Cyprus-Forum.com

[andri_cy]

Do the Kurds have partnership agreements like our 1960s agreements???

Talk about you thinking you have a monopoly in human rights.
Why do you think they have to have any agreement to be treated right?

[Natty]

Hey, why should they give us endless grief? It will take a while but I really feel that if the Cypriots are left to make their own decisions, then why should we not live together in one country? Both sides will have to compramise, but If we lay a good foundation for a united country, then why should Cyprus not flourish in the future?

Peace to you Izzy, and everyone!

[Piratis]

Do the Kurds have partnership agreements like our 1960s agreements???

Yes, it is a fact that the 1960 agreements made by the British were giving to the TC minority things that no other minority has.

So it would be a good idea to stop the illegalities and return to those agreements, you have every right to do so, and it would be the best thing you could ever do for yourselves.

Those agreements also talk about a unitary state, a GC president etc.

The same way you don't want to give up something that you earned with those agreements, we are not going to give up anything more either. Fair?

Or maybe you think that you should gain on our loss because you have the tanks of Turkey behind you? FORGET ABOUT IT. As long as you insist on winning on our loss you will come out losers as well, and then you will be crying about "embargoes" and your standard of living in your 3rd world pseudo puppet state.

Issy1956, these are some minorities: Blacks in USA, Russians in Latvia, Kurds in Turkey, Basques in Spain, Turks in Germany, Turks in Bulgaria etc.

ALL minorities no matter in which country they are they should have the same kind of rights. Each citizen belonging to a minority should be equal to a citizen that belongs to a majority, the religion, culture etc of a minority should be respected and equally protected by the sate etc.

Beyond that some minorities also have their own regions. Kurds in Turkey and Basques in Spain for example. Since these minorities own a separate part of the country, then having autonomy or even independence could be logical.

But TCs do not own a separate part of the country. Asking for a separate part just for TCs is just as absurd as asking that all European and Asian Americans should be ethnically cleansed from one part of the USA so black Americans can have their own autonomous region.

Autonomy or independence is given to the people of an area that are the legal majority. TCs are just the 18% of the legal population of the northern part of Cyprus, so how can they demand that this part of land falls within their "self -determination"? Self-determination is about determining what your own, not what is owned by a others to the most part.

If you want some part of land to have self determination upon it and you don't want to share it with us with your proportionate power, then go buy your own exclusive land somewhere else. Tell Turkey to give you a part of their country. You can't demand that we should be ethnically cleansed from the land that we have been the great majority for 3500 years so you will have autonomy over that land!

As long as you have such demands peace will never come.

[Issy1956]

Piratis,
You keep saying the 1960 agreements were made by the British. They were not. The Brits brokered a deal with the GC/TC's mainland Greeks and the Mainland Turks. The Archbish was not happy but he signed it. The origial ROC came into being. Period. Stop trying to rewrite history as you see it. If they were not happy they should have fought on and achieved their goals. Yeah they talk about a unitary state a GC Prez a TC vice Prez etc. a proportion of the police etc etc What happen to all that where is our representation in your state?
I dont propose to give you a history lesson but Cyprus and the Cypriots have all suffered and we are where we are today. We will go no further until both sides are willing to compromise.
You keep going on about the 3500 years since the Greeks invaded Cyprus ethnically cleaned the indigenous population to make it yours what happened to the people who were living there at the time . Does the passage of time santify your deeds. All empires come and go try and live in the present.

[bg_turk]

As usual the discussion has drifted from the topic...

Are you guys not tired of making the same arguments over and over again. You are all behaving like a broken record regurgating the same old stuff. In fact if you copy your old arguments from a year ago, and past them here, I am sure nobody will not notice. These discussions may continue ad inifinitum.

[Kifeas]

Piratis,
You keep saying the 1960 agreements were made by the British. They were not. The Brits brokered a deal with the GC/TC's mainland Greeks and the Mainland Turks. The Archbish was not happy but he signed it. The origial ROC came into being. Period. Stop trying to rewrite history as you see it. If they were not happy they should have fought on and achieved their goals.

Issy, the above is not as accurate. The negotiations for the drafting of the 1960 agreements were made between Greece and Turkey on the internal constitutional arrangements and with Britain on the rest of the issues. Essentially the two communities were not parties in the negotiations, nor were invited by the British to participate. The end product was presented to the delegations of the two communities to sign. The Greek Cypriot side, with Makarios in charge, refused to sign these agreements and considered the role of the Greek delegation at the time to be tantamount to a betrayal. Upon the initial strong objections and refusal to sign the agreements, the British essentially blackmailed the G/C side with subsequent partition on the basis of the McMilan plan that was prepared in 1958 suring secret consultations with Turkey, should there is no final agreement during the summit, and they have even put in front of them a map and details of how they were going to proceed towards their aim. After 36 hours of consultations among themselves, and after assessing that the British were serious with their threads, which even Greece affirmed, they eventually decided to proceed and sign them.

There are tens of books written on these agreements and tens of accounts given by many members of the G/C delegation -which was constituted by some 45-50 people, as to how the British went about the whole matter and how they blackmailed the G/C side.

