Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
We live in the past. We negotiate in the past… What we talk about is property and security and guarantees and territory. There has never been any concrete humanitarian content in the history of official negotiations: We do not talk about human rights, we do not talk about war crimes, we do not talk about past in the sense of dealing with it but rather we are trapped in the past and we want our past to shape our future…
There are no reconciliation experts on the teams of negotiators on either side. There are no psychologists, no psychiatrists, no peace activists. No one who has spent so much time in bi-communal groups listening to the needs and concerns of both sides… No expert so to say of the human heart of our communities…
There is no civil society involved, only politicians and officially acceptable negotiators – with all due respect to a few in the teams whose goodwill and expertise we highly respect, this does not change the general picture…
We are stuck in the past…
We are not in an effort to overcome the past and move towards the future with better lessons…
We allow politicians to direct the game…
Again, with all due respect to their goodwill, I will say that there are alternative ways of doing this and we have enough expertise and enough goodwill on the ground to work out a far better and far outreaching and far more effective way of doing things.
We are not speaking about "Truth and Reconciliation Commissions", neither are we talking about those who have committed grave war crimes against humanity…
We are closing our eyes and hoping for the best but in life you can't close your eyes and leave things to lead you wherever they take you… Because it might lead you in places that you wouldn't want to be…
No one is talking about truth and justice…
Not in the negotiations… Not in the joint political party meetings…
Why are we afraid of speaking about truth and justice?
Is it because we might end up with having to break the monuments we have built in ourselves as "heroes" and "saviours"?
Is it the fear of finding out that all our "protectors" are also "responsible" for what went throughout the conflict?
Is it fear of ourselves that we cannot look in the mirror since we will see our face with deep scars?
The scars will always be there in the mirror, reflecting our own true image – why can't we deal with that and instead stay quiet and look the other way? Why can't we see that even if we ignore the mirrors, the scars will be there forever and will always reflect what we have gone through?
The only difference is civil society… There are bi-communal efforts – there has always been even if they are made invisible – to discuss these sensitive issues at every occasion…
The civil society in Cyprus is far more different than the political ruling elites in Cyprus.
The civil society has started tackling the scars showing our tragic past long years ago…
Michalis Kirlitchas, a painter who passed away years ago, was among the first to draw Maratha-Sandallaris-Aloa in the 80s in his paintings…
Worker's Democracy started discussing the tragic killings in Kofinou in the 80s…
Trade unions were the very first to get together – PEO and DEV-ISH were vanguards in this sense when they formed very good working relationships that continue until now…
In the 80s, only after a few years from the partition of our island, civil society working for peace and reconciliation tried getting together – if not in Cyprus, abroad since they were not allowed to meet – in order to sit face to face and talk about our common future on this land…
If not Nicosia or Pyla when possible, then London or Berlin or Moscow or Brussels – the venue did not matter, what mattered was to meet and talk…
Many initiatives were formed, even a joint women's association – Hands Across the Divide – to be together and to move towards the future…
Long before the checkpoints were opened in 2003 when meeting in Cyprus was extremely difficult and up to the mercy and "permission" of authorities particularly from the northern part of our island, there was a will and action on the part of civil society from both communities of the island.
These were times when meeting with people from the other community was considered as being a "traitor" – many people from civil society paid a very high price for simply trying to work for a peaceful island, being fired from jobs, being the target of hate campaigns, being the target in society… But they did not stop. Because they did not get stuck in the past – they were looking towards the future…
At the Cyprus Dialogue Forum, we have been discussing how to deal with our past, how to create a collective memory and how to move towards the future…
As the Bi-communal Relatives of Missing Persons and Victims of War – "Together We Can" Association, on the 31st of January 2017, we got together with a very important South African expert on "Truth and Reconciliation", Hannes Siebert on the Green Line in Nicosia, in the former Fulbright offices…
Hannes Siebert, coming from a place that gave inspiration to other countries in setting up "Truth and Reconciliation Commissions" in dealing with their past currently works in Burma, in Nepal, in Lebanon and he has worked in Bosnia…
This was our third meeting with him and Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot relatives of "missing persons" and victims of war from our association "Together We Can" – the only joint association in Cyprus that brings together relatives and victims from both communities of the island – spoke about what they felt…
Mehmet Ali Gocher, whose brother Naim was taken from his house in December 1963 by three policemen from the Deftera Police Station and who disappeared expressed his feelings…
"How can the Republic of Cyprus policemen commit a crime and they have never been punished?" he said…
Kyriacos Solomi whose brother is "missing" from 1974 noted that those war criminals even from the Second World War are still being sought and punished and gave the example of Milosevic being tried in the international criminal court… Cyprus? No Cyprus… Nothing in Cyprus… He would point out that not only war criminals would get praised for being "heroes" in both communities and commemorated, there would even be monuments built for them… And this hurt Kyriacos…
Vasilis Pantazis spoke about organizing meetings in schools for students to learn the truth, the whole truth, not just part of the truth and told us how he encountered things like "This is not the time" or "These are sensitive issues…" Pretexts for not allowing youngsters to listen to the whole truth… Despite this, we worked throughout last year with EDON youth organisation, bringing together youngsters from ages 12 to 18 together with relatives of "missing persons" and victims of war to speak to them and to show them the alternative truth, the real truth of our country… We trained 500 youngsters and not as part of any "project", not with any "funding" but voluntarily because this is the future of our country and if we don't train and educate our youth, what future lies in wait for them?
Huseyin Rustem Akansoy whose whole family was killed by EOKA-B in 1974 at Maratha, said:
"Almost half of the population of our island encountered such horrible crimes. Are we Cypriots so bad? What got inside us? We know the answer to that: The problem was not the ordinary citizens. The problem was those at the top, putting us in such a position so that they could gain something for themselves…
Throughout my life, I never felt hatred towards Greek Cypriots, I never carried anything bad inside me. This is because I knew that the perpetrators of this massacre were fascists from EOKA-B. My main aim has always been to make an effort at reunifying Cyprus. There were very big obstacles in front of us… The two leaders are continuing negotiations, they are said to be the leaders who are the best agreeable leaders with each other. We might even find them successful. But the negotiations process is now out of the control of Cyprus. Now the "motherlands" have control of the negotiations. As Cypriots, we must realize that the problem is the same for both of us and expand our struggle. We must unite for a common aim. We must reach a point where we will say "As Cypriots we have agreed, no one else should have a say…""
4.2.2017
Photo: Members of Together We Can discussing Truth and Reconciliation...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 5th of March 2017, Sunday.
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