Cyprus-Forum.com

[Yiannis]

Older generations of GCs, indeed tend to speak Greek when they speak to other nationals but this is not happening just when talking to TCs. I remember one time my brother brought some American friends of his from college for the summer in Cyprus and when they were introduced to my gmother she started talking to them in greek even though she knew very well they dont know greek.The same thing happened with my mom who eventhough knows english she used to throw some greek words once a while. I think the reason for that is because older people got used to the old days when the socitey was closed to greek speakers and even TC spoke greek. However if u are trying to say that GCs are trying to opress the TCs because they insist in speaking greek then its just ridiculous.
Anyhow in my opinion this doesnt happen in such extend with the younger generations.

[Dhavlos]

"He who dares wins Rodney"

well actually im doing French A-level, and its a quote from a book, so its quite far from what delboy says....a lot more philosophical too!!!!!!!

[cannedmoose]

I believe it's derived from a quote by Herbert Hoover: "Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die".

My favourite anti-war quote:

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
Ernest Hemingway

[suetoniuspaulinus]

Mr brother

Thank you very much indeed

Your first answer begs another question.

Why?

Back in those times for a tc to know greek/english to get a job was not enough because tc were openly refered to as 'dogs' and many other unmentionable names, all the jobs went to gc and only jobs no gc wanted went to tc.

Many gc openly accept and acknowledge that tc were treated as 5 class citizens and were constantly verbally abused and mistreated, even though this happened and was common practice for many gc there were also just as many decent gc who never accepted this type of behaviour but they were usually ridiculed for treating tc as human beings.

Mr brother

Thank you very much for your candid and I believe honest answer

I can confirm that there were some GC's who were kind to TC's . My father for instance was apprenticed to a GC carpenter, at the age of 7. He received . if memory serves me correctly something like five Mils a week. Approx 2.5 Pence sterling. This was not a small amount in those days and helped my father's mother to feed her family. My father was also the first to admit that he was not initially a good apprentice but the GC kept him on ( knowing the family needed every penny) and indeed my father went on to become a Master Cabinet Maker.

[Dhavlos]

I believe it's derived from a quote by Herbert Hoover: "Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die".

My favourite anti-war quote:

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
Ernest Hemingway

the quote was from a book called 'Boule de Suif' by Maupassant, but the ideas are generally the same

[suetoniuspaulinus]

Mr cannedmoose

I'm hoping that you will be able to clarify something for me.

Is it possible that some members of this Forum believe their "Greekness" stems from the early Hellenic colonisers of Cyprus?

In your opinion can there be any connectioin between a modern day Greek, either from Greece or Cyprus, who has a remote connection to say Alexander the Great?

I admit to being confused since I have been repeatedly told that Cyprus has never been a Greek island

[gabaston]

suet n co

yup i would like to second that - there are many many good hearted gc's.

it was a small minority, probably profiteers who started this mess, and then the nationalist dream just took over.

in the event of re-unification it is not the vast majority of good gc's which i fear but that one per cent with the biggest mouths, and ottoman memories.

[Main_Source]

[Main_Source]

Is it possible that some members of this Forum believe their "Greekness" stems from the early Hellenic colonisers of Cyprus?

In your opinion can there be any connectioin between a modern day Greek, either from Greece or Cyprus, who has a remote connection to say Alexander the Great?

I admit to being confused since I have been repeatedly told that Cyprus has never been a Greek island

Listen it's simple. at around 2,000 BC, a bunch of Greeks from Mycanae settled and colonised around the whole of Cyprus (which already had a small indigenous colony on it somewhere around Larnaca). Subsequently, we (GC) are the decendants of those settlers. Of course the bloodline is probably very different but we are the continuation of Greek culture from the Mycanean colonists.

[cannedmoose]

Mr cannedmoose

I'm hoping that you will be able to clarify something for me.

Is it possible that some members of this Forum believe their "Greekness" stems from the early Hellenic colonisers of Cyprus?

In your opinion can there be any connectioin between a modern day Greek, either from Greece or Cyprus, who has a remote connection to say Alexander the Great?

