Cyprus: War or Reconcilliation? Notes from 1996
August in the Vanishing City, Book 1 of my trilogy, The Cyprus Chronicles, takes place on the island of Cyprus in the mid 1990s. While the book is fiction, it’s setting and context is based on extensive reporting I did about “The Cyprus Problem” in the 1990s — in particular a long piece of narrative journalism that I wrote about the events of 1996.
The piece was later submitted as my journalism master’s thesis, but has never been published. I’m posting an edited version here as backdrop for the book.
The situation in Cyprus has improved in some ways in the 20 years since this piece was written. In 2003, for example, the border between the Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus and the Greek Cypriot controlled south was opened up to at least allow for some freedom of movement. However, there has been little progress on the bigger questions. Will refugees from the 1974 invasion ever be allowed to reclaim their homes? Will the country ever be reunited politically?
Cyprus: War or Reconcilliation? Notes from 1996
In Ayios Pavlos, a suburb of Nicosia on the island of Cyprus, the elementary school teachers often gossip about a Greek Cypriot who they say periodically gets drunk, crosses the Green Line and pulls down the Turkish flag, while Turkish guards sleep. Then, he runs back through the United Nations-controlled buffer zone waving it and shouting.
The teachers at the elementary school have good reason to take interest in what happens on the line, since it runs no more than 200 yards from the school. From the playground, the children could wave at the soldiers opposite, if they wanted to; Ayios Pavlos is one of the many places in Nicosia where the Greeks and Turks of the de facto partitioned island can almost hear each other breathing. People in this neighborhood say they’ve heard sporadic gunfire from the Turkish side since 1974, but never as much as last year, when in addition to the distant cracking sound, several windows were shattered by bullets late at night. Nineteen ninety-six has been the tensest year between Greeks and Turks since 1974, both on and off the island.
Inside the old city of Nicosia, the twisting medieval roads are cut off abruptly by permanent roadblocks of sandbags and barbed-wire. In the heart of the city, a visitor might look up at an old Turkish minaret and not know which side it was on until he heard the rich baritone chant that is the Muslim call to prayer. Young Greek Cypriots walking in the old town can hear this call five times a day even though they have likely never met a Turk in their entire lives.
On a map, the 1974 cease-fire line appears straight, cutting neatly through the island to divide the two sides. In reality, the line weaves arbitrarily, so that driving along the winding roads on the government controlled Greek side, for example, one will suddenly see a Turkish guard-post to the south, a hundred feet away from the road.
From their posts, the Turkish and Greek soldiers impassively watch the cars going by. If one stops, they will wave it on, to keep moving. Taking pictures is prohibited, lest a visitor photograph something that could be tactically compromising. Nevertheless, on the Greek side, people build their houses with verandas facing the Pentathaktilos mountain range, which is inaccessible to them. They see it as a kind of defiance of the Turkish occupying forces. On the side of the mountains opposite, an enormous Turkish flag is painted, next to a quote from the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Attaturk, which says, “It’s best to be a Turk.”
Cruising through the streets of Nicosia on the back of his Fugati 750 motorcycle, no one is more aware of that ominous symbol than George Hadjicostas. Hadjicostas lives within 20 kilometers of the town where he was born, but he hasn’t been home in over a generation. As a Greek Cypriot, Hadjicostas is prohibited by Turkish Occupation forces from crossing to the north part of the island.
“What we were trying to do is give a free hand to the people . . . to pressurize your bloody country to help us have a freedom of movement here!”
“Let me put it to you this way,” he says. “I’m living here. Anytime of the day I can go anywhere in Europe I want, without any problem. I could go to London, I could go to Germany, I could go anywhere. But I can’t go where I want in my own bloody country! Where I was born! That’s what’s killing me. That’s what’s killing all of us!”
The owner of a motorcycle shop in the Nicosia suburb Strovolos, Hadjicostas usually spends his days in the loft office above his showroom. When he’s not dealing with his business, he’s arranging the affairs of the Cyprus Motorcycle Federation, of which he is president. An large man, the muscular, almost bald Hadjicostas looms behind a giant desk, smoking and drinking Greek coffee in a half-size demitasse cup. Rather than softening his features, his glasses seem merely to concentrate his gaze.
In early 1996, Hadjicostas began organizing a motorcycle protest that would lead, the next summer, to the bloodiest clash between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in over twenty years, and would nearly bring Greece and Turkey to war. Two previous motorcycle protests in 1993 and 1995 had led to protester confrontations with United Nations peace-keepers and members of the Turkish army, but had barely registered a blip in the international press. This time, Hadjicostas had been determined that at least the cameras of the international media would be present. At least a hundred European and American bikers would join the rally this time, and instead of starting locally, they would ride from the formerly bifurcated Berlin to Nicosia, now the only divided city in the world.
A motorcycle roars to life downstairs. Hadjicostas stubs his cigarette out in the bottom of his coffee cup. Leaning forward on his massive desk, looks into the eyes of the American visitor. “What we were trying to do is give a free hand to the people . . . to pressurize your bloody country to help us have a freedom of movement here!”
Most Greek Cypriots deeply resent European and American foreign policy which heavily arms Turkey the in the name of “stability in the region” but never puts any pressure on her to end her occupation of Cyprus, or to stop her use of the same weapons against civilian Kurds, a fact that has been documented by international human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Hadjicostas asks what the difference between Cyprus and Kuwait is, and waits, allowing a cold pause to fall in the conversation. Finally, he says, “We have bloody oil in Cyprus! Olive oil!”
If George Hadjicostas represents popular Greek Cypriot animosity toward a foreign occupation army, then Turkish Cypriot poet Nese Yasin exemplifies the revolt of a small group of Cypriot intellectuals and artists, Greek and Turkish, against the forces of nationalism and militarism on both sides which they say are the cause of the last 40 years of suffering on the island. Yasin’s famous idealism and efforts at reconciliation have earned her the enmity of Turkish Cypriot extremists and made her a political symbol for Cyprus government propaganda.
A small woman, Yasin seems at first to recede behind a curtain of black hair which hangs in front of her narrow face and dark eyes. But when she speaks, her soft voice carries her opinions directly; she’s not afraid to disagree with anyone. One of the few Turkish Cypriots living in the government-controlled part of Cyprus, she is currently giving a series of lectures at the Intercollege and the Cyprus University there. The daughter of a famous Turkish Cypriot nationalist poet, pacifist Yasin herself is well known enough to be recognized on the street throughout Cyprus. She has met with politicians and artists throughout the island and internationally; late last fall she met with the famous Greek singer George Dalaras.
