Piratis wrote:Afroasiatis wrote:Piratis wrote:
A real independence could be an acceptable alternative. But Cyprus was never given a real independence. What was forced on us with the 1960 agreements was some pseudo independence with foreign troops, foreign bases, foreign judges of the supreme court, "guarantor powers" and Ottoman style privileges granted to an 18% minority on the expense of the rest of Cypriots.
A real independence is anyway impossible. Is there one country in the world that can call itself really independent, that doesn't depend at all on other countries?
What Cyprus could get was an independence similar to that which most other ex-British colonies got. Not perfect, but far better than the one it finally got.
And the reason for this very restricted independence, compared to the other colonies, was exactly the presence of two competing nationalisms in the island. Among GCs this was expressed as the ideology of Enosi. This is what gave the UK the power to keep officially much of its control over Cyprus, and the right of Greece and Turkey to intervene in the internal affairs of Cyprus.
If there was a single Cypriot nationalism instead, with the goal of a real independent Cyprus where ethnic identity wouldn't matter at all, the British imperialists would have it much more difficult. They would still try to divide the Cypriot people and keep control of Cyprus, but we made it far too easy for them.
By real independence I of course mean independence as it exists in all other normal countries.
The reason of this pseudo independence is that the British had strategic interests in Cyprus. If they didn't, then they wouldn't have bothered that much.
What made it easy for the British was that the Ottomans some time earlier had created a Muslim minority on our island. Even if we wanted we wouldn't be able to create some single nationalism with people who have different religion and speak a different language in a time when the British would be offering to the TCs incentives (gains on our expense) for staying separate.
The British had strategic interests in various parts of the world. They didn't manage to hold on them everywhere. I'd think e.g. that their strategic interests in Suez Canal were much bigger than in Cyprus.
By the 1950s, the Muslim community already had a history of some centuries in Cyprus, and it was so indigenous in Cyprus as the Christian communities. It was something that had to be taken into consideration as non-changing fact.
And Cyprus was in this no exception, but part of the rule. Almost in every country of our region there were different religious-ethnic groups (except where they had been cleansed, e.g. Turkey or Greece). And this was the same in almost all of the countries under british colonialism. In many of them the linguistic and religious diversity was far bigger than in Cyprus. The British tried to make use of this everywhere, but they weren't always 100% successful
So the strategic interests and the ethnic diversity in Cyprus were factors that made an independence of Cyprus difficult, but not impossible. it would be a hard struggle, but it could be tried out. The problem in Cyprus was that the people didn't even want to try it. With the exception of few personalities (I think, most of them TCs), our elites accepted the division as it was wanted by the British.
To create a single nationalism under the conditions of Cyprus was a very difficult thing, but the only chance to really challenge the British imperialism. There are also nationalisms based on people with different religious background (see e.g. Arab nationalism) or different linguistic background (e.g. Indian nationalism).
