317) THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND

 

p.59-65 THE TERROR DOSSIER AND GREECE
International Affairs Agency (INAF) - Istanbul - 1993
ISBN 975-7769-05 Copyright Cem Basar

 

The Greek nation does not like the Armenians at all; it even hates them. It is also known how the Greek people, watching the flamboyant Armenian ceremonies against Turkey organized by the support of the Greek politicians in Athens, has blasphemed Armenians. In a KYP report published in Stohos daily about the Armenians, it was stated that the Armenians is a community which has always been dangerous for Hellenism.

 

Despite that hostile attitude of the Greek people, all the governments coming to power in Greece since 1974 have embraced not only the terrorist organization ASALA, but also all the Armenian associations and organizations, in order to make use of them in their propaganda, with the philosophy of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They have even established some fabricated Armenian associations.

 

Greece continues to be one of the centers of Armenian terrorism targeting Turkey for more than 15 years. The Greek ministers, politicians, and generals participate in the ceremonies against Turkey organized by some Armenians frequently. In those celebrations, Armenian and Greek flags wave side by side, accompanied with the music of the Athens city band. The Greek press, on the other side, publishes columns of articles for not it believed in, or symphatized to the Armenian issue, but for only to make its hostile feelings towards Turkey known. Armenian advertisements and slogans written to the walls in the streets of Athens are frequently seen.

 

The erection of a monument in Athens symbolizing the so-called massacre of Armenians by Turks on April 15, 1979, the naming of a square near the Piraeus port as the Armenian National Resistance Warriors in February 1986, and the change of the name of the Voltaire Square in the Singrou Boulevard in Athens as the Armenian Square with a ceremony in which the Governor ond Mayor of Athens were also present on September 14, 1986, were not the reverberations of the Greek admiration of the Armenians, but the simple products of a policy only staged in order to annoy Turkey.

 

Many top level Greeks and Southern Cypriots participated in the meeting organized by the Political Science Department of the University of Athens, the subject of which was the International Solidarity with the Armenian people, on April 20, 1986. In that meeting, the declarations of the ASALA, and the celebration messages of the Japanese Red Army, known with its bloody terrorist actions, and some Palestinian terrorist organizations were read and applauded.

 

After the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon in 1975, and especially after the southern Lebanon operation of Israel in June 1982, some groups the majority of which were fanatical and activist Armenians, have settled in the Southern Cyprus and Greece. Greece welcomed the Lebanese Armenians, and did not create any problem to them for their settlement in that country.

 

Nobody would argue that every Armenian is antagonist to Turkey. Sober Armenians, who were not cultivating hostility towards Turkey, had gone not to Greece, but to France and America.

 

The fact that the real objective of the Armenians emigrating to Greece from Lebanon was manipulating that country as a base against Turkey was in time brought to light.

 

The Armenian activities aiming at dismembering Turkey in Greece developed within the body of the Armenian PeopleAEs Movement, which had legalized the ASALA. The representatives of international terrorist organizations participated in the programmed meetings organized under the auspices of the Greek National Intelligence Organization (KYP), in those meetings, the message of the ASALA were read. The flourishing written propaganda activities in Greece endeavoring to justify those terrorist activities, are also noteworthy.

 

There are many publications in various languages of the Armenian PeopleAEs Movement, which operates in the building in Meletiou Vasiliou Street No.26 in the Neos Cosmos district of Athens. Among those are Van (a province in Turkey), Moush (Mus, another province of Turkey) in English, Garin in Turkish, Avril in Persian, Hayfedai in Greek and Lutte Populaire in Armenian, all of which are periodicals.

 

The Greek National Intelligence in the beginning of 1980s tried to gather the ASALA and the separatist Kurds, via the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), in order to make them unite their fights against Turkey.

 

The Kurds had rejected cooperation with the Armenians in a meeting held toward the end of 1979 in Beirut. This time the Communist Party of Greece, invited both sides to Athens, by creating a pretext for that invitation. Secret negotiations were held. In the end, the Kurds supporting Barzani did not accept cooperation with ASALA.

