Cyprus-Forum.com

[denizaksulu]

Our idea of what is authority changes with age, normally. For example, when we are toddlers we take everything mom says for granted. Here is an incidence sited by Eugenie C. Scott in her book "Evolution Vs Creationism".

In a public bathroom, I once saw a little girl of perhaps 4 or 5 years old marvel at the faucets that automatically turned on when the hands were placed below the spigot. She asked her mother, "Why does the water come out Mommy?" Her mother answered brightly, if unhelpfully, "It's magic, dear!"

When we are young we rely on the authority of our parents but clearly authority can mislead us. Have you considered broadening your horizon a bit Phoenix?

Clearly it is not the nicest of things to be bombed but have you pondered on the fact that we were raining mortar bombs and bombs of all sorts on the Turkish Cypriot villages before the Turkish planes intervened for a number of days? There were Turkish Cypriot Phoenices, I presumed, who also took shelter under the canvas despite the fact that Greek bombs only sing lullabies.

Does mom, Phoenix, know that we sent an ultimatum to Turkey saying that if the bombing did not stop we would attack all the Turkish Cypriot villages and Yiorgadjis asked General Karayiannis to pinpoint two Turkish Cypriot villages to be burn to the ground, without first evacuating the inhabitants? Luckily Karayiannis refused to be part of murdering civilians.

Bananiot . . . I never disputed that the TCs have their own stories too. I was just giving mine from personal experience, so why is that so hard to accept? I was 5 years old by the time the bombings stopped and I remember the air raids whilst in school too.

As for mummy, as I said, I related my experiences. My mother refuses to talk about that period of time, which is why I said I'll check with her this weekend, hoping I could entice her to reveal her experiences. I'm still waiting on that. But she was acquainted with Grivas from her resistance days in Greece (for which she was awarded a medal), and there are a lot of issues.

My father was like Miltiades and yourself, always putting the TCs first, their desires, demands and wishes as a way to solve the Cyprus problem. I find this attitude patronising. Surely they are mature enough to be treated as equals instead of like children with "special needs"?

Phoenix mou,

We all have seen what terrible carnage bombings from the air can do. It is terrible. I have full sympathy for all innocents who have been victims of aerial bombings violence of any sorts war etc. all over the world.

Your memories, at your tender age you say you were attacked by 'napalm' bombs? At your tender age I am surprised you knew the difference between a normal bomb (which is bad enough) and a 'napalm' bomb. You are consulting your mum now. So she had a good knowledge of this. Or was she told by the Official Propaganda machine that you were napalm bombed in order to elicit International sympathy as is the wont of the GCs.

The article quoted would only publish the information given by the Greek Cypriot Administration of the time.

The information you give may be true, but somehow I have a tiny doubt about the accuracy. Yet this does not negate the fact that you have suffered at the hands of irresponsible leaders who put us in this mess like most of us.

Regards

deniz I never said I was attacked by Napalm . . . The area in which I live was, and some 200 locals died this way.

As for my mother she is a war veteran, who was awarded a medal for her services and if you met her you would know immediately no one could tell her what to think. She is a staunch, stoical fighter for Human Rights and never took any nonsense from purveyors of propaganda.

Dear Phoenix, my intention was not to hurt your feelings anymore than they already are. Its all terrible. I cannot deny your mums heroics. Greece did indeed suffer as a result of the post war strife.

Only today I was reading a link re: the Koccina fighting and the aerial bombardment. The article gave the total G/GC losses as around 200 of which civilians amounted to around 50 ish. Which in itself is too much.

Then the first casualty in war is always the truth. (I am not casting aspersions on what you are saying , I refer to the report I had read today). I will try and find it. It was posted today. You might have come accross it.

You have not hurt my feelings.

Please find the report . . . I would like to fit some puzzling memories together and compile some questions for remaining relatives when I am back home.

Phoenix mou, I found the link and when you go to the Chronology section you will find this:


Official casualty figures issued by the Cyprus Government show that 55 Greek-Cypriots were killed and 125 were wounded. Almost all these casualties were due to the air attacks. Of these casualties, it was reported that 28 dead and 56 wounded were civilians. Any casualties among Greek Army officers and men involved in the offensive were not disclosed. Ten Turk-Cypriots were killed.

Btw, the link was provided by Phoenix.

Deniz . . . those are the figures for 1963. The Napalm was used in 1964 and 1974

These bombings are not in 1963. I am searching for 1974.

