Cyprus-Forum.com

[Bananiot]

What are you trying to prove? I see that you are not questioning the fact that Turkish Cretans were ethnically cleansed in certain parts of the island but somehow you are stuck to the exact time the Turkish Cretans moved out of Greece. If it means anything, those that eventually left in 1924 were a very small minority, probably a tenth in relation to the number of Turkish Cretans that lived in Crete before enosis.

And please, leave the flies alone. They bear no reflection to your perverted questions, however, has it occurred to your small mind that I might be a double agent?

[Pyrpolizer]

I was very clear in my statements.
You were very clear too.
No further comments.

As for the flies, your problem not mine.

[Natty]

Too many restrictions in this forum.
I went back to edit my own post it says I cannot edit it!!
What is this???

Anyway I did a mistake previously.
My quote to Natty should be this one:

however I am still not convinced that the plan was written to genocide the TC population,

Thanks Pyrpolizer for clearing that up, I got slightly confused!! I couldn't remember writting that, so I actually checked all of my posts!! Lol!

[Natty]

Hey Crete seems to be used a lot as a comparison to Cyrpus so I thought I'd do a bit of research, the bellow quote is from Wikipedia, so this is one view of what happened in Crete,



"Modern Crete
After Greece achieved its independence, Crete became an object of contention as its Greek populations revolted twice against Ottoman rule (in 1866 and 1897). Ethnic tension prevailed on the island between the Muslim ruling minority and the Christian majority. Aided by volunteers and reinforcements from Greece and more distant places including Britain, America, France, and Italy, the "Great Cretan Revolution" began in 1866 and the rebels initially managed to gain control of most of the hinterland although as always the four fortified towns of the north coast and the southern town of Hierapetra remained in Ottoman hands. Because the loss of Crete might have been the prelude to a much more serious loss of Ottoman territory in the Balkans, the Ottoman Grand Vizier, A'ali Pasha, arrived in the island in October 1867 and remained there for four months. A'ali Pasha was a man of exceptional intelligence and personal dignity whose qualities impressed even observers who were usually hostile to the Ottomans such as William Stillman, the American writer who was on the island as US Consul. A'ali set in progress a low profile district by district reconquest of the island followed by the erection of blockhouses or local fortresses across the whole of it. These were the basis of continued Turkish military rule until the final crisis of 1896-1898. More importantly, he designed an Organic Law which gave the Cretan Christians equal (in practice, because of their superior numbers, majority) control of local administration. He thus gained the minimum of political cooperation needed to retain control of the island by early 1869 and almost all the rebel leaders had submitted to Ottoman rule though some, notably the pro-Russian Hadjimichaelis, remained in exile in Greece. One symbolic turning point came in the early months of the rebellion when the monastery at Arkadi in 1866 was blown up by its Abbot Manasses, causing the death of most of the rebels and women and children sheltering in it. As reported by Stillman and others over the recently introduced telegraph, this event caused enormous shock in the rest of Europe and in North America and was a famous a major blow to the legitimacy of Turkish rule.

During the Congress of Berlin in the summer of 1878, there was a further uprising, which was speedily halted through the intervention of the British and the adaptation of the 1867-8 Organic Law into a constitutional settlement known as the Pact of Halepa. Crete became a semi-independent parliamentary state within the Ottoman Empire under an Ottoman Governor who had to be a Christian. A number of the senior "Christian Pashas" including Photiades Pasha and Adossides Pasha ruled the island in the 1880s, presiding over a parliament in which liberals and conservatives contended for power. Disputes between the two powers however led to a further insurgency in 1889 and the collapse of the Pact of Halepa arrangements. The international powers, disgusted at what seemed to be factional politics, allowed the Ottoman authorities to send troops to the island and restore order but did not anticipate that the reactionary and despotic Sultan Abdulhamid II would use this as a pretext to try and scrap the Halepa Pact Constitution and instead rule the island by martial-law. This action led to international sympathy for the Cretan Christians and to a loss of any remaining acquiescence among them for continued Ottoman rule. When a small insurgency began in September 1895, it quickly spiralled out of control and by the summer of 1896, the Ottoman forces had lost military control of most of the island. By March 1897, the Great Powers decided to restore order by governing the island temporarily through a committee of four admirals who remained in charge until the arrival of Prince George of Greece as first governor-general of an autonomous Crete, effectively detached from the Ottoman Empire, in late December 1898.

