Cyprus-Forum.com

[samarkeolog]

Piratis
If you define Object Z as containing the characteristics (a, b, c) and then ask someone to find another example of Object Z but which doesn't have the characteristics (a, b, c) then don't be surprised if they fail to do so ! Equally don't fool yourself into thinking that you've set up an unassailable position, when all that you've done is play around with semantics.

I didn't talk about any "Object Z" and any "a b c". I talk very specifically and it would be better if you did as well.

Incidentally your last post reads like a series of 'if onlys' : if only the Ottomans hadn't invaded, if only the British hadn't colonised, if only the coups hadn't happened in Turkey, if only the Greeks hadn't had a fascist junta, if only there hadn't been a red archbishop, if only the coup hadn't happened, if only the TCs hadn't ............. that's the trouble with history, it just gets in the way of our fantasies ....

On the contrary, I talk about what indeed happened. Just stating the Historical facts.

The ones who talk with fantasies and imaginary scenarios in order to excuse the crimes they committed are the Turks.

Historical Fact: The Cypriot people demand their self-determination for decades. The answer they always receive is "Never". In 1955 we start an armed struggle against the colonialists.

Then, in 1956, and in 1957...

On 7th of July of 1958 the TCs start the inter-communal conflict by attacking innocent Greek Cypriots. They loot Greek Cypriot shops and homes. On 12th of July they murder 8 unarmed innocent Greek Cypriots. EOKA responds.

Both Cypriot communities forget parts of the history. In 1956 and 1957, EOKA killed quite a few Turkish Cypriots (because they worked for the colonial administration). Unsurprisingly, the Turkish Cypriots began to take this personally. And, incidentally, when EOKA began, they bombed the house of a Turkish Cypriot who worked for the colonial administration, but the Turkish Cypriots didn't respond. But after lots of EOKA murders of Turkish Cypriots, the Turkish Cypriots began to feel like they were targets of EOKA, just like the British. Then they began to accept TMT.

[Piratis]

See? This is our disagreement; it's not about language. You think Greek Cypriots are Greeks in Cyprus; I think Greek Cypriots are Cypriots.

Yes, but you see, what you think on this issue doesn't count because you are not Cypriot. I am Cypriot and what I think counts. And the vast majority of Greek Cypriots are amazingly Greek Cypriots!! Its in the name. Greek for ethnicity, and Cypriot because we are native of Cyprus. If we were not Greek, then we wouldn't call ourselves Greek Cypriots right?

As I've said before (should I include the "as I've said before" again as well, because I've said this more than once?), I'm not telling you what to feel or what to be. You can believe you are whatever you want. I can tell you how I perceive things. Both things can happen.

Exactly. Isn't this why we started this discussion. Because of some preconceived notions that you have? So continue if you want. Disregard all the historical and scientific evidence, and choose some baseless politically motivated claims to base your views.

Do I need to provide you with the definitions of perception and preconception? Assuming that you're not doing this deliberately, I do.

Perception: 'the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.... ORIGIN Latin, from percipere 'seize, understand''.

Conception: 'ability to imagine or understand'.

Preconception: 'a preconceived idea or prejudice', where prejudice is 'preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or experience'.

And in your case it is Preconception, since obviously you didn't personally experience the history of Cyprus (so it is not a Perception) and you base some of your ideas on things that are not supported by historical or scientific facts but by your own ideological beliefs.

You might want to call it a conception rather than a perception, but it's still not a preconception; it may not be based upon experience, but it is based upon reason and evidence.

The most reliable and scientific sources do not support your conclusion though.

Take the three biggest Greek islands: Cyprus Crete and Rhodes. Can you tell me why Crete and Rhodes are Greek and should be part of the Greek Republic, while Cyprus is not and should not be allowed to be part of the Greek Republic even if this is was the desire of the vast majority of Cypriots themselves?

The people you perceive as English are a mix of people-who-never-had-an-ethnic-identity (European hunter-gatherers and farmers who lived on or passed through in the distant past) and people-who-are-given-an-ethnic-identity (Romans, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, et al). During the Roman period, communities from Africa and the Middle East were introduced into the mix. (There were probably individuals from lots of places before and after that, but we can only talk about the recorded ones we know arrived.) "The Vikings" - the Norse communities - were themselves mixed, as they lived and worked from North America to Asia. The Normans - the "North Men" - were Norse mixed with people-in-what-is-now-northern-France; and they became the even more mixed Anglo-Normans after they arrived on the Rainy Isles. The Anglo-Saxons' name is a mixture of two.