[Piratis]

You keep saying the 1960 agreements were made by the British. They were not. The Brits brokered a deal with the GC/TC's mainland Greeks and the Mainland Turks. The Archbish was not happy but he signed it.

So if the person who represented the 80 of the population was not happy then who was? Why was those agreements forced on us?

Can you imagine any independent country (e.g. UK, Turkey etc) that they will accept to have constitution that they do not want because some outsiders want to force it on them?

A similar example comes to mind when the USSR took eastern Europe. Because the eastern europeans were forced to sign agreements with the USSR does this mean that democracy should have been over in those countries once and for all and that the people should have never been allowed to democratically choose just by themselves what they want for their own country?

Those agreements were clearly FORCED on Greek Cypriots and this is a fact beyond any doubt.

The origial ROC came into being. Period.

It doesn't seem to be "period" for you now, does it? Or maybe you think that GCs should not take anything beyond what they took with 1960 agreements and the TCs should??
As I said above, I don't have a problem to return to the compromise of 1960 even if those agreements were way too much in favor of TCs. But asking for even more compromises from our side so you can have even more gains on our expense, well thats something we will never accept.

What happen to all that where is our representation in your state?

Ask Denctash, Talat and their bosses in Ankara. Being part of RoC was never the aim of TCs, and they instead kept working for partition.
GCs do have a blame as well, but not more (or less) than the blame of TCs. Do not try to blame the GCs exclusively to excuse the inexcusable crimes that are committed today.

I dont propose to give you a history lesson but Cyprus and the Cypriots have all suffered and we are where we are today. We will go no further until both sides are willing to compromise.
You keep going on about the 3500 years since the Greeks invaded Cyprus ethnically cleaned the indigenous population to make it yours what happened to the people who were living there at the time . Does the passage of time santify your deeds. All empires come and go try and live in the present.

How can you give history lessons when you are clueless about the facts?
You have no clue about how the Greeks first came to the island. You just make the falls assumption that "if Turks were building empires by butchering, ethnically cleansing, raping and stealing the land of others that means that everybody else did the same"

So let me give to you a quick history lesson:

1) The concept of "empire" did not exist at that time.
2) The concept of a "country" did not exist in our part of the world at that time either.
3) The population of Cyprus at the time Greeks first came was just some 1000s of people spread in mostly small villages.
4) Most of the land in Cyprus was unoccupied. And since the concept of a country did not exist, the villages owned only the territory of their village and its surroundings
5) The Greeks came to Cyprus and build new cities in unoccupied land - now thats something very different from what you are used to in your own history.
6) The Greeks had one of the greatest civilizations, adopted by many others. Later on even the super power of the time, the Romans, would adopt most of what Greeks created. Greeks didn't need to use force. Their culture, language and civilization was spreading by itself to people that at that time didn't have anything advanced of their own. This is what happened to Cyprus, and this is how most of the existing population became hellenized. The same happened with many of the other rulers of Cyprus that came later on and they were assimilated into what we know today as "Greek Cypriots".

Now compare the above with what the Turks did when the first came to Cyprus, which was pillaging, destroying towns, butchering people by the 1000s etc.

But Turks can be excused and forgiven for those things because those were the middle ages and such things were not uncommon at that time. Unfortunately turkey insists on middle age practices in the 21st century. Today we have things such as international law, human rights, democracy and many other things that did not exist 3000 or 500 years ago. Turkey continues today to ignore all these principles. Will Turkey ever become civilized?

[Natty]

The Greeks first came in small droves and set up a few city states, then came a great influx of Mycenians and they set up even more city states. The Cypriot people, were advanced, all the populqation of the Med at that time were very similar. The Cyrpiots actually had there own language very similar to the Minoan Language, infact they have found half Cypriot half Minoan wrtitngs...The Cypriot people adopted the greek language, just like amny other nations in the greek empire including the Islands.....(I don't know if i'm completely correct but it something along those lines......). And I beleive combined it with their own...

excuse the spelling, i'm typing fast, in a bit of a rush!

[cypezokyli]

Can you imagine any independent country (e.g. UK, Turkey etc) that they will accept to have constitution that they do not want because some outsiders want to force it on them?

ofcource.
there are so many countries that had / have a constitution from the outside and / or forced on them. in general is countries who lost wars , or they won wars with the help of others. a number changed it , a number suffered from it , for some others it worked just fine

[Kifeas]

Can you imagine any independent country (e.g. UK, Turkey etc) that they will accept to have constitution that they do not want because some outsiders want to force it on them?

ofcource.
there are so many countries that had / have a constitution from the outside and / or forced on them. in general is countries who lost wars , or they won wars with the help of others. a number changed it , a number suffered from it , for some others it worked just fine

I am banking my head on the wall right now.

Cypezokyli, what is the above that you wrote supposed to mean? Are you suggesting that no matter if something is forced upon us, we should abide by it because we are small and week, and also because others have taken this path too? Tell us what you meant please. What was your objective in saying the above?