nice try,
Greeks in Turkey can only elect a religious leader born in Turkey. With less then 5,000 Greeks in Istanbul and less 20,000 Greeks in all of Turkey it doesn't really leave much of an option.

The same reason why many Cypriot Turks would accept such a plan, whose villages, property etc. was either destroyed or expropriated in the south, where also an atuopark was shamelessly builded on the area of a mass grave of Turks.

Like it or not, it is not a biased agreement, you cant get a full satisfaction over a dispute that involves 2 sides. Countless negative entries for the Turkish side can be picked as well. A simple look at the analysis of the jurist, Haluk Kabalioglu from Yeditepe University would enable one to see possible dangers that expect cypriot Turks.

LMAO, Turkish troops were placed to island in connection with the founding treaties of Cyprus Republic as a Guarantor State. WRT its current presence on the island, it is related to existence and the protection of TRNC. If the both sides could have accepted the UN solution, then there would be no TRNC, consequently no need to protect its presence. If the Greek Cypriots lack the simple sophistication to see this basic fact, then do not seek the answer at me.


Turkey interfered as a legal guarantor state, and reminded UK of its obligation for the protection of Turkish community and as well as unified Cyprus, before taking action. Later in the coming years, accepted many solution offers like that of Gali set of ideas which was put in early 1990s.

If the plans absolves any responsibilty, then its evidently that of Greek sides, for the Turks were being murdered and driven into enclaves-something very well documented by foreign journalists, who were revolted not least by the lying that accompanied it all. Harry Scott Gibbons' Genocide Files (1997 is based on Greek Cypriot documents, captured by the Turks, showing how the nationalists were planning the ethnic cleansing of the island. Crete had undergone a similar process and "cleansed", with ferocious massacres, two generations before.


Turkey interfered as a guarantor state, depending on an agreement. It was after all a Greek court desicion, that concluded it was legal Greek Cypriots might do whatever they wish, but have no right to whine about the dispute not being solved. More importantly have no right to isolate Cypriot Turks from the world.

This is a very good subject, and should be one of the tripping-stones for the Turkish memberships. If Turkey should join, they should leave the island they invaded and tried to conquer. Hellenistic armies along with Cyprus Defence force would most likely approve this kind of act. After all, it is costly to keep their forces on constant high alert. Turkey does not even bother to regonize the Cyprus as a nation, but tries to create the Turk-side Cyprus. Pff.
I have had long discussions with Greek(pacifist) about this situation, Hector, do not try to lie in theis subject. What do you think about the failed invasion and current occupation of Cyprus territory?

Ah, I see you are already there.
Only a fool believes Turkey and their lies on the matter. I have been in Cyprus, I have seen the situation. I was there when Turkish army managed to occupie another village. Blackout throughout the island.
Your lies have no affect.

And your rhetoric based on some dubious personal experience has the greatest effect. I am sure you are the soul of objectivity. As regards being a fool, the Greek court is one according to your judgement

Hector, I have one question beside those issues the thread is currently spinning itself around.

Do you think the Turks or the Turkish state are ready or willing to handle over a signficant amount of souvereignity to Brussels?

Is that a question at all in Turkey when it comes to the EU-admission issue?

__________________
When the Nazis came for the communists I remained silent, I was no communist.
When the Nazis came for the Unionists I remained silent, I was no Unionist.
When the Nazis came for the Social Democrats I remained silent, I was no Social Democrat.
When the Nazis came for the Jews I remained silent, I was no Jew.
When the Nazis came for me, there was no one left who could protest.

OFf topic and sorry for it, but Slarti I fully agree with you on your siggy. Starbucks coffee does pretty much suck.

__________________

The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure... - Klaatu

Sorry, I know you asked that before, i was caught up by the excitement of the debate and ignored it, to answer other posts.

That was a question in the last few years but right now the most debates are about whether EU is sincere or not wrt Turkey.

As for handling the sovereignity over to Brussels, I dont think that it is a big fuss provided that EU gives a fair treatment and stops treating Turkey as her step-child , which is the main the reason making people loose their faith to EU in the recent.

