Cyprus-Forum.com

[paliometoxo]

What would you do if you could turn back the clock to 1960 and you were the President of Cyprus?

I would not signed the Zurich agreement and I would insisted on Greek Cypriots full rights in Cyprus

england forced makarios to sign it.. well so i saw on a english porgram they where saying they forced him to... how true that is ..?

[denizaksulu]

What would you do if you could turn back the clock to 1960 and you were the President of Cyprus?

I would not signed the Zurich agreement and I would insisted on Greek Cypriots full rights in Cyprus

england forced makarios to sign it.. well so i saw on a english porgram they where saying they forced him to... how true that is ..?

My understanding is that they 'black mailed' him.

[Oracle]

I would not have included ex-EOKA members in my cabinet,

Well there you have it!

They were ex-EOKA members with the emphasis on "ex" ....

nor should the 'Turkish Community' have included TMT members either.

And that's the problem with the TMT ... once TMT, always TMT!

[The Cypriot]

There you go again you Greek speaking, democracy seeking, 'Christian' Cypriot!

I'm sorry you disapprove of me exercising my freedom of thought and expression.

I don't think you are being honest now as you did tell bill it was to send the "right signals"

Is this the best you can do, to catch me out, to prove I'm dishonest? And what do you hope to achieve by doing so?

He did choose his "call" and he became an Archbishop.

Then the majority of the Cypriot people chose him as a leader, despite being a priest ... So, where was the controversy?

If you can't see the hypothetical point I'm trying to make, even now, looking back, with 20:20 hindsight (which is after all the purpose of this thread) you have an inpregnable blind spot.

Makarios enacted his leadership without dispensing with his priesthood and his dignity ... no matter who may have been "impressed" if he had.

I believe you're implying, rather crudely, that I am somehow dispensing with my dignity and that I do things to "impress" people because I am unequivocal about my Cypriot identity, today, in 2009.

It's unbecoming of you as well as incredibly annoying to me.

[paliometoxo]

What would you do if you could turn back the clock to 1960 and you were the President of Cyprus?

I would not signed the Zurich agreement and I would insisted on Greek Cypriots full rights in Cyprus

england forced makarios to sign it.. well so i saw on a english porgram they where saying they forced him to... how true that is ..?

My understanding is that they 'black mailed' him.

yes blackmail is more right..

but how true was that... they also claimed makarios liked little boys..

[kurupetos]

What would you do if you could turn back the clock to 1960 and you were the President of Cyprus?

I would not signed the Zurich agreement and I would insisted on Greek Cypriots full rights in Cyprus

He tried to do that initially, but Karamanlis, the greek prime minister, threatened him that Greece would abandon Cyprus from any future help.

Therefore, it was not a matter of choice.

[Tim Drayton]

A very good question ... and one which I am unable to answer.

I can't help feeling that the President's hands were so tied by the 1959/1960 agreements that it would have been impossible to do anything differently.

[denizaksulu]

I would not have included ex-EOKA members in my cabinet,

Well there you have it!

They were ex-EOKA members with the emphasis on "ex" ....

nor should the 'Turkish Community' have included TMT members either.

And that's the problem with the TMT ... once TMT, always TMT!

OK. I should have said EX-TMT. Does that sound better?

[denizaksulu]

What would you do if you could turn back the clock to 1960 and you were the President of Cyprus?

I would not signed the Zurich agreement and I would insisted on Greek Cypriots full rights in Cyprus

england forced makarios to sign it.. well so i saw on a english porgram they where saying they forced him to... how true that is ..?

My understanding is that they 'black mailed' him.

yes blackmail is more right..

but how true was that... they also claimed makarios liked little boys..

That was the blackmail, but I did not wish to go there. It could have been idle gossip.

[Piratis]

After the constitution that was imposed on Cypriots by foreigners, and benefited those foreigners and their local collaborators on the expense of the Cypriot people, Makarios was mostly correct in what he did in his effort to bring democracy and equality among Cypriots without racist discriminations and Ottoman style privileges given to a small minority.

Look at the 13 points one by one, and you will see that they do just that. They do not violate the human rights of anybody, just remove some of the Ottoman style privileges which were given to a small minority on the expense of every other Cypriot, privileges which were created in order to keep the Cypriot people divided (a requirement for foreigners keeping bases and troops in Cyprus) and are not given to any other minority in any other country (e.g. the Muslims in the UK or the Kurds in Turkey)

Nobody is unmistakable or perfect, and obviously with a hindsight we can find errors and mistakes in the moves of every person. However in general Makarios was quite correct in his moves after 1960 (he made more serious errors before that), and if it wasn't for the traitors of EOKA-B and the CIA supported coup, then Makarios might have achieved his objective of creating a democratic constitution and Turkey wouldn't have found an excuse to invade and implement their plans of partition, plans they never gave up and they were always trying to find ways to implement starting with the divisive 1960 agreements and continuing with the actions of TMT which never ceased to exist.