Oya Bain oyabain@gmail.com
Yesterday I participated in the THO program of General Stavridis and Fikri Isik. I am very impressed with both of them. Stavridis was excellent, moderate, mature, and had only best comments about Turkey and Turkish armed forces. Stavridis probably grew up with the endless brainwashing coming from his father. Also, the common people on both sides suffered terribly during those years. Probably it was later during the population exchange the father has left Anatolia, not early in 1920. Greeks occupied Izmir on May 15 1919 and advancing in Anatolia in 1920s
I think we have to look forward in such cases. It appears that once Stavridis got to know the Turks his impressions and feelings changed. He was the commander of US Southern Command 2006-2009 and Supreme Commander of European NATO forces 2009-2013. The book was written in 2008.
changed.http://click1.crm.foreignpolicy.com/qwfggbrdrngtmmmvtvnbhtjrcwtbbjdvhvmdwhfwpsmpw_jmrbjqjnqnwbvfnvjmvss.html?a=21438&b=Morning+Brief+OC&c=21438
Amiral Stavridis hakkinda ek bilgi…
Early life and family[edit]
Stavridis was born in West Palm Beach, Florida,[23] son of Shirley Anne (Schaffer) and Paul George Stavridis.[24][25][26] His father was a United States Marine Corps colonel who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.[27] Stavridis is married to Laura Hall, author of Navy Spouses Guide.[28] His paternal grandparents were Anatolian Greeks, born and raised in Western Anatolia, who emigrated to the United States.[29] His mother’s family was Pennsylvania Dutch (German).[30]
In his 2008 book, Destroyer Captain: Lessons of a First Command, Stavridis wrote:
In the early 1920s, my grandfather, a short, stocky Greek schoolteacher named Dimitrios Stavridis, was expelled from Turkey as part of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (read pogrom) directed against Greeks living in the remains of the Ottoman Empire. He barely escaped with his life in a small boat crossing the Aegean Sea to Athens and thence to Ellis Island. His brother was not so lucky and was killed by the Turks as part of the violence directed at the Greek minority.
A NATO exercise off the coast of modern Turkey was the “most amazing historical irony [he] could imagine,” and prompted Stavridis to write of his grandfather: “His grandson, who speaks barely a few words of Greek, returns in command of a billion-dollar destroyer to the very city—Smyrna, now called İzmir—from which he sailed in a refugee craft all those ye
Bulent Dogruyol