Demining Support From UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus

The UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) announced Friday that an agreement has been reached for the provision of demining support from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in order to clear two areas in Cyprus, where mines may have inadvertently been displaced into the buffer zone through flooding.

New House bill calls for U.S. State Department report on Churches stolen by Turkey

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) has been joined by the panel’s Ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (D-NY), in introducing bipartisan religious freedom legislation (H.R.4347) that would require the Obama Administration to submit annual reports on the status of stolen Christian churches and properties in Turkey and occupied Cyprus.

In a statement issued upon introduction, Chairman Royce outlined the need for passage of H.R.4347.  ”This legislation holds Turkey accountable for its international obligations to protect and promote human rights, and it calls attention to Turkish leaders’ broken promises to return church properties to their rightful owners. 

Over decades, Christian church properties, particularly those belonging to the Armenian, Syriac, and Greek Orthodox communities have been either violently overtaken or illegally confiscated by Turkish authorities under various excuses.  These churches under Turkish control have been looted, converted to mosques, storehouses, casinos, vandalized and often irreparably damaged,” stated Chairman Royce. “Vulnerable religious minorities deserve more than just piecemeal returns of their stolen religious properties.  It is important that the United States continue to encourage Turkish leaders to uphold their commitments and return all remaining properties without further delay.  This bill will make promoting religious freedom and tolerance in Turkey a U.S. diplomatic priority.”

Ranking Democrat Engel concurred, noting, “The Republic of Turkey, and indeed all nations, have a responsibility to protect, restore, and return religious properties which have been unlawfully seized from their communities and rightful owners by state authorities.  Armenian, Syriac, and Greek Orthodox communities in Turkey have for many years been seeking the return of their confiscated properties.  The claims of these communities must be respected and addressed in a comprehensive and timely manner.  This legislation calls on the Republic of Turkey to meet its international obligations, and urges the United States to prioritize the return of unlawfully seized religious properties in order to begin to resolve the legitimate claims of these communities.”

H.R. 4347 builds on a measure (H.Res.306), spearheaded by Chairman Royce and then House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA), which was overwhelmingly adopted by the House of Representatives on December 13, 2011.  That resolution called upon the government of Turkey to honor its international obligations to return confiscated Christian church properties and to fully respect the rights of Christians to practice their faiths in freedom.

H.R.4347 specifically requires the Secretary of State to “submit to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate a report on the status and return of stolen, confiscated, or otherwise unreturned Christian churches, places of worship, and other properties in or from the Republic of Turkey and in the areas of northern Cyprus occupied by the Turkish military that shall contain the following:

•  A comprehensive listing of all the Christian churches, places of worship, and other properties, such as monasteries, schools, hospitals, monuments, relics, holy sites, and other religious properties, including movable properties, such as artwork, manuscripts, vestments, vessels, and other artifacts, in or from Turkey and in the territories of the Republic of Cyprus under military occupation by Turkey that are claimed as stolen, confiscated, or otherwise wrongfully removed from the ownership of their rightful Christian church owners.

•  Description of all engagement over the previous year on this issue by officials of the Department of State with representatives of the Republic of Turkey regarding the return to their rightful owners of all Christian churches, places of worship, and other properties, such as monasteries, schools, hospitals, monuments, relics, holy sites, and other religious properties, including movable properties, such as artwork, manuscripts, vestments, vessels, and other artifacts, both those located within Turkey’s borders and those under control of Turkish military forces in the occupied northern areas of Cyprus.”

The resolution goes on to urge that a summary of the report be included in the annual U.S. State Department Human Rights Report and International Religious Freedom Report.

Turks figured out that they invaded wrong geographic region of Cyprus

No hegemonic peace in Cyprus by Marios L. Evriviades

If NATO today trots out the principle of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty to condemn Russia, how come it doesn't condemn Turkey when it comes to the territorial integrity and sovereignty that Cyprus is equally entitled to? Professor Marios L. Evriviades revisits the Turkish plan and analyzes where it went wrong.

Almost forty years to the date, the Turks finally figured out that they had invaded the wrong geographic region of Cyprus. Cyprus’s power wealth, its hydrocarbons, have been found to be located in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off its southern shores and not in its northern ones, where the NATO-trained and US-supplied Turkish army attacked massively in 1974. Since then and for decades the Turks persistently and stubbornly insisted that whatever the Cyprus problem, it was permanently solved in 1974. These days they are not so sure. And they have turned peace advocates. Or so it seems.

The double irony is that if one were to believe Ankara’s 1974 propaganda, namely that they were not “invading” but that they were merely launching a “peacekeeping operation” to secure the safety of their coreligionists, who were allegedly under threat of instant massacre by their blood thirsty compatriots, then it was the southern part that they should have attacked in the first place! For it was in the southern districts of Limassol and Paphos that the vast majority of the allegedly threatened 100,000 or so Turkish Cypriots lived. They did not live in the Kyrenia district and the Karpass or Morphou regions, that were the targets of the 1974 attack by Turkey.

In fact the autochthonous Greek Cypriot population in the presently Turkish-army occupied part of Cyprus numbered close to 200,000 souls. This is a figure that is twice as large as the total number of Turkish Cypriots who, prior the 1974 invasion, were intermingled with the Greek Cypriots throughout the island but, significantly, constituting nowhere a regional majority (except in a very few villages) . And in July 1974, when the Athens junta- organised coup occurred against the legitimate government of the Republic, they were hardly under any threat, lest one of massacre (“genocide” is Ankara’s favorite term).

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Αίσχος και αηδία: Ημίγυμνοι Τούρκοι μοντέλα ποζάρουν πάνω σε τάφους Ελληνοκυπρίων

(24HCOMCY) - Μέγιστη πρόκληση από τους Τούρκους. Ασελγούν στους τάφους Ελληνοκυπρίων στα κατεχόμενα.

Οι προκλήσεις των Τούρκων προς τον Κυπριακό Ελληνισμό συνεχίζονται. Αυτή την φορά όμως δεν σεβάστηκαν ούτε τους τάφους στα κατεχόμενα μέρη. Ημίγυμνα μοντέλα ποζάρουν επάνω στους τάφους κάνοντας έτσι το «θέαμα» θλιβερό.

Ασέβεια και περιφρόνηση των Ελληνοκυπρίων που είναι θαμμένοι στις κατεχόμενες περιοχές μας, στο βωμό της "τέχνης". 

Σε μια στιγμή μάλιστα που οι δύο κοινότητες προσπαθούν να βρουν λύση στο θέμα του Κυπριακού, οι Τούρκοι επέλεξαν να δείξουν τις πραγματικές τους ιδεολογίες και πεποιθήσεις έναντι των Ελληνοκυπρίων.