Where 18%=40% ? In Turkey !

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Aug 5, 2010 at 17:35

One detail worth adding is how the Turks arrived at their fanciful claim to 40% of the territory of Cyprus although they had just 18% backward poverty-driven illiterate Turkish population on the island.

After Turkey had grabbed 40% of Cyprus in mid-August 1974 , Turkey's Foreign Minister Turan Günes gave an interview to "Times" where he was asked about this :

" - What do you consider a fair share?

- That is negotiable. Callaghan (the then British Prime Minister , I.) came to me and said, "Do you really want 34% of Cyprus for 18% of the population?" I replied, "Well, we might even settle for 40%," but he did not appreciate the joke. I can assure you we will not occupy all of Cyprus and certainly not the British sovereign bases. I don't agree that 30% or 40% is all that unreasonable. After all, Turkish Cypriots are mostly farmers, and farmers need land. Our army will see to it that they get it."

Apparently, the Turkish definition of what is "reasonable" and "unreasonable" has little to do with our logic and common sense and mathematics. Probably, Günes meant also that if there had been Turkish nomads in Cyprus, 100% of the island should belong to Turkey as nomads need even more land than farmers, don't they ?

One additional remark . We often read about 37% or 40% of Turkish-occupied Cyprus. In fact both numbers are correct. The Turks have grabbed directly 37% of the territory which they made inaccessible along the so called 'Green Line' or rather no man's land which is 180 km long and occupies 3% of the island's territory. Even now after all liberalisation there it reminds of the old frontier between East Germany and West Germany with mines fields, , barbed wire, concrete walls, watchtowers, anti-tank ditches , machine gun positions etc. With 5-6 soldiers per 1 inhabitant Northern Cyprus is perhaps the most heavily militarized region in the world.

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