Cyprus-Forum.com

[humanist]

What is culture?

[MR-from-NG]

You are full of hate. That is why you occupy our country Maybe we should love you for this?

There's a difference with what you do and what Turkey did. Turkey intervened with the knowledge of the whole world, you were prepared for the attack.
As for you guys, you did it while we were in our beds, in deep sleep. That says it all about the kind of people you really are.

[Piratis]

In fact Turkey invaded early in the morning killing innocent people by the 1000s.
6000 people were killed within days by the barbarian invaders

During the intercommunal conflict your extremists had killed an equal amount of Greek Cypriots. So how can you complain about that period when you did equally as bad? And in that period we are talking about a few 100 dead from each side within a period of several years, not thousands within days as was the case with the invasion.

As usual you are full of lame excuses since you want for today what you did always: More crimes and illegalities against us.

[zan]

Part 1
In his excellent little book Cyprus, 1958-1967, published in the Oxford University Press series on 'International Crises and the Role of Law'(1974), Thomas Ehrlich juxtaposes two statements by Makarios expressing two very different attitudes to the 1960 Accords. The first statement, made at the closing ceremonies after the London Conference held at Lancaster House in 1959 celebrating the signing of the Accords, is conciliatory and optimistic:
Yesterday I had certain reservations. In overcoming them I have done so in a spirit of trust and good-hearted good will towards the Turkish community and its leaders. It is my firm belief that with sincere understanding and mutual confidence we can work together in a way that will leave no room for dissension about any written provisions and guarantees. It is the spirit in the hearts of men that counts most. I am sure that all past differences will be completely forgotten.
The second statement appears in a paper written by Makarios early in 1964 entitled >Proposals to Amend the Cyprus Constitution=and published in a Greek learned journal:
At the Conference at Lancaster House in February, 1959, which I was invited to attend as leader of Greek Cypriots, I raised a number of objections and expressed strong misgivings regarding certain provisions of the Agreement arrived at in Zurich between the Greek and the Turkish Governments and adopted by the British Government. I tried very hard to bring about the change of at least some provisions of that Agreement. I failed, however, in that effort and I was faced with the dilemma either of signing the Agreement as it stood or of rejecting it with all the grave consequences which would have ensued. In the circumstances I had no alternative but to sign the Agreement. This was the course dictated to me by necessity.
Ehrlich comments on the marked discrepancy between the two positions as follows:
It may be that the Archbishop's former statement minimized his 'reservations' out of respect for his co-signatories; but it seems equally plausible that his latter statement overemphasized his 'misgivings' in an effort to justify his current views concerning the 1960 Accords.
This strikes me as unduly generous to the Archbishop. The evidence is now overwhelming that Makarios knew all along what he wanted. This was to turn Cyprus into an Hellenic island and, when the time was ripe, to join it to Greece. In a 'top secret" letter written on 1 March 1964, to the recently-elected Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, Makarios was able to express his aims more openly than he allowed his team currently at the UN in New York to express them. Makarios wrote:
Our aim, Mr Premier, is the abolition of the Zurich and London Agreements, so that it may be possible for the Greek Cypriot people, in agreement with the Motherland, to determine in an unfettered way its future. I am signatory of these Agreements on behalf of the Greeks of Cyprus. In my personal opinion, in the conditions then prevailing,'naught else was to be done'. But not for a moment did I believe that the agreements would constitute a permanent settlement. It was a settlement of harsh necessity and, in my view, was the solution of the Cyprus drama which was the lesser evil at that time. Since then internationally and locally the conditions have changed and I think that the time has come for us to undertake to rid ourselves of the Agreements imposed on us.... The unilateral abrogation of the Agreements without the process of law and without the agreement of all the signatories will possibly have serious repercussions. But we shall not proceed to any such action without prior agreement with the Government of Greece.[Quoted in John Reddaway, Burdened With Cyprus: The British Connection (London, 1986), p. 224 (Italics added).]

[zan]

Part2

But that is precisely the way Makarios did proceed. Nothing was to stand in the way of this 'unfettered' future, and he was quite unabashed to say to the British or the Americans or the Turks, as to the leaders of the USSR and the Third World, whatever the occasion demanded - so long as he created an impression that suited his ruling passion. This supreme and transcendent end justified practically any means. Makarios was very dissatisfied with the 1960 Accords, but at least he was now President of Cyprus, and he had every intention of abrogating any, or all, of these 'binding' international agreements in so far as they stood in the way of the realisation of his political fantasies. It was a great shortcoming on the part of especially Great Britain in 1959/60 that insufficient account was taken of the predictable power of these fantasies and the havoc they were quite likely to create.