Cyprus-Forum.com

[halil]

Vardık, Varız, Var Olacağız!!! / We always existed, we will continue to exist

[halil]

Vardık, Varız, Var Olacağız!!! / We always existed, we will continue to exist








From Turkey's press....about yesterday meeting.

Thousands of Turkish Cypriots protest wage cuts

Saturday, January 29, 2011
NICOSIA – The Associated Press

Thousands of Turkish Cypriots in the north of divided Cyprus walked off their jobs on Friday and peacefully protested what they said are unfair economic policies that are stifling them.

Protesters from around 40 organizations banged drums and blew vuvuzelas at a rally in north Nicosia to voice their disapproval at polices they say are driving young people off the island to look for jobs.

"The economy is bad and everyone is getting angry," 18 year-old student Tuğrul Atakan said. "It's getting worse and worse."

Protesters also blamed Turkish Cypriot authorities for bowing to pressure from Turkey to enact such measures as steep entry level wage cuts for government jobs.

"Ankara prepared these measures and imposed them," said Murat Kanatlı, secretary general of the leftist New Cyprus Party. "They're pushing us out of the country."

Cyprus was split into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north in 1974 when Turkey intervened after a coup by supporters of union with Greece.

The Turkish Cypriot government of the right wing National Unity Party employs about one in eight people in the north, said Kanatlı, and any pay cuts would have a knock-on effect on the entire economy.

But more worrisome for Turkish Cypriots is the sense that they are losing control of their own destiny, as policy formulated in Ankara is implemented in the north by an acquiescent government, said Şener Elcil, general secretary of the Cyprus Turkish Teachers' Trade Union, KTOS.

"People are fed up. Turkish Cypriots want to govern themselves," said Elcil, one of the protest's organizers. "We sent a clear message to Turkey not to interfere."

Elcil said Turkish Cypriots are losing their jobs as state-owned companies are being sold off to Turkish businessmen.

Long-running negotiations to reunify the island that could determine the outcome of Turkey's troubled bid to join the EU have made little concrete progress.

But United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed optimism about the talks after a meeting in Geneva this week with Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot President Derviş Eroğlu.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php? ... 2011-01-28

[bill cobbett]

Vardık, Varız, Var Olacağız!!! / We always existed, we will continue to exist








From Turkey's press....about yesterday meeting.

Thousands of Turkish Cypriots protest wage cuts

Saturday, January 29, 2011
NICOSIA – The Associated Press

Thousands of Turkish Cypriots in the north of divided Cyprus walked off their jobs on Friday and peacefully protested what they said are unfair economic policies that are stifling them.

Protesters from around 40 organizations banged drums and blew vuvuzelas at a rally in north Nicosia to voice their disapproval at polices they say are driving young people off the island to look for jobs.

"The economy is bad and everyone is getting angry," 18 year-old student Tuğrul Atakan said. "It's getting worse and worse."

Protesters also blamed Turkish Cypriot authorities for bowing to pressure from Turkey to enact such measures as steep entry level wage cuts for government jobs.

"Ankara prepared these measures and imposed them," said Murat Kanatlı, secretary general of the leftist New Cyprus Party. "They're pushing us out of the country."

Cyprus was split into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north in 1974 when Turkey intervened after a coup by supporters of union with Greece.

The Turkish Cypriot government of the right wing National Unity Party employs about one in eight people in the north, said Kanatlı, and any pay cuts would have a knock-on effect on the entire economy.

But more worrisome for Turkish Cypriots is the sense that they are losing control of their own destiny, as policy formulated in Ankara is implemented in the north by an acquiescent government, said Şener Elcil, general secretary of the Cyprus Turkish Teachers' Trade Union, KTOS.

"People are fed up. Turkish Cypriots want to govern themselves," said Elcil, one of the protest's organizers. "We sent a clear message to Turkey not to interfere."

Elcil said Turkish Cypriots are losing their jobs as state-owned companies are being sold off to Turkish businessmen.

Long-running negotiations to reunify the island that could determine the outcome of Turkey's troubled bid to join the EU have made little concrete progress.