It is your country, you decide. I have no problem. Be whatever you want to be and call your country whatever you want to call it.

That wasn't the point. You said,

I am still waiting for an example of another ethnicity which is created by people who speak different languages and have different religions! Do you have any such example?

I had. I gave it. That was it.

I didn't realize you were answering that question. The vast majority of English are Christian and speak English. Those who don't are consider as parts of ethnic minorities. You know your own country better of course (as I know mine better), but I don't think I am wrong in this, am I?

You're not wrong, but it's more complicated.

Only 57% of Britons consider themselves Christian, which is more than 50%, and so a majority, but that includes the more religious populations of Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as all of the people who consider themselves "culturally Christian". I know an English priest who is atheist! And even most of the practising Christians wouldn't say it was an essential part of Englishness. So, Christianity isn't really part of the definition of Englishness.

Not speaking English would be an obvious sign that someone was an ethnic minority, but effectively all minority Britons can speak English, too; so speaking English isn't part of the definition of Englishness either. Englishness is basically "not being not English". It is a negative identity. Of course, English nationalists would insist that England was a white, Christian nation, but they're the kind of people who go clubbing in Agia Napa for a holiday.

The link you gave shows Christians as 67% not 57%.

Yeah, sorry. My screen's tiny; I should have zoomed in to check before I wrote.

But what you are saying is really beyond the point. My initial question was: "I am still waiting for an example of another ethnicity which is created by people who speak different languages and have different religions!". So in the UK, a person who is Muslim and doesn't speak the language of the Majority, does he not belong in an ethnic minority? Could you say that the ethnicity of that person is the same as the ethnicity of an English speaking white Christian?

Well, I did say that they would be an ethnic minority. But there are lots of Europeans who have settled in England and learned English, and their children are considered English.

So they were assimilated. But if they had not assimilate then wouldn't they remain a separate ethnicity?

The only reason a lot of ethnic minorities are categorised as ethnic minorities is because they have darker skin, or because their names tell their family background (like Irish O'Whatevers), so English nationalists treat them differently. (So, because they are categorised by others as a group, and because they are treated by others as a group, they feel like a group, then they identify with each other as a group, and act more like a group.)

You can be English and Muslim. There are English Muslims. There are other non-Christian English (but, admittedly, fewer than I thought! ). Christian English do not say than non-Christians are non-English. Religion is irrelevant (in England).

Many people want to maintain their separate ethnicity. So I don't agree with you on this point.

The conflict with the TCs started when the TCs attacked us in 1958 on 7th of June. Here is a British video for that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4EpCV2ysk

I have already posted about the Turkish Cypriots' false flag operations, including the 7th June 1958 bombing.

we responded to the attacks of TCs when they joined the Colonialists and attacked us?

After the explosion of violence, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lennox-Boyd reported that,

The information which the Governor had lately been receiving showed it was part of E.O.K.A.'s plan to attack the Turkish Cypriot community as such and not merely by way of reprisals for acts of communal violence, and that E.O.K.A. was on the point of commencing widespread sabotage and attacks on the security forces.
The Turkish Cypriots, at the same time, have been threatening further attacks on the Greeks, and the Turkish leaflets were inciting more communal violence and also violence against the Government.

So, if the Turkish Cypriot nationalist extremists hadn't caused the outbreak of violence, the Greek Cypriot nationalist extremists would have caused it instead. Both sets of nationalist extremists and the British colonial government share responsibility.

So are you now going to take the imaginary scenarios of Boyd as a fact? What did you expect him to say? To admit that the British gave incentives to the TCs in order to attack us, as part of their divide and rule policy?

Not only what he claims is nothing more than an imaginary scenario, but it is totally unreasonable as well. Why would EOKA for absolutely no reason decide to attack the TCs and open a second front? To gain what?

The British would gain be changing the nature of conflict in Cyprus from a liberation struggle against them, to an inter-communal conflict. The TCs would gain by receiving the gains that the British promised to them for their collaboration (soon granted to them with the unfair 1960 agreements which were forced on the Cypriot people). But what would EOKA and GCs gain from opening a second front?

EOKA did not respond after the events of the 7th of July, but after the events of the 12th of July it became evident that the TCs decided to start the conflict and that there was no way to avoid it.