 

The Protagoras, a facade organization used by the KYP, gathered the Kurds and the Armenians in Athens in May 1980. Kendal Nizam (Nevan), participating in that meeting as the representative of Kurds supporting Barzani, had met with me, since I was the Athens correspondent of Hurriyet, a Turkish newspaper, in the Athens airport half an hour before he went to Paris, despite all the prevention efforts of Greeks. Kendal Nizam (Nevan), a professor in the Paris University, had said in his answer to my questions that:

 

We the Kurdistan Democratic Party, do not think any cooperation with the Armenians. Nothing can be achieved by assassinating diplomats and killing people. We cannot let them make us their partners in their murders. We received the information that some people, under the name Kurd, have established connection with the Armenians. They are not Kurds, but the pawns of some dark powers. Greece, too, attempted to manipulate us, but we rejected it.

 

After that, Greeks tried this time via Syria. The PKK, under the patronage of Syria, was ready for such a cooperation for a long time. The first steps of cooperation between the ASALA and the PKK were thus taken in 1979-1980.

 

Greece, in order to orient the Armenian terrorism targeting Turkey along its interests, not only violated all the international agreements related to terrorism but disregarded the basic ethical rules by protecting terrorists.

 

We see one of the examples of the tolerant approach of the governments coming to power in Greece after 1975 to the Armenian terrorism in the considerable reduction which was made in the punishment of the ASALA terrorist Vadeh Khodaverdjian.

 

Khodaverdjian, who had bombed the Athens bureau of the Kuwait Airlines in 1982, was sentenced to 14 years and one month. However the Supreme Court of Appeal in Athens reduced his punishment to 3 years and 4 months on September 29, 1987, and he was released.

 

The Greek Public Prosecutor, instead of interrogating the Armenian terrorist, who endangered the security of the citizens of Greece, presented Vadeh Khodaverdjian to the court as a warrior struggling for his ideals and overtly defended the terrorist.

 

One of the results of the Greek governments protection of terrorism targeting Turks was the assassination of Galip Ozmen, the Attache of the Turkish Embassy in Athens, and his daughter by the Armenian terrorists in 1980. The Turkish Foreign Ministry had learned that a Turkish diplomat in Athens would be assassinated, and asked the Greek Foreign Ministry to keep the Turkish diplomats under protection. However, the Greek Foreign Ministry did not take it seriously or did not want to take it seriously. Two months later Galip Ozmen and his daughter were killed.

 

In my interview with the Director of the Greek General Diractorate of Press and Information two months after the incident, he had said to me that, We have received the information that assassination would be committed, but I do not understand why the warning was not taken seriously...

 

In a declaration prepared by the ASALA, which was being distributed in Athens a month before the assassination, it was being said that:

 

We will continue our actions against the Turkish diplomats in every country until Turkey accepts its crime in the Armenian genocide and declares this to the world.

 

That declaration appeared in the Greek press with the headlines The Armenians will shoot the Turks in Athens.

 

The KYP had given the information on the assassinated Turkish diplomats to the Armenian terrorist organization ASALA. On the other hand in Ankara, the Greek agents under the cover of diplomat, and the agents of some countries cooperating with the Greeks, were transferring the information they collected related to the Turkish diplomats to the ASALA. Those persons were known by the Turkish Intelligence units and their activities were watched over very closely. However, their diplomatic immunity and the fact that the murders were committed in another country prevented any measure.

 

The most important feature of the Panorama Review published in Italy is the news related to terrorism. Those news were never denied, in contrast, in most cases, they were affirmed.

 

The headline of the news Panorama on March 24, 1980, was as follows: These bombings smell Greek connection.. The bombing in the news was related to the explosions in the Turkish Embassy, and the Turkish Airlines bureau in Rome in which 2 persons died and 15 people were injured.

 

According to Panorama, three months before the bloody attack to the Turkish mission in Rome, in mid-December 1979, the leaders of the military and propaganda wings of the ASALA, and George Habbash (Yorgos Havvas), who was a Greek Orthodox Lebanese, and his Marxist-Leninist Palestinian terrorist organization which was under the control of the Syrian intelligence, and most importantly, the agents of the KYP, had secretly met in a hotel in the Bavarian mountains in Munich.

 

However, the German Anti-terror Secret Service (BKA), which recorded the speeches in that meeting, brought what was talked in that meeting to light. The German Intelligence Organization had notified that meeting one and a half month before the outbreak of actions to the Italian Intelligence Organization, but since the place and date of the anticipated actions were not definitely known, the necessary precautions could not be taken beforehand.

 

The article of Panorama, headed The bombings smell Greek connection... concludes in this way:

 

The terrorist actions targeting Turks had been planned three months before by a leader of the ASALA in Munich. It is an important provocation to Ankara that George Habbash and the representatives of the KYP participated in that meeting with close affinity with the Armenians.

