 |
| Author |
Message |
repulsewarrior
Ministerial
Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Posts: 2152
Location: a cypriot in canada
|
|
bravo stav, thank-you.
nice post. |
|
| Back to top |
|
samarkeolog
Villager
Joined: 03 Sep 2007
Posts: 32
Location: London, UK
|
|
Yes, your father was honourable.
| stavrizatz wrote: |
So by that logic Greece is only Athens; Sparta, Crete, the Aegean, Epirus, Thrace, Macedonia and the Ionian islands should all be Independent!!!
Cyprus was Greek for 3500 years, the culture the language, the people. |
Cyprus was not Greek. Even the Cypriots didn't call themselves Greek, did they? (Wasn't it a Cypriot koine, rather than a Greek koine on Cyprus?) And the others may have called themselves "Greek", but that was a cultural and political identity, not an ethnic one. You were Greek if you acted Greek - practised the customs, held the values, and yes, spoke the language. You could become Greek (or be Greek then become a Barbarian).
Anyway, why do you choose the "Greece" of that period? Why don't you define what "should" be "Greece" now as what was Greece in the Early Bronze Age. Of course, then Cypriots had a lot of contact with Anatolian communities, so you wouldn't want to choose that period. How about what was Greece in the Roman period?... No, you wouldn't want to choose that, either.
Did the Irish become British when we conquered them, made them speak our language, made them practice our culture? Some people in Northern Ireland feel they are Irish, some feel they are British. Neither is right, or wrong.
You want to choose the period when "Greece" was at its biggest. That's your choice. But everyone can do that. And identities and borders are always changing, so if you put the biggest "Greek" territory, the biggest "Turkish" territory, the biggest Italian territory (if modern Greeks can claim all of ancient Greece, modern Italians can claim all of ancient Rome), etc., etc., etc., then there isn't enough space on the map. There isn't enough world for everyone to claim they own what they owned when "they" were most powerful.
Plus, identities do change. They are not genetic, or automatic, or eternal. You can choose to think of Greece as everywhere that spoke Greek when Greek was widely spoken. But that's no more valid than choosing to think of Italy as the Roman Empire. You don't want to do that, because Cyprus was a Roman province. You might say that Cyprus was "Greek" before it was Roman. But it was "Anatolian" before it was "Greek". So you say that it was Anatolian, but then it became Greek. But if it became Greek, then it became Roman.
If Greece can claim Cyprus was Greek first, Turkey can claim it was Anatolian first. If Greece can claim Cyprus was Greek later, Italy can claim Cyprus was Roman later. Cyprus is Cypriot. |
|
| Back to top |
|
stavrizatz
Mukhtar/is
Joined: 20 Feb 2006
Posts: 952
Location: Australia / Lefkosia
|
|
| Quote: |
| Cyprus was not Greek. Even the Cypriots didn't call themselves Greek, did they? |
sais who?
| Quote: |
| (Wasn't it a Cypriot koine, rather than a Greek koine on Cyprus?) And the others may have called themselves "Greek", but that was a cultural and political identity, not an ethnic one. You were Greek if you acted Greek - practised the customs, held the values, and yes, spoke the language. You could become Greek (or be Greek then become a Barbarian). |
What is koine? Anyway I guess what you don't get is that different parts of greece have different customs and there are more similarities of Cyprus to Crete for instance than Crete to Athens.
| Quote: |
| Anyway, why do you choose the "Greece" of that period? Why don't you define what "should" be "Greece" now as what was Greece in the Early Bronze Age. Of course, then Cypriots had a lot of contact with Anatolian communities, so you wouldn't want to choose that period. How about what was Greece in the Roman period?... No, you wouldn't want to choose that, either. |
It has nothing to do with choosing, I am not choosing a Greece of a period, because in recorded history Cyprus has been in only two or three periods a)pre-history which is not really recorded, b) the Greek period from 1400 AD to the recent time. and th transition we have now and since independence.
| Quote: |
| Did the Irish become British when we conquered them, made them speak our language, made them practice our culture? Some people in Northern Ireland feel they are Irish, some feel they are British. Neither is right, or wrong. |
The comparison is invalid, the Irish existed as a separate culture, the Irish don't call themselves British or English, Cypriots have always called themselves Greeks until lately it became politically incorrect!
| Quote: |
| If Greece can claim Cyprus was Greek first, Turkey can claim it was Anatolian first. If Greece can claim Cyprus was Greek later, Italy can claim Cyprus was Roman later. Cyprus is Cypriot. |
Perhaps Cyprus was British first!!! |
|
| Back to top |
|
samarkeolog
Villager
Joined: 03 Sep 2007
Posts: 32
Location: London, UK
|
|
| stavrizatz wrote: |
| What is koine? |
I thought koine meant "group" and was the root for koinotita, "community".
| Quote: |
| Anyway I guess what you don't get is that different parts of greece have different customs and there are more similarities of Cyprus to Crete for instance than Crete to Athens. |
Yeah, I get that different places have different customs, some more similar than others.
