Cyprus-Forum.com

[Bananiot]

I understood perfectly well what you were saying DT. I am afraid it is you that failed to understand the subtle point I was making. I can expand but where would this leave subtlety ... ?

Let me address your real concerns now. In 1960 the Turkish Cypriots were given the constitutional right to elect their own Vice President of the RoC. At the time, a mere 45 000 votes would have been enough, I presume, or even less. At the time, I also presume, none of your ancestors applied to become a TC (God forbid) because it was so easy to get to the number 2 post and be acting President when number 1 went on one of his many trips abroad (holidays).

Our country is bicommunal and we need to live with this. The size of each community does not matter. The fact that we are negotiating at this very moment for BBF is based on the numerous serious mistakes we made in the past when we acted as a majority and stupidly thought that it was our divine right to do whatever we pleased, without ever consulting the other community which we considered as backward and its people as second class citizens. Rolandis gave a very good example of our arrogance and I will not get tired repeating it. Read again DT:

The Ministerial Council were discussing about making a road that connected two neighbouring Turkish Cypriot villages after a request was made by the inhabitats of the villages. The Council thought that 100 000 pounds were too much to spend on the Turks and Papadopoulos, then Minister of Transport, came up with the clever idea of making half a road, in order to save 50 000 bananas. After the meeting, Makarios went to Papadopoulos and told him:

"Tassos, today you saved the public 50 000 pounds"

Papadopoulos answered:

"No your Beautitude, today the public lost 50 000 pounds"

Stories like the above are plentiful. We managed to alienate the Turkish Cypriots by our sheer stupidity which is always fed by nationalism. We literally sent them, gift-wrapped, into the warm embrace of mother Turkey because we cound not counteract Denktash and his nationalists with a friendship attack on the ordinary Turkish Cypriots. Instead we went on a murder spree, taking people out of thier hospital beds and throwing them down wells.

With such a background, you come here and ask the Turkish Cypriots to go one step further than what the 1960 constitution gave them and accept that we would have a major say as to who will be their leader and President of Cyprus if rotating presidency is agreed.

I think you DT and the people that think like you have lost touch with reality. Your cries abour democracy and human rights are falling on deaf ears.

Only people with a proven clean past can talk about these sacred values.

[DT.]

I understood perfectly well what you were saying DT. I am afraid it is you that failed to understand the subtle point I was making. I can expand but where would this leave subtlety ... ?

Let me address your real concerns now. In 1960 the Turkish Cypriots were given the constitutional right to elect their own Vice President of the RoC. At the time, a mere 45 000 votes would have been enough, I presume, or even less. At the time, I also presume, none of your ancestors applied to become a TC (God forbid) because it was so easy to get to the number 2 post and be acting President when number 1 went on one of his many trips abroad (holidays).

Our country is bicommunal and we need to live with this. The size of each community does not matter. The fact that we are negotiating at this very moment for BBF is based on the numerous serious mistakes we made in the past when we acted as a majority and stupidly thought that it was our divine right to do whatever we pleased, without ever consulting the other community which we considered as backward and its people as second class citizens. Rolandis gave a very good example of our arrogance and I will not get tired repeating it. Read again DT:

The Ministerial Council were discussing about making a road that connected two neighbouring Turkish Cypriot villages after a request was made by the inhabitats of the villages. The Council thought that 100 000 pounds were too much to spend on the Turks and Papadopoulos, then Minister of Transport, came up with the clever idea of making half a road, in order to save 50 000 bananas. After the meeting, Makarios went to Papadopoulos and told him:

"Tassos, today you saved the public 50 000 pounds"

Papadopoulos answered:

"No your Beautitude, today the public lost 50 000 pounds"

Stories like the above are plentiful. We managed to alienate the Turkish Cypriots by our sheer stupidity which is always fed by nationalism. We literally sent them, gift-wrapped, into the warm embrace of mother Turkey because we cound not counteract Denktash and his nationalists with a friendship attack on the ordinary Turkish Cypriots. Instead we went on a murder spree, taking people out of thier hospital beds and throwing them down wells.

With such a background, you come here and ask the Turkish Cypriots to go one step further than what the 1960 constitution gave them and accept that we would have a major say as to who will be their leader and President of Cyprus if rotating presidency is agreed.

I think you DT and the people that think like you have lost touch with reality. Your cries abour democracy and human rights are falling on deaf ears.

