Cyprus-Forum.com

[metecyp]

So yes, we shouldn't have demanded enosis at that time, and we shouldn't have started the EOKA struggle.

However we had the right for an armed struggle against the colonialists, and we had the right to unite Cyprus with Greece at a later stage when the human rights of TCs would not be at risk.

If we go down this road, then TCs had the right to defend themselves against Enosis. Therefore TMT and the idea of partition were right in principle because they were just defence mechanisms against Enosis.

And when do you think your "right" to unite Cyprus with Greece ceased to exist? Or do you think your community still has that right? Why or why not?

[erolz]

I said it before: The best way is to forget about harming each other and live united as equal citizens of a truly united Cyprus. This way we don't have A and B, winners and losers, but we just have Cypriots that will all be better off.

But we already have and always have had two different Cypriot people. You want us to forget our Turkishness but you do not seem to be willing to forget your Greekness, as evidenced below.

However if TCs insist on splitting Cypriot citizens into two categories and they want to come out of this situation as the winners, then we have no other choice than to respond (because surendering is not an option for the majority, we are not all Bananiots).

It is not TC that inist on splitting Cyprus and Cypriots into two categories. There are two categories of Cypriot and have been for hundreds of years. ENOSIS is an ideal based on the idea that there is only one relevant Cypriot community - the Greek one.

As far as EOKA goes, the cause was a noble one. The British had no place in Cyprus. They could avoid even the slightest conflict by simply leaving from our country.

The cause of union with Greece was a noble one? In what sense noble? Is it noble to persue a cause that excludes and ignores 20% of your people totaly? Is it nobel to want to be ruled by one country but not another country? In one breath you talk of a single Cypriot people and in another you talk a nobel cause of the Cypriot people that is actualy only the cause of one community that makes up the Cypriot people. The only way ENOSIS can be considered a nobel cause is if you accept that Cyprus is Greek and the mengali idea is a nobel cause and TC to not matter or count as far as Cyprus goes. This then is your idea of a single Cypriot people?

The enosis cause was no less OK than an independence cause. Both (independence or enosis) were our rights and should have been accepted by the colonialists long time before 1955 and an armed struggle would not be needed.

GC had a RIGHT to impose coloinal rule of Greece on not just GC community but also on the TC community in Cyprus? You really believe this? You believe that the GC community in Cyprus had the right to both enosis or indepndance but the TC community in Cyprus has neither?

Anyways, all this was just to stress that there is nothing wrong with the idea of enosis, and there is nothing wrong from enosis under good conditions.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of neo colonialism? Nothing wrong with an idea based on raceiscm and devisivness? Nothing wrong with a numerical majority forcing a numerical minority to accept that very destruction of their own independant state, against their will?
Just what would be the the 'good conditions' for ENOSIS then? No TC in Cyprus, or no TC willing to resist ENOSIS?

However I could accept the argument that Turks at that time suffered in some parts of Greece and TCs didn't want to become part of Greece, and therefore under those conditions of that time demanding enosis was wrong.

But GC demanding enosis today should cause no concern to TC community in CYprus. That we should not care if we rule ourselves, if we rule jointly with GC or if we are ruled by Greece?

So yes, we shouldn't have demanded enosis at that time, and we shouldn't have started the EOKA struggle.

But you should celebrate as a nation EOKA and it's members?

However we had the right for an armed struggle against the colonialists, and we had the right to unite Cyprus with Greece at a later stage when the human rights of TCs would not be at risk.

You did not have a right to armed struggle. There is no human rights document anywhere that says that colonised people have a RIGHT to kill their colonisers. Armed struggle of oppresed people may or may not be justifed but it is NOT a RIGHT.
You only have and had a right to unite Cyprus with Greece if you accept that TC have no right to determine their own future at all in their own homeland. You seem to think the only issue for TC re ENOSIS is if they will be oppressed or not. You claim rights of self determination for the solely GC community (because your desires are solely GC) and insist they include a RIGHT to kill colonialist, their wives and children and anyone else that stands in the way of the 'freedom fighters', yet deny TC ANY right to self determination. TC are simply to do what they are told by GC - and as long as they are not oppressed they should be happy. Are TC not entitled to the same rights as others? Are we not entitled to not want to be ruled by people other than oursleves in our own homeland? Do we have the right to kill colonial oppressors? Did we have a right to kill to gain our indpendance (or union with Turkey) as you insist GC had?

[turkcyp]

Everyday in this forum,

It is topics like these that dampen my hope for unification.

[brother]

I understand what you are saying turkcyp, but i believe that the thinking displayed above is only a small minority like andrik, and the vast majority of gc are like you and i who want unification and peace.

