Cyprus-Forum.com

[cypezokyli]

i believe you would agree with me that no kid (even the cypriot kids) come to this world having an opinion on the cyprus poblem. so.... :

what do you think has affected the way you view the cyprus problem (an event, a personal experience, a book , school education, your political party, your family, your girl/boyfriend:roll: .....etc etc? )

which newspaper(s) do you read ?

could you propose a couple of books on the cyprus problem (dont have to be necessarily in english) tha you consider important?

thanks

PS. it would be really kind of you if you didnt comment on each others sources. the purpose is perhaps to get some sources ourselves rather than arguing that the "other" source is biased

[Piratis]

what do you think has affected the way you view the cyprus problem

We are not refugees so in my home there was no kind of hate against Turks and Turkish Cypriots.

In school we were taught about the events of 1974, with most blame placed on Turkey and the coup (and no blame at all on Turkish Cypriots) and my mother fill in the gabs the school didn't emphasize, such as explaining our fault in the whole situation. (e.g. that TCs were often treated as second category citizens, that in some period some extremists were tolerated, that the invasion was inevitable after the coup etc). Part of my family is 'politicaly center' and the other part left so I was always in the middle of heated discussions when it comes to politics, and since they never agreed on anything I had to make up my own mind.

Until some years ago I was with the impression that Turkish Cypriots were more or less forced to accept the situation imposed by Turkey and that after seeing that we have also changed that they would be more than glad to accept a solution that would unify the island.

All this changed when I started to read the opinions of Turkish Cypriots online. When they started giving me lame excuses as to why my very sensible proposals were rejected by them my position hardened. I realized yet another flaw of the human nature: greediness. If you can get more you will do it and an excuse can always be found.

Today I am convinced that with the current balance of power no kind of solution can be found.

[Agios Amvrosios]

I Google

[BirKibrisli]

Cypezokyli komshu!
Di ganis? ise gala? (from my elementary Greek Cypriot pre 1964)

I was born early 50s near Paphos and grew up pretty confused.
My grandparents spoke better Greek than Turkish,they did business mainly with GCs, our doctor for a GC,but there was an unease between the two communities,something unspoken at first,but soon was named (the fear of EOKA and TMT).We were told EOKA wanted to kill us,and the TMT wanted us to hate the greek Cypriots,not to speak their language,not to socialise with them.I was tought how to use a shotgun from age 6,how to use a pistol by age 10,and what to do with a hand granade by the time I was 12.When the troubles started in 1963 (the black Christmass!)I was at middle school in Nicosia,and by them the animosity between the two communities was well established.From then till I left Cyprus towards the end of 60s my overall feelings towards the GCs were fear and apprehension.
My great luck was to live with a greek family (I've told this story a few times but I think it's crucial to this post to repeat)for a couple of years,where all I thought about Greeks were turned on its head.My greek friends at school also helped.When I arrived the search of identity was beginning in Australia,so that was instrumental in making me realise that common human values are much more important for identity than your ethnic background,language you speak or your religion.
By nature I am a loner and always an outsider who sees both sides of a coin.It didn't take me long to sort out the wheat from the chuff,the propaganda from the truth.The person who had the most influense on me politically was my father.He went from being a nationalist Denktash supporter to being totally disullusioned with the TMT and the actions of Denktash supporters who used nationalism for their own purposes,so much so that it wasn't safe for him to be in Cyprus by the end.
I kept up with my Turkish by reading books by Aziz Nesin,Yashar Kemal,Fakir Baykurt and Orhan Pamuk and poems and plays by Nazim Hikmet and Attila Ilhan,plus the Cumhuriyet newspaper for which i had a subscription before the internet era.
To get an objective Turkish point of view on Cyprus I recommend books by Ozker Yashin (especially his Nevzat ve Ben series) and Ahmet An (he just got a book out on the recent history of cyprus) and ,of course,the feature articles by Sevgul Uludag,who also has a collection of her articles out recently(There might even be an English version of this but I am not sure).

[TheCabbie]

Google
Encarta
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Some online newspapers

I tend to always try to cross refer items I find on the .net as most sites seem to put their own spin on things.

Various Books

And I actually talk to real people, it was by doing this that I realised the version that I was told as a youngster (ie: all the Cypriots were always living happily together) was Bullshit, this was what made me want to know what really happened.

[zan]

Always been Turkish never been a Turk. Born 1960 thought I was too young to remember what had happened the night of “Black Christmas”, but it was locked up in my head until five years ago when I was put on steroids. Went into depression and until I discovered that the dreams I was having were actual events in my life, they came every night and scared the hell out of me. After the depression I was too scared to look into the matter any more in case it started again and because I had a lot going on in my life with my children’s schooling and my business the stress was worrying. Everything seemed to be so hard because of my illness.

