Cyprus-Forum.com

[GreekIslandGirl]

...You see yourself as a Greek living in Cyprus made up of 100 'things'. I say as a Greek Cypriot you are more than 100 things - you are Greek plus , made up of 140 things not just the 100 that you want to limit yourself too. Look up what the word synergy means.

I think it's you who doesn't understand synergy.

4 years ago ...

I want both to survive as I believe they are synergistic. The whole (Hellenic world) is greater than the sum of its parts.

6 years ago ...

... They're all pieces of our Hellenic heritage, marbles or Cyprus. Symbols of how they want to tear us apart and possess us, bit by bit, whilst refusing to give us autonomy or allow us to become whole and one again (not as Enosis, just brothers) because therein lies our synergistic strength.

I may not be giving anything away ... you do not seem to understand the Synergistic effect of our alliance!

7 years ago ...

Acknowledgement of Hellenic ancestry does not lead to the exclusion of Loyalty to Cyprus, but instead to a compounded synergistic Loyalty level .... which you cannot match with your partial Loyalty to Cyprus by taking the Turkish stance, of denying Hellenic indigeny in Cyprus.

[Sotos]

If our identity is made by 100 things and yours by 100 things and then 20 of those things are the same and the 80 different, then the "Cypriot identity" as you understand it would be just those 20 things. Language, religion, culture, history etc would, for the most part, NOT be part of such lower common denominator identity, because they are not common between us. It is one thing if some elements of your culture, language etc has entered ours (and vice versa), it is one thing to respect each others identities, and quite another thing to occupy our land and blackmail us to give up our identity (among many other things). If you want peace you have to finally ACCEPT our identity instead of trying to tell us what our identity should be!

Your maths is the maths of division. You see yourself as a Greek living in Cyprus made up of 100 'things'. I say as a Greek Cypriot you are more than 100 things - you are Greek plus , made up of 140 things not just the 100 that you want to limit yourself too. Look up what the word synergy means. Look at language. Of my fathers generation I would estimate that 70% of my family of that age spoke Greek as well as Turkish. Turkish plus. Take religion. Of my fathers generation they have an understanding and insight of the Greek Orthodox religion vastly greater than those living in Turkey did or do. Turkish plus. Or the other way round Greeks where a much larger number of them also speak Turkish than Greeks any where else - Greek plus.

I am not telling you what your identity should be. I am explaining that in my view and to my mind when you CHOSE to want to 'just' be Greek, when you CHOSE to want to be Cypriot minus, when you could chose to be 'full' Cypriot (Greek plus, Turkish plus, Armenian plus , Latin plus) you actually diminish yourself, diminish Cyprus as a whole and diminish the chances of making a better Cyprus where it truly does not matter if you are GC or TC or any other kind of Cypriot compared to how much it matters to just simply be Cypriot.

Those things happen naturally when different cultures interact... it happened between Greeks and Turks elsewhere also... not just in Cyprus. If you let people to coexist those things will happen again. Those are not issues of a policy that can be imposed on the people... if you try to impose anything like that it will backfire. I speak English and my way of life is quite "Americanized"... I will soon go watch some sitcom on Netflix. But I can't understand French even though I was taught French in school for several years because of some policy. Many TCs of your fathers generation spoke Greek because doing so was beneficial to them in the same way that it is beneficial to us today to learn English and because they were exposed to the Greek culture... they didn't speak Greek because some policy imposed this on them or because they wanted to be "Turkish plus". I don't want to be "just Greek" (whatever that means)... but your arguments until now were that we have to be "just Cypriot" and somehow we have to get rid of everything in our identity that is beyond that lower common denominator of commonality with you!

[erolz66]

... but your arguments until now were that we have to be "just Cypriot" and somehow we have to get rid of everything in our identity that is beyond that lower common denominator of commonality with you!