Earlier you said that you base your arguments on evidence and reason. This is a good example of how weak your "evidence" is, and how you apply no reasoning whatsoever. I am not saying that you do this always, but sometimes those preconceptions do not allow you to see clearly.

One preconception that became apparent is that you see EOKA as the "evil nationalists" and you are ready to accept every accusation against it, no matter how baseless and unreasonable. EOKA is not just Grivas. EOKA was a lot of other idealist fighters who fought for the liberation of Cyprus from foreign rule, such as Gregoris Afxentiou. Most importantly the cause of EOKA was supported by the vast majority of the Cypriot people, even most communists.

I couldn't care less whether Britain splits up or not. Most English people don't care. Some Scots and Welsh want independence (but not that many, and only when their economy is doing well; when the crisis started, they got a lot quieter... So much for it being a matter of principle!). I'm not trying to split anything up, or to keep anything together. I simply don't care. I care that people in a country can go to school, see a doctor, make a life for themselves; I don't care in which country they do those things, or, indeed, in which country they do not do those things.

So maybe we should have all stayed subjects your empire and be happy with it?

So, because I don't care whether Scotland becomes independent of England, or whether it stays in a unified state with it... I think Cyprus should have stayed under colonial rule...? No.

The Republic of Cyprus was overthrown in a coup by Greek Cypriot nationalist extremists and Greek imperialists. Their coup caused the Turkish invasion. The British crime was not intervening to end the coup, not protecting the Cypriots' from their own nationalists and from other foreign imperialists...

Many coups happened in Turkey as well. The coup was no reason for a foreign invasion, ethnic cleansing and occupation. Just a lame excuse that the Turks gave to put into action the plan they had since the 50s.

And by saying that Britain's crime was not protecting Cypriots' from both Cypriot nationalists and foreign imperialists, I was justifying the Turkish occupation...? No.

Just like with the TCs, these Greek and GC fascists were only a small minority, and without foreign support they wouldn't be able to cause any serious problem.

Yes, but their foreign support was from Greece and the U.S., as TMT's support was mostly from Turkey and the U.S. And the British support to TMT was from the secret services, not from the British army. It's all Operation Gladio bullshit.

OK, but you should remember that Greece during that time was under a CIA supported military Junta.

[Piratis]

Both Cypriot communities forget parts of the history. In 1956 and 1957, EOKA killed quite a few Turkish Cypriots (because they worked for the colonial administration). Unsurprisingly, the Turkish Cypriots began to take this personally. And, incidentally, when EOKA began, they bombed the house of a Turkish Cypriot who worked for the colonial administration, but the Turkish Cypriots didn't respond. But after lots of EOKA murders of Turkish Cypriots, the Turkish Cypriots began to feel like they were targets of EOKA, just like the British. Then they began to accept TMT.

Those people chose to join the Colonialists in order to fight EOKA. EOKA targeted the British colonialists, and that includes those who helped them. They targeted a lot of Greek Cypriots as well for the same reason. What does that mean? That the GC community was a target of EOKA?

And don't worry, we don't forget anything. In fact I have a video for that as well. Note how Dektash admits that they joined the colonialists to fight against EOKA. So it was their choice to join the British and attack us, and not our choice to attack them. We had no reason to attack TCs as a community, and nothing to gain from doing so.



And since we are at it, here is your friend Boyd, going to Ankara and proposing partition of Cyprus, all this before any inter-communal conflict started:

[insan]

And since we are at it, here is your friend Boyd, going to Ankara and proposing partition of Cyprus, all this before any inter-communal conflict started:

Dear Piratis, u r confusing the inter-communal conflict with inter-communal armed struggle.

When AKEL adopted the policy of union with Greece (Enosis) at its second congress at the beginning of 1943, there started some problems for the Turkish Cypriots in their cooperation with the Greek Cypriots, both in the trade union movement and in the political activities We observe here for the first time a division of the working class movement on the ethnic basis.

The First Turkish Cypriot Trade Union was formed on 27 December 1942 under the name "Nicosia Turkish Carpenters' Union" with the departure of 12 Turkish Cypriot carpenters from the common Trade Union under the leadership of Niyazi Dagli. The propaganda for Enosis was again the reason why the Turkish Cypriot agricultural workers left the newly formed Pan Cyprian Agrarian Union in 1943. The pro-Enosis leanings of the PEK prevented the further participation of the Turkish Cypriots. On 1 May 1943, the Turkish Cypriot villagers formed their own "Turkish Cypriot Union of Farmers".

