Cyprus-Forum.com

[zan]

"UNFICYF' carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances, including the Tylliria fighting, It shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting. In Ktima 38 houses and shops have been destroyed totally and 122 partially, In the Omorphita suburb of Nicosia 50 houses have been totally destroyed while a further 240 have been partially destroyed there and in adjacent suburbs."

I have to ask though.........You spent the whole time scanning the document for the word burned because.. You were not happy with the word "damaged"... OR...."Destroyed"... etc......

Had you had a decent education you would've read the above and understood that it does NOT SPECIFY which houses were "destroyed" or "damaged"! It quite simply doesn't tell us which of these were TC or GC...

If you had common sense then you would couple that with all the other bits of information you have been given and understand who were the people that were forced to leave their homes and the likelihood of whose houses were "damaged"......That has been your problem all along though from the first post you made in the TC Forum....Everyone there kept telling you to grow up....Still in ther pubescent stage I see

You've only got yourselves to blame... if you ever get a second chance in life and there's only 18% of you forget the bravado and blend in with the rest... or better still don't invade other countries and leave behind your baggage! (<-- That's you Zan!)

As I said...Pubescent stage... My bloodline is rooted in two places as is yours.....There was no bravado either...Just plain old resistance to tyranny...

[samarkeolog]

Right, I've just finished reading UN document S/5950 and this is a direct cut & paste of the section that some people were trying to make a point out of...

"UNFICY[P]' carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances, including the Tylliria fighting, It shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting. In Ktima 38 houses and shops have been destroyed totally and 122 partially, In the Omorphita suburb of Nicosia 50 houses have been totally destroyed while a further 240 have been partially destroyed there and in adjacent suburbs."

Ok gents, I'm all ears so go for your life...

Yeah, that's the same quote that's already been posted in this thread and elsewhere, that some Greek Cypriots have questioned or dismissed.

Well, if you assume 3 people in each house, and nearly a thousand houses were partially or completely destroyed (527+50+240+whatever number of the 38 and 122 'houses and shops' in Ktima...), that's between about 2,400 and 3,000 Cypriots' homes deliberately destroyed, in a population of about 600,000 at the time. Maybe one in every 200 Cypriots had their homes deliberately destroyed by September 1964. That is a lot. And when most or all of those homes were Turkish Cypriot, that could be up to 3,000 in 120,000, or 1 in 40... That is a hell of a lot.

And that report included what had happened before the 10th of September 1964, so it doesn't include any of the homes destroyed between the 10th of September 1964 and the 15th of July 1974 (or since then). For example, it presumably doesn't include the homes of 25 Greek Cypriots and 172 Turkish Cypriots in Agios Sozomenos. (You could argue over whether they decayed or whether they were destroyed, but as I understand it, the buildings were worst damaged or destroyed when the village was used as a National Guard training area.*) It certainly doesn't include the homes of 50 Turkish Cypriots in Pano Koutraphas, or 167 in Goshi, or 120 in Petrophani, which were destroyed long after it was written, or the (60-80+) Greek Cypriot homes in Rizokarpaso (UNSG, S/2007/328: 6 - para. 28...). So, actually, yes, that report is good proof of how much was destroyed how early, and a hint to how much has been destroyed since.

* Actually, Agios Sozomenos/Arpalik is a good example of how well mudbrick can survive without repair. All of the roofs have gone, but a lot of the walls are still standing, some of them two storeys high, some of them still with plaster on. If other villages of mudbrick houses don't exist any more, it suggests that something other than rain hit the buildings.

[samarkeolog]

You were moaning earlier about 103 TC villages burned, yet UN document S/5950 says no such thing, in fact the word “burn” or "burnt” does NOT even exist in the ENTIRE FUCKING DOCUMENT! …you incompetent, ignorant, afro-headed, bloody London cabby hillbilly!

