LIES, DAMN LIES, AND NETFLIX’S “FAMAGUSTA”
If you want to see Nazi Propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and film maker Leni Riefenstahl taken to a new level, then watch Netflix’s “Famagusta.” It is a TV series about Turkiye’s legal SOS mission to Cyprus in 1974 to prevent industrial scale slaughters of Turkish Cypriots by Greek and Greek Cypriot deranged terrorists indistinguishable from ISIS. But surprise surprise! The firefighters, Turkiye’s military, is portrayed as the fire, and the fire, the Greek and Greek Cypriot terrorists, and airbrushed out of the plot.
Netflix should be ashamed. It should apologize to Turkiye and Turkish Cypriots for the Faustian bargain it cut to extract money from Greek plutocrats.
But let’s turn the propaganda of “Famagusta” into something good. We will turn it into a history lesson to discover the truth about Cyprus which is routinely distorted or buried by the West for ulterior political-religious motives.
From 1878, Cyprus evolved from a British protectorate to a militarily annexed territory to a Crown colony until independence in 1960. Greek Cypriots constituted approximately 78 percent of the indigenous population and Turkish Cypriots approximately 22 percent.
In the run up to independence, a Greek terrorist organization, EOKA, guided by Archbishop Makarios in conspiracy with Greece, sought annexation of Cyprus to Greece, i.e., “Enosis,” by murdering opponents, whether Turkish Cypriots, Greek Cypriots, or British. In modern terminology, EOKA was a foreign terrorist organization.
Cypriot independence arrived without starry eyes. All knew that Greek Cypriots would seek to exterminate the Turkish Cypriot minority at the earliest opportunity absent muscular legal safeguards. Thus, the 1960 Cypriot Constitution generally required consensus between Greek and Turkish Cypriots for major decisions. Executive power, for instance, was shared equally by a Greek Cypriot President and a Turkish Cypriot Vice President elected by Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, respectively. Moreover, the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee authorized Turkiye (as well as Greece and the United Kingdom) to intercede to maintain Cypriot independence or prevent union with any other State, for example, Enosis.
Greek Cypriots chafed under the 1960 Constitution because it was protecting Turkish Cypriots from subjugation if not annihilation. In 1963, Archbishop Makarius unilaterally decreed that the Constitution was unworkable and shredded it like Germany did the Belgian Neutrality Treaty in World War I. Then came the massacres and genocide, which “Famagusta” hides from its viewers, as chronicled contemporaneously from independent media with no axes to grind.
On 28th December 1963, the Daily Express reported from Cyprus: “We went tonight into the sealed-off Turkish Cypriot Quarter of Nicosia in which 200 to 300 people had been slaughtered in the last five days. We were the first Western reporters there and we have seen sights too frightful to be described in print. Horror so extreme that the people seemed stunned beyond tears.”
On 31st December 1963, “The Guardian” reported: “It is nonsense to claim, as the Greek Cypriots do, that all casualties were caused by fighting between armed men of both sides. On Christmas Eve many Turkish Cypriot people were brutally attacked and murdered in their suburban homes, including the wife and children of a doctor -allegedly by a group of forty men, many in army boots and greatcoats.” Although the Turkish Cypriots fought back as best they could, and killed some militia, there were no massacres of Greek Cypriot civilians.
On 1st January 1964, the Daily Herald reported: “When I came across the Turkish Cypriot homes they were an appalling sight. Apart from the walls they just did not exist. I doubt if a napalm attack could have created more devastation. Under roofs which had caved in I found a twisted mass of bed springs, children’s cots, and grey ashes of what had once been tables, chairs and wardrobes. In the neighboring village of Ayios Vassilios I counted 16 wrecked and burned-out homes. They were all Turkish Cypriot. In neither village did I find a scrap of damage to any Greek Cypriot house.”
On 12th January 1964, the British High Commission in Nicosia wrote to London (telegram no. 162), “The Greek (Cypriot) police are led by extremists who provoked the fighting and deliberately engaged in atrocities. They have recruited into their ranks as “special constables” gun-happy young thugs. They threaten to try and punish any Turkish Cypriot police who wish to return to the Cyprus Government… Makarios assured Sir Arthur Clark that there would be no attack. His assurance is as worthless as previous assurances have proved.”
On 14th January 1964, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Turkish Cypriot inhabitants of Ayios Vassilious had been massacred on 26th December 1963. It reported their exhumation from a mass grave in the presence of the Red Cross.
On 14th January 1964, Il Giorno, reported by Giorgio Bocco “In Cyprus terror continues. Right now we are witnessing the exodus of Turks from villages. Thousands of people are abandoning their homes, lands, herds: Greek terrorism is relentless…”
On 13th February 1964, the Greeks and Greek Cypriots attacked the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Limassol with tanks, killing 16 and injuring 35.
On 15th February 1964, The Daily Telegraph reported: “It is a real military operation which the Greek Cypriots launched against the six thousand inhabitants of the Turkish Cypriot Quarter yesterday morning. A spokesman for the Greek Cypriot Government has recognized this officially. It is hard to conceive how Greek and Turkish Cypriots may seriously contemplate working together after all that has happened.” A further massacre of Turkish-Cypriots, at Limassol, was reported by The Observer on 16th February 1964, and there were many more.