The island's Muslim population lost heavily from these changes though some remained on Crete until the population exchanges of 1924. It was in fact a short-lived Muslim uprising in Iraklion (then known as Candia) in September 1898 in protest at the removal of administrative and fiscal control from Ottoman hands by the Admirals which, after the loss of 17 British soldiers and several hundred Christians, in intercommunal attacks, led the Great Powers to expel Ottoman forces from Crete.

From the summer of 1896 until the end of hostilities in 1898 the Cretan Muslims remained under siege in the four coastal cities and there was considerable ethnic cleansing in the eastern end of the island. Their pleas for help from the western powers were consistently ignored. When Ottoman rule ended, about half the remaining Cretan Muslim population left immediately and the Muslims dropped from 25-30% of the Cretan population to around a ninth of it. Subsequent waves of emigration followed as the island was united by stages with Greece. Even in Turkey however the descendants of this population continue to speak a form of Cretan Greek patois. A new Cretan insurrection in 1897 led to Turkey declaring war on Greece and defeating it. However, the Great Powers (Britain, France, Italy and Russia) decided that Turkey could no longer maintain control and intervened. Turkish forces were expelled in 1898, and an independent Cretan Republic, headed by Prince George of Greece, was founded. Taking advantage of domestic turmoil in Turkey in 1908, the Cretan deputies declared union with Greece. But this act was not internationally recognized until 1913 after the Balkan Wars. Under the Treaty of London, Sultan Mehmed V relinquished his formal rights to the island. In December, the Greek flag was raised at the Firkas fortress in Chania, with Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine in attendance, and Crete was unified with mainland Greece. The Muslim minority of Crete initially remained in the island but was later relocated to Turkey under the general population exchange agreed in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne between Turkey and Greece.
One of the most important figures to emerge from the end of Ottoman Crete was the liberal politician Eleftherios Venizelos, probably the most important statesman of modern Greece. Venezilos was an Athens-trained lawyer who was active in liberal circles in Hania, then the Cretan capital. After autonomy, he was first a minister in the government of Prince George and then his most formidable opponent. In 1910 Venizelos transferred his career to Athens, quickly became the dominant figure on the political scene and in 1912, after careful preparations for a military alliance against the Ottoman Empire with Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria, allowed Cretan deputies to take their place in the Greek Parliament. This was treated as grounds for war by Turkey but the Balkan allies won a series of sweeping victories in the hostilities that followed (see Balkan Wars). The Turks were effectively defeated in the ensuing war and were forced out of the Balkans and Thrace by the Alliance, except for the borders which Turkey continues to hold to this day.

In World War II, Crete provided the setting for the Battle of Crete (May 1941), wherein German invaders, especially paratroops, drove out a British Empire force commanded by General Sir Bernard Freyberg."




As I said I really don't think you can compare Cyprus to Crete, the political situations on both Islands were very different, although I find it interesting that the British, and other world powers to a certain extent supported the Greeks of Crete, above the Ethnic Turks, the minority of which was a lot larger than the minority of Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus...

Peace!

[Bananiot]

Enosis with Greece had a direct (huge) impact on the Turkish population of the island of Crete (despite Pyrpolysers absurdities). Enosis of Cyprus with Greece would have an even bigger impact on the Turkish Cypriots. They were equal partners in an independent country and they would automatically become an ethnic minority in Greece! Put your self in the shoes of the Turkish Cypriots and tell me honestly and frankly if you would be happy with such a development.

[Pyrpolizer]

Look who is talking absurdies

Equal partners my ass!

[Kifeas]

Look who is talking absurdies

Equal partners my ass!

I must say I find it very annoying as well, not because it has any practical meaning or significance anymore -since we are already talking of a solution on the basis of a new premise, but because it shows if nothing else how the above person views the entire Cyprus problem from a clearly TC and Turkish historical and political perspective.

