Baathist cohorts than with the Iraqi people as a whole and that the Turks bear quite a lot of

responsibility for the rising American death toll in Iraq. This view is especially held by the neocons in think tanks

and academe, who have traditionally carried water for the Turks in Washington and Jerusalem.

But you would not know this if you were to examine the public statements of the top leadership of the US,

from President Bush and Secretary Rice down to virtually all the political appointees of the Bush

Administration, including the State Department’s spokesman Mr. Boucher (significantly, a former

Ambassador to Cyprus).

Rice’s weekend visit to Turkey (February 5-6) is a case in point. Other than making some rudimentary comments

about anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism in Turkey (the Turks, believe it or not, hold that the Americans

caused the Asian tsunami through a secret nuclear blast and that they intentionally failed to inform Asian

countries of the coming disaster because the victims were Muslims and for the Americans “the only good

Muslim is a dead Muslim”; they also hold that the US and Israel artificially caused the 1999 deadly Turkish

earthquake in order to weaken Muslim Turkey) and that Washington and Ankara are strategic allies and

ideological boosom buddies whose differences are only minor, Rice took pad and pencil and dutifully jotted

down the “to – do” list for America’s once faithful ally: (a) no independence for Iraq’s Kurds (b) Kirkuk,

the Kurdish Jerusalem, would not be permitted to function as such (c) the PKK, now Kongra –Gel, will be

militarily hunted down in N. Iraq and, most significantly, its supporters and finances will be investigated globally

and neutralized.

And when Cyprus came up in Condi’s Turkey meetings, the Secretary’s forehead dutifully hit the floor. Cyprus

has, as of late and, significantly, even before the 24^th April 2004 referenda, when the overwhelming majority

of Greek – Cypriots refused to endorse the planned cratocide (that is destruction of a state as in genocide –

destruction of a people) of their state, become America’s favorite punching bag. Cyprus is easy to bully.

It is a very small and vulnerable state subjected to invasion and military occupation by America’s favorite ally,

that seeks security through membership in international organizations like the UN and the European Union. But

the Cypriots' moves make the Turks go mad. How dare these Cypriots defy their former masters with such

insolence? Have they learned nothing from the very recent past and their not-so-recent Ottoman one?

Apparently not. Ms Rice agrees with her Turkish hosts about these naughty Cypriots and their even naughtier

President (who the heck he thinks he is anyway, daring to talk back to the combined power of Turks, Americans

and Anglos?).

What more do you want us to do, she wonders out loud, while she does remind the Turks that back in March

2003 the Americans did not only offer them billions so that they both, Americans and Turks, could happily

attack Iraq, but they offered them, as well “Cyprus in the form of the Annan Plan”. (Quote by Daniel Fried,

senior State Department Official at a public meeting in Washington D.C June 26, 2003).

Well, why don’t you land one of your planes in our little fiefdom on Cyprus, they tell her -- that would surely

scare the hell out of Papadopoulos and his little minions. Rice promised to look into this once back in Washington

but, in the meantime something should be done they all agreed, and so they came up with the following: let us

organize a business mission of American companies that make money in Turkey and provide this mission with

official trappings by having the commercial attaché of America’s Ankara embassy acompany them to Cyprus.

That would surely make Papadopoulos lose his sleep and force him to commit state hara-kiri, in order to save

his skin. But then some one from Rice’s entourage sat and thought that the businessmen should not be Americans

but their Turkish representatives because, he reasoned, those devious SOBs in Cyprus will sooner or later discover

the legal liabilities of American corporations usurping and exploiting stolen properties. And they will surely tie us up

in legal tangles, he reasoned. Don’t we Americans do the same against those that have usurped American properties

in places like China, Guatemala, Cuba, Iran etc? Yes you are right, the Turks agreed. And that’s why we and the

Brits made sure that our UN straw man De Soto, did not allow them to have recourse to European Courts to claim

back their properties. We tell you the Cypriots are bastards and will not take anything we do to them lying down.

We certainly did have our chance to lay them prostrate in 1974 but we screwed it. We should have destroyed the

Cypriot state then and there.

Well, dear readers, it all comes down to this. Cypriots have paid, unfortunately, a very high price because although

rejected, the Annan Plan has, like Dracula, a life of its own. But the state did manage to get into the EU where

it can preserve itself and, at least, neutralize those patently anti-democratic, ghetto-like and racist aspects of the

Plan. In the meantime, Cypriots will have to cope with the combined wrath of the Anglo-Americans and the Turks.

They will continue to be bullied and function as their favorite punching bag. The Anglo-Americano-Turks will

continue screaming mad just because the 1960 Cypriot state continues to survive. They have been outwitted in

this regard and that makes them look foolish. You see, bullies surely hate to be made a public spectacle by their

weakling and former subjects.

Cypriots will have to live with that. The Anglo-Americano-Turks can no longer love them to death as they publicly

proclaim. My only regret in this: the Brits and the Turks have a long and dishonorable tradition in dealing with subject

and minority peoples. What excuse do the Americans have? It is really a pity because, when all is said, the “other”

America as the late Senator Fulbright would say, remains still the only hope for mankind.

P.S Cratocide is a word that I have coined for lack of a term to explain the Anglo-Americano-Turkish policy of seeking

the destruction of a state, in this case the destruction of the 1960 Cypriot State.

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