Talk:Civilian casualties and displacements during the Cyprus conflict

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Contents 1 References 2 Major Changes 3 Numbers of dead 4 Creation of the article 5 Copy-Paste Editing 6 TC casualties in 1974 7 There is no evidence or document about the Greek casualties from a neutral and respectible source 8 Anon Edits 9 TURKISH PROPAGANDA 10 Merging

[edit] References

Given the controversy of this issue, I think it would be best to avoid placing anything here (especially events and numbers of victims), without references to independent sources. By "independent" I mean international organizations, third-party publications, etc. (sites from Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus don't count).

What do you think?

[edit] Major Changes

Since noone has responded to my previous comment, I took the liberty of making a major rewrite of this article, giving the correct numbers of dead, missing, and misplaced persons, with citations to reports by international organizations. I also removed some irrelevant and biased comments.

If someone disagrees with these numbers and facts, feel free to change them, but please offer similar citations. And please keep your head cool and don't try to revert/change the article on the basis of national prejudice.--Respiridus 15:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I generally agree with your edits, but why is there no reference to the Turkish Cypriot mass graves? This is crucial for the 74 period. --A.Garnet 15:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, what I tried to do was to keep things simple and balanced, just offer the major events and the exact numbers of the victims. So, I took the liberty to remove (and/or not add) minor events of violence, places where mass murders took place, places where mass graves can be found, etc.

Agreed, it would be better if we had these things listed, but only if we could list them accurately and exhaustively for obvious reasons. Given the fact that there is much controversy over them, and no reliable sources (that I know of) that list them all, I simply can't see how this can be done.

For example, let's take mass graves: There are a few of Greek Cypriots in the south, and a few of Turkish Cypriots in the north that most people know of. However, most mass graves of Greek Cypriots are in the north, and most of Turkish Cypriots are in the south. For example, Lysi (GCs) and Kofinou (TCs). Their existence, and the events that led to their existence, are hotly disputed between the two sides, so what do we do?--Respiridus 15:39, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes we have to stay fair and balanced, but not at the expense of excluding major events. I dont think anyone is disputing that large numbers of TC's from Tokhni, Aloa, Maratha and Sandallaris were rounded up, shot and buried by EOKA-B. If i'm not mistaken the numbers were around 180+ , which is almost as large as the entire 63-64 TC casualty rate. So this cannot be dismissed by any means. --A.Garnet 17:27, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know much about these. I do know about Lysi (70+ Greek Cypriots executed), Varosi (14 Greek Cypriots), Dhavlos (2 Greek Cypriots) and Kofinou (14 Turkish Cypriots), though. However, I can't find any independent references on the net about these.

Perhaps we could add something like this: Although some of the casualties reported here represent collateral damage, mass executions and burrials did take place in 1974, mostly by TMT in the north and EOKA B in the south.

[edit] Numbers of dead

Hello everybody - I'd like to make some strong suggestions for this article - as a Cypriot.

I don't understand where the claim for 120000 Turkish-Cypriot deaths in the 1963-1974 era comes from. This is impossible, since the Turkish population in Cyprus (~85000 in 1960) actually grew substantially (~120000 in 1974) during these years. Evidence from a few books in my possession suggests that Turkish-Cypriot casualties where 500-700 people, while 300-400 Greek-Cypriots lost their lives.

As I'm not a specialist in modern Cyprus history, I'll refrain from editing this article. However I must urge the current editors to either research the topic properly and post the real numbers, or to remove the article altogether.

Another correction: the incident in old Nicosia that prompted the bi-communal violence resulted in the death of 1 Greek-Cypriot, along with those of 2 Turkish-Cypriots that are already mentioned. --Respiridus 16:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Creation of the article

Hello everybody - I just created this article, in order to resolve the dispute about the "Turkish Cypriot Genocide", which now is a redirect to this article. Your discussions about the genocide article are not lost, but in the Talk archive. - Snchduer 18:50, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I tried to give this article some basic structure, separating casualties and displacements by ethnicities, so we do not get mixed up here. Also, I wanted to separate the whole thing into two general time periods: 1963-1974 for intercommunal violence, and 1974/5 for casualties and displacements caused directly or indirectly by the Turkish invasion/intervention. - Snchduer 18:50, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There are of course a lot of issues that need to be addressed; For once, there are only Turkish Cypriot casualties and displacements as of now, which certainly needs to be mended. Secondly, there might be quarrels about some wordings. For instance, I used the word "invasion" as the landing of the Turkish army was unilateral and did in fact not result in the restitution of the 1960 constitution. - Snchduer 18:50, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copy-Paste Editing

