Cyprus-Forum.com

[kalahari]

There is no such thing as lack of Cypriot national identity because there is no such thing as a Cypriot nation.

Strahd, thanks for your reply. I do not understand this bit though, especially when you add this...

Cyprus is an independent country member of the EU family and recognised by the world as such.

I guess you are talking about living national sense of identity, Cypriots knowing what it means to be a Cypriot and being proud of being part of that island race.

I suppose I was talking more about an imposed sense of identity – following government guidelines, if that makes any sense. I was building on this comment:

From a personal point of view i can not see why the ROC has to fly the Greek flag at checkpoints, stadiums in fact most places were there is a flag pole you can almost guarantee there will be a Greek flag there. This is supposed to be an "independant" country. Also in the North the only reason i can see why the Turkish flag is displayed is because part of Cyprus is occupied by Turkey. As i have already had this discussion on a previous thread please dont defend the displaying of the Greek flag as part of our heritage. It may be part of Greek Cypriot heritage, you may talk the same language, share the same religion etc etc but there is no part of Cyprus occupied by Greece so why have the Greek flag flying.

Your definition of national identity is better than the one I have used, as it is more real, but I still don't understand why the flying of the Greek flag is actively encouraged instead of the Cypriot.

And I mean no insult to the Greek nation by this comment.

[cypezokyli]

i changed my original post, strahd and wrote a lengthy response to you.
i hope you scroll back a bit and read it....

ofcource it is obvious ot whom i was refferring to

[Strahd]

There is no such thing as lack of Cypriot national identity because there is no such thing as a Cypriot nation.

Strahd, thanks for your reply. I do not understand this bit though, especially when you add this...

Cyprus is an independent country member of the EU family and recognised by the world as such.

I guess you are talking about living national sense of identity, Cypriots knowing what it means to be a Cypriot and being proud of being part of that island race.

I suppose I was talking more about an imposed sense of identity – following government guidelines, if that makes any sense. I was building on this comment:

From a personal point of view i can not see why the ROC has to fly the Greek flag at checkpoints, stadiums in fact most places were there is a flag pole you can almost guarantee there will be a Greek flag there. This is supposed to be an "independant" country. Also in the North the only reason i can see why the Turkish flag is displayed is because part of Cyprus is occupied by Turkey. As i have already had this discussion on a previous thread please dont defend the displaying of the Greek flag as part of our heritage. It may be part of Greek Cypriot heritage, you may talk the same language, share the same religion etc etc but there is no part of Cyprus occupied by Greece so why have the Greek flag flying.

Your definition of national identity is better than the one I have used, as it is more real, but I still don't understand why the flying of the Greek flag is actively encouraged instead of the Cypriot.

And I mean no insult to the Greek nation by this comment.

Nobody encourages the flying of the Greek flag in Cyprus... it is done by Greek Cypriots because we are Greeks and we do not see the Greek flag as a symbol of the Greek state but as a symbol of Hellinism as a whole wether living in Greece, Cyprus, USA, Brazil, Austarlia etc. In the same sense we sing the Hellenic national anthem. Greece never wanted to occupy Cyprus, it let Cypriots decide for themselves(Only exception can be considered the works of the Junta but this again was done in co operation with Cypriots and it was considered high treason by the Greeks who jailed those traitors for life)... Greek Cypriots back in the 50s wanted the unification of Cyprus with the Greek state. Greece has also helped a lot economically Cyprus to rebuild as an independent state asking nothing in return after the invasion of Turkey.

We fly the Greek flag because we are memebrs of the Greek Community of Cyprus as described by the constitution and because it is our constitutional right from the declaration of independence at 1960.

[cypezokyli]

on second thought i repost my answer here :

i dont disagree in general with what you say strahd.
but for me to say "i agree" , i need to know what you mean by "the heelenic national identity must be preserved".
this is so vague, that can be interpreted in 100 possible ways.
please explain..... just once....

lets not get into discussion again about cypriot identity.... but,

you reffered to turkish and greek "traditions and culture" . arent there any traditions and cultures that one cannot find either in mainland greece or in mainland turkey , that are shared both by gcs and tcs. what do we label them ? non-existant ? if you want specific examples (and not sth vague as preserving cypriot identity ) i refer to cypriot music , dances , and uniform. what kind of label do we give to those ? greek , turkish or non-existent ?
ofcource the population of cyprus has influences from greece and turkey and ofcource they should be recognised.
but we could at the same time recognise some uniqunesses that we have , without that endagering our hellenism or turkishness. dont you think ?

