Cyprus-Forum.com

[ARMENIAN CYPRIOT]

In light of Ankara's recent criticism of what it calls Israel's "open-air jail" in Gaza, today's date, which marks the anniversary of Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, has special relevance.

Turkish policy toward Israel, historically warm and only a decade ago approaching full alliance, has cooled since Islamists took power in Ankara in 2002. Their hostility became explicit in January 2009, during the Israeli-Hamas war. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan grandly condemned Israeli policies as "perpetrating inhuman actions which would bring it to self-destruction" and even invoked God ("Allah will ... punish those who transgress the rights of innocents"). His wife, Emine Erdogan, hyperbolically condemned Israeli actions as so awful they "cannot be expressed in words."

Their verbal assaults augured a further hostility that included insulting the Israeli president, helping sponsor the "Freedom Flotilla" and recalling the Turkish ambassador.

This Turkish rage prompts a question: Is Israel in Gaza really worse than Turkey in Cyprus? A comparison finds this hardly to be so. Consider some contrasts:

c Turkey's invasion of July-August 1974 involved the use of napalm and "spread terror" among Cypriot Greek villagers, according to Minority Rights Group International. In contrast, Israel's "fierce battle" to take Gaza relied on only conventional weapons and entailed virtually no civilian casualties.

c The subsequent occupation of 37 percent of the island amounted to a "forced ethnic cleansing," William Mallinson said in a just-published monograph from the University of Minnesota. In contrast, if one wishes to accuse the Israeli authorities of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, it was against their own people, the Jews, in 2005.

c The Turkish government has sponsored what Mr. Mallinson calls "a systematic policy of colonization" on formerly Greek lands in Northern Cyprus. Turkish Cypriots in 1973 totaled about 120,000 people; since then, more than 160,000 citizens of the Republic of Turkey have been settled in their lands. Not a single Israeli community remains in Gaza.

c Ankara runs its occupied zone so tightly that, in the words of Bulent Akarcali, a senior Turkish politician, "Northern Cyprus is governed like a province of Turkey." An enemy of Israel, Hamas, rules in Gaza.

c The Turks set up a pretend-autonomous structure called the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus." Gazans enjoy real autonomy.

c A wall through the island keeps peaceable Greeks out of Northern Cyprus. Israel's wall excludes Palestinian terrorists.

And then there is the ghost town of Famagusta, where Turkish actions parallel those of Syria under the thuggish Assads. After the Turkish air force bombed the Cypriot port city, Turkish forces moved in to seize it, thereby prompting the entire Greek population (fearing a massacre) to flee. Turkish troops immediately fenced off the central part of the town, called Varosha, and prohibited anyone from living there.

As this crumbling Greek town is reclaimed by nature, it has become a bizarre time capsule from 1974. Steven Plaut of Haifa University visited and reports: "Nothing has changed. ... It is said that the car distributorships in the ghost town even today are stocked with vintage 1974 models. For years after the rape of Famagusta, people told of seeing light bulbs still burning in the windows of the abandoned buildings."

Curiously, another Levantine ghost town also dates from the summer of 1974. Just 24 days before the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Israeli troops evacuated the border town of Quneitra, handing it over to the Syrian authorities. Hafez Assad chose, for political reasons too, not to let anyone live in it. Decades later, it too remains empty, a hostage to bellicosity.

Mr. Erdogan claims that Turkish troops are not occupying Northern Cyprus but are there in "Turkey's capacity as a guarantor power," whatever that means. The outside world, however, is not fooled. While Elvis Costello recently pulled out of a concert in Tel Aviv to protest the "suffering of the innocent [Palestinians]," Jennifer Lopez canceled a concert in Northern Cyprus to protest "human rights abuse" there.

In brief, Northern Cyprus shares features with Syria and resembles an "open-air jail" more than Gaza does. How rich that a hypocritical Ankara preens its moral plumage about Gaza even as it runs a zone significantly more offensive. Instead of meddling in Gaza, Turkish leaders should close the illegal and disruptive occupation that for decades has tragically divided Cyprus.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a visiting fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

[humanist]

I think its called Hypocrites the Turks are ............... are as of course the TC's.

[shahmaran]

Oh yeah?

Will that explain why the RoC supports the PKK while trying to deny the rights of the Turkish Cypriots in their own country? Surely you cannot be caring about the Kurdish right for self determination can you? You couldn't be seriously supporting the fights of the ethnic minorities for self determination in their own lands, could you?!

Also what an idiotic analogy this is, to try and draw similarities between the Israel/Palestinian fight and what is going on in Cyprus.

First of all, the Israeli blockade is actively killing people in Gaza, not forget about the regular bombardments and the bulldozing of peoples homes while not allowing basic humanitarian needs such as water and fuel.

