By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, August 14, 2014
LIMASSOL, Cyprus -- Cyprus is a beautiful island. But it
has never recovered from the Turkish invasion of 1974. Turkish troops still
control nearly 40 percent of the island -- the most fertile and formerly the
richest portion.
Some 200,000 Greek refugees never returned home after
being expelled from their homes and farms in Northern Cyprus.
The capital of Nicosia remains divided. A 112-mile
demilitarized "green line" runs right through the city across the
entire island.
Thousands of settlers from Anatolia were shipped in by
the Turkish government to occupy former Greek villages and to change Cypriot
demography -- in the same manner the occupying Ottoman Empire once did in the
16th century. Not a single nation recognizes the legitimacy of the Turkish
Cypriot state. In contrast, Greek Cyprus is a member of the European Union.
Why, then, is the world not outraged at an occupied
Cyprus the way it is at, say, Israel?
Nicosia is certainly more divided than is Jerusalem. Thousands
of Greek refugees lost their homes more recently, in 1974, than did the
Palestinians in 1947.
Turkey has far more troops in Northern Cyprus than Israel
has in the West Bank. Greek Cypriots, unlike Palestinians, vastly outnumbered
their adversaries. Indeed, a minority comprising about a quarter of the
island's population controls close to 40 percent of the landmass. Whereas
Israel is a member of the U.N., Turkish Cyprus is an unrecognized outlaw
nation.
Any Greek Cypriot attempt to reunify the island would be
crushed by the formidable Turkish army, in the brutal manner of the brief war
of 1974. Turkish generals would most likely not phone Greek homeowners warning
them to evacuate their homes ahead of incoming Turkish artillery shells.
The island remains conquered not because the Greeks have
given up, but because their resistance is futile against a NATO power of some
70 million people. Greeks know that Turkey worries little about what world
thinks of its occupation.
Greeks in Cyprus and mainland Greece together number less
than 13 million people. That is far less than the roughly 300 million Arabic
speakers, many from homelands that export oil, who support the Palestinians.
No European journalist fears that Greek terrorists will
track him down should he write something critical of the Greek Cypriot cause.
Greek Cypriots would not bully a journalist in their midst for broadcasting a
critical report, the way Hamas surely would to any candid reporter in Gaza.
In other words, there is not much practical advantage or
interest in promoting the Greek Cypriot cause.
Unlike Israel, Turkey is in NATO -- and is currently
becoming more Islamic and anti-Western under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan. If it is easy for the United States to jawbone tiny Israel, it is
geostrategically unwise to do so to Turkey over the island of Cyprus.
Turkey is also less emblematic of the West than is
Israel. In the racist habit of assuming low expectations for non-Westerners,
European elites do not hold Turkey to the same standards that they do Israel.
We see such hypocrisy when the West stays silent while
Muslims butcher each other by the thousands in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon,
Libya and Syria. Only when a Westernized country like Israel inflicts far less
injury to Muslims does the West become irate. The same paradox seems to hold
true for victims. Apparently, Western Christian Greeks are not the romantic
victims that Palestinian Muslims are.
In the 40 years since they lost their land, Greek
Cypriots have turned the once impoverished south into a far more prosperous
land than the once-affluent but now stagnant Turkish-occupied north -- unlike
the Palestinians, who have not used their know-how to turn Gaza or Ramallah
into a city like Limassol.
Resurgent anti-Semitism both in the Middle East and in
Europe translates into inordinate criticism of Israel. Few connect Turkey's
occupation of Cyprus with some larger racist commentary about the supposed
brutal past of the Turks.
The next time anti-Israeli demonstrators shout about
divided cities, refugees, walls, settlers and occupied land, let us understand
that those are not necessarily the issues in the Middle East. If they were, the
Cyprus tragedy would also be center-stage. Likewise, crowds would be damning
China for occupying Tibet, or still sympathizing with millions of Germans who
fled a now-nonexistent Prussia, or deploring religious castes in India, or
harboring anger over the tough Russian responses to Georgia, Crimea and
Ukraine, or deploring beheadings in northern Iraq.
Instead, accept that the Middle East is not just about a
dispute over land. Israel is inordinately damned for what it supposedly does
because its friends are few, its population is tiny, and its adversaries beyond
Gaza numerous, dangerous and often powerful.
And, of course, because it is Jewish.
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