Cyprus-Forum.com

[samarkeolog]

I've been doing some work on smuggling of antiquities through Cyprus (rather than the smuggling of Cypriot antiquities, although I do mention a few examples of it). I'm still working on it, but I've got up a few posts, exploring: the nature of the illicit antiquities trade itself, the movement of artefacts from source through transit to market countries, etc.; the background of the Cypriot deep states that are involved in the trade (though I think that will only help non-Cypriots who don't already know the rezili/rezalet situation everything happens in); the conflicts between the Turkish Army and the PKK, between Turkish Hizbullah and the PKK, between the Kosovo Liberation Army and the PKK and between the Grey Wolves and the PKK; and the illicit antiquities trade through Cyprus, from the expected role of the Grey Wolves and the PKK, to the involvement of the Russian mafia, Lebanese Hizbullah and others.

Obviously, any corrections, comments, etc. are most welcome.

[Oracle]

I was wondering what this had to do with the Cyprus Problem ..... Then I realised it is presented as an example of the mine of misinformation sponsored by Turkey and manufactured to make everyone think it is the innocent victim of all these other evil-doing countries around it ...

[samarkeolog]

I was wondering what this had to do with the Cyprus Problem ..... Then I realised it is presented as an example of the mine of misinformation sponsored by Turkey and manufactured to make everyone think it is the innocent victim of all these other evil-doing countries around it ...

Do you mean that I showed, or that I spread, the misinformation sponsored by Turkey? Given there were separate posts on the Turkish deep state's false-flag terrorism, its alliance with the KLA and its use of Turkish Hizbullah and the Grey Wolves, I presume the former. Still, I do think it's worth pointing out that yes, the Turkish community, the Turkish state, the Turkish military and the Turkish deep state are all very different entities.

Just as I presume you would not like the Greek community to be punished for Papadopoulo's and Ioannidi's and IDEA's actions, or the Greek Cypriot community for Griva's or Georgadji's or EOKA-B's, so you should not blame the Turkish community for the Grey Wolves' activities, or the Turkish Cypriot community for TMT-B's.

[Get Real!]

Obviously, any corrections, comments, etc. are most welcome.

Please note that I was way too preoccupied by the presentation of your articles to be able to concentrate on the content itself and not to mention that there’s just too much material for anyone to go through in detail.

Overall, your writing style and incessant hypertexing makes your articles excruciatingly tiring. The use of special characters which do not show up correctly on all systems, and could’ve been avoided by using English Latin equivalents, also adds to the eye sore.

The hypertext links are sometimes irrelevant such as the one for “motorcycle hooligans” which opened the large and irrelevant UNFICYP Strategic Assessment PDF written at the time when the S300s where expected to arrive on Cyprus. I would re-evaluate the relevance of some of those links if I were you if at all needed.

More often than not there are no connections between paragraphs and sometimes between consecutive sentences even. All in all it’s a heap of cluttered and unsupported (no sources of reference) allegations ranging from the quite likely to the utterly ridiculous. It’s impossible to mention three dozen organizations in a page-full of text without the article getting incoherent and very taxing to the brain.

This must be one of the most bizarre writing styles I’ve ever come across…it’s like you’ve got a million ideas in your head but can’t be bothered to lay them out in a coherent order/manner so you just jot them in succession thinking that quantity is better than quality.

[Rebel.Without.A.Pause]

Just as I presume you would not like the Greek community to be punished for Papadopoulo's and Ioannidi's and IDEA's actions, or the Greek Cypriot community for Griva's or Georgadji's or EOKA-B's, so you should not blame the Turkish community for the Grey Wolves' activities, or the Turkish Cypriot community for TMT-B's.

Where the ordinary people of Greece and Cyprus were against the Junta military rule (to which the people of Greece themselves overthrew it) - I can honestly say the ordinary Turkish person I meet still see's the Turkish army as some kind of demi-gods and think they can do no wrong. Maybe the tide is turning slightly in Turkey and some people are coming out of their nationalist trance, most Turks are content with having a military rule it seems.

