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Missing pieces of the mosaic: Mixed marriages… (*)

Sevgul Uludag
I go in search of the missing pieces of the mosaic – to a foreigner who comes for a brief visit, Cyprus might seem like a place where there is only `Turkish-Greek confrontation`, hiding away thousands of years of culture and the influence of different cultures…

I start searching for what is missing in this mosaic called the Cypriot culture… I seek out Armenian Cypriots, Maronite Cypriots, Latin Cypriots… I speak with British Cypriots about their feelings and concerns… I look for `mixed marriages` among Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. In which category can you put them? They don’t fit anywhere, anytime… In order to be together, they had to change religion and their names… Being with the `enemy` has always been a `taboo` and people, once they got married with someone from `the other community` would hide behind their name and start acting like one of their spouse’s community. They would leave everything behind or at least seemingly do so… There would come a time when everyone in the family would prefer to `forget` that they had someone – a grandmother, a grandfather, an aunt or an uncle – from the `other community`… If this came up, they would react harshly… This would be a `secret` to be hidden…

I search for mixed marriages of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots… These marriages are so well hidden that it is difficult to identify who they are and how they live. Many on both sides of the dividing line refuse to speak… One couple who had no peace on either side, years ago now live in Limassol… The guy says, `We’ve had enough… Enough of journalists, enough of people asking… I try to think this is normal, I mean being married with a Greek Cypriot. We don’t see each other as Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot…`

Another couple from Limassol feel more or less the same:

`This is private… We don’t think of each other’s ethnic identity… There is nothing to tell really…`

Others are afraid…

One Turkish Cypriot woman who is married to a relative of a famous Greek Cypriot business family panics:

`Don’t write, please don’t write anything!`

`But they know your story in the north…`

`Not in the south, they don’t…`

`Okay, if you don’t feel comfortable about it, of course I won’t write…`

I speak to a famous Turkish Cypriot nationalist journalist, whose mother is a Greek Cypriot:

`I don’t want to speak, please don’t write anything` he says… `I love my mother… It is true, she is Greek Cypriot but let me tell you why we cannot live together with Greek Cypriots…`

His statement is an irony in itself. He has been living together with his mother all his life but he tries to find pretexts why we can never live together with Greek Cypriots!

On a Saturday morning together with my husband, we travel all the way to Agursos, a village in Paphos, to find the family of Shukru… For three generations, the family has mixed marriages…

Spiros and Demetra who have a house in Kissonerga help us find them… We go with Spiros to speak with Georgulla who is married to Shukru…

Georgulla is a grandmother but she doesn’t look her age… She has a coffe shop where tourists stop when they travel to Paphos…

She was 10 years old, tending the goats and Shukru was couple of years older than her… She had a stepfather who was beating her up all the time since she couldn’t keep the goats properly… Shukru would help her to get her goats together… That’s how they fell in love and when she was about 16, she moved to Shukru’s house… They never got married officially, never had any registration – therefore she never had to change her name or religion… Her sons Alpay and Niyazi also got married with Greek Cypriot women… Niyazi left the southern part of the island about 10 years ago and moved to the northern part, getting married there…

Niyazi was married to Goga in Paphos… They had five kids – Gul, Shukran, Cem, Alpay and Bekir…

On the 15th of July this year the daughter of Goga and Niyazi, Shukran got married with Cem – Cem also comes from a mixed marriage family. His mother is a Greek Cypriot and his father a Turkish Cypriot… His mother, Maria is from Pendaya and his father’s name is Murat Mustafa… Shukran and Cem are now expecting a baby…

Later, I go to Trikomo to interview a Greek Cypriot woman who was married to a Turkish Cypriot man… Her family had reacted to this – back on those times they sent her to London so she wouldn’t see him but he came all the way to London to take her back to Cyprus to be married. She had to change her religion and name in order to be able to get married… She speaks very good Turkish… It is surprising that her children feel comfortable enough to let her speak to me… Most of the children of such couples would `ban` their parents from speaking and would prefer to `disregard` the fact that they come from a mixed marriage…

One such case is in the village Kirni… The Greek Cypriot woman who decided to speak to me gets a `trashing` from her daughters: How dare she disclose such information! She decides to keep quiet in order not to upset her children…

One of the most interesting interviews I do is with Maria Emmanuel… Her great great grandfather was a Turkish Cypriot. They lived in Aya Marina. His name was Ahmet and the family is known as `Ahmediyes`… Ahmet had five kids and they baptized three of them… Two of them were raised as Turkish Cypriot kids… But when he was about to die, the kids started arguing about who will bury him…

The Christian Maronite kids would say:

`We will bury him!…`

The Muslim Turkish Cypriot kids would say:

`No! We will bury our father!`

Ahmet first called his Maronite children:

`Look! I will give you my soul… And I will give my body to my Turkish Cypriot kids!`

He reconciled them – first the Catholic Christian priest came to pray for Ahmet and later, when he died the Turkish Cypriot kids buried him in the traditional Moslem way!

Maria Emmanuel remembers all these stories being told in her family as she was growing up… Until 1963, mixed marriages in Aya Marina where Turkish Cypriots and Maronite Cypriots lived together was common…

`It was fairly easy to change religion and get married back then` Maria remembers…

But the conflict also hits this village: One night a gang of Greek Cypriots come to the village and with some very young Maronites, they start harassing the Turkish Cypriot villagers. According to Maria they also rape some very young Turkish Cypriot girls and torture some Turkish Cypriots from the village… The Turkish Cypriots leave the village, never to return… Families are split and with 1974, Maronites of the village also leave… The village becomes a military zone, where no one can enter…

With the opening of the checkpoints back in 2003, Maria’s family starts tracing their Turkish Cypriot cousins and relatives… They start celebrating both the Bayrams (Moslem Holidays) as well as Easters and baptizing days together!

But not everything is rosy: some Turkish Cypriot cousins react strongly to the interview I publish in YENIDUZEN… One of them calls and says `Why is it so important, after so many years, to write all this stuff? Where were our Maronite relatives when they were torturing my father? Why didn’t they save him from the Greek Cypriots? And all of a sudden they come and say we are your cousins!...`

Nationalism is in our brains – it is our blind spot… It is still effective, forcing our communities to look at different ethnic groups as `good` or `bad`, as `better` or `worse`, as `inferior` or `superior`, justifying the suffering of some or ignoring the fact that not everything is `perfect` as nationalism wants and nothing can be as is described in the textbooks we read at school…

The missing pieces of the mosaic of Cypriot culture still needs to be dug and brought to the surface so people can see how rich and diverse we all are…


(*) Article published in the ALITHIA newspaper on the 2nd of October, 2005.