As regards to Turks being patriotic, if not to say nationalistic, I really do not believe it is something more than French's anxiety for the Disneyland built in their country, fearing that it'll degenerate their national values or Chirac's leaving a meeting because a Frenchman insulted French pride by giving his speech in English.

What if Turkey wants to join the USA?

__________________
Hier ons bloed. Wanneer ons recht
Here our blood. When our right

Hm, perhaps I should ask it in a different way. Both France and Britain are very patriotic, thats nothing new for you for sure, but still there view of the EU is differing very much.

The UK sees in it an economic Union which accidentially has some political aspects. They are the greatest opponents for any form of further integration.
France on the other side while being often selfish too, committed itself to strengthen a political union.

You perhaps would counter that both governments act just in their own egoism. But look at the people. While Britains could not detest the EU any more severely, French people are quite pro European. And dont come with the Referendum about the constitution, the French did not vote it down because it was too integrationist, they voted it down because it was in their eyes too libertarian.


Is the way Turkey or the Turks think about the EU more like Britains think about it, or more like France thinks about it, concerning the nature of the political Union.

Furthermore I would like to know what would happen if Turkey will be overvoted during regular legislative work in Brussels. That happens to all countries from time to time. But not everyone can handle it as good as others.

Last but not least I would love to know the motives of the Turks. Why are there so many that support joining the EU (or at least have been a short time ago)? Is it to proove that they are "European" like Atatürk wanted it, is it because of economic advantages, or is it because of the aim to be member in the political Union?

__________________
When the Nazis came for the communists I remained silent, I was no communist.
When the Nazis came for the Unionists I remained silent, I was no Unionist.
When the Nazis came for the Social Democrats I remained silent, I was no Social Democrat.
When the Nazis came for the Jews I remained silent, I was no Jew.
When the Nazis came for me, there was no one left who could protest.

The reason the Armenians declined the commission because it was pointless. Most historians have said it was genocide what is the point of another inquest which will most likely not return any solution to the issue. The fact of the matter is that UN gave the Bosnia massacre "Genocide" status with death toll reaching 10,000 Bosnians, while Armenia claims 1.5 million Armenians died. If even a fraction of those deaths were true it will still be well over 10,000 peoples.

In September 1915 American consul discovered the bodies of nearly 10,000 Armenians dumped into several ravines near Lake Göeljuk. Many other American diplomats had recorded similar findings.

Also the fact that Turkey had an official stance at the time of "Turkey for the Turks" pretty much says it all doesn't it.


Well that doesn't really matter because most of the EU does and thats all that really matters to Turkey right now, doesn't it. More and more countries are also recognising the massacres as genocide with France and Switzerland one the most recent.



Turkish civilians were only targeted by Greeks after Turkey's invasion of Cyprus.anymore? I don't think minorities were ever welcome since the creation of the Turkish nation.



Greece probably thinks by giving Turks minority status they will start asking for autonomy or to join with Turkey. Maybe they should just do what Turkey did to Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and Kurds who tried to separate when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and kill and starve them or just drive them out of there land and homes.


Seriously you complain about the Muslim treatment in Greece when they are treated far better then the Christians of Turkey. Where there are over 130,000 Muslims living in Greece less then 20,000 Christians are living in Turkey when there once a number reaching into the millions. Instanbul which was excluded from the population exchange only has 5,000 Greeks currently living there. This shows that the rights in Greece much be such that Muslims feal safe enough to live and have lived for the last 80 years. This cannot be said about the Greeks of Turkey and other Christian groups of Turkey.
Muslims in Greece actually do not get treated bad at all and the only reason you sit here and complain about the treatment of Muslims in Greece is because the Greece government has given the muslims in Greece a voice to complain about issues. In the latest local elections (2002), approximately 250 Muslim municipal and prefectural councillors and mayors were elected, and the Vice-Prefect of Rhodope is also a Muslim..


In Greece .5% of higher education insitutions are saved for Greek minorities. Considering this I don’t think Muslims can complain about education prospects in Greece.










Why even bother putting the site link when its in Turkish.
I have been to Thrace and I have seen a lot of Mosques, they weren’t apartments. You might be getting confused with the Mosques of Athens which are in apartments and houses because the majority of the Muslim population are illegal immigrants so the government hasn’t catered for them because officially they don’t count.


