Posted on 03/05/2012 1:01:09 PM PST by Olog-hai
Turkey would consider annexing northern Cyprus, which is technically EU territory, if talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots fail to reach a deal on reunification of the island, Turkey's European Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış told a Turkish Cypriot newspaper.
Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christofias and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Derviş Eroğlu have made little progress in negotiations to reunite the island, divided in 1974, since the United Nations persuaded them to renew efforts late last year. …
Turkey has stationed troops in the north since invading in 1974, after a coup in Cyprus orchestrated by a military junta in Athens.
Northern Cyprus is recognized only by Ankara and its only air link is with Turkey. It is also excluded from international sport, finance and trade, and it has been heavily subsidized by Ankara.
The dispute took a serious turn in September when Cyprus allowed gas exploration drilling to commence. That prompted Turkey to dispatch naval ships to the Eastern Mediterranean, saying that any gas found would belong to all Cypriots.
(Excerpt) Read more at euractiv.com ...
77% Greek, 18% Turk, that might be interesting.
however, Greece is now a weakened, near failed state, and geopolitics abhors a vacuum. Assume that Turkey acts..grabs the place....do you think that any of the NATO states are gonna object..let alone actually do anything?
How will Israel and Russia react to this?
Absolutely not. If they had any stones they’d demand Constantinople back, as well.
Here we go again!
...if talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots fail to reach a deal on reunification of the island...Thanks Olog-hai.
Erdogan is defending Al-Bashir because in his words, "No Muslim could perpetrate a genocide".
A recent Council of Europe report says that during and after the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict, militia leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) tortured and killed hundreds of Serbs and political rivals in secret Albanian hideouts, removed their organs for sale and dumped their bodies in local rivers. The report added that these people were also heavily involved in drug, sex and illegal immigrant trafficking across Europe.
...claimed that Americans were tossing so many Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates that local mullahs had issued a fatwa ordering residents not to eat the fish. The same paper repeatedly claimed that the U.S. used chemical weapons in Fallujah. And it reported that Israeli soldiers had been deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and that U.S. forces were harvesting the innards of dead Iraqis for sale on the U.S. "organ market."
China has demanded that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan retract his accusation that Beijing practised genocide against ethnic Uighurs.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned European Union leaders that violence from Islamic extremists could escalate if the EU rejects Turkey as a member... Turkey signed the association agreement for EU membership in 1963 and it is expected that a two-day EU summit this week will finally decide to begin formal membership talks, probably in the second half of next year... Taking Turkey's 69 million, mainly Muslim, population into the Union is widely disputed... In Germany, leader of the Christian Social Union Edmund Stoiber told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his party in government would do what it takes to prevent Turkey from becoming a full member of the EU. There is also opposition in other countries. A majority of Danes would much rather see Ukraine as an EU member than Turkey... Turkey has rejected a request from the European Commission to recognise Cyprus ahead of this week's decision on Turkey's EU application. The Greek Cypriots, for their part, have threatened to veto Turkish EU membership. The Turks claim Greek Cypriots do not deserve recognition after they rejected a United Nations plan for the unification of Cyprus, which Turkish Cypriots supported.
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