Another War Flower Blossoms
Published April 29, 2003
We were at a small party Sunday for a friend who ran in the Cleveland Marathon (under 4 hours!). His wife is from Greek Cyprus - though she was largely silent during a long political conversation, when the topic of the border between divided Cyprus being opened last week came up, she very firmly stated that it happened because of our action in Iraq. "The Turks feel pressured by the success fo the war in Iraq and the fact that they didn't assist - this gesture addresses that."
Christopher Hitchens seems to agree:
- Along with the slow but now unstoppable movement among the Palestinians for a democratic "civil society" approach to their common problems and their long battle for statehood, this sudden development in Cyprus shows that there is indeed a "wind of change" blowing in the Middle East. Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot proconsul of the occupation, is a renowned hard-liner and chauvinist. It would have been unthinkable for him to have let so much oxygen into his airless dominion unless he felt serious pressure from below. And the recent isolation of Turkey itself, because of its crass decision to miss the "regime-change" train in Iraq, has only intensified
this process. Given any kind of a chance, the people are wiser and more internationalist than their leaders. I don't know how long this window will stay open in Cyprus but I do know that once it has been opened it will be impossible to shut it completely again. [Slate]
- Another War Flower Blossoms
- Published: April 29, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Politics
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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Comments on this articleComments
Being a Greek American,i totally disagree. Cyprus was an island of GREEK
TERRITORY. Cyprus as it is now was made that way by the AMERICAN government because they wanted to expand their military bases in the Middle east and Turkey was in a prime position for that.
I remember being in Washington at 8 years old with my family and thousands of other Greek Americans protesting this
ridiculous theft of a piece of a nation.
The worst part was that this was not the first time the United States acted in it's own interest which was against the interest of an ally. Cyprus should be retured to Greece because IT IS GREECE.
Given the intense nationalistic interests involved, accurate accounts of how the current situation in Cyprus came to be are hard to come by, but there's a good start here. There is, of course, a long history of Greco-Turkish enmity preceding the events in Cyprus -- dating back at least to WWI and atrocities committed against Greeks in Asia Minor by the Ottoman Empire -- which helps explain (though doesn't excuses) the fervor for enosis of the Greek nationalists and the actions they took in pursuit of it.
As for what's motivating Rauf Denktash (he's the president of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus) -- he has been under intense political pressure from both his Turkish Cypriot constituency and the Turkish government since December (well before the US' diplomatic debacle with Turkey) to move toward reconciliation, and his state has been under EU embargo since 1994. Ascribing the recent events on Cyprus to Iraq is therefore about as plausible as blaming Clinton's "atmosphere of permissiveness" for Enron.
Now, if this stuff goes anywhere... then we can talk about the Iraq war creating "a new atmosphere."
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aye, i still don't agree with messrs Bush and Blair, but it is undeniable the war in Iraq has made some large influences that can only be for the better (in the lnog run at least).