Will The Bitterness Ever End?

FROM the top of the Saray Hotel in Nicosia, one can get a good view of thecapital city of Cyprus. It is a contrasting view. The south side is seemingly cluttered with new and modern-looking buildings while the north is untouched by development.
If not for the United Nations' (UN) whitewashed lookout post nearby, the buffer zone cutting across the city and Turkey's flags flying aloft on the northern side, one would not know that Nicosia is actually split into two.
The "green line" separates the Greek quarter in the south while the northern side is controlled by Turkey.
The "green line" was drawn up in 1963 by a joint truce force comprising British troops and liaison officers from the Greek and Turkish contingents.
Currently administered by UN, the line is called such because it was marked on the map using a green China graph pencil by officials of the truce force. The UN headquarters is at the Ledra Palace Hotel, which is located in the buffer zone.
The Saray Hotel is in the north side of the island. A few metres from the hotel, there are buildings whose walls are riddled with bullet marks. Between 1963 and 1974, Greeks' fixation with enosis - union with Greece - had led to a one-sided war against the Turks and the brutal massacres of their men, women and children. Turkish Cypriots on the island were forced to migrate to enclaves covering a mere 3 per cent of the island, which is the third-largest in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia.
In 1974, Turkey - in exercising its rights as a guarantor power - had, after consultations with the other guarantor power the Great Britain, stepped in Cyprus to prevent the genocide.
Ever since the Turkish landing on the northern side of the island on July 20 in 1974, there has not been a single incident. But are things back to normal?
As far as Tahsin Ertugruloglu is concerned, "there is nothing but the Mediterranean sea beyond the borders of the TRNC (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus".
Ertugruloglu, who is in charge of foreign affairs and defence, believes to this day that the Greek Cypriots will never live in harmony with the Turkish Cypriots.
"For them, independence meant union with Greece. Their (Cyprus) application for membership in the European Union (EU) is an indirect attempt for enosis. They consider it as their national duty to hand over a Hellenic Cyprus to the future generation. But they forget that this island was never ruled by the Greeks but by the Ottoman Empire, whose subjects included the Greeks.
"They say they have given up on enosis but we don't believe it."
Ertugruloglu said he does not expect anything much from the Greek Cypriots. "I don't index my future to what the Greek Cypriots are doing.
"We are not saying that we don't want to have anything to do with them but until they grow up and overcome their obsession of having the entire island to themselves, we cannot sit and talk."
TRNC leader Rauf Denktash said he does not trust the Greeks. "The Greek Cypriots are telling the world that the Cyprus problem started in 1974. They forgot the period between 1963 and 1974, the mass graves, the attacks and the hunger we suffered. The fact that they confined us into 3 per cent of the area in Cyprus, threatened us with extinction for 11 years ... the Greek Cypriots have forgotten all that and the world too has forgotten that."
Denktash said he wants an agreement for a statehood, not one of a partnership, with the Greek Cypriots. "Why? So that they will not be able to tell the world that (because) the constitution did not work, they can throw it away and become the Government.
"In statehood, the quality is maintained. We are in charge of our security, we can arrange the conditions for cooperation and in time, this may grow if the Greek Cypriots forget the policy of making Cyprus only theirs."
He said Turkish Cypriots will never submit to Greek Cypriot rule. He wants to take his people to a future where they will be co-founder members and that "their rights will not be on a piece of paper as it was in 1960 but on a basis of statehood, so that the Greek Cypriots will not be able to destroy again".
Denktash said if this does not happen, his duty is to make "my state better, stronger and richer in the future, in cooperation with friendly countries".
Such bitterness among Turkish Cypriots is not surprising.
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus press and information officer Milhan Pampurogullari justifies such a reaction to the fact that "in a Turkish Cypriot family, there is at least one martyr". More than 2,000 Turkish Cypriots had lost their lives in the Greek Cypriots' bid for enosis.
Two of Pampurogullari's cousins, for example, died in the war and two of her aunties lost their husbands. Her father, a teacher, lives until today but with a bullet in one of his hips.
