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«'Eλληνες ενωθείτε
εναντίον
του κοινού εχθρού, εναντίον του μίσους, της διχόνοιας και της
διαίρεσης, που είναι ό ίδιος μας ο εαυτός» - Θ.
ΚΟΛΟΚΟΤΡΩΝΗΣ-
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| Η
λέξη «χριστιανισμός» έχει παρανοηθεί, γιατί στην ουσία υπήρχε ένας
χριστιανός, που πέθανε πάνω στο σταυρό- Νίτσε |
Γιά "να λέγονται τα πράγματα με τ'
όνομά τους" |
Κανείς δεν
πρόκειται ν' ανεβεί στην πλάτη σου, αν εσύ δεν θελήσεις να σκύψεις
Μάρτιν Λ. Κινγκ |
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New Lobby
in Town: The Greeks
TIME Magazine
Monday, Jul. 14, 1975
Nonexistent a year ago, forged on the anvil of a single issue, one of
the most effective lobbies in Washington today is that of Greek
Americans. Their grievance is the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, and
they have had remarkable success in helping persuade Congress to cut
off military aid to Turkey because of its invasion of the Mediterranean
island country. Greece and Turkey, of course, are NATO allies; in
legitimate pursuit of their special concerns, the Greek Americans have
complicated U.S. efforts to mediate an already complex situation on
NATO's southern flank.
Cyprus has a long history of conflict between the Greek majority and
Turkish minority who inhabit it. Too of ten in recent times, the Turks
have been second-class citizens. But under the rule of Archbishop
Makarios, a reasonable if at times precarious modus vivendi had been
achieved, and an independent Cyprus was prospering. Then a year ago,
the junta of Greek colonels who governed Athens and whom the U.S.
supported fomented a coup on Cyprus. It was led by 650 Greek military
officers commanding the 10,000-man Cypriot national guard. The Turks,
suspecting that the intent was to make Cyprus part of Greece and
further suppress the island's Turkish minority, attacked and occupied
Cyprus, uprooting 200,000 Greek Cypriots, and partitioned the island to
their own advantage.
The invasion and occupation spontaneously unified the roughly 3 million
people of Greek descent in America. Until then, they had been bitterly
divided over the dictatorial government in Athens, which ended when the
junta resigned in the wake of widespread civilian unrest in Greece
after the Cyprus defeat. Greek Americans were outraged by the Turkish
aggression, regardless of its justification, and besieged the U.S.
Congress with demands that American military aid to Turkey be withheld.
This led to a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to Turkey
effective last February, though other factors played a major role: 1)
the Turkish use of American military weapons on Cyprus clearly violated
U.S. laws banning their offensive employment and a specific agreement
between Washington and Ankara against shipment of such weapons to
Cyprus without Washington's consent; 2) Congress was growing
increasingly restive over what many legislators considered Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger's highhanded management of U.S. foreign policy.
Now the Greek lobby is regearing for a new assault on Congress. The
Senate in May yielded to Administration pleas and decided by just one
vote to end the ban on arms to Turkey. A House committee will take up
the issue this week, and a floor vote is expected by mid-July. But if
aid is not resumed this month, Ankara has vowed to require
"renegotiation" of U.S. military installations in Turkey—meaning that
Ankara might close U.S. bases that Washington considers vital Rule of
Law. How does this newest ethnic lobby function? In Congress the
American Greek community has worked mainly through Senator Thomas
Eagleton of Missouri and Congressmen John Brademas of Indiana, Paul
Sarbanes of Maryland and Benjamin Rosenthal of New York. Only Brademas
and Sarbanes are of Greek extraction (there are only three other Greek
Americans in Congress: Representatives Louis "Skip" Bafalis of Florida,
Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts and Gus Yatron of Pennsylvania). None of
them consider themselves part of a Greek lobby. "We prefer to think of
ourselves as the rule-of-law lobby," says Brademas, whose 475,000
constituents include only about 450 Greek Americans. Explains Sarbanes:
"We have simply sought to enforce a provision of the existing law. We
do not feel the U.S. should sanction aggression."
They also share a common antagonism toward Kissinger's obvious
reluctance to share foreign policy decision-making with Congress, most
notably on the Cyprus issue. Contends Rosenthal: "No doubt dealing with
Brademas, Sarbanes and myself is less exciting than dealing with Mao
and Brezhnev, but he [Kissinger] must deal with us and with other
members of Congress because we reflect the will of the American
people." That could possibly be true, but it is precisely because the
Cyprus situation has stirred relatively little public debate in the
U.S. that a concentrated lobbying effort can have great impact.
