Cyprus-Forum.com

[rawk]

Thank you Alexis for your detailed analysis of the role of Archbishop Makarios in the events of 1963 through to 1974.

On the whole I would tend to agree with you, he played his friends in EOKA for political advantage and then moved against them when he saw a threat to his role as leader of the Greek Cypriots. He probably managed to keep his identity as a man of God quite seperate from being a man of the people in his mind, and coupled with a almost medieval Machievellian capacity to appear as all things to all men, only became undone when the Greek junta decided he was too clever by half for their liking.

I would, however, like to revisit the issue of land and the expulsion of the Greek cypriots from the north and the Turkish cypriots from the south. This is a complex and horrendously tangled issue, complicated by the presence of 40.000 Turkish troops and the Republic of Cyprus now being a member of the EU. There are two sides to this current political situation, the legal and the political.

Several on this board have used the legal argument, i.e. everything about the TRNC is illegal, the land sales, the buildings, the institutions, the deeds, all are illegal. And they are absolutely right! If I create a country, pass some laws relating to another territory next to my country then in my country, all those things as enacted by my country's government are illegal.

However, in reality, the politics of the situation may be that, because events have taken place, the law has to recognise that reality otherwise it becomes an ass. Laws are only respected if they relate to real things otherwise it leads to civil disobedience. Again laws are drafted by politicians and are repealed, amended and updated, they are not set in stone.

Other members speak of the truth of the events of 1974, and cite personal family accounts of the tragedy that befeel their relations and friends. Personal tragedy is a very difficult thing to come to terms with and it doesn't assist one to be objective about events. It has quite the opposite affect, the mind is clouded by anger, guilt, frustration, revenge and retribution. The loss of homes, possessions, friends, loved ones, ancestral lands, personal pride and dignity all affect us and our children in the most traumatic way. In fact being refugees in your own country must be the most humiliating experience of all. But yet again it makes it difficult to be ruthlessly objective about the truth, and I mean the truth in terms of reality and not interpretation, of events.

Please forgive me if I digress a little.

There is a story of old about several men who were taken prisoner in a conflict and for some years were kept captive in a cave, they were chained facing the wall of the cave and the only illumination was from a fire that glowed behind them. From time to time men would walk passed the fire carrying objects which would cast a flickering shadow onto the cave wall before them.

To pass the time the men would play a game whereby they would try and guess the nature of the objects their captors were carrying. One would guess at an object as an urn, another as it being a barrel; then it would be a spear, "no" would say another, that's a rod for fishing.

One day, one of the men slipped his hands free of the chains and turned to face the fire, for the first time in years he could actually see the objects they recently could only guess at. Then he crept from the cave into the night. In the dark he could see objects and again he could see clearly but it was still too dark to make out their shapes. Dawn came and the world glowed with colour, he now say it for what it was in full clarity.
He saw the mountains, the trees and meadows and beyond, the sea, everything in full colour and real for what it was. As he looked up, he blinked tears of pain as he looked directly at the sun.

He went back to the cafe, it was empty of guards, the captors had left to look for him. he crept down into the interior where his companions still gazed at the flickering shadows on the wall.

"I have have seen the world for what it is, I have seen the truth", he said.

"Go away!", his companions muttered,
"we have the truth here before our eyes, can you not see it?"

This was written by Plato some 2400 years ago, he was a Greek. (Source Plato's Republic)

Again, sorry for the digression, but where there complex matters, there are no simple solutions. It is that we are shackled by our perceptions to reach the truth of a matter and require a rigorous debate to free us from the metaphorical chains that bind us to the cave wall.

Neither are the laws of men strong enough to always provide justice, each facet of this particular problem is dependant on the other, it is not simply a one wrong to be righted. A solution to the land problem cannot be just a legal one, many other factors have to be included, including facing up to the truth of the events of 1974 and earlier. It is multi dimensional area of human conflict that requires an independant body to explore and give guidance on.

Again I apologize for the length of this posting, I will try and keep subsequent ones more brief.

rawk

[bakala]

Rawk dont apologise mate,

thats a hell of a piece of Writing
id suggest you copywright it cuz its gonna get nicked
and perhaps we are all blinded in some respects not by a wall , but by lack of vison . and is anything more blind than a narrow mind ?

Over to Alexis ?

[Agios Amvrosios]

However, in reality, the politics of the situation may be that, because events have taken place, the law has to recognise that reality otherwise it becomes an ass. Laws are only respected if they relate to real things otherwise it leads to civil disobedience. Again laws are drafted by politicians and are repealed, amended and updated, they are not set in stone.

This applied to Nazi Germany- the Nazi maitained the "rule of Law" but the mechanisms of their regime and crimes against humanity were illegal. A Realist acceptance of unjust laws is flawed and will lead to huge problems for everyone when the Realist time bomb explodes. The laws of the Occupation are founded on illegality and gross injustice. Ethnically cleansing 82 % of the population is a fundamental injustice and Lex Iniusta non est lex.