On 17th February 1964 the Washington Post reported that Greek Cypriot fanatics appear bent on a policy of “genocide.”
On 10th September 1964, the Secretary-General reported (UN doc.S/5950): “UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances,…….it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2.000 others have suffered damage from looting. In Ktima 38 houses and shops have been destroyed totally and 122 partially. In the Orphomita suburb of Nicosia, 50 houses have been totally destroyed while a further 240 have been partially destroyed there and in adjacent suburbs.”
United States Under-Secretary of State, George Ball observed, “Makarios central interest was to block off Turkish intervention so that he and his Greek Cypriots could go on happily massacring Turkish Cypriots”.
From 1964 to 1974, the members of unconstitutional Enosis through violence burned but were not extinguished. A Greek right-wing military coup in 1967 ushered in the Regime of the Colonels, a revolving door of heartless dictators who crushed all dissent and placed Enosis on the front burner.
In 1971, Greek General Georgios Grivas returned to Cyprus to form EOKA-B, a successor terrorist organization seeking Enosis and extermination of Turkish Cypriots. In a speech to the Greek Cypriot armed forces (Quoted in “New Cyprus” May 1987), Grivas thundered. “The Greek forces from Greece have come to Cyprus in order to impose the will of the Greeks of Cyprus upon the Turks. We want ENOSIS but the Turks are against it. We shall impose our will. We are strong and we shall do so.”
On July 15, 1974, the Greek junta sponsored a coup in Cyprus leading to the replacement of Archbishop Makarius by the Cypriot National Guard with Greek terrorist Nicos Sampson. The latter later boasted, “Had Turkey not intervened I would not only have proclaimed Enosis, I would have annihilated the Turks in Cyprus.” (Eleftherotypia, February 26, 1981).
Turkiye intervened militarily on July 20 1974 not to conquer Cyprus but to protect Turkish Cypriots from Nicos Sampson’s planned genocide. The military mission was legal.
On 23rd July 1974 the Washington Post reported “In a Greek raid on a small Turkish village near Limassol 36 people out of a population of 200 were killed. The Greeks said that they had been given orders to kill the inhabitants of the Turkish villages before the Turkish forces arrived.”
On 23rd July 1974 the Times reported “The Greeks began to shell the Turkish quarter on Saturday, refugees said. Kazan Derviş, a Turkish Cypriot girl aged 15, said she had been staying with her uncle. The (Greek Cypriot) National Guard came into the Turkish sector and shooting began. She saw her uncle and other relatives taken away as prisoners, and later heard her uncle had been shot.”
On 24th July 1974, “France Soir” added, “The Greeks burned Turkish mosques and set fire to Turkish homes in the villages around Famagusta. Defenseless Turkish villagers who have no weapons live in an atmosphere of terror and they evacuate their homes and go and live in terror a shame to humanity.”
On 28th July 1974, the New York Times reported that 14 Turkish-Cypriot men had been shot in Alaminos.
On July 29 1974, The Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that “Turkey exercised its right of intervention in accordance with the article IV of the Guarantee Treaty of 1960” (Resolution No. 573).
In the village of Tochni on 14th August 1974 all the Turkish Cypriot men between the ages of 13 and 74, except for eighteen who managed to escape, were taken away and shot. (Times, Guardian, 21st August). In Zyyi, on the same day, all the Turkish Cypriot men aged between 19 and 38 were taken away by Greek Cypriots and were never seen again. On the same day Greek Cypriots opened fire in the Turkish Cypriot neighborhood of Paphos killing men, women, and children indiscriminately.
The German newspaper Die Zeit wrote on 30th August 1974, “the massacre of Turkish Cypriots in Paphos and Famagusta is the proof of how justified the Turkish were to undertake their (August) intervention”.
The capstone on the truth of Greek Cypriot atrocities is former Greek Cypriot foreign minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis. She elaborated in a post on social media about the massacre of Turkish schoolchildren in the village of Murataga, “All the children in this photo (except for their teacher who had been captured as a prisoner of war and a pupil, Safak Nihat, who had hidden with his family and survived) were murdered on 14 August 1974 by the criminals of Eoka-B. Although the killers are widely known, no one to date has been brought to justice…We are unworthy as a state and as citizens of this state for doing nothing to this day to punish the criminals.”
The Turkish military should have received a Nobel Peace Prize for preventing genocide. Instead, in the Orwellian world of realpolitik, the United States imposed on arms embargo on Turkiye and Greek and Greek Cypriot terrorists and murderers were rewarded with international recognition as the legitimate sovereign of all Cyprus and admitted into the European Union notwithstanding the Turkish Cypriot genocide and the fully functional Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
What have we learned from this history lesson?
- History is written by the rich and powerful earmarked by infinite lies and deceit to justify their power and wealth.
- With exceptions as rare as unicorns, everyone speaks or believes with ulterior motives for self-enrichment or self-aggrandizement, including Netflix and Greek billionaires.
- Be skeptical of anything asserted unsupported by evidence that would be admissible in a court of law. It is a worthless opinion.
- People would prefer to believe in falsehoods which make them feel good than in truths which make them uncomfortable.
*Bruce Fein is counsel to the Turkish Anti-Defamation Alliance.