No that is your misinterpretation of my arguments. I have not argued that we should be 'just Cypriot' - giving up our Greekness or Turkishness in order to replace it with Cypriotness that only contains the things we are not different on and renounce everything else where we are different. I have said I would support such an approach when it has been advocated by the likes of GR but my argument has always been that we can choose to place being Cypriot ahead of and above choosing to be Greek or Turkish. You do not have to give up or renounce any part of your Greekness to chose to do that. You just have to consider that whilst being Greek may be cool, being Cypriot is even cooler still because it has all of the Greek part and more besides.

I think the reason you argue so vociferously against the suggestion that, if we want a unitary Cyprus then choosing to place our common Cypriotness ahead of and before and above our differences as GC or TC is the right way to go about achieving this goal, is in fact just all about blame. You prefer the narrative that the state Cyprus is in today is all the fault solely of TC. Thus you have to argue that for us to create a different future, a better one, only TC have to change their behaviours, their attitudes , their beliefs from those that got us to the state we are in today. Well such is not, unsurprisingly, a view I share. In my view Cyprus is in the mess it is today because of the actions of Cypriots, both GC and TC. If we want a different future, a better one than that which we as Cypriots achieved since the end of British rule then we as Cypriots need to do things differently going forward to how we did them in the past. Both GC and TC alike.

[Sotos]

No that is your misinterpretation of my arguments. I have not argued that we should be 'just Cypriot' - giving up our Greekness or Turkishness in order to replace it with Cypriotness that only contains the things we are not different on and renounce everything else where we are different. I have said I would support such an approach when it has been advocated by the likes of GR but my argument has always been that we can choose to place being Cypriot ahead of and above choosing to be Greek or Turkish. You do not have to give up or renounce any part of your Greekness to chose to do that. You just have to consider that whilst being Greek may be cool, being Cypriot is even cooler still because it has all of the Greek part and more besides.

Being Cypriot is of course ahead and above being Greek... that is obvious. I clearly care more about Cyprus than I care about Athens or Crete or Salonica... But I also care more about Limassol than I care about Nicosia... and I care more about myself and my family than I care about my neighbor and his family. Somehow you assume that because we fought for enosis that this means that we care more for Athens than we care for our own town or village or island. That is absurd! For the majority of Cypriots of THAT TIME enosis just seemed the best way to serve their own interests, their own well being, their own security ... I can ensure you that it was a purely selfish choice. You can argue that those people made the wrong choice but you can't say that they placed Greece above Cyprus... that is simply not true at all.

I think the reason you argue so vociferously against the suggestion that, if we want a unitary Cyprus then choosing to place our common Cypriotness ahead of and before and above our differences as GC or TC is the right way to go about achieving this goal, is in fact just all about blame. You prefer the narrative that the state Cyprus is in today is all the fault solely of TC. Thus you have to argue that for us to create a different future, a better one, only TC have to change their behaviours, their attitudes , their beliefs from those that got us to the state we are in today. Well such is not, unsurprisingly, a view I share. In my view Cyprus is in the mess it is today because of the actions of Cypriots, both GC and TC. If we want a different future, a better one than that which we as Cypriots achieved since the end of British rule then we as Cypriots need to do things differently going forward to how we did them in the past. Both GC and TC alike.

I would argue that the opposite is true: That you keep bringing this up even though the enosis cause is dead and buried for years now just because you want to appropriate blame. And the state we are in today is not the fault solely of TC. The TCs are a small minority and on their own they wouldn't be able to cause any huge problems even if they wanted to. The main blame lies with UK and Turkey who had and continue to have strategic interests in Cyprus and want to impose their terms on Cyprus against the will of the majority of our population. The TCs, being a minority with major religious, linguistic and cultural differences were easily exploited to serve the aims of UK and Turkey... and as I argued this would have happened anyways.

[Sotos]

And, to add, the TCs also did what they did for purely selfish reasons and not because they are Turks or because they put Turkey above themselves. The saw that being a Muslim minority in a predominantly Christian country (Greece or Cyprus would't matter) could be a disadvantage to them... especially given our history, on top of that the UK and Turkey promised to them several privileges or even their own separate state... and the TCs did what they believed suited them best.