Correspondence

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 2, 2000

U.S. Policy Toward Cyprus Needs to Be Changed

Ahmet Erdengiz repeats the fiction of a "campaign of extermination" against Turkish Cypriots, which was used by Turkey as a pretext to launch its 1974 invasion of Cyprus [Fair Comment, Feb. 7]. This disinformation has been categorically refuted by impartial sources, such as the U.N. secretary-general's report which confirms that hostilities between extremists of both communities in 1963 and 1964 resulted in a total of 43 Greek Cypriots and 232 Turkish Cypriots missing.

Erdengiz omits the fact that it is the Greek-Cypriot community that bore the lion's share of violence on Cyprus. Four times as many Greek Cypriots (more than 6,000) were killed by Turkish troops as Albanians were killed in Kosovo prior to NATO's intervention. In addition, 200,000 Greek Cypriots were ethnically cleansed from the occupied north. Yet Serbia was bombed back to the Stone Age, while Turkey's occupation of Cyprus continues to enjoy tacit U.S. support.

Most troubling for the future of Cyprus is Erdengiz's apartheidlike creed that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots will never be able to live together. In fact, they peacefully coexisted for centuries until Britain instituted a policy of arming Turkish separatists and encouraging Greco-Turkish conflict to facilitate its control over Cyprus and prevent this overwhelmingly Greek island-nation from achieving self-determination.

A recent mobilization by Turkish Cypriots to find a blood donor for a 6-year-old Greek-Cypriot boy with leukemia further underscores the speciousness of the myth, propagated for the very purpose of keeping Cyprus divided, that both communities are somehow inherently incapable of living together.

Turkey's occupation regime has trapped Turkish Cypriots in a political and economic black hole, all the while importing Turks from the depths of Anatolia to wrest control from Cyprus' native Turkish population. As a result, as many as half of all Turkish Cypriots have fled their own homeland in search of greater economic and political freedom elsewhere, including in the south of Cyprus. An increasing number of Turkish Cypriots realize that the future of a prosperous Cyprus is a united one without Turkish troops.

Cyprus is Berlin all over again, with one difference: Rather than taking the side of democratic governments and pluralistic societies, our own government has decided to ratify invasion, occupation and transnational aggression to sustain an alliance of increasingly questionable value.

Matthew J. Stowell Associate American Hellenic Project New York City

Beautiful Montana Destroyed by the Clinton Administration

Regarding "A Scorched-Earth Debate Hits West" [Sept. 18], George W. Bush should make a trip to Hamilton, Mont., to gain some insight into what people think of the U.S. Forest Service and how they have handled the forest fires in the Bitterroot Valley. The people there are very upset! First the Clinton administration shut down all the sawmills by closing all the forests, and now the policy of letting it burn is a disaster. If loggers had been able to go in and do selective cutting and thinning this would not have occurred. What a disgusting mess they made of the most beautiful place in Montana!

Julie Daffin via the Internet

Drug Policy Should Not Be Set by Former Drug Addicts

"Swiss Say Yes to Doling Out Heroin" [Sept. 18] by Diane Sabom was a good article. She quotes some former drug addicts who are opposed to giving addicts free drugs. I am inclined to let addicts make their own decisions about drug use. But I object to former addicts presuming to make such decisions for everyone else. I don't use drugs and I don't take advice from those who do or once did.

Richard Carpenter via the Internet

Write: Insight, Correspondence Editor, 3600 New York Ave. N.E., Washington, DC 20002. E-mail: Insight@wt.infi.net. Fax: (202) 529-2484. Please include an address and daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for space.