The division of the working class movement on ethnic basis deepened when on 13 August 1944, hundreds of Turkish Cypriot workers left the PEO building in order to establish new Turkish Cypriot trade unions. In 1945, 843 Turkish Cypriot workers were organized in the separate Turkish Cypriot trade unions, under the name "Turkish Cypriot Union of Workers".

D.A.Alkan, who was Dervish Ali Kavazoglu's pseudonym, wrote the following in his article titled "Why the Turkish Workers' Union separated from the Greek-Cypriots?" on 13 June 1944 (No.429) of the “Halkin Sesi” newspaper. He was answering the article of Mr.Yakovides, the District Secretary of the Nicosia Workers Union, published in “Anexartitos” newspaper, dated 28 May 1944:


"(...) You decorated your union's building on 25th March with your own flags and made various speeches, but you never let us raise the Turkish flag on our national days and we did not say any word about the celebration of our national days. The worst of it, you did not give us the opportunity to listen to Ankara radio during the greatest sports bairam. (...) Your secretary-general Mr.Ziartides sent a pompous telegram to the British Prime Minister for the union of Cyprus with Greece. Although hundreds of Turkish and Armenians were members of your Union, you shouted in some of the general meetings "Brothers! Because we are Greeks, we have to continue our struggle and organize ourselves, so that at the end of the war, we could develop our nation." If you do not make discrimination between the racial and religious differences, why is there not a single Turk in the district board of the Union which is recognized by the government (...)."

I quote another passage from the open letter of Nicosia secretary of the Turkish Cypriot TU, Mehmet Niyazi, to the Nicosia District Workers Union, published on 22 June 1944 in Halkin Sesi:


"How many Turkish placards were among the hundreds of the Greek ones during the celebrations of 1 May 1943? None were present. During the meeting where the decision was taken for the general strike in 1943, no one spoke Turkish and suddenly when this was told to you after the Greek Cypriot workers dispersed, you wanted to keep the workers under the rain... Did you try to employ Turkish Cypriot workers at least according to the population quota? Was there any research that the wages of the Turkish Cypriot would be equal or near to the Greek Cypriot workers? In short, did you care for the rights of the Turks? No! No! No!"


The Turkish Cypriot newspaper “Yanki”, on its issue of 26 February 1945 No.9, published an article under the title "Greek Cypriot parties and us". It was referring to another article published in the journal of the Limassol Municipality under the title "The position of the Turks". Here are some excerpts: "Although the Limassol Municipality accepted the fact that we don't support Enosis, they want to see efforts for our future participation at this cause... We believe in the true friendship between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot... But we see with sorrow that the love we see from the Greek Cypriot friends is not more than a political respect. Because they still insist not to give the post of second presidency in the municipalities to us and they neglect the Turkish language in municipal matters..."


In another excerpt from the letter of the "Turkish Labor Union" sent to the British Secretary of the Ministry of the Colonies, published in “Yanki”, dated 6 May 1945, was saying this:


"Don't allow the oppression of the Turkish Cypriot civil servants or workers under the Greek Cypriots, so that they would develop and have success... The street labels which are put on the walls of every street should be written also in Turkish... Every document to be sent from the colonial offices to any Turk should be written in Turkish, not in Greek or English... Besides 1st May, the Turkish national days should be accepted and celebrated officially. The Turkish Cypriots and their schools should be called not as Islamic, but as Turkish."


In October 1947, the first Turkish Cypriot left wing publication was issued under the name of "Iscinin Yolu SASMAZ" (which means in English, "the path of the worker does not deviate"). But this monthly journal stopped its publication after the second issue, with the pretext that the contents were "too ideological".

After almost 50 years, the prediction of the AKEL Turkish Branch has proven right and Cyprus, has been de-facto partitioned. Unfortunately after 1974, AKEL, which is supposed to be the party of the whole working people of Cyprus, decided to close its so-called "Minorities Department".

There is lot more to read... just follow the link and cheers

http://www.virtualict.com/~erpicorg/ima ... Cyprus.doc
[/quote] [quote]

[Piratis]

Dear Piratis, u r confusing the inter-communal conflict with inter-communal armed struggle.

When we refer to "inter-communal conflict" we always mean the "armed struggle". Nobody said we didn't have differences before that, but those were not a conflict.

