www.talkcyprus.org

[repulsewarrior]

Unfortunately, the Turrkish leadership did have these aims. Witness Kutchuk, the Trotsky of our history, how he was ignored. Thus the question remains, the leaders in power are still playing an all or nothing game so that ultimately there is no sharing and as a consequence the destruction of so many lives.

[Gabi]

... if both sides seriously think of reunification as the solution to the CyProb, then FORGET the past. Forget 1958, forget 1963, forget 1967, forget 1974, Forget 1983 ... are you not tired of this endless blamegame. Are you not tired and ashamed of poisoning children's brain's with hate. Many of you were not even witnesses of what happened then. Just forget ... see Vietnam, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, N. Ireland, Germany ... and dont try to find small loopholes to challenge the paradigms that these countries have set ... Just FORGET + Smile

[repulsewarrior]

welcome gabi.

[100%cypriot]

Gabi wrote: ... if both sides seriously think of reunification as the solution to the CyProb, then FORGET the past. Forget 1958, forget 1963, forget 1967, forget 1974, Forget 1983 ... are you not tired of this endless blamegame. Are you not tired and ashamed of poisoning children's brain's with hate. Many of you were not even witnesses of what happened then. Just forget ... see Vietnam, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, N. Ireland, Germany ... and dont try to find small loopholes to challenge the paradigms that these countries have set ... Just FORGET + Smile

Not as easy as you say to just forget !!!!!

[erolz]

Yes welcome Gabi


When you say Cypriots should forget the past do you mean that Greek Cypriot should forget their lost pre 74 property along with eveything else in the 'past' ?

[Get Real!]

Gabi wrote: ... if both sides seriously think of reunification as the solution to the CyProb, then FORGET the past. Forget 1958, forget 1963, forget 1967, forget 1974, Forget 1983 ... are you not tired of this endless blamegame. Are you not tired and ashamed of poisoning children's brain's with hate. Many of you were not even witnesses of what happened then. Just forget ... see Vietnam, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, N. Ireland, Germany ... and dont try to find small loopholes to challenge the paradigms that these countries have set ... Just FORGET + Smile
Can I be the first volunteer of this lobotomy program?

[Dream_Merchant]

forget comes with forgive. if there is no forgive, there should not be forget. but for there to be forgive, it must first be asked for.

there is no blame 'game'. there is just blame.

[Gabi]

There we go again, forget, forgive, never forget, dont forget, surrender etcetc. Dont you both see that this leads nowhere but in furtherning the division of the island and the two peoples. See it with yourselves, even if most of you are very well educated and openminded in having civilised discussions ... each one of you accepts only up to a certain degree the wrongdoings of the side that you are on but at the end its always the other side that did the greater wrong. And the more you invest on the history of the issue the more you weaken your level of understanding of what the others have to say.

Property, settlers, functionality etcetc ... those are issues that will be in a settlement process and require good will on the part of the political leadership as it was the case in 2002-2003. This does not have to do with forgeting or not and this is an unchallengable reality. And then it lies upon the leaders to guide carefully their electorates on taking the final decision.

The CyProb has reached an impasse point whether you like it or not. Observers are tired of the childish and stubborn attitudes of the leaders of the two communities. Since the leaders are not in the position to agree on the basics there has to be a bottom-up approach. But for such an approach we need excessive degrees of political maturity. In my opinion it is an imperative that the history of the conflict is left aside ... FORGET.

I would love to see a Blog or Web-forum where there is no reference at all on the history of the conflict. Where topics and discussions on dead, slaughtered, massacred, raped or whatever people are banned or deleted or whatever.

The dead belong to the dead. I do not have to repeat myself with the examples of the countries that I have set in my previous post. Cease from the good paradigms of the past as a guide of what to do and what to avoid ...

[erolz]

What are you saying Gabi? Nothing of substance than I can see ?

What do you think a settlement should involve ? In terms of property. In terms of 'settlers'. In terms of political system and power sharing of communities if any ?

Bemoaning that we will not forget the past is easy but it does not bring us any closer to a settlement as far as I can see. It just sounds like 'holier than thou' lecturing / hectoring to me. The questions above are the hard ones, whether the past is 'forgotten' or not.

