"The Greeks [have] become a bad-mannered, misogynist, lazy, self-important fat bunch"
-- The Sunday Times, 3/7/99

"Keep your girlfriends away from Greeks because they walk up with their dirty open shirts, their gold jewelry hanging out, they put their hairy arms around your girlfriends and grab their breasts . . . all Greeks are con artists . . . all Greeks are scummy bastards."
-- The Mancow Show (Chicago Radio Program), 3/24/99

"The whole of Greece seemed to me a cut-price theme park of broken marble, a place where you were harangued in a high-minded way about Ancient Greek culture while some swarthy little person picked your pocket . . . The Greeks were not Greek, but rather the illiterate descendants of Slavs and Albanian fishermen, who spoke a debased Greek dialect and had little interest in the broken columns and temples except as places to graze their sheep . . . the Greeks struck me as being more xenophobic than the French, and more ill-tempered and irrational, in a country more backward than Croatia . . . Greece is the degraded fringe of Europe, basically a peasant society, fortunate in its ruins and its selective memory . . . More than any other place I had seen so far on the Mediterranean, Greece was purely a tourist destination, a theme park of shattered marble and broken statues, and garbled history."
-- The Pillars of Hercules, A Grand Tour of The Mediterranean, by Paul Theroux, pp. 314-316, 322, G. P. Putnam's Sons (1995)

". . . modern Greeks have little or nothing to do with the ancient Athenians . . . Modern Greeks are largely of Turkish descent, as is shown by their short, hairy legs and low-slung bottoms: their chief interest in the Elgin Marbles is commercial, as a tourist attraction."
-- The Daily Telegraph, Auberon Waugh, 9/28/98

"The Greeks, who like to see themselves as the linear descendants of the ancient Greeks, despite a generous admixture of Turkish, Slav and other genetic inputs over the millennia, exploded in rage when the newly independent Macedonian state . . . adopted the gold star of Vergina on a red background for its national flag and the Republic of Macedonia as its name."
-- The Financial Times Survey, "Republic of Macedonia, Island of Stability and Tolerance", A. Robinson, K. Hope, 7/7/95

"So the Maya do, indeed, have an extremely unusual ancient civilization. Not because it was based on star-worship or peace but because it is neither dead, like those of ancient Greece or Mesopotamia, nor living, like those of China or India."; The Economist, "Cracking the Maya's Code", 12/21/96

"The Eastern churches, moreover, are bonded to one another like Siamese twins . . . Eastern Christianity . . . holds the churches of the West in contempt. It's not altogether surprising, then, that just now there has been, at the initiative of Milosevic, some agitation in the parliaments of Russia, Serbia, and Belarus for a pan-Slavic union. (This reminds me of Gamal Abdel Nasser's fitful dream of a United Arab Republic, which was to cleanse the Jews from the Middle East.) . . . Why are we so reluctant to tell the quite simple truth about the Slavic wars--that is, to name the Eastern churches of Orthodox Christianity as partners in the near-genocide in Kosovo, as they were partners in the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia?"
-- The New Republic, "Holy Wars", Martin Peritz, 5/10/99

"The Serbian war against the Bosnians is a religious war not only because most Bosnians are Muslims but because the Serbs are Orthodox Christians. The best scholarship I have been able to find about Serbian Orthodoxy and Serbian nationalism is the writing of Sabrina Petra Ramet. . . Ramet discloses that some small but telling details. For example, the mug of ex-communist Slobodan Milosevic . . . is carried aloft in Orthodox services as a religious icon, along with the saints. . . The Russians have supported Serb aggression and want Bosnia diminished because they, too, are Orthodox Christians . . . Even the Greeks are involved, cheering on fellow faithful of the Eastern rite against "the Turks," a phrase applied indiscriminately to virtually all neighboring Muslims. . . Balkan cartography is patchwork. But one clear psychological line running through it is the line between the Orthodox churches and Islam . . . It is now a line drenched in Muslim blood. . . Turkey, because of ethnic affinities, history and the presence of a small Bosnian lobby, is the one Muslim country that has been significantly touched by sympathy for the Bosnian Muslims."
-- The New Republic, "Nationalism and Before", Martin Peretz, 8/7/95