[bill cobbett]

Just as I presume you would not like the Greek community to be punished for Papadopoulo's and Ioannidi's and IDEA's actions, or the Greek Cypriot community for Griva's or Georgadji's or EOKA-B's, so you should not blame the Turkish community for the Grey Wolves' activities, or the Turkish Cypriot community for TMT-B's.

Where the ordinary people of Greece and Cyprus were against the Junta military rule (to which the people of Greece themselves overthrew it) - I can honestly say the ordinary Turkish person I meet still see's the Turkish army as some kind of demi-gods and think they can do no wrong. Maybe the tide is turning slightly in Turkey and some people are coming out of their nationalist trance, most Turks are content with having a military rule it seems.

Absolutely RWAC and if I might add that an increasing number of Trs are also turning to fundamentalist religion. Trouble ahead ?

[Get Real!]

Just as I presume you would not like the Greek community to be punished for Papadopoulo's and Ioannidi's and IDEA's actions, or the Greek Cypriot community for Griva's or Georgadji's or EOKA-B's, so you should not blame the Turkish community for the Grey Wolves' activities, or the Turkish Cypriot community for TMT-B's.

Where the ordinary people of Greece and Cyprus were against the Junta military rule (to which the people of Greece themselves overthrew it) - I can honestly say the ordinary Turkish person I meet still see's the Turkish army as some kind of demi-gods and think they can do no wrong. Maybe the tide is turning slightly in Turkey and some people are coming out of their nationalist trance, most Turks are content with having a military rule it seems.

Absolutely RWAC and if I might add that an increasing number of Trs are also turning to fundamentalist religion. Trouble ahead ?

Blessings are sometimes disguised...

[samarkeolog]

Please note... there’s just too much material for anyone to go through in detail.

It's impossible to explain just how f'ked up the situation is without at least reference to this material. I put all the material together there, so that if anyone wants to know about it, go through it in detail or follow up particular aspects of it, they can; they don't have to repeat my research and they can evaluate it. I appreciate that you might not want to, but I hope you appreciate that by me providing it, someone who does want to, can.

Overall, your writing style and incessant hypertexing makes your articles excruciatingly tiring.... The hypertext links are sometimes irrelevant such as the one for “motorcycle hooligans” which opened the large and irrelevant UNFICYP Strategic Assessment PDF written at the time when the S300s where expected to arrive on Cyprus. I would re-evaluate the relevance of some of those links if I were you if at all needed.

Actually, the "motorcycle hooligans" link was entirely relevant: the link to the UNFICYP assessment directs you to Dan Lindley's (1997: 28; 28, footnote 34) comments on "motorcycle hooliganism"; that's why I linked to it, and I hope and believe that every other link was equally relevant.

That is also why I put in quite so many links - to explain and justify what I was saying. You don't have to follow the links, but if you wish to question my descriptions, statements, opinions, whatever, you can choose to follow the links to the sources that show why I have written what I have.

I am sorry that you felt there were too many links, but given you have already demonstrated that you didn't read the ones that you did follow and incorrectly criticised me on the basis of that lack of reading, I'm not sure what to say.

If you ignored the links to sources backing up what you deemed to be 'quite likely [true]' allegations and only followed the ones you felt were 'utterly ridiculous', you could understand why I made them. As with the motorcycle hooligans link, however, you would actually have to read the source to make an informed judgement.

The use of special characters which do not show up correctly on all systems, and could’ve been avoided by using English Latin equivalents, also adds to the eye sore.

I included the accented characters because that is how the names are written; different words can be written with the same letters, only distinguished by their accents, like "dış [dish with an undotted 'i']" and "diş [dish]", which mean "exterior" and "tooth", respectively.

I used all of the English names, but included the Greek and Turkish names in their alphabets, too, so that, if someone wanted to look for Greek or Turkish-language material, they could find it. If you Google for Turkish words with accented letters in them, but write them without accents, Google will still find the page(s), but, when you shift+F7 search on the page itself, your computer will not find the name(s).

I understand that some computers cannot render some letters sometimes - mine doesn't always render Greek and Turkish ones, or occasionally only renders them correctly in the Google cache version of a page (why I do not know...) - but it is common in Greek and Turkish-language work and websites to write with all of the appropriate characters.

