Cyprus-Forum.com

[miltiades]

No Turkey is not to be blamed for everything , I'm surprised however that you even dare to think that a proud nation of Cypriots would embrace an invading force. Turkey is a foreign power in Cyprus and when more people begin to feel the same way that I do , then we will find a solution. You know how I feel and wont bore you with repeating my position. I consider you and all other T/Cs to be my Cypriot brothers and co owners of our island .Until you too begin to consider me as you Cypriot brother ,a solution will not be found.
Earlier on in another post I " battled on " with Simon and his position as regards the role played by his motherland , Greece.I suggest all those that feel not Cypriot enough to display the Cyprus flag instead of some foreign one or some monstrous creation like the ridiculous flag of the "TRNC" to make their way and meet their creators .

[Natty]

I know their is a theory that the Junta and EOKA B, whether they new it or not, were working with the Turkish Goverment, and the Americans, so they could achive 'Double Enosis' half of Cyprus goes to Greece, half to cyprus...although I could be wrong...

Professor Theodore Couloumbis wrote,

"A war could have been excluded with certainly only through a prearrangement of Greeks (the Junta) and Turks to eliminate Makarios and to Partition Cyprus. If such an agreement did not excist (and there is no contrary evidence to date), then one can speculate that Ioannides was somehow led to 'assume' that Turks would not have reacted to his anti-Makarios putcsh, and that he naively went along with presumption"

I also found this interesting quote from the book "Hostage to History" about the Turkish Invasion...

" Supposing that one takes the most sympathetic view of the Turkish intervention-that is was a necessary counterstroke to a Greek putsch-and suppose that one regards the Turkish minority as blameless in the disruptions and brutalities of the 1960s. Suppose, further, that one ignores the long and tenacious attachment of the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot leadership to partition irrespective of the majority will. Suppose, still further, that one can forget or discount the outside involvement of the British and the United States in the same cause. Put the case that there might have been-indeed would have been- murderous attacks on Turkish Cypriots en masse by a consolidated Sampson leadership. Put the case that the Cyrpus problem is purely a question of the security of the Turkish Cypriots. Admit that the first Turkish intervention of 20 July 1974 did everybody a favour by demolishing the rule of Fascism in Greece and Cyprus. Agree and allow all this, and the second Turksish invasion becomes more reprehensable rather than less. By the time it took place, on the 14 August 1974, the Greek irredentist forces had fallen from power in both Athens and Nicosia. Negotiations were underway, and relations between the two communities on the Island were stable if nervous. The pretext for the original invasion had ceased to exist, and if Mr Ecevit had withdrawn his forces he would have been remembered as the man who rid Greece and Cyprus from it's designs, and rebuilt the image of Turkey in the West. The moral and (given such an impressive demonstration of Turkish force) the actual pressure for a lasting and generous settlement with the Turkish Cypriots would have been irresistable. Instead Mr Ecevit and his generals embarked on a policy of conquest and annexation."

Peace!!

[Kifeas]

Cant make you out , you are either mad or just plain stupid. You are saying that we did not want them to come to the island ?? Are you joking or just trying to annoy me . Is there a parallel in the world where a foreign army YES A FOREIGN ARMY TO THE 82% OF CYPRIOTS , invades a nation and is welcomed by the natives ,get real you are making as much sense as Alexander did. And Im telling you now you are amongst the T/Cs a very small minority.

Do you know about Turkeys guarantor rights? she is allowed to intervene to restore law and order which she has been trying to do. The fact that we have not been able to find a solution to our problems is a clear indiciation that things have not been resolved so her role continues until a time we can find a solution both sides can commit to.

Why shoud I try to annoy you there are many many TCs who think like me why are so suprised. Am I testing your beliefs and narrow vision that Turkey is blame for everything.

