You see, it’s not only the recent failed “friendship” between former Secretary of State Condoleezza (how nice she’s former! I always need to Google her name to spell it right) Rice and Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis (the latter’s toothpaste ad smile is a permanent fixture. It could be fake - bad enough - or the result of excessive use of Botox - even worse!) As with every American official, Rice and now Obama have understood this “friendship” to be a “do as you’re told” kind of thing.

This mentality goes decades back and has become a pattern which Greek-American relations haven’t managed to get rid of. In 1947(1), Senators Vandenberg and Connally asked Dean Acheson, at the time Acting Secretary of State (he is the same guy that proposed the Acheson plan for Cyprus in 1964, the plan that essentially partitioned Cyprus under the guise of union to Greece), why the aid of the Truman Doctrine to a proven ally such as Greece was given with so many restrictions, while to Turkey, which was neutral during WW II, there were no strings attached. Acheson answered that Turkey is a proud country and she would consider insulting those restrictions, while Greece is our friend and she will do as she is told!

Indeed, Greece did as she was told. Following the Washington directives, successive Greek governments carried out a plan for the total Turkification of Greek Thrace, where a Muslim minority resides and of which only one third is ethnically Turkish. The remaining two-thirds are Roma and Pomaks, the latter. a group with Bulgarian characteristics. The US feared that Communist Bulgarian spies might infiltrate the Pomacs and create a sort of fifth phalanx inside a NATO country. Meanwhile Turkey was a NATO member and they thought it would be safer for the whole Muslim population in Greece to be Turkish. Today, a real danger to Greece’s territorial integrity exists thanks to the implementation of that “friendly” directive on the part of the US.

Twelve days after the September 6-7, 1955 pogrom against (mainly) the Greeks of Constantinople, Turkey, (and also Jews and Armenians, just a few years after the Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany) when the final blow to that millennia-old community was given by the Turkish state and its thugs (as a result of the excessive destruction on people and property, more than 100,000 Greeks left the City and about 65% of the Jewish community immigrated to Israel) then-US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sent a message to both Greece (the victim) and Turkey (the perpetrator of a crime that amounted to another genocide) completely overlooking what happened and urging the two sides “to make every effort to assure that the effectiveness of your partnership (as NATO members) is not impaired by present disagreements.” Reluctantly, Papagos and successive Greek governments swallowed the bitterness and heeded to the “friendly” advice. (According to Dr. Speros Vryonis, who has done the most thorough so-far study of the pogrom and is the author of the book “The Mechanism of Catastrophe,” Dulles’ “statement also constitutes a landmark in the genesis for anti-American sentiment in Greece”). Meanwhile, the Turks continued the deportations and the confiscation of Greek properties, to the extent that less than 2,000 Greeks remain there today and more than 75% of the property of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been illegally usurped by the authorities.

Then we had Cyprus, where a “friendly” US nod – to the Turks this time – allowed them to invade and occupy almost half the island until today. In the mid-90’s, the Imia islets incident occurred, during which Turkey invaded Greek territory. American policy switched overnight and although in all American military maps those islets appeared as Greek, from that moment on they became “disputed.” President Clinton had to intervene and have the Turks leave Imia – establishing in effect their “disputed” status.

Just four years ago, President Bush recognized FYROM as “Macedonia” – although American diplomats as early as 1949 warned about the Communist plot to curve out the northern territory of Greece called Macedonia and have it united with the southernmost tip of the former Yugoslavia. Moreover, Bush, through Rice (and beans?) tried repeatedly to have Greece vote for the entrance of FYROM to NATO before a solution on the name dispute is reached. Karamanlis said no and guess what? The State Department went ahead to punish Greece by not allowing her to enter the Special Waiver Visa Program, a sign of despair and bad form by our country, that behaved neither as friend or superpower, but like a disreputable pimp.

There is much more to write about this “friendship” and really explore the way our country, the US, treats steadfast allies. Some will rush to point to the supposed anti-Americanism in Greece. That shouldn’t come as an excuse, however, because Turkey is by far more anti-American. Moreover, Serbia was even in times of Communism one for the most pro-American countries in the world, until we bombarded the shit out of her in the ‘90s and we reduced her into a landlocked hell, surrounded by pro-Nazi, corrupted, crime-ridden prostitution heavens.

Today and in the midst of this terrible economic crisis, our country is not what it used to be. People don’t take us as seriously, no matter how much we like to believe otherwise. President Obama, although extremely popular, didn’t get what he wanted during his recent trip to Europe and in many instances he played the role of the mediator instead of the playmaker. While in Turkey, he bravely called for more religious freedom addressing their National Assembly, in front of President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan who were both persecuted as candidates running for office because of their beliefs (Erdogan even went to jail). However, in order not to irritate the country’s “secular” mullahs who represent the Deep State (a military-industrial complex that runs the country behind the scenes – pretty much like here, that is), he had to sneak a 12 minutes meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew who heads the country’s oldest institution and is the spiritual leader of more than 10 million US citizens. Even the photographs of the meeting were released by the White House only after Greek-Americans protested! Both Presidents Clinton and Bush had visited the Ecumenical Patriarchate while in office, ignoring the Turkish gestures not to.

