Coercive Engineered Migration: Zionism’s War on Europe

[seemslikeadream]

could you guys just move on or stick to the subject of the OP....or maybe just fucking start your own fucking thread on the subject you feel you have to discuss

[Searcher08]

Anti-fascist or just "friend" of the cause, jakell can always count on Searcher...

Just as Wombat can always count on me;

and Luther and slad and 82 and neon and JR and Willow and tapisbo and Alice and slim and CD and zangtang and semper and Cuda and 8Bit and elfi and Mac and Savant and chump and fruh and conniption and drew and Vanlose and Nordic and bph and Pele's Daughter and Cordelia and Perelandra and...

Thanks for the compliment.

@slad
Thank you for the post from Alice, which was excellent, thought-provoking material.
I am very curious about her take on Iran having empire-building designs...

[Wombaticus Rex]

Always worth repeating: we all gain more by discussing the material here than by discussing each other.

Break-outs are surely inevitable but this one is spread across many threads at the moment - let us cease. I reckon everyone involved can agree that nobody has 1) changed their minds about the subject or 2) pointed out anything new. Myself emphatically included.

[tapitsbo]

Something like this broadcast doesn't come out of a "vacuum":



As Wombat points out everyone here probably realizes that, though.

This is not "underground" media. I think more people in the West need to see stuff like this, I personally find it most disagreeable. Note the literal call for genocide under the banner of "anti-fascism". Gee, where have we seen that before? I think it's probably time to move on to strict discussion of fighting fascism with fascism. Comparative fascism?

As far as the comment about the Protocols, let's just drop the bizarro context for a second and allow me to say that I don't see how you can understand the US establishment without terms like Zionism. Most especially with the Obama administration on the way out the door.

When we're told the Turkish government doesn't respect refugees' human rights, that actually implies wrongdoing on the part of the partnership that assisted them in support of IS, and so on, and so forth. IMHO FWIW.

[seemslikeadream]

well here's an idea!

Pesident of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman has suggested Greece could pay off its international debt by hosting deportation centers. He believes Athens could cash in on helping to deport migrants from Europe.

Czech president proposes Greece host migrant centers to settle debt problems
Published time: 6 Mar, 2016 16:55
Edited time: 6 Mar, 2016 17:00

© Marko Djurica

Pesident of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman has suggested Greece could pay off its international debt by hosting deportation centers. He believes Athens could cash in on helping to deport migrants from Europe.
Trends
EU refugee & migrant influx
"Detention centers would be built on Greek islands to where migrants from Europe would be deported ... and Greece would, by maintaining these detention centers, pay its otherwise uncollectible foreign debt," Zeman said.

Czech Republic President Milos Zeman. © Vincent KesslerMuslims ‘practically impossible’ to integrate into Europe - Czech president
The Czech president, an outspoken critic of the refugee influx, was speaking in an interview with a Czech television station, as cited by Reuters. He said it was "an original idea that could kill two birds with one stone.”

In January, Zeman said integrating Muslims into Europe was “practically impossible,” citing an example of the mass sexual assaults perpetrated by migrants in the German city of Cologne on New Year's Eve.

“Let them have their culture in their countries and not take it to Europe, otherwise it will end up like Cologne,” the Czech president said.

He also called the refugee influx an “organized invasion,” which mostly consists of young men, who should go back and take up arms against Islamic State.

“I am profoundly convinced we are facing an organized invasion and not a spontaneous movement of refugees," Zeman said in December.


However, it seems as though Germany may not be too keen on the president’s plan or that of the European Parliament President Martin Schulz, who suggested Greece be given more time to resolve its budget problems and greater flexibility should be shown.

"The refugee issue and the aid program for Greece should not be mixed," a spokesman for German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Reuters on Sunday.

Athens is facing a massive bottleneck of migrants, as its northern neighbors have blocked off their borders to the vast majority of refugees, leaving them stuck in Greece. Around 30,000 migrants are currently in the north of the country, waiting for Macedonia to reopen its border so they can continue their journey towards Germany.


