His voice sounds sharp and decisive in the small cell allocated to him in the sixth wing of Korydallos Prisons. "I was deceived by Cisco and Kissinger about Turkey's real intentions in Cyprus." He himself, dressed in a tracksuit, has just risen from the campaign bed where he has been resting for the interminable 35 years since his conviction for participation in the April Coup and his role in the tragic events of the summer of 1974.
Although small in stature, you feel watching this old man that he hides a lot of strength and toughness as well as quite a few secrets... With the exception of a problem he had with his eyesight, which he successfully overcame, his health is very good, while clarity and His observational skills are impressive for someone who was then (July 2009) over 87 years of age. Mimis, as his few friends address him, better known to the Greek people as "the invisible dictator", known as Brigadier General Dimitris Ioannidis, does not hide his anger at the orchestrated collusion against him by the political leadership of the US State Department at the time .
Looking back at the crucial meeting that took place on the morning of July 20, 1974, a few hours after the Turkish landing in Pedemili, Kyrenia, at the AED (Armed Forces Headquarters) - in which apart from the President of the Republic Phaedon Gizikis, the Prime Minister Adamantios Androutsopoulos, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense of Cyprus and Latsoudis and the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force, the United States Ambassador to Athens Henry Taska and the US Under Secretary of State Cisco, who had just landed from Ankara where he met with Etcevit, were present - he reveals that the Americans tried to... put Athens to sleep while the Turkish invasion continued.
“Sisco, who took the floor immediately after entering the third-floor Pentagon room where we were meeting, asked us to show restraint. He assured us, in fact, that he and Kissinger would convince the Turks to withdraw from Cyprus in the next 24 hours, leaving a force of approximately 1,500 men to reinforce TURDYK and boost the morale of the Turkish Cypriots. That is why he called us to avoid any military action".
At this point, he intervened and slapping his hand on the table, he said addressing the American side:"You deceived us, as you did a few days ago, when you promised us that the sixth fleet would patrol the straits of Mersina, in order to prevent Turkish landing action." Ioannidis remembers that both Gizikis and Kyprios immediately stood up and, addressing the two Americans in English, warned them that if the Turks did not leave immediately, Greece would leave NATO and declare war on Ankara.
After a short pause, recalling his memory, he says:"I immediately convinced the head of the Armed Forces, General Gregorio Bonanno, to declare general conscription! At the same time, we also decided in the UN Security Council, which issued Resolution 353/74 that same night, to call on all parties to respect the independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus".
"Besides enlistment, what other actions have you taken?", we asked him, with the courage of acquaintance we had acquired, as a game of fate brought us to share the same premises for a time.
"I ordered the then chief of the Naval General Staff, Petros Arapakis, to immediately send half the submarines that were in the Dodecanese to Cyprus and attack the Turkish ships, while I proposed to declare the Union of the Megalonis with Greece".
"Finally what happened?", we asked him again. "Both Bonanos, who still believed in American mediation, and Gizikis expressed hesitation. But also the then head of the Papanikolaou Air Force, when they asked him to send the Phantoms we had and disperse the invaders, he began the analyzes regarding the real capabilities of the specific aircraft"...
Inevitable is our question about "if we would win a war with Turkey that was numerically superior in both manpower and weapon systems"... "However, things were not like that", he interrupted us, "because the correlations in the quality of arms, particularly in the Air Force and Navy, were overwhelmingly in our favor. Even in the Land Army where Turkey was outnumbered three to one, we had no real problem because of the limited front on the Evros. After all, we had better tanks, the French AMXs, which were more modern and faster than the American M-47s they had, it is true in large numbers. Moreover, most of our senior officers had combat experience from 1946-49, while the Turks had been fighting since '22."
For the once powerful man of the country... "the crucial difference was in the psyche of the two peoples. The Greek soldier of that time (1974) was much better trained and had higher morale than his Turkish counterpart." According to him… “the 22 Phantoms that only we had at the time would create air superiority and crush the Turkish air force. From what I remember they flew at an operational speed of 700 km per hour and were infinitely faster than the F-104, F-100 and F-84 that the Turks had. Especially the last ones were kind of junk from the time of Korea that just flew around".