Never was schooled in Turkish, grew up an English boy with an English best friend. Left school, found soul music and started hanging out with GCs and an Armenian from my school. The Armenian friend was like a brother to me and apart from the fact that he had never read a book in his life, and as far as I know still hasn’t, we were on a similar wave length. None of my friends were particularly clever and it could be said that they were as far removed from the word as you could possibly get but those years were some of the most enjoyable and carefree days of my life. I had lived a sheltered life and they showed me how to party and I kept them on the straight and narrow. As Birkibrisli, I tend to be a loner by nature because I find that all the people I speak to and befriend, always seem to come out with their prejudices and their biased opinions in the end.

Still cant read Turkish so English is my only option. Tried to read a book on Cyprus and felt claustrophobic in that it was too biased. Have read up on “Gallipoli” and “Kemal Attaturk” and found pride and sadness in both. Maybe I was Turkish after all.

Other Authors I have read and recommend.

Charles Dickens/ Any thing
Julian Barns/ The history of the world in 10 ½ chapters
Steven Fry/ Anything
Louis de Bernieres/ Birds without wings and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Guneli Gun/ On the road to Baghdad
Bruce Chatwin/ The Songlines
Primo Levi/ The sixth day
Spalding Gray/ Impossible vacation
Stephen Hawking/ A brief history of time
And a must for any one with a sense of humour, Douglas Adams/ The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Every thing on Cyprus I now get from the Internet and cross-reference the lot. I am really only interested in the series of events as facts. I take the rest from both sides and find a theory some where in the middle. The only thing I have made my mind up on is that people are fickle and the vast majority are working on what they are told and have no intention of finding out for them selves. I don’t blame them however because that is what we pay our politicians to do for us. God help us.

[cypezokyli]

i guess till i left cyprus i shared the same views as i was expected to have. as i kid i was admiring the greek heroes, and i even baught from school a tape with EOKA songs which i knew all of them by heart. but somehow i got dissillusioned from patriotic words, and political parties (that i attented for a while) quite fast. my parents never actually had contact with tcs so i didnt get any positive or negative feelings from them. from my refuggee grandfather, i learned to dislike the english but not the tc ( the first thing he can remember in his life was at the age of 3 when a gc was shot dead from the english soldiers outside his house. his mother took him over the dead person and told him : do you see this guy. the english killed him.... i guessnow its clear why ).
a history teacher at school, as we learned european history managed to put into my head that history is not just facts, and never balck or white. usually it lies in the grey region not mention the colourful.
the picture i had for tcs was the one i could get from the tv, that is the one tc ever on tv , i.e. denktash. the AP caused to me a big confusion and it was only after it, that i heard for the first time critisism on our side. then somehow i came to accept that the mistakes of the past are going to be present in the solution of the future.
meeting with a tc, without actually discussing about the cyprus problem, destroyed a lot of my stereotypes.

i read the "opinions" rather than the news in the newspapers. i isolated 3-4 from some newspapers and i make a small round everyday to politis, phileleftheros, (even though more affected by politis i have to admit that ) eleftherotypia and the last couple of weeks to the turkish daily news (i have to say that such level of serious journalism is absent from cyprus. even though i am not sure if they represent the average turk or not). for international news, i prefer to avoid the cypriot ones . they are just too cyprocentric.

when it comes to books. i moved from the ones just accusing EOKA B and turkey, to the ones heavily critisizing makarios policies. the last one i ve finished is from sia anagnostopoulou concerning kemalism - turkey and tcs. quite informative and scientifically structured. it doesnt attempt to critisize but to present the other side. i ve so many questions that i would lke to ask a tc now..

[BirKibrisli]

Cypezokyli wrote:

i ve so many questions that i would lke to ask a tc now..

Fire away,komşu...Zan and I are listening!

[Eric dayi]

What difference does it make where I get it from? If I say the Internet then I’ll be accused of reading only anti-Greek sites. If I say TC papers then I will definitely be accused of reading biased info. I f say Greek papers I would be then accused of reading the wrong Greek papers. If I say I read unbiased foreign written books then, I will be accused of reading books written by authors who were/are paid by the Turks. If I chose critisize what a (supposedly) Turkish newspaper (ie: Africa) writes then I am accused of being a “hypocrite” and an “ultra-nationalist”.

I get my info from the same places as everyone else and also make up my own mind what I should believe or should not believe, just like the rest of you in this or other forums.

[TheCabbie]

What difference does it make where I get it from? If I say the Internet then I’ll be accused of reading only anti-Greek sites. If I say TC papers then I will definitely be accused of reading biased info. I f say Greek papers I would be then accused of reading the wrong Greek papers. If I say I read unbiased foreign written books then, I will be accused of reading books written by authors who were/are paid by the Turks. If I chose critisize what a (supposedly) Turkish newspaper (ie: Africa) writes then I am accused of being a “hypocrite” and an “ultra-nationalist”.

I get my info from the same places as everyone else and also make up my own mind what I should believe or should not believe, just like the rest of you in this or other forums.

Paranoia run in the family, or did you develop it in later life?