Greek police said on Sunday that the Macedonian authorities are now demanding asylum seekers prove they have come from war zones, if they want to travel to Europe. This would mean that people from Aleppo would be considered refugees, but citizens from Damascus would not be allowed to enter.

On March 1, The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) estimated that more than 122,000 migrants arrived in Greece in January and February, which is more than in the entire first six months of 2015.

The Greek Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Zeman’s proposals, while the EU is set to meet in Turkey on Monday to try and find ways to stem the migrant crisis.

In February, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the EU risks turning his country into a refugee “warehouse” unless other nations in the bloc share the burden of the migrant crisis.

"We will not accept turning the country into a permanent warehouse of souls with Europe continuing to function as if nothing is happening," Tsipras told parliament on February 24, according to Reuters.

21.05.2015

Czech economic policy mix gets IMF seal of approval
‘IMF approved’ is probably a badge that the Czech government ministers, finance ministry officials, and central bank policy setters could wear with pride after the latest visit and assessment from the international economic watchdog and advisor. The latest report is broadly upbeat but contains the customary dose of caution and advice.

advice

[Elvis]

A lot of these guys who have taken over this board in the last year are Stormshit, isn't it kind of obvious? There are a couple of genuinely naive older members who buy into any crap that comes out, either out of constant blinding anger (who do I mean?) or because "open mind you never know reality's not what it seems I still hurt from being called a mean name 30 years ago, blah blah why not flat earth, etc." But fellow travelers, morons/dupes, submarines, no excuses. No really, no excuses. No one's this stupid. This is just the Euro-racist populist hate shit-mix rewarmed with a few RI cliches and pretend-Buddhist-mystical-astral-plane-love spritzed on as perfume.

[seemslikeadream]

JackRiddler » Sun Feb 28, 2016 7:10 pm wrote:
A lot of these guys who have taken over this board in the last year are Stormshit, isn't it kind of obvious? There are a couple of genuinely naive older members who buy into any crap that comes out, either out of constant blinding anger (who do I mean?) or because "open mind you never know reality's not what it seems I still hurt from being called a mean name 30 years ago, blah blah why not flat earth, etc." But fellow travelers, morons/dupes, submarines, no excuses. No really, no excuses. No one's this stupid. This is just the Euro-racist populist hate shit-mix rewarmed with a few RI cliches and pretend-Buddhist-mystical-astral-plane-love spritzed on as perfume.

drive by critiques ...that's all your good for these days ....whatever ....blah ....blah......blah

[Jerky]

AMEN.

A lot of these guys who have taken over this board in the last year are Stormshit, isn't it kind of obvious? There are a couple of genuinely naive older members who buy into any crap that comes out, either out of constant blinding anger (who do I mean?) or because "open mind you never know reality's not what it seems I still hurt from being called a mean name 30 years ago, blah blah why not flat earth, etc." But fellow travelers, morons/dupes, submarines, no excuses. No really, no excuses. No one's this stupid. This is just the Euro-racist populist hate shit-mix rewarmed with a few RI cliches and pretend-Buddhist-mystical-astral-plane-love spritzed on as perfume.

[seemslikeadream]

another drive by heard from ......

[seemslikeadream]

The Anti-Immigrant 'Soldiers of Odin' Are Expanding Across Europe
By Reuters and VICE News

March 2, 2016 | 6:35 am
The Soldiers of Odin, a far-right vigilante group whose members have patrolled streets in Finland saying they want to protect locals from immigrants, have started spreading to other Nordic and Baltic countries, worrying authorities.

Named after the king of the gods in Norse mythology, the self-proclaimed patriots say they want to be the eyes and ears for the police who they say are struggling to fulfill their duties. But critics say they are jumping on the back of Europe's migration crisis to propagate a racist and dangerous agenda.

With some 250,000 asylum seekers moving into the region as a whole over the last year, fleeing brutal wars and desperate poverty in their home countries, the group has triggered fears of a rise in vigilantism.

The Soldiers are now expanding outside Finland, wearing similar black jackets adorned on the back with a Viking, his mouth covered with the relevant country's national flag, and the name of the group written in English.