As I've quoted from and explained more than once before, the claim that (not 103 but) "most" of the evacuated villages were "burned" was not made by the UN in that report, but by a former UN peacekeeper in research he did after he finished his tour of duty. You would appear to have described yourself.

[Get Real!]

Right, I've just finished reading UN document S/5950 and this is a direct cut & paste of the section that some people were trying to make a point out of...

"UNFICY[P]' carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances, including the Tylliria fighting, It shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting. In Ktima 38 houses and shops have been destroyed totally and 122 partially, In the Omorphita suburb of Nicosia 50 houses have been totally destroyed while a further 240 have been partially destroyed there and in adjacent suburbs."

Ok gents, I'm all ears so go for your life...

Yeah, that's the same quote that's already been posted in this thread and elsewhere, that some Greek Cypriots have questioned or dismissed.

Well, if you assume 3 people in each house, and nearly a thousand houses were partially or completely destroyed (527+50+240+whatever number of the 38 and 122 'houses and shops' in Ktima...), that's between about 2,400 and 3,000 Cypriots' homes deliberately destroyed, in a population of about 600,000 at the time. Maybe one in every 200 Cypriots had their homes deliberately destroyed by September 1964. That is a lot. And when most or all of those homes were Turkish Cypriot, that could be up to 3,000 in 120,000, or 1 in 40... That is a hell of a lot.

Save your convenient speculation for ATCA because this here is the CF and on the CF if you ain't got CREDIBLE EVIDENCE you ain't got jack-shit!

And that report included what had happened before the 10th of September 1964, so it doesn't include any of the homes destroyed between the 10th of September 1964 and the 15th of July 1974 (or since then). For example, it presumably doesn't include the homes of 25 Greek Cypriots and 172 Turkish Cypriots in Agios Sozomenos. (You could argue over whether they decayed or whether they were destroyed, but as I understand it, the buildings were worst damaged or destroyed when the village was used as a National Guard training area.*) It certainly doesn't include the homes of 50 Turkish Cypriots in Pano Koutraphas, or 167 in Goshi, or 120 in Petrophani, which were destroyed long after it was written, or the (60-80+) Greek Cypriot homes in Rizokarpaso (UNSG, S/2007/328: 6 - para. 28...). So, actually, yes, that report is good proof of how much was destroyed how early, and a hint to how much has been destroyed since.

* Actually, Agios Sozomenos/Arpalik is a good example of how well mudbrick can survive without repair. All of the roofs have gone, but a lot of the walls are still standing, some of them two storeys high, some of them still with plaster on. If other villages of mudbrick houses don't exist any more, it suggests that something other than rain hit the buildings.

I have been to Agios Sozomenos on two occasions and saw no evidence of fire. Strangely enough, there's also a church ruined right in the middle of the village!

I also have a 1964 report on the event from a British journalist who makes no mention of houses being torched.

[samarkeolog]

Well, if you assume 3 people in each house, and nearly a thousand houses were partially or completely destroyed (527+50+240+whatever number of the 38 and 122 'houses and shops' in Ktima...), that's between about 2,400 and 3,000 Cypriots' homes deliberately destroyed, in a population of about 600,000 at the time. Maybe one in every 200 Cypriots had their homes deliberately destroyed by September 1964. That is a lot. And when most or all of those homes were Turkish Cypriot, that could be up to 3,000 in 120,000, or 1 in 40... That is a hell of a lot.

Save your convenient speculation for ATCA because this here is the CF and on the CF if you ain't got CREDIBLE EVIDENCE you ain't got jack-shit!

ATCA? Really!? Look, I've been harassed by Turkish Cypriot police and harassed and threatened by Turkish paramilitary intelligence for my work. I had to leave northern Cyprus before I'd finished my fieldwork there. I'm not someone you can dismiss as a Turkish propagandist. Be serious or be quiet.

What speculation is involved?