The Turkish invasion was illegal. Turkey did not have the right to a military intervention without authorization by the UN SC. Cyprus called upon Turkey to resolve the issue of legality of the Turkish invasion in the International court of Hague, but Turkey refuses to proceed, simply because it knows that the court will rule the invasion illegal under international law.

http://www.moi.gov.cy/moi/PIO/PIO.nsf/A ... enDocument

[Viewpoint]

No Turkey is not to be blamed for everything , I'm surprised however that you even dare to think that a proud nation of Cypriots would embrace an invading force. Turkey is a foreign power in Cyprus and when more people begin to feel the same way that I do , then we will find a solution. You know how I feel and wont bore you with repeating my position. I consider you and all other T/Cs to be my Cypriot brothers and co owners of our island .Until you too begin to consider me as you Cypriot brother ,a solution will not be found.
Earlier on in another post I " battled on " with Simon and his position as regards the role played by his motherland , Greece.I suggest all those that feel not Cypriot enough to display the Cyprus flag instead of some foreign one or some monstrous creation like the ridiculous flag of the "TRNC" to make their way and meet their creators .

miltiades you have to realize that there is a whole generation of TCs who only know the TRNC which you detest so much. We have no feelings towards the "RoC" which to us is yours and a purely GC state which was and is the ultimate aim of your ruling elite to this day.

Turkey to you maybe a foreign power in Cyprus but you have accept that we want them here to protect us and until a time we can feel that we no longer have any safety issues we want them to stay.

Your current GC administration does absoulutely nothing to promote your dream of a Cypriot people or to make us feel that we should even think about the advantages of wanting to unite with you. Maybe you and people like you should channel your effort into convincing other GCs that we TCs are the ones they shoud be working with to create a Cypriot people.

[Kikapu]

Viewpoint , get a hold of your self , you are exaggerating again , how many thousands of Turkish troops died ???

YOU WROTE:
""it is at this point that thousands of Turkish soldiers died and you expect them not retaliate with even greater force, it was all out war the moment you ""

You tend to over estimate the capabilities of the G/Cs to inflict harm on the Turkish army.
YOU USE THE SAME ANALOGY WHEN DEALING WITH WHAT YOU CALL THE "CLEANSING " OF T/Cs
It's called propaganda , its unsubstantiated figures from the top of your head , that really is not necessary.
I think from the top of my head the number of Turkish troops that were killed was no more than a few hundred if that , but as I said I'm using the same criteria as you do , the top of my head.

Miltiades, I do not know what you have in mind but even though the GCs were fighting with WWI “type A” (“martini”) rifles and some bazookas and Brens, Turkish troops indeed have had severe losses. On the landing place and until the fall of Kyrenia (3 days after the invasion begun,) they definitely lost more than 500 troops and officers, and in the 5 day long fighting to occupy Lapithos and Karavas villages during the cease-fire period (31/7 -5/8 ) and which I have lived through until we evacuated Lapithos on the evening of the 4/08, they lost at least another 400 - 500 and about 6 tanks. On the capturing by LOK units of the Kocha Kayia hills opposite St. Hilarion (overlooking Agirda village) and the Petromouthkia hill overlooking the Kyrenia/Nicosia passage, during the night of 20/21 of July, reports say that at least 1-2 companies of parachutists (marines) have vanished. The Turks never publicly revealed their losses in 1974, but it is estimated that that they were in the range 2,000 –in fact approximately as many as the GC NG had lost.

I have just managed to catch up on all your conversations. Viewpoint claims few thousand Turkish soldiers dead, while Miltiades claims "rubbish", and stated only hundreds, (corrected it tonight to mean 10th of hundreds, which means few thousands), and Kifeas also claiming to be in few thousands, but I noticed the touch of exploitation of his own remarks, regarding the deaths of the Turkish troops. I can only think, this was intended to show that a small Greek and GCNG with 1st World War weaponary were able to fight courageously to defend Cyprus and it's citizens from an invading foreign forces, but at the end, they were defeated by a much larger and stronger army, but not before killing thousands of them in the meantime.

