In its headline "Shocking Revelation About Tassos - He
Planned To Annihilate Civilian Turkish Cypriots Between 1963-64 - We Had 75
Minutes To Exterminate The Turkish Cypriots and We Had The Plans and
Opportunity To Do This", yesterday (27 April) the Greek Cypriot daily 'Alithia'
reported that in his latest book entitled "First Partition: 1963-64 Cyprus"
Makarios Drusiotis could disrupt today's political situation and Turkish and
Greek Cypriot relations and even Tassos Papadopoulos and the communist AKEL
party supporters.
The daily said the book in question highlighting that
during the 1963-64 period today's Greek Cypriot Leader and AKEL partner Tassos
Papadopoulos was involved in the drawing up of a plan to annihilate civilian
Turkish Cypriots and publishing the telegraph that included six underlined
lines of this plan, said Makarios Drusiotis' book included historical
documents that proved that today's leader and AKEL partner Tassos Papdopoulos
was involved in the annihilation plan of civilian Turkish Cypriots but, the
plan couldn't be implemented because of the it's rejection by the then
Commander of the Greek Cypriot National Guard.
In his book, which has just been put on sale, Drusiotis
refers to a message sent by Papdopoulos to the Americans in August 1964 in
which he said, "the Greek Cypriots planned to sort out its internal problems".
In his message Papdopoulos, who at the time was the Minister for Labour and
the Vice Chairman of the Akritas Organization, had stated that: "If the
Turkish fleet enters within 12 sea miles of our borders we will count this as
being the start of the invasion. According to our calculations and with the
aim of defending ourselves this gives us 75 minutes in which to exterminate
the Turkish Cypriots. We have the plan and opportunity to do this".
Referring to documents obtained from the USA National
Archives of Research Administration, the author stated that Papadopoulos'
threat to annihilate the Turkish Cypriots later became a Council of Ministers
decision and according to General Karayannis this decision had been conveyed
to him by Minister Yorgacis, who had requested him to identify two Turkish
Cypriot villages to be destroyed following the end of the deadline given to
him. In his book the author also included documents that stated that
Karayannis rejected to take on the responsibility "for killing defenceless
people".
The daily reported that Drusiotis also wrote that the
situation in the internal front was not good, the people were very demoralized
and that when the proposals to amend the (1960) Constitution were being
prepared, in the event of a Turkish 'invasion' civilian Turkish Cypriots would
be used as human shields and that this had been the Greek Cypriot leadership's
plan since 1963. The author also wrote that the threat of massacring the
Turkish Cypriots always came onto the agenda whenever there was the threat of
an (Turkish) 'invasion'.