8) 6 August 1964 to 10 August 1964, an offensive by Greek-Cypriot troops against Turk-Cypriots at Kokkina prompts Turkish air raids and halts the attempt to find a geopolitical solution through force of arms.

[humanist]

I see we have done the full turn back to the unchangeable history the vicious circle that never ends

[T_C]

I know...we have a lot more to worry about what is happening NOW than what was happening back THEN!!!!

[denizaksulu]

I see we have done the full turn back to the unchangeable history the vicious circle that never ends

Sorry. It indeed seems like that.

While you are here, may I wish you all down under a Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year to yourself and all your loved ones.

Thats better

[MR-from-NG]

The pervert is here now.

So long, farewell . . .

If this is what it takes for you to leave your keyboard and do what other housewives and mothers do so be it.

You spend so much time doing jack-shit I often wonder what kind of a house you run.

I pity the man you are a wife to and the kids you are are supposed to be a mother to

[DINOS SKALIOTIS]

I see we have done the full turn back to the unchangeable history the vicious circle that never ends

correct

[zan]

"200 local people were napalmed to an unimaginably horrendous death"

It's the first time I heard of anyone being napalmed in Cyprus. But anyway I don't think we should forget the past and stop "bitching" , YET. I joined this forum to better understand about what the cyprus dispute is. I am only 21, and still studying so I don't have a lot of time cont. post but I can say I nearly everyday read through the threads. As far as I have understood, the regular posters on this forum can't even talk about past events and in an objective way. The dispute is a puzzle, you can't understand anything about the picture if you look at a single piece of a 2000 piece puzzle. The only way you can understand what you are going to end with in the end is if you put the puzzle together, its doesn't really matter if you have a few blank or wrong pieces in the puzzle, in the end you can still make out what the picture is. It troubles me that people in their 50's and upwards cannot still understand the big picture.

I am going to take it that you include me in this post except for the over 50 bit............2 more years to go

The problem I have is that the pieces of half the jigsaw have been altered and whereas you had a picture that was clear and concise of say ....The Houses of Parliament.....It now looks like a building that does not exist. That is where we are with the period between 1963 to 74......Those pieces do not exist and the Gc puzzle makers do not care that the picture is altered.....They actually revel in it and present it to the world as a real building...If it was just one or two pieces...even being the pedantic I am when it comes to order.....I would not mind.

So you acknowledge the use of Napalm by Turkey on the Cypriots in 1964 and 1974 as just another piece in the jigsaw of life . . . .

I cannot find anything on this and if you can then post it..Until then it is the same as that rubbish story that you gave us about a jet chasing you All accounts refer to air attacks and that is all. A little bit of propaganda you have had tattooed into your head again I suppose.....

[boomerang]

So everything you say is true and the rest is propaganda...How about the Armenians and what they are saying?

What makes your memories the truth and for everyone elses concerns propaganda?

[phoenix]

"200 local people were napalmed to an unimaginably horrendous death"

It's the first time I heard of anyone being napalmed in Cyprus. But anyway I don't think we should forget the past and stop "bitching" , YET. I joined this forum to better understand about what the cyprus dispute is. I am only 21, and still studying so I don't have a lot of time cont. post but I can say I nearly everyday read through the threads. As far as I have understood, the regular posters on this forum can't even talk about past events and in an objective way. The dispute is a puzzle, you can't understand anything about the picture if you look at a single piece of a 2000 piece puzzle. The only way you can understand what you are going to end with in the end is if you put the puzzle together, its doesn't really matter if you have a few blank or wrong pieces in the puzzle, in the end you can still make out what the picture is. It troubles me that people in their 50's and upwards cannot still understand the big picture.

I am going to take it that you include me in this post except for the over 50 bit............2 more years to go

The problem I have is that the pieces of half the jigsaw have been altered and whereas you had a picture that was clear and concise of say ....The Houses of Parliament.....It now looks like a building that does not exist. That is where we are with the period between 1963 to 74......Those pieces do not exist and the Gc puzzle makers do not care that the picture is altered.....They actually revel in it and present it to the world as a real building...If it was just one or two pieces...even being the pedantic I am when it comes to order.....I would not mind.

So you acknowledge the use of Napalm by Turkey on the Cypriots in 1964 and 1974 as just another piece in the jigsaw of life . . . .