Although I don’t agree what the Greek government did above but you are missing one important piece of information. Citizenship was only stripped to those Muslims of Turkish ethnicity who left Greece for Turkey and didn’t return for 7 years. Even so it still doesn’t compare with the Turkey’s treatment of Greek minorities in Cyprus where if they left to the country they were not allowed to return at all until only the last few years. The small Greek population at the Northern tip of Turkish occupied Cyprus (some villages were excluded from the population exchange) were left isolated from the outside world since the islands division. What was worse is the Turkish government did not supply the population with secondary schools so when the children finished primary school they had to leave the town to the Republic of Cyprus for there education knowing they could never return to the village til recently.






You will find Turkey has a large part to play in Armenia’s modern day economic situation. The fact that Turkey still occupies 60% of Armenian land which blocks Armenia’s access to the sea is one reason Armenia is now struggling.

Turkey invaded on the ground of the '1960 Treaty' states that guarantor powers (the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Greece) promised not to seek annexation or partition of Cyprus, and to assist their communities on Cyprus in the event of major clashes between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.

EOKA was the pro-Greek military organisation that fought againt British rule and was pro-Greek rule. EOKA never had the policy of targeting Turkish civilians. EOKA never achieved it objective, it however bring independence to Cyprus. The cease-fire led which to the '1960 Treaty of Guarantee', which led to the independece of Cyprus.
This biggest mistake of the treaty was that all major decisions made by the Cypriot government could be veto'd by the Turkish Cypriot minority.

In 1974 EOKA-B implemented a military coup against the Cypriot government government after been given the support of the Greek Military Junta and the US government. Turkey invaded on July 20 and but the invasion was a failure and only 3% of island was captured by Turkish forces.
Soon after the military coup was overthrown by the Makarios government and democracy was restored.

At a coference at August the 14th, 1974 Turkey demanded 34% of the island. The Cypriot government had yet give an answer, when within an hour and a half Turkey invaded for 2nd time, this time unprovoked by the Greek government. The north part of Cyprus which Turkey was demanding was made up of 82% Greek population.

In 1976 and again in 1983 the European Commission of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of repeated violations of the European Convention of Human Rights.
Since the Turkish invasion over 120,000 Turks have been brought to the north from Anatolia in violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, to occupy the homes of the Greek Cypriot refugees.
The Turksih military continues to remain on island in violation of the UN Charter and repeated UN Security Council Resolutions.

Are you illiterate or what? what is pointless? Is it not the recognition/admission that Armenians want? So then what is wrong with proving their case in a scholarly debate if it is such a well-known and simple thing as you present? Why would it not be likely to bring any solutions when the primary demand (admission) of Armenians can be satisfied ?

And most of these so-called most of historians bear the –ian suffix at the end of their name being French-Armenians or American-Armenians , among the rest, surely there are respectable names that can not be dismissed easily like the fact that a large number of scholars made their declarations against to the Armenian claims two times in Washington Post and NYT and rejected the genocide term.


A death toll has no relevance to whether something can be classified as Genocide or not, first learn this basic fact you ignorant thug. Two main conditions of genocide is premeditation and intent to annihilate, nothing relevant to numbers.


Simply fictional, Pastor Lepsius gives the total Armenian population as 1,600 000 and encyclopedia Britannica gives it as 1,500 000 whereas the French Yellow Book gives it as 1.475.011 and many more examples can be given.

So it must be a genocide ? You are far fooler than I thought. What does a large death toll itself prove beyond the tragedy involved? I dont think that one could take this Armenian events as a unique example for such comparison. Turkish/ Muslim death was more than 5 million between 1821 and 1922. So how many genocide could you make out of it then ?

The total Circassian toll (this is what the Ottomans used to call everyone coming from Caucasus at the period of Circassian migration, including Karachai Turks and others) was about 1.500.000, not to mention the millions of Turks, Laz, Pomaks, Albanians, Bosniaks, Crimean Tatars, Roma peoples, Akhbaz peoples, Chechens, and so on. In conclusion, Anatolia received some 4-5 million people before deportation of Armenians was the issue and some 1-2 million during and immediately after the ww1. In the end, even after the establishment of republic more than 2 million people migrated to Turkey from Cyprus, Crimea, Balkans, and Caucasus, and some Turkic pockets from Central Asia.