George Dalaras is the best known singer in Greece. Even abroad foreign Greeks pack auditoriums to see him. Although his music doesn’t always top the charts in Greece when up against some of the younger, Western-pop inspired songs, it is widely considered the best of what is known as “quality” music, or “music that lasts.” Originally a singer of Laika, the Rembetika-inspired music of the sixties which most foreigners associate with Greece, he now sings the lyrics of famous poets to the music of the country’s best composers.
Dalaras never sings with more passion than when he’s performing for Cyprus. No less than two of his recent albums are specifically about the island. The lyrics are either a protest against invasion, or a lament for what the country has lost, and the audience members know his music so well that they sing along. Dalaras often gives money from his concerts “for the defense of Cyprus,” — in other words, the Greek Cypriot national guard. Of the songs that Dalaras always sings when he visits the island, none is better known than one which describes the pain of separation in Cyprus:
They say that people should love their homeland
That’s what my father often says
My homeland has been divided in two
Which of the two pieces should I love?
The Greek Cypriot crowd quiets, and sings along mournfully as individuals flick their lighters and sway to the music.
What is most remarkable about this hymn to the reunification is that its lyrics were written not by a Greek but by a Turk. It is Nese Yasin’s most famous claim to patriotism for her country. “Which Half” was just one poem of many that Yasin wrote once in a private notebook, which she happened to give to a famous Turkish poet and literary journal editor when she was getting his autograph in the late 1970s. She asked him if he would mind looking at her work; she admired him, and awaited his opinion. A few weeks later, she received a letter in which he said he wanted to publish her work. She was 18.
“I was very excited,” she says, “it was something great for me. I was thinking, one of my poems will be published; then I went and bought the magazine. It was nine pages, and he put almost everything in!”
The magazine eventually found its way to Greek Cypriot poet Elli Peronidis, who had found that the issue was about Cyprus. With help, she translated some of the poetry; eventually Greek Cypriot composer Marios Tokas wrote music to it. Even though Dalaras has been singing her poem for years, Yasin did not meet him until late in 1996. She told him she didn’t like him singing and giving profits to the military.
“He listened,” she said, “he listened very carefully. But he said he believes in it, he believes in defense and things like that. I didn’t say . . . I have no right to say . . . I didn’t mention my song, but in general, I said, ‘I don’t like what you’re doing.’ I don’t know if something changed in him, because someone told me later that he was talking very strangely, and him mentioning that he met me, and his ideas changed. But . . .” Yasin sighs. “He is surrounded by the nationalists.”
Yasin is a pacifist. In one of her essays she talks about the “zero sum” game of a system with two opposing parties, and about the “oppressed” within the “oppressor,” and vice-versa. The writer, she says, can be the rescuer, the one who “is able to put himself in the place of the other.”
The pacifists and peacemakers form a minority in Cyprus. Turks and Greeks talk endlessly of settlement, but rarely of reconciliation. As for the forms of a political settlement, the two sides remain so far apart that it is difficult to imagine what a solution would be. High-level negotiations in the late 1970s suggested a “federal” solution, in which each community would have its own region of the island, which it would govern. This is what the UN special representative Gustave Feissel means when he says “We know what the solution is going to be.” He argues that, unlike many countries with bicommunal differences, in Cyprus the framework for a solution has been found. All that is required, he says, “is the will to do it.” But United Nations negotiators have been saying that for more than twenty years now. What is actually lacking is any sort of agreement about the crucial details.
The Turkish Cypriots envision two autonomous provinces with totally separate administrations that only nominally constitute the same country — in other words, a legitimatization of the status quo. The Greek Cypriots, on the other hand, see a federal solution as a heavy compromise; they envision a single state, with one international personality, with complete freedom of movement for all, and permission for everyone to buy property throughout the island. Even that is seen as capitulation by many Greek Cypriots who say they will never accept even the most generous federal solution. Why should some people get their houses back while others don’t, they ask? Moreover, why should some people be forced to live under Turkish administration? It is all or nothing, they say.
On their side, the Greeks have international law and United Nations security Council resolutions, which if implemented, they say, would solve the problem with no need for a compromise solution, or the surrender of land.
On their side, the Turkish Cypriots have the Turkish army which maintains close to forty thousand troops on the island in spite of United Nations resolutions. Perhaps more difficult to resolve than the format a federation would take is the issue of “security.” Despite the recent controversy surrounding the Cypriot government’s decision to buy the S-300 anti-aircraft missile-system from Russia, President Cleridis has long said he will support a total demilitarization of the island any time the Turkish Cypriot side is ready. The current Turkish Cypriot leaders, however, have said they will never accept a solution without the Turkish Army “guarantee.”
As these political problems fester the two communities grow ever more alienated from each other. Before 1974, despite their problems, Turks and Greeks often lived in the same villages and worked for the same companies; older Cypriots remember friendships and associations with members of the other community. These memories are in the past. A new generation has grown up with no image of the other side except that which is presented in mass media: the enemy. It was for this reason that in his last report on Cyprus, UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali emphasized the need for more inter-communal contacts, to at least attempt to rebuild a measure of trust between the two communities.
In his book The Clash of Civilizations, Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington argues that in the era after the cold war, the world’s most dangerous military conflicts will not arise from struggles between different social classes or competing ideologies, but from clashes between civilizations, of which he names nine. According to this thesis, wars like the one in Bosnia occur because they are on the “fault line” of civilizations. As Croats have received moral and economic support from Germany and the West, the Bosnian Moslems have been aided by Turkey and Iran, and the Serbs from fellow Orthodox Russia and Greece. Huntington argues that the sympathy generated in Western Europe and the United States for the Bosnian Moslems came about only as a result of that group’s ability to present itself as the victim of genocide; even so, the latent European fear of a Moslem state in Europe has never been overcome. Viewed from Huntington’s paradigm the conflict between Russia and Chechnya, and the war between Armenia and Azerbeijan, can be seen as representative of the same ancient ethnic feud between Orthodox Christianity and Turkic Islam. “For the forty years of the cold war,” he writes, “conflict permeated downward as the superpowers attempted to recruit allies and partners to subvert, convert, or neutralize the allies and partners of the other superpower . . . In the post-Cold War world, multiple communal conflicts have superseded the single superpower conflict . . . In contrast to the Cold War, conflict does not flow down from above, it bubbles up from below.”