In Estonia, the group held their first meeting in mid-February, with local media reporting that 60 people attended.

"We don't want refugees to come here," Indrek Olm, who said he was one of the leaders of the group in Estonia, told Reuters later in the month. "We will start going on patrol to make sure they don't do something illegal."

The Baltic country of 1.3 million has almost no asylum seekers or refugees. But the authorities nonetheless do not like the Soldiers of Odin.

"Self-proclaimed patrol gangs do not increase the Estonian people's sense of security in any way, rather the opposite." Prime Minister Taavi Roivas said on Twitter.

In Norway, police have expressed concern about how the arrival of some 31,000 asylum seekers in the country of 5.2 million last year will affect far-right groups.

"We consider the threat from right-wing milieus to be increasing. The asylum issue is fuelling right-wing activity, radicalization and recruitment," said the Police Security Service in its latest threat assessment last month.

The Soldiers of Odin held their first patrol in Norway on February 13 in Toensberg, a town of some 42,000 about 62 miles to the south of Oslo.

"Our main goal is to prevent violence, the sale of drugs and not least sexual assaults," Ronny Alte, then spokesman for the Soldiers of Odin in Norway, told Reuters. Alte has since quit the group over differences about the organization's stance.

"And if you look at these problems ... it is unfortunately the case that immigrants, and not least illegal immigrants, are over-represented in these cases," he claimed.

Other patrols have taken took place in several cities, while others were stopped by police. In the city of Kristiansand in the south, the Soldiers of Odin were told by police they could only distribute free buns and coffee.

The Soldiers of Odin do attract support in some quarters.

"Every citizen who wants to contribute towards reducing criminality and insecurity should be applauded," Jan Arild Ellingsen, a lawmaker from the populist Progress Party, a member of Norway's ruling coalition, told broadcaster NRK.

But his statement was condemned by Norway's prime minister. "The Soldiers of Odin have no place in the work to keep our streets safe. Dangerous values," Erna Solberg said on Twitter.

[seemslikeadream]

Nato accuses Russia of ‘weaponising’ immigrants

Geoff Dyer in Washington

Nato’s top commander accused Russia and the Syrian regime on Tuesday of “weaponising” immigration by using bombs aimed at civilians to deliberately cause large flows of refugees and challenge European political resolve.
General Philip Breedlove, Nato’s supreme allied commander, said that the types of bombs being used in Syria — especially the Assad regime’s barrel bombs — were designed to force civilians from their homes.
Asked at a Senate hearing whether Russia was aggravating the Syrian refugee crisis in order to divide countries in the EU, he replied: “I can’t find any other reason for them [air strikes against civilians] other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else’s problem.” He added: “I use the term weaponisation of immigration.”
Gen Breedlove was talking as the ceasefire in Syria orchestrated by the US and Russia entered its fourth day amid significantly reduced fighting but some signs of violations on both sides.
In a report published on Monday, the Institute for the Study of War said that Russian air strikes had continued in opposition-held areas of northwestern Syria after the start of the ceasefire.
Gen Breedlove said that the recent Russian air strikes were “ostensibly” against Isis and the al-Nusra Front, which are not covered by the ceasefire, but he added that “I think that this remains to be seen”. “We will have to watch the actual activity of the cessation to determine whether it is a valid one or not,” he said.
While US and European officials have been heavily critical of the impact of the Russian and Syrian air campaign on the refugee crisis that the war has generated, Gen Breedlove’s comments were unusually blunt.
I can’t find any other reason for them [air strikes against civilians] other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else’s problem
- General Philip Breedlove, Nato supreme allied commander
He said that the flow of refugees into Europe was “masking the movements of criminals, terrorists and foreign fighters” and that Isis was “spreading like a cancer, taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations and our own with terrorist attacks”.
The barrel bombs used by the Assad regime had no “military utility” and were “designed to terrorise, get people out of their homes and get them on the road and make them someone else’s problem”, he said. He also criticised Russia’s use of “non-precision” weapons in the air strikes it has conducted in Syria.
Gen Breedlove repeated his criticism of recent statements by Russian officials about the potential use of nuclear weapons in a conflict which he described as an “irresponsible discussion”.
“A series of their officials from several levels, including unformed military, have said that nuclear weapons are considered a normal weapon in the normal escalation and de-escalation of resolving an issue,” he said. “I have said more than once that I don’t think that is responsible by a nuclear power.”

