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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 and Asia-Minor 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 Turkish speaking Muslims the choice of leaving the island
completely and becoming Turkish citizens, or staying on Cyprus as British
nationals.
When after World War 2 the Cypriot people demanded to be freed of the
British yoke following the example of 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 campaign of terror in Cyprus was
carried out in parallel 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 unrepresentative 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 make it workable by bringing it in line with the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and international democratic norms. At the same
time the Akritas plan was drawn up in order to deal with the threat of
Turkish state sponsored terrorism which was predicted would intensify.
In December 1963 after years of violent
intimidation of both Muslims and Christians by Dektash's TMT, the
campaign of Turkish state sponsored against the people of Cyprus reached
its climax as the TMT was discovered 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
military and terrorist militias seized the strategically important Larnaka
to Limasol highway and attacked anyone who tried to use the road including
UN peace keepers who tired to re-open it. Seven months earlier America
in collusion with the king of Greece had organised a milltary coup and
installed a fascist junta to do its bidding. Instead of taking action
against Turkey which was using terror to destabilise the Republic of
Cyprus, the Greek juntas American paymasters acquiesced to Turkish demands
and forced the junta to withdraw the 20,000 strong Greek garrison that had
been brought to Cyprus in 1964 in accordance with the UN mandate of
resolution 186(1964) to keep the peace and thus left Cyprus completely
defenceless and open to any attack.
On July 20th 1974 after nearly seven years of relative calm,
the Turkish military without provocation unleashed a third premeditated
attack against the island of Cyprus in violation of the Article 2 Paragraph
4 of the UN Charter and explicit UN Resolutions
which stipulated that Turkey had no right to intervene in Cyprus affairs as
well as Article 27 of the Lausanne Treaty, on
the pretext of a failed American CIA organised coup
ordered by Henry Kissinger to assassinate President Makarios. Thousands of
heavily armed Turkish invasion troops landed in the Greek Cypriot dominated
town of Kyrenia and proceeded to attack and ethnically cleanse 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 over 37% 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, whereas Turkey had naval landing craft with over
40,000 heavily armed troops, 400 tanks and full air cover.
The Greek Cypriot majority who legally owned ninety percent of the land
and property in the northern third of Cyprus were
forced to leave their ancestral homes through a systematic process of
ethnic cleansing. Those who refused to go willingly were dragged out of
their homes and beaten or raped. The Greek Cypriots who were taken 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 the same as 20 million people being ethnically
cleansed from a county the size of the United Kingdom or 100 million people
being ethnically cleansed from the United States.
The Turkish army following the orders of prime Minster Bullent Ecevitand
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 Turkish speaking Cypriot Muslims 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 that
full control of its territory is restored to the Republic of Cyprus and
that the refugees are allowed to return to their homes.
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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