I cannot find anything on this and if you can then post it..Until then it is the same as that rubbish story that you gave us about a jet chasing you All accounts refer to air attacks and that is all. A little bit of propaganda you have had tattooed into your head again I suppose.....

If you search Napalm and Turkey you will find plenty

But here's a starter which I posted earlier to umit:

As for the use of Napalm by Turkey in Cyprus, it has the dubious honour of being one of the first countries to still use it after the ban (post Vietnam) . . . Turkey napalmed GC villages not only in 1964 but also in 1974.

Quote:
1964 January, London Conference. British, US efforts to create NATO force. Makarios announces abrogation of treaties (then backs away); TCs want partition..... June, Turkish invasion threatened. Grivas returns to command Greek army contingent; expanded control to National Guard leading Greek commander to resign. President Johnson's letter to Inonu deterring invasion; Acheson Plan for "double enosis" proposed and rejected. August, arms & men imported by both sides. GC attack on and capture of TC villages in the Tylliria area in effort to control the coastline led to Turkish bombing of GC villages which included the use of napalm. Ceasefire arranged.


Taken from:
http://www.cyprus-conflict.net/www.cypr ... ology.html

Regarding 1974: (this has disturbing images . . . well, for GCs anyway )
http://www.greece.org/cyprus/index.htm

[Kikapu]

Deniz,

Thanks for opening this thread.

Here is an excerpt from a short story I wrote on the forum last year, as to what happened to us in Kucuk Kaymakli during this time 44 years ago in 1963.

I have not forgotten what we went through, but I have moved on.

As usual, we woke up to have our breakfast, and my uncle prepared to go to his Carpentry shop in the city center, then came the news that 2 men were shot dead and that there were a lot of concerns as to what may happen. Then a family member came looking for their son-in-law that was taken away by Greek policemen during the night, and were very concerned for him. He had just gotten married 4 months ago to a cousin and she was already 3 month pregnant. My uncle decided to go to the city center to find out what was going on. Pretty soon we could hear gunshots from different directions. The sound of gunshot did not frighten me really, since I have heard them before, when the locals one time went around and shot every street dog that did not have a collar on, due to their aggressiveness towards people. The gun shots were getting closer and louder. All the family gathered together, and then we all went to next door to join another family in their house. By now, there must have been at least 20 young and old in one room waiting to see what was going to happen.

After a while, one male adult in the group said to my 17 year old cousin, " why don't you go out there and see who the troops are. Perhaps they are Turkish, in which case we can all come out". So my cousin went to see who was marching down the street. As any war movie you may have seen, where families gather in a room and the adults tell the kids to keep quite and don't make a sound. Half of the family there were only kids. After a short time went by since my cousin left us, we heard footsteps come towards the door that we were all hiding behind. Then the door opened by my cousin with affright on his face, follow by several Greek soldiers behind him. They asked if there were any weapons in the room, which the man said that he had a shotgun under the mattress, in which it was taken away from him. We were told to come out of the room and were lead away to a place where there were other people waiting guarded by soldiers. We were there for awhile, until several dump trucks drove up, and we were told to get on.

I really cannot remember how far we were driven, but eventually, we came to a large building, that some people knew that it was a university. Once inside the building and lead into the court yard, there were other Turkish Cypriots there. They announced for all the men to move to one side, and as they did, I started walking in their direction, when my mother pulled me back by my collar, as if to say, "where the hell are you going". I just thought all men meant all males. The way kids think sometimes is amazing....

The university (school) building that we were "prisoned" in had a 2-3 story building on one side of the court yard, while it had a one level building adjacent to it. The men were kept in the tall building, while women and children were kept in the ground floor building. It was more like a assembly hall, or a lunch room hall. Everybody were just sleeping on the floor with what ever blankets that were given to us. I came to learn later, that there were in total about 700 people that were kept as "prisoners" at the university. Given the size of my family, that would have made us about 1.5% of the people there.

As you can imagine, there was no privacy. Actually, there were no free space between you and the next person on the floor. During the day time we were free to roam around the court yard, but there really wasn't very much to do. Women cooked food on an open fire that were provided by the soldiers that were guarding us. My mother would tell me to go and visit my 17 year old cousin who was kept with the man in the main building. The main building basically had the class rooms, so the men were spread out in different rooms. I often did visit my cousin, and I did not notice any concerns on his part. There were some man who were joking by saying, that they have finally attended a university and laughed about it. But the men were not allowed to come down to the court yard.

