Cyprus-Forum.com

[Acikgoz]

Dt, Makarios would be sensitive to the wishes of his constituency however he could only operated within the boundaries of the law of Cyprus. If those laws were to be changed then that needed to be done within the process set out in the constitution. Being Cypriot citizens (TCs) the comparison with Ankara wholly is invalid.
It is a direct result of the destruction of the rule of law that TCs voted with their feet.

[CopperLine]

It is the first, the most important, the most vital aspect if we are serious about a LASTING settlement.

If enough of the population feel unfairly treated by a territorial settlement we are going to relive 1963 with more deadly weapons than we had back then.

A rational territorial settlement automatically takes care of most "thorns" that plague the situation now.

I don't understand this obsession with territory, especially in the context of a post-settlement Cyprus which would be an EU member state.

Supposing we took the de facto territorial division as a starting point, then the basic GC position is that this is an unfair territorial portion of the whole island given the ethnic distribution between TCs and GCs (forgetting other ethnicities). I seem to recall from Mr "Percentage" Piratis that, the current territorial division is 37% to TRNC though according to him (I stand to be corrected) TCs constitute just 18% of the total population. Following the basic logic (but historical nonsense) that territorial control should reflect ethnic population distribution, then the TCs have got too much land.

There's a second factor though, as I understand it, which is that whatever the territorial and population ratios, the current territorial division doesn't at all reflect the pre-74 distribution. For example, the high relative and absolute numbers of GCs in Lapta, Morfou and Karpas, and TCs in Baf, Lemessos, etc.

With Pandora out of the box, it seems to me that she cannot be put back in. A settlement can fix a broad territorial settlement but it cannot restore the ethnic populations at the status quo ante 1974.

If there is a territorial division under some kind of bi-zonality and bi-federal system, all the important aspects of social, political and economic life will be subject to EU law and regulation. Within a generation i.e, half the time period since 1974, the substantive differences between north and south will have been dissolved. Within a generation it won't matter very much where the dividing line demarcates the northern and southern entities. (Anyone who uses the Franco-German border or Spanish-French border or any other internal EU border will know that they've become almost totally irrelevant and certainly not really noticeable). As an EU citizen I travel for work and social reasons across the green line almost every day and for the life of me I cannot see what is so insurmountable that a european settlement could not work for everyone. My day-to-day interactions with TCs, GCs, Turks, Greeks, and almost every other nationality on earth is just not problematic.

[Get Real!]

I don't understand this obsession with territory, especially in the context of a post-settlement Cyprus which would be an EU member state.

No worries! We can always arrange for a group of thugs to throw you and your family out your house at gunpoint, and keep you out for 35 years as a learning exercise.

[CopperLine]

I don't understand this obsession with territory, especially in the context of a post-settlement Cyprus which would be an EU member state.

No worries! We can always arrange for a group of thugs to throw you and your family out your house at gunpoint, and keep you out for 35 years as a learning exercise.

Get Real, there's no reply to your idiocy.

[Get Real!]

I don't understand this obsession with territory, especially in the context of a post-settlement Cyprus which would be an EU member state.

No worries! We can always arrange for a group of thugs to throw you and your family out your house at gunpoint, and keep you out for 35 years as a learning exercise.

Get Real, there's no reply to your idiocy.

You said that you don't understand and I provided you with a practical way to do so! If only you’d take my advice you’d soon see how fast you understand.

[CopperLine]

I don't understand this obsession with territory, especially in the context of a post-settlement Cyprus which would be an EU member state.

No worries! We can always arrange for a group of thugs to throw you and your family out your house at gunpoint, and keep you out for 35 years as a learning exercise.

Get Real, there's no reply to your idiocy.

You said that you don't understand and I provided you with a practical way to do so! If only you’d take my advice you’d soon see how fast you understand.

How is thuggery a practical lesson ? Why advocate and resort to violence against me and my family ? You're contemptible.

[Get Real!]

I don't understand this obsession with territory, especially in the context of a post-settlement Cyprus which would be an EU member state.

No worries! We can always arrange for a group of thugs to throw you and your family out your house at gunpoint, and keep you out for 35 years as a learning exercise.

Get Real, there's no reply to your idiocy.

You said that you don't understand and I provided you with a practical way to do so! If only you’d take my advice you’d soon see how fast you understand.

How is thuggery a practical lesson ? Why advocate and resort to violence against me and my family ? You're contemptible.

Copperline, I’m under the impression that you appreciate common sense and logic, so I’m sure you’ll agree that there’s no substitute for experience!

[Natty]

The 1960 constitution was a direct result and a consequence of our actions. I am surprised people cannot see this. In 1950 and right up to 1953, Makarios pushed hard (even organised massive rallies in Athens and other Greek cities) successive Greek governments, to take the Cyprus issue to the United Nations. He was advised by various Greek politicians that this action would turn against us because internationalising the Cyprus issue would inevitably make indifferent at the time Turkey, a key player. Makarios would not listen and he used the all familiar term of "traitors" (the last resort of all scoundrels) to describe successive Greek governments. He even threatened to ask a third country to take the Cyprus issue (enosis) to the UN. Eventually, the government of Sophoulis (if I remember correctly) succumbed and took the Cyprus issue to the UN. At the same time. a handful of GC students in Athens were discussing the setting up of EOKA and an armed struggle to force enosis. This was the beginning of the end for Cyprus.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, we can easily look back now and criticise the dream Greek Cypriots had of unifying Cyprus with Greece, and the means that were used to secure that dream as being foolish and divisive, however I think it’s become all too easy to blame enosis and the actions linked with enosis for all Cyprus’s woes. Surely, it’s slightly naïve to not look at the bigger picture, to discount outside interests and to make the aspirations of the Greek Cypriot community solely responsible for the damage caused?