But United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed optimism about the talks after a meeting in Geneva this week with Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot President Derviş Eroğlu.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php? ... 2011-01-28

Solidarity to our CY brothers and sisters working to overthrow the Turkish Regime.

Protest boys and girls, get on to titter and FB and texts and organise friends, to get rid of the Turkish Puppet Eroglu voted in by the Settlers and supported by Capitalist Turkish Business.

[Kikapu]

Vardık, Varız, Var Olacağız!!! / We always existed, we will continue to exist

Who are you reminding, Halil, Turkey or the RoC.???

[Bananiot]

An interesting evaluation of the massive demonstration by Nicos Trimikliniotis

The Turkish-Cypriot mass strike and demonstration is a smile the sunshine brings in cold winter day

The demonstration was massive – 40,000 in the Square. It was militant; it had spirit and was inspiring. In fact it was so successful that there is a ‘phoney war’ in the media as to its’ meaning: what was it really about?

I will not delve into the factual details of the mass Turkish-Cypriots demonstrations; these are reported in the various news agencies. Besides, so many people were there and can provide their eye-witness accounts.

Mehmet Çaǧlar CTP MP was adamant in his statement to Politis (28.1.2010) that it was “completely unlike 2003”, as “Turkish-Cypriots no longer believe that there will be a solution even though they still want a solution”: Turkish-Cypriots feel let down from the EU and the Greek-Cypriots who voted ‘No’ and thus punished his party and Talat, laments Mr Çaǧlar. I get the impression that this is what he actually thinks and no doubt this reflects the view of a significant section of the CTP leadership. I am not persuaded that this was the feeling of the mass of people at the demonstration. No doubt there are those like the followers of Serdar Denktash DP or some of the right-wing unions, who wanted to confine the claims and the slogans to purely economic ones. On the other hand this was the exact opposite form the more radical trade unions, which actually led the demonstrations such as the teachers union, KTOS: the ‘economic’ was merely another aspect of the ‘socio-political’. After all the Trade Union Platform, which consist of 28 trade unions and political groups sound like a Cypriot version of the Zapatistas by demanding communal autonomy and self-government, democratic and labour rights and re-unification of the country. It aims “self-government of the community” by eliminating the problem of representation of the political will. The platform does not aim to be government.”

If we look at the first Greek-Cypriot reactions or interpretations of the demonstrations we can locate similar sort of attitudes, which were dominant during the mass demonstrations of 2002-2004. Some were cynical – in fact one person I chatted to told me that ‘all they care about is their interest’, the Greek term he used was ‘symferon’: ‘to symferon tous’. I strongly reacted: of course they had look after their interest; what is it that motivate people to take to the streets? Their interest is our interest, which our common interest, our common good. The editorial of the Cyprus Mail is also cynical: “UNION lunacy is quite clearly not something restricted to the areas under the control of the Cyprus Republic”, it proclaims in its’ rampant neoliberal gibberish.

On the other hand, AKEL had issued its’ solidarity with the demonstrating Turkish-Cypriot working people. Others point that it is unlike 2003: there is no specific plan, as there was then and Turkey’s accession to the EU has stagnated, said Nicos Moudouros (MEGA news 20.1.2011), adviser to President Christofias on Turkish affairs. Prodeftiki teachers union and the Bicommunal Teachers platform interpret the demonstrations as a call for action: they were definitely reminiscent of 2003 and open up prospects for common struggle.

So what was the message then?

I am of the view that the message given there was both economic and political but the dominant massage was clearly the more expanded, which is necessarily more political massage. How else does one interpret the term “Communal Survival” (Simon Bahceli, Cyprus Mail 28.1. 2011), which was the dominant feature that mobilised the people? It is precisely this contestation over the ‘social existence’, which is both ‘hidden’ and ‘opened’ in the Turkish word ‘toplum’ which means at the same time “society, social group and community”. ‘Toplumilim’ is sociology, whilst ‘toplumcu’ is a socialist or a collectivist or a communalist. Of course, I can hardly claim any expertise on Turkish language to provide the fine and subtle literally distinctions therein; any common dictionary of Turkish/English and Turkish/Greek makes the above point abundantly clear. The meaning is double-edged: it is directed to Ankara and the Greek-Cypriots.