"Can Greece be considered an honourable member of Nato, of the European Union, or even of what used to be called the community of nations? Well before Colonels or Novembrists, Greece had a lot to answer for. It set the whole lamentable pattern for European nationalism, matching Renan's definition that to be a nationalist means misunderstanding your own history and hating your neighbours, while pioneering rewritten history and invented tradition. This was encouraged by English philhellenes from Byron onwards, who colluded in the comical notion that modern Greece is in some sense the heir of Periclean Athens. There are echoes of that Philhellenic nonsense in the noisy agitation for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece. . . In the Eighties, under the appalling Andreas Papandreou, Greece's membership of the western alliance was plainly fraudulent or even bizarre. . . In recent years, whenever EU enlargement has been discussed, opponents have always had to hand an immensely eloquent one-word argument: "Greece". Here was one poor-but-less-than-honest country which had seen "the European idea" as a trough to guzzle from. . . What makes the Greek position finally intolerable is a foreign policy and penchant for picking fights, all stemming from infantile nationalism. . . At every opportunity we should raise Greece's continued membership of both the EU and Nato. To start with, we might take to using the name 'Former Ottoman Province of Greece'. As for the Elgin Marbles, we should keep them in London, or return them to their rightful owners, the Turks."
-- The Sunday Telegraph,"Why Greece won't tackle the terrorists", Geoffrey Wheatcroft, 6/11/00

"Turks say the village [Harput] was abandoned in the 19th century . . . But Armenians say the village was cleared out by Turkish authorities in 1915 during the alleged genocide of Armenians here." (emphasis added)
-- Associated Press, "Eclipse Chasers Gather in Turkey", Harmonie Toros, 8/10/99

"Greeks hate Turks, so on your next trip to Athens don't say this out loud, but the truth is that modern-day Greeks basically are Turks, without the mustaches . . . If you don't think the Greeks were a little shallow, then read their plays . . . Tipsy Greek guys, all under the heady impression that by the time the krater is empty they will have cleared up the mysteries of life: this is Greek culture . . . Periodically, we're reminded that the ancient Greeks don't even have identifiable descendants. Each time modern Greece demands that England return Lord Elgin's marbles to the Parthenon, it is pointed out in response that these Greeks are not the children of the Greeks of Plato's day . . . Today, Greeks are Turks . . . the ancient Greeks were marked for extinction. When the Met's Greek collection was entombed under New York soot, their story went unnoticed. Exposed to sunlight, it's sadder than any play by Aeschylus."
-- The National Review, David Klinghoffer (author of "The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy"), 5/17/99

"[The Greeks were] feuding tribes, and homes of regular bloodletting and an energetic culture of banditry, whose Ottoman rulers devised enormously sophisticated laws and political customs to cope with their anarchic instincts . . . When Byron witlessly twittered 'that Greece might still be free' he clearly didn't know that the struggle in Greece was less for independence than for the Hellenisation of the Ottoman Empire, in which the Greeks would become the dominant imperial group. The means employed by the `freedom fighters' was usually the standard Balkan one of killing civilians - in this case, of Turks in the Peloponnese."
-- Sunday Telegraph, "We always vilify the poor Turks", Kevin Myers, 2/21/99

"Best Blessing in Disguise"
Constantinople and the remnant of the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II in 1453. Far from declining, the city became the resplendent capital of the powerful Turks. And, shades of Starbucks, the conquerors opened coffeehouses throughout the city."
-- Time, 12/31/99, Vol. 154 No. 27, Person of the Millennium

"White folks was in caves while we was building empires. We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it"
-- Rev. Al Sharpton, cited in Democrats Do the Dumbest Things (Renaissance Books)

John McLaughlin: "The Person of the faux Millennium goes to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a Muslim visionary who, in 1922, abolished the Ottoman Sultanate, a feudal monarchy; emancipated women, adopted western dress, converted the Arabic alphabet to Latin -- the only leader in history to successfully turn a Muslim nation into a western parliamentary democracy and secular state."
-- January 1-2, 2000 broadcast of The McLaughlin Group

"Poland and Hungary . . . could teach some valuable lessons to some countries in Western Europe. And not just to semi-civilized places like Greece".
-- The New York Post, "Triumph of the Satellites", Editorial, 10/15/98

"'In most Balkan countries [the] Ottomans are portrayed as virtual savages imposing alien customs, expelling the native populations and replacing them with Turkish Colonists . . . All of these claims are at the best misleading and at worst completely false' . . . An examination of the Kosovo controversy shows that, possibly even more than creating warring forms of modern nationalism, the primitive 'liberation' movements of Serbs, Albanians, Greeks and Bulgarians led to a heedless and brutal assault on Ottoman society in the Balkans, the consequences of which are written in blood."
-- The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Schwartz, 5/5/98