You went back to 1942 but you could go even further back. When GCs were paying double the taxes than TCs, for example

Beyond that, the only thing that your posts shows is that union with Greece was supported by the vast majority of the Cypriot people, including the communist friends of samarkeolog. Because samarkeolog seems to have the misconception that union with Greece was an idea invented by extremists in the 50s, and not the genuine desire that the Cypriot people had since the Greek Revolution of 1821.

[insan]

Dear Piratis, u r confusing the inter-communal conflict with inter-communal armed struggle.

Nobody said we didn't have differences before that, but those were not a conflict.

Sorry, Piratis

Read carefully plz. If those events didn't clearly indicate a conflict between 2 communities ,I'll pray to God to save all humanity from ur rule.

[Piratis]

Dear Piratis, u r confusing the inter-communal conflict with inter-communal armed struggle.

Nobody said we didn't have differences before that, but those were not a conflict.

Sorry, Piratis

Read carefully plz. If those events didn't clearly indicate a conflict between 2 communities ,I'll pray to God to save all humanity from ur rule.

Insan, we live together on this island for about 438 years. If we are going to include the 1940s as years of conflict, then the conclusion would be that we didn't have a day of peace between us during those 438 years.

1940s were one of the decades that we had the least problems between us when compared with most of the rest 43 decades.

[samarkeolog]

Well, I did say that they would be an ethnic minority. But there are lots of Europeans who have settled in England and learned English, and their children are considered English.

So they were assimilated. But if they had not assimilate then wouldn't they remain a separate ethnicity?

Yes, if they hadn't been assimilated, they would have remained separate... but they were assimilated, and they didn't remain separate.

The only reason a lot of ethnic minorities are categorised as ethnic minorities is because they have darker skin, or because their names tell their family background (like Irish O'Whatevers), so English nationalists treat them differently. (So, because they are categorised by others as a group, and because they are treated by others as a group, they feel like a group, then they identify with each other as a group, and act more like a group.)

You can be English and Muslim. There are English Muslims. There are other non-Christian English (but, admittedly, fewer than I thought! ). Christian English do not say than non-Christians are non-English. Religion is irrelevant (in England).

Many people want to maintain their separate ethnicity. So I don't agree with you on this point.

But some people don't want to maintain their separate ethnicity, and some people don't. (More exactly, some don't care whether they do or not, and sometimes it disappears.) Which part are you disagreeing with - that nationalism increases communities' sense of their ethnic identities, or that Christianity is irrelevant to English ethnicity, or that some people don't care about their ethnic identity?

The conflict with the TCs started when the TCs attacked us in 1958 on 7th of June. Here is a British video for that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4EpCV2ysk

I have already posted about the Turkish Cypriots' false flag operations, including the 7th June 1958 bombing.

we responded to the attacks of TCs when they joined the Colonialists and attacked us?

After the explosion of violence, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lennox-Boyd reported that,

The information which the Governor had lately been receiving showed it was part of E.O.K.A.'s plan to attack the Turkish Cypriot community as such and not merely by way of reprisals for acts of communal violence, and that E.O.K.A. was on the point of commencing widespread sabotage and attacks on the security forces.
The Turkish Cypriots, at the same time, have been threatening further attacks on the Greeks, and the Turkish leaflets were inciting more communal violence and also violence against the Government.

So, if the Turkish Cypriot nationalist extremists hadn't caused the outbreak of violence, the Greek Cypriot nationalist extremists would have caused it instead. Both sets of nationalist extremists and the British colonial government share responsibility.

So are you now going to take the imaginary scenarios of Boyd as a fact? What did you expect him to say? To admit that the British gave incentives to the TCs in order to attack us, as part of their divide and rule policy?

Not only what he claims is nothing more than an imaginary scenario, but it is totally unreasonable as well. Why would EOKA for absolutely no reason decide to attack the TCs and open a second front? To gain what?

To get total control of "their" island, rather than sharing it with people it considered foreigners; to get rid of people they thought were an internal enemy; to get rid of Turkey's excuse to invade? Who knows? Why did they kill left-wing Greek Cypriots?

Greek Cypriot nationalist extremists had the same ideas in 1958 that they had in 1963. Former UN peacekeeper Richard Patrick stated that,

As a result, elements of the Greek-Cypriot police and a number of armed Greek-Cypriot irregulars were attempting to goad TMT into action in December 1963. Had the incident of 21 December not occurred, there can be no doubt that a similar Incident if would have been precipitated by Christmas.

