Oracle wrote:If the TMT were pressuring the TCs to leave for enclaves (proof of which has been posted many times by others) ... would burning down their villages not be part of this coercion?
They did conduct
a few false flag operations
before the restart of conflict in 1963 (and apparently one after it, bombing the Turkish Cypriot Communal Chamber in 1964), but it really is absurd to talk as if the 1963-1964 crisis was the Turkish Cypriots attacking themselves and burning themselves out of their homes. Jack Goodwin (1978: 166) said that Ayios Epiphanios-Soleas was Rauf Denktash's family's village, and it was destroyed and a
church and Greek Cypriot National Guard post built on top of it. If it were a false flag operation, it would be an amazing one, creating a military base for his enemy on top of his family's home. If it were a TMT operation to coerce the residents, it would have been Denktash holding a gun to his own head.
kafenes wrote:These villages mentioned in the list are villages which had TC residents who moved out. If a few houses in a couple of these villages were bulldozed, then it was for safety purposes.
And when whole villages were bulldozed, like Agios Epiphanios-Soleas? Still safety?
Lemba was never burned down.
According to Patrick (1976: 90n16), '[b]y 2 January [1964], this Turk-Cypriot village was deserted, looted and burned'. (And I've talked to others who confirm that.)
Pano Arodhes was a mixed village (with less then 10% TCs) and Kato Arodhes was TC with a few GCs. I have just returned from there this morning. Absolutely no TC house was burnt or bulldozed at any time. Until 1974 both communities lived together in harmony, doing business together, attending each others wedding parties etc. So much for Patrick's credibility.
Again, Patrick didn't say that Arodes was burned. He said that it was partially or completely abandoned in 1963-1964, and said that many of the villages in the list were burned. So it doesn't harm his credibility at all, because he never made that claim in the first place.
Tim Drayton wrote:PS - I accept that individual houses and whole quarters of villages were burned down or destroyed in the course of the 1963-1964 disputes, but I have still to hear anybody back up the claim of whole villages being burned or bulldozed by quoting a name.
Agios Epiphanios-Soleas,
Pano Koutraphas... There are others. (Plus, why do you accept whole neighbourhoods were destroyed but then decide that the destruction of whole villages is suddenly somehow unbelievable?)
Nikitas wrote:Koutrafas is a place I know. It is up the road from Astromeritis and I walked about the place extensively in 1977 to take pictures of Cyprus adobe construction and also because some of the houses were built by apprentices to my grandfather using molds he gave them.
There were no demolished houses. No signs of destruction. The place was a dirt poor hamlet and the adobe houses were all in bad condition and in a state of neglect, even though people lived in them at the time. After talking with some people there it was evident that they were all in the process of looking for better housing nearer Astromeritis or anywhere near the main tarmac road.
So in the case of Koutrafas at least the assertion that it was bulldozed etc seems to be inaccurate.
Well, you can follow the link and decide for yourself. As I'm sure you know, there are still families, in houses, in Kato Koutraphas, and there are buildings in all states. In Pano Koutraphas, there isn't anything (except for the fountain). There aren't even piles of mud where the homes "decayed". You can see the outlines of the homes in their
stone foundations. This is all that's left of
Kutrafa Mosque.
Tim Drayton wrote:Well, I have located Yerovasa (Lemesos) on Google Earth. It is true that nothing remains of this village. However, one has to ask what actually happened to it. Apparently at the time of the 1960 census, it had 23 Greek Cypriot and 83 Turkish Cypriot inhabitants.
http://www.peace-cyprus.org/VillagersMe ... gepop.html It seems that the Greek Cypriots left the village during the ethnic conflict. This was a tiny village in a deserted location on the Troodos foothills. Is it not possible that everybody left for a better life elsewhere? Or perhaps the houses were in a poor state of repair when the inhabitants left in 1974 and have gradually collapsed. This is such an out of the way place set on a winding dirt track that leads from nowhere to nowhere. It beggars belief that anybody would deliberatley come out here and waste their energy destroying the village. For what purpose?
For the same reason they did it elsewhere.
Tim Drayton wrote:Were any whole villages ever destroyed?
See the examples above.
Tim Drayton wrote:Ooops. Been back to Google earth and have found the ruined houses there, too.
Hasan Erçakıca speaks of this as being a destroyed village, implying that this was a deliberate act. Surely this is just an abandoned village gradually falling apart from disrepair?
I read one piece by
Ercakica, he talks about places pillaged/plundered (talan edildi), homes' stones and doors torn down (evlerin taslarini ve kapilarini soktu), and yok edilen (Kibrisli) Turk koyleri, which could mean "destroyed Turkish (Cypriot) villages", but could also mean "cleared out" or "emptied" ones.
But none of the official sources of either side are very clear with their words. Sometimes the Greek Cypriot administration talks about churches "destroyed" or "destroyed inside", in ways that would look the same as the villages you think are "decayed". I suspect he was lazy, just using the same word for everything.
And Goodwin (1978: 883) recorded that Yerovasa 'was mainly abandoned in the mid-1960's [sic] because of m[u]d-slides'. (Presumably the rest were driven out by the conflict.) So yes, a lot of the damage to Yerovasa that you can see now was probably natural. Still, it can be difficult to identify what was destroyed deliberately and what decayed naturally - especially after years of natural decay, which could hide deliberate destruction. (For example, Pano Koutraphas is now so overgrown that it looks natural - it doesn't even look like it
was a village that later
decayed - but it was
destroyed.)