If Huntington’s thesis is correct, then the pain of war and partition which Cyprus has experienced in the last 40 years can be seen as an ominous foreshadowing of global conflict in the first part of the next century. Throughout the last decades of the Cold War, Western military strategists complained that the ongoing conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey over Cyprus was a fundamental weakness in NATO’s “southern flank.” In other words, by 1974, the millennium-old Greco-Turkish ethnic conflict was already supplanting the much younger ideological battle between communism and capitalism.
But as seductive as political models like Huntington’s might be in explaining global conflicts as the continuation of ancient ethnic or “civilizational” strife, those same models can also serve to obscure other, more prosaic causes and catalysts for conflict. While it is true that many Greek Cypriots feel solidarity with Orthodox Serbs, just as many Turks felt solidarity with the Bosnian Moslems, Greek Cypriots also feel solidarity with the Moslem Kurds in Turkey, who they see as oppressed by a common enemy. Likewise, in his book Funu, Timorese activist Jose Ramos-Horta goes out of his way to praise Greece and Cyprus for their support of island East Timor, even as Turkey backed aggressor Indonesia. The people of East Timor and Cyprus find solidarity not in ethnic identity, but in the similarity of their historical situations.
International commentators often refer to “ancient animosities” when talking about places like Bosnia or Cyprus; they rarely mention the role of the old imperialist powers or the later global superpowers in consciously fueling those often latent animosities. In countries where populations of different ethnic, racial, or religious groups are intermixed, partition inevitably causes massive dislocation, usually accompanied by violence, and breeds the resentment of the dislocated. Historically, the death of empires has almost always led to division and dislocation; the birth of modern Greece and the other Balkan nations that came with the overthrow of the Ottoman rulers led to the expulsion of thousands of Muslim Turks; the painful birth of modern Turkey over the first quarter of the twentieth century led to the expulsion of a million and a half Greeks, and the extermination — in the world’s first modern, planned genocide — of over a million Armenians.
Partition, says Hitchens, “is an addition on the British part.”
Journalist Christopher Hitchens argues that the conscious policy of “common sense” partition in this century comes from the British Foreign and Colonial Offices. In the last century, the British Foreign or Colonial Offices have partitioned Palestine, India, and Ireland, have suggested partition for South Africa and Vietnam, and laid the groundwork for the partition of Cyprus. “It’s an addiction on the British part,” says Hitchens. Hitchens has written extensively against the current political divisions being imposed in Bosnia, which he believes comes from the same mentality. He points out that Bosnian negotiators Owen and Carrington were trained in the British Foreign Office. Partition, says Hitchens, has so far “always led to another war.”
In the case of the Palestinians and Israel, the continuing violence, even in the light of recent peace-talks, continues; the same is true for Northern Ireland. And the current arms race between India and Pakistan, says Hitchens, is the one most likely to lead to a nuclear exchange. And, judging from the events of 1996, the conflict in Cyprus may yet lead to an all out war between Greece and Turkey.
It has long been said that British colonial policy could be summed up as “divide and rule” — that is, consciously nurture the divisions between communities in a colony as both a means and an excuse to retain control of it; in the era of decolonization, that method become, like the title of Sir Pendal Moon’s early book on the partition of India, “divide and quit.” Sowing discord among different ethnic groups became, according to Hitchens, a method of “covering the retreat and justifying the discord that will follow” the departure of the colonial power.
This is almost certainly the case in Cyprus, which was given to the British by the Ottoman Empire in 1878, for its assistance in the Crimean war. Hitchens points out that throughout the British period in Cyprus, there was no violence between Greeks and Turks on the island. In that period, Greek Cypriots, who were 80 percent of the population, periodically requested that colonial rule end and that the island be ceded to Greece. Their request was repeatedly dismissed, although there were always some in the colonial administration who saw the wisdom of hinting at the eventual possibility of union — particularly during the Second World War, when the slogan, “fight for Britain and for Greece” was effectively used to recruit many Greek Cypriots into the British army against the Germans.
In the 1950s, the Cypriot Orthodox Church conducted a plebiscite of revealing that over 95 percent wanted to end British rule and unify with Greece. The issue was no longer only one of enosis (union) — although that was the popular slogan used — but one of self-determination; that is, the will of the majority of people in a region, as defined by the United Nations.
C.M. Woodhouse, a British Intelligence officers in Greece during the Second World War and for years after, says in his autobiography that in 1954, Harold Macmillan, then British Governor of Cyprus, “was urging us to stir up the Turks in order to neutralize Greek agitation. I wrote a minute in opposition to this tactic.”
Within six months after the beginning of the Greek Cypriot guerrilla uprising in 1955, the British had let go of the word “never” regarding self-determination in Cyprus, but they insisted that the current timing was poor, and struggled to keep Greece from bringing the matter before the United Nations. Instead, they suggested a tripartite conference with Greece, Britain and Turkey. By this time, Turkish interest in the affairs of the island was well established.
In September of 1955, someone bombed the Turkish consulate in the mainland Greek city of Salonika; on the property was the house where Attaturk, the founder of modern Turkey, had been born. The massive riots that ensued in Istanbul and Izmir destroyed much of the Greek property in those cities, and greatly contributed to animosity between the two groups. After the 1960 coup in Turkey, former Turkish President Menderes and other government officials were accused of arranging the bomb and organizing the riots. David Hotham, in his book, The Turks, writes that the defense gave evidence that they had been put up to staging a “small” demonstration by Cyprus Governor Macmillan which had gotten out of hand.
In addition, the British began hiring large numbers of Turkish Auxiliary police; for each one shot in the course of fighting the Greek Cypriot Guerrillas, a further wedge was driven between the two communities. It was around this time that the British authorities began to suggest that the island be partitioned between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, even though both communities lived throughout the island. Suggestions later became veiled threats; one propaganda cartoon distributed by British authorities at the time has Greek Cypriot guerrilla leader Grivas (Who took the nom de plume of a mythical Byzantine hero Digenes) in an imaginary dialogue with Greek Cypriot Cynic philosopher Diogenes. Diogenes chastises Digenes, saying his actions will lead to partition. In the last frame of the cartoon, a scissors cuts through a map of Cyprus.
The British knew perfectly well that the Greek Cypriots who lived throughout the island could never agree to such a outcome; one can only assume that they hoped that faced with the possibility of it, the Greeks would give up the fight, or agree to a limited “home rule” plan. The Greeks, however, did not give up; but the Turkish Cypriots who had started their opposition to union with Greece by forming a “Cyprus is Turkish” political party jumped on the new option and now cried out for “Partition or Death.” By the time the compromise constitution of independence was signed in 1960, the wounds from inter-communal fighting were perhaps too deep to heal.
