Bananiot wrote:I was watching a tv programme about Cypriots who fought with the allies in Italy. The presenter asked one of them to describe something that really struck out. The old soldier, without hesitation, immediately replied "the way the Poles killed Germans".
How can we be looking for justice in a war? War is all about taking lives and there is no way to feel at ease with this, even if the bad guys lose out.
It is true that the Turkish army went on a rampage, killing captives and spreading terror and fear in its passage. Yet, last April I attended the funeral of my fellow villager Kkitros who was laid to rest after so many years when his bones were eventually identified. Sevgul Uludag was there too. The nephew of Kkitros (a lawyer I believe) gave an unbelievably balanced speech, despite his sorrow. He told the large crowed that attended the funeral that the Turkish army started executing people after the mass graves were discovered in Aloa, Sandalaris and another village whose name I do not remember now. There, women and children were brutaly murdered by Greek Cypriots.
War brings the worse out of people. Everybody is capable of atrocities during war times. The Americans did it at Mi Lai in Vietnam and the cultured French behaved barbarously in Algeria. The Greek army in Asia minor was no better, according to Dido Soteriou (Matomena Chomata - also translated into Turkish. All must read this masterpiece). We took patients out of their hospital beds in 1963 and threw them down wells, after we put a bullet in their head.
It is the duty of all Cypriots to strive so that we and our childern and our childrens children do not have to go through this agony again. If we insist on counting who murdered more and who less we will be missing the point and end up like Piratis et al who think that justice is a matter of statistics. We need to bury the hatchet. We need peace here and now and now that a new effort is made we should be encouraging our leaders to move positively towards peace. The blame game feeds only the war monster. Even if things seem difficult we should never give up.
One final thought. There are bad people in both communities. We know who they are and it is up to us to cut their murdering hands. This can only be achieved if we get the peace we deserve. Otherwise we might as well feed the minautor of hate with more young blood.
Bananiot, thanks for taking the time to write such a full response to this topic. Obviously there are lots of sensitive issues here, but I have a concern with this assumption that it was a case of 'war'.
As far as I am aware, there was no clear 'declaration of war' from Turkey to Cyprus. Indeed, our friends on this forum prefer to call the invasion an 'intervention' or a 'peace operation'. There was no war between the GCs and TCs either, the invasion/intervention was in response to fighting between Greeks/GCs.
At the same time, even in wartime, I would like to think that most truly organised/trained military forces accept that civilian casualties/collateral damage should be kept to a minimum. This is clearly not what the Turkish forces did.
In addition to this, I am most concerned with the issue of the atrocities that were carried out
after the ceasefire had been declared. I appreciate that the article I posted does not mention this, but I have further material which I will post at later point that verifies this.
Certianly your post illustrates an ideal for the way forward, but I feel that ascribing the horrific events of the invasion to 'acts of war' is somewhat inaccurate and dishonours the memories of those that suffered.