That is exactly my point my friend miltiades you are 100% correct on this one... of course there is a Cyprus tradition, dances, food, folk art etc. And some of these are common with our copatriot TCs.

This diversity and uniqness you can also see if you visit e.g. Corfu, their food, dances and folk art are different from the other places in Greece... this is not what makes a nation though, a nation is built through history, language, religion and tradition. We as Greek Cypriots are part of the history of Hellinism, we speak Greek, we have the same religion and share most of the tradition with Greece because we are part of the Hellenic nation, in addition we also have some uniqness, music, dances, food and folk art because that is what happens in every different area specially with islands.

I recently watched a greek movie where one of the main characters was a Cretan speaking heavy Cretan dialect... when he first opened his mouth it sounded so much like the Cypriot dialect... they even used greek subtititles when he was speaking and that dialect.

Therefore we should stop looking for our lost identity or try to invent a new one, because we have our identity as the Hellines of Cyprus and we should preserve it at all costs. In addition we should also protect and promote our Cyprus culture and art and last but probably the most important respect all the cultures that make Cyprus equally.

sorry i needed to edit my post, bc i was meant to answer to malaka, but then i thought better give starhd an answer.

i mentioned before that the four characteristic of a nation that everybody seems to have accepted, without even bothering to question are quite young.

who sais that history religion tradition and language should define a nation ?
and who said that i should accept that in drawing lines between people?
who sais that people themselves drew such lines 200 years ago ?

let me give you some quotes from mark mazowers book "the balkans , a short history"

p.101-02
in the beggining of the 20th century, greek and bulgarians patriots where fighting to receive the support from the people of the ottoman part of macedonia . a greek fighter wrote : concerning the ideas greek villagers (note the "greek" villagers ) have concerning the greek orthodox church and the bulgarian one , their in no position to tell the difference. when they were asked if they were greeks or bulgarians they looked each other with amazement wondeering what this phrase means and replied : we are christians. what greeks what bulgarians ?

a bulgarian patriot was furious with the apathy of the peasants. a "bulgarian" priest who spoke the slavic dialect but used to make the mass in the church in greek told him : the gospel is good so why is it important to say it in bulgarian ? the bulgarian patriot got furious , bc they were all bulgarians (see the similarity with the greek patriot ? ) but they didnot know it and they should have bulgarian priests , but they didnot know that either , and they didnt seem to care about either of the two.

H.N. Breislford asked some kids in a mountain village near ohrida , where they had no teacher or priest. he took them to the ruins of the palace of the bulgarian czar and asked them who build these ?
- the free men
-and who were these?
- our grandparents
- ok, but where they serbs, greeks, bulgarians or turks ?
- they were not turks, they were christians.

when some people tried to calculate the "nations" inside the ottoman empire, they were often found in the weird situation where peasants would not only change their opinion according to who was asking , but also they would answer in bulgarian : i am greek ...or vice versa

the bosnian muslims spoke their slavic language , while ali-pasas from janena (remember our enemy , dont we ? Wink )spoke albanian and greek but not turkish he was married to an orthodox woman and during his reign their were numerous greek schools in his region. the muslims of crete spoke greek and could sing the cretan national poem erotokritos...

the examples are endless ....even with religion - which you pose as the characteristic of a nation. stories exist where people used to pray both in the christian and the muslim saints.
in some place turk sailors wouldnt sail if the greek priest wouldnot bless the waters.
p128 : lady montaque said : where christians and muslims live together they dont specialise in theological discussions , and they say that they cannot argue which is the best religion. but to be perfectly sure the visit the mosque on friday and the church on sundays.
when asked the mulism of western macedonia they answered : we are muslims but muslims of saint mary
p129 . christians would even use muslim courts even in cases where muslims were not involved. in cyprus a christian farmer sued his son (lol) and said in front of the religious judge "i sold my son a cow, i want the money. he delays. i want them according to the sacret law"

p135 we albanians have very strange ideas. we believe in any religion that allows us to carry owr guns"

can you imagine that thats how the people of the balkans thought 100-150 years ago ?
can you understand how indeffirent the "nation" was for them , what today is supposed to be the most sacred idea ?
can you imagine that in such a short time , the nationalist diseace has spread over the balkans, foorcing the peasants to take position , forcing ideas to the peasants that they never had , forcing them to be proud for sth they never were.
can you imagine that oly some dacades later and until today the balkans
saw the greatest attrocities in the names of "nations" ?
and you want me to accept all those deaths without a sign of critisism ?

do you understand that the idea of the "nation" did not represnt the majority of the oppresed christians but some educated elites ?