"Muslim-hating Greece, long a supporter of Serbia"
-- The Toronto Sun, 3/28/99

Turkey is a very old country with civilization stacked upon civilization. The more they dig, the more they learn that Turkey, not Mesopotamia, is the cradle of Western civilization . . . I find Turkey tastier, friendlier, cheaper and richer in culture and history than Greece . . . [t]he best thing about Athens is the boat to Turkey."
-- Europe Through the Back Door by Rick Steves (1994), host of PBS's television series Travels in Europe with Rick Steves.

"The inhabitants of Athens or Sparta today have no more in common with Pericles and Leonidas than do contemporary Italians with Marcus Aurelius; indeed, rather less . . . a correspondent [once] proposed that the re-establishment of a British protectorate over Corfu should be the price of [the Elgin Marbles'] return. That is too low; but what if we were to talk of Greece having to leave the European Union?"
-- The Daily Telegraph, Leading Article, 4/3/96

"The brilliant general and statesman Mustafa Kamel [sic], Ataturk . . . did much to turn Turkey toward the West: changing the alphabet from Arab to Roman, [and] abolishing the Greek fez".
-- Time, Country Profile/Advertisement, 10/30/95

"Turkish troops landed in northern Cyprus to protect the Turkish community of the island. [T]he Turkish government . . . is not willing to agree to [the demilitarization of Cyprus], lest the Turkish community on Cyprus be threatened".
-- The Baltimore Sun, "Monica Lewinsky and the Russian missiles in Cyprus", Robert Freedman, 8/31/98

"Greece might be the last truly Balkan nation.. . . the Greeks seem determined to live up, or down, to the worst stereotypes of Balkan emotionalism. . . Television stations and every Athens newspaper [during NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia were] all wildly anti-American . . . Greece lives on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, where Europe slides into the Islamic Middle East. It is a peasant land . . . its politics, food and music are closer to Istanbul or Damascus than to London or Paris. Passion too often dominates reason, and the Balkan disease--too much history, not enough vision--is endemic. . . a millennium of rule by Byzantine and Ottoman emperors meant that Greece, like Russia, missed all the great events . . . that created the skeptical and cooler Western mind. . . So it was barely 50 years ago that Greece's history diverged from the Balkan norm. For a half-century, it became allied to the West, first through NATO, then through the European Union. Fifty years, apparently, is not enough to shake off the Balkan mind-set--instinctive nationalism, brooding victimization, an obsession with history and a reflexive hostility toward neighbors--that inspired Serbia's assaults on the rest of the former Yugoslavia. . . Greece has been the most inconstant of allies, both within NATO (unlike Turkey, it avoids most military cooperation with its allies) and within the EU (other Europeans admit they are sorry they let the Greeks in) . . . These disputes keep Greeks in a ferment that boils over whenever there is trouble in the region, as there was over Kosovo. Blame is quickly assigned to the cause of this trouble--in this case Clinton and the Muslim Kosovars. Reason takes a holiday and demonstrators take to the streets. . . In a post-Cold War world, Greece could be a luxury the West no longer can afford. There are Balkan countries including Bulgaria and Romania that are eager to join the West, in every sense, and gave NATO much more help in the Kosovo war than did the Greeks. It is legitimate for the West to tell the Greeks that it saved them from Stalin and protected them from Turkey and that it expects more in return than tantrums. . . Most Balkan states, except for Serbia, clearly want to join the West. The Greeks already are there, but only precariously and perhaps temporarily. Poised between Europe and the Middle East, they haven't really decided where they belong. One day, their exasperated allies may settle the issue for them."
-- The Chicago Tribune, "Whose Side are Greeks On, Anyway?", R.C. Longworth, 11/28/99

"Insofar as an exhibition can assemble great sculpture and have practically no scholarly value, [`The Greek Miracle: Classical Sculpture from The Dawn of Democracy', an art exhibition touring the U.S.] does. The reason is that The Greek Miracle is an exercise in political propaganda . . . The Greeks, by contrast, stop short of turning into marble statues of themselves -- effigies of undying self-congratulation."
-- Time, 1/11/93

