Cyprus-Forum.com

[YFred]

..

[YFred]

Everything was separate since the time they first came to our island during Ottoman rule, since most Turks never really assimilated with the native Cypriot population.

The Ottomans kept their own settlers separate from the native population, giving to their settlers more rights, while treating the rest of the Cypriots as second category people with no rights.

We have made every attempt to assimilate this minority in a country without Ottoman style racist discriminations and human rights violations. Unfortunately most Turks want to maintain Ottoman style privileges on the expense of the majority of the population and they refuse to accept democracy and human rights.

If it is so difficult for them to assimilate and live in peace with the rest of the Cypriot population, and since they have absolutely no right to steal our lands, the only way for them to be separate from us is to be repatriated to Turkey, something which will solve all the problems they created since they came to our island.

Bullshit on both counts Piratis, pre 1955 we lived together and since when were GC natives to Cyprus. They were settlers like everybody else. So stop the bullshit already.

[Get Real!]

since when were GC natives to Cyprus. They were settlers like everybody else.

So everyone is a Greek settler and the indigenous Cypriots simply vanished like the Cyprus Hippo eh?

[YFred]

since when were GC natives to Cyprus. They were settlers like everybody else.

So everyone is a Greek settler and the indigenous Cypriots simply vanished like the Cyprus Hippo eh?

Yep, the murderous greeks killed them off.
The genocidal maniacs.

[B25]

If I may add a little anecdote re: the Nicosia General Hospital incidents.

Previously I had narrated the events of 21st Dec 1963, where I was staying with relatives in the Kosklu Chiftlik area, immediately behind the Ledra Palace hotel.

In our house were 10 or so families from neighbouring houses. Safety in numbers and all that. How safe? God only knows. It was after we were watching the armed Greeks moving northwards to the Kumsal/ Kyrenia road Police station. They were on the west side of the river.
Anyway, one of the ladies with us (I cannot remember her name) was constantly screaming her head off and crying all the time. Her husband was a Cyprus Goverment veterinary surgeon. We knew him as Dr. Osman. The story of the screaming lady was that her 10 year old son was in the hospital (Nicosia General/old hospital). He was their for some reason (tosils/appendicitis?).
The events of the 'missing' Turkish Cypriots had filtered out and of course this mother was distraught. Her screaming was demoralising to all. I had mentioned on a previous occasion that one of the men in the house was a neurotic Pharmacist. He used up his entire supply of Librium on this wretched mother. There was no contact with the hospital at all. About two weeks after the initial fighting had begun, there was a ceasefire.
Unexpectedly an English landrover pulled up and gave the parents the news that the little boy was safe and that he had been saved because he was amongst the greek boys in the ward. That was a happy ending.
I wonder if he remembers what happened.

This is my evidence. I think I may have posted this about two years ago.

I will always make an exception for my yegen...
Do you have a credible link for your evidence??? A UN source perhaps?

If anyone doubts my word, I will leave the CF immediately. You can imagine what a loss that would be. (good riddance, most will say)

I never saw the little boy at all. There was a ceasefire and they moved to their home. But I can imagine what the poor woman was going through. Not knowing whether the little one was dead or alive. We all assumed he was dead, but she wanted to know. We did fear the worse and would not mention the subject within her earshot. Ofcourse when she saw the Armenian dead ,lying in the street not far from us, she would begin her wailing.

Ofcourse in 1974, many more mothers went through the same trauma. Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

When will it all end?

Let us all spare a thought for all mothers who have lost loved ones.

Dr. Osmans wife was one of the 'lucky'.

Somewhere there is humanity. Lets find it and 'live' with it.

Deniz, I beleive you.

Although i would also say that in 1974, the Turkish army had made us pay, right??

[denizaksulu]

If I may add a little anecdote re: the Nicosia General Hospital incidents.

Previously I had narrated the events of 21st Dec 1963, where I was staying with relatives in the Kosklu Chiftlik area, immediately behind the Ledra Palace hotel.

In our house were 10 or so families from neighbouring houses. Safety in numbers and all that. How safe? God only knows. It was after we were watching the armed Greeks moving northwards to the Kumsal/ Kyrenia road Police station. They were on the west side of the river.
Anyway, one of the ladies with us (I cannot remember her name) was constantly screaming her head off and crying all the time. Her husband was a Cyprus Goverment veterinary surgeon. We knew him as Dr. Osman. The story of the screaming lady was that her 10 year old son was in the hospital (Nicosia General/old hospital). He was their for some reason (tosils/appendicitis?).
The events of the 'missing' Turkish Cypriots had filtered out and of course this mother was distraught. Her screaming was demoralising to all. I had mentioned on a previous occasion that one of the men in the house was a neurotic Pharmacist. He used up his entire supply of Librium on this wretched mother. There was no contact with the hospital at all. About two weeks after the initial fighting had begun, there was a ceasefire.
Unexpectedly an English landrover pulled up and gave the parents the news that the little boy was safe and that he had been saved because he was amongst the greek boys in the ward. That was a happy ending.
I wonder if he remembers what happened.

