Omer Seyhan wrote:
Turkey's idea of getting a foot hold in Cyprus is through a air / naval base in Karpaz (with a contingent of troops to protect its Southern flanks) and with a small population of its own - settlers. Turkey does not accept Turkish Cypriots as loyal but as Cypriots, so they move their own people in. This is a different issue. We can discuss this if you like in more detail.
Omer,
As far as I observed as aTC like to conduct observations almost abt everything, the first wave of settlers were from laz and Kurdish origin, peasants. Almost all of them had average education and couldn't even talk Turkish, properly. In 5-10 years time all of them absorbed TC culture and way of life. The little kids they brought to Northern Cyprus and their Cyprus born breeds r almost impossible to differenciate from TCs. The second wave of settlers were mostly Arabic origin from Hatay and due to their isolated environment in old Nicosia(inner Walls), they couldn't have much opportunity to get integrated into TC community. They support various TC political parties.
Few political parties founded by a group of settlers could have never passed the required threshold in order to be represented in TRNC assembly. 2 main political parties of TCs have always been UBP and CTP which got abt 65% of the votes.
The "loyalty" of TCs towards Turkey depends on all kinds of mutual relations with Turkish governments. Same goes with the settler origin TCs in TRNC. How satisfactory r the bilateral relations for TCs, that much the TCs happy with Turkey and "loyal" to her. Actually it's not a matter of "loyalty" but it would be far better to describe it as a bilateral cooperation for mutual interests. We owe our existence in Cyprus to those good bilateral realtions with Turkey. I feel forced to underline that we owe our existence in Cyprus not to Turkey but the good bilateral relations and cooperation with Turkey.
There has been many occasions some of our leaders and political parties opposed some of the leaders and political parties of Turkey on some issues. Who was right, who was wrong is discussible and depends on ideological differences but everytime such oppositions happened between them and us, it had been seen and understood that none of the Turkish leaders or political parties act against the will of vast majority of TCs.
A side note; Istrongly believe that(and there's an academic study) the gradual arrival of settlers and their settlement into North is in perfect correlation with the circumstances of Northern Cyprus.
Has the administration of Northern Cyprus been a recognized entity, 10 thousands of TCs wouldn't emigrate and even 10 thousands of TCs who emigrated since the begining of the Brit rule would most probably return to Cyprus.
In the begining of the British rule, TCs constituted 1/3 of population and has the administration of Northern Cyprus been an internationally recognized entity the Ottoman descendent TCs would have constituted 1/3 of the population of present day Northern Cyprus.
GCs backed by Greece and diaspora Greeks presumes that we would surrender their "majority rule" or "osmosis" policy under economic isolations. They r totally mistaken and by insisting on their decades lasted negative political stance towards TCs, they fed the anger, revenge feelings and seperatist feelings to a much greater extend. They still continue with same mentality which I'm sure will end up with totally 2 seperate states.
