Turkish Cypriots on the way to extinction... Unless stopped!...

He was barely 5 or 6 when I last saw him but now he’s grown up, living in Istanbul and teaching at a university there… He had written to me couple of e-mails to refresh my memory because his grandmother and my mother were close friends. Today he comes to my house so I can sign a book for him but the house is different, so is the garden and he is puzzled:

`This house wasn’t here…`

`No… And the pond wasn’t there, it was here – we moved it some years back…`

`I only remember your mother’s house and the cats…`

There were always cats in this garden and nowadays you can see the fat, furry male cats, passing quickly, not lingering, not stopping because it is the time that they go after female cats. My dog’s cat is still here, still hoping that Jelly would come back to share her food but Jelly has died more than a year ago and is not coming back.

Cats are here but the area has changed dramatically. Chaglayan or any other place in the northern part of Cyprus has changed. People have changed, the population structure has changed and the beautiful relationships of old Cyprus are long gone… There is no more `neighbourhood` concept, only people you do not know and you do not even say a `hello` to… We speak about our area Chaglayan because his grandmother used to live close by and my mother would go to her often… Both my mother and his grandmother are gone now, taking with them the old Cypriot culture that is fast disappearing. To refresh his memory, I offer him watermelon preserve with a glass of water, like my mother would do… He eats and smiles but he has to rush to the checkpoint because he will cross over with his sister, to see the old part of Nicosia, in the south… He likes doing that, he has told me in his e-mails, visiting the old mahalles and trying to remind himself of old memories of Cyprus.

Here, he would feel strange now: The `de facto` population has gone up to 500 thousand in the northern part of the island and the Turkish Cypriots only make up a fifth of that: Barely 20 per cent are Turkish Cypriots, it is estimated and 80 per cent come from Turkey under various pretexts: Some have been here since 1974 and had kids and their kids went to school with our kids so their kids are local kids. But there are other groups whom nobody knows and nobody keeps track of: Illegal labour coming in great numbers because the minimum wage in Turkey is only 200 Cypriot Pounds but in the northern part it is around 300 Cypriot Pounds. So they come to work in jobs that the Turkish Cypriots don’t like to work like cleaning, gardening, collecting oranges, working in construction sites etc. Turkish Cypriot youngsters without jobs go to the southern part of the island to work in construction sites, and the illegal labour from Turkey works in the northern part…There are thousands of university students from Turkey studying here and of course quite a big number of soldiers… When you add up all of this, it comes up to 500 thousand total!

The illegal labour comes in big numbers, looking for `a better life`, bringing their wives and children, their mothers and fathers, to stay in buildings without toilet or water… Sometimes they live in construction sites. They go to the hospitals and their children go to the elementary and secondary schools in the northern part of the island. No one can plan for a population of 500 thousand and the hospitals are not enough, the water is not enough, the electricity is not enough, the schools and the teachers are not enough – there is no infrastructure to support such a big population in the northern part. The teachers’ trade unions have been protesting and saying out loud that there is no way that the infrastructure can support such a population at schools but who listens to them? The flow continues and will continue since people will always be looking for `a better life` for themselves and for their children… On Facebook, a social internet tool, some young Turkish Cypriots created a group called `No more new citizenship to those from Turkey!` and they came under attack, getting threats of being thrown out of the island!

Some months ago, a Turkish Cypriot journalist friend who lives and works in Istanbul had told us that the aim of `Ankara` is to raise the population of the northern part of Cyprus to 650 thousand. That they would give support up to 650 thousand people in the northern part of the island. He was sad, when he told us this, at a meeting – he would come for holidays to Cyprus and he felt hurt that there was so much dramatic change on the island.

No country accepts a population bigger than its own and no country can absorb a population higher than its own local citizens. But this is valid only in places under `normal democratic conditions`, not in a `conflict area` like ours… We still live under conditions of `cease-fire`, hoping that this will change… But for the moment, the northern part of the island simply can’t absorb 500 or 600 thousand people and the future looks bleak unless there is a dramatic change on the island… The fact is that the Turkish Cypriots are in fact in the process of becoming extinct. The survivors will be like `samples` to see…

Can this process be stopped? Sure! If there would be an agreement on the island, then, this is the only chance that Turkish Cypriots have of survival on this island. Otherwise, the process of extinction would continue at a fast pace…

copyleft (c) 2001-05 hamamboculeri.org