But also in the Navy, according to the ideological leader of the Aprilian regime, as he likes to call himself, the difference was overwhelming:"We must have two or three more destroyers than the Turks, but the game would be won by the submarines and the French rocket boats we had just received. We had eight German submarines, of which four were modern 2009 type, while they were American remnants of the Second World War".
That is why, as he claims... "we could disperse the Turkish landing forces. I remember that the Arapaki submarines were about 80 nautical miles from Paphos and the Phantoms were on operational alert. In the meeting that took place in the early hours of July 21st in Gizikis' office, I told Arapakis to sink all the Turkish ships that were outside the port of Kyrenia and to Papanikolaou to send the first six Phantoms from Crete and bomb anything Turkish that moved on on the island".
In the end, however, nothing happened. "Why?", we asked him. "We were betrayed, I don't hide it, by the chiefs of the general staff and Gizikis. As I was informed afterwards, the three leaders together with Bonanno and Gizikis, met and decided not to come into confrontation with Turkey, while Arapakis ordered the submarines to turn back and Papanikolaou not to raise a single plane. In this particular meeting, as I was informed by the head of the Army Lieutenant General Galatsanos, Arapakis proposed and the others agreed to hand over power to the politicians".
He also answers the accusation that he wanted the death of Makarios. "In no way, because that would shake the foundation of the Union, let's not forget that most Cypriots were blessed. The order I had personally given to colonel Kon/nos Kompokis, who was in charge of the attack on the Presidential Palace, was to capture Makarios alive." As for the fate of the Archbishop of Cyprus, Ioannidis maintains that the late Archbishop of Athens Seraphim who "did not see with a good eye on Makarios", he had suggested that he be "hosted" for a while in the Monastery of Mount Athos. "Seraphim knew many abbots personally and had convinced me that he could settle the matter."
For the "invisible dictator" no crimes were committed during the Seven Years for which he can be considered a moral perpetrator. "Have you ever known that I have ever been sued in this matter, or that someone has filed a claim against my family, claiming to have been a victim of mine?", he wonders.
As for journalists, he believes they can do anything, even go to jail, like the undersigned, in order to report. We, however, have to describe the events, even from this side, as the paraphilology that had developed around the Cyprus tragedy, gives us the right to illuminate all the aspects of those who starred in this particular period...
"Write them when I die" (22-08-2010)
Mimis the "Fasarias" or "Arsakeias", as was the double nickname that his own people stuck to him, known to most as the "invisible dictator", left us early on the morning of August 16, with the official cause of death being heat stroke.
With him also left a burden that I carried inside me about whether I will be able to reveal unknown aspects of the Cyprus tragedy and especially the events that led to it, his relations with Papadopoulos and their final rupture, according to everything that I he himself had confided in prison.
Dimitrios Ioannidis - that's why - when I had asked him almost loads to see the light of the public except for his plan to deceive the Americans in the first days of the Turkish invasion of Martyria Megalonisos and other evidence for the role played by the superpower at the expense of Hellenism. he told me sharply:"Not as long as I live"!
So, now that I feel freed, I can relay the conversation he had in early March 1974 with the then US ambassador to Athens, Henry Taska. At the meeting held at the Pentagon, the head of the American diplomatic delegation had proposed to him the two-zone solution in Cyprus, presenting him with an Annan-style plan, of which the current Prime Minister, George Papandreou, is an ardent supporter. Taska was even quick to tell him that there was an agreement in principle for the peaceful settlement of the issue with Turkey's Foreign Minister Gunes. In return, Ankara would accept that the Greek islands had a continental shelf, something it had denied until then, while it would reconsider its position regarding Greek airspace.
Henry Taska
Ioannidis reacted strongly to such a negotiation and fatefully the discussion came to Aegean oil, since the relevant investigations had already started in 1972. Taska first tried to convince him that the Turks, after geological surveys, had discovered large oil fields in international waters heading towards their own maritime boundaries. And specifically in the area of Tenedos.
When he himself objected to how it is possible that such a large deposit, in the form of a lake, has not been detected by his compatriots, the American ambassador went straight into the ... roast. "I believe, he told him, that an oil deal would be beneficial to both sides while helping to end tensions."