The numbers of partially or completely destroyed houses comes from the UN Secretary-General's (1964: 48 - para. 180) report: 'in 109 villages, most of them Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting. In Ktima 38 houses and shops have been destroyed totally and 122 partially. Ιn the Omorphita suburb of Nicosia 50 houses have been totally destroyed while a further 240 have been partially destroyed there and in adjacent suburbs.'

The population numbers come from the census, about 600,000, about 109,200 (18.2%) of whom were Turkish Cypriots. (I'd just gone for 20% of 600,000 before, to make it easy to calculate in my head, but now you've got the precise numbers.)

I had made a low estimate of the average number of people per household, to be safe. I've now found a source for it, and at least in Alambra and Petrophani, it's not three, but five (Yerkes, 2000: 25). So between about 4,000 and 4,800 Cypriots' homes were already destroyed by September 1964, at least 1 in 125.

(Canadian former UN peacekeeper) Richard Patrick (1976: 96-97n61) judged that (pre-1974) conflict drove 252 Greek Cypriots of 6 villages from their homes, 63 from Ambelikou, 25 from Ayios Sozomenos, 34 from Lefka, 20 from Mansoura, 23 from Yerovasa and 87 from Gouphes.

(Note: that means that the other villages, evacuated by Turkish Cypriots, equal 109-6... 103.)

So even if every single home of every conflict-displaced Greek Cypriot household were completely destroyed, that would only account for 50 of the nearly 1,000 destroyed homes. So, using only UN and former-UN-peacekeepers' data, nearly 950 (obviously, 95%) of the homes destroyed by September 1964 were Turkish Cypriot. Approximately 4,750 (more than 4% of all) Turkish Cypriots' homes had been destroyed - more than 4% of all Turkish Cypriots', 1 in 23.

Again, even if every single home of every conflict-displaced Greek Cypriot household were destroyed, that would mean that, on top of the 950 partially or completely destroyed Turkish Cypriot homes, according to UN data, a further 2,000 Turkish Cypriot homes would have been looted. So nearly 10,000(/9% of/1 in 11) Turkish Cypriots' homes were looted. Together, then, about 14,750/13.5% of/1 in 7.5 Turkish Cypriots had their (2,950) homes either looted or destroyed by September 1964.

There. Every single claim is a fact backed up by a statistic from the UN, or a former UN peacekeeper, or the Republic of Cyprus (for the census data).

And again, I remind you that this data is only for what happened until September 1964. The looting and damage and destruction of Turkish Cypriot sites was already massive then and it only got worse.

What now...?

I have been to Agios Sozomenos on two occasions and saw no evidence of fire.

Once more, no-one claimed that every village was burned. No-one claimed that every village was destroyed, with or without fire. (If propagandists do, I'm not one of them, so if you want to disagree with them, you'll have to find them to do it.)

Strangely enough, there's also a church ruined right in the middle of the village!

Do you mean the church that had been ruined for ages (maybe hundreds of years), and may never even have been finished when it was built (in the Sixteenth Century)? (You do.)

Presumably, you've also seen the beautifully-preserved stone church next to it, and the smashed stone building with military graffiti on it quite near the broken down National Guard vehicles...

I also have a 1964 report on the event from a British journalist who makes no mention of houses being torched.

See above about burning... And, as (I think) I said in a previous post, it appears that the worst damage and destruction happened after 1974 when the National Guard were using the village as a training ground (presumably after 1978, when a few villagers were still recorded as residents).

Yerkes, R W. 2000: "Ethnoarchaeology in Central Cyprus: Interdisciplinary Studies of Ancient Population and Agriculture by the Athienou Archaeological Project". <u>Near Eastern Archaeology</u>, Volume 63, Number 1, 20-34.

[DT.]

Right, I've just finished reading UN document S/5950 and this is a direct cut & paste of the section that some people were trying to make a point out of...

"UNFICY[P]' carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances, including the Tylliria fighting, It shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting. In Ktima 38 houses and shops have been destroyed totally and 122 partially, In the Omorphita suburb of Nicosia 50 houses have been totally destroyed while a further 240 have been partially destroyed there and in adjacent suburbs."

