Cyprus-Forum.com

[Piratis]

This is what an RoC website says

Just a note. Thats not an official Republic of Cyprus website. All goverment sites end with .gov.cy (the main one is http://www.cyprus.gov.cy/).

Not that this matters to the correctness or not of the document.

[mehmet]

[quote="X-ite"]Yes but why did they want to change the constitution? Why do you think it was necessary? This is what an RoC website says:

[quote]

Ok, let's go back. There were many reasons why constitution was in trouble from 1960 to 1963. Firstly on the Greek Cypriot side independence was a compromise so maybe that affected their attitude to the constitution. This is what Makarios say

'The realisation of our hopes and aspirations is not complete under the Zurich and London Agreements'

this was in April 1960, before independence.

The following is what occurred between 1960-63.

1) upon independence Makarios dismissed hundreds of Turkish Cypriot policemen and replaced them with Greek Cypriots, many of htem formerly EOKA people. The total numbers of police was in excess of the 2,000 allowed under the constitution.

2) ratios in the civil service were intended under the constitution to be 70:30. This was never achieved despite a Public Services Commission being set up to ensure compliance.

3) disputes about armed forces Makarios wished Turkish Cypriots to be under the command of Greek Cypriots whereas Dr. Kucuk wished there to be separate regisments.

4) Municipalities. separate municipalities. The Turkish Cypriots wanted them the Greek Cypriots didn't. For three years there was no agreement about this issue.

5) the collection of taxes. The power of veto was used by the Turkish Cypriots in order to put pressure on other measures within the constitution (mentioned above) to be resolved.

6) the Constitutional Court. There was one GC, one TC and one foreigner. In this case it was someone from West Germany. The GC side percieved him as biased against them and ignored decisions made by this Court. When he resigned he said the following,

'failure to achieve a joint legislation was not due to the incompetence of those concerned, but to the fact that the ruling Greek CYpriots made no serious effort to co-operate or arrive at a compromise, but insisted with growing determination on ignoring and abolishing the existing Constitution. For tthis reason the practicability of hte Constitution could never be tested. The reason for its failure is rather due to lack of good will to make use of it.'

So there are many factors why constitution failed, and both communities share responsibility for this. Personally I don't think it excuses the actions of Makarios in trying to change the constitution unilaterally or of trying to subdue Turkish Cypriot resistance to it. Perhaps for some military force is acceptable, but there are always other options if we are trying to establish a democratic society.

[Piratis]

The problems was that:
1)The wish of the great majority of Cypriots was not respected and they were given something different instead.

2)The resulting Constitution was unfair (70:30 etc), and not democratic (veto power etc).

3)Other countries had the right to intervene, Cyprus was not independent.

4)The interests of foreigners were put first instead of the interests of Cypriots (British bases etc).

Does this remind you something? Yes, the Annan plan. Only that Annan plan is 100 times worst. So in order to create something that will not brake this time we need something better than what we had before and not something worst. Otherwise it will fail again for sure.

[Bananiot]

Lets be pragmatic for a moment. The 1960 constitution and the A Plan did not just drop from the sky. They were the direct consequence of our actions and the way we behaved (Greek and Turkish Cypriots). We do not deserve anything better. Germany lost large chunks of land to Poland and if Piratis was a German, perhaps he would still be crying that it is unfair. Its much like losing your money at the casino. They were yours, but once you lost them, there is no turning back. At best, you can get wiser and never ponder with gambling, however, we have never resisted to try our luck. We got only what we deserve. Come to think about it, may be we are very lucky we still have a portion of Cyprus.

[[email protected]]

[quote="Piratis"]The problems was that:
1)The wish of the great majority of Cypriots was not respected and they were given something different instead.

2)The resulting Constitution was unfair (70:30 etc), and not democratic (veto power etc).

3)Other countries had the right to intervene, Cyprus was not independent.

4)The interests of foreigners were put first instead of the interests of Cypriots (British bases etc).

Yes, if the intention was to ignore Turkish Cypriots then we would not have had a RoC and maybe for some this is still a problem. Democracy sometimes involves accommodating the interests of the minority, something you have advocated with your own ideas, something for which you have my respect. We may not agree on the details but I can live with that because negotiations will take place between people with more responsibility than ourselves, if they take place at all.

[Piratis]

Democracy sometimes involves accommodating the interests of the minority

Yes it does of course. Nobody said that TC or anybody else should be ignored. But the interests of the minority can not be above the interests of the majority.
The majority can not touch the human and democratic rights of any minority(even if that minority is 0.001%). In other matters it is always good if everybody agrees, but this rarely happens. And in democracies the direction that the country follows is that of the majority, and everybody else should respect it.