This is my evidence. I think I may have posted this about two years ago.

I will always make an exception for my yegen...
Do you have a credible link for your evidence??? A UN source perhaps?

If anyone doubts my word, I will leave the CF immediately. You can imagine what a loss that would be. (good riddance, most will say)

I never saw the little boy at all. There was a ceasefire and they moved to their home. But I can imagine what the poor woman was going through. Not knowing whether the little one was dead or alive. We all assumed he was dead, but she wanted to know. We did fear the worse and would not mention the subject within her earshot. Ofcourse when she saw the Armenian dead ,lying in the street not far from us, she would begin her wailing.

Ofcourse in 1974, many more mothers went through the same trauma. Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

When will it all end?

Let us all spare a thought for all mothers who have lost loved ones.

Dr. Osmans wife was one of the 'lucky'.

Somewhere there is humanity. Lets find it and 'live' with it.

Deniz, I beleive you.

Although i would also say that in 1974, the Turkish army had made us pay, right??

'Us', yes. We are all paying for it. Some more and some less. The ordinary people are paying through their noses. Those at the top and their mates reap the benefits

[Oracle]

True to form ...

The phoney peace-seekers

From Northern Ireland to Nicosia, we talk about a 'process' but the divides remain as deep as ever

Peter Preston
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 January 2010 21.00 GMT


The theory is that time plays great healer of wounds, that Catholics and Protestants can sit in harmony at Stormont, that Palestinians, Israelis, Indians and Pakis­tanis can one day find peace together. But don't hold your breath. Just spend a few days following the UN secretary general around ­Nicosia this week, and prepare to be disillusioned.

Cyprus is a small, sunny island, divided for 36 years. The Turkish army sits to the north and guards its patch. Greek Cypriots sit to the south, build hotels, welcome tourists and make money. Turkish Cypriots long to escape their unrecognised, impoverished, ­stifling little enclave. Greek Cypriots long to live again in the beautiful, whole land that the older ones among them remember. An Ankara anxious to join the European Union knows it must get Cyprus off the red-alert list first. Greece, the old enemy, wants ­Turkey as an eastern Med ally in Brussels. America wants Cyprus solved and the Turks in Europe; so does Britain; so do countless perambulating diplomats as well as Ban Ki-moon.

It ought to be a doddle. The Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders – Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat – are friends, not enemies. Better yet, they were elected to deliver agreement at last. They have talked and talked for two years. The future governing structure of Cyprus – a bizonal carve-up only Bosnians could love – is more or less in place. Everything should be easy for Ban, then? Just a few dots, commas, warm words – and he's away? No: this is wretched last chance saloon again.

The bigger the scab over the wounds, the more distant the events that split Cyprus in two, the harder it actually seems to make progress. Time may heal the most bitter memories, mute the most passionate howls, but it has also set the divide in a chill mould of ­calculation. Nobody under the age of 50 can possibly remember what the old island was like. No Greeks who saw their land or their villas lost far beyond the UN green line can possibly nurture that grievance fresh every morning. Where they live in the south, they have new homes, new jobs, new wealth, new membership of the EU. Yet that isn't enough somehow. A settlement means fields returned, compen­sation agreed, territory restored – and Ankara in a sense punished for ancient affronts. Enter the lawyers and accountants.

Christofias, like other peace-seeking presidents before him, can't make ­concessions that a voluble public opinion finds no pain in refusing. Talat – under desperate time pressure because he seems doomed to lose an April election to a florid hardliner – has seen a ­feeble economy blot out all other issues. They'll either do it this time, or they won't. Expect nothing good to emerge. Ban is no miracle worker. Worse, thanks to Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, Turkey's hopes of EU membership – the vital incentive for negotiating impetus – have slipped away. Ankara is thinking more and more about turning big cheese in its own region, not redefining its whole existence.

Let Ban go back to New York empty-handed, and Cyprus – a tiny, foolish, dusty problem – will just potter on for more decades, fouling more nests, bringing in more UN peacekeepers to while away their time: a monument to a crisis that time forgot. And that's the harshest lesson here.