In some of the villages, Turkish Cypriot men had been taken to the south as hostages. After the war, some returned home through an exchange programme with the south. Others, however, were killed and buried in mass graves.
In the villages of Murtaga and Sandallar, victims were children, women and the elderly. The two villages, like many others in the north, are now deserted.
"They (Greek Cypriots) took our men to the south. They killed the others and buried them in mass graves not too far from here," she said at the Murtaga and Sandallar memorial, which was erected in memory of the victims of the war.
A total of 89 bodies were exhumed from the mass graves and re-buried at the memorial. The youngest victim was a four-month-old girl while the eldest was 80 years old.
At another memorial at Atlilar, about 15-minute drive from Murtaga and Sandallar, a total of 37 bodies were recovered from the mass grave.
Pampurogullari was only three years old when Turkey intervened in Cyprus in 1974. "We were visiting my uncle's family at the village near Famagusta. I remembered the jubilation. They (her family members) knew it (Turkish intervention) was coming," she said.
Erdil & Sons Ltd director Ozil Nami was in Ankara, Turkey, during that time. He was 12 years old. "I remembered my father throwing a party when Turkey intervened in Cyprus. He fought in the war in Cyprus but he was asked to go back (to Ankara)," he said.
Ertugruloglu explained that Turkey had tried to intervene in Cyprus twice. The first time was in August 1964 when Turkish jets bombarded Greek Cypriot forces who were pillaging Turkish Cypriot villages.
"Our people were then at the last stage of defence. They only had the sea to their backs... the attack by the Turkish jets saved us. In 1967, the Turkish army attacked again when we were under siege from the Greek Cypriots. Again we were spared," he said.
Denktash agreed that had Turkey not come to save the Turkish Cypriots, "there would be no Turkey Cypriot Muslim person in Cyprus today".
The Turkish army on the island totalled about 30,000. They don't have their own air force base on the island but if anything untowardly happens, their bases are only five minutes away in Turkey. TRNC is also in the midst of having its own coastguards to patrol the seas.
TRNC has its own brigade of between 5,000 and 6,000 personnel led by an army general. This will soon be increased to about 10,000, with a major-general commanding it. A Turkish Cypriot will be appointed as brigadier-general.
It is hardly surprising then to see Turkey flags flying aloft alongside TRNC flags all over northern Cyprus. "This is to signify the affinity we have with the Turkish people and their Government," Ertugruloglu said.

TRNC Waited Far Too Long

TIME waits for no man, so the saying goes. And time certainly did not wait for Turkish Cypriots to regain statehood and their sovereign rights in Cyprus. In fact, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) had waited for far too long - 37 years to be exact - for the Cyprus problem to be settled. And this is at the expense of its economic development.
In the TRNC, the economy has always been second to freedom and settlement. In fact, under more strenuous circumstances from 1963 to 1974 - at the height of the one-sided war against the Turkish Cypriots and the brutal massacres of their men, women and children - it had no economic life at all.
For 27 years since Turkey intervened in Cyprus in 1974 - which put a stop to the one-sided war - the TRNC leader, Rauf Denktash's priority was to regain statehood and the sovereign rights of the Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus.
His priority remains but the TRNC leader realised that one of the ways to gain international recognition is to be strong economically.
"For a very long time, we waited, from year to year, for the Cyprus problem to be settled. We woke up all of a sudden and realised that the Greek Cypriots were using the negotiating table to gain time and the time they gained, they embedded themselves more and more as the Government of Cyprus at our expense.
"The continuation of the talks was working against us because they (the Greek Cypriots) were telling the international community that the Government of Cyprus was talking to the minority (Turkish Cypriots). All these came to light eventually," he said.
During these so-called talks, the TRNC's economy remained static. On top of that, it is slapped with a partial but very damaging economic embargo by the south. This has further stifled growth. Athough the TRNC's economy has gone bad, Denktash still sees light at the end of the tunnel.
"It is still in existence. It still has a foundation on which further improvements will be made."