[Bananiot]

Does the call for enosis respect the rights of the minority? Had we not struggled for enosis would we get into such a tangle with our compatriots? Of course its easy to blame the brits on this, but we have a nag for puting the blame always on someone else's shoulder. Did we need to take the Cyprus issue to the UN in 1954, contrary to all friendly advice including Greece? Of course not, but we did, and immediadely made Turkey a key player of the Cyprus issue.

[Piratis]

Let me make clear that today neither I, nor the majority of GC wants enosis. We are talking about the pre-1960 era now.

Does the call for enosis respect the rights of the minority?

Why it doesn't?

[insan]

Let's continue from 1971 while Denktash and Klerides were negotiating for constutitional ammendments in order to make RoC more functional and just...

You should have acknowledged that in 1967 Junta had come into power in Greece and this situation had concerned Turkey very much. Demirel government which was in power in that era gathered the cabinet and had had a 4 hours lasting consultation regarding an intervention to Cyprus in order to restore the constutitional order...

What's happened then?

US prevented Turkeys intervention and the intervention postponed... Makarios declared that Enosis wasn't feasible anymore and took side by leftists... Embargos lifted on TCs and inter communal negotiations had were started...


Here's some quotations from Denktash-Klerides letters....

In order to complete this review I would like to put on record, once again, the vital concessions which I have indicated willingness to make; concessions, for which, the Greek side seems determined not to give anything in return, thus raising the pertinent question whether the exercise of the local talks was merely for amending the 1960 Constitution in such a way as to make the Independent Republic of Cyprus a convenient spring-board for Enosis! My whole purpose in these talks has been to amend the Constitution in such a way as would satisfy your side's demands without diminishing in any way or form the juridic stat- us of the Turkish Community and without imperiling the ultimate safety of the independence of Cyprus:

Concessions which the Turkish side has shown willingness to make:

(a) Abolition of the provisions of the Constitution which necessitated the appointment of non-Cypriots to the posts of Presidents of the Supreme Constitutional Court and the High Court;

(b) The amalgamation of the Supreme Constitutional Court with the High Court;

(c) The amalgamation of the gendarmerie with the police;

(d) Reduction of Turkish participation from 30% to 20%;

(e) Abolition of the provision of the Constitution requiring majority vote of both Communities in the public commission;

(f) Abolition of the provision of the Constitution requiring separate majority votes in the House on legislation dealing with all taxation matters, elections, municipalities.

(g) Abolition of veto powers in Foreign Affairs, Defence and Internal Security;

(h) Reduction of Turkish participation in the Army from 40% to 20%;

(i) Making it optional, for litigants to resort to the protection of Article 159.

(j) Reduction of Turkish participation from 30% to 20% in Town Planning Affairs as per Article 176.

I hope the above will give us a new ground for tackling the problem anew in a spirit of give and take. So far the Turkish side has been on the giving end; I hope your side will find it possible to be a little generous and understanding so that we can reach agreement on all outstanding issues.

Yours sincerely,

Rauf R. Denktash
President, Turkish Communal Chamber

Looking back at that formula I cannot but state that a cardinal error was committed by Makarios . . . , [who] considered [the formula] to be a form of concealed federation. . . . In local government autonomy, the element of two separate and geographical cohesive areas did not exist. The Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots would have remained in their villages and towns and would have enjoyed local government autonomy under their respective communities. Furthermore the scope of local government agreed to was much more limited than that of the powers and functions of a federal province, canton or state. Makarios in rejecting the September 1972 formula on local government failed to evaluate correctly the internal situation in Cyprus, i.e. the growing danger of a coup by the Greek military forces in Cyprus acting on orders from the Greek Junta, the reaction of Turkey to such a development, and the warning given by the United States. C

The internal situation amongst the Greek Cypriot community was such, the risk of a military coup by the Greek forces in Cyprus so great, and the danger of a Turkish invasion so real, that the formula of September 1972 on local government should have been accepted. Had it been accepted, an agreement would have been reached on the solution of the Cyprus problem, which would have left Cyprus with a much improved constitution. Turkey would have been thus deprived of any reason, and of any excuse to invade Cyprus. The Greek junta would have been prevented by the U.S. Government from attempting a military coup, and Cyprus would have been spared the Turkish invasion and its destructive effects.


G. Klerides

Negotiaions had deadlocked on local autonomy issue....


What's happened then....

Grivas secretly returned to Cyprus and founded EOKA-B in 1971. Several times Eoka-B attempted to assasinate Makarios but failed...


What's happened then...


Here's some quotations from the letter was written by Makarios to Junta...

Makarios writes General Ghizikis, July 1974

One of the alleged triggers for the coup against Makarios was his insistence that the Greek troops be removed from Cyprus. This letter to the Apresident@ of Greece is frequently cited as one of the provocations to the Athens military junta.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nicosia, 2nd July 1974

Mr. President,

It is with deep regret that I am bound to report to you certain unacceptable conditions and facts, for which I consider the Greek Government responsible.