"['The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization' documentary is] so narrowly focused and blatantly worshipful that it gets a little ponderous . . . The film also sometimes overstates its case, praising [Athens] excessively while ignoring outside virtues and internal flaws. Please. Helping forge Western civilization should be achievement enough. Even the Greeks, at least the more realistic ones, might not see a need to inflate it.
-- USA Today, "Athens conquers all -- even the truth", 2/9/00

". . . Israel knew that the goal of the Second Temple era was the kingdom of Torah and the Commandments -- and the kindling of a small Menorah that could banish the darkness of Greek culture. When that happened, it was time to celebrate . . . Merely being alive on the twenty-fifth of Kislev is not enough; one must see the flame, remember what it represents, and know that we are grateful for the triumph of Torah's light over Greece's darkness."
-- New York Post, "Understanding the Meaning of Chanukah", Special NY Post Chanukah Advertising Supplement, 12/16/97

"Turkey's present-day leaders, such as PM Tansu Ciller, are the direct functional descendants of the rulers of the Ottoman Empire, a very diverse and sophisticated class [and] the inheritors of the culture and political structure of the Byzantine Empire. This background helps explain Turkey's political stability as well as its reputation as one of the most Western-oriented countries within the Muslim world."
-- The Harvard Gazette, 3/9/95

"Turkey is a treasure house of literature and culture - a microcosm of the history of mankind, beginning with Xerxes, Alexander the Great, the Caesars . . . thus, Turkish literature sprang from roots as varied as Plato, Persian epics, Arab verses, and later French and European novelists."
-- New York Times, from a Mobil Oil ad on an Op Ed page, `94

"[A] settlement of the Cyprus issue would remove the one clear and present excuse for a Greek veto on [EU admission for] Turkey . . . The passionate objections of Greece will never vanish entirely, because too many shapeless fears lie behind them."
-- The Economist, "A Survey of Turkey: Star of Islam", 12/14/91

"Rarely has a state visit threatened to do more damage to American interests than that of the Greek Prime Minister . . . To impose sanctions against [Macedonia (FYROM), a state that] is protected in part by hundreds of American soldiers is a hostile act toward the U.S. . . . if war erupts in the next few years in Macedonia and neighboring Kosovo, the Clinton-Papandreou meeting will appear in hindsight much like the 1990 meeting between Saddam Hussein and the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, that inadvertently gave Iraq a green light to invade Kuwait."
-- New York Times, "Athenian Games", Robert Kaplan, 4/21/94

"Turkey has a long history of religious tolerance, having been the birthplace of Orthodox Christianity and a meeting point throughout history for many of the world's great religions."
-- Liberal Opinion, Hillary Clinton, 4/15/96

"Greece is reminding the world that it too is a Balkan country, the inhabitant of a region where history often induces hysteria . . . Athens thinks it has a 2,400-year-old trademark on the word [Macedonia] . . . Partly because the Greek position is so preposterous, the suspicion persists that the complaint about the name camouflages a revival of Greece's own age-old expansionistic ambitions . . . Mitsotakis has secretly discussed the partition of Macedonia with Serbia and perhaps with Albania and Bulgaria as well . . . In the U.S. [Greece] has the additional help of the powerful Greek-American lobby . . . . . [U]nder the pretext of complying with international sanctions against Serbia, Greece is blockading fuel shipments to Macedonia. As a result, factories there have had to shut down; crops are rotting in the fields; ambulances are sitting useless in hospital parking lots. `It's murder without bullets'"
-- Time, "Greece's Defense Seems Just Silly", Strobe Talbott 10/12/92
[Talbott subsequently became U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and has played an integral role in shaping US foreign policy towards Greece and the larger Balkan region]

