Cyprus –
Divided We Stand
July 1998
Dur: 19’45’’
Reporter - Jonathan Holmes
Empty road, UN vehicle appears#Music#01:00:00#######Holmes: Station Sergeant John Hoitink of the Australian Federal Police has one big headache in his present job: hunters.
###Hoitink in car#Hoitink: They’ll come over this way looking for just about any form of wildlife, including sparrows. And they stand around blasting around at them with shotguns.#01:27###And of course as soon as they start shooting in the buffer zone, the Turks think they’re being shot at, it causes us a huge problem because we’re the one have to go and grab them.
###Checkpoint#v/o: Australian policemen have been patrolling the barren hills of Cyprus every since 1963; a contribution to the longest continuous peace-keeping operation in United Nations history.#01:48###The war that destroyed these villages ended in a cease-fire 25 years ago. But to the north an army of 40,0000 Turkish troops is still on constant alert. To the south, 80,0000 reservists of the Greek Cypriot National Guard can be in action within hours.####Between them, running right across an island that’s only one sixth the size of the Tasmania, runs a strip of no man’s land, sometime kilometres, sometimes only metres, wide. ####Officially it’s called the UN buffer zone. Unofficially it’s known as the dead zone.
####FX: Bell
#02:44##Nicosia/ Bell ringer#v/o: Sunday in Nicosia – one of the last divided cities in the world.
#02:50###FX: Church singing
####v/o: In the southern half of the city and the southern two thirds of the island, the faithful are gathered in the Greek Orthodox Churches. But while some are praying, others are watching. Seven days a week, the soldiers of the Cypriot National Guard stare over their sandbags at what they call the Turkish occupied area, which starts just a few metres away.
###Dead Zone #In between, through the heart of the city, runs the Dead Zone. Fifty metres away, on either side are cars and crowds and cafes. But here you’re in a time-warp a quarter of a century old.
#03:25##Holmes walks with police#Hoitink: Now this area here is the narrowest in the whole buffer zone. At the end of the street it’s only 3.3 metres wide between the two cease-fire lines. Now, prior to ’89 and the unmanning agreement, you had Turkish forces in this building, and national guard forces in that building. And there was a lot of problems with fighting back and forth across the building – bayonets tied on long sticks, throwing stones.
####Holmes: So they were right on these balconies, were they?
####Hoitink: On these balconies as you can see. And they used to tied the bayonets on with poles and try and stab each other across the balconies. And they used to also attach barbed wire to the end of poles and try and drag each other into the buffer zone. Then they could lawfully shoot them.
####v/o: Here in the centre of Nicosia, things are a good deal less tense since the two sides agreed to pull back a few metres nine years ago.#04:20##Holmes in car#But the buffer zone runs for 150 kilometres across the island. UN soldiers and police know all too well that trouble can flare any time, any place along its length.
#0430:###Hayward: I’m not quite sure how much further we can go up here. They’ve got a lot of blockades and barriers up here. So I’m not quite sure how far we can go.
###Holmes and Hayward#v/o: Like the time two years ago when Sergeant Bruce Hayward was sent to the eastern end of the green line.
#04:53###Hayward: And two years ago, these didn’t, these large mounds didn’t exist. They just had a free access road.
####Holmes: And you could walk straight through?
####Hayward: Absolutely, yes.
####Holmes: You certainly can’t do that now. ####Hayward: No.
###Bikies#v/o: In August 1996 Greek nationalist bikies invaded the buffer zone en masse, to protest against the Turkish occupation. #05:14#######A few of them got through to the Turkish side, where on bikes, in full view of news cameras, was beaten to death by Turkish Cypriot civilians and police.
####Three days later, after his funeral, the furious bikies came back into the buffer zone, determined to lay a wreath where their comrade had died.
###Hayward#Hayward: We came to assist the Irish police and the crowd broke through the ranks, they got very emotional, and several thousand demonstrators came into the buffer zone. It was impossible to stop them all.
#05:50##Demonstrators#Singing
####v/o: One Greek-Cypriot man succeeded in getting as far as the Turkish side of the zone. He escaped his UN pursuers and tried to climb the flagpole to remove the Turkish flag. It was the last action of his life.
####Demonstration
####Hayward: I was probably about 15 to 20 metres distance away and I could see it was about to happen, but there was nothing I could do.
#06:32###Shooting
####Hayward: When the firing started, there was mad panic by all the demonstrators.
#06:49###Holmes: Could you hear the bullets going by?
####Hayward: I could hear them, and they were actually landing in the ground in front of us. I really thought at that stage that we’d be killed.
########v/o: Two British UN soldiers and eleven other demonstrators were wounded by Turkish gunfire.
####So what’s the history that’s led to this astonishing hatred and bitterness?
