Sir, - I am distressed, although certainly not surprised, by Mr Marangudakis's letter (November 7th). Distressed because it is an unfortunate mixture of distorted history, thinly veiled prejudice or worse still, outright hatred. Hardly surprising, since our Greek friends always have recourse to this well-worn pattern whenever they are confronted by objective facts and a fair and balanced analysis.
Let me explain. Turkey was forced to intervene in Cyprus in 1974 to prevent the island from being annexed to mainland Greece and to protect the Turkish Cypriot community from what would surely have been a violent bloodletting. (The mass graves unearthed in the aftermath of the intervention are nothing if not ample proof of the atrocities perpetrated by the Greek Cypriots on the Turkish community.) What is more, Turkey was totally within her rights as a guarantor power to intervene as she did, and if she had to act alone, it was only because the two other guarantor states, Greece and the UK, would not.
Need I remind you that, in the 23 years since Turkey's intervention in Cyprus, calm and peace have reigned in the island, which I think would hardly be the case had Turkey "wanted to invade the rest of Cyprus". Furthermore, it is hard to believe that Mr Marangudakis would accuse Turkey of harbouring expansionist policies in the Aegean, knowing that it is Greece, not Turkey, which would like to extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles and insists, against all international norms, on a 10-mile air space, despite a six-mile territorial water.
Mr Marangudakis goes on to bend out of shape events which occurred during the first World War in Eastern Anatolia. True, a great number of people, Armenian and Turks alike, lost their lives during the war. But, here again, Mr Maraguidakis not only quotes exaggerated figures, he conveniently forgets to mention the tens of thousands of Turks slaughtered at the hands of Armenian bands, who were backed by the Tzar's army, then at war with the Ottoman Empire.
Anyone who follows the media knows that the PKK terrorist organisation has been waging a violent separatist war against Turkey since 1984, and that the Gulf War in 1991 created a no man's land in Northern Iraq which acts as a safe haven for the PKK from which to conduct its attacks against the military and civilian targets inside Turkey. Similarly, forays of the Turkish military into Northern Iraq are aimed at eradicating the PKK's power base there and are no in any way directed at the civilian Kurdish population. Every state has the inherent right and the obligation to uphold its territorial integrity.
Turkey is a unitary state which does not differentiate between its citizens on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity. As a result, Turkey's citizens of Kurdish origin coexist in harmony with their Turkish brethren, which is more than what can be said for the Turkish minority in Western Thrace in Greece, who are persecuted relentlessly in every aspect of their daily lives by the Greek local authorities. - Yours, etc.,
Merrion Road, Dublin 4.