Madam, - I was delighted to learn that the Irish Government strongly supports the application of Turkey to join the European Union and was taken aback by some of the comment and hesitation expressed.
Fifty years ago at an OEEC meeting in Paris the Cypriot delegates, a Greek and a Turk urged Ireland through me to live together in harmony as they did. (A Greek restaurateur in Beirut in 1972 made the same plea concerning Ireland and the Lebanon!). The tragedy of Greek-Turkish relations is that Cyprus was owned by neither when Ataturk and his Greek opposite number exchanged populations 80 years ago. Turks left Crete and Macedonia (Ataturk was from Saloniki) and Greeks left Anatolia. Had either owned Cyprus then a similar arrangement would have planned for the future.
Cypriot tensions began and escalated when Colonel Grivas and Archbishop Makarios took a violent road to Enosis - union with Greece, ignoring the sizeable Turkish population and Turkey felt obliged to protect the Turkish population in the north. Recently Cypriots had a chance to end these tensions through a referendum. The Turks voted overwhelmingly to join Europe but the Greeks thwarted this. I was amazed that the European Union went ahead and endorsed this act of bad neighbourliness by accepting only the Greek Cypriots. Hardly the sort of people we want in a Union promoting peace.
Much hoo-haa is made of Turkey's alleged human rights record. A major world power is arguing at present that confessions obtained by torture must be accepted in court and another major power at the same time is seeking to circumvent a 8:1 House of Lords finding on its illegal detentions. What specifically are the Turks going wrong today?
Although Turkey has been for many decades a secular state much is made of the religion of the majority of its citizens. The EEC was launched by a group of statesmen of Catholic background - Adenauer, Schuman, de Gasperi, etc. Suppose they excluded Sweden because it was too Litehran? Sweden's peace record is impressive, so is Turkey's. Militant fundamentalists and moral majorities are not a feature of either country. Turkey is a pillar of NATO and its soldiers in Korea never succumbed to Communist propaganda. Turkey is more western than some recognise.
I lived in Ankara. I love and admire its people. Many of them are less swarthy than Greeks. Indeed it is often hard to tell the two people apart - like Serbs, Croats and Bosnians? Turks have many traditional Irish values, as a young Irishman in Istanbul told RTÉ a few days ago. They adore children and prize family life; they are welcoming and generous to strangers and they are touchingly grateful to wealthy countries which employ them at the bottom of the social scale and treat them poorly. Beannacht. - Yours, etc.,
MICEAL ROSS,
Brighton Terace,
Monkstown,
Co Dublin.