More often than not there are no connections between paragraphs and sometimes between consecutive sentences even. All in all it’s a heap of cluttered and unsupported (no sources of reference) allegations ranging from the quite likely to the utterly ridiculous.

It is simply absurd for you to complain that my 'allegations' are 'unsupported', with 'no sources of reference', when as far as I know, every single claim has a link to the sources of reference that support my claims; indeed, moments ago, you were recommending I provided fewer links to corroborating evidence.

The many, many links you bemoan direct you to most of my sources (to all of my online sources); I have given full references for any offline sources cited, but have tried to use online ones wherever possible precisely so that you could check them and so my claims.

Even without following the links, simply by rolling the mouse over them, you will be able to see that my sources include the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the London Guardian, the BBC, le Monde Diplomatique, der Spiegel, Kathimerini, the Turkish Daily News, Today's Zaman...

It’s impossible to mention three dozen organizations in a page-full of text without the article getting incoherent and very taxing to the brain.

This must be one of the most bizarre writing styles I’ve ever come across…it’s like you’ve got a million ideas in your head but can’t be bothered to lay them out in a coherent order/manner so you just jot them in succession thinking that quantity is better than quality.

Unfortunately, it may be true that the text is too condensed, and that that makes it difficult to read and follow, but I was trying to gather the material together, document it - and corroborate any claims about it - then move on, to write a (hopefully more coherent) paper summarising it all.

I certainly do not believe that quantity is better than quality, but it is true that I may have sacrificed some quality just to get that quantity of information posted; I already spent so long preparing these posts that I was unable to finish the paper I was supposed to write summarising them.

So, while you do have a point when you criticise my writing style, I hope I have proved you wrong about everything else.

[Oracle]

I was wondering what this had to do with the Cyprus Problem ..... Then I realised it is presented as an example of the mine of misinformation sponsored by Turkey and manufactured to make everyone think it is the innocent victim of all these other evil-doing countries around it ...

Do you mean that I showed, or that I spread, the misinformation sponsored by Turkey? Given there were separate posts on the Turkish deep state's false-flag terrorism, its alliance with the KLA and its use of Turkish Hizbullah and the Grey Wolves, I presume the former. Still, I do think it's worth pointing out that yes, the Turkish community, the Turkish state, the Turkish military and the Turkish deep state are all very different entities.

Just as I presume you would not like the Greek community to be punished for Papadopoulo's and Ioannidi's and IDEA's actions, or the Greek Cypriot community for Griva's or Georgadji's or EOKA-B's, so you should not blame the Turkish community for the Grey Wolves' activities, or the Turkish Cypriot community for TMT-B's.

The sentiment is fine. The reality is something else. This is where an author's self-assessed impartiality can let him down.

The weight of condemnations is very strong on Greek Cypriot connections, with much effort gone into gleaning all possible links to pad out your biased view on the enormity of the GCs' crimes. Such an equal effort is not apparent in anything to do with Turkish connections. The pro-Turkish bias is obvious because it is heavy with omissions.

Your blog is pure spin; the sort of white-wash political parties attempt every few decades to re-emerge as "New".

It is indeed another revisionist compilation, for the Turkish deep-state clean-up operation, of their dirty campaign of terror spanning more than 50 years.

[Oracle]

It is simply absurd for you to complain that my 'allegations' are 'unsupported', with 'no sources of reference', when as far as I know, every single claim has a link to the sources of reference that support my claims; indeed, moments ago, you were recommending I provided fewer links to corroborating evidence.

The quote above made to Get Real! brings to mind how I felt reading your elaborate account of Racist Greek Cypriot youths. A personal encounter I supposed, so perhaps you could be allowed leniency on corroboration and links.

But flicking through as much as possible of your voluminous trough, I could find no other similar experiences to balance the one-sidedness I immediately felt. That would be fine as you cannot force experiences.

But I was left wondering why you included it?

If retaining you must, then I would add that, save for unquestioning Turkish youths intent on believing anything accusing GCs of racism, your narrative gives you away.

Put simply your bias emanates here more strongly than anywhere else. Tarnishing all the other (skilled) attempts to come across as an impartial historian.