Oracle wrote:Expatkiwi wrote:I don't need to validate. Ask any TC on this forum.
If you are only persuading the TCs ... then kindly carry on.
The rest of humanity is NOT impressed by your performance.
Then be impressed by this:
guardian.co.uk wrote:Turkish Cypriot appetite for united island dwindles as hostility grows. Separatist sentiments gain ground in north of Cyprus despite new round of reunification talks
Simon Tisdall in Kyrenia, northern Cyprus guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 January 2010 19.38 GMT
Surveys suggest rising numbers of Turkish Cypriots feel that a separate state is a more viable solution than reunification.
Mustafa Iusufoglu was only a small child when Turkish troops overran his village a few miles outside Nicosia in the summer of 1974. But he remembers clearly the elation with which his father and the local Turkish Cypriot community greeted their arrival after years of often bloody, island-wide confrontation with the Greek Cypriot majority.
Cyprus has been divided ever since by a UN-monitored ceasefire line running east to west. But that's for the best, Iusufoglu said. "Before 1974 it was no good. In the village we had two quarters, one for them, one for us. There was one church and one mosque. There were two separate schools. There was no co-operation, no visiting. There were terrible feuds. It's better now.
"The Greeks don't like us and we don't like them. We need to have separate states, though of course it would be good to have a better atmosphere," he said.
Iusufoglu is not alone in his views. Separatist sentiments are gaining ground in Turkish northern Cyprus despite a new round of internationally mediated reunification talks, the latest in a series going back more than 40 years.
Ever distrustful of Greek intentions, angered by the international trade embargo and other sanctions imposed on their isolated, mostly unrecognised republic, and buoyed by the rise of Turkey as a regional superpower, Turkish Cypriots are tired of waiting for a settlement that never comes.
A rising number – 34% in one recent poll – want to go their own way. Another survey found that 85% of Turkish Cypriots do not believe a reunification solution is possible. There is much scepticism on the Greek Cypriot side, too.
"For me personally I think it is better that the two communities are separate," said Halil, a civil servant in Kyrenia. "We tried. But you saw what happened between 1960 and 1974 [when Greek Cypriots discarded a power-sharing constitution bequeathed by Britain, the former colonial power]. The Greek Cypriots feel the same way."
Suleyman Oral, owner of the Mardin restaurant near Lefke, is more vehement. "The Greek Cypriots are looking at the world with one eye. They don't understand the realities. The Greeks would like to see all Turkish people go back to Turkey. If Turkey [which has an estimated 30,000 troops in the north] leaves, in a minute they will destroy us. They have tried to do this before."
Businessman Gunay Cherkez, president of the Turkish Cypriot chamber of commerce, said the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was viable economically, especially if post-1974 restrictions on direct trade and exports, flights, visas, telecoms and higher education opportunities within the EU were lifted – although he conceded it would continue to rely on support from Turkey.
Like other Turkish Cypriots, Cherkez expressed anger at last week's court of appeal decision to uphold a ruling ordering a British couple, David and Linda Orams, to demolish a house they built in northern Cyprus on land belonging to a dispossessed Greek Cypriot.
He claimed the case demonstrated the insincerity of the Greek Cypriot side in the peace talks, where property rights on both sides of the UN buffer zone are a central issue along with security, territory, and governance.
With the current nationalist prime minister, Dervis Eroglu, tipped to replace the TRNC's pro-reunification president, Mehmet Talat, in elections in April, separatist momentum seems likely to grow. Only an unexpected breakthrough in the latest round of talks, due to concludetomorrow, would significantly change the current dynamic, said Ahmet Sozen of the Cyprus Policy Centre in Famagusta.
"Turkey will push the TRNC to stay at the negotiating table" for fear of damaging its bid to join the EU, Sozen said. "But if the Turkish Cypriots are forced to quit, there are other scenarios. One is growing normalisation of relations with other countries, like Taiwan has done. Some countries will start recognising the TRNC, Muslim countries like Syria and Qatar."
Comparisons with Kosovo were also valid, Sozen suggested. In that case, an independent state had been carved out of territory belonging to a sovereign power (Serbia) after a military intervention. A degree of international recognition had then followed.
Turkish Cypriot leaders say they are committed for now to the UN-brokered reunification process. But foreign minister Huseyin Ozgurgun said that if the talks failed again, "we will work for recognition" of the TRNC as an independent state. He said his government had increased the number of its representative offices overseas and obtained observer status in the 56-country Organisation of the Islamic Conference. It may open direct air links with Iran next year.
Gunay Cherkez summed up Turkish Cypriots' exasperation with what they characterise as endless Greek Cypriot foot-dragging: "I want to dance. I arrange the music. I lower the lights. I'm all dressed up! But my partner doesn't want to join me. So maybe I dance on my own."
i dont claim to know them either but the survey cant be very accurate
