Sir, - I read Mr Unal's letter "Turkey's position on Cyprus" (October 22nd) with great interest. Indeed, Mr Unal is right in insisting that Turkey does not have any territorial claim over Greece, and that Turkey has never declared war on Greece, or even on Cyprus, in this respect.
What Mr Unal does not clarify is that Turkey does not have any territorial claim on what Turkey alone, and against international treaties, considers to be Greek borders. For example, Turkey does not consider 300 Greek islets in the Aegean sea to be Greek territory. Some of them (e.g. Gavdos) are only a few miles away from Crete, or even Athens itself!
It is also true that Turkey never declared war on Greece. I would also have to concede that in 1974 Turkey did not declare war on Cyprus either - it just invaded the island and partitioned it. Furthermore, Turkey did not declare war against the Armenians in 1915, when 1,500,000 of them were massacred at the hands of Turkish mobs and soldiers, and it certainly did not declare war against Greece in 1955 when Turkish mobs aided by army units destroyed in less than a week (September 1955) the Greek Orthodox population (250,000) and culture of Istanbul (churches, cemeteries, schools, art centres, shops).
Though Mr Unal does not mention it in his letter, it is equally true that Turkey has not declared war on Iraq, or the Kurds, the Giezidi, or other Turkish minorities who struggle to survive the ultra-nationalist Turkish establishment.
A last point about the recent Cypriot armament programme mentioned in Mr Unal's letter. Since 1974 free Cyprus has been hostile to the Turkish army (30,000 soldiers, 400 tanks, etc) stationed in the occupied part of the island. Simply enough, if Greece wished to respond to Turkish aggression at the Aegean, it risked a Turkish invasion of the rest of Cyprus. Now that the Cypriots are armed, Turkey knows that it cannot use Cyprus as a hostage any more. Frankly, there is no easy way to expand to the Aegean, or be part of the European Union, as long as the Turks bully minorities and neighbours - even without declaring war on them. - Yours, etc.,
Manussos Marangudakis
University of Ulster, Derry.