Let us hope that this new humility based on reality and necessity will be also extended to US’ traditional friends, like Greece. The president should make true to his offer and invite Karamanlis to the US sooner rather than later. He needs to do the same to the President of Cyprus (to show Turkey that he means business when he called for a solution to the Cyprus problem). This way he will also demonstrate that his talk on friendship represents a break with the past. In November, Bartholomew will visit the US and President Obama will have every chance to remind Turks how serious the US is when it comes to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

We understand that the President needs Turkey to carry out his Middle East agenda, but experience shows that in politics whoever has put all his eggs in one basket has lost. Moreover, and speaking of baskets, Obama, as a basketball player, knows that in a game there are two baskets to shoot at, not one.

Last, but not least, in this month’s Perixscope is the mess at this year’s 23rd Celebration of the Greek Independence Day at the White House (March 25). Every time we hear complains about who gets to be invited and many don’t like the fact that they are excluded from the list of the so-called “leaders” that make it there. This time, though, the whole thing started on the wrong foot because President Obama, the host, waited until the last minute to make it known that he would organize the reception. When, finally, about a couple of weeks before March 25, it became widely known that the event will take place – a way to appease Greeks because the President announced he was going only to Turkey, breaking another tradition that had every American president visiting Greece too as part of the same trip – the offstage war about the invitations was declared. AHEPA’s Supreme President Ike Gulas in a letter to the White House expressed his disappointment that members of his organization got the invitation just a day(!) before and it would be impossible to arrange for transportation. Moreover, it’s insulting to invite someone on such short notice. Other people, like me, were told by the White House staff to come to Washington and wait outside, in case something would change and they could sneak us at the last minute (the problem is they sounded serious!)

When it came to the press, the mess was monumental. According to the list one day before the reception, only a representative of the Athens News Agency, one from the Cyprus New Agency, and a cameraman from the Greek State television were registered to get in! That meant that no Greek-American media were invited at all! It’s really intriguing that the President’s staff that supposedly plans everything to the minutest detail, would have only the people of Greece and Cyprus, two foreign countries for that matter, be informed about the event and not the Greek-American public. Unless that was precisely the case, to placate Greece’s disappointment because she was left out from the presidential trip to Europe!

In the future, if President Obama condescends to do the reception again, the list of those invited should be compiled by the Archdiocese, the most important institution in the community, and AHEPA, the oldest and biggest secular Greek-American organization. And besides inviting primarily “leaders,” as Andy Athens stated in a letter, responding to Gulas’ protest, emphasis should be given to having people who, while being Greek-American, are or have been shaping this country’s character in all fields of endeavor (besides, last year when I got in, I saw only a handful of real leaders among the 300 or more guests). Gulas’ father, Alek, is such a person and he should have been among the first people invited by President Obama. As a club owner in Alabama, Alek Gulas defied racism – when it was extremely dangerous to do so – and he had artists of color perform there. AHEPA, also, was founded in part to fight racism in the American south.

In his letter, Mr. Athens explained that the reception is the President’s prerogative and Greek-Americans, after all, are only the second group after the Irish to have such an honor. He also pointed out how hard many people – himself included – had to work in order for this tradition to gain footing.

Although Mr. Athens is absolutely right on the premise of his argument, one cannot fail to notice two different attitudes between him and Mr. Gulas and that they represent a generational difference. Athens, on the one hand, grew up and became extremely successful (and helpful to Hellenism) when it wasn’t so hip to be a Hellene in America, the melting pot was the norm and “blind” allegiance to authority was considered the only patriotic way. As Greek-Americans, we hadn’t proved ourselves then and we had to be grateful for what America offered us, oblivious to our contribution to her.

Gulas, on the other hand, represents a more self-assured generation of Greek-Americans that are not hesitant at all to play and, yes, fight in equal terms. As a lawyer, he took on huge pharmaceuticals in court and he won. Although thankful for being invited by the President to the White House, he didn’t hesitate to turn it down protesting that the invitation came last minute (another not so honoring aspect of the celebration is that the appetizers served at these events are paid for by wealthy Greek-Americans, which makes the initial reason for the reluctance of Obama to hold the reception this year due to economic constraints, obsolete!)

It will be very interesting to see how these two attitudes, as represented in this case by Mr. Athens and Mr. Gulas, intertwine and play in the future. As there is a time for everything, so in our state of affairs we need as a community to be less grateful and more assertive, even if it needs to be at the expense of a presidential reception (for which we foot the bill, anyway).

1. Legislative Origins of the Truman Doctrine, Hearings held in Executive Session Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 80th Congress, First Session on S. 938, A Bill to provide assistance to Greece and Turkey. Executive session held on March 13, and 28 and April 1, 2, 3, 1947. Made Public January 12, 1973, Historical Series. Information provided by Professor Van Coufoudakis.

DEMETRIOS RHOMPOTIS
dondemetrio@neomagazine.com