[seemslikeadream]

Tusk to immigrants: Do not come to Europe! Do not come to Greece!

CIHAN | ATHENS - 03.03.2016 17:07:00
President of the European Council Donald Tusk paid an official visit to Athens on Thursday and met with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Addressing all immigrants planning to arrive in Europe via Greece, Tusk “Do not come to Greece, do not come to Europe! Do not believe traffickers. Greece will not be a transit country,” noted in his statement.

On a tour of the Balkans and Turkey in relation to the refugee crisis, Tusk made a statement concerning the topic.

“The EU did not abandon Greece. It will never leave Greece on its own,” said Tusk. Stating that the refugee flow through the West Balkan route had turned into a dramatic situation, Tusk asked the EU to take a decisive stand. Additionally, Tusk stated that he will promptly visit Turkey due to the complexity of the situation in Greece.

Meanwhile, addressing all immigrants who plan to arrive in Europe via Greece, Tusk declared, “Do not come to Greece, do not come to Europe! Do not believe traffickers. Greece will not be a transit country.”

[seemslikeadream]

Human rights groups worry Europe is turning refugees into 'bargaining chips'

BY MEGAN SPECIA
2 HOURS AGO
The European Union and Turkey agreed to a controversial agreement on Tuesday that's aimed at combating the devastating refugee crisis that has gripped the region through what's being billed as a "one-to-one" exchange.


But human rights groups are raising the alarm, warning that the program would be damaging to the hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees who are attempting to enter Europe and result in mass deportations.

Under the newly proposed plan, all migrants and refugees arriving on boats in Greece en route from Turkey would be turned back. In return, one Syrian in Turkey would be formally resettled in an EU country for every Syrian sent away.

Turkey in turn agreed that it would accept migrants who are picked up in the Aegean Sea, in the region that separates the country from the nearby Greek islands, as well as those who have arrived in Greece but have not yet applied for asylum there.


People wait by the border gate on March 8, 2016, after a rainstorm made for miserable conditions at Idomeni border camp, where more than 13,000 people, mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees, are trapped.
IMAGE: JODI HILTON/NURPHOTO/SIPA USA
The two sides believe the measures could cut down on human smugglers and will more evenly distribute the burden of new arrivals, taking pressure off countries on the frontline of the crisis. But aid workers foresee a dangerous precedent.

“Refugees should not be used as bargaining chips,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement emailed to Mashable. “The integrity of the EU’s asylum system, indeed the integrity of European values, is at stake.”

Aid group Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has been working with migrants and refugees in Europe for months voiced similar concerns in an emailed statement that called the proposal inhumane.


Migrants are anxious to pass the Idomeni's checkpoint on the border between Greece and Macedonia.
IMAGE: PACIFIC PRESS/SIPA USA
"For each refugee that will risk their life at sea and will be summarily sent back to Turkey, another one may have the chance to reach Europe from Turkey under a proposed resettlement scheme," said Aurelie Ponthieu, MSF humanitarian affairs adviser on displacement. "This crude calculation reduces people to mere numbers, denying them humane treatment and discarding their right to seek protection."

"These people are not numbers but women, children and families, 88% of whom are fleeing refugee-producing countries," Ponthieu said. "They should be treated humanely and with full respect for their rights and dignity."


An average of 2,500 people have made the crossing every day since a previous EU-Turkey agreement was struck in November 2015. So far this year, more than 141,000 people have arrived in Greece after crossing from Turkey.

The EU is expected to double its aid package, to $6.63 billion, for health care, education, and other basic services for more than two million Syrian refugees already in Turkey, and ramp up political concessions to Turkey, such as easing visa restrictions for Turkish nationals and reviving talks on Turkish accession to the EU, in exchange for stepped-up efforts to curb migration and refugee flows to Europe.