In the court yard, it was always busy with women cooking and washing what ever little clothes we had. Kids were everywhere, just running around and playing various games that did not involve anything other than their imagination, as how to pass the time. For me, I could not understand why we were there. Only yesterday we were at our home, and now we were sleeping on the floor in some strange place. I did not think in terms of being in a bad place, since I did not see any fear from anyone. There were a lot of talking, but non of it made any sense to the kids.

Then few days later, there were talks of us being returned back to our homes, so there were a lot of happy faces, but it took another day or two, until we saw many dump trucks escorted by military jeeps. I suspect, it was the UN military force that came to take us away from there. By early afternoon, all the trucks were full with all of the 700 people that were held as "prisoner" for one week, and were driving in a convoy of many trucks.

After couple of hours later, we found our selves in part of Nicosia that was vaguely familiar to me, in which there were thousands of people waiting for our arrival. There were a lot cheering and crying going on at the same time. It was almost like a football champions being driven through a emotional crowd. I didn't understand why these people were there, until I saw my uncle who came to look for us. Obviously, all the rest were there to "claim" their families. No body had any idea who would be arriving on the trucks, other than about 700 men, women and children. There was no name list, so for all those that had a relatives that was taken away at the point of a gun, had come to find their love ones. Well sadly, not all those that were missing were on the trucks, so there were a lot of emotional and upset people, that their fears of their love one's well being were getting worried. There were some false reports that there would be more trucks coming soon. I don't know if any more came that day, or ever.

My pregnant cousins husband was not amongst the returning trucks, and neither were many other men that had gone missing while we were kept as "prisoners". In fact he has never surfaced, and the cousin had a child without his father. She eventually accepted his doomed faith and moved on with her life and got remarried few years later. I have not seen her since.

My uncle took me and my grandmother and the 17 year old cousin to a house were there were relatives there. These relatives were living in their home in "Buyuk Kaymakli" which we visited often. They had a much nicer home than ours and there was always a treat waiting for us to eat. What else does a kid care more about than some food and sweets. As I told Issy1956, the two Kaymakli's were next to each other, so it was a short walk between the two. The relatives in their new surroundings were very determined to know what has happened to their house in Buyuk Kaymakli, so once again, my 17 year old cousin was sent on a mission to find out. Well, he returned few hours later, unable to say the words directly to the relatives, which they started to cry . They must have heard the rumours about Turkish homes being burned in BK, and when my cousin told them that has happened also to their house, just like Issy1956 house.

I don't know where my mother and the 5 siblings went after arriving with the trucks. Then soon after we were freed, all the boys were gathered together, on a heliport with a giant military helicopter nearby, as if it was a field hospital, much like M*A*S*H , and we were all made to lay on a gurney, or some kind of a simple bed, and wearing nothing but a gown. It was a mass circumcision was to be performed on us, and they did. We had all gotten "clipped". It was a painful experience, where we had to walk around only wearing this gown for the next several days.

Now, I was staying with my mother and the siblings in another building were it was crowded with people, sleeping on insect infested, and urine stained mattresses. They would come and spray DDT to kill the insects. That stuff has been banned from most developed countries today, due to their harmful side effects. Then people were talking of the horrible things that has happened to other people. In one case, where a mother and her children were murdered in cold blood in their bath tab one of the Kaymakli's. There was a picture showing the dead bodies in a blood stained bathtub walls. Even till today, when ever I think of these people being killed in the bathtub, I seem to focus on a particular house that was on the way to my school. I don't know if that was the house where the murders took place or not, but I seem to get drawn to it. Then there was a case where soldiers put a bottle inside a woman, then broke the bottle just for the fun of it, and another case, where, soldiers came to an old mans house, where upon entering his house, he stabbed one of them in the heart with a shish kebab skew, in which he was be-headed and left in a field.

Eventually, myself and my grandmother were sleeping in my uncles carpentry's storage room, which was very small, while my uncle slept in the shop itself. The shop was only about 100-200 feet from what was now a barrier between the TC's and the GC's. There were soldiers who would guard the division behind sand bags. Now and again you would hear a shot or two. One day, there were few soldiers running after a man, that run into the GC's side, the the TC's were upset with themselves, how this person managed to escape to the Greek side. They were debating why wasn't this person shot while running away. My grandmother would often curse the Greeks to Allah, as how could they do this to us. She cursed them till she died several years later.

For the full story............. http://www.cyprus-forum.com/cyprus6336-20.html