Cyprus :: History

CyprusA TIME TO regain Experience cautions us that irreparable damage could be done by those who somehow seem to regard Cyprus as a dazzling mental challenge and fail to put human faces behind the issues. Of one social function we can be sure They will not be close to when their ill-conceived paper glory is blown away in the beset that is bound to follow. It has been 35 years since the stationing on the island of a UN peace-keeping force that could preserve neither a secret invasion by Greece nor the continuation of the inviolate range of faits accomplis created by force over the next 11 years. KORKMAZ HAKTANIR launch Member of the Cyprus Foundation It was September, still warm in day time, but a welcome cool descended on the central plain by nightfall. The window panes had cracks in them and there were bullet holes on the walls. The house was on what apply to be the northern edge of the Turkish quarter. No one had lived on the second floor since it had come under gunfire f rom a tall-stalked and ugly building down the s channelizet occupied by classic Cypriots. I was the first tenant afterwards many years. When I began, in this way, to live in Northern Cyprus more than twenty years ago, my dwell was an elderly lady who had not seen the sea for eight years after 1963. In the afternoon, she sat on the porch in the shade of the lemon tree in her garden and watched over her grandchildren. Nalan hanm and her family had survived those traumatic years in caves, in tents and in enclaves into which Turkish Cypriots had been squeezed, leaving behind loved ones, homes and property, and a peaceful life. She always felt living on an island without a coup doeil of the Mediterranean around her had been the worst punishment of all. This experience alone seemed to interpret in her mind the unforgotten fears, abuse, desperation and isolation of those years. She recalled how she had ventured to the northern shore and stared at the sea for the first time after so ma ny years, looking at the cool breeze on her face. The policy of doing away with Turkish Cypriots was by that time being pursued through severe economic sanctions, this time to squeeze them out of the island. She was then, like the rest of her people, still a hostage in her own homeland.