Ok gents, I'm all ears so go for your life...

Yeah, that's the same quote that's already been posted in this thread and elsewhere, that some Greek Cypriots have questioned or dismissed.

Well, if you assume 3 people in each house, and nearly a thousand houses were partially or completely destroyed (527+50+240+whatever number of the 38 and 122 'houses and shops' in Ktima...), that's between about 2,400 and 3,000 Cypriots' homes deliberately destroyed, in a population of about 600,000 at the time. Maybe one in every 200 Cypriots had their homes deliberately destroyed by September 1964. That is a lot. And when most or all of those homes were Turkish Cypriot, that could be up to 3,000 in 120,000, or 1 in 40... That is a hell of a lot.

And that report included what had happened before the 10th of September 1964, so it doesn't include any of the homes destroyed between the 10th of September 1964 and the 15th of July 1974 (or since then). For example, it presumably doesn't include the homes of 25 Greek Cypriots and 172 Turkish Cypriots in Agios Sozomenos. (You could argue over whether they decayed or whether they were destroyed, but as I understand it, the buildings were worst damaged or destroyed when the village was used as a National Guard training area.*) It certainly doesn't include the homes of 50 Turkish Cypriots in Pano Koutraphas, or 167 in Goshi, or 120 in Petrophani, which were destroyed long after it was written, or the (60-80+) Greek Cypriot homes in Rizokarpaso (UNSG, S/2007/328: 6 - para. 28...). So, actually, yes, that report is good proof of how much was destroyed how early, and a hint to how much has been destroyed since.

* Actually, Agios Sozomenos/Arpalik is a good example of how well mudbrick can survive without repair. All of the roofs have gone, but a lot of the walls are still standing, some of them two storeys high, some of them still with plaster on. If other villages of mudbrick houses don't exist any more, it suggests that something other than rain hit the buildings.

If you do the maths you'll see that you've double counted.

carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances, including the Tylliria fighting, It shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting

You then read the parts where it gets specific about ktima and Omorphita and recounted those homes into your numbers when you did this.

(527+50+240+whatever number of the 38 and 122 'houses and shops' in Ktima...),

There, I did the maths and if you're gonna base everything on this report then at least count them up properly.

Assuming that's 3 people to a house as you say then the number is closer to 1500 than 3000. That makes it 1.25% of the TC population. (1500/120000) Compare that with 33.33% of the GC population who's houses might as well have been destroyed if they haven't already since they've been kept out for 34 years so far and counting and you can get the scale of this tragedy and the impact its had on each community.

1.25%
33%

[samarkeolog]

If you do the maths you'll see that you've double counted.

carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances, including the Tylliria fighting, It shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting

You then read the parts where it gets specific about ktima and Omorphita and recounted those homes into your numbers when you did this.

(527+50+240+whatever number of the 38 and 122 'houses and shops' in Ktima...),

As far as I know, Ktima and Omorphita were classed as suburbs of towns, rather than villages. The UN report said that, 'in 109 villages..., 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting'. Not naming them as villages, the UN report then lists Ktima and Omorphita separately and explicitly refers to them (and neighbouring quarters) as 'suburbs', the Ktima district of Paphos, and 'the Omorphita suburb of Nicosia'.

And Patrick specifically referred to Omorphita and its neighbours as town suburbs (1976: 267) and to Ktima as a town or a quarter of the town (1976: 74; 273). He clarified that Turkish Cypriots 'completely evacuated their quarters in 72 mixed villages and abandoned 24 Turkish-Cypriot villages...., they partially evacuated 8 mixed villages' and partially evacuated 'every one of the six district towns' (1976: 75). You can look at the list of evacuated villages on Patrick's (1976: 77 - fig. 3.10) map, given earlier in this thread, which excludes Ktima, Omorphita, etc., because they are suburbs, not villages.

So no, I didn't double count them and I did add them up properly.

