The Cyprus problem started only when Turkey was invited to help solve it !

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Aug 2, 2010 at 15:19

Lazman wrote :

> Cyprus problem goes back to 1963 and not 1974<

As far as Cyprus itself is concerned it goes back to a few millenia of Hellenism there and more recently to the offers made voluntarily by Britain in 1915 and 1940 to give the island to Greece in exchange for participating in war on Bulgaria/Turkey and Germany/Italy respectively.

As far as Turkey is concerned it renounced any claims to Cyprus in virtue of Article 16 of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 . It was only when it became clear that Greece would move the Cyprus issue [and the forgotten British promises] to the UN forum where the British would be forced to make a referendum and lose Cyprus for ever that Britain unilaterally invited Turkey to have a say in the Cyprus problem. Thus by egging Turkey against Greece Britain made any international recommendations and solutions ineffective. But as one shrewd observer noted : "Before 1952 the Cyrpus problem didn't exist for Turkey at all ." ( It's a quote from the Turkish newspaper "Kitle" 13.08.1974 I found in a book "Turkish Foreign Policy after WWII" by B.M. Potskhverya , Moscow 1976, p. 248).

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