Too much history

Submitted by Caleb (United States), Sep 8, 2010 at 20:34

The Canadian historian Gwyn Dyer observed that the trouble with history is that there is too much of it. Nowhere is this more true than in the intertwined histories of Greece and Turkey. On Cyprus, each side can point a finger at the other and shout "You started it!", BUT... Cyprus has never been part of Greece. Lying only forty miles off the Turkish coast, it was part of Ottoman Turkey for 350 years. It became a British Crown Colony in 1925. Even after independence, Britain retains its Sovereign Base Areas on the island. The purpose of the London and Lausanne Agreements of 1960 was to create an independent and unitary Republic of Cyprus under British guarantees, draw a line on past communal conflicts and start fresh. It is regrettable that some on each side cannot allow the memories of what happened before 1960 to die.

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