| Quote: |
| Quote: |
| Anyway, why do you choose the "Greece" of that period? Why don't you define what "should" be "Greece" now as what was Greece in the Early Bronze Age. Of course, then Cypriots had a lot of contact with Anatolian communities, so you wouldn't want to choose that period. How about what was Greece in the Roman period?... No, you wouldn't want to choose that, either. |
It has nothing to do with choosing, I am not choosing a Greece of a period, because in recorded history Cyprus has been in only two or three periods a)pre-history which is not really recorded, b) the Greek period from 1400 AD to the recent time. and th transition we have now and since independence. |
Choosing a Greece of a particular period is precisely what you're doing. You could define Greece as the Greece that existed when a lot of what are now Greek islands were part of the Ottoman Empire, but you don't. You choose to define what Greece should be now as the biggest territory that it has ever been in its past. You joke about Cyprus being British first, but it demonstrates my point. If you can define "Greece" as the ancient Greek Empire, why can't I define "Britain" as the recent British Empire? (I don't want to, because I'm anti-nationalist and anti-imperialist.) Some Turkish nationalist can define Turkey as the earlier Ottoman Empire, some Italian nationalist can define Italy as the ancient Roman Empire...
The first people on the island arrived on it from somewhere else. And they didn't speak Greek. They didn't stay "foreigners" forever. They established a Cypriot community. Later, there was trade between communities on the island and off it, presumably settlement of some of the foreign traders on the island, and they started to speak Greek. If they became Greek then, later they became Roman, and Venetian, and Lusignan, and Ottoman (and, poor bastards, British). If they did not later become Roman, etc., etc., etc., they did not first become Greek. They remained Cypriot.
| Quote: |
| Quote: |
| Did the Irish become British when we conquered them, made them speak our language, made them practice our culture? Some people in Northern Ireland feel they are Irish, some feel they are British. Neither is right, or wrong. |
The comparison is invalid, the Irish existed as a separate culture, the Irish don't call themselves British or English, Cypriots have always called themselves Greeks until lately it became politically incorrect! |
No. The comparison is valid. You say "the Irish" don't call themselves British, but you have excluded all of the people in Ireland who do call themselves British. "The Irish" don't call themselves British. But there are also "Britons in Ireland" who don't call themselves Irish. And they could. Through history, groups have formed who identify with "the Irish", and with "the British". The community of Northern Ireland includes both "Irish" and "British".
| Quote: |
| Quote: |
| If Greece can claim Cyprus was Greek first, Turkey can claim it was Anatolian first. If Greece can claim Cyprus was Greek later, Italy can claim Cyprus was Roman later. Cyprus is Cypriot. |
Perhaps Cyprus was British first!!! |
Not first, but last maybe, before independence at least. So if Cyprus became Turkish first, then Greek, it became British last.  But who wants that? Certainly not you, and certainly not me! So why don't we agree that, first, and last, it was Cypriot?  |
|
| Back to top |
|
stavrizatz
Mukhtar/is
Joined: 20 Feb 2006
Posts: 952
Location: Australia / Lefkosia
|
|
| Quote: |
| Not first, but last maybe, before independence at least. So if Cyprus became Turkish first, then Greek, it became British last. But who wants that? Certainly not you, and certainly not me! So why don't we agree that, first, and last, it was Cypriot? |
Because while the extreme majority of Cypriots in the 50s aspired the union of Cyprus with Greece, the foreigners imposed a fake identity, the Cypiot identity, it was foreign in 60s, it is becoming more and more acceptable now as it became politically incorrect to Cyprus is Greek...fabricated history.
| Quote: |
| Choosing a Greece of a particular period is precisely what you're doing. You could define Greece as the Greece that existed when a lot of what are now Greek islands were part of the Ottoman Empire, but you don't. You choose to define what Greece should be now as the biggest territory that it has ever been in its past. You joke about Cyprus being British first, but it demonstrates my point. If you can define "Greece" as the ancient Greek Empire, why can't I define "Britain" as the recent British Empire? (I don't want to, because I'm anti-nationalist and anti-imperialist.) Some Turkish nationalist can define Turkey as the earlier Ottoman Empire, some Italian nationalist can define Italy as the ancient Roman Empire... |
let me explain this to you again, I am not choosing a greece of a time, Greece at its biggest went up to India. I will never claim all the territory up to india as Greek symply because Greece was an empire taken over native land of other people. By the way Greece was not a country as it is today, Greece was separate city Kingdoms that united later and Cyprus became part of the Greek world. The difference between the other occupiers you mention is that Cyprus was Greece and Cypriots if not (under foreign independence, then they wanted to be with Greece). So the relation of Pakistan, Persia, Anatolia to Greece (as a former ruler) is the relation of Italy, Britain, Turkey to Cyprus. These countries are foreign and existing rulers, Greece is not a ruler, it is the country that Cypriots looked as a mothercountry, and I don't argue that for the present because the impose Cypriot national identity overtook the native identity, the Greek one. However in the 1950s it was clear that if not Britain, then re-union of Cyprus with Greece was the only fair solution. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
All times are GMT + 3 Hours
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3
|
| Page 3 of 3 |
| |
 
 
Link Partners
605118 Attacks blocked
|
Register 
Log in 
Album 
Home