But the deal is still not set in stone. The aim is for deal at the next EU summit in Brussels starting March 17.

[seemslikeadream]

E.U. Woos Turkey for Refugee Help, Ignoring Rights Crackdown
By TIM ARANGO and CEYLAN YEGINSUMARCH 8, 2016

Demonstrators were hit by tear gas in front of the offices of the Turkish daily newspaper Zaman in Istanbul on Saturday. The authorities raided the newspaper. Credit Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ISTANBUL — The contrast was jarring: Just days after the police broke into the offices of an opposition newspaper using tear gas and water cannon, Turkey’s prime minister was greeted in Brussels with offers of billions in aid, visa-free travel for Turks in Europe and renewed prospects for joining the European Union.

The juxtaposition highlighted the conundrum Europe faces as it seeks solutions to its worst refugee crisis since World War II. To win Turkey’s desperately needed assistance in stemming the flow of migrants to the Continent, European officials seem prepared to ignore what critics say is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s steady march toward authoritarianism.

It is a moment of European weakness that the Turkish leadership seems keen to capitalize on. As Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived in Brussels this week he upped the ante, asking for more financial aid than was previously negotiated and demanding visa-free travel by June, while offering to take back some migrants who have crossed into Europe.


The Turkish offer was hailed as a “breakthrough” Tuesday by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, spoke about a “common understanding” between Europe and Turkey. They said they hoped to work out the details at a summit meeting on March 17 and 18.

Yet criticism of Turkey’s media crackdown was mild, with President François Hollande of France saying, “cooperation with Turkey doesn’t mean we should not be extremely vigilant about press freedom.”

The refugee crisis — more than a million people fleeing war and hardship in the Middle East and beyond have landed on Europe’s shores — has significantly shifted the balance of power between Turkey and Europe. Membership in the European Union was once seen as a carrot to induce Turkey to push through democratic reforms. Now it is offered as an enticement for Turkish help contain the flow of refugees, with Europe, critics say, choosing to set aside its values to secure Turkish cooperation.


“More rights and freedoms for people in Turkey has been the reason why I supported accession,” said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. But nowadays, she said, “we see the trading away of principles in the mere hope of solutions to Europe’s own challenges in dealing with asylum seekers and migrants.”

In addition to the media crackdown, critics have been concerned by the renewed fighting in Turkey’s southeast between the army and Kurdish insurgents. They say Europe should do more to push the two sides to return to peace talks.

Selahattin Demirtas, the top Kurdish political leader, whose party for the first time won representation in Parliament in elections last year, said the refugee crisis had led Europe to be largely silent on the renewed war in the southeast. He criticized Europe for bowing to Turkey’s demands, and not taking a tougher line with Ankara on its domestic troubles.

“Blackmailing European countries in turn for the refugee crisis, this is something that the European Union should not close their eyes to,” Mr. Demirtas told reporters on Monday. “The European Union should see this as blackmailing, and this is not in line with European values.”

In previous years the membership talks between Turkey and the European Union led to more democracy within Turkey, analysts say. To put itself more in line with European values, Turkey has abolished the death penalty, legalized education and news broadcasts in the Kurdish language, granted more rights to non-Muslim minorities and curbed the influence of the military over politics. Now that is shifting.

“E.U.-Turkey relations today are merely transactional,” said Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish columnist who sometimes contributes to The New York Times. “We can give you this, you can give us that. You take back some refugees, we give you free visas. It is not about Turkey becoming an E.U.-style liberal democracy.”

Mr. Erdogan, Turkey’s pre-eminent political figure since 2003, once embraced democratic reforms in the hopes of obtaining European Union. membership. But in recent years, as those hopes faded, the early gains were reversed. There was a tough crackdown on government protesters in the summer of 2013. There was a corruption investigation that prompted the government to purge the judiciary and police of perceived enemies. And there has been the erosion of press freedoms.