###Holmes rents binoculars#Well, as you rapidly discover in Cyprus, that depends whose eyes you’re looking through. #07:28###Just as in Northern Ireland or Israel, there are two different accounts for almost everything that’s happened here. The Greek Cypriots who stare north across the dead zone at the port city of Famagusta where so many of them used to live, see only a brutal occupation by an alien army. ####The Turks had no right to come to Cyprus, they say, and even less to stay.####Eleni: Cyprus was a Greek island, ###Eleni in museum#and Cyprus is a Greek island, and Cyprus will stay a Greek island.
#07:59###v/o: The Museum of National Struggle in Nicosia is a shrine to the Greek-Cypriot version of history.
####Holmes: There have been Turks living here since 1570.
#08:11###Eleni: Yes.
####Holmes: Do they have any right to be on this island, do you think?
###Super:
ELENI CHRISTOFORIDOU
Curator, Nat. Struggle Museum#Eleni: Nobody is against them. The Greek side, we don’t want to kill them, but they are 17%, 17% it’s a minority. All over the world, in all countries there are 17% minority.
#08:20##Holmes in museum#v/o: The museum is dedicated to the martyrs of EOKA, the nationalists who fought the British through the fifties, not for independence, but for enosis – the union of Cyprus with Greece. The Greek Cypriots call them heroes. The British call them terrorists , and hanged them when they could catch them. #08:39##Archival footage of EOKA##08:58###For the nationalists of EOKA, the independence granted Cyprus in 1959 was a bitter disappointment. The constitution forced the Greek Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios, to share power with the Turkish minority. But the young republic was making the best of it, they argue, until Turkey invaded in 1974.
###Invasion footage#FX: Invasion
#09:24###v/o: Tens of thousands of Greek Cypriots were forced out of their homes in the north. They were replaced by settlers from mainland Turkey.
####Eleni Christoforidou was one of those made homeless. And after 25 years, her bitterness is unabated.
###Eleni#Eleni: In the occupied area we have 500 churches. The Turks change to mosques, to museums, to stable, to coffee shop, to showroom, to anything. Five churches changed to toilet. #09:47###They say let’s have a negotiation. We have 120,000 Anatolians, barbarians, thieves, killers, gypsies and soldiers. They are sitting in our houses, they have all the guns, and – let’s have a negotiation. What kind of a negotiation can we have, what?
#10:02###Woman on microphone: We believe in democracy! We believe in
Freedom! We believe in justice! We also believe in peace!
#10:27##Women holding photos#v/o: On the Greek Cypriot side of the main crossing point in Nicosia, every weekend, mothers and sisters and wives display portraits of their loved ones arrested by the Turks in 1974. Most are no doubt long since dead. But these women insist that they are being held hostage, somewhere.
#10:37###Children singing
####v/o: This is a society where no one, from oldest to youngest, is allowed to forget the past. Most Greek Cypriots will tell you that they no long want union with Greece. They just want a united island. They’ll tell you too that any strife between Turkish and Greek Cypriots was manufactured by outsiders.
#11:02##Eli interview
Super:
ELI STAVROU
Greek-Cypriot#Eli: A solution will be in Cyprus, we shall be together as lived centuries and centuries with the Turks together. Because I must tell you the truth, I love everybody sir. Our religion says love everybody, even the enemies of your, and Turks are not the enemies of us.
#11:22##Blue and white flag#v/o: And yet everywhere in the supposedly independent Republic of Cyprus, the blue and white flag of Greece takes pride of place.
#11:48##Holmes walking through checkpoint#If you’re a foreigner, you can walk through the Greek checkpoint and pass the old Ledra Palace Hotel, where the UN soldiers live. #12:00###A 100 metres to the north, it’s as though you’ve walked through the looking glass. Through another barbed wire barrier and you’re in another country with another motherland, another flag, and another set of posters remembering other atrocities, a different history.
###Holmes in Turkish Republic of North Cyprus#The Turkish Republic of North Cyprus is recognised by no other country on earth except Turkey itself. But its leader justifies its existence by referring to his version of history.
#12:34##Denktash interview
Super:
RAUF DENKTASH
Turkish-Cypriot Leader#Denktash: We were confined to three percent of the area, and in little enclaves surrounded by Greek troops and Greek Cypriot troops for 11 years – denied all our rights. This was the policy for 11 years and no one cared. #12:48###This dividing line, as everybody says, what a shame, is it necessary, should it be, has an answer to it. The common graves, go and see it.###Car arriving at memorial#Village after village was surrounded up, and people were lined up, irrespective of age – 16 day old babies, 1 year old, 2 year old, 3 year old, the whole population of an elementary school and killed. Why? Because Makarios had made a statement in 1964, if Turkey comes to save Turkish Cypriots – and Turkey had the right to come and save us – Turkey will find no Turkish Cypriot to save.
