Word: turkeys
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Frustrated by its inability to aid the ethnic Greeks on the distant island against Turkey's blatant aggression, the new democratic government of Premier Constantino Caramanlis angrily denounced its NATO allies, particularly the U.S., for not intervening. In a move that may permanently weaken the West in the eastern Mediterranean (see following story), Athens summarily pulled its forces out of the NATO alliance. "NATO is dispensable," Caramanlis, 67, said in a grand De Gaulle-like gesture of independence. "It used us, but when we needed it, it closed its eyes...
Britain, which had occupied the island from 1878 to 1960 and along with Greece and Turkey is a co-guarantor of Cyprus' independence, had led the negotiations and was as stunned-and bitter-as Athens at the Turkish intransigence and arrogance. British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan said that "what happened was totally unnecessary, and that's not only my view but also that of the U.S. Government, as the Turks have been told. I cannot believe that peace in the eastern Mediterranean depends on 36 hours...
...easily supplied from Turkish ports. The Greek mainland, by contrast, is 525 miles away; a Greek counterinvasion almost certainly would have been thwarted by Turkish air support and the 40,000 Turkish troops already deployed on the island. The only Greek alternative would have been to attack Turkey on the mainland through Thrace. This, however, would have been even more disastrous for the Greeks. Not only does the Turkish army have almost three tunes as many men, but the leadership and morale of the Greek army have also been crippled by seven years of a dictatorship that had purged most...
...Greeks wanted to bite anyone-anyone besides Turkey, that is-it was the U.S., which, in Athens' view, had betrayed it in its most desperate hour. The decision to withdraw Greek military forces from NATO, a move specifically directed against Washington as the leader of the alliance, was immensely and immediately popular in Greece, and served as something of a diversion to Greek humiliation at the hands of Turkey. Almost everywhere throughout the country a virulent anti-American mood was evident. Several hundred people demonstrated against the U.S. in downtown Athens, police were called in to guard the American...
...Gesture. Besides feeling that the U.S. was siding with the Turks, the Greeks were bitter over what they consider longtime American support of the corrupt military dictatorship that preceded Caramanlis. The whole imbroglio with Turkey could have been avoided, the Greeks believed, if Washington had vetoed the attempt by the Athens dictatorship to overthrow the Nicosia government and bring Cyprus into the Greek orbit, a switch Ankara obviously could not allow...