How many hundred billion euros should we ask for compensation from Greece?
Poland is preparing to demand $1.3 trillion from Germany as World War II reparations.
Greece demanded 162 billion euros in compensation from Germany in 2013.
Then, in 2015, they increased this compensation to between 269 and 332 billion euros, the government’s calculation was published by the newspaper To Vima.
Then, the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave a note to Germany, calling for negotiations to begin negotiations for the payment of 320 billion euros suffered in the 1st and 2nd World Wars.
In fact, during the visit of Germany’s new Foreign Minister in July, Greek Foreign Minister Dendias brought up the issue again, and presented his guest with a book about that period.
Germany says that in 1960, during the Federal Republic of Germany, it paid 115 million marks to Greece in compensation and the matter is closed. Berlin says the compensation issue with Poland has also been resolved in the past and cannot be renegotiated.
In fact, a similar situation is also valid for Israel. Germany paid a very serious compensation to Israel, but then continued to pay the victims of the genocide with various funds. In 2007, German Government Spokesperson Thomas Steg said that additional payments can be negotiated if Israel is requested.
This means that compensation is still being demanded for world wars, and even if the issue was concluded with an agreement in the past, compensation files can be opened again.
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Do you know Karaağaç Neighborhood in Edirne?
This neighborhood, which is 4 km from the Greek border, was left to Turkey by Greece in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne as war reparations.
I especially recommend that you read the section of compensation from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s Speech.
The fiercest arguments between İsmet Pasha, who attended Lausanne on behalf of Turkey, and Rauf Bey, the Prime Minister of the time, took place over the war indemnity to be received from Greece. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had to intervene in this debate personally.
In Lausanne, the Entente Powers suggested that Greece, which was experiencing internal turmoil, could not afford to pay war reparations and therefore Karaağaç should be given to Turkey as compensation. İsmet Pasha, considering the still occupied Istanbul and other important issues, said that a positive step should be taken in this regard. Prime Minister Rauf Bey refused to accept Karaağaç as compensation, saying, “We will fight the Greeks again if necessary”. The language of the encrypted telegrams between the two became increasingly harsh. İsmet Pasha telegraphed Rauf Bey, saying, “I will leave the negotiations, you can send the Minister of Finance who is curious to be here.” Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, after reading all the correspondence between the two, describes the path he followed in Nutuk as follows:
“Generally, my attitude towards both sides has not been soft. I did not take the path of silencing the other side by giving right to one side.” Turkey, without money and in a state of internal turmoil, agreed to give Karaağaç as compensation, and focused on the results it achieved in vital issues, especially the evacuation of Istanbul, in return for the concession it made.
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If it had the chance to say to the storks flying over Turkey, “Turks are expansionists, don’t fly from there, fly from our country”, we have a Greek government that would do it without hesitation.
They start each new day asking what harm they can do to Turkey and they do their best.
If we do not use both diplomatic and military methods against this evil, Athens will reduce the Turkish territorial waters to 7 percent in the Aegean, take the 12-mile step, and call the EU army and NATO, if we are not a member, to remove the Turkish soldiers from Cyprus. .
The Greek Cypriot Foreign Minister shamelessly told EU foreign ministers this week that Turkey’s Cyprus Peace Operation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are the same thing. The Colonels’ Junta, which had Nikos Sampson staged a coup, made no mention of the London-Zurich agreements, in which the breakdown of the constitutional order on the Island gave all guarantors the right to intervene.
Turkey is not a country that can compete with Greece, this is their superior side.
If we can’t compete with being ugly, we can now point the gun that Greece pointed at Germany at them. Since the closed compensation files are opened again, Greece should pay the compensation for the invasion of Anatolia now.
As a country that does not care about Lausanne and arms the islands, Greece cannot say, “We solved the compensation issue in Lausanne”. Turkey may not receive compensation, but it will have the chance to explain the Greek barbarism in Anatolia once again and to announce to the world once again who has eyes on whose land.
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There are so many documents to ask for war reparations from Greece…
For example, on October 26, 1921, the Soviet Foreign Minister Çiçerin’s letter to the foreign ministers of the Entente States describing and protesting the massacre committed wherever the Greek army retreated.
The Manisa Fire Report of the US Istanbul Deputy Consul General James Loder Park, the detections of the Manisa fire by the French Representative Henry Franklin Bouillon, the Uşak Fire, then the Yalova Massacre of the occupation period, the Karatepe Massacre, the Becek Massacre, the Menemen Massacre, the Orhangazi, Yenişehir, Armutlu massacres, Pergamum Raid… The list goes on and on. These are foreign sources, but we also have domestic sources. The reports of the Tetkik-i Mezalim and Tetkik-i Fecayi commissions determined and recorded the barbarism of the fleeing Greek army, if not the years of occupation. These reports are definitely in the state archives.
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“What if other countries want compensation from us?” Let’s get to the question:
Turkey is a country that has already paid both war reparations and Ottoman debts.
For example, two warships seized by the British at the beginning of the First World War were left to England as war reparations. Again, in Lausanne, we accepted the debt of 105 million 553 thousand 623 gold liras from the Ottoman Empire. A payment plan agreement was made in 1928, but Turkey, which turned the 1929 Depression into an opportunity, reduced this debt to 8 million 578 thousand gold liras with the Paris Agreement in 1933. In other words, the Ottomans managed to write off 80 percent of their debts.
Compensation issues are problematic, but the young Republic signed an agreement with the USA in 1934.
With this agreement, we paid 1 million 300 thousand dollars to the United States in 13 years in return for this agreement, which dropped the compensation lawsuits filed by all Armenians, Greeks and Jews who are US citizens, and the compensation lawsuits filed by Turkish citizens against the US. With this treaty, it was decided that there would be no compensation to be paid to American citizens who lived as Ottoman citizens during the First World War and later became American citizens for various reasons and whose lands and properties were confiscated.
Just as the Greek parliament took a decision to demand compensation from Germany, the TGNA can take such a decision after making the necessary investigations.
Greece must see that the evil it does against Turkey every day and systematically will have not only military but also diplomatic and economic consequences.
We should look at the section “People who died of hunger”, which they used when asking for compensation from Germany, and remember the aid ships sent by the Red Crescent from Istanbul to Piraeus in order to prevent those deaths…
moments…
Bagcilar Square, 1962: People lay wreaths at the Atatürk Monument on Republic Day. The area is empty, a square that has nothing to do with today’s Bağcılar.
Bostanci, 1970: The name of that place was Yumurcak Beach. Times when you can swim from anywhere in Istanbul.
Tunnel, 1952: Teachers in the front, children carefully preparing to cross the street in the back. The square is 70 years old in history, but in perception it looks like new from the present.
photo of the week
Pity those tomatoes… This year, I looked at the photo of the tomato fight festival held every year in the village of Bunol, near Valencia, Spain, with a different eye this year. The driest summer of the last century was experienced in Europe, since there was no natural gas, the production of ammonia and naturally fertilizer became difficult, prices went up. Of course, it is important to keep the traditions alive, but at this rate, they will be able to throw not tomatoes but red-dyed water at each other in the future.
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