........................
now, pause for a minute and think the 4 characterstic of a nation.
did you ever think that perhaps they are 5 or just two , or 3 different ones. why do you accept it without even questioning it?

but lets follow them for a while :
history: whats that supposed to mean? ofcource one of the first civilazation and the most dominant one in cyprus was from the greek settlers. but dont you also forget that for the last 400 years we live on this island with not mainland greeks but with tcs. we do have common history , and its the most recent one we have.

tradition : well when it comes to that , there exist no greek tradition imo. that shows again the stupidty of nationalism and drawing borders. the traditions in thrace are similar to bulgaria , the ones in macedonia similar to serbia , the ones in ionian islands close to italy, the ones of the aegean similar to turkey. only pellopenese and perhaps eipiros have their own distinct traditions. bc, when someone drew a border between two villages of what now is greece and bulgarian he forced two villages to accept a new identity they never posseced. what makes you think that the village that fell on the greek side had less things in common with the village accross the border than it had with crete or cyprus.

language : ofcource the cypriot dialect originates from the greek. but it has evolved to sth distinct just like it happened to all regions of greece. after the idea of the nation came along , it was decided that we sell away our dialects and we become all the same through a process of homogenisation.
moreover i have asked this question a thousand times :
what makes you think that a christian in cyprus was able to communicate easier with a christian in northern turkey than a muslim in cyprus ?
what makes you think that neighbours could not comunicate ?

religion : i have laready posted , how people viewd religion and how easily they would interchange. it is only lately that we are preooccupied with the "right" religions.

moreover, if we accept religion as a characteristic of a nation i do not accept that any todays mainlant greek fulfills the criteria of a true helene. the ancient greeks were not christians , and imo they mostly developed the foundation of western ideas bc of that. imo thats one of the biggest paradoxes that you can find. you cannot believe that religions make nations , and then consider yourself a christian. plato , aristotele , and aristophanes will be screaming from their graves.

...............
now , could i add a fifth characteristic of a "nation" ?
or does that destroys the way of thinking we have been taught ?
why not create nations according to geography ?
why shouldnt that make a credible characterstic of a nation ?
why can i and my tc neighbour cannot be called a nation , and i shoud identify myself with someone living km away. today ofcource and after the mass nationalist education we both received , that sounds weird. but , give it a thought for a while. it might not be as absurd as it sounds

[Strahd]

on second thought i repost my answer here :

i dont disagree in general with what you say strahd.
but for me to say "i agree" , i need to know what you mean by "the heelenic national identity must be preserved".
this is so vague, that can be interpreted in 100 possible ways.
please explain..... just once....

I mean, our language, I mean our history, I mean our culture... I do not mean ethnic separation and cleansing, I do not mean hostility to other nations and above all I do not mean nationalism in any form.

Now for your comments on nationality...

Well to tell you the truth I am totally confused because through a marxist utopia of no nations you are trying to breed a new nationalism... but that is the Cyprus communist paradox,.

For our foreign friends it should be very difficult to understand how the communists in Cyprus are so pro-Cyprus and reach to the point of creating a new nation and the nationalists are those who have accepted the fact of the existence of other nations in Cyprus and voted yes for the Anan plan... Funny isn't it?

Well to tell you the truth some of the things you say I can accept, but you have to open your mind more and get out of the Cypriot political stereotypes and become a free thinking EU citizen of the ROC. Have a look at Greece and see how those left-right stereotypes have been abolished. If you study the political history of the region you will see that politics in Cyprus are about 10-15 years behind.

[cypezokyli]

1. i am not a communist. so i would prefre answers instead of labels. my god , i do believe that peace between greece nad turkey will not be brought by any workers of the world uniting but by capitalist interests. communists imo never did they manage to either understand or get rid of their own nationalism.

2. i am just questioning things such as "nations" that people have some to believe.
you can either answer to what i wrote : i refer to me as a communist or a "yes-supporter" .
just like gcguk calls me a turk.

