North Cyprus leads the struggle for end of occupation & reunification

Interesting set of events have taken place in Cyprus, in recent weeks and months. Erdoğan’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, with trademark repugnant smugness to challenge the best that Likud officials can muster, paid a visit to the Turkish Cypriot parliament in north Cyprus.

Prior to his parliamentary visit, he was speaking with a group of settlers, who demanded “priority treatment” in being granted “citizenship” of the “TRNC” (“Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”).

Çavuşoğlu took it upon himself to tell them that “everyone will get citizenship” and that from now on only a “two state solution” is on the table in relation to Cyprus.

Needless to say, such “citizenship” does not necessarily mean citizenship of the Republic of Cyprus, since the “TRNC” is not a recognised state and, to borrow a sentence from Wikipedia, “Northern Cyprus is considered by the international community to be part of the Republic of Cyprus”.

The importance of his statement is that it exemplifies the always held view of the Republic of Turkey, but now made blatant under the current Erdoğan administration, that it calls the shots in north Cyprus, that TRNC is not the state of the Turkish Cypriots, but a mechanism for Turkey to impose its will with only a façade of democracy and self-determination for the Turkish Cypriots.

At the parliament, Deputy Speaker Fazilet Özdenefe, member of the Republican Turkish Party (CTP, left leaning parliamentary opposition party) pointed out to Mr Çavuşoğlu: “We support a federal solution, please take into account our point of view”.

“When my president visited your Parliament you acted like he did not exist. Now we are going to act like you don’t exist. You know that you have PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party) members among your MPs” responded Çavuşoğlu.

CTP, together with the Communal Democracy Party (TDP), former presidents Mustafa Akinci and Mehmet Ali Talat, and the TC Mayor of Nicosia Mehmet Harmanji, had boycotted a speech by Mr Erdoğan during a prior visit.

Another CTP MP interjected: “You are leaving us under a cloud of suspicion by such a claim – please tell us who they are”.

“Go ask the Turkish Embassy, they will tell you”(!), Çavuşoğlu responded.

It is debatable whether any occupier has ever publicly and directly humiliated any colony like this, let alone the minister of a “friendly nation”.  And of course, the spurious charge of PKK affiliation among the CTP ranks is modus operandi for the Erdogan regime in slandering and bullying their opposition.

Of course, referral to the “Turkish Embassy”, is a not too subtle way of telling CTP who is in charge. The irony is, Tufan Erhürman, the leader of CTP publicly denies that there is occupation in the north at every opportunity, in line with official Turkish rhetoric.

When it comes to the Ittihadists who wrote the book on perfidy and fratricide, subordination gets one nowhere!

Like Papa Eftim (born “Pavlos Karahisaridis”, leader of the Turkish speaking Christian Orthodox Karaman community, who aligned with Kemal and his Pan-Turkism in the 1920s and formed a breakaway Orthodox church, in opposition to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople, and yet could not prevent his community’s expulsion for “not being Turkish”) and now like Tufan Erhürman, it only results in abject humiliation.

Of course, I have no expectations of Erhürman. Through inaction and acquiescence, he has become ineffective. He did nothing when journalist Şener Levent was targeted by a mob who, spurred by Erdoğan, stormed the offices of Avrupa newspaper; when Tacan Reynar (the judge who sentenced the perpetrators) was targeted and subsequently resigned; and when Mustafa Akıncı was targeted by Erdoğan seeking Akıncı’s withdrawal from the presidential elections. By doing nothing, one ends up being nothing.

Every indication points to Erdoğan’s plans of annexation before Turkish presidential elections next year.

Being part of the Ittihadist Republic of Turkey would be a bottomless pit. A vast darkness, state oppression, injustice and human suffering – for all of Cyprus and all Cypriots.

First the Turkish Cypriots and then the Greek Cypriots will live in a nightmare that grows darker day by day until they are no longer.

This is a fact proven by the hundred-year lived experience of Anatolian Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, Leftists, student movements, trade unionists and artists.

This list now also includes Erdoğan’s own long standing allies, many of whom have been labelled as “Gülenists” and have lost their freedom without independent judicial process, and had their assets and industrial holdings confiscated.

For Turkish Cypriots, neither appropriated property nor money in the bank can cure or compensate being without a country.

As Cypriots, our backs are against the wall. We have no other way to live but to wise up, abandon ethnic tribalism and act together for the liberation of our common homeland. It’s now or never.

There is occupation in Cyprus. This is the main problem. And humane life only begins when occupation is replaced by international legitimacy, sovereignty, and social justice for the whole island.

And who knows, if we save ourselves, and cease to be a tool for the “deep state” of the Turkish Republic as the Cyprus conflict has always been, we may even be able to support the forces struggling to free Turkey from the historical grasp of Ittihadism.

It is probably worth making a note for the EU, and especially Germany. It is now well established that wartime Germany was complicit in the crimes of Ittihadism during the War.

Hitler took inspiration from the Ittihadists, and in particular from Kemal, and his racist Republican project and that is also well established ( See “Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination”, by Stefan Ihrig).

The ongoing Ittihadist rule in Turkey is not in the interest of EU any more than it is in the interest of the people of Turkey. There is an alternative like never before!

Selahattin Demirtaş, co-leader of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and Osman Kavala, both kept imprisoned by Erdogan despite the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, HDP in general, progressive sections of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) electorate and even sections of the industrial bourgeoisie represent that alternative.

EU has to be more proactive in distancing itself from the Erdoğan regime. The near bankruptcy of the latter and its sensitivity to EU business does not escape us, no matter how much grandstanding Erdoğan may indulge in.

The disturbing events mentioned in this article occurred during Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu’s last visit to north Cyprus last June.