Going through the memoirs of Dr. Ihsan Ali I thought it would be useful to try to locate the roots of the passion of the Greek Cypriots for Enosis. I believe that this will help us to better the historical back round of the Cyprus Problem.
So, instead of an opening statement from me, I will let Dr. Ihsan Ali speak.
(Underlinings and annotations are mine)
Dr. Ihsan Ali: Memoirs
http://www.ihsanali.org/Default.aspx?_P ... ontent=102
Chapter 5. The struggle for Enosis.
(Extract)
(comment from me: I wonder why they decided to legalise this nest of traitorous snakes just then?The morning of 1 April 1955, many people of Cyprus woke up frightened by bomb explosions. The truth is that for a long time everyone had been expecting that our Greek compatriots would start the struggle against the British Colonial rule. Moderate Turks and Greeks had been urging, on every occasion, the authorities of the Colonial administration to abolish the political oppression against the people of Cyprus and to practice a democratic administration. They should also, for example, have constructed roads and dams. In short, they should have given emphasis to the development of the economy of the island and to the well-being of the people. If they were not going to take those steps, a revolution would break up sooner or later. Personally, I used to give such advice as above not only to the officials of the administration in Cyprus but also to those who used to come from the United Kingdom to Cyprus in familiarization visits.
My concern was to prevent the creation of a tragic situation on the island. Unfortunately, my advice on this matter had fallen on deaf ears. The question arises here: Could the Greeks, with their burning passion for Enosis, be held back one way or another? Truly, for the Greeks of Cyprus the idea of Enosis was a passion, and it was not easy to obliterate it from their minds and hearts whatever method one chose to use because the root of this idea was very ancient. In Byzantine times, the Church of Cyprus was recognized as autocephalous and Emperor Zeno granted the Archbishop of Cyprus the three known privileges: to sign in red ink, to wear imperial robes and to hold imperial scepter.
After the Byzantines, upon their arrival in Cyprus the Francs and the Venetians tried to supress the Orthodox religion. The situation changed when in 1571 the Turks conquered Cyprus and recognized the right of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus to be autocephalous and the Orthodox faith together with the Moslem faith as the official religions of the island. Moreover, they recognized the Archbishop of Cyprus as Ethnarch, i.e., political leader in effect.
In 1878, the Turks ceded Cyprus to the British on an annual rental basis. The British curtailed the authority of the Archbishop as a leader of the Greek Community. This behavior caused a reaction in Orthodox Church, and the slogan for Enosis was launched. The Greeks' anger increased when they learned that the sum of money paid to the Turks by the British was being collected from the people of Cyprus. When the AKEL Communist party, which had been founded in 1926, was officially recognized in 1941....,
...the outcry of the Church against the British increased and efforts towards Enosis were speeded up by the Church.
The Colonial administration exerted both political and economic oppression. It failed to carry out development works and did not bother to find markets for the products of Cyprus. Their policy aimed at subduing the people of Cyprus through poverty and economic misery and exploiting them even further whenever the opportunity would arise. This happened during World War II when many Greeks and Turks joined the British army as volunteers owing to the economic depression prevailing on the island. This was an irreconciliable and tragic action.
Thus, because of the administration's wrong policy, the Church became the pioneer of Enosis as it was the pioneer of the 1931 events known as "octovriana" (the October events) and later on of the 1955 struggle of EOKA.
To read the hole chapter use the link above.