I admit to being confused since I have been repeatedly told that Cyprus has never been a Greek island

Yes, I believe that some GC members of this forum, and many beyond do have a romantic notion of the pureness of their blood... ironically it was a discussion that I was having with a GC friend on Saturday evening and she attested to being a pure Greek. In ethnic terms, I think any analysis of Cypriots DNA would display a significant mix of origins, including Greek, but I doubt that many would have 'pure Greek' blood. It's like saying that I, as an Englishman, have pure blood dating back to the people who constructed Stonehenge, which is a fallacy as to my knowledge I have a mixture of celtic, scandinavian, germanic and East Mediterranean/North African origins (yes, I may even have Greek, Cypriot or Turkish ancestry).

It's an interesting issue because GC and TCs look at their origins in different ways and, as you write, are taught different perspectives on the origins of Cyprus and its people.

SP, if you'll indulge me, and apologies in advance for its length, I'll quote a section from Rebecca Bryant's book 'Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus' that I've just finished writing a review on for an academic journal. She explains how GC and TC adopt completely different perspectives when considering the history of Cyprus. She explains it far better than I can:

"Turkish Cypriots speak of their history in terms of contingency, and forms of historical proof exist within what I will call here an 'archaeological' discourse, attempting to secure truth by tracing causation. Their Greek Cypriot compatriots, on the other hand, construct an ineluctable history discussed within the framework of what I will call a 'genealogical' discourse in which historical proof is aimed at demonstrating truths that are taken to be self-evident. In genealogical discourse, one traces links between persons and events whose relationship to each other is already presupposed. In archaeological discourse, in contrast, one attempts to construct a causative sequence that will explain events. In the first, one validates the truth; in the second, one uncovers truth.

Moreover, this concern with a purity and continuity that underlies external appearances is reflected in genealogical discourse, by which I mean one that merely attempts to trace links that are already assumed. This is a very prevalent form of 'proof', expressed for instance, in opening remarks given in a 1993 international archaeological symposium by the then minister of education, who stated that:

'The goddess of love emerged from our sea shores, and the depths of our soil had shed light on 3,000 years of Greek history and civilisation because the heart of the island, since the time of the Trojan war, beats along a Greek frequency despite the Laestrygons and the Cyclops encountered in the flux of time'.

In contrast to this genealogical discourse and distinctly ethnic notion of genealogical blood ties, I want to suggest that, despite Turkish Cypriots' uses of blood as a metaphor for historical power, it is blood without genealogy - it is simply blood shed, or an inert historical fact, something that one uncovers archaeologically. As in the Greek Cypriot case, this is perhaps best understood through the ways in which Turkish Cypriots attempt to explain the other community. One old teacher remarked that 'we were never obsesssed, like the Greeks, with some idea of a pure culture'. Rather, he argued, the Greeks have fantastic notions about the nature of descent:

"You see they have this utopia. For instance, this business about the island of Aphrodite. They think that Aphrodite really came out of the sea in Paphos, and then went up to our village and took a bath in the spring near Latchi... Of course this is a myth and so on. But to believe that this island is the island of Aphrodite - Aphrodite's something mythical. Very strange to me anyway - to make it a political thing. Some things which came from the walls of Troy say that some of the men who escaped established some colonies here, but there were no Greeks here. But all these things which we have show that either the culture was connected mainly with Anatolia because it's closer, to Syria and then to Egypt. The Greeks came later, and they never dominated the island as such."

Like the few Turkish Cypriot works that deal directly with the issue of Greek Cypriot culture, the concern here is with heterogeneity, factuality, and mixture. An interesting example of this comes from Necmi Potamyalizade. He continued for over two decades to write long and often unprintable letters to the editors of Morning Post and the Near East in which he used Homer, Herotodus and other ancient sources to undermine Greek Cypriots' claims. These sources, he believed,

"clearly proved that the Greek Christians of Cyprus are not Greek by origin and descent, that their language is not the language of Homer, but 'only a dialect of the ordinary commercial language of the Eastern Mediterranean - Greek - which has gradually superceded the Roman influences', that Cyprus had never been a Hellene island..."