And I would remind you that I found sources and revised my earlier, "safe" estimates several hours before you posted: the average number of people per household was not three, but five.

All of my statistics and all of arithmetic stand.

Assuming that's 3 people to a house as you say then the number is closer to 1500 than 3000. That makes it 1.25% of the TC population. (1500/120000) Compare that with 33.33% of the GC population who's houses might as well have been destroyed if they haven't already since they've been kept out for 34 years so far and counting and you can get the scale of this tragedy and the impact its had on each community.

1.25%
33%

If we ignore your incorrect "corrections"...

... and if we don't try to compare the suffering of knowing strangers have moved into your home with the suffering of knowing that your neighbours have bulldozed your home...

How on earth can you question my mathematics when you compare 1964 Turkish Cypriot displacement with 1974 Greek Cypriot displacement? If you want to include Greek Cypriots' 1974 displacement, you have to include Turkish Cypriots' 1974 displacement as well!

Professor Roger Zetter (1991: 41), who spent fifteen years studying the Greek Cypriot refugee community, stated that:

Some 180,000 Greek-Cypriots (from an ethnic population of about 500,000) became labelled as 'refugees', fleeing from the north to the south of the island. This was paralleled by a reverse flow of 50,000 Turkish-Cypriots from a total ethnic population of 120,000.

That's 180,000/500,000 (36% of) Greek Cypriots and 50,000/120,000 (41.67% of) Turkish Cypriots. So even then, the Turkish Cypriots were disproportionately affected. (And that wouldn't include the 1960s displacements, which almost exclusively afflicted the Turkish Cypriots.) But we shouldn't have to play with numbers. If only Cypriots recognised each other's pain, we wouldn't have to.

I agree, as I have said before and I am sure I will have to say again: the Cyprus Problem is a tragedy that has greatly harmed both the Cypriot community and the Greek Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot and other communities that make it. It is only through truth and reconciliation that the Cypriot community has any hope of coping with its wounds. It is not through denying the other's pain, or claiming the status of the greatest victim. Every ordinary Cypriot has been screwed by every nationalist extremist. Ordinary Cypriots do the nationalist extremists' work for them and screw each other when they deny each other's suffering.

Zetter, R. 1991: "Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratic Identity". Journal of Refugee Studies, Volume 4, Number 1, 39-62.

[Get Real!]

Samarkeolog,

You are full of shit because the UN report is written in such a way that NOBODY can possibly figure out how many damaged and/or looted houses belong to TCs and how many to GCs… end of story!

Furthermore, the initial allegation that “103 TC villages were burned down” goes down as yet another stupid TC fabrication proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be nothing more than a load of rubbish!

[BirKibrisli]

What is wrong with you people????
You have just spend some 30 pages over nearly a year on something which never happened....Cypriots are not capable of such atrocities...
No TC has ever left their village,or went into exile...No GC has been ever forced to leave their homes...You are all imagining things...There were never any massacres or forced evacuations or murders or invasions...Cyprus is still in tact...My village (Istinjo in Paphos) is still there as I remembered it...A prospering, green heaven-on- earth...When I visited last year,my grandfather was still sitting in the sun outside his shop reading his newspaper...Nothing had changed since 1955...Get this straight...Nothing bad has ever happened in Cyprus...Cypriots were just too smart for those hate-merchants who tried to infect them with the nationalism virus...They chased the EOKA and the TMT and the dreamers of Enosis and Taksim out of the island...They realised they were just one people ,one nation,separated by some artificial factors like language and religion...They embraced each other as brothers and sisters...It was One for All and All for One...Stop trying to prove that the earth is flat...or the sun rises from the west...Everything,everything is a figment of your imaginations...Cypriots are not capable of such atrocities...Nothing bad has ever happened....Never ever...

[Viewpoint]

GR why dont we just say nothing ahppened to TCs in 1963-1974 they were all living in Butlins and the murders and loss of homes is just something they created in their own minds, didnt really happen, is that what you want?