Now lets look at your definition first,
Paphitis wrote:A Cypriot is a national of Cyprus, and a true Cypriot is one who has unwavering allegiance to the RoC
Do you think my definition of a 'national' is any different to the Oxford Dictionary?
Now lets look at some quotes from Mak himself. The quotes below are all taken from an interview with a British journalist back in 1964.
How predictable!
Gilbert wrote:Do you think the Greek people of Cyprus still wish Enosis?
Makarios wrote:Certainly, yes. This was always the desire of the people of Cyprus.
It was the democratic desire of the overwhelming majority, and if for the sake of argument the majority of Australians wanted ENOSIS with New Zealand, then no minority has the right to undermine the democratic free will of the nation.
Gilbert wrote:If Enosis does come how do you feel, sir, about not being a member of the Commonwealth?
Irrelevant.
Cyprus should tell the Commonwealth to get stuffed anyway. I have the same feeling about Australia's membership within the Commonwealth.
An irrelevant grouping of nations is just a waste of time.
Makarios wrote:I support the Commonwealth as an institution and as long as Cyprus is not united with Greece, we will continue to be a member of the Commonwealth family. The choice, however, between Enosis and Commonwealth is not a difficult one. I shall feel very happy when Cyprus is united with Greece which is our Motherland.
I think you will find that most Cypriots couldn't care less bout the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth is irrelevant to this discussion.
Gilbert wrote:What is Cyprus’ future?
Makarios wrote:We are aiming at attaining unfettered and unrestricted independence which will allow the people of Cyprus to decide its future in exercising the right of self-determination. And the future we envisage is Enosis with Greece. The solution of our problem would not be difficult had foreign interferences ceased. The Cyprus problem would easily and peacefully be solved between the Greeks and Turks of Cyprus, or through the United Nations and within the framework of its Charter.
As stated above, Cypriots had every right to attain unfettered and unrestricted independence which would allow the people of Cyprus to decide their future in a democratic way. This is the norm in any other other nation, and Cypriots were wrongly denied their rights back then.
Gilbert wrote:Everybody knew that Makarios had cut off a number of Turk-Cypriot villages, trying to starve them out with an economic blockade. We were filming Turkish workers in the fields who were being protected by a contingent of Irish UN personnel when Makarios’s police arrived out of nowhere, checking up on us and the Irish UN. We saw the looks on the faces of the Turks who were obviously terrified and would no doubt have taken off had not the UN presence been there.
Meanwhile when Markarios offered small supplies of food to Turkish villages the people refused to accept food from Greek Cypriots and left it to rot on the outskirts of the village, thereby risking starvation. The word among the correspondents was that no tears would be shed by Makarios should a few Turks starve in the process.
Your link to the above would be appreciated.
The TMT's role in using the enclaves as a means to partition the island is well known. You can read about it here:
This is written in order to counter the many Turkish Myths and propaganda that is propagated by many Neo Partitionists on this forum.
A common propaganda bite used by the Turkish state to legitimize its 1974 invasion of Cyprus is that "The Greek Cypriots then unleashed a campaign of extermination and eviction that killed or wounded thousands and drove a frightening percentage of Turkish Cypriots into besieged enclaves.." (Insight Magazine, "Fences Might Be the Right Thing for Multiethnic Nation of Cyprus", Ahmet Erdengiz, Feb. 7).
And let’s not mention the false claims of genocide which only claimed about 800 TC lives, compared to some 10,000 GC victims from 1958-1974.
And the sole purpose of these besieged enclaves was none other than to facilitate the dream of TAKSIM!
This claim has been refuted by findings of impartial sources such as the UN Secretary General's report No. S/5950, para. 142 which confirms that as a result of the brief but turbulent period of hostilities between Greek and Turkish-Cypriot extremists from December 21, 1963 to June 8, 1964, a total of 43 Greek Cypriots and 232 Turkish Cypriots are missing and presumed dead. Clearly, this was no "campaign of extermination".
Even UN Secretary General's report S/5950, para. 142 refutes the Turkish claims of extermination and genocide.
Why let facts get in the way of a good story when TAKSIM is your sole objective?
Moreover, these deaths were a direct result of Britain's documented policy of arming Turkish separatists and encouraging Greco-Turkish conflict to facilitate its control over Cyprus.
The real culprit of GC and TC victims has been identified..
While extremists of both communities are to blame for intercommunal violence, fuelled by British attempts to prevent this overwhelmingly Greek island-nation from achieving its self-determination, history is clear that Turkish extremists initiated the cycle of violence that claimed victims on both sides.
In June of 1958, a bomb explosion outside the information office of the Turkish Consulate-- later shown to have been planted by Turkish extremists (the "TMT")--set off the first intercommunal clashes on Cyprus. As noted by British author Christopher Hitchens in his highly acclaimed work on Cyprus, Hostage to History, the self-proclaimed president of Cyprus' occupation regime, Rauf Denktash, admitted in a 1984 interview that it was a Turkish Cypriot friend who planted the bomb. As a result, "Turkish Cypriots promptly burned out a neighbouring district of Greek shops and homes, in what was to be the first Greek-Turkish physical confrontation on the island. A curfew was imposed, and Greek guerrillas [were] blamed [by British authorities] for the bomb as they were for everything else."
The fact that the TCs were the first to instigate intercommunal violence against the GCs, as a pre-cursor for TAKSIM is well documented.
Next the British released from jail eight Greek Cypriot EOKA fighters, forcing them to walk through the Turkish village of Guenyeli, where they were quickly set upon and murdered. Thus began two months of violence by extremists on both sides, killing 56 Greeks and 53 Turks. Tellingly, the British arrested 2,000 Greeks, but only 60 Turks.
More British crimes against Cyprus and their very clever policy of instigating further destabilising violence through "Divide and Rule".
In addition to the hostile environment that was created by combatants on both sides, there was a second factor that led to the polarization of both communities: with a view toward partition, the Turks withdrew from predominantly Greek areas and evicted Greeks from areas where Turks were in the majority. In a single week over 600 families, two-thirds of them Greek, left their homes, and many Turks who left Greek areas did so under intense pressure from Turkish separatists.
Turkish Cypriots who favoured compromise or a close relationship between the two ethnic communities were targets of TMT violence. Turks caught smoking Greek cigarettes or visiting Greek shops were beaten, and Turkish gangs forced some Turkish Cypriots to resign from Greek Cypriot trade unions. In Limassol, a Turkish Cypriot owner of a restaurant popular with Greeks was threatened and later murdered by the TMT. Two progressive-thinking, London-educated Turkish barristers who spoke against partition were killed outright by these same Turkish gangs.
Turkish extremists forced several thousand Turkish peasants to abandon their farms and animals and move into an overcrowded Turkish enclave in Nicosia. "Thus the aim of partition, camouflaged by Turkish propaganda as `federation,' was relentlessly pursued regardless of loss of human life and the human misery created. However, this so-called `first phase' of the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey only partly succeeded, since well over half of its brethren refused to obey instructions to abandon their homes for the predetermined enclaves" (The Making of Modern Cyprus, Panteli). On December 23, 1963, Turkish gangs also moved through the Armenian quarter of Nicosia and forced the inhabitants at gunpoint to leave their houses, shops, church, school and clubs to make room for more Turks.