Would Turkey, for example have become so heavily involved (indeed, even become a 'key player') had it not been given the green light by the British, keen to protect their own interests on the island, particularly after the loss of the Suez Canal? When one looks at the example of Rhodes, which pre enosis was under Italian rule, was not of particular strategic importance and had itself a significant Turkish numerical minority, it becomes tempting to speculate that without the gentle nudging it received by the British Government, Turkey would not have shown as much interest as it came to show.

Regarding the arguments made about Makarios getting voted in by the GC community only, as stipulated by the constitution, they remind me of a President or Prime Minister who is voted in by his party members and then, talking to the whole nation says that he will be the President of his loyal party members only. Does anyone know of any such incidence ever occurring anywhere in the world? Wouldn't a sane person address the rest of the country, pre and post election, to assure them that if elected he would be the President of the whole country?

Yes, but when a party leader then goes on to become Prime Minister/President he does so because he gets voted in by the electorate as a whole, unlike what happened in Cyprus. Does anyone know of any such incidence ever occurring anywhere in the world? Wouldn’t a democratic constitution allow all citizens to vote for their own President?:wink:

[Bananiot]

If you bring the issue of hindsight into any argument you basically kill the argument. After all, the politicians that decide for us must have hindsight in order to be able to look after our interests. However, it is good that you agree that Makarios blundered badly but I need to stress here that even at that time there were many politicians and historians from across the political spectrum who disagreed with the strategy and tactics used by the ethnarchy back then and warned that they would bring the worse for Cyprus. The historian Spyridakis springs to mind.

I have no issue with enosis and many times I said that the Greek Cypriots were entitled to aspire for union with Greece. However, the methods chosen to achieve enosis were not the desired ones to say the least. The demand of enosis "here and now" and the armed struggle to achieve it, (force it to happen, without taking into consideration the fears and worries of the Turkish Cypriots) basically made enosis an unreachable dream. Yet, you will tell me that hindsight is a wonderful thing. What can I say?

The last matter. What kept Makarios from addressing the Cypriot people as a whole? These semantics that he was voted in only by the Greek community really upset me because it is splitting hairs. We are very good at this but look where it got us.

[Kikapu]

It is the first, the most important, the most vital aspect if we are serious about a LASTING settlement.

If enough of the population feel unfairly treated by a territorial settlement we are going to relive 1963 with more deadly weapons than we had back then.

A rational territorial settlement automatically takes care of most "thorns" that plague the situation now.

I don't understand this obsession with territory, especially in the context of a post-settlement Cyprus which would be an EU member state.

Supposing we took the de facto territorial division as a starting point, then the basic GC position is that this is an unfair territorial portion of the whole island given the ethnic distribution between TCs and GCs (forgetting other ethnicities). I seem to recall from Mr "Percentage" Piratis that, the current territorial division is 37% to TRNC though according to him (I stand to be corrected) TCs constitute just 18% of the total population. Following the basic logic (but historical nonsense) that territorial control should reflect ethnic population distribution, then the TCs have got too much land.

There's a second factor though, as I understand it, which is that whatever the territorial and population ratios, the current territorial division doesn't at all reflect the pre-74 distribution. For example, the high relative and absolute numbers of GCs in Lapta, Morfou and Karpas, and TCs in Baf, Lemessos, etc.

With Pandora out of the box, it seems to me that she cannot be put back in. A settlement can fix a broad territorial settlement but it cannot restore the ethnic populations at the status quo ante 1974.

If there is a territorial division under some kind of bi-zonality and bi-federal system, all the important aspects of social, political and economic life will be subject to EU law and regulation. Within a generation i.e, half the time period since 1974, the substantive differences between north and south will have been dissolved. Within a generation it won't matter very much where the dividing line demarcates the northern and southern entities. (Anyone who uses the Franco-German border or Spanish-French border or any other internal EU border will know that they've become almost totally irrelevant and certainly not really noticeable). As an EU citizen I travel for work and social reasons across the green line almost every day and for the life of me I cannot see what is so insurmountable that a european settlement could not work for everyone. My day-to-day interactions with TCs, GCs, Turks, Greeks, and almost every other nationality on earth is just not problematic.

I don't understand this obsession with territory, especially in the context of a post-settlement Cyprus which would be an EU member state.

You know what, I agree with you, but why stop there with 63%-37% when using your logic, why not have just a single state since we are in the EU and by your own admission, within a generation or two, it will not make any difference at all where the "borders" are. But if you tell me that the TCs need a place of their own to feel secure, then why does it need to be 37%, or 29% or 20% or 10%. Why not 18%, to reflect their population size and property owned by individuals previously plus state land. It will go a long way to reduce tensions where one does not feel like they have been done wrong that their properties are under the control of an authority they do not want to be, even though it may not make too much difference a generation or two down the road as you have suggested.

The problem is, there is a mistrust between the communities, is the reason why one wants more land than their population size and the other does not want to give more than which reflects the population size. The mistrust is, while the GCs are willing to go along with BBF based on True Federation, True Democracy, Human Rights and EU Principles, the TCs are after loose Confederation and against most of the basic EU principles. How can any GC trust such a structure by giving more land to the TCs than what their population size, because under loose confederation which what the Annan Plan was based on, what is to stop the north state as a EU member declare to be independent when another sectarian violence crises are started deliberately to break up the union, and with the "borders" well established at 63%-37% or what ever the numbers may be, the GCs do not want to risk more than 18%. At the same time, the TCs are after as much land as possible in the event the union within Cyprus does break up. I believe that's the reason why it matters to both sides where the "borders" are drawn. If the TCs were after the BBF under True Federation, then it does not make any difference where the "borders" are that much, but I have yet to hear from the north that's what they want.!