[repulsewarrior]

Gabi, in many ways I understand your position.

http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5707

http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2484

http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5804

http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5802

I would like your opinion on my proposals.

Beside the past, what can be done, futuristicly?

[pg]

I think Gabi's point is that we should correct what can be corrected, of all wrong doings - but that instead of discussing that many people want to avoid that with the excuse that history will repeat itself - and they hurry to repeat history to reinforce such a view...

[erolz]

pg wrote: I think Gabi's point is that we should correct what can be corrected, of all wrong doings - but that instead of discussing that many people want to avoid that with the excuse that history will repeat itself - and they hurry to repeat history to reinforce such a view...

I think it was wrong (and is wrong) to think that the Greek Cypriot community alone pursuing not (pan) Cypriot objectives but Greek objectives under they excuse that they were the only 'real' Cypriots or the more numerous Cypriots had a right to impose these Greek desires on the Turkish Cypriot community with no regard for their wishes as a community or any support from them as a community.

Is that a valid wrong to be corrected today , or is this living in the past ?

I am sorry but too many times when I hear arguments that 'we' need to forget the past what is really being said, as far as I can determin, is we should forget everything before 74 and nothing after it. That to me is not looking for a way forward , its just a repackaging of standard propaganda. If we say forget the past, forget the 'theft / loss' of the Turkish Cypriot communities legal valid and constitutional rights as a community, then why not also say forget the 'theft/loss' of Greek Cypriot land in the north as well ?

I am not looking for confrontation here or excuses. I am trying to be as honest as I can about what many calls to 'forget the past' sound like to me as a Turkish Cypriot.

[Gabi]

I'm definitely misunderstood ... and surprised at the same time of being reproached of ... Quote: repackaging of standard propaganda .

I do not want and actually I am incapable of going deep into the specifics of a settlement between the North and the South ... From the little I know I think that more or less all versions of the Annan Plan provided for a just accomodation of the needs and demands of both communities and thus for a solution (temporary or permanent).

My thoughts have to do with the fact that both peoples are stuck with their history, the myths on their glorious pasts, their inferiority/superiority complexes (the one complements the other) not to mention their conspiratorial views of the world, to an acute sense of persecution and worst of all to that distinctive malaise of all “fallen” people.

Maybe I am just verbalising or bemoaning and hectoring as erolz has put it. However, i insist that if the injustices and the pains of the past are not forgotten among the citizens of both communities of TODAY, then we cannot have a solution based on reunification. Books must be changed, educational curriculums must be revised, ideas such as "Cyprus is a Hellenic island", "proud to be a Turk", "Osmosis" etcetc must one way or the other be erased from your/ours hard memory discs if we want to see a reunified Kibris/Kypros.

The technical arrengments on a settlement of the conflict are already there ... see Annan Plan .... as regards the minimum requirements of a solution: Bizonal-Bicommunal federation; political equality; one head of state.

[erolz]

Gabi wrote: I'm definitely misunderstood ... and surprised at the same time of being reproached of ... Quote: repackaging of standard propaganda .


Just to be clear Gabi I was not saying that this is what you were doing specifically (I do not know enough about your views to be able to say that). I was just pointing out that some people DO use the argument 'lets forget the past' as another version of 'the problem started in 74' kind of propaganda. When they say 'let's forget the past' they actually mean let's forget the issues pre 74, like the loss of the Turkish Cypriot communities constitutional rights under the 60's agreements and only deal with Greek Cypriot losses post 74. That was the point I was making as a way of trying to explain why I remain 'cautious' about calls for 'let's forget the past'.

[stavrizatz]

Here are my comments. It is a well written article representing the Greek Cypriot rhetoric. It is certainly not a balanced article as far as I am concerned, why? reasons are mentioned by Erolz. However I would keep some points and comment on others.

