'No to assimilation’
Friday, March 4, 2011
CENGİZ AKTAR
The motto “No to assimilation!” is not about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s advice to Turkish descents in Germany during a visit earlier this week; it is about Cypriot Turks expressing their discontent with Ankara lately. As well, while nowadays everyone is writing about the awakening of people in Arab countries, it would be judicious to also look at the awakening in our immediate neighborhood that is of particular concern to Turkey.
An unprecedented demonstration was organized in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus last Wednesday. The 2nd “Societal Existence Meeting” was a continuation of the first one held on Jan. 28, and an answer to pejorative remarks from Ankara. Participants say more Cypriot Turks than that of the 2004 Annan Plan referendum meetings gathered at the İnönü Square on Wednesday. Apparently, the armed attack against the daily Afrika was not enough to scare anyone, quite to the contrary.
Under the banner of the Trade Union Platform, Cypriot Turks by and large, the Republican Turkish Party, the Communal Democracy Party and the Democratic Party of Serdar Denktaş, the son of former President of Northern Cyprus Rauf Denktaş, joined the crowds supported by a general strike. More than 50,000 demonstrators, which is an enormous figure on the Northern Cyprus scale, from all political views, including Rauf Denktaş’ wife Aydın Denktaş, were there. By looking at the slogans, we see that the “identity” outweighs the “economy”: “This is Our Country. We’ll run it,” “We’re Cypriot-Turks. Who are you?” “Respect Identity,” “No to Annihilation,” and “Resistance against Assimilation.”
The Cypriot Turkish Teachers’ Trade Union, or KTÖS, Secretary-General Şenel Elcil at the podium named Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek in charge of Northern Cyprus “the Minister of Colonies” as the Cypriot Turkish Secondary School Education Teachers’ Trade Union, or KTOEÖS, President Adnan Eraslan, lamented on behalf of the Trade Union Platform: “Why don’t you say that more than what you provide as aid returns back to you? We cannot use our hospitals and schools. We don’t know the size of our population. You are forcing us to attend private schools and hospitals because of the new settlers you send [from Turkey]. We are witnessing mafia warfare, which we are not accustomed to, at casinos and nightclubs. We cannot enjoy walking in the street because of the escalating crime rate. Our prisons are filled to the brim. You are causing social and cultural erosion of Cypriot Turks through mosques, religious complexes and religious propaganda. You allow your friends to build hotels on our most valuable lots but these hotels contribute nothing to our economy. And I think you are unaware of the fact that some of our institutions have been given to the proponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party of Turkey [AKP].”
Population and identity
The Turkish mainland looks today at northern Cyprus through the very same eyes as “Megali Idea” and “Enosis.” It’s been all clear today that Cyprus is nothing but an archaic show of force between Greece and Turkey, that the northern part of the country is seen as a piece of land conquered and that nobody cares what locals might want or demand. Indeed the former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who passed away recently, before anyone else called the 1974 “Peace Operation” a “conquest.”
In the book “Ambassadors’ Account: Cyprus in Turkish Diplomacy,” former Ambassador to Nicosia İnal Batu talks about Rauf Denktaş and his close circles as follows: “Denktaş and people around him are loyal to the homeland. They say, ‘We wish Turkey would annex us so we could become the 82nd province.’” (p. 95)
In the same book, information provided by former Ambassador Asaf İnhan put a final dot on the deliriums of commentators who still claim that Cypriot Turks are arrogant snobs who underrate Anatolian settlers. İnhan admits that the transfer of population from Turkey to the Northern Cyprus was demographic engineering organized by the state. “The Population transfer was rushed and unplanned. This was a direct attempt by Ankara. Cyprus had made no demand in this direction.”
Today, a study conducted by the Center for Quality Research Consultation and Education, or KADEM, reveals that 92 percent of Cypriot Turks are disturbed by the population policy of the government and uncontrolled population flux to the north of Cyprus from Turkey. Eighty percent are disturbed by the construction of new mosques.
It is difficult for a government to manage this crisis when it doesn’t even call it as such. The way to reduce the issue to “economic rationality” or “Mediterranean lethargy” of Cypriot Turks is grossly inadequate. From now on, exactly like people of Tunisia or Egypt, Cypriot Turks are rising up, asking to determine their fate. They are becoming new social actors.
The demand for identity recognition is not against crossbreeding but against Turkey-style Turkification and abuse. If we read it another way around, Cypriot Turks imply, “If I want to be lazy, that’s my business.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=8216no-to-assimilation8217-2011-03-04
while the money was coming in there was no problem...now the money is drying up the tcs see a problem?
you asked for partition, so stop whining, embrace your roots as you keep on telling us and stop whining...
