Cyprus-Forum.com

[Bananiot]

Do you think Papadopoulos has the stomach to enter into negotiations to find a solution based on the A plan? To me this is walking on clouds. Papadopoulos will not accept the plan because he has a different agenda on his mind. He was always for a solution that keeps the TC's a minority and now he thinks that membership in the EU will help him realise his vision. This man will never accept the TC's as an equal partner. He will never accept political equality for the two communities. The points you raise are very good but, alas, only as a theoretical exercise. Also, are you claiming that Anan plan no. 5 called for only 40 000 settlers to remain? If this is the case get ready for ... intense shelling.

[Alexandros Lordos]

It's not a theoretical exercise, the point of the survey is to build momentum towards a solution by showing that there could be common ground between majorities of GCs and TCs ... such results, if they arise ofcourse, will be presented to political leaders and may help to sway opinions in a more constructive direction ...

P.S. 40,000 was the official number of settlers to remain, plus dependants ... it is this plus that raises the number. I am proposing here 25,000 plus dependants.

[brother]

So are we looking at 65000 settlers remaining.

[Alexandros Lordos]

I don't know, to be honest, I am a bit confused about the settler issue and the Annan Plan ....

P.S. Everyone, if you can, please have a look at the 10th post of this thread, in page one, and let me have your comments ....

[brother]

O.K it looks sound but i think you will get a varied response, especially when it comes to the settlers issue.

[Alexandros Lordos]

Varied responses are helpful ... through them we will be able to discern different tendencies and groupings within the TC community.

[brother]

I think that you will find that majority tc will want settlers out, but your survey should give a better picture of the true nature of peoples desires.

[turkcyp]

Dear Alexandros,

Couple of things you have to keep in mind in order to make this thing more scientific. First of all, options should be given as inclusive as it can be. Of course perfectly all inclusive options that capture all scenario are not feasible but I think your options can be improved on.

For example if you have an option 1 - Totally Unacceptable, the opposite of it is not 5- Absolutely Essential, but “Totally Acceptable”. There is a huge difference in between. Something may be “Totally Acceptable” without being “Absolutely Essential”.

Furthermore, an option of “Totally Acceptable and/or Unacceptable” have got nothing to do with “2- A change for the worse and/or better” options. They imply different aspects of questions, and therefore should be asked in different questions. Every question you are asking should be designed to capture only one nature of that subject, if you try to capture more than one nature with one question, then essentially your responses will overlap with each option.

What I mean is this? Asking something is acceptable for you or not deals with the nature of the question about how far people are willing to give in? On the other hand asking is this an improvement over the previous plan, deals with the nature of the question about what kind of changes they want? For example some people may think that a question is “totally acceptable” and improvement while other may think that it is “totally acceptable” but it is not improvement but they can live with it. So which one this person should answer, “totally acceptable” or one of the two other options.

This two nature of the question can only be captured if you either ask two questions or if you ask conditional questions like “If this is acceptable, is it an improvement or not”….


Other than this statistical and logical criticism. I want to make the same criticism I have made earlier. None of these questions are capturing what we want as an improvement on the plan, but simply are asking if we would accept the changes made the plan to accommodate the GCs views.

I find this quite dangerous because it puts the Cyprus problem in the contexts of “losers and winners” rather than “winners and winners”. In other words, as a strategy it may not achieve a “Pareto Efficient” outcome.

I strongly advise you to make some preliminary survey in TC community and find out what they do not like about the Annan Plan and ask for changes on those issues viewed as an improvement from the TC point of view. Just because TCs liked the plan more than GCs does not mean that plan was perfect for TCs.

We, as TCs in this forum, can give you an initial idea of what we did not like about the Annan Plan, but I strongly believe that the opinion you will get at this forum would not reflect the true opinion of either GCs or TCs. To start with forum is simply too small, failing to provide a sufficient sample size. And furthermore, the forum is quite biased, towards favoring solution. This violated the basic two premises of sampling a) sufficient size b) unbiased representative of the population.

But anyway may be you can start with our views and continue to form a better sample. I mean this is not your fault at all. Because the TC side accepted the Annan plan, and because accepting the Annan plan usually seemed to be the correct thing to do in international arena, and in TC arena as well, nobody made a proper discussion in TC community about what kind of changes they would prefer on Annan Plan.

When you were doing your research on GCs, you had this advantage of head start, because before you people were already discussing and speculating why GCs did not like the plan, and what kind of changes they would ask for in the plan. This kind of discussion simply never took place in TC society and therefore is your main disadvantage and obstacle in performing this research.

[Alexandros Lordos]

turkcyp,

I agree with your statistical/logical criticism - it was nagging me also and you have helped me understand more clearly what the problem was.

As to what changes the TCs would like, I am aware of the problem (of not having paid enough attention to what TCs would like) ... that is why I need your help, as Turkish Cypriots, to tell me not just what you yourself would like to see improved, but also the opinion of other TCs that you know who held a more negative view of the UN Plan. This is what I did with the Greek Cypriots, even though I didn't agree with many of the demands put forward by different people, I was sufficiently aware of what was going on in my community to be able to list them.

So, my invitation to you and other TCs in the forum holds: What changes in the UN Plan do you, or other TCs that you know, wish for?

[turkcyp]

So, my invitation to you and other TCs in the forum holds: What changes in the UN Plan do you, or other TCs that you know, wish for?

This will take me a while, but I will write you what I think changes should be. It will take a while not because I have huge, huge changes demands, but I simply do not remember teh exact Annan Plan right now.

I remember thinking when I read it, "Ohh. This is bad. it should be like this" but I do not remember which ones were they? So I will go and read teh Annan Plan again and come up with my answer.

And I always consider myself as middle of the way in TC community when it comes to Cyprus problem. So you can look at my views adn think that %50 lies on my left and %50 lies on my right.