While Eagleton and the three Congressmen have championed the cause, the
pressure has been generated by a complex of Greek-American
organizations. Most effective has been the American Hellenic Institute,
founded last summer. The institute has a full-time lobbyist in
Washington and is headed by Eugene Telemachus Rossides, a former
Nixon-appointed Treasury Department official and a well-connected
Republican attorney (he is a law partner of former Secretary of State
William Rogers). Son of a Greek mother and Greek-Cypriot father,
Rossides argues that the Cyprus crisis "exposed the myth of Kissinger's
competence as a negotiator," and that the Turkish aggression was "equal
to if not worse than the Soviet aggression against Czechoslovakia and
Hungary and Hitler's aggression against Czechoslovakia and the Balkan
nations." Such invidious rhetoric aside, Rossides' group has
efficiently spearheaded the lobbying.
Two long-established Greek-American institutions have provided vital
grass-roots support, stimulating the mail campaigns. One is the Greek
Orthodox Church, headed in the U.S. by Archbishop lakovos, who set up
50 state committees after the Turkish invasion to raise money for
Greek-Cypriot refugees (collections so far: $1.3 million) and to urge
letters to Congressmen. Iakovos has personally pressed the issue with
President Ford, Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy and Democratic
Presidential Contenders Henry Jackson and Lloyd Bentsen. The other is
AHEPA (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association), the
Greek-American fraternal order, which has 400 chapters and about 50,000
members, as well as some 700 chapters of auxiliary organizations for
women, boys and girls. AHEPA headquarters raised $165,000 to run
newspaper-ad campaigns and to solicit letters; it sent delegations to
Ford, Kissinger and Under Secretary of State Joseph Sisco.
A publicity campaign has been pushed by the Greek embassy in
Washington, which has hired the public relations firm of J. Walter
Thompson to advise it. The embassy has also retained William
Ruckelshaus, the former Deputy Attorney General who was a victim of
Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, to argue against military aid
to Turkey on Capitol Hill. Legislators describe his efforts as "low-key
but effective."
Hard Work. There are some 70 Greek-American organizations, about 20 of
which have sprung up because of the Cyprus crisis. Much of their effort
will now be coordinated by an organization set up for that purpose in
Boston last month. Called the United Hellenic American Congress, it is
headed by Andrew Athens, president of the Chicago-based Metron Steel
Corp. Among this group's supporters have been New York Shipowners
George Livanos, Pericles Callimanopulos and the Goulandris family. Most
of the shipowners' contributions have been to aid Greek-Cypriot
refugees. Such prominent Greek Americans as former San Francisco Mayor
George Christopher, California investment Millionaire James Zissis and
Mayor Lee Alexander of Syracuse, N.Y., have worked hard in the lobbying
drive. An ad hoc group, the Hellenic Council of America, was founded
last summer by Columbia University Economics Professor Phoebus Dhrymes
to enlist academic and professional people in the campaign.
Kissinger has responded to the Greek-American criticism by meeting four
times with the AHEPA leadership's Justice for Cyprus Committee and
several times with anti-Turkish-aid Congressmen. He has refused to
budge in advocating aid to Turkey and has criticized the opposition as
misguided and not in the best interests of the U.S. Kissinger also has
found one Greek American, Rochester lawyer Dennis Livadas, who has
agreed to try to organize a minority lobby within the U.S. Greek
community to support the Administration.
To complaints by Greek Americans that he should have warned the Turks
that invading Cyprus would be a breach of aid agreements, as Lyndon
Johnson did so effectively in 1965, Kissinger has argued that would
have been interpreted as support of the Athens junta—a U.S. stance for
which he was already under fire. While some of his aides have conceded
that Turkey violated U.S. military aid laws, Kissinger insists they are
bad laws. With merit, the pro-Greece lobbyists counter that laws, good
or bad, must be obeyed. Indeed, when India and Pakistan went to war,
using U.S. arms, in 1965, the Johnson Administration itself suspended
aid to both combatants.
Still, another barrage of anti-Turkey mail is hitting Capitol Hill, and
it is now up to the House of Representatives to make its difficult
decision. There is no comparable Turkish lobby active in Washington.
The case for Turkey is, instead, being made vociferously and with
potent political arm-twisting by the Administration. As in the Senate,
the final House vote is expected to be close.
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