We talk habitually about peace ­"processes": in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, in Sarajevo, Kosovo, Kashmir. But most of the time, there is no process, no advances along any true road map. Bosnia is becalmed, a criss-cross of complex, unreal community com­promises that brings neither prosperity, ­satisfaction or self-government. Israel and Palestine, as one US president has succeeded another, are still busy going nowhere useful. Kashmir just lies there, the untackled wound which means that Pakistan can never concentrate wholeheartedly on solving its fissures within.

And Belfast? Prime ministers dance agonised attendance as though the Troubles had never ended. Stormont's politicians appear pawns of forces that dwarf all of them in the imagining. The "process" seems more a mantra than a policy that involves actual movement.

Too bleak, too fearful? Perhaps. But look at Nicosia, a divided city that can't be bothered to come together again – and wince at the folly of frozen hopes.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... nd-nicosia

[denizaksulu]

True to form ...

The phoney peace-seekers

From Northern Ireland to Nicosia, we talk about a 'process' but the divides remain as deep as ever

Peter Preston
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 January 2010 21.00 GMT


The theory is that time plays great healer of wounds, that Catholics and Protestants can sit in harmony at Stormont, that Palestinians, Israelis, Indians and Pakis­tanis can one day find peace together. But don't hold your breath. Just spend a few days following the UN secretary general around ­Nicosia this week, and prepare to be disillusioned.

Cyprus is a small, sunny island, divided for 36 years. The Turkish army sits to the north and guards its patch. Greek Cypriots sit to the south, build hotels, welcome tourists and make money. Turkish Cypriots long to escape their unrecognised, impoverished, ­stifling little enclave. Greek Cypriots long to live again in the beautiful, whole land that the older ones among them remember. An Ankara anxious to join the European Union knows it must get Cyprus off the red-alert list first. Greece, the old enemy, wants ­Turkey as an eastern Med ally in Brussels. America wants Cyprus solved and the Turks in Europe; so does Britain; so do countless perambulating diplomats as well as Ban Ki-moon.

It ought to be a doddle. The Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders – Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat – are friends, not enemies. Better yet, they were elected to deliver agreement at last. They have talked and talked for two years. The future governing structure of Cyprus – a bizonal carve-up only Bosnians could love – is more or less in place. Everything should be easy for Ban, then? Just a few dots, commas, warm words – and he's away? No: this is wretched last chance saloon again.

The bigger the scab over the wounds, the more distant the events that split Cyprus in two, the harder it actually seems to make progress. Time may heal the most bitter memories, mute the most passionate howls, but it has also set the divide in a chill mould of ­calculation. Nobody under the age of 50 can possibly remember what the old island was like. No Greeks who saw their land or their villas lost far beyond the UN green line can possibly nurture that grievance fresh every morning. Where they live in the south, they have new homes, new jobs, new wealth, new membership of the EU. Yet that isn't enough somehow. A settlement means fields returned, compen­sation agreed, territory restored – and Ankara in a sense punished for ancient affronts. Enter the lawyers and accountants.

Christofias, like other peace-seeking presidents before him, can't make ­concessions that a voluble public opinion finds no pain in refusing. Talat – under desperate time pressure because he seems doomed to lose an April election to a florid hardliner – has seen a ­feeble economy blot out all other issues. They'll either do it this time, or they won't. Expect nothing good to emerge. Ban is no miracle worker. Worse, thanks to Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, Turkey's hopes of EU membership – the vital incentive for negotiating impetus – have slipped away. Ankara is thinking more and more about turning big cheese in its own region, not redefining its whole existence.

Let Ban go back to New York empty-handed, and Cyprus – a tiny, foolish, dusty problem – will just potter on for more decades, fouling more nests, bringing in more UN peacekeepers to while away their time: a monument to a crisis that time forgot. And that's the harshest lesson here.

We talk habitually about peace ­"processes": in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, in Sarajevo, Kosovo, Kashmir. But most of the time, there is no process, no advances along any true road map. Bosnia is becalmed, a criss-cross of complex, unreal community com­promises that brings neither prosperity, ­satisfaction or self-government. Israel and Palestine, as one US president has succeeded another, are still busy going nowhere useful. Kashmir just lies there, the untackled wound which means that Pakistan can never concentrate wholeheartedly on solving its fissures within.

And Belfast? Prime ministers dance agonised attendance as though the Troubles had never ended. Stormont's politicians appear pawns of forces that dwarf all of them in the imagining. The "process" seems more a mantra than a policy that involves actual movement.

Too bleak, too fearful? Perhaps. But look at Nicosia, a divided city that can't be bothered to come together again – and wince at the folly of frozen hopes.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... nd-nicosia

That is more depressing than reading my own obituary. Nothing new there, but seeing it in b&w, yet again is bad news.

Why does God create imbeciles?