My reading is based on a social and political understanding of events. And here it all depends on how one reads history. If one thinks that history is written by ‘great men’ [exceptionally also women], then one cannot but be confused and/or cynical about the demonstration. I am of the opposite view. I believe it is ordinary people who make history (many times personalities, including ‘big names’ leave their mark too). In this sense we need a different reading to the mass demonstration – one that I have alluded to above in my poor Turkish linguistic endeavour over ‘communal survival’. So, what is the disagreement about? What is the contestation over the meaning of ‘communal survival’ here?

As Rancière notes that disagreement with the established or normal order (law, power, state apparatus etc.) generates the political, which is the result of exceptional circumstances. He argues instead that the most relevant distinction to be made is that politics is exceptional, while police is commonplace: “Politics, in its specificity, is rare. It is always local and occasional”: “it always reflects a social convulsion, a social conflict around a wider dispute” (Bowman on Rancière http://ranciere.blogspot.com/2007/09/po ... ti-by.html).

It is within this exceptional moment that the Turkish-Cypriots strike and demonstration which paralysed the ‘normal order’ that we have the emergence of politics: it opens up the potential for new subjectivities, for new actions and collective belongings. It is an Event around which people decide where they stand. This is precisely why the message of the Event is contested. There is always of course the potential for a closure in this contestation: ‘it was nothing’ or it was ‘abnormal thing, a momentary lapse that will pass’, say the apologists of the status quo (the ‘police-order’ in Rancière’s terms). ‘It marks a historic moment which the new would be born’, say the challengers of the order.

The contestation will now traverse into an ‘expert’ as well as a ‘political’ debate in the media over what ‘it meant’. The struggle about which view will prevail, over the meaning or better translation can be seen as an effort to ‘normalise’ the Event within the current order. At the same time it is continuation of the Event by other means in the struggle for hegemony. If and when the suppression hypothesis (i.e. the view that ‘it was nothing’ or ‘momentary lapse’ etc) fails, then there is an effort to subordinate it by claiming it as ‘ours’: the effort to capitalise on the Event.

I have argued amongst few others that the Turkish-Cypriot mobilisations clearly illustrate that they are a political subject, which Ankara and the Greek-Cypriot majoritarians have failed to recognise. Only two other books written in Greek have made a similar claim Sia Anaglostopoulou’s book on the Turkish-Cypriots and Turkey and Themos Demetriou/ Sotiris Vlahos book on the Turkish-Cypriot uprising (also translated in Turkish). These two texts refer to the Annan period (i.e. just before and just after). We are now certainly in the post-Annan period: there is a new paradigm in the efforts to resolve the Cyprus problem.

Moreover, it is a period of reflexivity – we have moved on: we do not live in 2003; after 2004 Cyprus is no longer the same – this was a watershed event which has changed our society on both sides of the barbed wire. But life moves on; we are not stuck in those days; in the process Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots have passed the ‘age of innocence’. We can learn from the past. Of course the momentum of 2004 is not the same but we have all hopefully learned something from those days.

Despite defeats, painful setbacks and scars from the past, 2011 is in that sense more of an opportunity for Cypriots than most people can imagine. The Turkish-Cypriot mass strike and demonstration is a smile the sunshine brings in cold winter day. Can we make it last?

[Bananiot]

Translation of the phrase:

Kurtarildik mi?

please.

[Klik]

Translation of the phrase:

Kurtarildik mi?

please.

'save us' I think

[B25]

He could have summarised all that rubbish in to a single paragraph. Friend of yours Bananiotiglu??

Talk about waffle and padding out, Jeeesusssss!

And his point is????

[ZoC]

He could have summarised all that rubbish in to a single paragraph. Friend of yours Bananiotiglu??

Talk about waffle and padding out, Jeeesusssss!

And his point is????

indeed... clumsy verbose pomposity. and there's no apostrophe after its (possessive adjective)...

it's its not its'.

[Bananiot]

Like blow flies attracted by death, these fascists will denounce anything progressive, even if it is for the good of their country. Misanthropist bunch of people with a dark piece of coal in the place of the heart.