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Over nine thousand
years ago the first farmers came to Cyprus and built the earliest known
settlements. From there they radiated to Crete and mainland Greece.
Settlers followed them back to Cyprus from Greece during periods of
migration during the Minoan, Mycenaean, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic
periods and Cypriots also went the other way which resulted in the creation
and consolidation of a Hellenic cultural, linguistic and religious identity
of the Cypriot people.
Cyprus Greek character
and identity was unaffected by invasions by the Phoenicians, Egyptians,
Persians, Romans and Francs. Since the bronze age Cyprus had its own Greek
monarchs and mythical heroes. In the iron age Cyprus was an ally of Assyria
and at the time of Artaxerxes II, Evagoras the
king of all Cyprus and the conqueror of the Phoenicians was recognised as
an equal by the Persian Great King. Cyprus came under Ptolemaic rule in
Hellenistic times after which it became part of the Roman and then the
Byzantine Greek empire. Later Frankish Crusaders and the Venetians
introduced the feudal system to Cyprus, like most of western Europe, but
individuals were eventually able to prosper and rise up the socio-political
ladder or join the military and some were even able to marry into the
foreign aristocracy.
Cyprus freedom and
prosperity came to an end when the Ottoman Turks invaded and subjugated the
people to brutal oppression. Under the Ottomans the Cypriot people were
regarded simply as salves that had no right to participate in the
government, carry out independent trade or build places of worship simply
because they were Christians.
Since Christians were
not allowed to have any share in power the Ottoman Turks could only maintain
their rule through military might therefore they abducted young Christian
children from their families in the "Paidomazwma" or “Child Tax”
to use as slave soldiers. These children were brought up as Turks and
brainwashed in Islamic religious schools into becoming fanatical Muslim
fighters or "Janissaries" by being forced to read
nothing but the Koran every day and by being made to believe that the
Sultan was their father. Today this crime is considered to be an act of genocide.
The Ottoman period
witnessed horrendous crimes against humanity including huge massacres of
Cypriot civilians such as the massacre of the population of Famagousta and
the public hanging of Archbishop Kyprianos, three Bishops and other priests
and Greek Cypriot dignitaries in Nicosia.
The fact that
Christians were treated as second class citizens with no right to hold
office in the Ottoman state and were discriminated against and forced to
pay heavy taxes in comparison to the Muslims caused some to convert to
Islam as a public charade, but secretly these "Linovamvakoi" continued to worship
Christ in underground churches and keep Greek culture alive.
Three hundred and seven
years of brutal Ottoman oppression and degeneration ended when on June 4
1878 Turkey sold Cyprus to the British in return for military assistance.
The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne sealed the end of any notion of a legitimate
Turkish claim to the overwhelmingly Greek populated island. Article 21 of
the treaty gave the minority Muslims on the island the choice of leaving
the island completely and living as Turks in Turkey, or staying there as
British nationals.
When it was becoming
apparent that Cyprus was to be freed of the British yoke like other Crown
Colonies, Turkey reneged on the treaties which bound it and began a
campaign of state sponsored terrorism against the majority of Cypriots both
Christians and Muslims that wanted independence and democracy. This was
synchronised with a Turkish government orchestrated campaign to
exterminate the indigenous Greeks of Asia-Minor and Constantinople. In November 1957 the TMT Terrorist Organisation was formed by Rauf Denktash,
and was funded and trained by Turkey.
On 12 June 1958 eight
innocent unarmed Greek Cypriot civilians from Kondemenos village were
murdered by T.M.T. terrorists near the Turkish Cypriot populated village of
Geunyeli in an totally unprovoked attack, after being dropped off there by
the British authorities. After this the Turkish government ordered the TMT
to blow up the offices of the Turkish press office in Nicosia in order to
falsely put the blame of the Greek Cypriots and prevent independence
negotiations from succeeding. It also began a string of assassinations and
murders of prominent Turkish Cypriot supporters of independence.
In the following year,
after the conclusion of the independence agreements on Cyprus, the Turkish
Navy sent a ship to Cyprus fully loaded with arms for the TMT Terrorists
which was caught red-handed in the infamous "Deniz" incident.
Cyprus finally gained
its independence from British colonialism on 16th August 1960
but at the price of an unworkable and divisive constitution imposed on
it by the British to satisfy Turkey which violated the democratic rights of
the Greek Cypriot majority and made Cyprus ungovernable due to the
unreasonable vetoes and numerical quotas that were given to the 18% Muslim
minority that bore no relation to their numbers and which allowed Turkey to
use them as pawns to interfere in Cyprus internal affairs and destabilise
the country. After the government was repeatedly forced into deadlock and
all major legislation and the budget were repeatedly vetoed by the Muslims
at the behest of Turkey, President Makarios proposed 13 amendments to the
constitution in order to bring it in line with the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and international democratic norms. At the same
time a plan was drawn up to deal with the threat of Turkish state
sponsored terrorism which was predicted would intensify, the so called
Akritas plan.