Only people with a proven clean past can talk about these sacred values.

Firstly, if I see that passage one more time (which by the way has never been proven to be true or not apart from Rolandis's word which has been questioned MORE THAN ONCE BY SEDER LEVENT ON HIS RELIABILITY)
I'm going to fill your school up with APOEL banners

BTW Rolandis ladies and gentlemen has been writing for the magazine the Dialogue. A publication financed by the "trnc foreign ministry" Levent picked him up on this and ROlandis reacted.....badly! This has-been who has a following of 3 on the entire island (one is with us on this forum) has been forgotten by all as a reckless minister and a failure of a politician. I believe his political party the Liberals mastered a maximum 0.4% of the vote once.

Now on your second point about clean pasts, the only one on this forum who should not be talking is you and your generation bananiot. My generation and the ones who think like me are nothing to do with you or your old cronies be they left-wing or right-wing.

We don't support DISY or AKEL and we have no desire to watch someone with the vision and the PR talent of a dung beatle like Tassos ever come to power again.

You, your generation and the ones before you let us down. Now its time to shut up with your anachronistic demands of submission due to some virtual punishment we should be receiving for daring to think we matter enough to exist as we want on our island.

We are not fanatics Bananiot, your type is the fanatic one. The fanaticism of submission to every turkish demand when even TC's such as Levent and Kikapu are telling you that you're going down a wrong road.

Just like these other fanatics on the forum, where all of a sudden your not a real Greek if your trying to reunify the country between all Cypriots and you're not a real Cypriot if you respect and love your Greek ethnic background and culture.

What the hell kind of crap is everyone on this forum sprouting for the past months! None of you will be satisfied until you've pigeon-holed yourselves into tiny caricatures of narrow mindedness and spend the rest of your days fighting from 104 to 107 when the spectrum you should be looking at is from 0 to 1000000000.

I'm starting to see a pattern here and I'm guessing its age.

[Bananiot]

DT, that was a poor attempt to answer, focusing totally on sentiment and ignoring the facts. You may have an axe to grind with Rolandis but he is a very decent man. He was always outspoken and did not stop talking or thinking just to save his job, like the majority of our countrymen do. In fact he was the first Minister to actually resign, on reasons of principle.

He does not write very much and when he does he sends his text to all newspapers and most of them print it. He does not write specially for "Dialogue" on a regular basis. I expect the editors of "Dialogue" saw his article and asked him whether they could publish it too. So the reality is entirely different from what you claim, that "he writes for Dialogue". Sener Levent was totally wrong when he claimed that this weekly paper is funded by the "TRNC". I will not try to convince anyone but I can invite people to read it. It is out every Friday and it does a fantastic job in building bridges of trust and cooperation between the two communities. Levent's claims makes one wonder of what his motives really are.

Your rantings about my generation are amusing to say the least. Whether you like it or not, what my generation (actually, just to correct you, you probably mean the generation of the politicians of the 60's, which was the generation before mine) did to Cyprus, cannot be undone by your or anybody's else generation. However, instead of generalising, you would be doing a better job, if you would list the mistakes "my" generation made, because you do not seem to disagree with this (serious mistakes made) and then we can take it from there. For example, do you agree that the armed struggle in 1955 was a serious mistake whose consequences we still pay today? Ah, one final thing. When you make a mistake in politics, they do not forget to send you the bill, which you pay, no matter how much you cry.

[Paphitis]

Bananiot, you are very good at avoiding to answer questions posed to you.

You had questioned the legitacy of the 55-59 struggle for self determination before, and I challenged you with this:

Why would I shy away from trying to teach an old dilapidated man a thing or two? You are causing great damage to my country and so it is my duty to try and show you the correct path.

Britain had switched its Middle East headquarters to Cyprus in 1954. The island was the new home of the M16 Regional HQ. The intelligence gathered in Cyprus was shared with the Americans under a secret pact called UKUSA pact. Australia, Canada and New Zealand were also parties to this pact and each country was allocated an area of responsibility, with the Middle East being in the Britain’s sphere of influence. By 1955, Cyprus had even greater strategic importance due to the Baghdad Pact. This pact committed Britain to the forward defence of the region, a defence where the Cyprus Air Bases played a crucial part against Soviet expansion.

These are the reasons why self determination was never to be offered to Cypriots.

