Cyprus-Forum.com

[Sotos]

I've been to many placed in Greece. When you compare similarly sized places ... not mega-cities like Athens, then people are very similar to Cypriots especially in other islands, like Crete. Same language with minor differences, same religion, very similar customs... With the TCs we don't even speak the same language, different religion etc. It is stupid to say that we are so different from other Greeks that can justify a different ethnicity and then say that we are of the same ethnicity as the TCs who are much more different.

[Panicos UK]

My wife and I were at a Greek community dinner and dance a few years ago in central London and were introduced to a retired anthropologist (can't remember his name). We got talking and he asked if I wanted to know where my ancestors were from. We were a bit drunk and I joked around with him a bit, but he asked again so I agreed. I told him both my parents were born in Cyprus and he shook his head. His 'deduction' was that I was a mixture of French and Italian and that my ancestors 'settled' in Cyprus probably sometime between the 13th and 16th centuries. My wife was with us and she was also curious. His deduction on her was that she was 'Mesopotamian'.

My point is that there is no real way of knowing exactly what the 'ethnic' make-up of Cypriots is, so why bother? Even if we can trace some kind of blood lineage back to Greece, if we went back another 1000 years, we could end up being ancestral africans.

In my view, the ethnic element is not the focus, the focus should be which cultural group we belong to, i.e. what language we speak, our religion, customs, traditions etc. My cultural group is Greek and I see myself as a Greek. Who is anybody else to challenge that? Being Greek doesn't mean that I am a Greek citizen, it doesn't mean that my ethnicity is linked to the current geographical map of Greece. Being Greek is a cultural definition and statement. If 80% of Cypriots identify as Greek then they are Greek.

[GreekIslandGirl]

... and then there's the thorny issue of DNA, where GCs and TCs share more DNA with each other than Greece or Turkey.

It's only "thorny" because it isn't true. If it were true, we would be a different species.


Cyprus

Greek Cypriots

Greek Cypriots formed the island's largest ethnic community, nearly 80 percent of the island's population. They were the descendants of Achaean Greeks who settled on the island during the second half of the second millennium B.C. The island gradually became part of the Hellenic world as the settlers prospered over the next centuries (see Ancient Period , ch. 1). Alexander the Great freed the island from the Persians and annexed it to his own empire in 333 B.C.. Roman rule dating from 58 B.C. did not erase Greek ways and language, and after the division of the Roman Empire in A.D. 285 Cypriots enjoyed peace and national freedom for 300 years under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Empire of Byzantium (see Byzantine Rule , ch. 1). The most important event of the early Byzantine period was that the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus became independent no in 431. Beginning in the middle of the seventh century, Cyprus endured three centuries of Arab attacks and invasions. In A.D. 965, it became a province of Byzantium, and remained in that status for the next 200 years.

The Byzantine era profoundly molded Cypriot culture. The Greek Orthodox Christian legacy bestowed on Greek Cypriots in this period would live on during the succeeding centuries of oppressive foreign domination. English, Lusignan, and Venetian feudal lords ruled Cyprus with no lasting impact on its culture (see The Lusignan and Venetian Eras , ch. 1). Because Cyprus was never the final goal of any external ambition, but simply fell under the domination of whichever power was dominant in the eastern Mediterranean, destroying its civilization was never a military objective or necessity.

Nor did the long period of Ottoman rule (1570-1878) change Greek Cypriot culture (see Ottoman Rule , ch. 1). The Ottomans tended to administer their multicultural empire with the help of their subject millets, or religious communities. The tolerance of the millet system permitted the Greek Cypriot community to survive, administered for Constantinople by the Archbishop of the Church of Cyprus, who became the community's head, or ethnarch.

However tolerant Ottoman rule may have been with regard to religion, it was otherwise generally harsh and rapacious, tempered mainly by inefficiency. Turkish settlers suffered alongside their Greek Cypriot neighbors, and the two groups endured together centuries of oppressive governance from Constantinople.