3. believe me i never in my life shouted in demonstrations :
I kypros einai elliniki
or
i kypros anikei sto lao tis ,
bc i found both as creations from political parties : AKEL and DYSI , to polarise the political system. so you are an akelite wont work for me

4. i dont believe in left and right , if you are really interested. i dont consider akel as left but as nationalist as all the rest.

5. greece has ofcource got over the civil war wounds , but greece if you are really interested has along with italy and france the most extreme left-wing groups. ofcource they are minorities , but there are at least 6 communist parties that i can mention just on the top of my head

......
i am not trying to breed a new nationalism. i am just trying to tell you that the premises on which we have faught wars over (including all communists throughout the world) might not be as stable as we think they are.

the idea of a nation can be seriously brought under question.

[Kifeas]

There are two main definitions of the term nation. The cultural-anthropological one and the legal /political one! The cultural-anthropological definition, i.e. the one seen from a cultural anthropology’s scientific perspective, calls a nation an “ethnic” group of people that share the same language, customs, traditions and history, and who also usually share the same religious and /or genetic pool.

The political /legal definition of a nation is the one based on citizenship of a particular sovereign country (nation /state.) i.e. The American, or the British or the Australian nation (all the citizens together of each one of the US or the UK or the Australian “nation /state” countries.)

The two notions (definitions) are not equal, nor always interchangeable, neither mutually exclusive. For example one may refer to the Greek nation in an “ethnic” cultural -anthropological sense, in which case he includes most (not all) of the people living in Greece but also all those living outside Greece and identify themselves as ethnically Greek; but may also in another instance refer to the Greek nation in a political /legal sense, in which case includes only those holding the citizenship of the Greek nation /state. The same can be said for the term Turkish nation.

In our case (Cyprus,) if one looks to the people living in this country from a cultural-anthropological perspective, he may claim that there are two ethnic groups living here that decent their origins from two different nations, the Greek and the Turkish ones, always from a cultural anthropology perspective. At the same time, if one looks at the same people from a political /legal perspective, we all belong to the Cypriot nation, because we are all citizens of the same sovereign from international law’s aspect Nation /State that is called Cyprus.

A Greek Cypriot can say that he is a Greek in an “ethnic” sense and therefore he is allowed to culturally identify himself with the rest of the Greeks around the world and in Greece. However, as far as his political /legal national identity is concerned, he is only a Cypriot, since Cyprus is considered by international law and the UN to constitute a separate, sovereign and independed nation /state.

The Cyprus problem is an international political and legal one, and therefore it will be more helpful for its solution -as it is mainly envisioned from a Greek Cypriot community’s perspective, to concentrate and emphasise more on our Cypriot national identity (as it is defined above,) and play down the cultural-anthropological Greek ethnic /national identity. Apparently in today’s world of multiethnic and multicultural societies and nation /states, the one that has the most practical significance is the former, since there is essentially almost no nation /state in the word that is not composed by people from multiple ethnic backgrounds.

[kalahari]

Christ Kifeas, what an excellent answer! Hats off to you sir.

[michalis5354]

There is no such thing as lack of Cypriot national identity because there is no such thing as a Cypriot nation. The republic of Cyprus is a sovereign country that is inhabitted by 85% Greeks who are very proud of what they are and that is Cypriots who belong to the Greek Cypriot community.
Since the re-establishment of the Republic of Greece and the removal of the military Junta in Greece (1974) the Greek government has never questioned the sovereignity and independence of the Cypriot people. Greece has always been Cyprus biggest ally and has helped with the Cyprus EU membership and always backs the positions of the government of the Republic of Cyprus and never try to impose anything on us.

Those who betrayed Cyprus are jailed for life...

HA HA HA HOW Ignorant you are ? Cypriots have nothing in common with Greeks as I already explained to you in a previous post of mine. I am Cypriot and I have nothing in common with a Greek living in Greece. THis is my Nationality according to the iNternational Agreements we signed in 1960. My culture is 100% different and I have no personal traits with Greeks in Greece.

Cypriot cultures consists the Greek and Turksih culture but both of them make up the Cypriot culture. This is the reason many products of Cyprus can be found in Turkey but not in Greece!

[michalis5354]

Sorry Can I ask a question seriously to all of you and provide me with your own personal answer!

What do you understand by the term Independence? Can you please give me a definition of this term. In order to speak with the same language.

Thanks