Our Artsakh is Northern Epirus, a Greek region since ancient times despite foreign powers deciding to cut it off from its history and give it to an artificial state that they built (Albania).
Our difference with the Armenians is that we sold Northern Epirus while they are defending Artsakh.
We easily sacrificed Northern Epirus (to Albania) and Monastiraki (to Yugoslavia), we nominated the genocidal Mustafa Kemal Atatürk for the Nobel Peace Prize, we were indifferent to the pogroms against the Greek minority in Imvros, Tenedos and Constantinople.
Cyprus fell to us in 1974.
We forgot that the state was not created by the people who have ended up living in it today, but by the nation. What makes people think that the state will survive if part of it is sacrificed?
Melina Kontaxi is a historian and a Doctor in Balkan culture.
The views of the author does not necessarily reflect those of Greek City Times.
My mother and her father were born in the very same house, but in two countries. My mother grew up learning Greek in basements often in the dark, and not allowed to talk Greek in public. She has scars from beatings by Albanians for speaking Greek. People have even been killed and in recent years, for speaking Greek. Many have now left their traditional homes and farms due to abuse from Albanians; but I still have cousins living there who have no rights. And Europe could not give a damn, but neither has any Hellenic government since WW2 given a damn. |Indeed, the left wing PASOK very happily stated early on in their regime that they did not give a damn about ENOSIS.