On 20July 2024, the golden leaf thrown onto the tranquil turquoise waters of the eastern Mediterranean will be mourning 50-years of an inconvenient and bloody illegal occupation holidaymakers, profiteers and politicians would rather ignore.
When you think of Cyprus, you think of Ayia Napa, year-round sunshine, clear waters,14,000 years of civilisation and the backdrop to many plays, myths, historical events and even fragrances. But Aphrodite’s birthplace is bleeding and riddled with war crimes, contravention of UN resolutions, displacement, murder and ethnic cleansing. Its scars are there for everyone to see, but no one chooses to look.
The plight of the Palestinians ripples through every Cypriot as a trauma bond with one exception, no one knows or cares about Cypriot apartheid.
The current genocide in Gaza has rightly set the world alight with activism, boycotts, marches, merchandise, social content, TV shows, podcasts, art, music and fashion that’s akin to the marches against the Vietnam War in the 70s. Stories and receipts on the 74-year apartheid, genocide, displacement and subjacation being told the diaspora and ordinary people who couldn’t even point to the Holy Land on a map have at last taken centre-stage.
But waiting in the wings is EU member, the Republic of Cyprus, split between its indigenous majority in the south with the north illegally occupied by illegitimate terrorist-state, Turkey, who spent 67 years, funded numerous terror cells among the Turkish-speaking minority and launched two invasions to achieve its colonial goal set at the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Since the Turkish authorities opened the in-land border crossings in 2003, the occupation has been normalised and tourism has flourished, allowing the authorities in the occupied north to push for a two-state solution, therefore recognising northern Cyprus as a state.
An island, measuring 9,251km2, being split into two countries is unacceptable, as Genocide Watch states, Turkey is in violation of Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention by transferring and resettling 160,000 settlers from mainland Turkey, permanently and artificially altering the demographics of the country, mimicking Israel’s Law of Return.
The occupied lands house Othello’s Tower, Gazan St Hilarion’s monastery, the home of English writer Lawrence Durrell, Sleeping Beauty’s castle and the ancient ruins of Salamis and Soli built on Proto-Cypriot kingdoms, now suffering extensive destruction of cultural heritage and religious sites, as well as looting of archaeological excavations and illegal exportation of objects, on on-going and ignored war crime. On top of many properties that have been looted and repossessed, yet hotels, flights and restaurants have popped up for tourists who see this an undiscovered unspoilt holiday destination but wouldn’t dream of visiting settler communities in Gaza or the West Bank.
The barbed wire along the world’s only divided capital city, the watchtowers where 40,000 Turkish soldiers shoot-to-kill anyone venturing near the border, the UN buffer zone guarding a country-length ribbon of houses, shops, farmland, the world-beating Ledra Palace Hotel and Nicosia’s state-of-the-art airport, which all lie abandoned in a 70s time capsule. It’s a point of fascination for dark tourists and travel influencers, who unlike Gaza aren’t there to report and spread awareness but to promote the region, directly funding an illegal militarised state - something that should get them cancelled if they did it in Palestine.
Profiteers, politicians and holidaymakers ignore the 250,000 displaced, 6,000 casualties, 1,619 missing, 2,000 prisoners of war shipped to Turkey, 20,000 Greek-Cypriots and Maronites who didn’t flee in 1974 now numbering 557, the Turkish Cypriots becoming even more of a marginalised minority than before and nine municipalities under apartheid.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. The ethnic cleansing and longest-standing case of internal displacement in Europe didn’t start in 1974.
Colonialism led to violence by the occupiers - they turned Byzantine churches into mosques, hanged priests, wiped out villages and killed most of the Greek-speaking population of Larnaca in 1822. Resentment towards violent colonisers, the desire for sovereignty and a fight for identity led to extremist movements.
The 16% Turkish minority started self-isolating in the 50s by taking over villages and neighbourhoods, creating enclaves to force partition. They collaborated with the Turkish regime to create numerous terrorist organisations like Taksim, Volkan, Kara cete, 9 Eylul and TMT, to name just a few, whose aim was sedition against a state fighting for its libration from the British Empire.
The suspiciously underreported by the international press, Bloody Christmas in 1963 produced a harrowing photo of the Bathtub Massacre, which was weaponised by the Turkish regime as justification for their numerous war crimes but this has been widely disputed in Cyprus and Turkey. One incident by extremists saw 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots tragically lose their lives. It discredited Cyprus’ freedom fighters, EOKA, whose purpose was self-determination, on both sides.
Eleven years later, an invasion was devised by the British (despite being a colony and home to two vast army bases), US, Turkey and Greece to “protect of the Turkish Cypriot population from genocide”, in a move that echoes the October 7 attack.
In July of that year, 40,000 Turkish troops dropped onto Cyprus, and with the help of 20,000 Turkish Cypriot terrorists, they went from town to village forcing the population to run to the next safe town under threats of death. They left with the nothing but the clothes on their back as they were told they were to return tomorrow.
While the Turkish Cypriot minority had the might of Turkey to fight for them, Greece came with a pitiful 2,000 soldiers to defend Cyprus - adding insult to their canon of injuries against Cyprus leading its crescendo with a pantomime of betrayal titled, The Greek Military Junta. Guarantor Britain was a no-show.
Relying only on a Cypriot army numbering 12,000 soldiers, a third of the population, the north didn’t stand a chance. That bloody and sweltering summer saw the beginning of illegal occupation of 37% of a sovereign country and continued ethnic cleansing the population.
Victimhood is used as justification to use disproportionate force in this CI-plAy. “Victims” who outnumber and outgun the “murderous” indigenous population simply fighting for its right to exist against a cast of powerful actors. A victim who has the power to commit war crimes, has US backing and can attack with impunity isn’t a victim. Turkish nationalism seeps into the discord, poisoning the conversation and any chance of reconciliation with the same bombastic arrogance, violent vitriol and sensationalist victim-playing propaganda spewed from the Knesset.
Much like the 100,000 Palestinian casualties, the annhilation of Gazan infrasture and displacement of 2.2 million people by the world’s 18th largest and best equipped army is deemed disproportionate force for the hundreds of murdered Israelis, many by the IDF, and 129 hostages taken into Gaza by Hamas using their Soviet-era arsenal.
Unrest is exploited by the world’s superpowers for dominance in the region, designed to create instability, division, distraction and weakness. Retaliation by the indigenous population was branded terrorism, which led to a CIA-backed illegal occupation. The legacy of war criminal, Henry Kissinger, and the American military-industrial complex lives on, destroying lives, ripping apart cultures, altering history and spilling innocent blood to this day across the Levant - turning the fertile crescent into a volatile one.
The language of occupation, disproportionate force, CIA operations, land separated by colonisers, self-hating Cypriots, freedom fighters, ethnic cleansing, ethnocide, history-washing, propaganda, denial of the existence indigenous people, self-defense, apartheid, victimhood, evidence and cause needs to be used when talking about Cyprus too.
The world has boycotted Israel, calling for heavy sanctions and justice. The world has turned its back on High Street staples, Starbucks and McDonald’s, causing their share price to fall. Hundreds of thousands march the streets and hundreds proudly wear their keffiyehs and watermelon badges. But illegally occupied Cyprus is marketed as a dream holiday destination or somewhere to buy a holiday villa, all of which funds and promotes a militarised state-sponsored occupation on stolen land built on the bones of the indigenous peoples.
Believing in apartheid, especially CIA-backed apartheid, is support for oppressive colonial white supremacy. Free occupied Palestine. Free occupied Cyprus.
