Cyprus-Forum.com

[GreekIslandGirl]

Memories from German children raised after WWII recall how they grew up in places that mysteriously lacked their original occupants.

After the war, successive German governments embarked on a collective-memory erasure to remove signs of the missing Jews that they had genocided, expelled from their homes, appropriated their businesses and belongings, killed!

Slowly, decades later the post-war, post-genocide, Nazi-kin kids grew up and started noticing clues that once *other* people had lived in their villages and towns. Questions were asked. Where was the baker with the *foreign* name? What is that relic of a strange religious-temple? Remnants of missing people.

The shock of the realization of what their parents had done led some to suicide. Some to seek justice for their parents' wrongdoings.

Turkish-occupied Cyprus Today.

The Turks are doing exactly what the Germans tried to do after the NAZI-GENOCIDE of native people. Collective-memory erasure. Removing signs of the people they killed, genocided, forcefully expelled by rewriting deeds, renaming monuments etc. (However, the similarity ends: what the Turks have done and are doing in Cyprus is worse than what the Nazis did.)

After recently issuing apologies, and paying billions in compensation to Jews, Germany now has the fastest growing Jewish population in Europe. Justice prevails. Right has won ...

Are the Turk-TCs' children now asking questions on the missing people whose land they currently occupy?

Or, are they really worse than the children of the Nazis?

[Lordo]

nazis are your friends who murdered children my dear. but worse they invited terggy to cyprus. tcs are thankful for all the efforts of you nazis.

[GreekIslandGirl]

If that is the view of today's Turkish Nazi-kin, then Turk-TCs occupying Cyprus are worse than the German Nazi-kin who sought justice for their crimes of ethnic removal of people from their homes and destruction of their lives.

Despite hundreds of years of Germans feeling oppressed and hard-done by from Jews, they relented and admitted their reactions were wrong.

You say, Turkey was 'invited'? Allude to it being a spontaneous decision to visit, a quick reaction to an event, alleging to supposed 'murder of some children' (how many?) and so for this reason it was the right one? Turkey merely accepted an invite? The Greeks asked for such a reaction, an invasion, genocide and decades of occupation?

Fine, you are proving the Turk-TCs have a worse outlook, a sicker lack of morality than Nazis and their inheritors.

[Lordo]

are the tcs guilty of inviting the terggs to cyprus. how long have you been peddling this little lie. it was your nazis who could not wait to wipe out tcs from cyprus that did that. who has no morality. have you lost all your senses.

[Paphitis]

are the tcs guilty of inviting the terggs to cyprus. how long have you been peddling this little lie. it was your nazis who could not wait to wipe out tcs from cyprus that did that. who has no morality. have you lost all your senses.

When was that? When did the GCs try to wipe out the TCs? This was all manufactured by your lot (TMT) and then you have the audacity to say that this genocide and decades long occupation on ethnically cleansed lands was invited by the GCs. Which "Nazi" like GCs did that?

Oh yes, we have known that you wish to justify Turkey's illegal actions which amount to Invasion, genocide and ethnic cleansing. Not only this, you have embarked on a decades long campaign to eradicate any sign of GC inhabitation over the area you illegally control, preventing 200,000 people from returning to the homes they own and to their villages and towns. The place is littered with desecrated cemeteries, Churches and other culturally significant sites have been destroyed. Sites are are historically and culturally very important to the 200,000 who were violently unsurped.

No different to what ISIL did in Mosul. You're all a bunch of mongrels if you support these actions.

Face it! You want to illegally keep what you stole. You are much worse than the NAZIs or at least they lost the war and have successfully redeemed themselves from the horrendous actions of their forefathers to the point where Israel and Germany have excellent relations and there is once again a thriving Jewish community in Germany.

Turkey has a long way to go before it becomes as civilized or European as the Germans. A bloody very long way to go.

