kalahari wrote:I went to bed earlier than you guys, like a good boy, so missed out on all the flag diatribe last night. As it happens, I was just about to paste this comment up:
When it comes to offensive graffitti, I reckon this one is pretty inflammatory.
Note that this was taken off of Google Earth. I reckon it would be good fun to see if we can find a more blatant example of "piss your enemies off" on the face of this earth.
Incidentally, I am opposed to ALL graffitti – if only from the point of view of social conscience. I reckon that anybody who does it should be dipped in paint and left to go solid. Then give them a bottle of turps and a J cloth and tell them to get on with it! Nail 'em up I say! Nail 'em up!
Gosh that felt rather good.
Seriously, I know it's an old topic and we've dragged it around the block MANY times, but I would be interested to know what Tim (hi Tim) makes of the flag in the light of his initial post.
I know you've apologised for the rantish quality, Tim, but it raises an interesting point – the KILL TURKS graffiti is new. Does this make it more offensive? The flag is older, so does that make it less offensive? If a country is illegally invaded today does that make it more offensive than if the army of invasion is still as armed and resident thirty or more years on?
At what point does offensive graffitti – whether it's KILL TURKS or FUCK AEL – become part of the urban scenery, and at what point does an army of invasion become a legitimate barrack?
Your thoughts, gentlemen, are invited from both sides of our little green line.
Love, Kal
I am surprised that this thread still has any mileage left in it, but I would like to reply to these points.
I was deliberately provocative in both my choice of title for the thread and in the way I worded my first post. I don’t really apologise for this – we have crossed the forty page mark and I think this approach has helped to attract attention to the issue.
I can’t help touching on a point that was raised with reference to my first post. I was informed that, according to “Minor Atrocities of the Twentieth Century” the casualty figures for Cyprus were, for example, in (1955-59):
Turkish Cypriots: 84
Greek Cypriots: 278
Well, doesn’t this illustrate my point? 84 Turkish Cypriots fell victim to ethnic violence in this period, and against such a background graffiti which can be construed as referring to such violence, or even inciting a repetition of such violence, has to be viewed as being highly inflammatory. Otherwise, what is the point of comparing numbers in this way? Is this a biblical “eye for an eye” mentality? “They” got 194 more of “us” than we did of “them”, so we are entitled to even the score. Let us ignore the point that these figures only make sense when the proportion of the total population represented by each group is taken into account. In my opinion, even if the “score” was 10,000 on one side and 1 on the other, it would not in any way detract from the significance of that one life lost.
Let us pursue this point within the context of one documented act of ethnic violence:
(We are in 1956) “Another shooting of a Turkish-Cypriot policeman, in a coffee shop, led to fights with clubs and knives. The funeral on 29 May turned into a riot, and the angry crowd, armed with pick-helves and stakes stormed a factory, beating to death the Greek-Cypriot watchman” (Brendan O’Malley and Ian Craig, The Cyprus Conspiracy, 1999, p36). Now, either you can argue that the Turkish-Cypriot mob was justified in killing an innocent Greek Cypriot on the grounds they “they” killed one of “ours” so we are entitled to kill one of “theirs”. Or, in keeping with all value systems that I am familiar with, be they religious or secular, we can argue that there is a fundamental sanctity to human life and the unprovoked killing of another human being, such as took place here, constitutes the most serious of all crimes. If we accept the latter argument, surely all this bandying of numbers becomes irrelevant.
Having got that off my chest, to address the main question posed, on a naïve and non-political level, I think these flags represent an ugly scar on the landscape. Politically, if nothing else, they accord with the discourse promoted by Denktash and his allies that Greek and Turk can never live side by side and therefore a system of apartheid requires to be imposed on the island, and the self-proclaimed state in the north is the realisation of this project as far as Turkish Cypriots are concerned. (This of course flies in the face of thousands’ of years of ethnic pluralism on this island, and it is also ironic that Rauf Denktash, whose first pet dog was a present from a Greek Cypriot family friend, who in 1964 sought the assistance of his Greek Cypriot friend, Glafkos Clerides, to ensure that his wife and children were taken to the airport and put on a plane to Ankara so that they might escape the conflict that was going on, and who in 1970 was saved from drowning by a Greek Cypriot when his boat capsized off Girne/Kyrenia [information about Denktash from Niyazi Kızılyürek, Doğmamış Bir Devletin Tarihi - Birleşik Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti, p66] has at the same time been one of the most ardent supporters of the separatist project). However, the point remains that these symbols are consistent with the discourse promoted by those who had them erected.
What actual message do they send? Well, on one level I think they point to an inferiority complex. If the architects of the “TRNC” really believed that “we will keep it alive for ever”, to quote the official slogan, I don’t think they would have felt the need to resort to such a gaudy attempt to promote awareness of their self-proclaimed state. On the other hand, these flags are clearly positioned to be visible from as much government-controlled territory as possible, and there is a kind of “in your face” feel to them. The message may not be “kill Greeks”, but there is a subtext which reads “We have ethnically cleansed this part of the island so keep out”. As such it does nothing to promote an atmosphere of peace and reconciliation. I am sure Denktash has no problem with them, but it is debatable whether these flags help to promote the concept of a settlement envisaged by the current CTP government. A small symbolic step, such as no longer illuminating these flags at night, could help so much. But, all we see is lots of talk and nobody prepared to take even the simplest of steps to remove obstacles to reconciliation. A lot like the history of this thread, actually.
On the other hand, the issue of the slogan “kill Turks” in Limassol is more cut and dried in that it conflicts with RoC discourse which argues that it is the legitimate heir of the Zurich and London Agreements and as such is a bicommunal state which is home to both TCs and GCs. Bearing this in mind, removing it should be a much simpler matter than removing the obscene scar on the mountains overlooking Nicosia.
