So when do we pressure Turkey to get out of Cyprus? They’ve been there for over fifty years.
“So when do we pressure Turkey to get out of Cyprus? They’ve been there for over fifty years.”
Well, first we have to evict China from Tibet, which it invaded more than 70 years ago.
Each of these imperialist wars of aggression was a war crime under the Nuremberg Principles. In a just world, each of the resulting land grabs would be reversed. But, as I said, we can’t right every wrong.
The realistic approach: We compare the projects of liberating Tibet or northern Cyprus, on the one hand, with the project of defending Ukraine against Russia’s aggression, on the other. Defending Ukraine is very difficult and expensive. Nevertheless, undoing the invasions of Tibet and Cyprus would be far, far MORE difficult and expensive.
Realists also consider the future consequences. In your example, the division of Cyprus has been stable. Turkey is probably satisfied with its ethnic cleansing in northern Cyprus, with most Greek Cypriots having been killed or pushed to the south. Turkey has no particular reason to try to take over the rest of the island.
By contrast, Putin has said that Ukraine is “not a real country.” He has denounced the breakup of the Soviet Union (in which what’s now Ukraine was a component part, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). Any land-for-peace deal would be only temporary. In 1994, Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s borders. Then it violated that agreement. Any new agreement about Ukraine’s (presumably revised) borders would, like its predecessor, last only until Russia had rebuilt its military and decided that it could grab more land.