Fw: (Cyprus), Nicosia is in Europe not Asia.

[Yiango]

> Yiango, do you have any references to quote to the contrary?

First of all I'd like to apologize for the somewhat slow reply. I've
asked a friend (an other fellow Cypriot, Alexia Galati) to help out, and
she very kindly spent some time at the library looking up information to
re-enforce my original request that Cyprus should be listed under Europe
instead of Asia.

There is no doubt that indeed Cyprus in numerous locations is listed as
being in Asia. This became especially more evident to me after reading
Gwillim Law's reply. I'd still like a shot at convincing you guys to the
contrary, even if my attempts end up being futile.

A few relevant references are the following:

- In the Readers' digest, Atlas of the World (1999), Cyprus and Turkey are
included in the political map of Europe. (However this does not totally
debunk your argument since it is also included in the Asian map). My point
in mentioning this is that the evidence that you have presented is far
from conclusive.

- Cyprus is also included in "the political map of Europe in 1999" which
is presented in the list of tables of the book "Nationalizing and
Denationalising European Border Regions, 1800-2000: Views from Geography
and History" ed. by Hands Knippenberg and Jan Markusse.

I realise that the tz archive should actually be following "standard
geographical practice" but is it not wrong to ignore basic facts such
as Cyprus' participation in the European arena? Cyprus is politically,
culturally and historically part of Europe and participates in most of
its institutions (it has been a full member of the Council of Europe
since 1961). How about Cyprus' potential future admission into the EU?

At least on the Greek side, one could claim how the Greek-cypriot
community upholds the Greek culture, language and religion that are
undoubtably European (they are in fact the predescents of many aspects
of European culture itself). Even the Turkish-cypriot community,
although of Anatolian origin, has a claim over European identity proved
by a) the fact there's a lot of cultural convergence between Greek and
Turkish Cypriots and b) Turkey's endeavors to become an EU member.

Though I'm definately not an expert in this subject, how could one prove
that the existing boundaries are conclusive? From the Yearbook of
European Studies (V6), ed. by J.Th.Leersen and M. Van Montfrans, 1993;
there's an interesting article called "Political and Mental Borders" by
Alexandru Dutu (who's President of the Center for South-East European
studies at Bucharest). Here's a lovely quote: "Borders usually take
shape in political circles and result from the talks among political
representatives of the major powers. But politicians always pay
attention to how people establish their identity and define "the
others". Borders result from our need to settle limits to space and time
and to discover ourselves in the "others": their roots are to be found
in the world of imagination...It would be wrong to seperate "real" from
"imaginary"  borders, since frontiers are the products of our thought,
feeling and imagination."

With the above quotation, I'd like to contest the legitimacy and
validity of purely geographical frontiers that are used in segmenting
the globe (because frontiers are in themselves imaginary, determined on
the negotiation table of political powers, etc.).

I, therefore, do not wish to categorize Cyprus on the basis of
cartographic evidence (as it could actually be really hard to prove that
Cyprus is not also a part of Asia -- but we are nevertheless also
presented as being a part of Europe in various references.)

Regards,

Yiango Yiangoullis