Was he fantasising too? Was this Canadian trying to protect his empire's dominion? EOKA wanted to destroy the Turkish Cypriot community's ability to resist enosis, first when they were cooperating with the British, making colonial rule easier, then when they were refusing to cooperate with the Greek Cypriot attempts to make enosis possible.

The British would gain be changing the nature of conflict in Cyprus from a liberation struggle against them, to an inter-communal conflict. The TCs would gain by receiving the gains that the British promised to them for their collaboration (soon granted to them with the unfair 1960 agreements which were forced on the Cypriot people). But what would EOKA and GCs gain from opening a second front?

EOKA did not respond after the events of the 7th of July, but after the events of the 12th of July it became evident that the TCs decided to start the conflict and that there was no way to avoid it.

Earlier you said that you base your arguments on evidence and reason. This is a good example of how weak your "evidence" is, and how you apply no reasoning whatsoever. I am not saying that you do this always, but sometimes those preconceptions do not allow you to see clearly.

One preconception that became apparent is that you see EOKA as the "evil nationalists" and you are ready to accept every accusation against it, no matter how baseless and unreasonable.

Maybe I didn't have evidence for that claim because I wasn't making that claim. Even when I say, again, again, again, that TMT caused the 7th June 1958 incident, you complain that I'm blaming EOKA. If I said it was a sunny day would you complain that I was grumbling about the weather? I'm not saying EOKA was worse. I'm saying it wasn't better. Both EOKA and TMT were terrible.

EOKA is not just Grivas. EOKA was a lot of other idealist fighters who fought for the liberation of Cyprus from foreign rule, such as Gregoris Afxentiou. Most importantly the cause of EOKA was supported by the vast majority of the Cypriot people, even most communists.

It's a shame that 'EOKA had published a "Black Bible" on communist treason in Cyprus.... consisting of 74 pages.... Colonel Grivas, the leader of EOKA, claims in the "Black Bible" that the Cypriot Communist Party (AKEL) has been working closely with the British government against EOKA and has tried to sabotage the struggle of the Cypriot people.' A shame that 'EOKA also brutally terrorised or killed left-wing Greek Cypriots suspected of not supporting fervently enough the national cause or the terror against their Turkish fellow citizens'.

Just like with the TCs, these Greek and GC fascists were only a small minority, and without foreign support they wouldn't be able to cause any serious problem.

Yes, but their foreign support was from Greece and the U.S., as TMT's support was mostly from Turkey and the U.S. And the British support to TMT was from the secret services, not from the British army. It's all Operation Gladio bullshit.

OK, but you should remember that Greece during that time was under a CIA supported military Junta.

Yes! I'm not blaming Greeks. But I'm not blaming Turks either. I'm blaming the nationalist extremists and foreign imperialists who destroyed the country.

[samarkeolog]

Both Cypriot communities forget parts of the history. In 1956 and 1957, EOKA killed quite a few Turkish Cypriots (because they worked for the colonial administration). Unsurprisingly, the Turkish Cypriots began to take this personally. And, incidentally, when EOKA began, they bombed the house of a Turkish Cypriot who worked for the colonial administration, but the Turkish Cypriots didn't respond. But after lots of EOKA murders of Turkish Cypriots, the Turkish Cypriots began to feel like they were targets of EOKA, just like the British. Then they began to accept TMT.

Those people chose to join the Colonialists in order to fight EOKA. EOKA targeted the British colonialists, and that includes those who helped them. They targeted a lot of Greek Cypriots as well for the same reason. What does that mean? That the GC community was a target of EOKA?

No, but the Greek Cypriot left-wing community was.

And don't worry, we don't forget anything.

So you remembered it, but ignored it? Look, EOKA couldn't repeatedly kill Turkish Cypriots over two years and then be surprised when TMT fought back. You can't say, "as long as you let us do whatever we want, we won't kill you. And if you let us do whatever we want, but get a job in the police, preventing everything from theft to murder, we'll still kill you. But otherwise, please, feel free.'

In fact I have a video for that as well. Note how Dektash admits that they joined the colonialists to fight against EOKA. So it was their choice to join the British and attack us, and not our choice to attack them. We had no reason to attack TCs as a community, and nothing to gain from doing so.



