Comment from a Greek reader, reacting to this comic strip
June 22, 2010
Dear Jean-Pierre,
After reading your comments about your cruise, I thought back to your questions regarding Greece’s purchase of an expensive giant hovercraft of Russian manufacture. It should be noted that Greece must face Turkey’s expansionist policies all by itself. The Cyprus issue is an undeniable example. Since 1974, Turkish forces have illegally occupied the territory, yet the international community and “European brothers” remain deaf to this situation. Why? Firstly, because the Americans wanted to establish bases there; secondly, because today’s Turkey is a creation of the British, French, and Germans—the latter having orchestrated ethnic cleansing in Asia Minor. Besides being a land rich in resources, Asia Minor was and remains a uniquely geo-strategic location, a hinge between East and West.
I bring this up to demonstrate that Turkey knows it can attack Greece with impunity, since it has always been unofficially supported by Western powers.
Turkey wants the Aegean islands and aims to undermine Greece’s sovereignty over them.
Things can happen very quickly (e.g., the incident involving Gavdos Island in 1996): thus, such a weapon isn’t a luxury or paranoid delusion but a reflection of a serious diplomatic problem. It must be understood that Greece suffers daily violations of its airspace and territorial waters by Turkey, which refuses to recognize UN conventions. Greek territory is also European territory—so why do Europeans leave Greece alone to face this problem? Perhaps because it suits them...
Beyond economic and diplomatic issues, the gravest matter is the loss of Greece’s national sovereignty.
The fact that Papandreou requested IMF aid constitutes placing Greece under US tutelage. The fact that he accepted a “bailout plan” proposed by France and Germany—which is nothing more than speculation on Greece and a deliberate attempt to plunge the country into excessive debt—also amounts to tutelage. You know, during the protests that cost three lives, Greek TV broadcast what was said in parliament. Papandreou gave a syrupy speech calling for calm, while a KKE MP told him: “Mind your own business, you’re not even Greek! Burn down parliament, burn it down!”
Papandreou’s mother is American, hence his nickname “the little American,” and hence the Greek people’s sense of betrayal.
Finally, his meeting with Erdogan and describing it as historic—thereby securing Turkey’s acceptance of disarmament from a Greece weakened by the crisis—only intensifies this feeling of betrayal.
Additionally, there’s the example of the Parthenon marbles, which Greece still hasn’t managed to retrieve, whereas Egypt recently had some of its artworks returned. This once again shows Britain’s strong grip on the country. Then there’s the Macedonia issue, where Greece is still criticized for refusing to let a country with no historical ties to Alexander the Great use his name for its province.
I’ll make a brief digression regarding immigration: Turkey ignores agreements made with Europeans, namely not to turn Greece into a buffer zone. Currently, there are 3 million immigrants among 10 million inhabitants. Turkey faces no consequences whatsoever, while this small, over-indebted country struggles to manage these flows despite being financially strangled. Recently, I heard that Berlusconi struck a deal with Egypt so that immigrants would be sent to Greece rather than Italy. No comment needed—so many conclusions to draw!
Thus, Greece has no sovereignty over its nation nor its own culture.
Not to mention that Germany drove the nail home by, on one hand, allowing the infamous Focus magazine controversy to go unmentioned in France, and on the other, having a German MP call for selling off the Parthenon and our islands. Merkel had to apologize during her latest visit to Greece, as we were on the brink of a diplomatic rupture. But the worst part is that the trade in islands has actually begun.
I am very pessimistic about Greece’s future, and that’s why I reacted strongly when you depicted a greedy Greek in your comic. Because reality is far more perverse: those people are puppets of great powers, while the population labeled “lazy” by the media endures unimaginable subjugation and oppression.
Theodora