Since the secret arrival in Cyprus of General Grivas, in September 1971, rumours have circulated and there were well founded indications that he came to Cyprus urged and encouraged by certain circles in Athens. It is, however, certain that Grivas, from the first days of his arrival in Cyprus, was in touch with Greek officers from Greece, serving in the National Guard, by whom he was given help and support in his efforts to form an illegal organisation and to struggle allegedly for Enosis. He created the criminal organisation "EOKA B", which was the cause and the source of many ills for Cyprus. The activities of this organisation which, under the mantle of patriotism and Enosis slogans, has committed political assassinations and many other crimes are well known.

The National Guard, which is officered and controlled by Greek officers, was from the start the main supplier of both men and materials to "EOKA B", the members of which euphemistically called themselves "Enosists" and the "Enosist Array".

On many occasion I considered the question why an illegal nationally damaging organisation, which divides and causes internal dissension, splits the internal front, and leads the Greek Cypriots to civil war in Cyprus, is supported by Greek officers. On many an occasion I have also considered the question whether this support is approved by the Greek Government. I had a number of thoughts and reflections in order to find a logical answer to my doubts and to my questions. No answer under any circumstances or reflections could he supported on a logical basis. But the Greek Officers' support of "EOKA B" is in reality an undeniable fact. The National Guard camps in various places and their surrounding areas are decorated with pro-Grivas and pro-" EOKA B" slogans and with slogans against the Cyprus Government and especially against me. Greek Officers make propaganda in favour of "EOKA B" within the camps of the National Guard, openly. It is also known and it is an undeniable fact that the opposition press, which supports the criminal activities of "EOKA B", is financed by Athens, and is guided and takes its line from the persons in charge of the 2nd Bureau of the General Staff and the Greek Central Information Office (KYP) in Cyprus.

It is true, that whenever complaints were transmitted by me to the Greek Government about the attitude and behaviour of certain Greek officers, I received the reply that I ought not to hesitate to report such officers by naming them, and to state concrete accusations against them so that they would be recalled from Cyprus. I did this only on one occasion. Such a task is displeasing to me. But the evil is not cured by dealing with it in this way. What is important is the uprooting of the evil and its prevention and not simply to deal with the resulting consequences.

And here's some quotations from an interview which was made with Makarios just after the Turkish intervention of 1974....


Makarios only proplem wasn't with Junta ...

OF: What do you mean by a bad agreement?

M.: Turkey is going to insist on a geographical federation, and I will never accept a federation on a geographical basis. It would lead to a partition of the island and to a double enosis: half of

Cyprus consigned to Greece and half to Turkey. It would mean the end of Cyprus as an independent state. I'm more than ready to discuss a federation, yes, but on an administrative basis not a geographical one. It's one thing to have areas governed by Turks and areas governed by Greeks; it's quite another to divide ourselves into two parts. It's one thing to group, for example, or three Turkish villages and entrust them to a Turkish administration; it's quite another to shift more than two hundred thousand people from one end of the island to the other. The Turkish Cypriots are scattered all over Cyprus. How can you say to them, "Pack up your things, leave your house, your land, and move elsewhere because we're going to have a federation"?! It's inhuman, to say the least.

O.F.: Is this really what worries you. Beatitude? I mean the tragedy of the Turkish Cypriots? It doesn't seem to me that so far they've been the object of much concern. They've been treated like second class citizens and . . .

M: That's not true! It=s not true! Though they=re a minority, they=ve had a lot of privileges, and they've behaved as though they represented the majority. We haven't been the ones to mistreat them, it was their Turkish leaders, by forcing them to live in separate villages, blackmailing them, keeping them from co-operating with us even economically, and from progressing. They didn't even let them do business with us, or help us to develop tourism. They weren't our victims, they were their victims. Nobody can deny that a true democracy, and a good one, exists in Cyprus. In their newspapers the Turks could abuse me and insult me as much as they liked. They could come to see me at the archbishop's palace whenever they liked. The trouble is they were obliged to come secretly, without their leaders knowing it. In mixed villages we had no problem living together, in the past and at the time of the Greco-Turkish war as well. What you say isn=t true.

Now it is clearer why Makarios and his successors Kyprianou and Papadopulos who comes from Makarios tradition and even Klerides for different reasons couldn't compromise on a geographical fedration basis...



There are a few more remarkable points in his interview....

O.F.: Maybe it was helped along by the letter you wrote to Gizikis in July.

