Cyprus-Forum.com

[observer]

Kifeas wrote

Observer, you talk garbage as usual, but let me tell this to you! We want nothing from you! We are just ready to grand you your separate recognized partitioned state, as soon as you withdraw to your fair portion of the island, which by all means and measures is no more than 18% of the territory of Cyprus! You keep your corner with all the settlers and Turkey's guarantees, and we build a 10 meter high wall in-between, to live in the rest of our country as a free people! We give you 18% of the island, which is even more than you deserve if we take the historical aspect into consideration (remember that we have been in this island as a distinct people since the dawn of history, 4 thousand years ago, and you have only been here since 500 years ago;) and we want to have nothing to do with you, as we want you to have nothing to do with us! Enough!

I only told you how I see it, and if you want nothing from us, explain the attacks of 1963/64, and the economic blockade that followed, before the final events of 1974.

Turning to this idea of splitting up territory by population, what rubbish. If that were how matters were decided, Gibraltar (population density 4,654 people/sq km) would be demanding land from Spain (population density 89 people/sq km). The Czech Republic (population density 130 people/sq km) would be demanding land from Slovakia (population density 110 people/sq km) and census takers and surveyors would be all over the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union.

Personally, I have been on this island (with breaks) for almost 60 years, Your argument about being on this island since the dawn of time reminds me only of Israeli extremists who I have seen interviewed on TV who claim that the whole of Palestine belongs to them because they occupied it at a similar time to that you are talking about. Many countries have groups of extreme nationalists who claim land now ruled by someone else because at some time in the past “their descendants” ruled it. And always these people speak of “our descendants”, when in fact few people can trace their descendents back much more than a couple of hundred years because of illiteracy and because any records there might have been have been so often lost over time. I doubt if you can trace your ancestors back any further than I can, which is considerably less than 500 years and puts us both in the same position when it comes to who owns what in Cyprus.

If you do want to talk about percentages, then what the land contains is more important than what size it is. According to the UN (UN document S12723, Annex I) the area occupied by the TRNC contains:
17.3% of Cyprus’ water resources.
28.66% of Cyprus’ agricultural productivity.
2% of Cyprus’ minerals.
2.17% of Cyprus’ forests.

So in everything except agricultural productivity you are doing rather well, and since much of that is concentrated in the Güzelyurt region (along with much of the water resources) which TCs had agreed to hand back under the A Plan, GCs would have held quite a lot more than 18% of Cyprus’ resources.

[observer]

Read that through my eyes as "I want everything that I tried to grab by force in 1963..."

Don’t you feel the slightest bit of shame that you’re propagating manufactured rubbish?

A piece from a UNHCR document follows…

“Turkish Cypriot government officials rejected these proposals, stating that political protections for Turkish Cypriots would be removed. They withdrew from their posts, and the bi-communal arrangement collapsed.“

NB: I won't post the UNHCR link again because its too long and causes the page to widen but you'll find it in another thread I recently started.

I really don't know where to start with this. Are you really suggesting that the attacks on December 22nd 1963 and on into 1964, which brought about the deployment of the UN, followed by years of cruel blockade, did not take place?

GCs failed to fool the international press, the international community, and now members of the GC community are beginning to speak out.

... and I've tried googling the words you have posted but can find nothing.

[Get Real!]

Nobody has the right to partition Cyprus just because they “can’t cope” with the current situation! If you don’t like it get out!

Cyprus has been around for THOUSANDS of years in ONE PIECE so for any person passing through time today, to think that they have special carving rights should think again…

YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A MERE SPEC IN THE HISTORY OF CYPRUS SO GET OVER YOURSELF!

Cyprus was handed down CONTIGUOUS for millenniums and so it shall remain.

I think it is the TCs that can not cope with a United Cyprus with basic democratic principles such as one man one vote.

We all desire Cyprus to be once again Contiguous. Turkey however will not allow this unless it maintains an unnacceptable footprint on the island and a licence to intervene into our affairs at will.

There's nothing that time doesn't heal. Turkey too will meet her doom in Cyprus... tick… tick… tick… tick… for every second that goes by, she is one second closer to her demise...

During the Turkish invasion an old man stared into my horrified eyes and calmly said... "Every storm has an end..." but being only 9.5 it didn't do much to ease my pain at the time, but when I reflect on that today I now realise how right he was.

[Get Real!]

Read that through my eyes as "I want everything that I tried to grab by force in 1963..."

Don’t you feel the slightest bit of shame that you’re propagating manufactured rubbish?

