[Turk2]

History of Cyprus:

58 B.C.-A.D. 395: part of the Roman Empire. - 337 years

A.D. 395 to 688: part of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. - 293 years

A.D. 688 to 965: Arab-Byzantine joint rule - 278 years

A.D. 965 to 1191: Byzantine rule. - 226 years

A.D. 1191: conquered by Richard the Lion-hearted of England.

A.D. 1192-1489: ruled by Lusignan dynasty. - 297 years

A.D. 1489 to 1571: ruled by Venice. - 82 years

A.D. 1571 to 1878: part of the Ottoman Empire. - 307 years

A.D. 1878 to 1960: part of the British Empire. - 82 years

A.D. 1960: independence.

[Verginius Rufus]

According to the book Northern Cyprus: A Traveller's Guide, by Eileen Davey, published in 1993 in Britain, when the Ottoman Empire conquered Cyprus in 1571 "Cyprus at first welcomed the Turks, who suppressed the hated Latin church and abolished the feudal system." Conditions deteriorated later; she mentions a general massacre of Christians following the Greek revolt in Greece of 1821, but conditions began to improve later in the 19th century even before Britain took over the island.

Bernard McDonagh's Blue Guide: Turkey: The Aegean and Mediterranean Coasts, published in 1989, on page 94 quotes Henry Stubbe, Under-Library-Keeper at the Bodleian, Oxford, in the mid-17th century, asserting that "it is indeed more the interest of the princes and nobles than of the people which at present keeps all Europe from submitting to the Turks."

I don't think either Davey or McDonagh is a Turk.