If Turkey lost between 2,000 and 3,000 troops in less than few days, how big was the Greek forces on the other side. It sounds to me to be more than the 1,000 mainland legal Greek force that was stationed in Cyprus, and even the 1200 Greek Cypriot national guards, could do so much damage to the Turkish forces. Perhaps we should also add the 10,000 illegal millitia force that Makarios put together in 1960's that was run by his friend Grivas, which was hidden from the TC's. That still only adds up to around 12,000. Just to make a comparison, when the USA and UK invaded Iraq with 150,000 troops, and first fought the Iraqi army, then the rag tag insurgents, with their hit and run fighting, and after 3 years with an on going deaths to the US and UK forces, the total is less than 3,000. How can this be. Turkey loses 2,000 to 3,000 in a few days and the US and UK about the same amount in 3 years. If Kifeas did not confirm these Turkish troop deaths, I would have called Viewpoint a lier also, just as Miltiades did at first.

So what is my conclusion from all these. Well, there had to be a lot more mainland and local forces that fought the Turkish troops. And I have to say, thank God that the Turks were not defeated by this large and well equiped with heavy weapons form the Greek side, because, once Turkey pulled back with it's tail between it's legs, it was going to be "turkey shoot" for the rest of the Turkish Cypriots. I now believe, that the "coup" was well organized to 1st to defeat an invading force from Turkey as the guarantor, and than finish of the TC's. It would have been a perfect set up, to claim that the TC's just got caught and killed between the two forces, and had Turkey did not try to invade, all this would have been avoided. Then of course, the Enosis would have been established within few days.

The more I read of the past, the more problems I see for the future. Turkey will have a hard time walking away from Cyprus, if in fact they lost up to 3,000 troops there. And at the same time, TC's will have a hard time trusting their GC's for the future, knowing they came within a whisker of being wiped out. This is not to say that the average GC is responsible as to what has and almost had happened to the TC's, but at the same time, had Enosis went ahead, they would not be looking back today, wishing that it never happened. So the future is very uncertain both to the TC's and the GC's.

[Natty]

[/quote]Consequently, by recognising the “TRNC”, Turkey flagrantly violated the Treaty of Guarantee, which itself had signed to guarantee the territorial integrity, independence and unity of the Cyprus Republic. With this action, Turkey makes it manifest that the cause of the military intervention was not the differences between the Greek and the Turkish Cypriots, but rather specific Turkish geopolitical and military interests.

Moreover, in an interview to the Turkish TV channel TRT1, the Turkish Prime Minister said that the “΄TRNC΄ is of vital importance not for the safety of the Turkish Cypriots but for the safety of Turkey itself” (Kibris 26.11.2001), clearly implying that Turkey’s interest in Cyprus is related to the fulfilment of broader strategic considerations in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean, rather than to the protection of Turkish Cypriot interests. [quote]

The below quote comes from the book "The road to Bellapais", the book contains only official Turkish sources and no Greek, which makes it rather more intersting,

"Already by 1969, relations between the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots had so dramatically improved that when a tornado struck the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Limassol, Makarios inspected the damage and promised the victims that his goverment would provide them with all that was necessary to rebuild their homes. However, while relations between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots were improving, those between the Greek Cypriots and the Greek goverments were steadily deteriorating....The Junta was determined to achieve enosis; the acquisition of Cyprus would crown it's rule with glory and legitimise its continued existence. But Makarios now seemed determined to barter it away for the sake of achieving a rapprochement with the Turkish Cypriots and restoring the unity of his long-divided nation"



Peace!!

[miltiades]

Kikapu , since you are very well versed with the events of 1974 , and you also appear to give credence to the alleged T/C cleansing by the G/Cs , you may be able to answer a question I put too Viewpoint a little while back which he dodged.See if you can do better.
How many T/Cs were killed by the G/Cs from let us say January 1970 to June 1974 .Since the claim of cleansing has entered the T/C folklore lets us put it to the test. You don not have to answer this today , do take your time .
Please remember the UN was in Cyprus at the time and I would expect the UN to have provided detailed records. Not interested in coffee shop figures , only corroborated one UN versions.