And since we are at it, here is your friend Boyd, going to Ankara and proposing partition of Cyprus, all this before any inter-communal conflict started:

Well, as I'm an anti-imperialist, the Secretary of State for the Colonies was hardly my natural ally, was he? I'm against partition, too, so, it was hardly surprising he was for it, was it? But that doesn't mean his statement was untrue. See the logic and tactics the peacekeeper credited Greek Cypriot nationalist extremists with.

[Piratis]

Well, I did say that they would be an ethnic minority. But there are lots of Europeans who have settled in England and learned English, and their children are considered English.

So they were assimilated. But if they had not assimilate then wouldn't they remain a separate ethnicity?

Yes, if they hadn't been assimilated, they would have remained separate... but they were assimilated, and they didn't remain separate.

The only reason a lot of ethnic minorities are categorised as ethnic minorities is because they have darker skin, or because their names tell their family background (like Irish O'Whatevers), so English nationalists treat them differently. (So, because they are categorised by others as a group, and because they are treated by others as a group, they feel like a group, then they identify with each other as a group, and act more like a group.)

You can be English and Muslim. There are English Muslims. There are other non-Christian English (but, admittedly, fewer than I thought! ). Christian English do not say than non-Christians are non-English. Religion is irrelevant (in England).

Many people want to maintain their separate ethnicity. So I don't agree with you on this point.

But some people don't want to maintain their separate ethnicity, and some people don't. (More exactly, some don't care whether they do or not, and sometimes it disappears.) Which part are you disagreeing with - that nationalism increases communities' sense of their ethnic identities, or that Christianity is irrelevant to English ethnicity, or that some people don't care about their ethnic identity?

What I am saying is clear: A person with language X and religion Z can not be of the same Ethnicity as as a person with language Y and religion N. Not in Cyprus, not anywhere. (unless one of the two assimilates into the other)

The conflict with the TCs started when the TCs attacked us in 1958 on 7th of June. Here is a British video for that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4EpCV2ysk

I have already posted about the Turkish Cypriots' false flag operations, including the 7th June 1958 bombing.

we responded to the attacks of TCs when they joined the Colonialists and attacked us?

After the explosion of violence, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lennox-Boyd reported that,

The information which the Governor had lately been receiving showed it was part of E.O.K.A.'s plan to attack the Turkish Cypriot community as such and not merely by way of reprisals for acts of communal violence, and that E.O.K.A. was on the point of commencing widespread sabotage and attacks on the security forces.
The Turkish Cypriots, at the same time, have been threatening further attacks on the Greeks, and the Turkish leaflets were inciting more communal violence and also violence against the Government.

So, if the Turkish Cypriot nationalist extremists hadn't caused the outbreak of violence, the Greek Cypriot nationalist extremists would have caused it instead. Both sets of nationalist extremists and the British colonial government share responsibility.

So are you now going to take the imaginary scenarios of Boyd as a fact? What did you expect him to say? To admit that the British gave incentives to the TCs in order to attack us, as part of their divide and rule policy?

Not only what he claims is nothing more than an imaginary scenario, but it is totally unreasonable as well. Why would EOKA for absolutely no reason decide to attack the TCs and open a second front? To gain what?

To get total control of "their" island, rather than sharing it with people it considered foreigners; to get rid of people they thought were an internal enemy; to get rid of Turkey's excuse to invade? Who knows? Why did they kill left-wing Greek Cypriots?

Greek Cypriot nationalist extremists had the same ideas in 1958 that they had in 1963. Former UN peacekeeper Richard Patrick stated that,

As a result, elements of the Greek-Cypriot police and a number of armed Greek-Cypriot irregulars were attempting to goad TMT into action in December 1963. Had the incident of 21 December not occurred, there can be no doubt that a similar Incident if would have been precipitated by Christmas.

Was he fantasising too? Was this Canadian trying to protect his empire's dominion? EOKA wanted to destroy the Turkish Cypriot community's ability to resist enosis, first when they were cooperating with the British, making colonial rule easier, then when they were refusing to cooperate with the Greek Cypriot attempts to make enosis possible.

Historical fact is that it is the TCs who joined the Colonialists and them who started the intercommunal conflicts in 1958. Beyond that if you want to believe the imaginary theories of Boyd, or even create some more of your own, go ahead. I don't care about your ridiculous theories, I care about the facts.

About 1963:

1) there was no EOKA in 1963
2) the conflict was already going since 1958. Maybe the Turks thought that their collaboration with the British was successful and lead them to a final victory on our expense, but we had not surrendered our rights as they believed.

