By ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
It’s not that there is no longer any point in cursing those who betrayed us.
It is not that a lot of water but also mud has flowed in the river of History already.
It is not even that the repetition of images and testimonies no longer puts a knot in the stomach, which doesn’t have time now to “digest” all that is happening in this land.
It is that the “guilty and complicit, innocent and fellow innocents” of that time, later became one and gave birth to a new version of “patriotism”. [Translator’s note: reference to a speech on August 15, 1974, by then EDEK leader Vasos Lyssarides, addressed to Greek Cypriot political leaders from across the political spectrum, where he sought “a remedy for a national tragedy”, urging them to reject then Turkish Foreign Minister Turan Güneş’ proposal to establish six Turkish Cypriot cantons in Cyprus]
It is as if they all washed together in the Pool of Siloam and came out pure and unblemished to give lessons on the new “national cause”. [Translator’s note: a pool in Jerusalem where it is said Jesus Christ performed a miracle, curing a man from blindness]
It is that we never understood that extremes, fanaticism, absolute truths, a one-way reading of History will always lead to disasters.
It is that we truly did not deserve this tragedy since we failed to become a little wiser.
Almost half a century and we are living through the same. Only that their faces and their History have got us so confused. Everything was done in the name of a certain “patriotism” and a “national cause”. And we didn’t even realise that, among the many slogans, we had run out of the word of truth, and perspective…
Source: THE NEW “PATRIOTISM”