The same Turkish Cypriot groups that cried “Partition or Death” were also responsible for stirring up hostility. In 1956, a bomb exploded at the Information Office of the Turkish Consulate in Nicosia. Thinking it was the Greeks who were to blame, a Turkish Cypriot mob destroyed an adjacent Greek neighborhood, in what Hitchens, in his book on Cyprus, describes as the first physical confrontation between the two communities on the island. Hitchens quotes current Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash as saying that it was, in fact, “a friend of mine . . . who placed the bomb in order to create an atmosphere of tension so that people would know that the Turkish Cypriots mattered.” Forty years later, the wounds gouged by the violence that bomb started have still not healed, and remain a chief cause of Greco-Turkish tensions in the world.
In 1996, relations between Greece and Turkey remain poor. A Turkish ship ran aground on an uninhabited islet in the Dodecanese near the Turkish coast. The ship refused Greek help, saying the islet was Turkish; within days Greeks and Turks were respectively putting up and tearing down one and others’ flags on the island. Reports at the time indicated that the countries were mere hours from all out war before the U.S. State Department secretary Nicholas Burns was able to defuse the situation through shuttle diplomacy. Members of Parliament in Greece accused the then new prime minister of Greece of treason and demanded his resignation.
Through the spring, Greek and Turkish warplanes violated each other’s airspace, and often came close to engagement. In June, the Turkish government made a statement that it “neither accepts nor denies” Greek sovereignty on the island of Gavdos. Gavdos, a tiny island south of Crete, is over 250 miles away from the Turkish coast, and has only Greeks living on it. To the predictable Greek outrage at the statement, the Turkish government issued a statement that their point was not political; it was only a “technical” matter.
As the spring of 1996 progressed, the Cyprus government expressed growing concern about the motorcycle protest. The United Nations told the government that it was their responsibility to keep protesters out of the buffer zone to avoid clashes. The Government started calling meetings with Hadjicostas.
“They wanted us to hold the protest on the old Limassol road,” he says, “away from the Green Line. Our aim was to show the Turkish army forbidding freedom of movement, not just live to friends who had come from Europe, but also through the camera to show the world. Doing the demonstration on the Limassol road is meaningless. So we insisted.”
In June, a Greek Cypriot soldier was killed on the Green Line; he had apparently befriended a Turkish soldier opposite, and had entered the buffer zone to exchange hats with his comrade. As he approached, Turkish forces shot him; they then prevented Greek soldiers from getting to the bleeding body by firing over their heads. By the time Cypriot National Guard forces were allowed to recover him, the soldier was dead.
As the summer wore on, Hadjicostas started holding press conferences in which he suggested that it would look very bad for Cyprus if at a protest for freedom of movement, the world saw Greek Cypriot policemen instead of Turkish troops. Members of the government still tried to convince Hadjicostas to call it off. He met with members of parliament, government ministers, and the chief of police. But nothing could shake his determination.
A few weeks before the rally, Hadjicostas says he received death threats from the Turkish side. “I have nine letters. I received them at once, but it wasn’t from one person, it was from various people, some ladies, some men . . . well, I referred it to the police,” he says with a wave of his hand. “Some were direct threats, some were indirect, some of them said, ‘you are a very clever person, you’ve collected so much money now, why don’t you take advantage of it?’ You know what I mean, every letter gives you a direction out of it.”
He says he wasn’t scared; before August, all he could think of was the rally. He even left instructions for how it would be carried out in the event of his death, allowing for others to take over for him.
The Turks, meanwhile were making threats, and had even announced that they were going to bring large numbers of “Gray Wolves” to stage counter protests against the bikers. The Gray Wolves are the youth wing of an extreme right-wing Turkish group that has been connected to wide-spread international terrorism; they made international news most prominently when one of their ex-members shot the Pope in 1981. Founded by the now aging Alpasan Turkes in the early 1970s, its members were responsible for many, if not most, of the murders of leftists, union leaders and intellectuals in Turkey in the widespread exchanges of violence there before the coup in 1980. The outlawed party was allowed back into the political spectrum in the early 1990s, but never got enough votes to gain a seat in parliament; instead they threw their support behind other parties, pulling them to the right. It was the scandal of associations with the Gray Wolves and organized crime which drove Tansu Ciller form office as Prime Minister; she is now secretary of foreign affairs. When the Gray Wolves arrived in Cyprus in the summer of 1996, the Turkish Cypriot papers carried pictures of leader Rauf Denktash greeting them and being hailed as “Gray Wolf Denktash.”
As planned, 122 motorcyclist protesters from all over Europe and Cyprus left from Berlin, a city where freedom of movement had until recently been restricted. The biggest problem of the trip was money; Hadjicostas felt bad that he couldn’t provide food and boarding — the bikers often ended up sleeping on the street. For the route to Cyprus, they went south through Germany and the countries of the former Yugoslavia, and Greece, where they planned to take the ferry to Limassol, Cyprus. Hadjicostas, as the planner of the event, flew back to Cyprus early in order to coordinate the project. The 122 bikers were to be joined by thousands in Cyprus.
The bikers’ planed to attempt to cross into occupied Cyprus at several checkpoints. At each spot, presumably, they would be stopped by the Turkish army, thus showing the cameras and the world the lack of freedom in Cyprus.
Upon his arrival in Cyprus, Hadjicostas was asked to come to the presidential palace for urgent meetings. He met with government ministers and presidential advisors, who told him that they were afraid the protest would start a war which Cyprus was not prepared to win.
“It’s one thing,” says Hadjicostas, “when you hear something from the chief of police. It’s different when you hear it from the President.”
Hadjicostas remembers beginning to feel uneasy about continuing with the protest. It’s one thing, he says, “when you hear something from the chief of police. It’s different when you hear it from the President.”
President Cleridis made a personal request for him to cancel the demonstration. Hadjicostas asked him, if the danger was as real as he said it was, why didn’t he cancel the protest?
“And he said to me, ‘I can’t cancel it, because I’m going to look like a dictator. But I beg of you to do it, because you can do it.’”
Hadjicostas objected. It would be next to impossible, he knew, to control all the bikers now that they were already on the road. The ministers said they believed in him, they knew the bikers would listen to him — they had listened up to now, hadn’t they?
One of the ministers said, “’We know you’re honest people. We’ve checked on that. And we know that everything you do, you do for the good of your country. But some other people, back in 1974 loved their country, thought they would do something good for their country, and they gave half of Cyprus to the Turks. Now you are about to give the other half.’”
The minister was referring to the coup of 1974, in which mainland Greek army officers taking orders from the military dictatorship there overthrew the legitimate government of Cyprus, and attempted to kill President Makarios, all in the name of union with Greece.