 

During the first week of April 1975, 26 deputies of the New Democratic Party of Karamanlis brought a draft resolution to the Parliament. In that resolution, it was claimed that The struggle of the Armenians to recover the territories usurped by Turks should be assisted and supported. Thus the Greek politicians exposed their relations with the Armenian terrorists, whom they manipulated against Turks.

 

After the Green Light of Constantine Karamanlis to this end, The Greek politicians, diplomats, journalists, and the KYP gave a new impetus to their attacks against Turkey under the Armenian cover.

 

Danis Tunaligil, the Turkish Ambassador in Vienna, was assassinated in the Embassy building on September 23, 1975, five months after the Armenians in Athens had cried out war slogans against Turkey in May 1975 with the agitation of the Greek government.

 

The Austrian police and the INTERPOL issued a detention bulletin for three people possessing Greek passports. Witnesses had informed the police that they had seen those Greeks around the Turkish Embassy. Meanwhile, the INTERPOL notified the situation to the Greeks, and demanded their immediate capture, and dispatch of their photographs to the Austrian Police.

 

The Greek government did not like those developments. It did keep a blind eye to the demand of the INTERPOL, sending the passports of the accused Greeks to the Austrian, Hungarian, Czechoslavakian and Yugoslavian Embassies in Athens, and claiming that these three Greeks did not have any connection with the murder in Vienna. However, photocopying the passports was not allowed.

 

The date of the assassination was 23 September 1975. That day approximately 10 thousand Greeks entered and left Czechoslovakia via Vienna with cars and buses to watch Greek football team s match there. In summary, there were thousands of Greeks in Vienna at the day of the assassination of the Turkish Ambassador. The entry and exit visas in their passports were regular, what was irregular was the photographs in some of them.

 

Athens not only did not send the information and photographs to Vienna, but the Greek Foreign Ministry with a diplomatic note requested the cancellation of the decision of detention of three Greek citizens, and its declaration in Austrian radio and television. The note even demanded the Austrian government should apologize from the Greek government.

 

Meanwhile, the foreign journalists in Athens had started to look for the three accused Greeks. Despite all the efforts, the only information obtained was that those accused Greeks were being hidden by General Kalamakis, the Director of the Greek National Security Organization (EA).

 

When some journalists showed a sensitivity to the issue, Panaiotis Lambrias, the Press Secretary of Karamanlis, telephoned one by one those journalists and threatened them not to investigate the issue, otherwise they would be deported.

 

The news below, taken from The Armenian Reporter, a weekly published by the Armenians in New York, is an important source for understanding the Greek-Armenian relations targeting Turkey. According to the news, The International Solidarity Meeting in Athens was realized under the leadership of the Armenian People`s Movement. The largest part of the meeting was devoted to the readin of the messages supporting the Armenian territorial claims on Turkey and the Armenian struggle.

 

The support of PASOK was announced by Mihalis Haralambidis, who was a member of the Central Committee of PASOK and also the Greek member of the Permanent People`s Court. Ara Sarkisian stated the objectives of the Armenian People`s Movement. george Habbash and Bassam Abu Salim (PFLP) attracted the attention with their speeches. Abu Salim emphasized the full support of its organization to the Armenian cause, and stated that the Palestinian camps were always open to all Armenians desiring to attend to armed training. Abu Salim, in one of his answers, made it clear that his organization had trained the Armenian ASALA terrorists and continue to do so.

 

Abu Salim: The bulk of the youth joining the Armenian People`s Movement is of Greek origin. There are also people coming from the Middle Eastern countries.

 

Thus the news regarding the training of the Armenian, Greek and Southern Cypriot terrorists in the camps of the PFLP, led by Greek Orthodox Arab Yorgos Havvas, in Syria, was confirmed with the statement of Abu Salim.

 

The manipulation of Armenians by Greeks against Turkey is evaluated in an interesting article published in Ellinikon Avrion in this way:

 

ACCORDING TO ONE OF THE AXIOMS OF POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND . TURKS ARE OUR ENEMY, ARMENIANS ARE THE ENEMY OF TURKS. SINCE WE HAVE A COMMON SIDE WITH THE ARMENIANS, IT IS OUR DUTY TO HELP THE ENEMY OF OUR ENEMY.

 

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