OPINION - Lies, damn lies, and the Netflix series Famagusta

By Bruce Fein

-The author is counsel to the US-based Turkish Anti-Defamation Alliance (TADA).

ISTANBUL (AA) - If you want to see Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl taken to a new level, then watch Netflix’s Famagusta. It is a TV series about Türkiye’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 Daesh/ISIS. But surprise, surprise! The firefighters, Türkiye’s military, is portrayed as the fire, and the fire, the Greek and Greek Cypriot terrorists, are airbrushed out of the plot.

Netflix should be ashamed. It should apologize to Türkiye 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.

-How did the genocide and massacres against the Turkish Cypriots take place?

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% of the indigenous population and Turkish Cypriots approximately 22%.

In the runup 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 Türkiye (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 Makarios 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 the series Famagusta hides from its viewers, as chronicled contemporaneously from independent media with no axes to grind.

-How were the events covered in the Western media?

On Dec. 28, 1963, Britain’s 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 Dec. 31, 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 40 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 Jan. 1, 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 Jan. 12, 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 Jan. 14, 1964, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Turkish Cypriot inhabitants of Ayios Vassilious had been massacred on Dec. 26, 1963. It reported their exhumation from a mass grave in the presence of the Red Cross.

On Jan. 14, 1964, Il Giorno, reported by Giorgio Bocco, said: “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 Feb. 13, 1964, the Greeks and Greek Cypriots attacked the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Limassol with tanks, killing 16 and injuring 35.

On Feb. 15, 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 Feb. 16, 1964, and there were many more.

On Feb. 17, 1964, the Washington Post reported that Greek Cypriot fanatics appeared bent on a policy of “genocide.”

On Sept. 10, 1964, the UN secretary-general reported (UN doc.S/5950): “United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (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.”

US Undersecretary 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.”

-What happened before and after the Cyprus Peace Operation?

From 1964 to 1974, the embers 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 Gen. 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 in 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 Makarios by the Cypriot National Guard with Greek terrorist Nicos Sampson. As quoted in Eleftherotipia on Feb. 26, 1981, the latter later boasted: “Had Turkey not intervened I would not only have proclaimed Enosis, I would have annihilated the Turks in Cyprus.”

Türkiye 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 July 23, 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 July 23, 1974, the Times of London reported: “The Greeks began to shell the Turkish quarter on Saturday, refugees said. Kazan Dervis, 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 July 24, 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 July 28, 1974, the New York Times reported that 14 Turkish Cypriot men had been shot in Alaminos.

On July 29, 1974, in Resolution No. 573 the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that “Turkey exercised its right of intervention in accordance with the article 4 of the Guarantee Treaty of 1960.”

As quoted in the Times of London and The Guardian on Aug. 21, in the village of Tokhni on Aug. 14, 1974 all the Turkish Cypriot men between the ages of 13 and 74, except for 18 who managed to escape, were taken away and shot. [3] In Zyyi, on the same day, all the Turkish Cypriot men age 19-38 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.

German daily Die Zeit wrote on Aug. 30, 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 August 14, 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 US imposed an arms embargo on Türkiye, 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 (TRNC).

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 worthless opinion. People would prefer to believe falsehoods which make them feel good than truths which make them uncomfortable.

​​​​​​​*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.