[Main_Source]

Brother, before independance was an option...a lot of GC saw themselves as Greeks still under rule of a foreign power. Crete had joined with Greece, as well as Samos which was also under British, so GC thought why couldnt Cyprus be the same. The GC have a lot more in common with the island Greeks than the mainlanders..but other island Greeks were still a part of Greece. Before the implementation of the RoC flag (which was designed by a TC)...what flag do you think the GC looked to as there own? It wasnt the British flag was it. Why should the GC be under foreign rule any longer?...when other islands of Greek culture and history had joined with Greece.

Like I said, I dont think there was any problem with the theory of Enosis...and that idea came out of the frustration of being under foreign rule for so long. Although, issues like what may have happened to the TC population...especially under the Greek junta...made the realities of Enosis not so simple...or basically not so positive. Im sure many TC would not have had many problems with being under rule of Turkey again...but one of the main causes of of longing of Enosis was the frustrations of a majority population of an island, who had been under foregin rule for like 500 years, could not join and be a part of a country to which was set up for people of Greek culture.

If you ask me TODAY though, I would say the whole Enosis thing is dead and burried in the water...and proud to be a Cypriot and want a lasting solution for Greek and Turkish Cypriots to live as one on the island.

Although, TODAY compared to the early-mid 20th centuary of Cyprus, were different times.

[turkcyp]

Dear brother,

I understand what you are saying turkcyp, but i believe that the thinking displayed above is only a small minority like andrik, and the vast majority of gc are like you and i who want unification and peace.

I, no more, think they are the minority, and furthermore I do not see any action to change as well. Every self-criticism is being silenced as traitor and is blamed as being paid agent in GC society.

It is not just this forum but you see this in the GC society. Instead of getting more moderate they are becoming more nationalistic. Now they are giving medals to terrorists, what is next. Start celebrating 21st of December. And those that dare to say some of the very bad things this organization has done is being silenced.

Do not get me wrong. Same kind of nationalistic tendencies exist in TC society as well. It is obvious from the flag on the mountain. We are seeing this everyday in our own society and trying to change it in our own society. I do not like what Sener Levent writes but in no time I have accused him as being traitor or try to silence him. And all those lawsuits against him is the biggest disgrace to the democracy we are trying to nurture in north Cyprus. Thankfully the above attitude is changing in TC society everyday. Even currently Yeni Duzen is publishing a list of interviews done with the daughter and son of Ayhan Hikmet, and no body is blaming them as traitor. I am not saying that TC society is there in terms of full implementation of free society and democracy yet, but at least we are working for it. But I do not see the same things in GC society.

AS Evelyn Beatrice Hall once said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

The above attitude is what I do not see in the influential circles of GC society that can change the society for better. We can not try to change GC society. That has to be done by GCs. I am an outsider and if start criticizing them I will never be welcomed. They should be criticizing themselves and accept their mistakes, and we should be doing the same thing as well.

And we should be doing this together at the same time. Otherwise why would I want to get rid of nationalistic elements in my own society if they are not getting rid of theirs?

[erolz]

Like I said, I dont think there was any problem with the theory of Enosis...

The problem with the theory of ENOSIS was that it assumed that Cyrpus was populated solely by people considering themselves Greek and in support of uniting Cyprus with Greece after ending British rule. The problem then was the theory was based on a false premise imo.

and that idea came out of the frustration of being under foreign rule for so long.

No - calls for independance come from being under foreign rule. ENOSIS came out of the Greek (note Greek - not GC or Cypriot) 'big idea' on which the modern Greek Nation was founded - namely the mangali idea. It came out of years and years of teaching GC by Greeks that their destiny and duty as Greeks was to ensure the rebuilding and reclaiming of the ancient Greek empire - as vague as that concept is. ENOSIS was a purely GC desire that came out of and was inspired by a purely Greek vision of the way the world should develop - a vision I might add that was expansionist, racist and imperial in its very nature.

[insan]

mangali idea

(No offense intended)

I think it must be "megalo idea", aka Great Ideal. Greek irredentism.