The British would gain be changing the nature of conflict in Cyprus from a liberation struggle against them, to an inter-communal conflict. The TCs would gain by receiving the gains that the British promised to them for their collaboration (soon granted to them with the unfair 1960 agreements which were forced on the Cypriot people). But what would EOKA and GCs gain from opening a second front?

EOKA did not respond after the events of the 7th of July, but after the events of the 12th of July it became evident that the TCs decided to start the conflict and that there was no way to avoid it.

Earlier you said that you base your arguments on evidence and reason. This is a good example of how weak your "evidence" is, and how you apply no reasoning whatsoever. I am not saying that you do this always, but sometimes those preconceptions do not allow you to see clearly.

One preconception that became apparent is that you see EOKA as the "evil nationalists" and you are ready to accept every accusation against it, no matter how baseless and unreasonable.

Maybe I didn't have evidence for that claim because I wasn't making that claim. Even when I say, again, again, again, that TMT caused the 7th June 1958 incident, you complain that I'm blaming EOKA. If I said it was a sunny day would you complain that I was grumbling about the weather? I'm not saying EOKA was worse. I'm saying it wasn't better. Both EOKA and TMT were terrible.

EOKA is not just Grivas. EOKA was a lot of other idealist fighters who fought for the liberation of Cyprus from foreign rule, such as Gregoris Afxentiou. Most importantly the cause of EOKA was supported by the vast majority of the Cypriot people, even most communists.

It's a shame that 'EOKA had published a "Black Bible" on communist treason in Cyprus.... consisting of 74 pages.... Colonel Grivas, the leader of EOKA, claims in the "Black Bible" that the Cypriot Communist Party (AKEL) has been working closely with the British government against EOKA and has tried to sabotage the struggle of the Cypriot people.' A shame that 'EOKA also brutally terrorised or killed left-wing Greek Cypriots suspected of not supporting fervently enough the national cause or the terror against their Turkish fellow citizens'.

Just like with the TCs, these Greek and GC fascists were only a small minority, and without foreign support they wouldn't be able to cause any serious problem.

Yes, but their foreign support was from Greece and the U.S., as TMT's support was mostly from Turkey and the U.S. And the British support to TMT was from the secret services, not from the British army. It's all Operation Gladio bullshit.

OK, but you should remember that Greece during that time was under a CIA supported military Junta.

Yes! I'm not blaming Greeks. But I'm not blaming Turks either. I'm blaming the nationalist extremists and foreign imperialists who destroyed the country.

[/quote]

So are you labeling almost every Cypriot a "nationalist extremist" because we wanted our freedom and self-determination and we fought for it ?

Maybe there were some Left-Right "inter-GC conflict" going on at the same time, but the vast majority of people, left and enter and right, wanted self-determination and union with Greece.

You coming to label our liberation struggle as "nationalist extremism" just goes to prove that you are totally clueless about that period of our history.

Here are some parts from the article that insan posted earlier:

Mr.Ezekias Papaioannou was elected as the new secretary-general of the AKEL at its 6th Congress in August 1949. His slogan was "Enosis and only Enosis" and he had the support of Nicos Zahariades, leader of the Communist Party of Greece.

“Neos Cosmos”, the illegal organ of the Communist Party of Greece wrote in its issue of November 1951 that the Enosis slogan permitted the strongest anti-imperialist mobilization under the then existing conditions.

AKEL, too, published the first Turkish language statement of the "Turkish Branch of the Party" in October 1954 which was widely distributed up to Galatia village in Karpasia. This first historical statement included the well-known Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet's message to the Turkish Cypriots, who asked them to cooperate with their Greek Cypriot brothers in their struggle for peace and freedom in Cyprus which should stop being a colony and a military base, serving for imperialism.

After the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot workers marched together on the 1 May 1958 and stated their decisiveness to wage a common struggle against imperialism and colonialism, the TMT (Turkish Resistance Organization) published a statement and asked the resignation of the Turkish Cypriot workers from the Greek Cypriot trade-union PEO and warned those who collaborate with the Greek Cypriots that they would be punished. As a result, Turkish Cypriot newspapers of those days were full of resignations from PEO. And the first terror action started on 22 May 1958 with the murder attempt to Ahmet Sadi, the head of the Turkish section of PEO. Later on 24 May, Fazil Onder, the editor of the "Inkilapci" newspaper was killed. Other progressive Turkish Cypriots were either killed or wounded in Nicosia and Limassol.