THOSE ON THE OTHER SIDE

In 2017, after our fierce battles in Swiss conference rooms over the abolition of guarantees and intervention rights, on the day we celebrated the founding of our bicommunal state, two fighter jets arrived directly from Greece. Like a splendid pair of tsarouchi [Editor’s note: traditional Greek dancing shoes], they obviously arrived to complete Nikos Anastasiades’ pre-election nationalist costume ahead of the 2018 elections.

He had already largely adopted the rhetoric of Spyros Kyprianou and Tassos Papadopoulos and, with brazen audacity, had begun wagging his finger at supporters of… “any solution whatsoever,” as he once characteristically put it. Because he – a political heavyweight and figure of prominence – had suddenly discovered that… in the Parable of the Ten Virgins, he was among the five foolish ones who ran out of oil! And the poor man finally saw, at 71, what others had “seen” decades before him.

As expected, the Greek fighter jets flying over the parade achieved the presidential palace’s objective: momentary emotion from the spectating public. Even Harris Georgiades, of the famous statement “there are some cultural ties, that’s all,” felt a shiver of national pride down his spine and couldn’t contain himself: “Greek F-16s over Nicosia honouring independence and all those who fought for us to have a European state,” he wrote on Twitter. The President himself, who days earlier had proclaimed to the ends of the earth that “a European state cannot have guarantees from other states,” upon seeing the two fighter jets from the motherland guarantor power flying over Cypriot skies, barely restrained himself from exclaiming “in this sign, conquer,” like Constantine the Great the night before the most crucial battle of his life. He, too, was preparing for battle, and everything necessary had to be done to convince the right-wing voters everywhere – from Kokkinochoria and Mammari to urban Nicosia and affluent Limassol – that the president stood his ground: “I shall hand over the homeland no less than I received it!”

Instead of triumphant declarations (the message being received was enough for him), he simply said… “Cyprus has room for all of us.”

It was a significant message he wanted, he said, to send to “our compatriots the Turkish Cypriots.” The same Turkish Cypriots whom, just days before, he had called upon to decide “whether they wish to live in a modern state or become part of Turkey.” And evidently, through the arrival of Greek fighter jets for the first time in 16 years (though he had governed since 2013, he only deemed it appropriate to bring them in 2017, on the eve of elections – you understand why!), it was to convince them that he was working tirelessly in this direction, to allay their fears (whether real or unfounded doesn’t matter) and to encourage them to throw off the Turkish yoke.

I remember Anastasiades’ pre-election nationalist display every time the Turkish Cypriots, themselves numbed by time and many other factors, seem to awaken from hibernation, take heart, roll up their sleeves and take to the streets en masse against the wishes of their “motherland.” In 2020, 2022, 2025…

And it’s not just Anastasiades’ tsarouchi that I remember. I also recall another story, from much further back – March 2000, three years before the crossing points opened. When, together with Athens’ “Eleftherotypia” newspaper and its magazine “E,” we conducted a four-day visit to the occupied territories. From my reporting at that time, I quote here a conversation I had on the last day with the late Sebahettin, then “specialist on Greek affairs” who accompanied us. I believe this conversation has significance given that back then, in the year 2000, we were… only (!) 26 years after the invasion. “…We continue to talk intensely with Sebahettin. I tell him what I gathered during these four days. That the majority of Turkish Cypriots have a different view from the one he expresses and his regime represents. That even those who don’t want to live with us again admit that before ’63, they were better off than they are now. I tell him that most Turkish Cypriots I met, especially young people, don’t feel comfortable under Turkey’s ‘umbrella’ and don’t want to be its province. That their dilemma is enormous: on one hand, Turkey breathing down their necks, on the other, their potential annihilation or the risk of being bought out by Greek Cypriots. I also tell him that most don’t get along with the ‘karasakal,’ the black-bearded men brought in from Turkey. That they feel an asphyxiating grip, a lack of freedom to express themselves, isolation. They simply cannot express it. I heard the phrase ‘mate, don’t write down names, they’ll cut heads here’ many times in the occupied territories when speaking with Turkish Cypriots…”

Those “26 years after the invasion” have become 51! We know very well the conditions prevailing in Turkey and, by extension, in the occupied territories with 40,000 troops, the all-powerful “Turkish embassy,” and the “establishment” Turkish Cypriots who have become more royalist than the king, either because they exploit Greek Cypriot properties or because they acquired power. Being labelled an “enemy of the regime,” wrapped in a sheet of paper, and living your own “Midnight Express,” without the film’s happy ending, is all too easy.

Therefore, the fact that some still react, who at times feel suffocated, the noose tightening, the fact that some still dare to voice resistance, some more boldly and others timidly and very cautiously, leaves me astonished. Logically, they should have been suppressed already. And yet, they exist. At regular intervals, they find the opportunity, venture out and speak up. As happened in 2020, 2022, as is happening now, as occurred after the attacks Erdogan provoked against Şener Levent’s “Afrika” newspaper. When five thousand people took to the streets. Shouting, as they are now, for the removal of the heavy veil that Turkey spreads over them…

I reflect on the mistakes of the past. When our foresight, both leadership and people, led us to add plentiful water to Turkey’s mill. The useful idiots of history. When the hawks in Makarios’ government considered it a waste of money to build a road leading to a Turkish Cypriot village or to install a water tap in Pileri and Kambyli in Kyrenia. I also consider our current stance, which has been our stance for many years. How from the comfort of our sofas we dismiss their every reaction, how after 60 years of separation, we resort to basic arguments to undermine their voice and goals, how we overlook what we ourselves say and do in the meantime, how these sound to their ears. How we demand they think like Greek Cypriots and… surrender into our arms, while we never made them – the ordinary Turkish Cypriots I mean, not their politicians – feel that we consider them one with us, that we never made them feel that we don’t consider them equally our enemies, like Turkey, that we never strengthened their voice to come and find ours, never encouraged or convinced them to overcome their concerns, to become our allies against Turkey. Not even back then, in 2000, when they marched in their large demonstrations holding and waving the flags of the Republic of Cyprus…

This article was first published on 13.04.2025

Source: THOSE ON THE OTHER SIDE