Headlines
by Daniel Pipes
In light of Ankara’s recent criticism of what it calls Israel’s “open-air jail” in Gaza, today’s date, which marks the anniversary of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus, has special relevance.
Emine Erdoğan, wife of the Turkish prime minister.
Turkish policy toward Israel, historically warm and only a decade ago approaching full alliance, has cooled since Islamists took power in Ankara in 2002. Their hostility became explicit in January 2009, during the Israel-Hamas war. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan grandly condemned Israeli policies as “perpetrating inhuman actions which would bring it to self-destruction” and even invoked God (“Allah will … punish those who transgress the rights of innocents”). His wife Emine Erdoğan hyperbolically condemned Israeli actions as so awful they “cannot be expressed in words.”
Their verbal assaults augured a further hostility that included insulting the Israeli president, helping sponsor the “Freedom Flotilla,” and recalling the Turkish ambassador.
This Turkish rage prompts a question: Is Israel in Gaza really worse than Turkey in Cyprus? A comparison finds this hardly to be so. Consider some contrasts:
- Turkey’s invasion of July-August 1974 involved the use of napalm and “spread terror” among Cypriot Greek villagers, according to Minority Rights Group International. In contrast, Israel’s “fierce battle” to take Gaza relied only on conventional weapons and entailed virtually no civilian casualties.
- The subsequent occupation of 37 percent of the island amounted to a “forced ethnic cleansing” according to William Mallinson in a just-published monograph from the University of Minnesota. In contrast, if one wishes to accuse the Israeli authorities of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, it was against their own people, the Jews, in 2005.
- The Turkish government has sponsored what Mallinson calls “a systematic policy of colonization” on formerly Greek lands in northern Cyprus. Turkish Cypriots in 1973 totaled about 120,000 persons; since then, more than 160,000 citizens of the Republic of Turkey have been settled in their lands. Not a single Israeli community remains in Gaza.
- Ankara runs its occupied zone so tightly that, in the words of Bülent Akarcalı, a senior Turkey politician, “Northern Cyprus is governed like a province of Turkey.” An enemy of Israel, Hamas, rules in Gaza.
- The Turks set up a pretend-autonomous structure called the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.” Gazans enjoy real autonomy.
- A wall through the island keeps peaceable Greeks out of northern Cyprus. Israel’s wall excludes Palestinian terrorists.
The division of Cyprus since 1974.
A sign on the fence around Varosha, Cyprus.
And then there is the ghost town of Famagusta, where Turkish actions parallel those of Syria under the thuggish Assads. After the Turkish air force bombed the Cypriot port city, Turkish forces moved in to seize it, thereby prompting the entire Greek population (fearing a massacre) to flee. Turkish troops immediately fenced off the central part of the town, called Varosha, and prohibited anyone from living there.
As this crumbling Greek town is reclaimed by nature, it has become a bizarre time capsule from 1974. Steven Plaut of Haifa University visited and reports: “Nothing has changed. … It is said that the car distributorships in the ghost town even today are stocked with vintage 1974 models. For years after the rape of Famagusta, people told of seeing light bulbs still burning in the windows of the abandoned buildings.”
Curiously, another Levantine ghost town also dates from the summer of 1974. Just 24 days before the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Israeli troops evacuated the border town of Quneitra, handing it over to the Syrian authorities. Hafez al-Assad chose, for political reasons too, not to let anyone live in it. Decades later, it too remains empty, a hostage to bellicosity.
Signs on a metal gate in the capital city of Nicosia.
Erdoğan claims that Turkish troops are not occupying northern Cyprus but are there in “Turkey’s capacity as a guarantor power,” whatever that means. The outside world, however, is not fooled. If Elvis Costello recently pulled out of a concert in Tel Aviv to protest the “suffering of the innocent [Palestinians],” Jennifer Lopez canceled a concert in northern Cyprus to protest “human rights abuse” there.
In brief, Northern Cyprus shares features with Syria and resembles an “open-air jail” more than Gaza does. How rich that a hypocritical Ankara preens its moral plumage about Gaza even as it runs a zone significantly more offensive. Instead of meddling in Gaza, Turkish leaders should close the illegal and disruptive occupation that for decades has tragically divided Cyprus.
Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Mr. Pipes founded the Middle East Forum (MEForum.org), an independent 501(c)3 organization, in 1994. The Forum's mission is "promoting American interests" through publications, research, media outreach, and public education. With a US$2 million budget, it publishes the Middle East Quarterly and sponsors Campus Watch, Islamist Watch, the Legal Project, and the Washington Project. 
So, the question is: Why do so many Greeks–including Greek-Americans, favor the Palestinians over Israelis?? Why have they not seen the disparity of their bias when their compatriots have had such a tumultuous
relationship with the Turks? Should they not have more empathy for Israel instead of for a people who seek to destroy instead of build? Please, will someone explain this?
Many Greeks look back thru history and associate the Palestinians of today with the Philistines of long ago. Of course, there is no relation, but the allure is there and the similarity of the names. The Philistines died out, were driven out and/or were absorbed into Jewish society shortly after the time of David and so should not be identified at all with the people who call themselves Palestinians today. This is actually a new group formed from various countries which surround Israel today.
I would also like to comment on the reply of Abdulameer who said that ‘when the Greeks are not busy hating the Turks, they despise the Jews.’ This is patently incorrect. When the Jews left Spain, many found new homes in Greece and Crete (the island where I am from). Thessaloniki actually had the largest Jewish community in the Mediterranean from the immigration of Jews and they were accepted quite readily. There were six synagogues on Crete of which one still remains today. Sadly, the Jews were in time so absorbed into Greek society that it’s difficult to find anyone who actually knows their Jewish heritage. Through most of history, Greeks and Jew have gotten along quite well and at the very least tolerated each other. As far back as Ptolemeus Philadelphus who actually paid to free about 200,000 Jews from the Seleucid kingdom and bring them to Alexandria at about 300 BC, Greeks and Jews got along quite well, thank you very much! Alexandria went on to become the breadbasket for Rome.
There’s also the story confirmed by Flavius Josephus that recounts how Alexandria the Great spared the city of Jerusalem because he recognized it as the Holy City of the true God’s people.
You and anyone can and should confirm all these for yourselves.
As for hate speech, the source of that is obvious by reading your comment.
Sure, Honey, I will be glad to explain it, although you already know the answer. The answer is anti-Semitism, basically. When the Greeks are not busy hating the Turks, they despise the Jews.
The Turks are even more anti-Semitic than the Greeks because anti-Semitism is theologically required by Islam whereas it is only a tradition in Christianity.