Cyprus-Forum.com

[Viewpoint]

In a parallel to your experience Kikapu .... After the Turkish bombardments between Polis and Kokkina in 1964 ... we went to live briefly with my grandmother in Greece before eventually moving to the UK at the end of 1965.

So much displacement ....

Our stories are not unique Oracle. There are thousands of them from all sides. I do not hold ill feelings towards anyone because of our ugly past like some who never had to face what we faced, like VP, who had it made by being born and raised in the UK in a warm bed and a full stomach every night, and yet he comes on here to tell us about his pain and sufferings. What a joke.!

So the suffering of the TC community is a joke...well done Kikapu your mask has really dropped.

[zan]

By 1968 the Turkish government was injecting ,8,000,0000000 per annum into the Turkish-Cypriot economy

This number just caught my eye.

80 Billion.! I believe this was in Turkish Liras, and I remember very well, that in 1964, while I was living in Turkey during this time, £1 British Pound was worth 35 Turkish Liras, which would have been around £2.3 Billion Pounds at the time or around $4.5 Billion US Dollars today or about 5.6 Billion New Turkish Liras today. By 1968 with a huge inflation in Turkey, the exchange rate would have been atleast 400% worse, meaning, that £1 British Pound was probably worth about 150+ Turkish Liras.. If true, it would still be a huge number and I don't know where the money would have gone to, considering Turkey pays out only around $500 Million US Dollars today to sustain an economy that caters to around 400,000 people in the north and not the 100,000 TC's back in 1964.

I question the term Turk-Cypriot. We did not have Turkish settlers back then in Cyprus other than 650 Turkish military personal or else the author is a bloody minded fool. There is no need to interject phrases into this report that is not true, otherwise, that can alone automatically make the whole report questionable for accuracy.

Another one of your state the obvious jokes Kikapu??? A typo maybe...Not the most important part of that report I would say but then you are always looking for excuses..Now how about disputing the rest and maybe even finding a few spelling mistakes that might catch your eye

[miltiades]

In a parallel to your experience Kikapu .... After the Turkish bombardments between Polis and Kokkina in 1964 ... we went to live briefly with my grandmother in Greece before eventually moving to the UK at the end of 1965.

So much displacement ....

Our stories are not unique Oracle. There are thousands of them from all sides. I do not hold ill feelings towards anyone because of our ugly past like some who never had to face what we faced, like VP, who had it made by being born and raised in the UK in a warm bed and a full stomach every night, and yet he comes on here to tell us about his pain and sufferings. What a joke.!

So the suffering of the TC community is a joke...well done Kikapu your mask has really dropped.

He never said anything of the sort , read again VP , HE CLEARLY SAID THAT YOU ARE A JOKE !!

[zan]

In a parallel to your experience Kikapu .... After the Turkish bombardments between Polis and Kokkina in 1964 ... we went to live briefly with my grandmother in Greece before eventually moving to the UK at the end of 1965.

So much displacement ....

Our stories are not unique Oracle. There are thousands of them from all sides. I do not hold ill feelings towards anyone because of our ugly past like some who never had to face what we faced, like VP, who had it made by being born and raised in the UK in a warm bed and a full stomach every night, and yet he comes on here to tell us about his pain and sufferings. What a joke.!

So the suffering of the TC community is a joke...well done Kikapu your mask has really dropped.

He never said anything of the sort , read again VP , HE CLEARLY SAID THAT YOU ARE A JOKE !!

And Miltiades wets himself again......Age or just excitement???? Who know...Who care???

[Oracle]

i was born in 1983 so a bad year but you people remember so far bakc in the past while there was a united cyprus... what was that like?

I remember two Cyprus' I'm afraid.

One was the normal everyday childhood stuff (climbing trees, swims, fewer cars, mostly dirt tracks, plenty of donkeys, excitement in village projects like building the Dam, sad things like my dog being shot for having rabies , being related or thinking you were, to everybody you met ... great sense of love family and comfort).

The second Cyprus houses all my worst nightmares. Air raid sirens, leaving the classroom to hide in a shelter, stuck under a large overhanging tree for hours with mum, aunts and cousins, jumping into a ditch with screaming bullets around me, planes dropping bombs all around, that deadly silence before the sheer panic of approaching low, flying planes, packing to leave for Kathikas and camping for a few weeks to avoid further expected bombardments. So many nasty experiences etched fear and anxiety forever. It seems incomprehensible that they occurred over such a short space of time, a few weeks, stretched into what seems like years.....

[Nikitas]

Paliometoxo,

There were two sides of the memories I have. The troubles, where the curfew is the formost memory. Seven o'clock at night we had to be in the house, and all streets were eerily empty. We lived in central Nicosia for part of that time and we experienced the first intercommunal attacks. It was a time of total fear to be in curfew and under attack at the same time.

But there were good times. Like Oracle, I remember a lot of our visits to the village, of Famagusta with much fewer cars than cities have today, bicycle rides around town and many bike repair shops doing quite well.