"EDDIE: Whatsa matter, you forget, pal? . . . a dozen Rooski Goys and a coupla Greek Orthodox with Goddamn sabers right behind, lookin' to slice somethin' Jewish off ya? . . . They held my Grandpa down under his favorite acacia tree and pulled his beard out -- his beard, a rabbi's honor -- they're tearin' it outa his face a chunk at a time, him screamin' in this garden behind his shul, they grabbed us all there that Saturday comin' outa morning prayers. This chubby one is whirlin' a saber over his head, faster and faster till it whistles -- I know this guy, I seen him waitin' tables at the Cafe Fankoni -- "I'm takin' your skull-cap off," he says to my brother Heshy; one whistlin' swing, he slices it off along with the top of Heshy's skull, scalpin' him . . . he's got his hands on his head, the blood is runnin' through his fingers, he's already dead, he still runs around the garden like a chicken for maybe thirty seconds before he drops . . . My mother, they cut her ears off; her ears, go figure it, what was Jewish about them? Regardless, she bled to death in the garden before it got dark, ranting like a child by then, really nuts. . . . . . ZARETSKY: Three days exactly, the perfect Pogrom . . . And stranger still that morning, waddling down the street towards me, an enormous fat man, like from the circus, laughing. I watch him, silent like a balloon on the soft feathers, into one empty Jewish house and then another he goes, growing fatter as he comes, and now closer I see the face of the Greek, Poldaris, from the tobacco shop, and he is wearing one atop the other the suits and cloaks of dead Jews. No, Mr. Ross, they didn't catch me, and no, I didn't forget; this morning even, the fat Poldaris follows me still, laughing, waiting for my clothes."
-- Conversations With My Father, a Broadway play by Herb Gardner

"[Patmos] belongs at present to Greece, though its history and geography suggest this status may not necessarily be permanent. It is one of those islands on the far eastern side of Greek territory that insert themselves as sentinels into the ragged lines of Turkey's western coast."
-- The Washington Post Magazine, 10/16/94

"As at Babi Yar, the notorious Nazi mass grave in Ukraine where Soviet authorities for decades refused to acknowledge that most of the victims were Jews, Salonika has been slow to recognize that its large and vibrant Jewish community was singled out for annihilation. `There was such an unbearable silence about the Jews of Salonika' . . . To the discomfort of local Greek nationalists, [Salonika's] is a history that was largely Jewish during the 500 years of Ottoman Turkish occupation . . . All evidence of this past is virtually gone now, and not only because of the Nazis . . . Greece, a country where more than 95 percent of the population is Orthodox Christian, is still suspicious of its minorities, religious and ethnic, and still reluctant to grant them their place in history . . . The Jewish contribution to the city's past is not the only historical memory to have fallen victim here to a collective amnesia . . . the five centuries of Ottoman rule are referred to euphemistically as the `post-Byzantine' period . . . Such torturing of history, and reality, makes for a heavy burden, one that many here hope will be shed as this city -- and the turbulent region that it borders -- moves closer to modern European standards. `It is impossible to live within the European Union without being really European,' said Mr. Sefiha. `Greece still has to make a lot of steps in this direction.'"
-- New York Times, Celestine Bohlen, 4/8/97

"the governor's part was filled by Michael Dukakis and the VP was played by [George Bush], whose campaign totally trashed the pathetic Greek from Massachusetts"
-- NY Daily News, 3/12/00

"The burgeoning Turkish-Israeli relationship . . . holds the possibility of creating a powerful alliance . . . [and] a tangible hope for that most elusive of goals in the region: peace. [A] Turkish-Israeli alliance would decisively shift the regional balance of power in favor of the two most democratic . . . countries in the area."
-- The Washington Quarterly, Dov Waxman, Winter 1999

"The petty squabble of Greece and Turkey, lining up warships around a pile of rocks off the Turkish coast, demonstrates that neither deserves membership in the European Union. Yet one is in and one is out . . . Yet how much more European could Turkey be? It was the home of Byzantium."
-- Baltimore Sun, 2/15/96

"A large Greek army captured Izmir [Smyrna] and invaded southwestern Anatolia, but massacres of the Turkish population led the Allies to withdraw their support from the Greeks."
-- Entry re: 1922 Turkey in Encarta CD-Rom Encyclopedia, 1994-

". . . the president's Greek boy, George Stephanopoulos"
-- Tribune-Review, 6/11/95

"[Greece] is seemingly deaf to pleas from its partners . . . to scale down its confrontation with its neighbor, Albania . . . Greece has annoyed its EU partners yet again by threatening to block EU aid to Albania until the Omonia members are freed and minority rights for Albania's ethnic Greeks are guaranteed . . . Unless the Greeks show an unfamiliar restraint, there is likely to be more squabbling, more tension in the Balkans - and more for Greece's EU partners to fret about."
-- The Economist, "Greece v. Albania", 9/17/95

"[T]here is nothing natural about arming allies who act increasingly against U.S. interests. The flow of arms to both countries should cease."
-- New York Times Editorial, "Deadly Gifts to Greece and Turkey"