You on the other hand, are just bitching about not having access to you second homes, that's about as far as it goes, no humanitarian crisis in Cyprus, you are filthy rich and still want more!

But if we really want to stretch the situation and draw any similarities then we have to look at the time when there really was a humanitarian crisis here in Cyprus, propagated by your racist fight.

This would have to be around the days when the GC fascist were not allowing freedom of movement to the TC's and a lot of them had to rely on the UN for food and medication, while many of them were denied it and had to live in shit! This is how I lost my grandfather.

Now THAT makes YOU the Israelis, not Turkey.

No limit to the shamless bullshit propaganda machine, is there...

Incredible!

[Get Real!]

Will that explain why the RoC supports the PKK...

They don't need the RoC anymore... they've got Israel spurring them on now!

[shahmaran]

Will that explain why the RoC supports the PKK...

They don't need the RoC anymore... they've got Israel spurring them on now!

Yeah unfortunately Israel is also suffering from the rule of an extremist radical Jewish party as is Turkey with this Islamic fools.

With any luck, they will both be voted away before they bring us the the verge of a war.

If that happens PKK will be a walk in the park compared to what the Jews will face.

[Piratis]

Will that explain why the RoC supports the PKK while trying to deny the rights of the Turkish Cypriots in their own country? Surely you cannot be caring about the Kurdish right for self determination can you? You couldn't be seriously supporting the fights of the ethnic minorities for self determination in their own lands, could you?!

We support the right of the Kurds for self-determination in their own lands. Their own lands, Kurdistan, is a territory where the Kurds have been the vast majority for long before the Turks invaded. Now tell me where are TCs "own land" in Cyprus? TCs are a minority which was formed during foreign rule. Like similar minorities were formed in most other territories the Ottomans occupied.

There are Kurds all over Turkey. But we do not support that Ankara or other territories with Kurdish minorities should be part of a Kurdish state.

You on the other hand, are just bitching about not having access to you second homes

It is not "second homes" but the original homes, in the lands of our ancestors. Our refugees today live in refugee housing, which in most cases they don't even own.

But if we really want to stretch the situation and draw any similarities then we have to look at the time when there really was a humanitarian crisis here in Cyprus, propagated by your racist fight.

This would have to be around the days when the GC fascist were not allowing freedom of movement to the TC's and a lot of them had to rely on the UN for food and medication, while many of them were denied it and had to live in shit! This is how I lost my grandfather.

Again you are spurting your one sided propaganda. The conflict you refer to was in fact initiated by the TCs in the 50s. It is the TCs who insisted and fought for racist discriminations, so they could continue to divide the Cypriot people into two categories, like they did during Ottoman rule. The TCs never accepted to be equal citizens with all the rest. They always demanded to have powers and privileges on the expense of the human and democratic rights of every other Cypriot. This continues until today.

Here are the details:
http://www.cyprus-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=30000

[shahmaran]

Piratis, stop talking like a fucking politician who only addresses the audience in any debate.

I have exposed you enough times.

What you giving me more of your own written junk to support your current junk?!

What are you stupid?

After 5 years you are still passing that same cheap ass video around to prove to everyone what a racist schmuck you are?!

You know fuck all about Kurds and where they come from, just like you know dick about Turks and where they come from, specially about the Ottoman Empire.

A ruling class is like a separate race, they only breed amongst other ruling classes and do not mix with anyone below, that's what the Empire is, a ruling class that uses people from many ethnic backgrounds to grow and rule.

So no they are not TURKS, they were not even called Turks, it was the Ottoman Empire.

And what you know as TURKS today, are the people who fought away the Empire and the ruling class.

So take your primary school history along with your videos, write them down in a hardcover and ram them up your racist fucking arse, where it came from.

You bullshit does not even deserve this much attention but it has been a while

[Piratis]

Piratis, stop talking like a fucking politician who only addresses the audience in any debate.

I have exposed you enough times.

What you giving me more of your own written junk to support your current junk?!

What are you stupid?

After 5 years you are still passing that same cheap ass video around to prove to everyone what a racist schmuck you are?!

You know fuck all about Kurds and where they come from, just like you know dick about Turks and where they come from, specially about the Ottoman Empire.

A ruling class is like a separate race, they only breed amongst other ruling classes and do not mix with anyone below, that's what the Empire is, a ruling class that uses people from many ethnic backgrounds to grow and rule.

So no they are not TURKS, they were not even called Turks, it was the Ottoman Empire.

And what you know as TURKS today, are the people who fought away the Empire and the ruling class.

So take your primary school history along with your videos, write them down in a hardcover and ram them up your racist fucking arse, where it came from.

You bullshit does not even deserve this much attention but it has been a while

So you are declaring yourself the victor of all arguments? That is indeed a great achievement. Congratulations!

