characterizations might have seemed tame compared with the telegram from one activist referring to “the Turkish insane animals.” In a letter to President Ford, another concerned American, Basil Rodes, noted that history was replete with examples of “the death and destruction visited upon peoples in Asia Minor, Europe, and North Africa by the Turks. The Turks are repeating the same practice of death and destruction in Cyprus today. The Turks had contributed nothing to the human race and its civilization, but they have spread death and destruction throughout the ages.” Another wrote to Secretary Kissinger, emphasizing a common theme: “The major portion of Turkey today is a barren wasteland … buildings and monuments created by their ‘restless minorities’ now lie in ruins, further desiccated by the indolent and feckless peasants [Turks] who carry off pieces of building stone as needed, to reinforce their own dilapidated, shanty-like dwellings.”15
Occasionally, such vitriol made its way into the publications of the major Greek American organizations. An article in the Ahepan stated, “From the very first day that the battle started, the Turks displayed that they are still the same savage people.” A recounting of Greek-Turkish relations recalled all the harm done to the Greeks in World War I, including the massacres of Greeks and Armenians and the forced resettlement of Greeks from Asia Minor to Greece. The article was silent on the Greek invasion of Anatolia after the war (1919–1922) and on the repatriation of a smaller Turkish population from Greece to the Republic of Turkey.16
One of the most troubling developments was repeated charges of atrocities on both sides. These were more numerous coming from Greek Americans, who had more outlets to present their arguments to the American public. There were tales of looting, rape, and intentional destruction of churches in the area under Turkish army control. The Cypriot embassy in Washington circulated an information sheet in mid-November 1974, claiming to provide ”factual evidence” that the Turks were guilty of the greatest crime of all, “GENOCIDE,” against the Greek population, murdering in cold blood hundreds of innocent women and children and crippled and old men. They had allowed “repeated and continual rapes of women from the age of twelve onwards on an organized basis by the officers and men of the Turkish army, reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps.” Even Archbishop Iakovos added to the charges. In a letter to Congressman John Brademas (D-IN), the archbishop’s office claimed that, among other crimes, “priests have been beaten to death, one priest attempting to rescue his daughter from being raped was savagely beheaded.”17
Yet there was little incontrovertible evidence to support these lurid tales. When an AHEPA delegation to Cyprus met with Dr. Vasos Vasilopoulos of the Ministry of Health, he disputed reports that Cypriot women’s breasts had been cut off or that boys had been emasculated. There were enough real problems, he explained, resulting from the destructiveness of modern warfare. Still, the exaggerated accounts did not subside.18
The government of Turkey also publicized questionable claims of atrocities, in spite of advice from the US embassy not to do so. A UN report concluded that, after an investigation of thirty alleged cases of so-called Greek atrocities against Turkish Cypriots, none had been verified. The UN did verify, however, a massacre of Turkish Cypriot civilians at the village of Tokhni, between Limassol and Larnarca, and also at Maratha. The US embassy in Nicosia reported that 90 percent of Turkish Cypriots released as prisoners of war or detainees chose to head north, even though their families were often in the southern part of the island. Turkish Cypriots were gathering in the area controlled by the Turkish army, quickly “Turkifying” the northern sector.19
Even responsible spokesmen sometimes wandered into this murky landscape. Such was the case when notoriously outspoken Congressman Ed Koch (D-NY) recalled Ottoman barbarities toward the Armenians and suggested that “Turkish events in Cyprus today may yet warrant similar distinction.” More surprising were statements by Congressman Brademas printed in the English-language Turkish Daily News. “The government of Turkey has in my opinion acted in a very uncivilized way,” he observed. He followed this with a reference to Hitler’s attempt to outgun everyone, noting, “might is right.” The usually cautious congressman might not have understood how much the Turks resented such unfavorable comparisons, which had a long history.20
Throughout the last decades of the Ottoman Empire and into the early years of the Turkish republic, foreigners repeatedly made claims about the Turks’ barbarity, their animal-like natures, and their lack of any civilizing qualities. These outrageous allegations seemed endless. It was in part to end such derogatory assertions by supercilious Europeans and Americans that Ataturk launched his movement to transform the Turkish nation, to make all Turks proud of their heritage and ethnicity. Symbolic of this goal was the founder’s widely publicized statement, “Happy is the man who calls himself a Turk.” This was not mere chauvinism; it was an attempt to encourage a new and necessary confidence among his fellow citizens. In this, he appeared to have remarkable success. Ataturk also positioned Turkey closer to Europe, distancing it from the Middle East.21 Now, in the mid-1970s, many of the former stereotypes were resurfacing among foreign observers.
The Greeks and many of their Greek American supporters argued that the Turkish Cypriot minority had been treated well in Cyprus and got on well with their Greek Cypriot neighbors. They claimed that a minority of extremists, acting in accord with the Turks in Ankara, was forcing the Turkish Cypriots to live in isolated enclaves throughout the island. Father Evagoras Constantinides, a Cypriot by birth and a member of a delegation meeting with Secretary Kissinger and his deputy Robert Ingersoll on August 26, 1974, asserted that “he was not aware of any oppression of the Turks by the Greeks in Cyprus” and claimed that “insurrectionist Turks always held at least one member of a family hostage to ensure the return of the others.” These seem, at best, only partial explanations for the continuing tension and violence between the two communities throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.22
Of the Greek American organizations actively pursuing justice for Cyprus, none surpassed AHEPA. Founded in 1922, it had thousands of members in all fifty states and possessed an effective structure for activating the larger community. On July 22, just two days after the initial Turkish invasion, AHEPA announced a July 24 press conference in Washington, where leaders of twenty Greek American societies would demand the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Cyprus. AHEPA would continue to be one of the leading critics of Turkish actions on the island and of the Ford administration’s policies toward the crisis as well.23
Although AHEPA was the oldest and best known of the Greek American associations, there were others that took on important roles. The American Hellenic Institute (AHI) limited its membership of approximately 200 individuals to professionals and academics. Headquartered in Washington, DC, it was led by Eugene Rossides, who had served in the Treasury Department under Nixon and was a law partner of William Rogers, former secretary of state and attorney general. Rossides knew how to get things done in the capital. He became a leading spokesman on Cyprus and was often called to testify before congressional committees on behalf of Greek Americans. His model for AHI was the highly successful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). According to political scientist Paul Watanabe, who has studied the organization closely, “whenever any key votes were in the offing, AHI-PAC reviewed its congressional profiles in order to determine the most effective strategies to persuade individual congressmen. Armed with this information, AHI-PAC dispatched at least two influential Greek American constituents, who were carefully preselected, to contact, in person if possible, each congressman.”24
The third of the “big three” organizations—those whose representatives were regularly invited to testify at congressional hearings—was the United Hellenic American Congress (UHAC) in Chicago, a center of Greek American activism. Andrew Athens, president of Metro Steel Corporation and a close ally of Senator Charles Percy (R-IL), headed this organization. It was said to be the creation of Archbishop Iakovos, and it maintained close ties to the Greek Orthodox Church. UHAC organized large public protests to support the arms embargo and aid for Cypriot refugees.25
Archbishop
