In reality, the Greek Cypriot community was numerically much larger than the Turkish Cypriot community (80:18). Equal representation and participation in a bi - communal form of government would be undemocratic. Such “equality” would be an intolerable inequity at the expense of the majority.
This paper sets out to analyse the nature of bi - communal representation (communalism) as it manifested itself in Cyprus in the hope that a deeper understanding of the nature of the system will provide a useful contribution to those seeking a more viable solution of the Cyprus problem.
Undoubtedly the Ottoman occupation was the “unhappiest and least prosperous for Cyprus”.[19] Apart from natural catastrophes (locusts, plague, droughts) the growing corruption and exploitation by the Turkish officials caused many Orthodox Greek Cypriots to flee abroad, to the Peloponnese, to Asia Minor and to Egypt where they set up large communities.[20] Despite these oppressive stratagems, despite the creation of refugees, the Orthodox Greek Cypriots not only remained the majority community on the island but also retained their awareness as a social group (an ethnos) distinct from that of the Moslem Turkish Cypriots.
To this sense of a distinctive Hellenic Orthodox ethnos and culture was added a nationalist dimension which grew in intensity over the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. This in turn was to bring about “the eventual collision of two opposing nationalist movements in the case of the bi-national society of Cyprus”.[21
Neo-Hellenic nationalism, a product of the long term exposure of Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire to European intellectual and political influences, was initially stimulated by the individual liberalism of the eighteenth century Enlightenment and the impact of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.[22] But the decisive ideological formulation of Greek nationalism was to take a militant conservative trend, especially with the acceptance of the Orthodox Church as “the guardian of spiritual and national unity”.[23] The ethnos was deemed more important than the individual and great emphasis was placed on the ethnological and cultural continuity into which pagan classicism was incorporated. However, the critical questioning dimension inherent in classicism was displaced by “the ideology of ancestral worship that sustained the modern Greek claim to glory”.[24] Out of this emerged an intolerant sense of self-sufficiency and self-confidence that found its political manifestation in the Great Idea.
Greece’s destiny, its irredentist civilising mission in the East would be at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. Traditional anti - Turkish sentiments and symbolism were integral to the Great Idea as part of the process of converting the unredeemed Greeks of the periphery to the values of the Great Idea.
In part this would be accomplished through education (the establishment of schools, provision of teachers and educational materials) and the creation of a network of political and cultural ties with Greece. It was also to be reinforced by the emigration of Greek subjects to various parts of the Ottoman Empire, to Russia and to America throughout the nineteenth century. Greece’s expansion throughout this period (1830 - 1922) at the expense of the Ottoman state was liberationist ; it was never imperialistic. In this sense, while for Greece itself the Great Idea served a conservative social function, the Great Idea for the unredeemed Greeks represented, apart from national glory, “a redemption from arbitrary and autocratic rule” and “a concrete aspiration for political order and material progress under the aegis of a national entity with which they could identify symbolically and socially”.[25]
Greek nationalism had its hesitant beginnings in Cyprus at the end of the eighteenth century at a time when there was emerging a commercial merchant class along with a tax-farming class.[26] A small segment of Cypriot society became sensitive to Greek nationalist influences penetrating the island in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. No fully - fledged mass nationalist movement was evident in Cyprus during the last fifty years of Ottoman rule, but there is more than ample evidence to support the British Consular Report of 1866 that “the townspeople (of Cyprus) had become inculcated by the Hellenic Idea”.[27]
This nationalist orientation spread from prelates and notables to the mass of the Greek Cypriot population. The Greek Orthodox Church was the irredentist nationalist movement’s foremost exponent through its maintenance and control of education. The increase in literacy meant the spread of nationalist ideology, the social and national indoctrination of the younger generations. Moreover, Greek Cypriot students attended secondary schooling in Greece and to these were added later students at the University of Athens. Teachers from Greece staffed Cypriot schools especially in the decades before and after the British occupation in 1878. These efforts were reinforced by the assistance of organisations specifically structured to promote Greek Cypriot nationalism.[28] The whole structure to promote neo-Hellenic nationalism in Cyprus operated openly and more freely after the British occupation.
When the British occupied Cyprus, first as administrators in accordance with the Anglo - Ottoman agreement, and later as colonisers with the island’s annexation during World War I and the formalisation of this action in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), they established a system specifically designed to provide for communal representation in a Legislative Council by which the official members of the Council in conjunction with the Turkish Cypriot representatives could always balance out the Greek representatives. The Governor had the casting vote. They thus perpetuated and institutionalised a system of communal division.[29] Indeed as L.S. Amery of the Colonial Office admitted, the Constitution of 1925 had purposely given a disproportionate leverage to the Moslem minority as a safeguard against the movement for enosis, an undemocratic system which re - assured the “Old Turkish Party”, the Turkish Cypriot ruling elite, the non - Moslem majority would not be able to impose its will on them.[30] The Turkish Cypriot leadership of the inter - war years described this system of government as a “bulwark against racial and religious oppression.[31]
Yet cooperation and peaceful coexistence between the two major communities, while possible, had their limitations. As Mehmet Rifat Effendi, the owner-editor of the Turkish newspaper Masum Millet (Innocent Nation) pointed out: “With the exception of their (the Greek Cypriots’) national aspiration, everything detrimental to us is also detrimental to them. From the present poverty of our country both brother elements are affected”.[32]
Moreover, besides keeping open the traditional division between the Turkish Moslem and the Greek Christian sections of Cypriot society, the constitutional structure imbued the Moslem members of the Legislative Council with the idea that their support of Government measures entitled them and their coreligionists to special treatment.[33]
Nothing has changed... The mentality is the same mentality. "TCs are the descendants of opressor, barbarian Ottoman colonialists.", moreover, "TCs constitute %18 of the population in Cyprus, therefore they are nothing more than a minority."
http://www.paseka.org/index4.htm
TCs well know that there are so many idiots who desperately look out for the most convenientcircumstances to achieve their long awaited goal. TCs well know how deep is your wounds because of the Asia Minor, Ottoman Rule and events of 1974. And TCs well know how Hellenic Ruling Elite abused the facts in order to keep the hatred alive in hearts and souls of vast majority of "ordinary" Hellenes.... "You'll never forget."... We know...