Months later, Hadjicostas reflected on the minister’s words. “So you understand,” he says. “I’m not a politician . . . it’s a huge responsibility, which I couldn’t hold on my back. So I decided to call it off.”
Inside the presidential palace, Hadjicostas prepared to announce to an estimated 12,000 bikers who were waiting for a signal to move that the protest was called off, and they should all go home.
It is said that when the Turkish Cypriots moved into Greek Cypriot houses after 1974, they removed all the bathtubs; in one of her essays, Yasin describes the “bathtub phobia” of Turkish Cypriots:
“If you are a foreign journalist and you happen to come to the place called “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” you will see that the authorities have already prepared a program for you . . . There are places you should see and stories you should listen to.”
She goes on to describe the “Museum of Barbarism.” It is the place, she writes, where the Turks say a Greek Cypriots murdered a Turkish Cypriot colonel’s family in the war of 1963. The colonel’s wife and children were killed in the bathtub; according to Yasin, pictures of their bodies are everywhere, not just at the museum, but in all of Northern Cyprus. Children who visit the museum, she says, sometimes have to see psychiatrists.
Neither the Greek nor the Turkish side had gone into the 1960 compromise in good faith. Most Greek Cypriots resented an agreement which had denied them of their majority will, and which they felt had given far too much power to the Turkish Cypriots. The Turkish Cypriots, were granted a permanent veto in all legislative matters and were granted 30 percent of the civil service jobs, even though they were only 18 percent of the population. In addition, the mainland Turkish government had introduced a “Treaty of Guarantee” clause which they later used as the pretext for invasion. They set invasion plans in motion during the civil war of 1963–64, but were held off by President Johnson. Those elements in the Turkish Cypriot community who advocated closer links with the Greeks were silenced; the leaders of the Turkish Cypriot opposition parties were murdered by the Turkish Cypriot terrorist group T.M.T. in 1962.
On the Greek side, many voices continued to call for enosis with Greece. President Makarios attempted to balance the concerns of different sides in a way that appeased none. To the enosists, he hinted that their dream could be realized at some future date. While they were not mollified, his word succeeded in alienating the already suspicious Turkish Cypriots.
In 1963, President Makarios proposed changes to the constitution which would have abolished the Turkish Cypriot right to veto, and allotted government jobs to the Turks and Greeks in proportion to their respective populations on the island. Even if the changes were eventually necessary or fair, they were certainly ill-timed. The wounds of 1955–59 had not even begun to heal yet; this legal change seemed to the Turkish Cypriots not an alteration, but a provocation.
On December 21, 1963, two Greek Cypriot policemen stopped a Turkish Cypriot car ostensibly to search it for weapons. Shots were fired, and a civil war that lasted through the next year had begun; sociologist R.A. Patrick estimates that 200 Greek Cypriots and 350 Turkish Cypriots were killed. Characterized by vicious attacks against civilians by both sides, it seemed that the 1963–64 war would forever destroy goodwill between the two communities. That year was remembered from then on by the Turkish Cypriots as the year of the Christmas Massacres.
Because of the violence, many Turkish Cypriots left their village homes and crowded into tiny Turkish enclaves. This separation, encouraged by fear of Greek violence and the partitionist goals of some Turkish Cypriot leaders, became the first physical partition on the island, and laid the groundwork for the invasion of 1974.
The Bay of Morphou, on the Northern side of Cyprus, is visible from a road in the government-controlled region, near the village of Peristerona; it glistens, flat in the distance, like a mirage on the horizon. Peristerona itself is an old Greek-Turkish mixed village; the tenth century Orthodox church there lies only a couple hundred meters from the old mosque. Before 1974, the village was often pointed to as an example of peaceful coexistence between Greeks and Turks; now the Turks are gone.
Because Yasin lives in Greek Cyprus, she can visit Peristerona, the village where she was born, any time she wants to. She says she knows the Greek woman who now lives in her old house. Yasin was only four when her family had to leave Peristerona in the war of 1964, but she has some strong memories of that time, particularly when her brother was born, late in 1963. Her father was away in Nicosia and unable to return to the village due to violence in the city, when her mother went into labor; so two neighbors put Yasin’s mother and grandmother in a car to go to a Nicosia clinic.
On the road, they were stopped by Greek Cypriot irregulars who were controlling movement in the area. They arrested the two Turkish Cypriot men, and took Yasin’s mother and grandmother to a Greek hospital. The women never saw the car again. Yasin’s mother had the baby, but they had no way to get back, and because everything had been taken away from them, the baby had nothing to wear. Finally, when people in the village found out was happening, a Greek neighbor went to the hospital, and picked them up. On the way back they were stopped again, and the man was asked who the people with him were. “She is my daughter,” said the man. They were let through.
“Although my mother was kidnapped by Greeks, she was also saved by Greeks. So this made me think that there are bad people and good people. I mean, I didn’t create an evil figure of the enemy, because it was the enemy who saved my mother as well.”
Many years later, Yasin reflects on how that story continues to affect her views about Greeks and Turks. “This is very important in my life,” she says. “Although my mother was kidnapped by Greeks, she was also saved by Greeks. So this made me think that there are bad people and good people. I mean, I didn’t create an evil figure of the enemy, because it was the enemy who saved my mother as well.”
It wasn’t too much later that Yasin’s family was forced to move to the Turkish enclaves of Nicosia. Even years after, when they had the chance to move back to Peristerona, they didn’t. The house had been looted, the doors ripped off. The Turkish Cypriot authorities discouraged them and other Turks from going home, and the families followed their instructions, because, according to Yasin, they were afraid for their lives.
Hadjicostas admits that the Greeks undoubtedly made mistakes in the 1960s. While some Greek Cypriots deny that their side ever committed atrocities against the Turkish Cypriots, Hadjicostas suspects that they did. “I can’t check if it’s true or not, but that’s what the Turks say, and it’s probably right. It’s not an excuse to do 100 times worse. That doesn’t mean that Turkey with an army of 1 million should invade our little island, and take half of it.”
When asked about the specifics of his own experiences in the 1960s, Hadjicostas is vague; he was very young, only eight at the time of the war in 1964, and there were no Turks living in his village. He did, however, hire Turkish Cypriot laborers to help him build his house in Tymbou before the 1974 invasion — he says now that those men were close friends.
He also made Turkish Cypriot friends while living in London after the invasion, until he returned to Cyprus in 1981. Even now, he says, they call him on the phone and tell him that when the Cyprus problem is solved, they’ll come back and live in Larnaca — a large southern port town — where their old houses stand.