Dear Argy,

refrain from using copy-paste-editing to overwrite this article. There is a certain sense in this structure, but your edits are firstly quite POV and secondly unstructured. If you want to include GC casualties and displacements, do so in the appropriate section, but maintaining a neutral tone. - Snchduer 00:13, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] TC casualties in 1974

hi Expatkiwi (or other ppl who have sources),

can you please shorten the TC 1974 section dramatically? I do not see the benefit having a list of names here; state places, and numbers instead. - Snchduer 19:06, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, yes, please shorten. --Chiacomo (talk) 19:18, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Did it myself in the end; added the numbers in the appropriate places (counting the lines Expatkiwi inserted with names), but they might still not be correct. Again, I removed it because I did not see the point in having lists with names and numbers on this site. - Snchduer 19:48, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I put the names in because seeing names hits it home about the people who were killed. Expatkiwi 21:26, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yep, but imagine the GCs also want to put their 5000 names... this will make the page quite unreadable... I favour your solution of putting it on extra pages. If this is deemed not fit for a wikipedia article (as I would suspect it might be), don't get angry, but provide the proper links to the TRNC page (I suspect you got it from there?). - Snchduer 23:17, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Expatkiwi, as I told you in erenkoy 's talk page, Wikipedia is about delivering facts, not "hitting" anything "home" (a.k.a. Create impressions or feelings).--Jsone 09:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] There is no evidence or document about the Greek casualties from a neutral and respectible source

There is no evidence or document about the Greek cassualties from a respectible or neutral official source , please write there where did you found the information about "5000" Greek Cypriots killed or massacred if that thing is happened. On the other hand there is no neutral source about the casualties of the Greeks , and there is no evidence that Greeks were massacred too. And there is no proof or evidence about the TMT activities against the Turks (?!?) This is funny too , I don't think that TMT killed Leftist Turks. PLEASE SHOW REFERENCES. aozan

About the GC casualties, I am afraid I have to concur. Even on the Cyprus PIO page there is only a mentioning of "missed persons", not of dead ones. I supposed that missing=dead, but that seems a bit strange, due to the fact that a) probably quite some people are known to be dead, and that b) I would assume the number to be a bit higher. - Think Different 28 June 2005 14:06 (UTC)

About the TMT activities against the Turks... it seems very likely to me that they did actually do this (as did the EOKA as well), and I do remember hearing about this happening (not only on wikipedia). Here is sth from a pro-Greek website (so I guess): [1] and also Examples of the Turkish-Cypriot democrats, opposing the idea of partitioning Cyprus, information about the staging of the intercommunal conflict in Cyprus through the underground organisation "TMT" and its provocations, the attacks and the murder against the Cumhuriyet newspaper and its owners, which defended the Republic of Cyprus as a compromise formula are given for the first time to the reader with documents. [2] - Think Different 28 June 2005 14:06 (UTC)

And another (possibly a bit off-topic in general, but in this aspect not too bad): However, the TMT did not target only Greeks but also some Turkish workers who were in favour of peace and independence of the island. After a joint mass demonstration by Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the TMT began murdering Turkish trade union members. [3]

Greek Cypriots like to exagarate the nature (if not the number) of their deads. The 5000 deaths they keep on talking about was mostly (I am not saying wholely as in the case of every war there are always collateral damage) armed paramilitary and military people that had tried to stand againts Turkish operation by fighting. If we are going to write about the deaths of war as casualty then we should also start wrting the death of Turkish army during the war which is also in 4 digits.

The fact is there has never been masacre perfomed by Turkish army or Turkish Cypriots in the scale of attorcities performed by Greek Cypriots like wiping out the whole villages and burrying them in the mass graves. If there were Greek Cypriots would have made it visible by now. As i have said most of their casualties are armed military dead unlike Turkish Cypriots.

[edit] Anon Edits

Some anonymous user tried to revert the article to the form it had before when it was listed under "Turkish Cypriot Genocide" (cf changes here: [4] and the anon's reverts [5], [6]). I reverted his version, and I invite the user to sign in with a proper user name and discuss what he wants changed. - Think Different 30 June 2005 09:44 (UTC)

[edit] TURKISH PROPAGANDA

Why don't you ever stop lying?You claim that turkish cypriots suffeed more during the invasion when women where raped and men killed.Then what can we say about the Greek cypriots.Weren't treated like animals from the "peace-keeping" army of your motherland?The turkish army has killed much more civilians than the greek-cypriot armed forces.The turkish cypriot fled to the north because they wanted to be in the turkish-controled teritories.The attacks on villages were made mostly by fanatics of EOKA B that wanted revenge for the turkish invasion.Also we must not foeget that in the first days of the invasion almost every turkish village created its own small military force that became a danger for nearby greek villages.In the larger cities like Famagusta and Limasol the turkish-cypriots formed armed forces consisting of 1000 armed civilians that required the respone from the Greek-cypriot army.Summarising the effect by the turkish invasion is much more greater on the greek-cypriots rather the turkish-cypriots; as mush more were killed,injured,raped and forced to leave their homes by the turkish 'peace-force'.

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Although quite willing to accept your version, please can you provide more evidence than the rather vague assertions above. All the books I have read on the subject note the number of civilian casulties among Turks prior to 1974, and the plans to remove Turks from power shareing under the Aktsis plan. I think it is generally accepted that ethnic cleansing took place after the invasion in the North. But to demonise one side is not the route to finding a peaceful solution. Sol

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Sorry, I hit rollback by accident. I restored the material. My apologies for the oversight. El_C 01:41, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Merging

I'm against merging of this article with the Cypriot refugee article cause the Civilian casualties and displacements during the Cyprus conflict article is more general than the other one. The Cypriot refugee article can be added to this article as a separate section. E104421 12:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)