According to Ioannidis, Taska told him verbatim:"Give the Turks something to calm down. After all, they know that the oil (of Thassos) was found in your waters"... Again categorically, the "invisible dictator" or ideological guide of the Aprilian regime, as he liked to be called, refused again, citing the agreement made by the Greek Public (under Papadopoulos) with the OCEANIC company. She predicted that Greece would get five of the ten barrels.
Ioannidis thought it was a good deal and even remembered with joy when, at the end of 1973 or the beginning of '74, the first Greek oil arrived at his office in a cylindrical container! That is why he was upset when Taska then suggested that Greece give one of the five barrels it was holding on its behalf to Turkey, in order to permanently ensure calm in the region. A proposal that he, after being disgusted, as he claimed, rejected, stressing that ultimately if our country accepted it, it would get three out of ten barrels that would be pumped even while the drilling was in its own underwater space.
Discussing the events that preceded the coup that overthrew Makarios, he revealed to me that he considered the most dangerous man in Cyprus to be Polykarpos Georgkatzis. He was an unpredictable person. Specifically, he told me:"I believe that he was even involved in the attempted assassination of Papadopoulos by Alexandros Panagoulis in 1968"...
From Makarios' beloved child he became his most hated enemy. In general, according to Ioannidis, Georgatzis gathered a lot of dislikes that led a little later to his murder. He himself did not rule out the possibility, he even characteristically laughed when I asked him about it, that he was murdered on his orders by a Greek commandos officer, his confidant, on a special mission. This is the same person who allegedly tried to shoot down Makarios' helicopter in 1970.
Ioannidis did not hide from me that he was aware of the plan to assassinate the Archbishop by this same person, but he never told me if he approved this action nor did he reveal to me the name of the would-be executioner. On the contrary, he expressed his admiration for Georgatzis' French wife whom he called "a real beauty". For the sake of history, it is worth mentioning that this particular lady later married the late President of the Republic of Cyprus Tassos Papadopoulos, one of the greatest personalities of modern Hellenism.
Since the summer of 1973, he had prepared the overthrow of Papadopoulos, as Ioannidis claimed to me. At that time, he had the first contacts with commanders of Units of Attica and beyond. "I was on the receiving end of the protests against the April 21st revolutionary spirit and the politicization of the regime by many middle and senior officers," he confessed to me.
Ioannidis admitted that although he talked with Papadopoulos at regular intervals, they never felt like friends, unlike his brother Kostas (he died in Korydallos of a heart attack) with whom they were "close friends" and his connection with the rest of the coup plotters on trial. Regarding the Polytechnic, he himself believes that Papadopoulos handled it in the wrong way. "He should - as he told me - not open a front with the students"...
Referring to the Markezini government, Ioannidis believed that it did nothing good for the country, on the contrary, it made many soldiers wonder about the future of the "revolution".
Speaking about the dawn of November 25, 1973, when Papadopoulos was arrested at his villa in Lagonisi on his orders, he told me that if the operation did not succeed, we might have "civil war" in the ranks of the Armed Forces. That is why the plan was drawn up with extreme secrecy, since all the participants were dressed as civilians while they used for their transport, in addition to private cars and trucks, even the bus of the Pedion Areos - Saronidas line. In fact, the truck that had the heavy weaponry was from a transport company, so that its presence would not arouse suspicion.
According to Ioannidis, the operation should have been bloodless, as it was, since the objective was only Papadopoulos, without whom no one would have made any move. "Besides", as he added, "and the leaders of the Armed Forces were my people".
He also told me the short conversation he had with Papadopoulos when he visited him in the villa where he was being held. "He was sitting in a big armchair in the living room of the house in front of a radio playing military marches," he recalls. "As soon as he saw me he grimaced and muttered something about the viper he had been feeding on his neck for so long." Ioannidis then told him that "the revolution was not made to wear suits but for the country that was receiving internal and external threats". He himself ruled out the possibility that the Americans knew that an attempt would be made to overthrow the Papadopoulos regime, with which they maintained very good relations.
Be that as it may, a cycle of Greece's recent history was closed for good about a week ago at the State General of Nice, where the last, perhaps, leader of the Junta was served. Surely the "invisible dictator" took some secrets to his grave, but even in his last moments he made sure to reveal some...
SOURCE: anixneuseis.gr