Treacherous, idiot dictator is dead

There is an irony, I suppose, that the death of the idiot traitor Brigadier Dimitris (Mimis) Ioannides was announced today in Athens. Mimis Ioannides was, of course, the leader of the Greek junta from November 1973 to July 1974, his overwhelming legacy being the overthrow of President Makarios, which precipitated the Turkish invasion of Cyprus; the second and most devastating phase of which we commemorate at this time of year – 14-16 August – when Famagusta, the Mesaoria, Karpasia and Morphou were seized by the Turkish invader.

Last month, in an interview with the Greek daily Αδεσμευτος Τυπος  the idiot traitor tried to make out that his intentions in overthrowing Makarios were patriotic and aimed at bringing about the union of Cyprus and Greece, and he blamed American duplicity and the reticence of his senior colleagues for thwarting his great plan.

Thus, Ioannides says that the Americans assured him that, after deposing Makarios, the Turks would not invade. Even when on 20 July the Turks were landing troops on and bombing the island, Ioannides says he accepted American reassurances that the Turks were only planning to stay on the island for 24 hours and would only leave 1,500 men around Kyrenia as reinforcements for the Turkish Regiment on Cyprus (KTKA) to assuage the fears of the Turkish Cypriots.

(Yes, Mimis: you were going to declare the union of Cyprus and Greece and you expected Turkey to shrug its shoulders and let you get on with it – or was your sense of betrayal and bewilderment felt  because the Americans had told you that if you overthrew Makarios the Turkish response would be muted given that your intention was to partition the island with them as soon as possible?)

And, later, when it became clear to Mimis that what was going on in Cyprus was not a limited Turkish landing but a full-scale invasion, Ioannides wants us to believe that when he tried to convince the heads of the armed forces and the other junta members to mobilise the Greek military to repel the Turkish invasion, he was betrayed by the loss of nerve of his colleagues, anxious to avoid conflict with Turkey and urging a return to civilian rule, which meant that apart from the 300 Greek commandos sent to Cyprus as part of the ill-fated Operation ‘Niki’, Greece ended up totally abandoning Cyprus to the Turks, something that Cypriots have never forgotten or forgiven, as much as they’d like to, so that those feelings of adulation and awe that Cypriots once had towards Greece are now mixed with negative feelings associated with humiliation, cynicism and contempt. Bravo, Mimis Ioannides. You couldn’t have done a finer job for Cypriot Hellenism if you had been a Turk.