What do you know about that American consul or Lake Golcuk apart from what you found as a result of internet search? That American consul is Leslie Davis and here is the story that you omitted from us:


One day Daviss was told by a Turk that he had seen thousands of bodies around lake Golcuk (today called Hazar), about 20 miles southeast of Harput near the road to Diarbekir, and he offered to take the consul to these places. Subsequently Davis undertook three trips on horsebacks to the area around the lake. The first trip was made in late Septembr, many weeks after the last deportees had left Harput. (…) Davis later wrote of his first trip… When they left the road to Diarbekir they saw dead bodies scattered over the plain. “Nearlry all of them were those of women and children. It was obvious that they must have been killed , as so many could not have died from disease or exhaustion. They lay quite near a Kurdish village, which was known as Kurdemluk, and I afterwards learned that the Kurds of this village had killed most of these people .“ A woman who was left for dead and found her way back to Harput described what had happened. Another survivor was a young woman who had been taken by one of the Kurds and kept in Kurdemlik for several months but eventually managed to escape and returned to Harput. Some of the bodies had been burned, and Davis was told that this was done in order find any gold that the Armenians might have swallowed.

Armenian massacres in Otoman Turkey: a disputed genocide. By Guenter Lewy
Page 171 and 172.

Right and there is more :

A British officer also reported that Armeians had massacred around 300 000 Kurds, while the special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, M. Philips Price, who in November 1916 spent several weeks with Russian-Armenian volunteers in the Lake Van area, observed the killing of Kurdish villagers. This happened, he noted, because the Armenian volunteers saw “absolutely no difference between combatants and non-combatants.”M. Philips Price, War and Revolution in Asiatic Russia (New York, 1918), p. 141


And A British political officer, Major E.W.C. Noel, reported:

As a result of these months touring through the area occupied and devastated by the Russian Army and the Christian army accompanying them, during the spring and summer of 1916, I have no hesitation in saying that the the Turks would be able to make out as good a case against their enemies as that presented against the Turks. According to the almost universal testimony of the local inhabitants and eyewitnesses, Russians acting on the instigation and advice of Armenians who accompanied them murdered and butchered indiscriminately any Muslim member of the civil population who fell into their hands. A traveler through the Rowanduz and Nell districts would find widespread wholesale evidence of outrageous crimes are committed by Christians on Muslims The destruction was enormous and anything more thorough and complete would be difficult to imagine.Sam Weems, "Armenia — Secrets of a 'Christian' Terrorist State," 2002, pg. 36; footnote: Borian II, pg. 82

Mark Bristol, recorded in his War Diary, August 14, 1922 (U.S. 867.000/1540):

"I know from reports of my own officers who served with [Armenian] General Dro that defenseless villages were bombarded and then occupied, and any inhabitants that had not run away were brutally killed, the village pillaged, and all the livestock confiscated, and then the village burned. This was carried out as a regular systematic getting-rid-of the Muslims."



Nothing factual only garbage. How do you explain the existence of Jews, Albanians, Bosnians, Pomaks, Laz, Circassians, etc ? It was “the Armenians’ unflagging devotion to cause of Allies”, in the words of Boghos Nubar, the Armenian leader to Paris Conference, perhaps explains it pretty much better. What the Armenians had to undergone was pretty terrible and sad and I am sorry it ever happened, But in no way you are in a position to attempt teaching/distorting what has happened in the stupid manner you do, when you conveniently ignore or turn a blind eye to others like these :


At least one Greek song suggested that the Greek rebels intended to drive out or even kill the Turks of the Morea: “The Turk shall live no longer, neither in the Morea, nor in the whole earth.” This was not mere exaggeration: as in later cases of ethnic cleansing, this was war against entire civilian populations. Describing a war against all Turks, Kolokotrones, one of the leading Klephts and rebels sent instructions “to attack the Turkish inhabitants simultaneously, storming them in their different fortresses.”