"Greek and Turkish nationalist hotheads were equally to blame for the two countries' near war over some uninhabited Aegean rocks last month."
-- New York Times, Editorial, 2/17/96

"The young Greek-Cypriot girl looked closely at the young Turkish-Cypriot girl but could not see the horns and tail her teacher told her all Turks have. She ran to her father to tell him of this curious development. Her father, who was talking to the father of the Turkish-Cypriot girl, blushed. He apologized and said, 'That's what they're taught in school' . . . 'The main problem is the hate,' said [the TRNC representative] Ahmet Erdengiz. 'They are taught a good Turk is a dead Turk. They say we eat Greeks and that we crucified Christ. These are the people we're supposed to negotiate with' . . . [Erdengiz's] grandmother was the first Turkish-Cypriot killed by a Greek-Cypriot in a political uprising, he said. She was gunned down in a riot against British colonial rule in 1957 . . . Five uncles and cousins were also killed by Greek-Cypriots. 'Our story is pretty much common in Cyprus,' he said. 'It's a sad story.'"
-- The Washington Times, "Living With Hate", James Morrison, 9/24/97

"Greece and Turkey proved this week that the irrational can play as great a role in statecraft as it does in the private lives of individuals . . . Costas Simitis, the new prime minister of Greece . . . can hardly afford to be seen surrendering even a single goat dropping to the Turks . . . In his calls to Greek and Turkish leaders, Mr. Clinton 'pressed them relentlessly on the need to de-escalate . . . when this silly saga began to unfold,' one senior official said."
-- The Boston Globe, 2/1/96

"Greece's treatment of its own Macedonians has over the years been less than admirable"
-- Foreign Affairs, book review of Loring Danforth's "The Macedonian Conflict", R. Legvold, Spring, '96

"When the Bosnian Serbs attacked the United Nations 'safe area' of Srebrenica last summer, Greek mercenaries fought with them and raised the blue and white Greek flag triumphantly when the enclave fell. Several thousand Muslim men were massacred, and General Mladic has been indicted on charges related to the killings. But the fall of Srebrenica and the massacres went virtually unreported by Greek journalists. Indeed, Bosnian Serbian atrocities throughout the war were ignored by the Greek press, leaving most Greeks as ill-informed about the war as the Serbian people themselves."
-- The New York Times, "Greek Lawyer Pleased to Defend Serb Leader", David Bonner, 8/4/96

"Among the dubious factoids of the Afrocentric cannon: that Socrates and Cleopatra were both black; that Greek philosophy and science were stolen from Africa; and that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the library at Alexandria. . . But what is most interesting here is that Afrocentrism continues to thrive at prestigious universities, even though administrators acknowledge privately that it is a crock."
-- The New York Post, "When Pretension Reigns Supreme", Scott McConnell
[above quote cited to illustrate fasle revision of Greek history in academia]

"the Greek policy [with regard to Macedonia] 'is totally irrational'"
-- The New York Times, "In Macedonia, New Fears of A Wider Balkan War", Raymond Bonner, 4/9/95

"The Macedonian generals carved up [Alexander's empire] after Alexander's death . . . They had armies largely Macedonian and Greek in personnel, and most of them founded cities with colonies of their soldiers. Thus began the remarkable spread of the Hellenistic (Greek, rather than Macedonian) civilization."
-- The Columbia Encyclopedia, Entry on "Macedon", Fifth Edition, 1993

"Ruling from 359 to 336 B.C., Philip conquered the Greeks in 338 B.C. and unified the Greeks and Macedonians into one empire. . . . .
Alexander the Great became king of Macedonia when his father, Phillip II, was assassinated in 336 BC. . . Alexander led his troops in campaigns against Greece, Egypt, and the Persian Empire . . . . .
Alexander began his war against Persia in the spring of 334 BC by crossing the Hellespont with an army of 35,000 Macedonian and Greek troops"
-- Microsoft Encarta Multimedia CD-Rom Encyclopedia, Entries on "Macedonia (region)" and "Alexander the Great", 1994-

"[The Ptolemaic] government, dominated by Greek and Macedonian officials, was not popular."
-- Microsoft Encarta Entry on "Ptolemaic Dynasty", 1994-

"[T]he history of the next century will be shaped . . . by conflicts among ancient civilizations - Turkish, Chinese, Perisan, Hindu and Buddhist"
-- New York Times, "Future Meltdown", Michael Ignatieff's book review of Robert Kaplan's "The Ends of The Earth", 3/31/96