A piece from a UNHCR document follows…

“Turkish Cypriot government officials rejected these proposals, stating that political protections for Turkish Cypriots would be removed. They withdrew from their posts, and the bi-communal arrangement collapsed.“

NB: I won't post the UNHCR link again because its too long and causes the page to widen but you'll find it in another thread I recently started.

I really don't know where to start with this. Are you really suggesting that the attacks on December 22nd 1963 and on into 1964, which brought about the deployment of the UN, followed by years of cruel blockade, did not take place?

GCs failed to fool the international press, the international community, and now members of the GC community are beginning to speak out.

... and I've tried googling the words you have posted but can find nothing.

It's the second link from my post in this thread...

http://www.cyprus-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=17301

[observer]

It's the second link from my post in this thread...

http://www.cyprus-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=17301

Ah... I see why you only quote an isolated sentence, omitting (from the same paragraph) "Over 25,000 Turkish Cypriots and several hundred Greek Cypriots fled their homes, with Turkish Cypriots seeking refuge in guarded enclaves".

UNHCR is trying to be neutral, but I think that the picture painted is more than just "... they withdrew from their posts" with the inference that no one really knows why.

They were driven from their posts is the actuality, and any TC who didn't risk his life leaving the enclaves, risk being attacked while going through GC areas, and didn't managed to force his way past the armed para-military thugs who were outside the ministry buildings, in GC-speak "withdrew from his post". Well true, but not really the whole truth is it?

[Get Real!]

It's the second link from my post in this thread...

http://www.cyprus-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=17301

Ah... I see why you only quote an isolated sentence, omitting (from the same paragraph) "Over 25,000 Turkish Cypriots and several hundred Greek Cypriots fled their homes, with Turkish Cypriots seeking refuge in guarded enclaves".

UNHCR is trying to be neutral, but I think that the picture painted is more than just "... they withdrew from their posts" with the inference that no one really knows why.

They were driven from their posts is the actuality, and any TC who didn't risk his life leaving the enclaves, risk being attacked while going through GC areas, and didn't managed to force his way past the armed para-military thugs who were outside the ministry buildings, in GC-speak "withdrew from his post". Well true, but not really the whole truth is it?

That is NOT what many UN documents I've read are saying... you just made that up...

Turkish Cypriots feared TMT backlash far more than GCs! Go study what your people were doing to each other before coming here.

[Tim Drayton]

May I post a lenghty quote from Diana Weston Markides' book entitled "Cyprus 1957-1963 From Colonial Conflict to Constitutional Crisis", published by the University of Minnesota (pp 167-8).

"Although military intervention to partition the island was threatened regularly in the following years, Turkish policy, which once more concentrated on political leverage over the status of Cyprus, was directed by the principles that had dictated inistence on municipal partition since 1958. The extended Turkish municipalities and other predominantly Turkish areas, such as the town and environs of Lefka, which as a result of the intercommunal fighting had become defended enclaves, were now the basis on which Turkey would in the following decade seek to establish a federal system in the Republic of Cyprus. The Turkish Cypriot leadership, however, felt abandoned. The fact that Turkey failed to intervene, while at the same time insisting that the Turkish Cypriots remained isolated from the Greek Cypriot majority, had to some extent sacrificed the welfare of the Turkish Cypriots to the interests of the motherland. By keeping them as far as possible geographically and politically isolated from the Greek Cypriots, Ankara could, as long as the problem remained pending, rest assured that there would be no change in the status of the island. Furthermore, they could continue to argue for a federal solution and thus maintain a political foothold without disturbing Greek-Turkish relations. However, the policy inevitably entailed the Turkish Cypriots' isolation from the economic boom enjoyed by the Greek Cypriots between 1964 and 1974, and condemned them to a ghetto existence largely dependent on Turkish government subsidies. The Greek Cypriots once again assisted Ankara in this strategy by subjecting the Turkish Cypriots to undue harassment. Heavy-handed treatment by the Greek Cypriot police, constant humiliating searches, and the confiscation of Turkish buses that had to run the gauntlet of Greek Cypriot roadblocks between their villages and the town centers, had destabilized the way of life of many Turkish Cypriots, who consequently gravitated towards the enclaves. The Turkish government made little effort to bring about a change in this situation. After the hostilities of 1963-64, Turkish Cypriot security was a factor in the need for geographical separatism, but a continuing factor rather than the chief motivating force."