But you have a long history of genocide. The sacking of Smyrna in 1922 as ordered by Ataturk comes to mind. Yes you destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters and then wiped out the entire population. The only survivors being those who were lucky enough to climb onto foreign ships which were anchored at the Harbour, Ernest Hemingway, an American Author on one of these American ships gave some chilling accounts of how the Turkish Soldiers would slaughter women (even pregnant women) and children. The hellish cries from the Pier could be heard from the Ships 2 miles off the coast. Some ships would turn their search lights on, and the cowardly Turkish Soldiers would scamper and stop their gruesome deeds. When the lights went off, the screams and the hell would begin once again until there were no more.

To this day, Turkey denies these criminal events. Germany has come to terms with its past but not Turkey.

[kurupetos]

are the tcs guilty of inviting the terggs to cyprus. how long have you been peddling this little lie. it was your nazis who could not wait to wipe out tcs from cyprus that did that. who has no morality. have you lost all your senses.

Nazis, Zionists, and Young Turks are all the same shit.

[supporttheunderdog]

are the tcs guilty of inviting the terggs to cyprus. how long have you been peddling this little lie. it was your nazis who could not wait to wipe out tcs from cyprus that did that. who has no morality. have you lost all your senses.

Nazis, Zionists, and Young Turks are all the same shit.

and you are the supporter of a party that has openly praised the Nazis and their leadership.....

[supporttheunderdog]

are the tcs guilty of inviting the terggs to cyprus. how long have you been peddling this little lie. it was your nazis who could not wait to wipe out tcs from cyprus that did that. who has no morality. have you lost all your senses.

When was that? When did the GCs try to wipe out the TCs? This was all manufactured by your lot (TMT) and then you have the audacity to say that this genocide and decades long occupation on ethnically cleansed lands was invited by the GCs. Which "Nazi" like GCs did that?

Oh yes, we have known that you wish to justify Turkey's illegal actions which amount to Invasion, genocide and ethnic cleansing. Not only this, you have embarked on a decades long campaign to eradicate any sign of GC inhabitation over the area you illegally control, preventing 200,000 people from returning to the homes they own and to their villages and towns. The place is littered with desecrated cemeteries, Churches and other culturally significant sites have been destroyed. Sites are are historically and culturally very important to the 200,000 who were violently unsurped.

No different to what ISIL did in Mosul. You're all a bunch of mongrels if you support these actions.

Face it! You want to illegally keep what you stole. You are much worse than the NAZIs or at least they lost the war and have successfully redeemed themselves from the horrendous actions of their forefathers to the point where Israel and Germany have excellent relations and there is once again a thriving Jewish community in Germany.

Turkey has a long way to go before it becomes as civilized or European as the Germans. A bloody very long way to go.

But you have a long history of genocide. The sacking of Smyrna in 1922 as ordered by Ataturk comes to mind. Yes you destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters and then wiped out the entire population. The only survivors being those who were lucky enough to climb onto foreign ships which were anchored at the Harbour, Ernest Hemingway, an American Author on one of these American ships gave some chilling accounts of how the Turkish Soldiers would slaughter women (even pregnant women) and children. The hellish cries from the Pier could be heard from the Ships 2 miles off the coast. Some ships would turn their search lights on, and the cowardly Turkish Soldiers would scamper and stop their gruesome deeds. When the lights went off, the screams and the hell would begin once again until there were no more.

To this day, Turkey denies these criminal events. Germany has come to terms with its past but not Turkey.