It was Henry Hopkins, Churchill's Colonial Minister who made a public statement on 28 Jul 54:

..."some Commonwealth territories could NEVER expect to be fully independent, and that the question of the abrogation of British sovereignty CANNOT ARISE".

This blew the lid on any pretence that Britain would eventually move towards self determination. Britain viewed Cyprus as a British base, and democratic ideals were never going to be allowed to get in the way.

As such, the actions of EOKA in 1955 were justified. And it was this campaign that led to independence in 1960.

Please try to provide a counter argument. Can you do that Bananiot?

I am still waiting for your counter argument.

[Kifeas]

With such a background, you come here and ask the Turkish Cypriots to go one step further than what the 1960 constitution gave them and accept that we would have a major say as to who will be their leader and President of Cyprus if rotating presidency is agreed.

I think you DT and the people that think like you have lost touch with reality. Your cries abour democracy and human rights are falling on deaf ears.

Only people with a proven clean past can talk about these sacred values.

Rubbish!!!

In the same way that we get to have a saying as to who the two deputizing presidents will be, i.e. both the GC and the TC, in exactly the same the way the TC community will have exactly the same right to decide upon who the same two deputy presidents will be! In this way, we both eliminate each other’s possibility of appointing nationalists like Denktash -and Makarios if you so like, on the top office of the country, and allow only moderates that can win substantial popularity and approval among both communities to do so.

Rubbish Bananiot, rubbish you talk!!! You cannot beat the donkey, and you choose to beat the saddle instead!

I offered you a near perfect solution and ruined Loukas Charalambous stupid argument! Why don’t you dare comment on it?

[Bananiot]

What you offer is worthless because, for the reasons I have already explained, it cannot be accepted by one of the parts. Now tell us about your partition turn. Are you over it?

[Bananiot]

Paphidis, we have been through this a thousand times. The armed struggle as such was not one for self determination but one for enosis with Greece. The objective of the armed struggle was enough in itself to spell the certain failure of it. I do not ignore the British arrogance regarding the Cyprus issue prior to 1955. However, even within this environment the armed struggle was absolutely wrong. Our current predicament is a direct result of the bad decisions made then my a handfull of people who never took into consideration the wishes of the majority of the people of Cyprus.

[Paphitis]

Paphidis, we have been through this a thousand times. The armed struggle as such was not one for self determination but one for enosis with Greece. The objective of the armed struggle was enough in itself to spell the certain failure of it. I do not ignore the British arrogance regarding the Cyprus issue prior to 1955. However, even within this environment the armed struggle was absolutely wrong. Our current predicament is a direct result of the bad decisions made then my a handfull of people who never took into consideration the wishes of the majority of the people of Cyprus.

The majority of people were supporting the movement for self determination. The only party to voice "concerns" was AKEL, and even most of their supporters were still behind the movement. They only objected to the methods employed by EOKA, whereas EOKA believed it had no other choice but to up the ante. Please provide evidence to support your notion that this was not the case.

And let us say that the sole purpose of the struggle was for ENOSIS with Greece. So What?

The GCs who formed 80% of the total population had every right to fight and request for ENOSIS if this is what they desired.

However, the main ulterior motive was not ENOSIS. It was for self determination. Whether this self determination resulted in ENOSIS with Greece or gave us our independence was neither here nor there to the majority of Cypriots.

[Kifeas]

What you offer is worthless because, for the reasons I have already explained, it cannot be accepted by one of the parts. Now tell us about your partition turn. Are you over it?

And I suppose that because the TCs do not want to accept it, due to the fact that it doesn't suit their and that of Turkey's agenda, it is no good for you either!

Well, hear this! Neither what you, they or the Annan plan offer, can be accepted by us, for very good reasons, and therefore we are back to square one! At least I can explain and persuade any 3rd well indented party, why what the GC side is offering is best for Cyprus and its unity. You, and the TC side, cannot explain why it is no good for them or for Cyprus; simply because all of your and their arguments will only boil down to safeguarding Turkey's interests, which relate to having the whole of Cyprus under its suzerainty via a bunch of easy to influence and manipulate senators, elected by the strong influence of the settlers from Turkey.

[Bananiot]

You honestly expect the TC's to accept a proposition that allows GC's to have a major say as to who their leader would be? Taking into account what we have been through in recent times, this would be tantamount to getting a turkey to shout long live Xmas.

We have our own sensitivities too, as you know, one being the guarantees of Turkey. Come next May, when the give and take part comes, we shall see what can be agreed.