Turkish Cypriot appetite for united island dwindles

No1Doyen


Joined: 04/07/2008
Posts: 16617

Message Posted:
28/01/2010 16:52

Mustafa Iusufoglu was only a small child when Turkish troops overran his village a few miles outside Nicosia in the summer of 1974. But he remembers clearly the elation with which his father and the local Turkish Cypriot community greeted their arrival after years of often bloody, island-wide confrontation with the Greek Cypriot majority.

Cyprus has been divided ever since by a UN-monitored ceasefire line ¬running east to west. But that's for the best, Iusufoglu said. "Before 1974 it was no good. In the village we had two ¬quarters, one for them, one for us. There was one church and one mosque. There were two separate schools. There was no co-operation, no visiting. There were terrible feuds. It's better now.

"The Greeks don't like us and we don't like them. We need to have separate states, though of course it would be good to have a better atmosphere," he said.

No1Doyen


Joined: 04/07/2008
Posts: 16617

Message Posted:
28/01/2010 16:52

With the current nationalist prime minister, Dervis Eroglu, tipped to replace the TRNC's pro-reunification president, Mehmet Talat, in elections in April, separatist momentum seems likely to grow. Only an unexpected breakthrough in the latest round of talks, due to concludetomorrow, would significantly change the current dynamic, said Ahmet Sozen of the Cyprus Policy Centre in Famagusta.

"Turkey will push the TRNC to stay at the negotiating table" for fear of damaging its bid to join the EU, Sozen said. "But if the Turkish Cypriots are forced to quit, there are other scenarios. One is growing normalisation of relations with other countries, like Taiwan has done. Some countries will start recognising the TRNC, Muslim countries like Syria and Qatar”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/26/turkish-cypriot-separatism-greece-un