"The World's Largest Open Air Museum: Turkey, the Center of World History"
-- widely placed advertisement listing four civilizations of Turkish history: "Ottoman, Byzantine, Roman and Ionian"

"There once was in fact a Saint Nicholas, the 4th century Turkish Bishop of Myra"
-- The Santa Fe Sun, "Epiphany, The True Story of The Miracle On 34th Street", R. Leviton, 12/94

"So, we have a short story of a Turkish saint, a bishop at that, who eventually became our Santa Claus."
-- The Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas, by Jeff Smith, 1991

"Turkey's new interest in Santa is bringing him back to his roots."
-- The New York Times, "Strange, That's Santa in the Seat of the Sultans!", Stephen Kinzer, 12/21/96

"Every April, some Armenian groups use half-truths and distortions, in offering a one-sided misrepresentation of the events that took place between Turks and Armenians during and after World War I. . . There was no 'genocide.' . . . It was a civil war during which many people, Turks and Armenians alike, perished. . . When a big lie is repeated often enough and loudly enough, it can become perceived as fact. But as the Turkish proverb says, 'You cannot cover the sun with clay.' Ultimately, the truth will come out."
-- The New York Times, Advertisement by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, 5/14/95

"The Ottomans proved to be more respectful of Orthodox Christianity that the Western Church. Moreover, in 1492, when Spain ordered the mass expulsion of the Jews, they were able to flee to Ottoman lands. This comparative tolerance finds expression in the wonderful illuminated books at the Metropolitan from St. Catherine's in the Sinai. Its library is rivaled only by that of the Vatican, and its survival attests to a long Islamic tradition of multicultural tolerance"
-- The New York Times, "The West's Debt to Byzantium", by Karl E. Meyer, 3/30/97

[Nikos Sampson] was replaced on July 23 by Glafkos Clerides . . . after Turkish forces landed on the island. By late August, following fighting that left many persons homeless, the Turks controlled the northern third of the island."
-- Microsoft Encarta Multimedia CD-Rom Encyclopedia, Entry on "Cyprus", 1994-

"In New York City, Robert McGuire, the president of Kroll Associates and a former NYPD police commissioner, said that the [TWA 800] crash was, in his estimation, suspicious. . . Kroll Associates is a highly regarded consulting and security firm. McGuire said that the destination of the plane, Paris, did not in itself suggest an unusual risk. However, its original departure point, Athens, Greece, has been on the U.S. government list of dangerous airports. Another security expert, Philip Stern, the managing director of the Fairfax Group, said that the original departure point of Athens was 'troublesome' to him. Athens has long been known to act as a gateway to the Middle East. Stern said that Greece has a history of 'radical politicians sympathetic to Middle Eastern causes.'"
-- EmergencyNet News Service, S. Macko, 7/19/96

"The Greek airport improvement may have happened in a roundabout way-and as a result the Clinton Administration may come under fire for trying to play politics with airline safety [following the TWA 800 crash]. Last February, White House aides tried to squelch a Transportation Department warning to American travelers about lax safeguards against terrorism at the airport. White House aides feared such a warning would prompt a frosty reception for Hillary Clinton when she visited Athens in March"
-- Time, "Terror On Flight 800", 7/29/96

Voyage of Terror: the Achille Lauro Affair (1990): a made-for-TV movie based upon the 1985 hijacking of an Italian cruise ship. The movie featured the mysterious and wholly fictitious "Pappas" twirling his worry beads while masterminding a terrorist act by Palestinians -- who murdered a Jewish-American handicapped man, played by Burt Lancaster.

"The fact of the matter is you have one NATO ally supporting terrorist operations against another NATO member . . . There is no question that what the Greek government is doing with the PKK makes them supporters of international terrorism . . . If political considerations were put aside, they would qualify as state sponsors of terrorism."
-- Washington Times, "Greek Spy Agency Tied to Terror Group, Athens Backed Anti-Turkish Kurds", Bill Gertz, 9/10/96

Offensive or discriminatory headlines:

"Beware of Greeks Bearing History"
-- New York Times, Edmund Keeley, 5/29/94 book review of Elia Kazan's Beyond the Aegean:
["the editor's fingerprint is certainly clear as well: While on the one hand the review tells us that 'Kazan gets his history right,' the headline blares: BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING HISTORY." -- Marjorie Dobkin, address delivered at Thessaloniki, Greece, 11/1/94]

