It seems lately every article I read talks about Armenian Genocide.
The Jewish Voice
July 24 2014
Tragic 40th Anniversary of Turkish Invasion of Cyprus Marked
Thursday, 24 July 2014 13:54 By: Daniel Pipes
July 20, 2014 marked the gloomy 40th anniversary of the day that
Turkish troops overpowered the tiny, almost undefended island of
Cyprus in a brutal exercise of military might whose immorality only
intensifies with the passing decades. Some thoughts in honor of the
day:
The invasion did not take place under Islamist rule: Although an
Islamist (Necmettin Erbakan) served as deputy prime minister in a
coalition government for almost all of 1974, he was not the key
decision maker in Turkey. Rather, Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, a
leftist, enjoyed that privilege.
The Ecevit-Erbakan cooperation in 1974 symbolizes a support among
Turks of all political persuasions for the invasion of Cyprus that
still persists. This near-unanimity is a basic fact of Turkish
political life.
That consensus will presumably remain in place until the Turkish
occupation begins to take its toll - economic, diplomatic, or even
military - on the Republic of Turkey. After 40 years, this has not
even started, making one wonder if it ever will.
But two recent developments could potentially change the dynamic by
turning Turkish Cypriots against the status quo: (1) their frustration
at being excluded from the incipient gas and oil bonanza on the island
and (2) their growing resentment toward the ever-more autocratic
Islamist overlords in Ankara. As the occupation is ostensibly for
their benefit, if Turkish Cypriots want it ended, they just might make
it happen.
Also to note: the Republic of Cyprus (the southern, official part of
the island) has, as I put it in recent article titles, both stepped on
the world stage and joined the Middle East. It held the presidency of
the European Union, prompted a world-shaking economic crisis, is
becoming a significant energy exporter, and has newly-close links to
Israel, the military powerhouse of its region. The "Cyprus Problem"
now matters more to the outside world, which could be constructive.
The occupation that began on July 20, 1974, still brings much
suffering to what could be an idyllic Mediterranean island. It must be
but a memory by the time the fiftieth rolls around.
Occupation and even wholesale slaughter was not a new concept for the
Turkish government. During World War I, the government of the Ottoman
Empire killed approximately 1.5 million Armenians through mass
shootings, forced marches, exposure, and starvation. It could not have
taken place without WWI, which radicalized Turkish public opinion and
freed the "Young Turks" from the constraints of international law. But
the stage for genocide was set on February 8, 1914, when Europe's
Great Powers forced the Turks to accept reforms they viewed as an
existential threat.
An ancient ethnic group attested as far back as the sixth century BCE,
the Armenians weathered the rise and fall of empires for millennia
before the Ottoman Turks finally conquered the multiethnic Caucasus
region in the 16th century CE. During the heyday of the Ottoman
Empire, the Christian Armenians enjoyed considerable religious freedom
and legal autonomy under the Ottoman "millet" system, which allowed
religious minority groups to live by their own traditional laws.
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