“So what Turkey says, that they came to protect the Turkish people, it’s rubbish! It used to be 120,000 Turkish Cypriot people before the invasion, and today it’s 40,000. So the other two thirds already emigrated. So it’s not true they came to protect the Turkish Cypriot people.”
The Turkish army allegedly came to protect the Turkish Cypriot community, which, according to both, was threatened with immediate annihilation after the coup. In Northern Cyprus and in Turkey, the invasion is referred to as a “peace operation.”
In reality, no one knows exactly how many Turkish Cypriots have left Northern Cyprus, but it is clear that their population has more than been replaced by large numbers of Anatolian settlers. Depending on who is talking about it, Turkish Cypriots are deeply resentful of their Anatolian compatriots, who have brought a different culture and new problems to the cities of Northern Cyprus. Accurate crime figures are difficult to come by, but some Turkish Cypriots say that it is now dangerous to walk in the occupied part of Nicosia at night, whereas it once was carefree; and that people can’t leave their bicycles outside at night anymore. Relations with the enormous number of soldiers are difficult as well. Locals say that soldiers from Turkey have the arrogance to claim that they have saved the Turkish Cypriots.
Asked which of the feuding Greek parties he thought was responsible for the 1974 fiasco, Hadjicostas has a quick answer.
“Yes, I have someone to blame,” he said, “and that someone is Turkey!”
He claims that no one in his family has ever been active in party politics, or was ever a member of the EOKA paramilitary organizations. “Not even up to this day,” he says. He doesn’t even vote, despite the fact that in Cyprus, voting is mandatory; he’s even said it in public, in interviews. “I keep saying it, and if there’s anybody who doesn’t like it, he can take me to court. I don’t believe it’s freedom when you force me to vote. So I never vote.” No one has taken him to court yet.
When asked to talk about his experiences of the invasion, Hadjicostas relays his story dispassionately, repeating often how fortunate he is not to have lost any member of his family. On an island where forty percent of the population are refugees, and most men who were between the ages of 15 and 60 in 1974 were forced to fight during the invasion, Hadjicostas doesn’t feel his story is anything special, and he doesn’t point to any particular moment which directed his later thinking. His experiences, from the chaos of the resistance effort to the sense of desolation scattered individuals felt as they traveled through large portions of the island which had been deserted in the wake of the advancing Turkish army, is emblematic rather than unique.
In 1971, George Hadjicostas left Cyprus to go to England, like many Cypriots to do “shit-work,” to pay off debts on his house. By the summer of 1974, he had paid off what he owed and returned to Cyprus, intending to stay permanently.
The first thing he heard of the invasion were the airplanes. It was hot, he remembers, and the windows were open. He got up and turned on the radio. In the years before he left Cyprus, Hadjicostas had been in the army; he was still a member of the reserves; the radio said that all reservists should report to their nearest meeting place for duty.
All the men of Tymbou from the ages of 16 to 65 collected at the military airport nearby. Hadjicostas was one of the few who had been in the army, so he was sent to back to the Tymbou school yard to train the others how to use a gun. On the second day, a Turkish airplane was shot down, but the pilot ejected. From Tymbou, the makeshift Greek Cypriots defense force saw the parachute, so Hadjicostas and another soldier were sent to retrieve the pilot. They never found him, but, says Hadjicostas, they were able to pose in front of the downed plane for a journalist who was taking pictures, because they were wearing army clothes.
In the first round of the invasion, the Turks occupied only a small part of Cyprus, an area around the northern water-front town of Kyrenia. The immediate result was the fall of the junta in Greece, who, when they realized that they could do nothing against the Turkish military machine, finally gave up power. It is ironic that the invasion resulted in the era of the most freedom and democracy the modern Greek nation has ever had. It is doubly ironic that Turkey takes credit for this even while its own present democratic discourse takes place only within the bounds which the military powers allow. On the 14th of August, in violation of their cease-fires, the Turkish army rolled forward, occupying in two days the remainder of what they continue to occupy today — the northern 40 percent of the island of Cyprus.
When the second round of the invasion occurred, Hadjicostas was again called to serve. Along with several other soldiers, he was sent to cover the road out of Mora, a Turkish village nearby. The soldiers’ instructions were to go out before dark, and station themselves along the road, every hundred meters or so, to watch for the busses which would pass by with Turkish passengers — either soldiers or civilians. They were to order the bus to stop, and if it refused, to shoot. Hadjicostas was armed with a heavy British-made Bren machine-gun.
Hadjicostas waited alone in the grass; not a single person drove by. As the temperature rose, he became anxious for relief; he had been told that one of the students he had trained would be bringing water, and if necessary, more ammunition for the machine-gun. Finally, Hadjicostas got up to find one of his fellow soldiers on the road, to see if he had gotten word of anything, or if they had water, since the temperature was at least forty degrees centigrade. He found no one; so he went home to his village. It was close to lunch-time.
Hadjicostas found his village to be completely empty. In the distance, dogs were barking. He went to his house and put the machine gun in the trunk of his car. As he was gathering his things to leave, he heard a tank roll into the village; he remembers seeing its gunfire streaking by and smashing into the village elementary school. He jumped in his car and drove off in the other direction.
It took three days for Hadjicostas to find his family; in the confusion the islanders had scattered in all directions. Finally, he found his wife, who was pregnant at the time, and his little boy. Even as they were reunited, Hadjicostas got word that his brother had been taken to prison by the Turkish Army and was being held in Turkey.
Later, he also found out that another brother had been wounded in battle. “Sixteen bullets in him, believe it or not, but was not seriously hurt,” he says dryly. “Today he is a walking man, without any handicap. He spent about three months in the hospital, and after that he was going for physical therapy, because one bullet hit the bone of his leg, and some other bullets went through inside, coming in here, out there. Some they just burned him, but it was altogether sixteen bullets.”
Because he had not officially declared his intention to stay in Cyprus, Hadjicostas was one of the first to be officially released from the army; Cypriots who lived abroad were allowed to go early. He had, then, only the clothes on his back; his house was gone, and there was no work to be found. He decided to take his family and go back to England.
The only way out of Cyprus after the invasion was by boat, so Hadjicostas took his family to the port of Limassol, and prepared to leave the next day. That evening, they watched on the television as his brother was released from Turkey in a prisoner exchange. Hadjicostas missed the boat, and went to meet the brother; but in the end, he left Cyprus a few days later, not to return until 1981.
