Cyprus-Forum.com

[ZoC]

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/opinions/cyp ... t/20120826

good piece.

Imagine Cyprus as a beautiful little island in the Mediterranean where the people ... live together, work together, do business together and play together. An island where everyone lives wherever one likes. An island where there are no foreign military forces. And where all the citizens ... enjoy full benefits of European Union membership.

This is not wishful thinking. This is a vision partly reflecting on what actually happened in the past, recalling the positive aspects of the past to re-create a better future. This is partly learning from the gaps left carelessly wide open in 1960 by Britain, Greece and Turkey, possibly because they did not know any better.

and possibly because they didn't have the interests of the cypriot people uppermost in their thinking - and why would they?

[Cap]

This may well be true, and absolutely wonderful... if we were located in the middle of the Atlantic.

But as long as we're positioned in an enviable and historically turbulent geographic location, we will ALWAYS be tormented by foreign interests.

[ZoC]

This may well be true, and absolutely wonderful... if we were located in the middle of the Atlantic.

But as long as we're positioned in an enviable and historically turbulent geographic location, we will ALWAYS be tormented by foreign interests.

the weak and stupid should get tormented, sure. but the strong and wise should get even.

[bill cobbett]

Yes but it helps if we appreciate that CY's geo-political position, just 30 miles off the Turkish coast and with Turkey's aspirations to re-annex a large part of CY goes a very, very long way to explaining the CY problem.

... and of course once we appreciate this root cause of the problem we can act to resolve it.

[ZoC]

Yes but it helps if we appreciate that CY's geo-political position, just 30 miles off the Turkish coast and with Turkey's aspirations to re-annex a large part of CY goes a very, very long way to explaining the CY problem.

... and of course once we appreciate this root cause of the problem we can act to resolve it.

sure thing, billy. hurry up and appreciate the root cause of the problem everyone!

[supporttheunderdog]

Since the birth of the modern and sometimes expansionist Greek Republic out of war with and often at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, and with the modern Turkish Republic born out of the war with Greece over Greek expansion into Western Anatolia, and concerns about the megalist idea, with Cyprus so close to the Turkish coast no way was Turkey willing to allow its regional rival Greece to take total control of the Island: In 1947 they were not in a position to stop the Italians giving Rhodes and the rest of the Dodecanese to Greece, but by 1955 thy were in a better position to take on Greece over Cyprus. The two most workeable options were therefore probably (1) Enosis with partition or (2) independance. I maintain it was the failure of the Greek Speaking Cypriots in the period 1955 onwards to recognise this, that contributed so much to the settlement of 1959 and the events of 1963, 1967, and finally 1974. Without Cypriot participation the 1974 Junta inspired and lead coup could not have happened and Turkey would not have had the excuse to intervene.

And foreign policy is seldom moral....

[bill cobbett]

Yes, morals rarely come in to any nation's foreign policy.

It is the one area of any gov's responsibility that is unchanging past one election after another, so whereas any internal affairs policy is open to change at each election, foreign policies are entrenched in the past relationships between nations, by alliances etc and governed not so much by elected politicians but by civil servants at places like the US State Dept, the GB Foreign Office and their equivalents in Greece and Turkey.