In the light of intercommunal conflict since the mid-1950s, it is surprising that Cypriot Muslims and Christians generally lived harmoniously. Some Christian villages converted to Islam. In many places, Turks settled next to Greeks. The island evolved into a demographic mosaic of Greek and Turkish villages, as well as many mixed communities (see fig. 4). The extent of this symbiosis could be seen in the two groups' participation in commercial and religious fairs, pilgrimages to each other's shrines, and the occurrence, albeit rare, of intermarriage despite Islamic and Greek laws to the contrary. There was also the extreme case of the linobambakoi (linen-cottons), villagers who practiced the rites of both religions and had a Christian as well as a Muslim name. In the minds of some, such religious syncretism indicates that religion was not a source of conflict in traditional Cypriot society.

The rise of Greek nationalism in the 1820s and 1830s affected Greek Cypriots, but for the rest of the century these sentiments were limited to the educated. The concept of enosis--unification with the Greek motherland, by then an independent country after freeing itself from Ottoman rule--became important to literate Greek Cypriots. A movement for the realization of enosis gradually formed, in which the Church of Cyprus had a dominant role.

Extract Source: Library of Congress Country Studies.

[supporttheunderdog]

Well at least you admit the Turkish speaking Cypriots and Turks are of the same species as Greeks and Greek Speaking Cypriots. HoweverI think Mr Ed has not expressed himself well, in scientific terms and you have tried to distort his meaning: My own understanding is that if one were to compare the DNA of Greeks, Turks, Turkish speaking Cypriots and Greek speaking cypriots, the Turkish Speaking Cypiots and Greek Speaking Cypriots will tend to to show greater commonality of Haplotypes and within haplotypes of SNP mutations, suggesting greater recent common ancestry, than to either Greeks or Turks. There is at least one study suggesting that Cypriot mtDna has been stable for poosibly 7000 years, ie from the time when the island was finally permanently settled, and there will of course be many similarities to Greeks and Turks, becuse the ancestry of many Greeks Turks and Cypriots can be traced back to peoples who emerged out of the fertile crescent in a series of waves after the Last lacial Maximum, and who sread west through Anatolia, into Cyprus, the Aegean, and what is now called Greece. There is little evidence to support a theory of a mass polulation movement starting about 3500 - years back,of peoples from the Aegean region now labelled Mycenaean or Greek.

[Viewpoint]

Just accept it you are all bastards

[supporttheunderdog]

Just accept it you are all bastards

and you too my dear, you too!

[Viewpoint]

Just accept it you are all bastards

and you too my dear, you too!

[B25]

Just accept it you are all bastards

Yes, GREEK. Bastards.

[GreekIslandGirl]

Well at least you admit the Turkish speaking Cypriots and Turks are of the same species as Greeks and Greek Speaking Cypriots. HoweverI think Mr Ed has not expressed himself well, in scientific terms and you have tried to distort his meaning: My own understanding is that if one were to compare the DNA of Greeks, Turks, Turkish speaking Cypriots and Greek speaking cypriots, the Turkish Speaking Cypiots and Greek Speaking Cypriots will tend to to show greater commonality of Haplotypes and within haplotypes of SNP mutations, suggesting greater recent common ancestry, than to either Greeks or Turks. There is at least one study suggesting that Cypriot mtDna has been stable for poosibly 7000 years, ie from the time when the island was finally permanently settled, and there will of course be many similarities to Greeks and Turks, becuse the ancestry of many Greeks Turks and Cypriots can be traced back to peoples who emerged out of the fertile crescent in a series of waves after the Last lacial Maximum, and who sread west through Anatolia, into Cyprus, the Aegean, and what is now called Greece. There is little evidence to support a theory of a mass polulation movement starting about 3500 - years back,of peoples from the Aegean region now labelled Mycenaean or Greek.

Neither he nor you know what you are talking about. Spare us your interpretations. Please supply some evidence for your fantasies.

[PC Bubble]

Viewpoint.

Very well said.

Leave them to argue just what nationality bastard they are !