With respect to your platonic cave, are saying that the the prisoner who escaped is somebody who goes to the Occupied areas to see"reality' and goes to the free areas to tell the other refugees what he saw?

I went to the occupied areas and the reality I saw was that my grandmother's grave was desecrated. The "reality" was that her tombstone wasbroken and thrown 150 meters from where she was buried. Everything else was like Michael Jackson's Ranch Neverland. What will happen to your Neverland if Turkey cuts its losses with Occupied Cyprus to get into the EU? If TUrkey gives up on the EU it will thrown back centuries further into the stone age and break up into one million pieces. The Greek Cypriots will win either way-


Basically what you are saying is to accept ethnic cleansing as reality. We know its real but the attempt to legitimise this crime is a fraud no matter how you look at it.There is only one remedyto ethnic cleansing- restitution. There is no justicifation for indiscriminant war crimes such as ethnic cleansing. As Turkey tries to move closer to Europe Turkey will have to deal with its ongoing ethnic cleansing in Cyprus.

The reality is that this is the only card the Greek Cypriots can play if Turkey refuses to allow the refugees to return to their homes.

[bakala]

Rawk

what do you think the future will hold for the island ?

a federation of two seperate states ?

Unification or will it remain with Turkey and Greece having half the island each ?
and what do the people want for the future ? by tthe people i dont mean the extremist guys on this board i mean the real average people

[bakala]

Argios i didnt realy want to start all this again but you wont let it rest, you keep looking back instead of forward
in fact your one of the guys who cant take see further than the wall

do you mean the 10 years of Ethnic Cleansing before the landings in 1974 or after that ?

[Agios Amvrosios]

the extremist guys on this board

you must be talking about the extremists who want the ongoing ethnic cleansing to be institutionlised.

you keep looking back instead of forward
in fact your one of the guys who cant take see further than the wall

You can't accuse Greek Cypriot refugees of "looking backward' when the ethnic cleansing is CURRENT, ONGOING and maintained by 40,000 Turkish ethnic cleansing troops.

Are you seriously trying to say that institutionalised ethnic cleansing is forward looking and progressive in 2006.

[bakala]

Agios
If you keep playing the same old cards time after time then people get bored,
besides your argument about ethnic cleansing only raises the issue of the fact that, the Greek Cypriot people were conned into trying to ethnicly cleanse the Turkish Cypriots out of Cyprus for ten years prior to 74,
the Attempt failed becaus of the Turkish Intervention stopped it suceeding,

An intersting quetion no one has asked yet is, if the Turkish Forces haden't landed what would have happend ? what was the plan after the very last Turkish Cypriot village was cleared, what was the plan after the last surviving Turkish Cypriot got to the safe haven of Turkey,

In other words you started a fight and lost. not only dd you loose the fight you gambled for total control of the whole island and lost half of it. now you want your stake back. Tough.

Any future settlement may or may not involve restitution of lands to former owners . if land is given to former owners then it will be because the TRNC think its the right thing to do. If the TRNC decide that the greek Goverment who control the Greek cypriot goverment are too intransigent to deal with then they may decide to hold onto the land and wait for recognition, because recognition is comming slowly but surely wether you like it or not,

The one thing the TRNC and its Turkish Cypriot people will never do is accept domination by Greece in any shape or form they tried that once and look what happend,
A federal partnership between two friendly states of Cyprus may happen one day if the respective Goverments have at their head two leaders who can reason and look forwards instead of back, Rawk And Alexis are the calibre of people you need to find a solution, The problem is those type of people are far too rare ,

I am living outside the Cyprus problem in the UK, but sometimes its best to stand outside the probelem to see the solution.
Often those who live inside the problem cannot see the other persons point of view

Of all the types of Blindness the blindness of the narrow minded man is the worst, Because it makes him deaf as well, deaf to reason and sometimes truth too

[twinkle]

Unification or will it remain with Turkey and Greece having half the island each ?

Cyprus is an independent country from Greece, with its own Government, laws, flag, tennis player, eurovision entry, football team, the list is endless.....................

When will people stop tarring us with the Greek brush. Be proud to be Cypriot!

[bakala]

Who are you trying to kid twinkle, Us or yourself ?

[stuballstu]

Twinkle

Friends of ours crossed from the North at Ledra Palace not so long ago. Their son who is 10 years old asked his father if they were in Greece or Cyprus as the first thing that he seen is a Greek Flag. If the ROC want to be seen as an indpendent country then why is the Greek flag in flown in abundance?

Also at any of the events you named why are there so many Greek flags in replacement of Cypriot flags? The young Cypriot tennis player who done so well at the Australian open had many twice as many Greek flags waved at him as he did Cypriot flags.

I have just posted on another thread which is buy a journalist who makes a major reference to the lack of "Cypriotness". I would invite you to read this and leave your comments.