When the Americans, British and other Western diplomats told him how bad the economy was and to hurry up and accept Greek Cypriots as the government and get it over with, Denktash said: "I asked them if they are not ashamed... (they) allowed Greek Cypriots' embargo to continue for so many years against us... an illegal embargo, not sanctioned by the United Nations. They obeyed it, they accepted it."
TRNC has to, among others, pay Customs duties for exports to Europe, which the south is exempted from. TRNC does not get any aid from other countries either compared with the south which continues to get all the foreign aid to develop their economy.
Ahmet Aker, who is in charge of economic affairs in the TRNC, said the northern side also has limited right of travel and communications. It also has no right to do business and to trade.
"But we have been able to expand with Turkey's help. And we will continue to do so with Turkey's support."
Turkey is the only government which recognises TRNC's existence.
Aker described TRNC's dependence on Turkey as "the support that compensate the disadvantages that we face as a result of the embargo imposed on us. Remove the embargo and we shall need no help from Turkey.
"The fact that Turkey is close, not only in terms of physical distance but also coming to our rescue, is a great consolation. Our people are confident that we will resolve our problems with the efforts and contributions of Turkey."
The TRNC, he said, asks for no special privileges. All it wants is the right to equal opportunity and the possibility to compete in the international economic arena.
"We have been in existence for the last 27 years as a democratic republic. "It does not matter what you call or label us, (but) you cannot deny our existence."
The backbone of the economy in the TRNC is the agriculture sector but its share of the gross domestic product (GDP) is decreasing from year to year. The mainly agriculture-based TRNC economy underwent a major structural transformation with the expansion of its industrial and services sectors.
While the share of the agricultural sector of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dropped from 17.3 per cent in 1975 to 9.3 per cent in 1990, that of industrial sector rose from 8.3 per cent to 18.4 per cent. Last year, the agriculture sector was 7.6 per cent of the GDP.
The TRNC now sees tourism, services, light industries and electronics as its main economic sectors.
Where manufacturing is concerned, there are small-scale enterprises manufacturing cosmetics and in food processing, garment making, meat-processing and citrus-processing.
Looking ahead, Denktash sees potential in turning TRNC into a distribution centre for, not only the 65 million population in Turkey, but also Europe as well.
"The idea of creating free trade zones (FTZs)... to spread their goods from the centre of the Mediterranean to all directions, I think is a very good beginning."
In TRNC, there is already the 115-acre Famagusta Free Port and Zone, offering foreign investors opportunities for transit trade as well as manufacturing opportunities.
Among the activities that can be undertaken in the zone is the assemblying and repair of any kind of ships, banking and insurance services, transshipment and re-export activities and manufacture af all kinds of industrial products. The free port and zone is totally exempted from controls and regulations regarding trade and finance, which are applicable within the TRNC.
The TRNC will also introduce incentives to foreigners who invest less than US$5 million (US$1 = RM3.80) and additional incentives to those who bring in more than US$5 million. Good tax reductions will also be given regardless of nationality.
There are also monetary and fiscal incentives for those who want to invest in the tourism and education sectors in the TRNC. These include free availability of land and also deferment of taxes for 10 years.
The TRNC is also looking at cutting down red-tape by setting up one-stop centres to attend to the needs of the foreign investors.
At present, TRNC has trade relations with some 70 countries. It mostly imports from these countries. Most of its imports are from Japan, in the form of electronic products and vehicles.
While there may still be hindrances in its move towards economic development, Denktash said his people will not be waivered.
The people in TRNC - from its leaders to the lowest paid of personnel - have previously survived on STG30 (STG1 = RM5.54) each a month. The Red Crescent had sent them food but was stopped at the Famagusta Port as the Greek leaders said taxes should be paid for it. Still, the Turkish Cypriots are unmoved in their fight for their rights.
They said "first my freedom, my rights". "We are very sorry for our people who are suffering economically," Denktash said, apologetically. "They are not at fault but we know they will bear with us until the economy improves and they will not ask anyone to bargain on their freedom or their statehood.
"We can improve the economy any time but if we lose the statehood, the sovereign rights of the people, we will not get it back," Denktash said.