[insan]

And together with all this, there was a massive official act of trying to unremember. They deleted the "social time" of, and all concrete references to, the years from 1908 to 1922. But what did filter through the sieve were some abstract emotions of always having been persecuted, and ostracized by Europe, having been and bullied by the Great Powers posing as the protectors of the Greeks or the Serbians or the Bulgarians, and a general kind of xenophobia that simply would not disappear. Then what happened was that when things, like the Cyprus crisis, started to come along from the 1950s onwards, certain elements of those new tensions or conflicts began to resonate very dangerously with this flattened-out landscape of Turkish memory. Nobody really "remembered"the Balkan Wars, etc, but there was an enormous fear of foreign irredentism or the Greek megali idea, as well as cliches to the effect that if you snatched an Orthodox priest, you would find a guerrilla. This is a constant refrain, for example, in the short stories of Omer Seyfeddin and of course Vasil Levsky, the Bulgarian national leader and hero, was a priest who had turned into a guerrilla. And when Turkish nationalism with this kind of memory was faced with Makarios, of course the whole idea of Enosis resonated with memories of Greek irredentism, and Makarios himself tell in line with the cliche of the priest turned guerrilla. This is what happens if things are not really brought out into the open and addressed concretely. If you engage in artificial acts of forgetting or unremembering, the later resonances of buried hatreds can be even more dangerous.

http://www.hri.org/por/Summer98/story3.html



GUIDE TO THE GREEK PAMPHLET COLLECTION
... 1. Balkan Wars 2. Greek Irredentism 3. Megali Idea ... press articles favorable
to Cypriot independence movement and self-determination through enosis. ...
libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/ firestone/rbsc/aids/kyrou.html



Greek Cypriot narratives of history and collective identity ...
Dosya Biçimi: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
... arguing for enosis now, a position that received much ideological and ...
to implement the Megali Idea, and the subsequent destruction of Smirni (izmir) ...
www.anthrosource.net/doi/ pdfplus/10.1525/ae.1998.25.2.149


Greek nationalism, the "Megale Idea" and Venizelism to 1923
... and once again Greece was too weak to risk "enosis" by war. ... Venizelos'
identification with irredentism led to a crisis in Greek politics. ...
www.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/lect14.htm


THE IMAGINED ‘OTHER’ AS NATIONAL IDENTITY
Dosya Biçimi: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - HTML olarak goruntule
... Aegean as Greek (2), wanting the ‘Enosis’ of Cyprus and ‘not ... have Megali
Idea and irredentism in mind – are ‘old’ Greek lands. ...
www.stgp.org/english/docs/Tg1.pdf

[Piratis]

Some questions for you:

1) Is Crete, Rhodes or any other Greek island under "Greek colonization"?

2)Turkey applied to the European Union. If when that time comes a referendum is held in Turkey and 82% votes "yes" for joining the European union, and 18% says "no" claiming that they are Asians and they do not wish to be part of the EU, what do you think Turkey should do? Join or not?

And some quick answers:

Why would you have the right to unite with greece piratis?

Do you see yourself as a mainland greek or cypriot?

If France wanted it, and the great majority of Cypriots wanted it too, we could unite with France also. So yes, it is our right, but this doesn't mean I would personally want to use this right. However I respect democracy, and if the majority wanted this the rest should accept it.

If we go down this road, then TCs had the right to defend themselves against Enosis. Therefore TMT and the idea of partition were right in principle because they were just defence mechanisms against Enosis.

Under those circumstances I can accept that TCs had the right to fight against enosis, but the idea of partition (unlike enosis) is fundamentally illegal and can not be justified under any circumstances.

And when do you think your "right" to unite Cyprus with Greece ceased to exist? Or do you think your community still has that right? Why or why not?

In 1960 we made an agreement. While this agreement favored TCs, we were legally binded by it, so the right for enosis ends in 1960.

But we already have and always have had two different Cypriot people. You want us to forget our Turkishness but you do not seem to be willing to forget your Greekness, as evidenced below.

I never said we should become all one religion, one culture, one language, one ideology, one color etc. We are all different, and we can be grouped into several separate groups. E.g. Turkish/Greek/English/French speaking, muslims/christians/atheists, capitalists/socialists/liberals, smart/stupid etc etc. There is nothing to stop somebody from being a greek speaking muslim, or English speaking muslim socialist etc etc.

Therefore I never asked from you to forget your Turkishness, to become Christian, capitalist and paint your hair blond. You can be whatever you want to be.

What I said is that we should all be equal Cypriot citizens.

I hope now I am clear and what I say will not be intentionally misinterpreted (You are smart people, so I know you do it intentionally)

It is not TC that inist on splitting Cyprus and Cypriots into two categories. There are two categories of Cypriot and have been for hundreds of years. ENOSIS is an ideal based on the idea that there is only one relevant Cypriot community - the Greek one.

No, enosis is based on the idea that the great majority of Cypriots wanted it.

It is topics like these that dampen my hope for unification.

Why do you keep calling your version of partition as "unification"???
Actually why I am surprised? You are the same people that call the invasion a "peace operation".