Word: denktash
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...audience, as Turkish Cypriot Leader Rauf Denktash shrewdly surmised, was far larger than the modest throng that gathered in Nicosia last week to cheer his proclamation of a new Turkish Cypriot republic on the divided Mediterranean island. It was a ringing declaration, but as soon as it was made public, Turkish Cypriot officials added an odd qualifier. The decision, they said, was not irreversible: what Denktash really had in mind was to call the world's attention to Turkish Cypriot demands, frustrated so far, for a federated Cyprus. Under the Denktash formula, equal political weight would be given...
Greek Cypriots across the "green line" that separates the two communities heard Denktash's lofty words, but were not impressed by the qualifier. An infuriated President Spyros Kyprianou demanded that the action "be condemned by everybody throughout the world." In Athens, the government of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou was equally outraged at what it perceived to be another threat to Cyprus' Greeks. In Ankara, where a caretaker government is running the country until the installation of newly elected Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, officials who normally support Denktash insisted that they were as stunned as everyone else...
...were they the only ones troubled by the most serious crisis the island has faced since the 1974 invasion by Turkish troops. Because Denktash's action exacerbated already crackling tensions between Greece and Turkey, two NATO allies, it threatened further disruption on the alliance's southern flank at the very moment that NATO faces the volatile issue of deploying U.S. nuclear missiles in Western Europe. Groused the left-leaning Paris daily Libération: "The storm surrounding the Euromissiles wasn't enough. Cyprus had to be thrown in as well...