[Viewpoint]

Kikapu , since you are very well versed with the events of 1974 , and you also appear to give credence to the alleged T/C cleansing by the G/Cs , you may be able to answer a question I put too Viewpoint a little while back which he dodged.See if you can do better.
How many T/Cs were killed by the G/Cs from let us say January 1970 to June 1974 .Since the claim of cleansing has entered the T/C folklore lets us put it to the test. You don not have to answer this today , do take your time .
Please remember the UN was in Cyprus at the time and I would expect the UN to have provided detailed records. Not interested in coffee shop figures , only corroborated one UN versions.

miltiades no one can say for sure exactly how many TCs were driven out of Cyprus over the troubled periods. You should not forget that the GCs were very devious in finding ways to encourage TCs to go work and live abroad with the promise of a better life. The murders were just the tip of the ice berg but the real aim was to isolate and exaust the TC community economically and morally so as to push them out and thus reduce numbers of TCs to a managable size. To confirm what I am saying all you have to do is talk to the first generation TCs who reside abroad.
The GCs have always used and will try to use their numerical weight to reduce the TC community into an insignificant minority just like the Indians in the UK. We will never accept this as we have a stake in the ownership of this island which we will never let go just to become another minority.

[Kikapu]

[So what is my conclusion from all these. Well, there had to be a lot more mainland and local forces that fought the Turkish troops. And I have to say, thank God that the Turks were not defeated by this large and well equiped with heavy weapons form the Greek side, because, once Turkey pulled back with it's tail between it's legs, it was going to be "turkey shoot" for the rest of the Turkish Cypriots. I now believe, that the "coup" was well organized to 1st to defeat an invading force from Turkey as the guarantor, and than finish of the TC's. It would have been a perfect set up, to claim that the TC's just got caught and killed between the two forces, and had Turkey did not try to invade, all this would have been avoided. Then of course, the Enosis would have been established within few days. .

Miltiades,
I'll be very happy to answer the question you have asked me to answer today, regarding how many TC's were killed between 1970 and 1974, and also about the TC cleansing. I really hate to answer a question with a question, but, what the hell does that have to do with the events of the 1974 coup.? What I wrote above is what I regarded as the full agenda for those behind the coup, so to get back to your question, so that I'm not accused of dodging it, is probably no TC's were killed or were tried to be ethnically cleansed. So what the hell is the importance of that. The important time began with the plan of the coup, to once and for all, to complete the long sought Enosis. If between 2,000 and 3,000 well trained Turkish forces were killed in Cyprus in the first few days of the invasion, there had to be a one hell of a built up Greek forces with weapons to do such damage. And if you thought, if once the Turkish army was defeated, the coup leaders were going to ask the TC's to become their next door neighbour, and live happyly ever after, then you do belong in the "land of Oz". And by the way, along with eliminating the TC's, there would have been a large number of GC's would have met their deaths also, who would have been against Enosis. Perhaps Turkeys victory against the coup members may have saved many GC's lives. I know you think I screwing with you on this point, but what was to stop the coup members from doing anything they wanted. So the 1970-1974 is a total waste of time to even try to draw any conclusions as to why there were no killings and ethnic cleansing. You need to read it one more time as to what I wrote in my quote above. This does not in anyway direct blame to the average GC's, but only to the coup members.

If I did not answer any specific part of your question, please feel free to ask as soon as possible.

[miltiades]

Kikapu , I posted in another thread that G/Cs and T/Cs lived happily and interacted peacefully until the poisoned ideology of motherland procrastinations came to the forum.I still believe that the animosity and conflict between our people is the result of this ideology . It is the reluctance to let go and begin cultivating our true identity of Cypriot. Yes we are and shall always remain Greeks or Turkish I'm not for a second suggesting that we eradicate our roots but as in Britain where the Welsh , English and Scots live in peace with each other just as the hundreds of ethnics that live happily in the States why cant we first be Cypriots .Both sides have to begin the process of promoting the Cypriot identity, I think from the T/Cs side an effort has to be made too , the removal of the Turkish flag on Pentadaktilos and the erection of a Cypriot flag would be a massive booster to the process of good will and co operation.