I don't know why you started to argue about the identity of the Ottomans. I only mentioned the Ottomans to state the fact that your minority in Cyprus was created during Ottoman rule and your population was spread all over the island, not concentrated in any one single territory, and therefore there was never any "Turkish part" in Cyprus for which you could have any separate self-determination over.

On the other hand the Kurds are the majority in what is known as Kurdistan for many centuries, long before any Turks occupied their lands. This is what gives them the right for self-determination over those lands, but not over other parts of Turkey were they have always been just a minority.

The racist here is no else than you, by the way. You adopt the official position of the Nazi Turkish state, that Cyprus should be forcefully divided along ethnic lines by means of ethnic cleansing, that Cypriots should be segregated and discriminated based on their ethnicity, so that Turkish Cypriots can have unfair privileges and a lot more power and land than what proportionally belongs to them.

Racist discriminations were imposed against the majority of the population during Ottoman rule. Then just 8 decades after the end of Ottoman rule TCs and Turkey collaborated with the British and forced on Cyprus some constitution that again segregated the population and discriminated against the majority of Cypriots. And today you continue to insist on yet more segregation and racist discriminations that come at the expense of the human and democratic rights of the Cypriot people.

Don't you think is time you abandoned your racist tactics and demands, and accept that in Cyprus should be no racist segregation and discriminations, so we can finally have in Cyprus what we were never allowed by you and the foreign Imperialists to have: A normal democratic country where all citizens are equal regardless of their ethnicity.

[miltiades]

Piratis, stop talking like a fucking politician who only addresses the audience in any debate.

I have exposed you enough times.

What you giving me more of your own written junk to support your current junk?!

What are you stupid?

After 5 years you are still passing that same cheap ass video around to prove to everyone what a racist schmuck you are?!

You know fuck all about Kurds and where they come from, just like you know dick about Turks and where they come from, specially about the Ottoman Empire.

A ruling class is like a separate race, they only breed amongst other ruling classes and do not mix with anyone below, that's what the Empire is, a ruling class that uses people from many ethnic backgrounds to grow and rule.

So no they are not TURKS, they were not even called Turks, it was the Ottoman Empire.

And what you know as TURKS today, are the people who fought away the Empire and the ruling class.

So take your primary school history along with your videos, write them down in a hardcover and ram them up your racist fucking arse, where it came from.

You bullshit does not even deserve this much attention but it has been a while

So you are declaring yourself the victor of all arguments? That is indeed a great achievement. Congratulations!

I don't know why you started to argue about the identity of the Ottomans. I only mentioned the Ottomans to state the fact that your minority in Cyprus was created during Ottoman rule and your population was spread all over the island, not concentrated in any one single territory, and therefore there was never any "Turkish part" in Cyprus for which you could have any separate self-determination over.

On the other hand the Kurds are the majority in what is known as Kurdistan for many centuries, long before any Turks occupied their lands. This is what gives them the right for self-determination over those lands, but not over other parts of Turkey were they have always been just a minority.

The racist here is no else than you, by the way. You adopt the official position of the Nazi Turkish state, that Cyprus should be forcefully divided along ethnic lines by means of ethnic cleansing, that Cypriots should be segregated and discriminated based on their ethnicity, so that Turkish Cypriots can have unfair privileges and a lot more power and land than what proportionally belongs to them.

Racist discriminations were imposed against the majority of the population during Ottoman rule. Then just 8 decades after the end of Ottoman rule TCs and Turkey collaborated with the British and forced on Cyprus some constitution that again segregated the population and discriminated against the majority of Cypriots. And today you continue to insist on yet more segregation and racist discriminations that come at the expense of the human and democratic rights of the Cypriot people.

Don't you think is time you abandoned your racist tactics and demands, and accept that in Cyprus should be no racist segregation and discriminations, so we can finally have in Cyprus what we were never allowed by you and the foreign Imperialists to have: A normal democratic country where all citizens are equal regardless of their ethnicity.

A reasonable and well presented post by Piratis.
I fully endorse the fact that there was never in the history of Cyprus a part of it that was exclusively T/C lived .
The T/Cs , as he says lived in all parts of Cyprus , may I also say that all of Cyprus is T/C just as much as it is G/C Armenian etc. A true Cypriot , that is one who considers his motherland to be the island of Cyprus , considers all of Cyprus an his homeland.
Kyrenia and Morfou , Famagusta and Rizokarpaso is CYPRIOT not Turkish nor Greek .
The occupied part of Cyprus regardless of the enforced Turkification by the invader it is nevertheless an integral part of the island of Cyprus.

[shahmaran]

500 years is long enough to get self determination, you are the only schmuck who thinks taking the argument back half a millennium would hold water...