Benjamin Lieberman. Terrible Fate Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe, 2006:[ Bag and Baggage Ethnic Cleansing Begins] page 8


Patriotic cry of the revolution proclaimed by the Greek Archbishop Germanos was “ Peace to Christians! respect to Consuls! Death to Turks!”

Thomas Gordon, History of Greek Revolution, page 149


For 3 days miserable Turkish inhabitants were given over to the lust and cruelty of a mob of savages. Neither Sex nor age was spared. Women and children were tortured before being put to death. So great was the slaughter that [guerilla leader] Kolokotrones himself says that, when he entered the town, from the gate of the citadel his horse’s hoofs never touched the ground. His path of triumph was carpeted with corpses.
W. Allison Philips, The War of Greek Independence. Page 60-61.





No, it doesn’t, it is just one of the many stupid claims that you are in the habbit of making. It is a legal term and according to article 6 UN convention, only the authorized/competent tribunals can decide what constitutes genocide or not and not parliaments. Anyone but anyone who made an elementary reading about the matter would know this. But there is really no point in my bothering to instruct you until you have at least flipped through an encyclopedia. Legal aspect aside European politicians have no moral justification either, they are selective and biased. French parliament thinks French colonization was good for those colonized ,whereas Algerian president claims their nation to be a victim of Genocide. The Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 resulted in the death 250-300 thousand muslims and more than 500 000 muslims became permanent refugees into Anatolia, far from showing any sympathy they have celebrated its centennial in 1978, ( see K.H. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics, University of Wisconsin Press, chapter related to Bulgaria)

In the Thirties roughly half the urban population of Turkey was made up of refugees and their descendants, and these can hardly be expected to take kindly to the European Parliament’s resolving that one of these ethnic cleansings,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...808535,00.html
Norman Stone, former professor of History at Oxford University, professor of History at Koc University, Istanbul

And France is not a recent one my ignorant friend, it is one of the earliest.

Really ? You are a fool if you believe in what you say.

“... the fanatic Greeks are gradually approaching to ethnic genocide ...”
Washington Post 17 - 02 - 1964

Archbishop Makarios, robed and bearded cleric who serves as President of Cyprus, has Byzantine talent for equitation .... His government deliberately provoked the clashes and is bent upon the extermination of Turkish population ...
Robert H. Estabrooh Washington Post
16 - 2 - 1964
“We went tonight into the sealed-off Turkish quarter of Nicosia in which 200 to 300 people had been slaughtered in the last five days. We are the first western reporters there and we have seen sights too frightful to be described in print and horrors so extreme that people seemed stunned beyond tears and reduced to a hysterical and mirthless giggle that is more terrible than tears ....”
Rene Maccoll - Daniel Mc Geachie Daily Express 28 December 1963

in a night of terror 350 villagers - men, women and children - vanished.They were all Turks. Today I was one of two British correspondents to drive to the village to investigate the mystery.
Peter Moorehead reporting from the village Skylloura
Daily Herald 1 January 1964

So my humbe advice to you is to have a grasp of what you are dealing with before rushing absurd conclusions and making your mockery.
Rofl, keep thinking simpleton, that nation sent your country aid when Greece was starving in 1940s. And saved more than a hundred thousand Jews during WW2.
http://hnn.us/articles/29114.html

Where in Macedonia( FYROM if you like), Kosova, Bulgaria etc. did they ever advocated or asked for such a thing? it is clearly your fascistic view of minorities that tend you to resort such fantastic and ridiculous excuses.


And maybe it is the other way around, they have learned some lessons from others such as Greeks, as even the advocates of Armenian genocide started to admit :
Likewise, as they gained their independence from the Ottomans and expanded the borders of their new states, the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and Montenegrins largely killed or expelled their Muslim populations. The Muslim refugees from these lands poured into the Ottoman Empire, bringing with them tales of horror that catalysed anti-Christian feeling among the Ottoman Muslims. (…)
The Armenian Genocide is sometimes wrongly referred to as ‘the first European genocide of the twentieth century’. Yet in the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, the Christian states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro partitioned the Ottoman territories in Europe and slaughtered or expelled much of the Muslim population in the process. As the journalist Leon Trotsky, who reported on the