brother wrote:I have thousands of posts and argued with many and i am still to be convinced when it comes to tassos, i see him like the wolf in sheeps clothing and have no trust at all in him especially after his infamous no tc killed speech, the lies concerning the SG and his one year on failure to sit down to negotiations.
Brother,
I agree that if he said that absolutely no one TC was killed after 1964, when most intercommunal fighting had settled down, then it was definately a lie.
What remains to be examined is whether this was an intentional or an unintentional lie.
Politicians sometimes, especially when carrying foreign contacts or interviews, tend to exaggerate in order to stress a point. Papadopoullos didn't hide the facts in that interview that there was indeed intercommunal violence and many TCs were killed by GC irregulars. However in his effort to stress that this has been put into control after some time and attacks against TCs were reduced to a much less degree, perhaps he was carried unintentionally too far away and said none, in order to stress the point he wanted to make, which was the real fact that after 1964 any similar and massive violent attacks by GC irregulars against TC civilians were reduced to a minimum level. Of course there are the events of Kofinou village in 1967, in which TC civilians were also killed, but this event by itself is an entirely separate chapter, which I once discussed with Gabaston in a different thread. The truth remains that he lied but if what I said above was the real point he wanted to make, then I would call it an unintentional lie.
However, there is an entirely different issue here, which is related to the propaganda that each side used and /or continues to use until this date. I will only touch the issue of the Turkish / TC partitionist propaganda here, although I do not refuse that there was an equivalent GC pro union propaganda. For decades now, the main argument of the Turkish /TC propaganda machine, which was aiming to promote partition and /or recognition of a separate TC state, was that the GCs and TCs cannot live together, cannot coexist and the only period of time in which they were both left alone was the period between 1960-1974 but the end result was mass killings of TCs by the GCs, who hate them and their (GCs) only aim is to annihilate them (TCs) and make Cyprus a Greek Island.
This propaganda continues to be used even up to this moment by those forces within the TC community and in Turkey who do not favor reunification and want to convince the outside world that the only solution is that of partition. Not very long ago, Denktash has used, yet again, exactly the same verbose.
Under this climate and circumstances, tell me which GC politician who is trying to reunite his country and obstruct the partitionist plans of the fanatics of the other side, would ever dare say, especially in a foreign media, that indeed the GCs were continually killing the TCs up until 1974 when Turkey invaded. Wouldn’t this be a golden chance for the propaganda machine of the other side to pick up his (Papadopoullos) words and make full use of them as an add on to it’s propaganda literature? Wouldn’t it be the perfect ammunition for them to continue their struggle to prove that indeed the GCs were continuously butchering the TCs for 14 years and now, we also have the GC leader even admitting it publicly?
Therefore, under the current situation and before having concluded a final solution, I can understand Papadopoullos cautiousness, although he intentionally lied. Once a solution is reached and the country is re-united for good, if the same question is put in front of Papadopoullos again, I am sure he will not give the same answer. Why? Because the reasons not to tell the truth, will no longer exist.
Please tell me now, why has Turkey so far never admitted that her army has committed any atrocities against the GCs in 1974? Isn’t it a fact? Of course it is a fact, and a well documented one. However, should Turkey admit such a thing, then she can no longer call the 1974 invasion as “peace” operation. What is the reason that Turkey refuses to admit it? The same reason that Papadopoullos has said what he said in that interview, which is to avoid offering ammunition to the propaganda machine of the opposite side.
