Bananiot wrote:Well, in the 50's and 60's, fighting (sic) for enosis was the "patriotic" thing to do. Those that foresaw the dangers were quickly branded traitors and many lost their lives from bullets of "patriotic" EOKA. In fact more Greek Cypriots were murdered by EOKA than British soldiers.
In my book patriotism, means the chartering of the best path to reach a feasible target and to avoid disaster. The shortest path to disaster is to go for objectives that are unatainable despite the fact that they may be very palatable to the masses.
Venizelos had no problem signing a treaty of friendship and non agression with Turkey only a few years after the disaster of Asia Minor where some one million Greeks were uprooted from their uncestral homes and many thousands died in the battle fields.
Of course fighting for liberation was the patriotic thing to do when all our calls for allowing Cypriots to democratically and peacefully decide the destiny of their own island (as it was our right) had been denied to us. Our mistake was that at some point we stopped fighting and accepted somehting that was unfair and benefited the Turks and the British on our loss.
IF it was not for EOKA we wouldn't even have what we have today. The British would have all the time they need to comfortably divide Cyprus as they wanted by gradually dividing the Cypriot people into separate regions. Or maybe you think that the British would let all their interests in Cyprus because we would be nice with them? The only thing the British would be satisfied with is if we were all permanent slaves of them, like you are. In
any other case they would apply their divide and rule games, and achieve an even worst result for us. India fought against the Colonialists in the most peaceful way with Ghandi, and still the British applied their divide and rule there. What do you have to say about that?
Venizellos also made a criminal mistake. How signing off Asia Minor to the Turks helped Greeks? On the contrary it only made it very easy for the Turks to exterminate almost all Greeks from Asia Minor, while the number of Turks in Greece is keep rising. (if the treaty was not singed, at the very least the Greeks could have exterminated all Turks from Greece in response). Treaty of "friendship and non aggression with Turkey" my ass. Turks have not stopped being as aggressive as they have always been, and history is there to prove this. (Greeks of Asia Minor, Imbros, Tenedos, invasion of Cyprus, demands in Aegean, violation of airspace, Immia incident etc etc)
It is obvious to me that you want to sign off the north part of our island to the Turks just so you will please them and think that you are Venizelos, while in fact you are clueless. But apart from
empty slogans you have
no arguments to support your position.
1) With Annan plan the north part of our island would be
officially Turkified and Turks would have
all the control over this part of Cyprus like they do now.
2) Any Greek Cypriots returning there would be the equivalent of our enclaved GCs we have now, and it is clear from many polls conducted that almost no GC is willing to go and live under Turkish occupation.
3) While now Turks are responsible to give compensations to our refugees
and give them their land back, if we sign something like the Annan plan Turkey would be off the hook and we would have to compensate ourselves!
4) The Turkish army should
theoretically leave after 20 years or so, but they would just go a few miles northern where they will have the right to return whenever they see fit. Furthermore I am certain that they wouldn't even leave. Today they are obligated to leave because they violate the sovereignty of Republic of Cyprus, and there are UN resolutions demanding the withdraw of their troops, and they still ignore all these and maintain 40.000 troops in Cyprus! And then you expect the Turks to honor their promise and leave when it is clear that they are not willing to do so, and when it will be
much easier for them to violate that agreement than it is now?
5) With the Annan plan the Turks, through their settlers and the TCs, would be able to fully control the
whole of Cyprus. The TCs/Settlers would have veto powers and this means silencing the voice of Cypriots in EU, UN or anywhere else. Cyprus would become a protectorate of Turkey.
6) We would allowed the TCs/Turks to use our own land and our or EU money to compete against us. When one of our main industries is Tourism and they would keep over 50% of the coast line, I hope you understand what that means for us.
The
only "positive" of Annan plan is that it returned to the rightful owners about 7% of land (instead of the 100%, as it should), and that is again if we believe Turks would keep their promise. And since Turks would get everything they wanted from Annan plan from
day one then I really don't see them giving to us anything more than part of Famagusta.
With such agreement the Cyprus problem would
not be solved. It would be made
worst. With Annan plan Turkey would be totally off the hook, it would control the whole of Cyprus, and the Cyprus Problem would be just a conflict between the two separate and equally recognized states in Cyprus.
