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Migration Crisis: Germany Wants to Be "Miss Congeniality"
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Commenting on Germany's acceptance of hundreds of thousands of migrants, the popular mainstream newsmagazine Der Spiegel last week portrayed Chancellor Merkel as a Mother Theresa-like figure (left). Pictured at right, a German policeman leads a group of newly arrived migrants.
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Overwhelmed by the unprecedented influx of migrants, Germany has imposed temporary border controls. This temporary halt in new arrivals is "intended to give Germany a chance to catch its breath while at the same time ratcheting up the pressure on other European Union member states to accept a quota system for the distribution of asylum recipients across the bloc," according to Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann of the German state of Bavaria on public radio. Germany's move to tighten its border controls, however, is not going to halt millions of migrants already mobilized by Berlin's suspension of existing asylum rules and its open border policy in the first place.
Turkey Needs to Practice in Turkey What It Preaches in Cyprus
by Kyriacos Kyriakides • September 20, 2015 at 4:00 am
- Turkey has claimed all along that it stays in Cyprus to "protect" the Turkish Cypriot minority. Since Turkey has "protected" them, almost half of Turkish Cypriots have abandoned Cyprus. They have been conveniently replaced by Anatolian Turks whose Islamic orientation and ethos could not be more foreign to Cyprus.
- If Turks are so keen on "saving" minorities, why have they not applied the same principles in Turkey to save their own Kurds?
- With these circumstances in mind, it might be helpful to summarize the demands of the Turkish Cypriot minority and their patron, Turkey.
(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
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The Turkish Cypriots are sort of like the "Kurds" of Cyprus -- with the emphasis on the sort of. Like the Kurds in Turkey, the Turkish Cypriots are a sizeable minority in Cyprus -- and that may be just about where the similarity ends.
The Greek Cypriots, the original Cypriots, like the Kurds in Turkey, have a provenance that is deeply rooted in history.
They happen to have, in fact, an uninterrupted, well-documented Greek and Christian cultural footprint that dates back over three millennia. Modern Cyprus was born in 1960 out of geostrategic concerns after an anti-colonial struggle, the aim of which was union with Greece.
In Turkey, similarly to the Greeks in Cyprus, the Kurds who have lived mostly in north Kurdistan, the eastern part of the country, have a history as its indigenous people of over a thousand years.