Paphitis, from their side do the Greeks recognize that the massacres were not all one sided, as there are apparently reliable independent reports of many outrages performed by Greeks against Turkish civilians in the Period after the Greek Landings at Smyrna in 1919, and during the retreat with wholesale destruction of Turkish towns and villages and massacres of the population.?

see Wikepedia for general information and for links to source materials including reports by foreign Diplomats

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Turkish_War_%281919%E2%80%9322%29#Greek_massacres_of_Turks

Greek massacres of Turks[edit]

Turkish medics arrived at a town to rescue wounded on the way to Izmir after Greek forces abandoned the town (August 1922).
British historian Arnold J. Toynbee wrote that there were organized atrocities since the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919. Toynbee also stated that he and his wife were witnesses to the atrocities perpetrated by Greeks in the Yalova, Gemlik, and Izmit areas and they not only obtained abundant material evidence in the shape of "burnt and plundered houses, recent corpses, and terror stricken survivors" but also witnessed robbery by Greek civilians and arsons by Greek soldiers in uniform in the act of perpetration.[93] Toynbee wrote that as soon as the Greek Army landed, they started committing atrocities against the Turkish civilians, as they "laid waste the fertile Maender (Meander) Valley", and forced thousands of Turks to take refuge outside the borders of the areas controlled by the Greeks.[94] Historian Taner Akçam noted that a British officer reported as follows:[95]

The National forces were established solely for the purpose of fighting the Greeks..,. The Turks are willing to remain under the control of any other state.,.. There was not even an organized resistance at the time of the Greek occupation. Yet the Greeks are persisting in their oppression, and they have continued to burn villages, kill Turks and rape and kill women and young girls and throttle to death children.

James Harbord, describing the first months of the occupation to the American Senate, wrote that[96] "The Greek troops and the local Greeks who had joined them in arms started a general massacre of the Mussulmen [sic] population in which the officials and Ottoman officers and soldiers as well as the peaceful inhabitants were indiscriminately put to death." [97] Harold Armstrong, a British officer who was a member of the Inter-Allied Commission, reported that as the Greeks pushed out from Smyrna, they massacred and raped civilians, and burned and pillaged as they went.[98] Marjorie Housepian wrote that 4000 Smyrna Muslims were killed by Greek forces.[99] Johannes Kolmodin was a Swedish orientalist in Smyrna. He wrote in his letters that the Greek army had burned 250 Turkish villages.[100] In one village the Greek army demanded 500 gold liras to spare the town; however, after payment, the village was still sacked.[101]

The Inter-Allied commission, consisting of British, French, American and Italian officers,[c] and the representative of the Geneva International Red Cross, M. Gehri, prepared two separate collaborative reports on their investigations of the Gemlik-Yalova Peninsula Massacres. These reports found that Greek forces committed systematic atrocities against the Turkish inhabitants.[102] And the commissioners mentioned the "burning and looting of Turkish villages", the "explosion of violence of Greeks and Armenians against the Turks", and "a systematic plan of destruction and extinction of the Moslem population".[103] In their report of the 23rd May 1921, the Inter-Allied commission stated as follows:[104]

A distinct and regular method appears to have been followed in the destruction of villages, group by group, for the last two months ... there is a systematic plan of destruction of Turkish villages and extinction of the Muslim population. This plan is being carried out by Greek and Armenian bands, which appear to operate under Greek instructions and sometimes even with the assistance of detachments of regular troops.

The Inter-Allied commission also stated that the destruction of villages and the disappearance of the Muslim population might have as its objective to create in this region a political situation favourable to the Greek Government.[104]

Arnold J. Toynbee wrote that they obtained convincing evidence that similar atrocities had been started in wide areas all over the remainder of the Greek-occupied territories since June 1921.[93] Toynbee argued that "the situation of the Turks in Smyrna City had become what could be called without exaggeration a 'reign of terror', it was to be inferred that their treatment in the country districts had grown worse in proportion."[105]

Greek scorched-earth policy[edit]
According to a number of sources, the retreating Greek army carried out a scorched-earth policy while fleeing from Anatolia during the final phase of the war.[106] Historian of the Middle East, Sydney Nettleton Fisher wrote that: "The Greek army in retreat pursued a burned-earth policy and committed every known outrage against defenceless Turkish villagers in its path."[106] Norman M. Naimark noted that "the Greek retreat was even more devastating for the local population than the occupation".[107]