Now, rather than being the leader of a glittering Islamic democracy, Mr. Erdogan, who remains extremely popular among his religiously conservative base, is often compared to Vladimir V. Putin, the leader of Russia — an authoritarian leader with little regard for freedom of expression.

Underscoring this pivot in Turkey, even as Mr. Davutoglu was meeting with European leaders on Monday, the Turkish authorities, backed by a court order, moved to seize the Cihan News Agency, a news media outlet that like Zaman, which was seized last week, is linked to the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a rival of Mr. Erdogan’s who lives in exile.

And as the talks were progressing in Brussels on Monday, Mr. Erdogan, in a speech in Ankara, denounced the Europeans for failing to deliver on their pledge of more than $3 billion of aid for refugees.

“They promised to give us three billion euros, and four months have passed since then,” he said. “The prime minister is in Brussels right now. I hope he returns with that money, the three billion euros.”

Activists, press freedom advocates and Turkish liberals who once counted on the prospect of European Union membership to bring about more democratic reforms have reacted with despair to Europe’s muted criticism of what they see as Turkey’s increasingly anti-democratic behavior.

“Is the E.U. determined to let itself be humiliated?” Christophe Deloire, the secretary-general of the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, asked in a statement on Monday. He noted that Turkey’s seizure of the daily newspaper Zaman came last week as Mr. Tusk was on a visit to Ankara.

Svante Cornell, a Turkey analyst and director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a research organization, said the various crackdowns on the news media “illustrate fully the charade that E.U.-Turkey relations have become."

“The timing of Turkey’s move against Zaman was ostentatious,” he said, “suggesting Erdogan’s government is not even trying to pretend to live up to European norms and values.”

This week Zaman, now overseen by court-appointed trustees, quickly shifted from a steadfast critic of the government to a voice of support, a transformation neatly illustrated by Tuesday’s front page headlines about the summit meeting in Brussels.

“A green light from the E.U. for Turkey’s demands,” one read, while another celebrated that “the path to visa-free travel in Europe opens.”

[seemslikeadream]

Refugees Caught in Tide of European History

Jamie Dettmer
March 08, 2016 12:11 PM

THESSALONIKI, GREECE—
Syrian and Iraqi war refugees are sleeping by railroad tracks in northern Greece hoping to be allowed to travel onward to Germany and other northern EU countries. Seventy-three years ago, these tracks were traversed by another group heading to Germany for a completely different future: the Nazi death camps.

North was not a direction the Jews wanted to be heading. Packed into death trains by the SS, their journey ended in the gas chambers of the Third Reich, where 98 percent of the total Jewish population of Thessaloniki died.

Europeans escaping Nazi tyranny in the Balkans and parts of Central Europe, were heading in opposite directions from Thessaloniki’s Jews, some southeast for Turkey, the country contemporary Syrians and Iraqis are traveling through to flee the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the jihadists of the Islamic State and al Qaida affiliate Jabhat al Nusra.

Poignant, cruel historical ironies and injustices abound in the turmoil of the current refugee crisis roiling Europe and the Middle East — ghostly echoes of a past Europeans thought they had long ago exorcised that is panicking their politicians.

Located at a major crossroads between mainland Europe and the Mideast, Greece and its Balkan neighbors - now throwing up coils of razor-sharp wire on their frontiers and militarizing their borders to stop asylum-seekers - are no strangers to huge flows of war refugees searching for a firm footing nor to forcible displacements.

In the last few days tents have gone up close to passing cargo trains in Idomeni, Greece, near the Macedonia border. (Jamie Dettmer for VOA)

The turmoil that has come in the wake of these mass migrations has shaken countries to their roots and foreshadowed era-changing politics.

It is almost as if the European continent is built on political tectonic plates. With each chafing and grinding, the lives of hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, are shattered. Individuals, rich and poor alike, are caught up in consequences beyond their control.

From the 19th century until the end of the 20th century, an estimated 10 million ethnic Turks, Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Tatars and Pomaks trudged towards Turkey, emigrating to the heartland of the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia.

