Word: cypriotes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Flowers were in bloom on the crumbling towers of St. Hilarion, and hawks turned soundlessly high above Kyrenia. Now and then, rifle fire beat against the spring stillness, for a band of well-entrenched Turkish Cypriot irregulars still held Kyrenia Pass against the determined onslaughts of their Greek countrymen. All across Cyprus last week, the 7,000 "peacemakers" of the United Nations wagged their blue berets in impotence and pleaded a simple cause: cool off. But no one on Cyprus would or could listen. The islanders were caught up in a Mediterranean frenzy of nationalism, the product of four centuries...
Janissaries of Sultan Selim II wrested control of the island from Venetian merchant princes in 1571, and quickly demonstrated to the Cypriots the basic style of Ottoman administration. The defender of the Cypriot city of Famagusta, one Marcantonio Bragadino, had held off the Turkish troops for nearly a year, and when Famagusta finally fell, the Turks slowly and publicly flayed him alive. Bragadino's straw-stuffed skin was paraded through the city, and the lesson was not lost on the Cypriots...
Earlier conquerors had exiled the Greek Orthodox archbishops, who served as religious and political leaders to the Cypriots. But the Turks, confident in the strength of their 30,000-man garrison, unwisely permitted these ethnarchs to return. When the mainland Greeks rose against the Ottoman Empire in 1821, Cypriot Archbishop Kyprianos aided them-and was beheaded for his collusion along with hundreds of his followers. Greece won independence in 1829, but Cyprus remained under the hated Turkish rule. The desire for enosis, or union with Greece, had been kindled, only to be brutally frustrated...
Enter the British. In 1878, Britain took Cyprus in "trust" from the declining Ottoman Empire and disregarded Cypriot demands for union with Greece on the grounds that the Sultan was still the suzerain. But after Turkey sided with the Central Powers at the start of World War I, Britain annexed the island outright. Under the British, a state of wary but peaceful coexistence developed between Turkish and Greek Cypriot. Greek landowners in the craggy Troodos Mountains leased their pastures to Turkish shepherds; Turkish shopkeepers bought oranges and carobs from Greek farmers. In the village taverna, Turk and Greek...
Last November, with the Greek government momentarily involved in a leadership crisis, President Makarios decided the time was ripe to "rebalance" the constitution. He submitted a 13-point amendment that effectively stripped the Turkish Cypriots of their safeguards. In a flash, Cyprus was up in arms. The Turkish Cypriots, backed by Ankara with its threats of invasion, cry for taksim-partition-or at least some form of cantonal federation. Greek Cypriot extremists, reviving the threat of enosis with Athens, have seriously suggested that all Turks be forcibly removed from the island and packed off to Turkey. Either solution appears unworkable...