Word: cypriotes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Captain Mahmud," replied the control tower, "here is the Foreign Minister of Cyprus. I beg you in the name of the Cypriot government and people, and in the name of humanity, release all children, women and sick people on board. Please." Then came another voice from the tower: "I am the representative of the Palestinian Liberation Movement in Cyprus. Do you hear me, Captain Mahmud?" Mahmud shouted back: "I do not care who you are! Whoever you are, I do not want to talk...
Makarios had been President for 17 years, the only elected President that the sun-drenched island had ever had, and so his unexpected death created yet another lurching crisis. No one else had the loyalty and affection of the 515,000 Greek Cypriots who comprise four-fifths of the population. No one else had the political power to accept compromise with the Cypriot Turks who make up the remainder of the population and who have held some 40% of the island territory since a massive Turkish invasion of Cyprus was made in their behalf...
With some foreign statesmen, Makarios could be cold and obstinate. With his own people, however, he was warm and effusive. Although he suffered a mild heart attack earlier this year, Cypriots were unprepared for his death. The vigorous archbishop had never really designated a successor. The mourning, as a result, was electric as Greeks filed past the bier, where he lay in splendid gold crown and mantle. The Greek Cypriot government declared a 40-day mourning period...
While the Turks marshaled their own forces, the Greeks fell to fighting among themselves. In preindependence days, Makarios battled the British with the legendary Colonel George Grivas, whose EOKA (for National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) provided the archbishop's guerrilla legions. After independence, Grivas was banished to Athens as part of the settlement. He later returned secretly to oppose Makarios with a new EOKA-B. After the 1967 coup of the colonels in Greece itself, assassination attempts and other plots against the archbishop multiplied. In 1974 the Athens junta mounted a coup that sent Makarios into hasty exile once...
Whoever inherits Makarios' job will be no new Dark Priest. But his problems will be enough to tax a saint. Although the Greek Cypriot community has recovered economically from the 1974 Turkish invasion, the ethnic division of the island is deadlocked. And the broader Greco-Turkish split that has wounded NATO shows no sign of healing. The course ahead for the next President is one that Makarios bequeathed him, and that will surely be a course of serpentine prospects...