The Turkish Republic has pursued a long-term policy ever since the 1950's to partition Cyprus and gain the maximum amount of control over the island. It has used the Turkish Cypriots as a pawn to this end. To a large extent, Turkey has bided its time, waited for the Greek Cypriots to make a mistake, then exploited this mistake to the full. I really wonder if some of those who claim that it is the TCs themselves who desire partition have ever once in their whole lives talked to a Turkish Cypriot. I do not believe that this claim is true. I believe that most Turkish Cypriots feel their identity to be under threat and long for a just solution.

Markides makes the observation that "the Greek Cypriots once again assisted Ankara in this strategy". Surely the political lessons need to be learned from such mistakes. Yet, in this thread I see a desire to repeat these mistakes. The argument is: "Let's drive the TCs into as little territory as is possible, build a huge wall and to Hell with them!" Can't you see that such a policy is bound to drive the TCs into the hands of Turkey? If you were to push the TCs into a small area and totally isolate them, this community would then inevitably become totally dependent on Turkey. The last time the Greek Cypriots adopted a policy of driving the Turkish Cypriots into enclaves and saying to Hell with them, this policy came back to haunt them in 1974. The way to halt Turkish expansion is not to drive the Turkish Cypriot community into Turkey's hands.

[observer]

I deny making anything up. The following quotation comes straight from the same paragraph of the same document that you directed me to.

"Over 25,000 Turkish Cypriots and several hundred Greek Cypriots fled their homes, with Turkish Cypriots seeking refuge in guarded enclaves"

Ask yourself a couple of simple questions - is it really likely that 25,000 TCs would flee their homes and move into enclaves guarded by a very much under-gunned TMT if they were scared of the TMT, when all they had to do was ask for protection from the much more strongly armed GC forces? Is it likely that a TMT led revolt would cause 25,000 TCs to flee and only several hundred GCs.

As for the rest, ask any TC who was around then exactly who was shooting at him. They sure as hell weren't speaking Turkish.

Read any international newspaper or news magazine of the time.

Even read your own GC newspapers of the time.

The evidence is overwhelming, whatever your government and school books might say.

[Get Real!]

TMT was the outcome of Turkey's cooperation with the colonial power, and was the means of frustrating the wishes of the majority of the population of Cyprus, dividing Greek and Turkish Cypriot and beginning the long path towards partition.

The organization was set up by Mr Rauf Denktash. "I had set up the TMT with a few friends...Everybody thought that I was the leader, but I was not. I was political advisor. Immediately after forming it I handed it over... The leaders were former army officers from Turkey."
(The Times, 20.1.1978)

Dr Kuchuk takes up the story with an account of how Riza Vurushkan came to Cyprus from Turkey to lead TMT.
"Year 1957...in order to give daily reports to Ankara...and to secure aid from Turkey I used to go to Ankara very frequently. During one of these visits, the late Prime Minister of Turkey, Adnan Menderes, introduced Riza Vurushkan to me...Later I met him at the office of a Lieutenant General and talked with him there. During our meeting it was decided that Vurushkan should come to Cyprus as "civilian adviser". He arrived in Cyprus under an assumed name and settled down here."
(Halkin Sesi, 16.2.1979)

TMT incited anti-Greek riots and tried to force Turkish Cypriot workers to establish separate trade unions.

Murder, arson and intimidation were the means that TMT used in order to prove that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together. The victims were trade unionists, journalists and ordinary Turkish Cypriots who resisted TMT's call.

After the signing of the Zurich and London Agreements in 1959, which led to the independence of Cyprus, TMT continued its clandestine activities in the cause of dividing Cyprus, and was to continue until 1984 as Mr Ozgur was to
reveal.

In October, 1959, seven months after the signing of the agreements on Cyprus independence, the British mine-sweeper HMS Burmaston intercepted the Turkish boat "Deniz" as it was attempting to deliver a shipment of arms to TMT in Cyprus.

Despite TMT terrorism, the mass of Greek and Turkish Cypriots citizens entered hopefully into the period of independence.

Some TMT attacks against Turkish Cypriots, May-July, 1958

- 22.5.58: Murder attempt against Ahmet Sadi, Director of the Turkish Office of the Pancyprian Workers Federation. In order to save his life, Sadi left Cyprus soon after and settled in England.

- 24.5.48: Murder of Fazil Onder, Chief Editor of the weekly newspaper "Inkilapci".

- 29.5.58: Murder of Ahmet Yahya, committee member of the progressive Turkish Cypriot Athletic-Cultural Centre.