Cyprus in the late 50s and early 60s still had a subsistence economy and consumerism had not bitten into the national character and many trades that are now unknown flourished. People got their shoes made to measure at the skarparis, their furniture at the pelekanos, and so on. No Ikea, no Orfanides. No BMWs either, most cars were English. There were no highways and most roads were built wide enough for a military truck so when two cars met head on on or both had to fall on the hard shoulder, the Banketto, hence the expression "pese banketto pezevenghi!" The Famagusta-Nicosia journey was considered a long trip, ncessitating a coffee stop in Lysi. Apostolos Andreas included two coffee stops and lunch breaks on the way. Sleepy villages with mud brick walls looked pretty much like the film sets of spaggetti westerns. It was poverty compared to today but it was fun too.

[Nikitas]

Zan,

The reasoning given in your quoted article for the Mari- Kofinou attack contradicts my sources, and they are pretty close to Grivas to be considered reliable.

The order to attack the Kofinou positions came from Greece. Grivas was dead against it, and considered the situation a police, not an army matter. The provocation was sporadic small arms fire on passing traffic, nothing drastic to require an army attack. Finally he was ordered to attack and the crisis broke out which resulted in the withdrawal of the Greek division. It also led to the Evros meeting between dictator Papadopoulos and Turkish officials and set the stage for the double union policy which lculiminated in the events of 1974.

[Kikapu]

In a parallel to your experience Kikapu .... After the Turkish bombardments between Polis and Kokkina in 1964 ... we went to live briefly with my grandmother in Greece before eventually moving to the UK at the end of 1965.

So much displacement ....

Our stories are not unique Oracle. There are thousands of them from all sides. I do not hold ill feelings towards anyone because of our ugly past like some who never had to face what we faced, like VP, who had it made by being born and raised in the UK in a warm bed and a full stomach every night, and yet he comes on here to tell us about his pain and sufferings. What a joke.!

So the suffering of the TC community is a joke...well done Kikapu your mask has really dropped.

He never said anything of the sort , read again VP , HE CLEARLY SAID THAT YOU ARE A JOKE !!

I very seriously doubt, that VP is really able to fully understand the written English language. This is one of many examples that I have noticed lately where VP just does not comprehend simple English written sentences. He is as bad as Liar Soyer. One can in fact easily confuse one to the other. They must have had the same English teacher at their Propaganda school. I know Liar Soyer flunk the course, but I don't know how the hell VP passed it. One can only assume that favours were exchanged.!!

I really do not want to know the details.!

[Kikapu]

By 1968 the Turkish government was injecting ,8,000,0000000 per annum into the Turkish-Cypriot economy

This number just caught my eye.

80 Billion.! I believe this was in Turkish Liras, and I remember very well, that in 1964, while I was living in Turkey during this time, £1 British Pound was worth 35 Turkish Liras, which would have been around £2.3 Billion Pounds at the time or around $4.5 Billion US Dollars today or about 5.6 Billion New Turkish Liras today. By 1968 with a huge inflation in Turkey, the exchange rate would have been atleast 400% worse, meaning, that £1 British Pound was probably worth about 150+ Turkish Liras.. If true, it would still be a huge number and I don't know where the money would have gone to, considering Turkey pays out only around $500 Million US Dollars today to sustain an economy that caters to around 400,000 people in the north and not the 100,000 TC's back in 1964.

I question the term Turk-Cypriot. We did not have Turkish settlers back then in Cyprus other than 650 Turkish military personal or else the author is a bloody minded fool. There is no need to interject phrases into this report that is not true, otherwise, that can alone automatically make the whole report questionable for accuracy.

Another one of your state the obvious jokes Kikapu??? A typo maybe...Not the most important part of that report I would say but then you are always looking for excuses..Now how about disputing the rest and maybe even finding a few spelling mistakes that might catch your eye

TURK-CYPRIOT was written 35-40 times in that report. That's one hell of a "typo", Zan. Turk-Cypriot was written many times in the same sentence as Turkish Cypriot was written. I don't know where the author wanted to go with this deliberate injection of this phrase. It had to have been for something, NO !!??

[BirKibrisli]

i was born in 1983 so a bad year but you people remember so far bakc in the past while there was a united cyprus... what was that like?

Those of us, unfortunates, born in the 50s, grew up with fear and uncertainty,palio...I cannot remember a time without the EOKA and the TMT in my life...EOKA we believed were going to kill us all and drink our blood for breakfast....But we had our own heroes,the TMT to save us from the big bad wolves.My father was a school teacher and the regional commander of the TMT...Our house was often used to hide guns (handguns,grenades,some rifles and a few sten guns)...I remember times where I had to go to bed surrounded by an arsenal of arms and ammunition,pretending to be asleep,while British soldiers searched our house...By 1963 my father had fallen out with the TMT and we were living in the old Walled section of Nicosia where the TCs had a strong enclave.
The fighting at the end of 1963 was a particularly terrifying times...I still remember the sounds of gunfire and those terrible bullets we called doom-doom (if I remember correctly)...There were a few weeks of critical times when we didnt know whether we would manage to hold the GCs attacking the enclave...On one occasion when Father went out to defend the walls he left me at home to guard my mother and 3 sisters...I was 12 years old and armed with just one hand grenade,and the idea was that if the GC irregulars came to the door I would gather the female folk around me and pull the pin...Believe me you are very lucky to have been born in the 80s...Cyprus was not a very pleasant place to be in the 50s,60s and 70s...