James Loder Park, the U.S. Vice-Consul in Constantinople at the time, who toured much of the devastated area immediately after the Greek evacuation, described the situation in the surrounding cities and towns of İzmir he has seen, as follows:[108]

Manisa ... almost completely wiped out by fire ... 10,300 houses, 15 mosques, 2 baths, 2,278 shops, 19 hotels, 26 villas ... [destroyed]. Cassaba (present day Turgutlu) was a town of 40,000 souls, 3,000 of whom were non-Muslims. Of these 37,000 Turks only 6,000 could be accounted for among the living, while 1,000 Turks were known to have been shot or burned to death. Of the 2,000 buildings that constituted the city, only 200 remained standing. Ample testimony was available to the effect that the city was systematically destroyed by Greek soldiers, assisted by a number of Greek and Armenian civilians. Kerosene and gasoline were freely used to make the destruction more certain, rapid and complete. Alaşehir, hand pumps were used to soak the walls of the buildings with Kerosene. As we examined the ruins of the city, we discovered a number of skulls and bones, charred and black, with remnants of hair and flesh clinging to them. Upon our insistence a number of graves having a fresh-made appearance were actually opened for us as we were fully satisfied that these bodies were not more than four weeks old. [the time of the Greek retreat through Alaşehir]

Consul Park concluded:[108]

The destruction of the interior cities visited by our party was carried out by Greeks.
The percentages of buildings destroyed in each of the last four cities referred to were: Manisa 90 percent, Cassaba (Turgutlu) 90 percent, Alaşehir 70 percent, Salihli 65 percent.
The burning of these cities was not desultory, nor intermittent, nor accidental, but well planned and thoroughly organized.
There were many instances of physical violence, most of which was deliberate and wanton. Without complete figures, which were impossible to obtain, it may safely be surmised that 'atrocities' committed by retiring Greeks numbered well into thousands in the four cities under consideration. These consisted of all three of the usual type of such atrocities, namely murder, torture and rape.
Kinross wrote, "Already most of the towns in its path were in ruins. One third of Ushak no longer existed. Alashehir was no more than a dark scorched cavity, defacing the hillside. Village after village had been reduced to an ash-heap. Out of the eighteen thousand buildings in the historic holy city of Manisa, only five hundred remained."[109]

It is estimated some 3,000 lives had been lost in the burning of Alaşehir alone.[110] In one of the examples of the Greek atrocities during the retreat, on 14 February 1922, in the Turkish village of Karatepe in Aydin Vilayeti, after being surrounded by the Greeks, all the inhabitants were put into the mosque, then the mosque was burned. The few who escaped fire were shot.[111] The Italian consul, M. Miazzi, reported that he had just visited a Turkish village, where Greeks had slaughtered some sixty women and children. This report was then corroborated by Captain Kocher, the French consul.[112]

I am not seeking to lesson or justify what the Turks did, probably in revenge, as two wrongs do not make a right, but with that as recent History that many alive in the late 50's and early 60's would have seen, it would be very easy indeed for the terrorist TMT to spread fear in support of their evil aims.

[Paphitis]

That is an appalling post STUD. There can never be any justification for the sacking of Smyrna or the 100,000 Greeks and Armenians who were butchered.

Can I ask you, when you think the Greek Genocide started? Was it 1914?

How many Pontian Greeks were killed? Estimates range from 300,000 to 500,000?

When did the Armenian Genocide occur? How many killed? 1,500,000

When did the Greeks land at Smyrna? 1919 you say?

[kurupetos]

are the tcs guilty of inviting the terggs to cyprus. how long have you been peddling this little lie. it was your nazis who could not wait to wipe out tcs from cyprus that did that. who has no morality. have you lost all your senses.

Nazis, Zionists, and Young Turks are all the same shit.

and you are the supporter of a party that has openly praised the Nazis and their leadership.....

Can you prove it, dog?