Nese Yasin remembers once when she was young, a child asked her if a Turkish child could be born into a Greek family. She answered with an imaginary story in which two babies were accidentally exchanged in a hospital ward. And then someone said to her, “yes, but what about their blood?” Nese remembers the moment as one of many which made her more and more aware of perceptions which divide the Greeks and Turks in Cyprus.
After the summer of 1974, Yasin’s family was given a Greek Cypriot house whose residents had fled from the invasion. She was 15 years old, and describes it as “a bitter time” for her. Arriving at the house, the family found a dead cat in front, and found their new home had already been looted. Nevertheless, many of former occupants’ old possessions were still there, including pictures which remained on the walls. “So the Greek Cypriots were the enemies,” she says, “and we had to sleep in their beds, and use their sheets . . . it was very strange for me.”
Yasin was given the room of a Greek Cypriot child, and because she remembered having to leave her own home, she empathized. It was at that moment, she says, that she began to doubt things she heard on the radio, or read in the newspapers.
Later, Yasin went to college in Ankara, where she became involved in the student movements there, where she wrote articles for the newspapers herself, which she says the authorities didn’t like. In the years before the Turkish army coup in 1980, a powerful political left grew in Turkey, and Nese was part of the movement, denouncing chauvinism and militarism. In one article she wrote with her brother, she criticized the way both Greek and Turkish Cypriots wrote such nationalistic poetry; among the people they attacked was their father.
After 1980, she got married and stopped writing for a while, but by 1985, she was divorced, and had returned to Cyprus, where she began writing for the newspapers while she looked for a job. She remembers vividly how enthusiastically the man at the Education Department spoke to her about possible job options; but when she finally told him her name, “he was shocked,” she says. The department gave her a job anyway as a high-school teacher, but after one year, her position wasn’t renewed. When her father called for her to ask why, the man said, “We thought maybe she could become a good girl . . . but she wrote in the newspaper.”
It was a difficult time for her; she had kept her son for a while, but then, because she had agreed with the child’s father that whoever was in the best position economically would take him, she sent him to live in Istanbul. Eventually, with no prospects, she took a small gift of money, bought a few plates, and opened a makeshift coffee shop in an unused room at a local youth center. At the time, her supporters wrote articles in the newspaper about how shameful it was for the country that someone so educated and famous was running a coffee shop. Yasin says that at the shop, people often felt embarrassed to be served by her.
But her situation didn’t change until she got an offer from RIK, a Greek Cypriot radio station that had a Turkish program. As part of their public stance on reunification between the two communities, Greek television and radio have, since 1974, put out programs in Turkish as well as programs in Greek about the Turkish community. The work they offered Yasin was mostly freelance, but with the exchange rate, she could just squeeze by. Then, in 1993, she got involved in a campaign that landed her in jail.
She had befriended a Turkish Cypriot conscientious objector to the army. He was thrown in jail, and so was she. Because of the wide exposure the case received, Amnesty International quickly put in a call for her release, and she was let go. Followed for months afterwards by the secret police, she says, she had to endure editorial after editorial in the newspapers which accused her of being a Greek agent. “I could very easily have become a political refugee, but I didn’t want to leave. I insisted to stay,” she says. “I don’t want to be defeated. I want to be here, and I can do many things here. I don’t want to leave.”
At one point she stood as an MP under one of the Turkish Cypriot opposition parties, but was never elected. She remained unemployed until she finally decided to accept an offer to come to the south part of the island. She finally went, she says, “to improve my economic conditions.”
Through the years, Yasin has remained remarkably outspoken, considering the potential dangers. According to international non-profit group, The Committee to Protect Journalists, Turkey currently has more journalists in jail than any other country. The Committee has also expressed grave concern about the continuing occurrence of extra-judicial killings that have claimed the lives of controversial reporters.
In the summer of 1996, a month before the motorcycle protest, Yasin’s friend, journalist Kutlu Adali was murdered outside his home, just six days after the European Human Rights Commission agreed to admit Cyprus’ application against Turkey. Adali’s writings had apparently been quoted extensively at the preliminary proceedings, and it seemed likely that he would have later been asked to testify had he lived.
“Adali’s death was a warning to everybody,” says Yasin. “This is serving to silence people, and many people got affected, and it’s a possibility for anyone to be killed one day.” But Yasin refuses to stop publishing controversial material. “I don’t want to build my life on fear,” she says. Living in the government controlled part of Cyprus, she believes she is actually less secure than she would be in the north, since, she believes, the forces which would silence her from the Turkish community could strike anywhere. “To do it here in south Cyprus is more efficient for them because they can say the Greek Cypriots did it.”
In the days before the motorcycle protest, Yasin was living in north Cyprus. She remembers vividly the tension, and the fear that the protest would throw the whole island into war. Once, on a bus, she watched as some women cried, for fear the island would go to war, and that their sons, who were in the army at the time, would killed. “They were saying, ‘oh, what do they want, we can give everything, we can give the houses back, we can give everything.’ They were very concerned for their sons’ lives,” says Yasin, “and they said they didn’t care about anything else. ‘Give them anything they want, let’s make a solution.’”
Thousands of bikers had been waiting for a signal to move for hours; in the 100 degree Cyprus summer heat, Makarios stadium was a sea of chrome and sweat. Finally, their leader, George Hadjicostas, appeared to make his announcement. The rally had been canceled. In fury, the bikers bolted; there was no way that after so much waiting and anticipation they would suffer the humiliation and turn back. The thousands of young men — many of whom had rented a motorcycle only the day before in order to participate — scattered to different parts of the island to face the Turkish Army. It was in the village of Dherynia that the violence led to death. Dherynia lies directly to the south of the ancient town of Famagusta and its old tourist haven suburb, Varosha. Varosha has been abandoned since 1974, when its inhabitants fled the invasion. Many of them resettled in Dherynia, and can now look across the rolling plane to their old city.
The Cyprus police formed a human chain to keep the protesters out, but the protesters’ numbers were so large that several hundred broke through in to the buffer zone, where they ran back an forth, hurling stones at the soldiers opposite. An hour or so passed; protesters, gradually growing tired of their fruitless anger, began dissipating. But even as Greek energy was wearing down, on the Turkish side, the Gray Wolves were arriving, clearly distinguishable by the triple-crescent flags they carried. A mass of them, armed and with wooden and iron bars, attacked suddenly from behind a grove of acacia trees. Most of the participants and journalists quickly dropped back against the onslaught, but four Greek Cypriots who had been trying to tie a Greek flag to a gate, got caught in the buffer zone barbed wire, and were severely beaten.
