American Hellenic Media Project - Published Submissions

Please find below:

(1) An editorial entitled "Ghost of Papandreou Hovers Over Greece" published by The Boston Globe;

(2) A letter in response by the American Hellenic Media Project (AHMP) as published by The Boston Globe on April 2, 1999;

(3) The longer version of two responses as originally submitted by AHMP to The Globe; and

(4) The shorter version of two responses as originally submitted by AHMP to The Globe.

(for "fair use" and educational purposes only)

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(1)

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Ghost of Papandreou hovers over Greece

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist, 03/29/99

ATHENS - Andreas Papandreou has been dead since 1996, but his ghost still haunts Greek politics.

These days, prominent Greeks insist that their nation has abandoned the radicalism of the 1980s, when Papandreou was prime minister and seemingly bent on ruining Greece's relations with the West. An avowed Marxist, Papandreou routinely denounced the United States and went out of his way to embrace the world's pariahs. Within weeks of taking office in 1981, he opened an embassy in Cuba and invited terrorist Yasser Arafat to Athens. He flirted with Moscow. He courted Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy and Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's military strongman. He periodically threatened to pull out of NATO, was unequivocally pro-Arab in the Middle East, and supported Serbia despite its atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia.

But that was then, Greeks say; things are different now. Today Greece craves stability and warm relations with Washington and the European democracies. "Our main agenda," says Thanos Velemis, president of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, a leading Athens think tank, "is to integrate into the European Union."

Greek politics have been roiled ever since last month, when Turkish commandoes captured Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish terror group PKK. Ocalan had been secretly sheltered at the Greek Embassy in Kenya; it was when the embassy put him in a vehicle and sent him to the Nairobi airport that the Turks seized him. Greeks were outraged -- not that Greece had been protecting a savage killer but that it had failed to keep him out of Turkish hands. Three government ministers were sacked, and there were calls as well for the head of Prime Minister Costas Simitis.

Try to talk to Athens policy mavens about any of this, though, and they push the conversation back to Greece's drive to join the new European currency, the euro. They point with justifiable pride to the Simitis government's economic achievements: inflation is sharply down, the growth rate is up, and both the deficit and the public debt have fallen as a share of GDP. And they insist that Greece's key foreign-policy goals are stability in the Balkans and close integration with the West.

Yet if it is clear that Greece has turned its back on the worst excesses of Papandreou, it is equally clear that Papandreouism is not quite a thing of the past.

As the Ocalan affair suggests, Greece continues to carry a torch for some of the world's bloodiest villains. Government officials refuse to label the PKK a terrorist organization, despite its long history of murder and mayhem. Some 30,000 people have died in PKK attacks; it has killed teachers, journalists, and children; its methods range from setting homes on fire to pulling drivers out of cars and machine-gunning them. Yet Greeks persist in seeing Ocalan as a freedom fighter, a stance that puts them sharply at odds with the United States and Western Europe.

There is no evidence that the PKK operates training camps on Greek soil, as Turkey routinely alleges. Still, no one disputes that the PKK raises substantial amounts of money in Greece, or that its political support runs deep. At the national convention of the ruling Socialist party earlier this month, delegates chanted, "Freedom for Ocalan."

The same party congress welcomed a special foreign guest with a thundering ovation. That guest was not one of Europe's left-leaning leaders, such as Britain's Tony Blair or the new German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder. It was Papandreou's old favorite, Yasser Arafat. Granted, the PLO boss is no longer the international leper he was in 1981; he would receive a polite reception even in some Israeli circles. But there was no mistaking the thrill in Simitis's voice as he introduced Arafat, or the delirium in the hall as the delegates cheered. This was not politeness; it was hero worship.

Greek policy in the Middle East is not as bitterly anti-Israel as it was in the 1980s. "We have good relations with the whole region," says George Papandreous, the soft-spoken foreign minister (and son of the late prime minister). "We want good relations with Israel."

Yet he does not say no when asked if Greece is moving closer to rejectionist Arab and Muslim states like Syria and Iran. Instead he asks, "Shouldn't we try to help encourage the forces of reform in Iran?"

But there is more to it than that.

In a widely noticed article in Commentary last November, American scholar Daniel Pipes wrote: "Greeks hate and fear Turks. And so, in the time-honored fashion of the Middle East, they seek to befriend other enemies of Turkey, whoever they may be."

Hence Greek military cooperation with Syria, which includes the exchange of information and sale of equipment. Hence the Syrian prime minister's description of Greece as the country friendliest to Damascus outside the Arab world. The previous Greek foreign minister said in 1996 that Greece's position on the Israeli-Arab question is nearly identical to Syria's. The close ties between Turkey and Israel, on the other hand, he called "an alliance of malefactors." That's the sort of remark Andreas Papandreou would have made.

Greeks, in short, feel tugged in two directions. There is no mistaking their commitment to European unity, Western democracy, and economic reform. At the same time, they still despise the Turks, still chafe at American predominance, and still make common cause with rogues and dictators. Papandreou may be gone, but the politics he nurtured live on.