"Greeks Bearing Gifts: HANAC's Dance with Rudy"
-- The Village Voice, W. Barrett, 4/30/96

"My Patriarch Can Beat Your Patriarch"
-- Time, 3/18/96 [referring to a dispute between the patriarchs of Constantinople and Russia]

Imputation of exaggerated power, illicit influence and ethnic conspiracy:

"American soldiers [stationed in FYROM] have, in effect, become hostages of the White House's concerns with the Greek lobby . . . placing the troops at greater risk of finding themselves in the middle of war."
-- New York Times, Op-Ed, S. Ordanoski, 9/4/94

"The Greek-American efforts [at lobbying] were legal, but the situation underscores how big-bucks donors bought access to lobby the President in hopes of changing his policies . . . 'President Clinton has too many Greek friends,' says Namik Korham, the Turkish Cypriot representative in the United States. 'This is what the Greeks are trying to do to influence the administration against Turkey.' With friends like George Stephanopoulos at the White House and campaign cash in their pockets, the Greek community wielded tremendous clout last year and used their access to lobby on everything from Cyprus to plans to sell the ships to Turkey. . . Greek-Americans were not shy about mixing fundraising with foreign policy lobbying when they had Clinton's ear."
-- The NY Daily News, "Bill Lent Ear to Greeks: Clout, Cash Opened Doors for Lobbying on Cyprus", T. Galvin, 4/10/97

"Partly because the Greek position is so preposterous, the suspicion persists that the complaint about the name camouflages a revival of Greece's own age-old expansionistic ambitions . . . Mitsotakis has secretly discussed the partition of Macedonia with Serbia and perhaps with Albania and Bulgaria as well . . . In the U.S. [Greece] has the additional help of the powerful Greek-American lobby"
-- Time, "Greece's Defense Seems Just Silly", Strobe Talbott 10/12/92
[Talbott subsequently became U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and has played an integral role in shaping US foreign policy towards Greece and the larger Balkan region]

"[U]nder pressure from prominent Greek-Americans, President Clinton has continually appeased Greece [on the Macedonian dispute]."
-- New York Times, "Athenian Games", Robert Kaplan, 4/21/94

"A strong coalition in Washington, led by powerful Greek, Armenian and pro-Kurdish lobbies, presses for action against Turkey"
-- New York Times, "Dissent in a Land of Contradictions", Stephen Kinzer, 11/30/97

"[The Greek and Armenian] lobbies are implementing the agendas of two small foreign countries to the detriment of the United States. In any other country, including Greece and Armenia, such activities would be considered treason and would be treated as such."
-- Washington Times, Letter to the Editor, M. Tarhan, VP of the Ataturk Society of America, 11/1/95

"Cobra gunships will not be on the list of military equipment the United States is willing to offer Ankara. . . The answer is ethnic politics, Washington style: A fierce campaign against the sale organized by Senator Paul S. Sarbanes, the Maryland Democrat, a prominent Greek-American and longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."
-- New York Times, Raymond Bonner, 3/29/96

"[P]eople are learning that [Turkey's] image is false, created to a great degree by its unfriendly neighbors. Many Americans know Turkey only from the thrilling but unrealistic movie, Midnight Express. The movie was paid for, produced and acted by Armenians and Greeks (historically unfriendly neighbors). While it gives a fine impression of the Greek and Armenian bogeyman image of Turks it says absolutely nothing about the Turks or Turkey today."
-- Europe Through the Back Door by Rick Steves (1994), host of PBS's television series Travels in Europe with Rick Steves

"There is virtually no Turkish or Azerbaijani lobby to match the Greeks or Armenians"
-- The Chicago Tribune, R. C. Longworth, "One Nation, Many Voices: As Members of Congress Exert More Leadership, Diffuse Special Interests Find That They Can Have Exceptional Influence."

When cotton grows on the fig tree
And alfalfa hangs on the rose
When the aliens run the United States
And the Jews grow a straight nose
When the Pope is praised by every one
In the land of Uncle Sam
And a Greek is elected President
THEN-the Ku Klux won't be worth a damn
-- Poem passed out at election polls by the Klan during the 1920's illustrating that, as with anti-Semitism, anti-Hellenism is not a new phenomenon.