Cyprus-Forum.com

[Oracle]

I don't think re-unification has anything to do with the past ... and everything to do with what is right and fair in this day and age.

And those of you who want to sabotage the next generation for your sick propaganda and revisionist history have another thing coming!

It is not politically or morally correct to put schoolchildren at the heart of a debate to removing 40,000 illegitimate Turkish troops residing in our country and using it as an Army base whilst consistently filling up the Island with uneducated Anatolians who are going to need an awful lot of schooling to make them half-way acceptable in a European centered country ....

[Piratis]

History books should reflect the truth and not be written to brainwash people just for the sake of reconciliation. The motives of those people that want to change the books are simply the wrong ones.

Something like this maybe could be somewhat justified after a solution is found, but definably not while the Turkish troops continue to occupy part of our country.

Those that talk about 1963, should remember that 1963 didn't happen out of the blue. What brought us to 1963 was the Turkish attack against us in 1958, when the Turks collaborated with the British colonialists in order to oppress the revolution of the Cypriot people and impose on us by force and blackmail the unfair 1960 constidution.

In 1963 we merely asked for changes to the constidution of our own country, which would bring it up to the standards of other democratic countries. We didn't ask for TCs to get anything less than any other minority in the world, definitely not less than what Turkey gives to their Greek minority. It is a fact that the conflict restarted in 1963 because TCs flat out refused to even discuss any democratic reforms and they left from the goverment, wrongly believing that what they gained on our loss due to their collaboration with the British against Cyprus was their rights.

Our side simply avoids going very deep into the inter-communal conflict because they prefer not to emphasize the conflict between TCs and GCs because our aim is unification. But if we are going to re-write the books and go deeper into that period, then everything should be written.

Personally I don't see how it will help reconciliation if our students learn in detail about the TC attacks against us of 1958 and their collaboration with the British colonialists with the aim to defeat the Cypriots. Up until now our books put the blame on Turkey, not on TCs. If we examine that period in detail then the blame of TCs in starting the conflict will be obvious, something that will have the opposide result than the reconciliation that it is hoped for.

Furthermore, even if we assume the aim was not the truth, but just to show some out of context suffering of the other side to justify their current attitude against us, the same and at the same time should have happened on the TC schools. Such kind of reconciliation doesn't happen one way.

[zan]

Piratis says: Lets just lie to ourselves and our children until there is a solution. Didn't he take a lot of space doing it though....

[Piratis]

Piratis says: Lets just lie to ourselves and our children until there is a solution. Didn't he take a lot of space doing it though....

On the contrary what I said is that we should not lie for the sake of reconciliation, especially when in the TC side they brainwash their students with hate propaganda against Greek Cypriots.

Reconciliation is good, but the motive in changing any books should be the truth not reconciliation. We can't fake our history just to make the TCs and Turks look nice, especially when they do not deserve such favor since they continue acting as aggressively and as arrogantly today as they have always been with no remorse at all.

[roseandchan]

you cannot re write history. the history books should be written by both gc's and tc's together, with actual fact which can be backed up by proof. that way the history of cyprus would be about the truth and the facts, without properganda. translated into both languages so that all children have the correct history for their country.

[denizaksulu]

I agree they should change. They are too kind with TCs. They don't say how the TC minority was created on our island. This is how: The Turks invaded our island. They murdered 10s of thousands of Cypriots. They stole our lands. They brought Turks from Asia Minor and gave them our lands. Then now they call those Turks as "TCs". The Turks did this many times since then. Even now they bring in more Turks, give them the lands they stole from us and call them "TCs" again!!!!!! Same story over and over. The Cyprus Problem is a problem of TURKISH EXPANSIONISM. I think this should be clear in our books.

You sound so much like Piratis. Asr you one and the same?

[Bananiot]

Piratis, Sotos, the whole bunch of reactionaries, expose themselves as they really are, even with this innocent but much needed gesture of the Minister of Education. What makes them so scared of the truth?

[Tim Drayton]

It is only fair to mention in this context that the Turkish Cypriot education authorities introduced new history textbooks in 2004. These new textbooks were intended to present a more balanced and less chauvinistic view of the past.

[zan]

Piratis, Sotos, the whole bunch of reactionaries, expose themselves as they really are, even with this innocent but much needed gesture of the Minister of Education. What makes them so scared of the truth?

I relish these facts Bananiot.....It can only make the right thinking people stronger and marginalise these lying idiots that know not what they do....Thank heavens for the few ignorants....

[CopperLine]

Generally I'm against history being 'authorised' by any authority. It should be not for government departments, in any country in the world, to approve or censor history books since it is in this way that inevitably nationalist histories are passed from one generation to another.

However I know that I'm in a tiny 'libertarian' minority on this point, and in that light I do agree that a fundamental task is to open up the histories of Cyprus and break the nationalist and racist stranglehold which has informed most authorised histories, north and south. The move by teachers in the north a few years ago was a step in the right direction, moves to throw-off nationalist history in the south is more than welcome as well.