To the right of them, a Greek Cypriot protester found himself suddenly isolated, and was surrounded and attacked; a young man named Tassos Isaac rushed forward to help him. He never made it to his comrade; he was several feet away when the mob converged upon him. At least ten Turkish or Turkish Cypriot civilians and policemen jostled for position to hit Issac. At one point, the bushy-haired Greek Cypriot grabbed the legs of one of the men, who fell backward into a sitting position; but Issac was beaten down before he could counter any further.
Photographs and videos taken at the time clearly show Turkish Cypriot police taking part in the beating. Photographer Kostas Kyriakithis has one picture in particular that shows four clubs from police raining down on Issac’s body at the same instant. A helmeted policeman who was wearing his visor down is seen driving a powerful, two handed blow into Issac’s neck. Kyriakithis, photographing the scene at the time, instantly knew the boy was dead. A couple of seconds later, the two United Nations peace-keepers who had fended off the attack on the first protester — the man Issac had run to save — managed to use their shields to break through the mob and pull Issac’s body away.
Hadjicostas experienced all of the protest’s events through the television, from inside the presidential palace. “I was . . . I can’t describe how I felt,” he says. “I was expecting it to be more trouble, I was expecting it to be more killing, and I was feeling helpless to do anything . . . at some stages I was thinking to join them, at some stages I was thinking to go there and call them back, I was so mixed up . . .”
On Wednesday, Hadjicostas and the original European bikers attended Issac’s funeral, along with thousands of other mourners. The president of the Italian motorcycle federation asked Hadjicostas to show him where Tassos Issac had died, so after the funeral, they went with an escort to the demarcation line, and arrived just as the second civilian of the summer died.
Solomon Solomou, a cousin of Issac, was one of many mourners who had gone to lay a wreath were Issac had been killed. Tearing past Greek Cypriot police and United Nations troops, Solomou started up a flagpole to bring down the Turkish flag; less than a quarter of the way up, Turkish troops shot him. On video, Solomou’s half-smoked cigarette flies out of his mouth as his neck explodes with blood, and he sinks to the ground in a crumpled heap. It took several minutes for the United Nations soldiers to be assured that they had permission to recover the body. A few seconds later, the Turkish soldiers fired again, indiscriminately into the crowd. According to the Cyprus government, eleven other Greek Cypriots were wounded, as well as two United Nations soldiers.
Unlike Issac’s funeral, Solomou’s was held, uncharacteristically, at night, to prevent a repeat of the same incident. Among the famous people who attended was George Dalaras, the Greek singer who gives his proceeds to the defense of Cyprus. Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis was in Cyprus at the time, in urgent conferences with President Cleridis; he decided not to attend, in order to avoid inflaming passions even further.
Turkish foreign minister Tansu Ciller praised the soldiers’ actions, saying that Turkey would “break the hands” of anyone who dared to touch its flag. A few days later, a Turkish Cypriot soldier was killed in a mysterious night incident which the Turks blamed on the Greek Cypriots. United Nations investigators said they could determine nothing conclusive from the evidence. One would be hard-pressed to find a Greek Cypriot who doesn’t believe the murder was committed by the Turks themselves, for the sake of propaganda. If that’s the case, it turned out to be successful, as United States diplomats who mention deaths in condemning the recent violence in Cyprus now refer to losses on both sides.
In the fall, a middle aged Greek Cypriot was shot and killed by Turkish troops as he was collecting snails after a rainstorm. The Cyprus government says that autopsies show he was shot in the back; the Turkish side claims that he charged their soldiers with a knife.
After George Dalaras, the second most famous Greek singer is arguably Haris Alexiou. In the fall she released a song about the daughter of Tassos Issac, who was born only a month after his death; in the music-video that played almost continually on Cyprus television for the rest of that year, a little girl is show walking with her father, only to watch him vanish, ghost-like as he lets go of her hand.
In January, the Cyprus government announced that it would purchase a Russian anti-aircraft missile system in order to build up its air-defense as part of its military pact with Greece. The Americans and the British instantly criticized the deal, saying it would destabilize the region; the Turkish government threatened pre-emptive strikes and even hinted at a blockade of the island.
In the same month the missile purchase was announced, Yasin faced a sea of Greek Cypriot faces at a talk she gave at the old Famagusta gate, a portal through the old Venetian walls of the city that had been converted into an auditorium. Yasin told the audience that she opposed the missile purchase, as she opposed all arms build ups. On the whole, the audience was sympathetic to what she had to say; as the talk had been billed a peace meeting, the members were mostly pacifists who, in the question-and-answer session, seemed approving of Yasin, and sharply critical of Yasin’s fellow speaker, Kate Cleridis. A Cyprus MP and the daughter of the current president, Cleridis argued that it wasn’t a contradiction for the Cyprus government to offer its had in peace and at the same time purchase anti-aircraft missiles. One of the questioners said that the people who would buy weapons and risk war never had to scrape a dead body off the ground like he did. Another questioner pointed out that the converted auditorium in which they spoke had once been consider the high-tech defense of its day, designed to keep out the Turkish invaders . . . until the invaders got a more powerful cannon.
Yasin expressed her feelings about the missiles later. “Now I feel less secure both because of the Turkish army and the missiles as well. Those missiles, they cannot be for protection, because when you have a gun in your home, even to protect yourself, you become part of the violence. I don’t think there’s a defense policy on getting militarized . . . there’s no army that claims it is getting militarized to attack others. This is a vicious circle, and there’s no way out.”
But the attendees at the peace meeting did not represent Greek Cypriot public opinion; polls published in the newspapers indicated that the vast majority supported the plan to buy missiles. In reality, the average Greek Cypriot doesn’t believe that it would be possible to defeat the vastly superior Turkish army on the island, but they do think the missiles would at least be a deterrent.
Having recovered from the unsettling events of the last summer, Hadjicostas is planning another motorcycle rally, if he can get the funding, this time with bikers from all over the world; he hopes that it will be much bigger than the previous one. One way or another, he says, as the next generation continues to come of age, the situation in Cyprus cannot remain static. “I live day and night with youngsters, and I know their feelings,” he says. “And I know they are ready to die for their country, the majority of them. Obviously there are a few people who don’t give a damn about the problem, but the majority of them ,” he says, “they don’t accept the situation as it is. They don’t have anything against the Turkish Cypriots, I don’t have anything against the Turkish Cypriots, but I can’t accept the Turkish army, and the Turkish people coming from Turkey, living in my own house, living in my country, and I’m not allowed to go and see my own house.” Hadjicostas leans forward against his thick, wide desk. “If we can’t find a solution through negotiation,” he says, “We’ll find it through fighting.”