M.: Let's say that that letter speeded things up. If I hadn't written it, the coup would have happened all the same, a month or two later. As Kissinger admits, it had been more than decided on; all that remained was to set the date. I was too big an obstacle to enosis, and they were too anxious to have enosis. Every time we were on the point of reaching an agreement between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, officials in Athens intervened by shouting about enosis. "We don't care about your local agreements, our goal is enosis." I remember one of these officials who came to me one day and said, "You must declare I enosis. Anyway it will take three or four days before the Turks can send troops to Cyprus. In the meantime the United States will intervene and keep them from invading the island. In a week enosis will be a fait accompli." Maybe they really believed that annexation to Greece was a viable alternative. Anyway, they expected me to take orders from Athens, they wanted e to obey like a puppet, and that's absolutely impossible with my temperament. I obey only myself.

O.F.: So you too were expecting the coup.

M.: No. I never thought they'd be so stupid as to order a coup against me. In fact, to me it seemed impossible that they wouldn't consider its consequences. I mean Turkish intervention. At the most I thought they might do such a thing by making a deal with Turkey, that is, authorizing Turkey to intervene so that Greece could then respond, to be followed by partition and double enosis. I went on thinking so even after the coup, when I got to London. It took some time for me to realize that Ioannides had simply acted out of a lack of intelligence. And yet I knew him. In 1963 and 1964 he had been in Cyprus as an officer of the National Guard, and one fill day he came to see me, accompanied by Sampson, in order to Aexplain to me secretly a plan that would settle everything.@ He had bowed to me, he had kissed my hand most respectfully, then: "Beatitude, here's the plan. To attack the Turkish Cypriots suddenly, everywhere on the island. To eliminate them one and all. Stop." I was flabbergasted. I told him I couldn't agree with him, that I couldn't even conceive the idea of killing so many innocent people. He kissed my hand again and went away in a huff. I tell you, he's a criminal.

Questions:


1- What was TCs and Turkeys mistakes in the period 1967-71? Insisting on local autonomy? Or else?

2- What was GCs and Greece mistakes in the period 1967-71? Insisting on not to give local autonomy to TCs? Or else?

3- What was Greeces mistakes in the period 1971- 15th of July 1974?

4- What was Turkeys mistakes in the period 1971- 19th of July 1974?

5- What should Turkey do on 20th of July?

6- What should Greece do on 19th of July?

7- Why were right wing put into power on both sides of Cyprus?

8- Why any investigations and interrogations weren't made regarding the known and alleged war crimes afterwards 1974 and just Sampson and some Eoka-B militants arrested and jailed for a short time period then released?

9- Who were the operators behind the scenes?

[Piratis]

Turkey made no mistake. Mission is accomplished as planed for them.

In Greece there was no democracy and it was ruled by a bunch of criminal idiots. They did nothing correct for Cyprus (they did no good for Greece either).

The mistake of GC and TC was that they didn’t manage to eliminate the super nationalistic elements within them. I must admit that the quote from Denctash above shocked me a bit. I didn’t expect that he had ever said anything constructive. If we had looked at our own interests as Cypriots we might have managed to go against the interests of those foreigners (Turkey, UK, US, Greece of junta) and had something that would work for us.

Behind the scenes were the Americans and the British. Here is a quote:

(from the book
The CIAs Greatest Hits
by Mark Zepezauer)
In April 1967, a Greek election campaign was about to begin. The candidate favored to win the election was George Papandreou, a staunch anticommunist. His son Andreas was a bit more left-wing, an admirer of subversives like Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson. Both the Papandreous, however, were a bit too independent for US policymakers.
Andreas Papandreou had mused publicly about steering a more neutral course for Greece in the Cold War. He also had some misgivings-correct ones, as it turned out-about the autocratic nature of certain elements in the Greek military.
George Papandreou had previously served as prime minister, but had been removed from power in 1965 by the king, with the assistance of the CIA. Like his son, he showed signs of less than complete subservience to US interests.
Two days before the election campaign was to begin, a group of colonels overthrew the government and established military rule. The leader of the coup had been on the CIA payroll for the previous fifteen years
For the next six years, martial law held sway in the birthplace of democracy. Widespread censorship, routine use of torture, brutal beatings and killings by the government became standard. Among the offenses deemed worthy of torture was possession of leaflets critical of the government. While being tortured, victims were taunted that they were beyond all help, since the colonels were supported by the power of the United States.
The official justification for the coup and the hideous repression that followed was that they were necessary to save the nation from a communist takeover. The Papandreous weren't communists, of course, but they were something much more dangerous committed, independent nationalists.
The US attitude toward that breed is made clear by the following quote: When (in 1965) the Greek ambassador objected to President Johnson's plan for settling a dispute concerning Cyprus, LBJ told him, "Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good....If your prime minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament and constitutions, he, his parliament and his constitution may not last very long."