Content Cow

Welcome Guest

Give Your Articles

Use Our Articles

Information

Categories

39 users online.

Navigation: Home » Formatnewsletter » Format Article for Newsletter

Newsletter Article

Here is A Brief History of the Turkish and Greek Partition of Cyprus formatted for a newsletter with 65 characters per line.

Return to A Brief History of the Turkish and Greek Partition of Cyprus

A Brief History of the Turkish and Greek Partition of Cyprus

by Chris_Woolfrey

It was announced this week that genuinely committed talks on the
reunification of Cyprus would come into effect in September of
this year.

Demetris Christofias, the Greek Cypriot president, met with the
Turkish Cypriot president Mehmet Ali Talat on the 28th of August,
and both are reportedly keen to discuss a potential reunion of
the island. It is the fourth time Talat and Christofias have met
to discuss union issues since the latter came to power, signaling
a potentially serious reconstitution of what it will mean for
citizens on the island to call themselves Cypriot.

With discussions now proposed, it is important to remember that
the ‘Cyprus Dispute’ is a substantial historical division.
Certainly, The Republic of Cyprus now claims possession and
influence over 97% of the island’s land - split into Turkish
Cyprus and Greek Cyprus - and Britain maintains control over the
remaining portion, but this was the outcome of numerous
conflicts.

Long before the division, though, and indeed long before the U.K
held any claims, Cyprus had been under the colonial possession of
the Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey was the centre. At that time
it was a united island, though it had a strong ethnic mix; the
Ottoman Muslims cohabited with the Christian Greeks.

It was only during the late nineteenth century that Turkey
suffered any challenge to its domination in Cyprus, and this is
generally attributed to the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire,
which saw many of Europe’s Great Powers competing for the
empire’s border territories. The most famous of these conflicts,
the Crimean War, saw the Ottoman Empire supported by an alliance
of Great Britain, France and Sardinia against the territorial
ambitions of Russia, who were at that time viewed by many
European diplomats and heads of state as the most dangerous
threat to the continent’s status quo.

But when it came to Cyprus, it was Great Britain who looked to
shift the balance of power on the Ottoman Empire’s borders,
though it was cloaked within a commitment from the U.K to once
again protect the balance of power against Russian expansion.
Administrative power over the island was given to Great Britain
in 1878.

After the Ottoman Empire allied with the defeated powers in
World War One, it was decided that Cyprus be annexed as part of
post-war negotiations. 11 years later, Cyprus became an official
colony of the British Empire.

Under the British Empire, and fueled with Woodrow Wilson’s
post-war implementation of self determinism, Greek Cypriots
established the ‘National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters’ in
1955. Turkish Cypriots countered with the ‘Turkish Resistance
Organisation’, and both groups sort for independence on their own
terms.

Independence was indeed granted in 1960, with both Greek
Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots maintaining constitutional rights,
and the island became ‘The Republic of Cyprus’.

From there, a number of flash points occurred. In the 1970s, a
Greek coup funded by the United states attempted to unite Cyprus
with Greece. turkey invaded Cyprus in order to ratify the
original constitution, and a civil war raged. Its consequence was
the partitioning of Cyprus into Turkish and Greek sections.

That is the position in which the island currently stands today.
If Christofias and Talat are to succeed in reunification talks,
they will have to be aware that they have the weight of history
on their shoulders.

Chris Woolfrey specializes in the <a
href="http://www.whiterocksbafra.com/page.php?pageID=46&slideID=4">history
and politics of Cyprus</a>, and writes for
http://www.whiterocksbafra.com

Syndicated by Content Cow - www.contentcow.biz

	Quick Search:
Home \| Submit an Article \| Advanced Search \| Grab an RSS Feed