He insists describing the 1960 Republic of Cyprus as a mere partnership between two communities (as equal partners,) even though such a notion is not been referred or provided -not even once in the entire 1960 set of agreements and constitution. And even if one is allowed to make an assumption that it was indeed a partnership of two communities by inference to the spirit (and not to the letter) of the constitution, yet the notion of equal partners cannot be made either. If they were equal partners, then at least the parliament should have been split between them in a 50:50 ration and not in a 70:30 one, and, instead of a Greek Cypriot president substituted by the GC chairman of the parliament and a TC vice president substituted by the TC vice-chairman of the parliament, it should have been a case of two co-presidents -one GC and one TC, rotating the seat of the presidency. Furthermore, the notion of a partnership of two equal entities requires also an equal contribution of each one of the partners to the budget needed to run the state’s government, something which of course has also never been the case.

Anyway, despite all the above, the TC political and historical thesis is that indeed the 1960 RoC was one of two equal partners, and we all know very well why they maintain such an approach, which has to do to the nature of solution they historically wanted to be adopted in Cyprus after 1974, i.e. one of a confederation between two "pre-existing equal, sovereign and independed nation /states," using in this way their own skewed interpretation of the 1960 agreements as a "propaganda" vaulting horse.

Even though we can all understand the motive of the TC side for taking the above approach regarding the 1960 constitution, I find it completely impossible to understand and digest why a GC would want to accommodate such a view and essentially accept and use the TC propaganda skewed interpretation. Does it have to do with his "love-affair" and insistence on the Annan plan, which at times appears so strong that even if the GC side will manage to improve it, such outcome it seems will rather be very unpleasant for him? I do not really know!

[Bananiot]

Why in heaven then did we try unilateraly to change the 1960 Constitution if it did not give equal partnership to the two communities in Cyprus? Pyrpolyser may just ignore this "small" fact, I do not know, but Kifeas, if he has managed to convince himself that this is not so then the situation is more serious.

With the London-Zurich agreements the EOKA struggle, which aimed at enosis, was defeated. As a result, the Turkish Cypriots became equal partners. The Turkish Cypriot Vice President had veto rights on all important issues. If this is not an indication of the status for equal sovereignity, then words lose their meaning. What about representation in the government, where the Turkish Cypriots with 18% got 30%, if I remember correctly?

Makarios and Papadopoulos and EOKA leaders and top brass never accepted that the struggle had ended in this way. In complete failure, from their persective. In typical Cypriot fashion, instead of shouldering the blame like real men, they put all the blame on Constantinos Karamanlis, then Prime Minister of Greece. Then, three years after independence, Makarios sought to revise the agreements, despite being warned by all sane people at that period, including Karamanlis who advised him that any steps must be small, political and in cooperation with the Turkish Cypriots.

[Pyrpolizer]

The equal partners stuff was the problem right from the start. How could an 18% minority be equal partners? We were under foreign rule the foreign rule imposed on us this madness. The TCs as any other minority had fears as every other minority in the world. This is a different issue. It doesn't mean those fears should be calmed by reducing the rights of the majority.

[Kifeas]

First of all the GC side DID NOT try to unilaterally change the constitution, and this is another indication of adopting the Turkish propaganda line. The GC side proposed changes and invited the TCs for discussion on the basis of those proposed changes, something which Turkey (without having the right to voice its opinion) rejected it, before the TCs even gave their reply.

Secondly, the reason the GC side PROPOSED (and not unilaterally attempted) changes to the constitution was NOT because the constitution was a case of two equal partners (because such was not the case anyway,) but because it ruled it to have been unworkable, inefficient and unfair in terms of proportionality (70:30 instead of 80:20 that was the closest round ratio.)

The 1960 constitution, in its LETTER, was not PARTNERSHIP as such, set aside one between two EQUAL partners. The closed description one can give as to what IN FACT it was, should only be that the 1960 constitution as an ARRANGEMENT as to how the people of Cyprus -divided in two communities- would express and exercise their inherent political rights as Cypriot Citizens, with some excessively strong and counter productive provisions in order to secure that the smallest community of the two would not be marginalized, as it could or might have been the case in a simple one-man-one-vote direct democracy system. It was not a partnership as such, and it was not a partnership of two equal partners either, by its letter; even though, as I said, one may, by inference to its spirit, claim that it was a kind of a partnership notion.