- 5.6.58: Murder attempt against Hasan Ali, member of a Construction Workers Committee of the Pancyprian Labour Federation.

- 30.6.58: Murder of Ahmet Ibrahim, a barber from Limassol, because he had friendly relations with Greek-Cypriots and expressed himself in favour of Greek-Turkish cooperation.

- 3.7.58: Murder attempt against Arif Hulusi Barudi. He was working in a business owned by a Greek Cypriot. Before the attempt he had received a threatening letter demanding that he leave his job.

[Kifeas]

Kifeas wrote

Observer, you talk garbage as usual, but let me tell this to you! We want nothing from you! We are just ready to grand you your separate recognized partitioned state, as soon as you withdraw to your fair portion of the island, which by all means and measures is no more than 18% of the territory of Cyprus! You keep your corner with all the settlers and Turkey's guarantees, and we build a 10 meter high wall in-between, to live in the rest of our country as a free people! We give you 18% of the island, which is even more than you deserve if we take the historical aspect into consideration (remember that we have been in this island as a distinct people since the dawn of history, 4 thousand years ago, and you have only been here since 500 years ago;) and we want to have nothing to do with you, as we want you to have nothing to do with us! Enough!

I only told you how I see it, and if you want nothing from us, explain the attacks of 1963/64, and the economic blockade that followed, before the final events of 1974.

Turning to this idea of splitting up territory by population, what rubbish. If that were how matters were decided, Gibraltar (population density 4,654 people/sq km) would be demanding land from Spain (population density 89 people/sq km). The Czech Republic (population density 130 people/sq km) would be demanding land from Slovakia (population density 110 people/sq km) and census takers and surveyors would be all over the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union.

Personally, I have been on this island (with breaks) for almost 60 years, Your argument about being on this island since the dawn of time reminds me only of Israeli extremists who I have seen interviewed on TV who claim that the whole of Palestine belongs to them because they occupied it at a similar time to that you are talking about. Many countries have groups of extreme nationalists who claim land now ruled by someone else because at some time in the past “their descendants” ruled it. And always these people speak of “our descendants”, when in fact few people can trace their descendents back much more than a couple of hundred years because of illiteracy and because any records there might have been have been so often lost over time. I doubt if you can trace your ancestors back any further than I can, which is considerably less than 500 years and puts us both in the same position when it comes to who owns what in Cyprus.

If you do want to talk about percentages, then what the land contains is more important than what size it is. According to the UN (UN document S12723, Annex I) the area occupied by the TRNC contains:
17.3% of Cyprus’ water resources.
28.66% of Cyprus’ agricultural productivity.
2% of Cyprus’ minerals.
2.17% of Cyprus’ forests.

So in everything except agricultural productivity you are doing rather well, and since much of that is concentrated in the Güzelyurt region (along with much of the water resources) which TCs had agreed to hand back under the A Plan, GCs would have held quite a lot more than 18% of Cyprus’ resources.

Observer, Cyprus's most valuable resource is the coastline zone, that is why land (properties) along it are valued 10-20 times higher (more expensive) than inland properties! The last time I checked, what you illegally grabbed in 1974 constitutes about 60% of the total coastline of Cyprus, and with Anan plan it was going to be around 50%! With today's prices, the value of land in the area which you illegally grabbed in the north constitutes nearly 45% of the total value of all properties in Cyprus (because of the coastline value.) I do not know about the figures you posted above, but I know another thing! So "poor" was the area that you have grabbed in 1974, for just the 18% of Cypriots, that you found it suitable to import another 150,000 settlers from Turkey to fill the gab of the excessive amount of territorial wealth you have stolen! Before 1974, the area which you have occupied was the ancestral homeland of 1/3 of the GC community or some 170 thousand GCs, plus another 55 thousand TCs! Perhaps it is useful to tell you that so "poor" the area was that these 170 thousand GCs had by far the highest per capita income from all the rest of GC residing in the south!

Now, it is either we split this bloody island on the basis of the population and property ownership ratios and not one square mile more, (your community had the 18% of people and 17% of the private land;) or the status quo will continue indefinitely, as well as your isolation from the rest of the world! Only over our dead bodies you will manage to attain recognition of what you have stole from us!

I was once very much in favour of reunification! I have changed completely my views, once I realized what a bunch opportunistic assholes and liars the majority of your community and your leaders are! I now do not want to have any dealings with such people (the majority of TCs,) although admittedly there are some very dissent and noble ones among you that I would have definitely wished to regard as my compatriots!