Jeff Jacoby is a Globe columnist

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THE BOSTON GLOBE

April 2, 1999

Letters to the Editor

More light on death toll

In his March 29 op-ed column ("Ghost of Papandreou Hovers Over Greece") Jeff Jacoby erroneously states that "[s]ome 30,000 people have died in PKK attacks". Jacoby overlooked the well-known fact that this figure represents all deaths suffered by both sides in the war.

Moreover, official death tolls reported from Ankara demonstrate that the lion’s share of the war’s more than 30,000 deaths has been inflicted by the far better-equipped, well-trained and more numerous Turkish armed forces.

Likewise, the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths have been Kurdish ones, and most of these the result of attacks by government forces against entire Kurdish villages deemed to be sympathetic to the secessionist cause. As reported by the State Department in 1994, Turkey’s scorched-earth policy forcefully displaced up to 3 million Kurds from Turkish Kurdistan.

It is the reality of ethnic cleansing and severe repression that makes pointing fingers at Kurdish insurgents for human rights violations -- and at Greece for allegedly supporting them -- so disingenuous.

P.D. SPYROPOULOS
Executive Director
American Hellenic Media Project
New York, N.Y.

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American Hellenic Media Project
P.O. Box 1150
New York, N.Y. 10028-0008
ahmp@hri.org
www.ahmp.org

March 30, 1999

(the longer of two responses)

To the Editor of The Boston Globe:

Jeff Jacoby’s editorial "Ghost of Papandreou Hovers Over Greece" (3/29/99) was more than simply an unfair portrayal of arguably the most progressive and democratic country in the Balkans, the Mideast and Eastern Europe. It was poor journalism.

Apparently dispensing with fact-checking and relying instead on Turkish government claims, Mr. Jacoby erroneously stated that "[s]ome 30,000 people have died in PKK attacks". One wonders how Mr. Jacoby could have overlooked the well-known fact that this figure represents all deaths suffered by both sides in the war.

Moreover, official death tolls reported from Ankara demonstrate that Kurdish casualties vastly outnumber Turkish ones, and that the lion’s share of the war’s more than 30,000 deaths have been inflicted by the far better equipped, well-trained and more numerous Turkish armed forces. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths have been Kurdish ones, and most of these the result of attacks by government forces against entire Kurdish villages deemed to be sympathetic to the secessionist cause. As reported by the State Department in 1994, Turkey’s scorched earth policy—in which thousands of Kurdish villages were intentionally destroyed by Turkish security forces—forcefully displaced up to three million Kurds from Turkish Kurdistan.

According to the Associated Press, an investigation leaked last year by the Turkish prime minister’s office to discredit a prior administration concluded that "Turkish death squads carried out many of Turkey’s 14,000 unsolved murders" targeting teachers, dissident students, religious leaders, businessmen, writers, poets, human rights activists, journalists and other civilians who were either Kurds or Turkish sympathizers of the Kurdish cause.

This is why Danielle Mitterrand, the president of the France-Freedom Foundation and widow of the late French president Francois Mitterand, declared that "if you judge Ocalan as a terrorist, you should also judge and impose sanctions for state terrorism represented by [Turkey’s] official army." It is this reality of ethnic cleansing and severe repression that makes pointing fingers at Kurdish insurgents for human rights violations—and at Greece for allegedly supporting them—so disingenuous.

Mr. Jacoby goes on to claim that the Greeks’ image of Ocalan as a freedom fighter "puts them sharply at odds with the United States and Western Europe", having apparently forgotten that both Italy and France are Western European countries—Italy refused to hand over Ocalan to Turkey, and both Italy and France joined Greece in rejecting Turkey’s simplistic villification of Ocalan and his PKK separatists as "terrorists", choosing instead to condemn Turkey for its human rights epidemic.

Very truly yours,
P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director

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The American Hellenic Media Project is a non-profit organization created to address inaccuracy and bias in the media and encourage independent, ethical and responsible journalism.

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(4)

American Hellenic Media Project
P.O. Box 1150
New York, N.Y. 10028-0008
ahmp@hri.org
www.ahmp.org

Via fax & e-mail: (617) 929-2098

(the shorter of two responses)

March 30, 1999

RE: Factual correction in 3/29 Editorial

To the Editor of The Boston Globe:

In his 3/29 editorial ("Ghost of Papandreou Hovers Over Greece") Jeff Jacoby apparently dispenses with fact-checking and erroneously states that "[s]ome 30,000 people have died in PKK attacks". One wonders how Mr. Jacoby could have overlooked the well-known fact that this figure represents all deaths suffered by both sides in the war.

Moreover, official death tolls reported from Ankara demonstrate that the lion’s share of the war’s more than 30,000 deaths have been inflicted by the far better equipped, well-trained and more numerous Turkish armed forces. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths have been Kurdish ones, and most of these the result of attacks by government forces against entire Kurdish villages deemed to be sympathetic to the secessionist cause. As reported by the State Department in 1994, Turkey’s scorched earth policy forcefully displaced up to three million Kurds from Turkish Kurdistan.

According to the Associated Press, an investigation by the Turkish government leaked last year concluded that "Turkish death squads carried out many of Turkey’s 14,000 unsolved murders" targeting teachers, dissident students, religious leaders, businessmen, writers, poets, human rights activists, journalists and other civilians who were either Kurds or sympathizers of their cause.

Very truly yours,

P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director