To the Editor:
I sent the following letter to The Economist in response to their special edition on Turkey:

The special report on Turkey, Jan. 21, examines the troubling aspects of President Erdogan’s rule while lamenting the passing of the political system created by the dictator Mustafa Kemal. Erdogan may be different from Kemal in terms of philosophy and ideology, but there is one area where the two would agree, and that is on the matter of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians as well as the Kurds which were physically targeted for extermination by Kemal and his predecessors in the Ottoman Empire. It is not true, as one part of the articles says that Kemal fended off the Greeks. The Greek supplies were cut off by the British, French, and Italian governments who provided arms to Kemal (as did the Soviets under Lenin and Trotsky).
Kemal presided over the genocide of Greeks and Armenians in the historic Christian city of Smyrna. Turkish President Erdogan today routinely threatens to invade the Greek islands and has threatened to launch a missile into Athens. The genocidal implications of Erdogan’s threats against Greece attracted no attention from the articles in the Special Report. In addition to threatening Greece and Cyprus, Erdogan has supplied the fascist-racist state of Azerbaijan with drones and other equipment and training that led to the ethnic cleansing of Armenian Christians in the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh.

It is entirely just that the Economist seeks to bring attention upon the problems of Turkey’s present leadership. It is also simultaneously reprehensible and propagandistic that the Economist completely ignores the present circumstances that Armenia, Cyprus, and Greece presently find themselves in. Erdogan’s Turkey is a predatory State and his partner in the National Action Party has openly displayed maps showing the Greek islands as being part of Turkey. The failure of the international media to document and examine Turkey’s genocidal threats and external acts of aggression make those same journalists accessories to Turkish war aims and crimes against humanity.

Theodore Karakostas
Boston, MA