Most did so during the Balkan War of 1912-13 and the Great War - World War I - as the Ottomans saw their territory shrink and independence grabbed by vassal states. In 1915 those refugees passed Armenians coming the other way when about 80,000 survivors of the Armenian Genocide fled to Greece.

There was more to come with the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, the Greek occupation of the port of Smyrna, now known as Izmir, the launching point for many fleeing Syrians and Iraqis today. The war was concluded with a forcible mass exchange of populations that saw the expulsions of Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and of Muslims from Greece to Turkey.

The Aegean Sea, now being passaged by Syrians and Iraqis desperate to reach safety, figured prominently then as well.

The population exchange — “the great uprooting” — involved more than two million people.

A Syrian father plays with his son. (Jamie Dettmer for VOA)
A Syrian father plays with his son. (Jamie Dettmer for VOA)
When friends become foes...

“Can’t we go back to Syria now,” is a plea many Syrian parents at Idomeni have heard from their children. The same look of bewilderment, the same faux courage is on the faces of Syrian and Iraqi kids as they are captured for posterity in the faces of Greek and Turkish children in black-and-white photographs taken during the great uprooting.

“My mother only took a few spare clothes because she thought she would be coming back. And then the boat came and took us away,” an aged Despoina Christopulou, a Greek Christian survivor, recalled in a 2012 BBC documentary exploring the devastating consequences of the Greek invasion of Turkey and the refugee crisis it created on both sides of the Aegean.

Remembering how life was before, Christopulou says: “There would be a Greek house and then a Turkish house — they would all live well together. They ate and drank together. They would come to yours; you would go to theirs.” War put a finish to that. When the Greek army retreated, Greek Christians fled in its wake pursued by vengeful Turks determined to punish the terrible devastation wrought on their towns by the Greek military. Christopulou talks in the documentary about the disappearance of her father, wiping tears away as though it were yesterday.

Today, Sunni Muslims, Kurds, Yezidis and Christians are flooding out of the Mideast in the biggest mass movement of people Europe has seen since the Second World War. And their oral histories, what they are struggling with emotionally, what they are enduring now, are, for all of the technological differences, the same.

“We stayed because we thought the war would stop, but then we realized the war will never stop,” says Shermini, a 19-year-old Yezidi, who with her parents, a brother and his wife left their village near the Iraqi town of Dohuk at the beginning of February.

She and her family decided also to leave because they started to fear their Sunni Muslim neighbors, people they had once called friends. “We thought if Daesh came, they would quickly become Daesh themselves,” she says, using the Arab acronym for the Islamic State.

One of the few water taps at the Idomeni refugee camp in Greece, for more than 13,000 refugees. (Jamie Dettmer for VOA)

Starting over

About the same time Shermini and her family left, so did Waad Alnaimee, a Sunni Muslim from Baghdad and a former director in Iraq’s Ministry of Culture. He fled the Iraqi capital after his eldest daughter was kidnapped — she was freed by the police — and his car was crumpled in a bombing, an assassination attempt on him.

“In the new Iranian-controlled Iraq there is no place for Sunni Muslims,” he says.

He was at Idomeni for two weeks with his wife, two grown-up daughters and his ten-year-old son but has now agreed to enter a relocation scheme that should get him and his family placed somewhere in Europe, although they are not allowed to choose the country.

“We left everything behind,” he laments.

Like most refugees he is trapped in nostalgia and struggling to maintain his self-identity. He flicks through photographs on his mobile of his office and of him greeting well-known artists. “I loved my work; I loved my job,” he says.

He will have to try to recreate himself — or part of himself — in Europe. He seems destined to get the chance. Others may not, if those opposed to admitting more asylum-seekers into Europe get their way. Force is already being used — Afghans were kicked into Athens-bound buses last week by Macedonian border guards after they had been denied further entry into the Balkans, according to relief workers.

NATO warships are starting to patrol the Aegean to help Turkish coast guards turn back the little, unseaworthy boats ferrying refugees. European leaders say the mission is to rescue refugees, to ensure they don’t drown. The refugees see the objective as forcible interdiction.

History can be hard to escape.