++ [ originally posted by Ferrari^M
] ++
So they actually do show you our problem?
That's nice.
Ok let me tell you about the situaton here.
The island is made up of mainly two races, Greeks and Turks. Quite impressive as these two races are like cats and dogs.
The greeks are the majority of the island.
In 1974 Greece basically invaded Cyprus to unite it with greece, this is also what the most people wanted.
But turkey found this chance to capture half of the island.
With the excuse that they were protecting the Turkish-Cypriots they invaded and got half of the island.
The turkish site was never accepted as a nation. Only by turkey. And the greek site was accepted by everyone except Turkey of course.
Now all this that happened is not Turkey's fault no. They might have the leading part but also the Greeks and the cypriots who were too patriotic were at fault.
So the island remains divided for all this time.
Just this year the boundaries opened. I was able to visit the other half of my country at 17 years old, and we need to give passport to go through.
This of course is illegal.
The great majority of the Turkish and Greek cypriots now want to leave together. Only the leader of the Turkish Cypriots and the people who take advantage of them want the two parts to be separated. Their leader Ntektash manages win elections by the votes of the Turkish immigrants that he brought from turkey to make the island turkish.
He suggested that if the two people united again there would be problems. But now that we have united again in a way with the opening of the "boundaries" it was very touching to see that the people were very happy together.
Now it's just a matter of time before all the island unites and enters the E.U. as a whole with all of it's citizens Turkish-Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots.
The turkish cypriots even had huge demonstrations, unfortunately they are mistreated by ntektash, who violates their human rights in many ways and they are financiall worse than the Greek site.
I hope that in May 2004 all the people of the island will celebrate our E.U. entrance.
Oh and yeah Cyprus has very nice beaches and clubs and stuff, it's preety much like greece if you've been there.