Cyprus gained her sovereign independence by virtue of a consti-tution and three treaties — the Treaty of Guarantee, the Treaty of Al-liance and the Treaty of Establishment, all of which came into force on the same day — Aug. 16, 1960.
They were interrelated so that, for example, the 48 “basic articles” of the Constitution were incorporated into the Treaty of Guarantee while the two Treaties of Guarantee and Alliance were in turn men-tioned to “have constitutional force” in Article 181 of the constitution.
The third treaty, the Treaty of Establishment, makes it clear that the boundaries of the Republic of Cyprus do not coincide with those of the island, in that Britain retains absolute sovereignty over two en-claves, totaling 99 square miles which contain the...
The island of Cyprus has been attempting to resolve its internal and external political associations for the past 52 years.
The roots of the Cyprus problem can be traced back to the 1950s, when Greek Cypriot and Greek aspirations to achieve enosis (the island’s union with Greece) took the form of a terrorist campaign against Turkish Cypriots as well as British colonial rule. Despite at-tempts by Greece to exploit the issue in the UN, the UN General As-sembly has not upheld Greek demands designed to achieve annexation under the guise of self-determination, but urged negotiations among the parties concerned. So when Britain gave Cyprus independence in 1960, a series of sui generis agreements had to be reached, designed to compromise the conflicting interests of the Turkish and Greek ...
It is now exactly 1,327 days, or three years, seven months and 17 days, since the referendum on the Annan plan, held on April 24, 2004, and still there is no peace on the island nor a sustainable solution to the Cyprus issue due to the 75 percent majority of “No” votes from the Greek Cypriots.
Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos — irrespective of his assurances to EU officials of the “Yes” votes of Greek Cypriots to open up the gates for the annexation to the EU prior to the referendum — unexpectedly changed the direction of the vote by addressing Greek Cypriots on local TV stations a few days before the referendum, oppos-ing the Annan plan and urging Greek Cypriots to vote “No” on the refe-rendum while reinforcing this with genuine tears in his eyes.
Either UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself took the new initiative on the Cyprus issue into his own hands, or somebody dropped it there.
The developments that took place this week regarding the Cyprus issue were all quite unexpected. Ban’s report, the Babacan-Bakoyannis agreement and British Minister of State for Europe Jim Murphy’s statements all hint at the new policy of the world’s political giants on the Cyprus issue. If you happen to know the political alphabet and understand political language, then you can easily understand what is cooking in the kitchen of politics.
It seems that the giants of politics did not forget the opposition of the Greek Cypriots in 2004’s referendum or the “political lie” told by Tassos Papadopoulos, the president of t...
The contents of Mr. Tassos Papadopoulos’ speech to the UN Gen-eral Assembly on Dec. 18, 2005, and an interview published in the weekly French magazine L’Express dated May 4, 2006 clearly reveal the real target and vision of the Greek Cypriot leader.
Papadopoulos stated his vision for the future, the solution of the Cyprus problem through the absorption of Turkish Cypriots into a Greek Cypriot state, at the UN General Assembly. And in his interview in L’Express, he clearly defined his goal of establishing a unitary state run by the Greek majority: “We reject a state constituted of two distinct zones and two differing communities while the Greeks are 82 percent of the population. I cannot accept a system allowing a blockage to the validity and smooth running of ...
