[MGSA-L] KARAOLIS AND BRITISH COLONIALISM IN CYPRUS

[George Baloglou]

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 4:47 PM, George Gedeon <g.gedeon at sympatico.ca>wrote:


> *Also imagine what Turkey would have done if Britain had agreed to Enosis?
> Have we forgotten what happened when people like Karaolis staged a coup in
> 1974?*
>
>
​Karaolis' main goal was union with Greece, whereas the people who staged
the coup in 1974 mainly targeted Makarios and his 'non-allied' politics,
catering -- whether directly or indirectly, deliberately or not -- to
US/UK/Israel/Turkey interests.​ As for Turkey, thirty or even twenty years
before 1974 had neither the interest nor the strength to intervene in
Cyprus: had the British agreed to Enosis back then, Turkey would not have
reacted at all, just think of the Dodecanese.


> *I have no objections to any people trying to liberate themselves from
> oppressors, occupiers, etc, but there is a price to pay and Karaolis paid
> this price, not because he wanted Enosis or to be Greek. He was executed
> for killing a policeman. If that was the Nazis, Karaolis' village would
> also have been burned down, if not worse...*
>
>
​Last sentence fully agreed, but the rest of the paragraph, although
factually correct of course, raises broader issues: just because "there is
a price to pay" ... should we not honor ​our heroes of the past? (This has
not been stated but it could be perceived as a logical implication.)
Further, every uprising inevitably involves acts of 'terror', blind
violence, and so on. (One might even cynically state that a hero is a
successful terrorist!)


-- 

Γιώργος Μπαλόγλου -- Θεσσαλονίκη

http://www.oswego.edu/~baloglou (1988 - 2008)

http://crystallomath.wordpress.com (2009 - )
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