The following statements are statements that I like and which I believe represent the tragic reality of Cyprus. However these statements are often rejected by Turkish Cypriots, perhaps because they want to dress up their conclusions and justify the separation of Cyprus, perhaps because of the Turkish propaganda or maybe because they do know something that I 'we' don’t.
Quote: A common propaganda bite used by the Turkish state to legitimize its 1974 invasion of Cyprus is that "The Greek Cypriots then unleashed a campaign of extermination and eviction that killed or wounded thousands and drove a frightening percentage of Turkish Cypriots into besieged enclaves.." (Insight Magazine, "Fences Might Be the Right Thing for Multiethnic Nation of Cyprus", Ahmet Erdengiz, Feb. 7).

Quote: Moreover, these deaths were a direct result of Britain's documented policy of arming Turkish separatists and encouraging Greco-Turkish conflict to facilitate its control over Cyprus.

Quote: While extremists of both communities are to blame for intercommunal violence, fueled by British attempts to prevent this overwhelmingly Greek island-nation …

Quote: Turkish Cypriots who favored compromise or a close relationship between the two ethnic communities were targets of TMT violence.

Quote: Despite comprising only 18% of the population, Turkish Cypriots were granted three of the ten seats in the Council of Ministers and thirty percent of the deputy positions in the House of Representatives. A Turkish Cypriot was to be made minister of defense, foreign affairs and finance. Turkish Cypriots were allotted 30% of the civil service jobs and 40% of the command positions in the Army. Any change to the constitution required a two-thirds majority of representatives from both communities. Even the most rudimentary of governmental functions became impracticable--for example the Turkish Cypriot leadership's voting against income and other taxes had placed the government in danger of bankruptcy. In short, the government was hog-tied; Cyprus' very undoing was written into its own constitution.

Quote: invasion was authorized by the Treaty of Guarantee. The Treaty of Guarantee provided that one of the guarantor powers (England, Greece or Turkey) could intervene in an emergency but only in order to restore the country to its original (unified) state, and certainly not to partition, ethnically cleanse or occupy it.

And here some statements that I don't really share.

Quote: history is clear that Turkish extremists initiated the cycle of violence that claimed victims on both sides.

History is not so clear at all… we Greek Cypriots like to blame the Turkish Cypriots that they initiated the troubles and they like to blame us. From my understanding after independence both Greek Cypriot enosists and Turkish Cypriot separatists were still preparing the day of violence. In my village (Ayios Vasilios) were many of the killings occurred, the first shot was by a Greek Cypriot but there was an immediate response by the Turkish Cypriots who took positions. The extremists of both sides were ready to fulfil their scope given the opportunity and they were ready to use all means to achieve that with no concern on the human loss what so ever.

Quote: In addition to the hostile environment that was created by combatants on both sides, there was a second factor that led to the polarization of both communities: with a view toward partition, the Turks withdrew from predominantly Greek areas and evicted Greeks from areas where Turks were in the majority. In a single week over 600 families, two-thirds of them Greek, left their homes, and many Turks who left Greek areas did so under intense pressure from Turkish separatists.

That is not so true I think. To me those who lost more after the events of 63-64 and 67 are clearly the Turkish Cypriots. Not all Turks withdrew from the Greek areas, even so TMT encouraged Turkish Cypriots to withdraw so as to create a territorial basis for partition, many were violently forced out by Greek Cypriots and we shouldn’t deny that.

Quote: Makarios was opposed to union with Greece. He sought complete independence for Cyprus and a unified sovereign state that protected the rights of all Cypriots, both Greek and Turkish.

I am fairly sure that Makarios never opposed enosis. Makarios said “what is desirable does not always coincide with what is feasible”

Erolz, I also read your reply to what you call a standard Greek Cypriot propaganda and you replied with what I would call the usual Turkish Cypriot rhetoric that is not very different from the article of the author but the other side of the coin.

Anyway History is a long chapter and I believe if we want to deal with it constructively we should take events one by one.

Forgeting the past,

Gabi firstly welcome. I know you are new here, so I would like to inform you that are not the first person to suggest “forget the past”. Forget the past means to erase every memory as from yesterday. Therefore we should have Cyprus divided in two separate states and continue to live as we do today and who cares about the past and if there are things we need to improve. I say no to that sort of forgetting the past and I am sure that is not what you mean, therefore I will make a new suggestion “Embrace the Past”… know about it, own it and accept all responsibilities, obligations. Saying that, as humans we also have rights and our human rights should not be for compromise.