The Greek Cypriot-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) connection ex-ists not only on a simple level and is not just a tiny connection to a Cypriot passport numbered C015198, valid 1995-2005 and issued to Kurdish terrorist leader Abdullah Öcalan under the fake name Lazaros Mavros. The latter actually is the founder of the Kurdish Solidarity Committee (KSC) in Cyprus.
When Apo — the Kurdish terrorist leader Öcalan — was captured by the Turkish counterterrorism team in Nairobi on Feb. 15, 1999 around 8:00 p.m., he was carrying a Greek Cypriot passport officially issued by the Immigration Office of the Ministry of Interior of the Greek Cypriot administration.
In Nairobi, he was accommodated in the residence of the Greek Embassy and was looked after by Maj. Savvas...
President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) Mehmet Ali Talat met with UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon in New York on Oct. 18, 2007, on an official invitation. For the first time ever, Mr. Talat was received on very high level protocol and security mea-surements with escorts and other provisions provided only to presi-dents and prime ministers in the US. The meeting lasted for 40 mi-nutes, 20 minutes longer than that held with Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopulos late last month on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Papadopulos tried to play a dirty Byzantine game shortly before the arrival of Mr. Talat to New York. He announced that he had pre-sented proposals and sent a letter to the UN Secretary General only one day before the meeting. His hopes were to...
The Greek Cypriot administration has tried all possible means to stop ferries sailing from the port of Famagusta in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) to Lattakia of Syria and is still trying. All possible means includes everything from political oppression to blackmail, from political misdirection to bribery, inclusive of the influ-ence of the Orthodox ecclesiastics as well. They have tried everything possible to reach their goal.
I often wonder about those who say the Cyprus problem started after the Turkish intervention in 1974. This depiction is just a fairy tale and is often used to mislead people with minimal knowledge of the issue. It actually started in 1963 and still goes on. I am also perplexed by those who say there are no embargoes on the Turkish Cypriots. F...
Turkish people are quite sensitive and touchy about certain sig-nificant concepts, like military and militarism, Islam and Islamic prac-tices, religious laws, laicism, the Armenian issue and Turks killed by Armenians during World War I, family relations, martyrs and national dignity.
During the past few days, incidents have hit a number of these nerves as if to indicate planning, rather than mere coincidence. Terror-ists from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ambushed Turkish troops in the Gabar Mountains and ruthlessly executed 15 wounded soldiers at point blank range. This attack engulfed the Turkish people in deep sorrow, as other attacks in the past have done. It has prompted the government to send a decree to the Turkish Parliament, perhaps as early as next week, right afte...
After decades of passivity, Turkey has suddenly found itself standing right at the center of the crossroads of Eurasia and had sig-nificantly restructured its foreign policy to become an important dip-lomatic actor in the Middle East. Recently there has been a debate both inside and outside Turkey as to whether its Eurasia policy is changing and if so, in what direction. In particular, the importance of the Middle Eastern direction has been reviewed and is now one of its priorities. The Foreign Ministry was instructed to improve relations with the Arab states and Iran, while at the same time conserving allied relations with Israel on quite a cool level.
The government of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) that came to power in 2002 restructured the hierarchy of the basic ...