In December 1963 after
years of violent intimidation of both Muslims and Christians
by Dektash's TMT, a full scale campaign of Turkish state sponsored terror
was initiated against the people of Cyprus when the TMT was found to be in
possession of vast quantifies of illegal Turkish supplied arms and now
outgunned the Cyprus authorities. Turkey used the violence which it
organised as a cover to send commandos into Cyprus who were to collude with
the TMT and the Turkish battalion that was stationed there under the
so-called Treaty of Guarantee so as to capture the Nicosia to Kyrenia main
highway to use as a bridge-head for a full scale invasion. Despite UN
and international condemnation Turkey mounted waves of indiscriminate
air strikes and chemical weapons attacks using napalm on civilians in
Muslim and Christian villages and on the newly formed National Guard which
was given a UN mandate to restore the peace.
In 1967 Turkey was
behind another wave of violent aggression when its troops seized the
strategically important Larnaka to Limasol highway and attacked
UN peace keepers. Seven months earlier America in collusion with the
king had organised a military coup in Greece and instead of taking action
against Turkey, America forced the Greek junta to withdraw the 20,000
strong Greek garrison that had been placed in Cyprus in 1964 in accordance
with the previous UN mandate and left Cyprus completely defenceless.
On July 20th
1974 after nearly seven years of relative peace, the Turkish Army without
provocation executed its third premeditated invasion of the island of Cyprus in
violation of the Article 2 Paragraph 4 of the UN Charter and explicit UN Resolutions as well as Article 27 of the Lausanne Treaty, on the pretext of a failed CIA
organised coup
ordered by Henry Kissinger to assassinate President Makarios, using naval
landing craft, over 40,000 heavily armed troops, 400 tanks and full air
cover, all of which had been put in place weeks earlier long before the
coup and planned since the 1950's. The troops landed in the Greek Cypriot
dominated town of Kyrenia and proceeded to attack the Greek Cypriot
population.
On August 14th
in violation a UN cease-fire, 3 weeks after democratic Government had been restored,
the Turkish invasion continued. Further reinforcements were shipped into
the less than 5% of Cyprus territory which had already been captured by the
Turks and UN Peacekeepers were deliberately fired upon and killed. Britain
deliberately prevented the UN from taking action to stop the Turkish
invasion and took no action to stop the invasion and genocide of the Greek
Cypriots in violation its own status as a guarantor power because it wanted
Cyprus to be permanently partitioned.
Using its heavy forces
in conjunction with renewed napalm and bombing raids against
civilians
Turkey attacked and captured 38% of the territory belonging to the
defenceless island Republic, whose National Guard consisted of less than 1,000
men, 35 (or so) old WW2 Tanks and no air force or navy to speak of.
The Greek Cypriots who
legally owned nearly all of the land and property in the northern
third of Cyprus,
and formed the majority of the population there were forced to leave their
ancestral homes. Those who refused to go willingly and acquiesce to ethnic
cleansing were beaten and punished and even raped. The fleeing
Greek Cypriots who were captured were imprisoned in Concentration Camps
located both in occupied Cyprus and in Turkey, to which the UN and Red
Cross were denied free access. Over 1,600 Greek Cypriots including women and children,
known to have been sent to these concentration camps are still unaccounted
for.
The total of number of displaced persons was in the region of 200,000 or
1/3 of the total Cypriot population, which numbered 600,000. This is
equivalent to 20 million people being ethnically cleansed from a county the
size of the United Kingdom.
The Turkish army
following the orders of prime Minster Bullent Ecevit and using the captured Greek Cypriots as hostages
threatened Cyprus with the further invasion of the free areas and
sanctioned the bombing of Greek and Turkish Cypriot villages and
air-and-chemical-weapons strikes on civilians, unless the Republic of
Cyprus and the UN and the British Bases authorities consented to the
transfer of the Turkish Cypriots living in the free areas to the north
against their will.
After a new
"cease-fire" was called 20,000 Greek Orthodox and Maronite
Cypriots still remained enclaved in the north in 1975 but through
systematic persecution and the deliberate violation of their rights (as
judged by the ECHR) their number has now fallen to less than 300 and thus the almost
complete ethnic cleansing of the occupied areas by Turkey has been achieved.
Even the Muslim
Cypriots have now been almost completely replaced in Cyprus by over 150,000
Turkish Colonists brought to Cyprus in violation
of the Geneva Convention. Out of the original
population of 110,000 Muslim Cypriots who lived in Cyprus, only between
60,000 and 85,000 remain, the rest being forced to emigrate through
economic hardship brought on by the Turkish occupation and intimidation by
the colonists from the Turkish mainland.
On 13th
February 1975 Turkey declared occupied Cyprus a federated Turkish State
which was condemned in UN Security Council Resolution 367(1975). In 1983 Turkey formed the
"Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus", condemned in UN Security
Council Resolutions 541(1983) & 550(1984). Having failed to gain
international recognition for this illegal entity, Turkey now plans the complete
annexation of the occupied areas.
The Turkish Military has stationed 40,000 heavily
armed Troops in occupied Cyprus, together with 400 Tanks and has two Navel
Bases, which it claims are needed to protect the Turkish Cypriots, but in
reality they are there to stop the Turkish Cypriots from rebelling and
prevent the enforcement of over 100 UN Security Council resolutions which
demand the Turkish occupation be ended and the return of the refugees.
Turkey to this day has
not shown any sign of repentance or remorse for the atrocities that it
and the Ottoman Empire perpetrated against the people of Cyprus and instead
of recognising or acknowledging its crimes against humanity glorifies the
perpetrators as national heroes while the world looks on in silence.
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