Bananiot wrote:Jerry, we totally ignored Turkey in the early 50's when we made our first moves. This does not indicate fear from our part. In fact we stupidly considered Turkey incabable of touching us back then and we showed a clean middle finger to any one that told us we were playing with fire.
Of course we ignored Turkey when we were "protected" by Britain, however if the British had simply cleared off in 1960 as in Palestine 1948 do you honestly think Turkey would have done nothing? Post liberation, independence call it what you will Greek Cypriots believed they needed someone to ensure their security and Greece was the obvious choice, it always had been. It wasn't to be, the TCs "won" in 1960 and we felt cheated. Perhaps we should have tried harder to make the it work but, in my view that would have been tantamount to admitting that they were more deserving and better than us. There were those on both sides who saw the ROC simply as an interim solution. It looked as though the Greek Cypriots had won, the Americans held Turkey back so indeed we could wave a middle finger around, until the anti Cypriot coup of 1974. We know the rest.