#13:17##Homes at memorial#v/o: Elaborate memorials to obscene massacres dot the landscape of northern Cyprus. On their marble walls, the subliminal message is driven home: when Greeks and Turks share the same territory, you were not safe, your families were not safe.
#13:48##Holmes walks among old city#Holmes: The whole of this tiny island is crisscrossed with walls and fences and boundaries, some old, some new. These walls in fact were originally built by the Venetians to protect the city of Famagusta from the Ottoman Turks. But eventually the Turks won, and the beautiful church over there became a mosque. Four hundred years later, in an independent Cyprus of the 1960s, this old city here was in fact an enclave for Turkish Cypriots who very seldom dared to venture outside its walls.
#14:08##Famagusta port#The Greeks who were expelled from Famagusta in 1974 remember it as the wealthiest city in Cyprus.#14:37###It’s not so rich now. Many young men have no jobs. All trade must come through turkey. So must the tourists, and few of them find their way to Zeka Hosgur’s little antique shop. But at least now, unlike the 1960s he says, he feels secure from Greek Cypriot oppression.
###Hosgur interview
Super:
ZEKA HOSGUR
Turkish-Cypriot#Hosgur: They were blocking the roads, they were arresting us. So I myself, three times, has been arrested for nothing. And I was very afraid, because they had many shotguns with many armed guards, you know, automatic guns. Up to 1974 we were not safe. It is true, believe me, I’m not talking with my military thing. Don’t worry.
#15:04###Holmes: How do you think Turkish Cypriots would feel if the Greek Cypriots could move back here.
####Hosgur: I don’t trust them. Maybe still now, I have many friends, we talk as friends, but I don’t trust them.
###Holmes with Nami#v/o: But some Cypriots on both sides of the battle zone have been trying to build trust between the two communities. #15:44###Kemal Nami is an Australian-born Turkish Cypriot who is a student in Famagusta. Several times last year he attended meetings with Greek Cypriot students, organised by the United Nations.
####Holmes: So what did you expect ###Nami interview#before you met the Greek Cypriots. What did you think they were going to be like?
#16:05##Super:
KEMAL NAMI
Turkish-Cypriot#Nami: Everyone had this kind of vision that they were going to meet with some creatures, some monsters.
####Holmes: So what did you actually discover?
####Nami: Well, everyone found out that it was quite different, and they were astonished. First of all we realised that we’re all human beings, as a starter. And then we started to realise that we had a lot of common things.
####Holmes: You’re all Cypriots for example?
####Nami: Yep, yep. It was quite interesting and successful.
###Exterior radio station#v/o: Back on the Greek Cypriot side of Nicosia I found another voice calling for reconciliation.
Nese: Hello everybody, hello Cyprus as a whole.#16:37##Holmes and Nese in studio#Welcome to the Peace Garden, the first bi-communal program of Cyprus.
v/o: Trying to rebuild trust between the divided communities is almost a subversive activity. In Cyprus.#16:45###Nese Yasin is an unusual woman. A Turkish Cypriot poet and peace activist who’s decided to live in the Greek Cypriot side.
####Nese: You can dial 1010 and do not worry that your English is not good enough…####v/o: Nese’s weekly radio show is in English because it’s the only language Greek and Turk have in common. But there’s a problem with the new direct-dial telephone connection from the north, and only Greek Cypriot listeners get through.
####Woman Caller: My salutations to my Turkish Cypriot friends, Amreah, Kalih, and Geoff…
#17:25##Holmes question to caller#v/o: I discovered that like Kemal Nami in Famagusta, the Greek Cypriot caller had made friends across the buffer zone at UN-organised bi-communal meetings. And her reactions were the same as Kemal’s.
####Caller: I discovered that the Turkish Cypriots are just people like us and they want peace too, and I love them, I want to be friends with them.
#17:46###FX: Sirens
###UN Training exercise#v/o: But the UN Peacekeepers have had to stop trying to bring the two sides together. Instead, they’re now training to keep them apart.
#18:02###FX: Sirens
####v/o: The Greek Cypriot government’s application to join the European Union, without consulting the north, has infuriated the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Denktash. Earlier his year, he abruptly put a stop to the bi-communal meetings. Now threats and accusations are being hurled by both sides.
####Music
###Pyla, Holmes in car#v/o: One of the few places that Turkish and Greek Cypriots can still meet is at Pyla, a village within the UN Buffer Zone, where members of both communities have always lived peaceably together. #18:40###Mind you, most of the time they keep themselves to themselves.
###Men playing backgammon in café #In the Turkish café, the old men play backgammon, as their forefathers have done in Cyprus for 400 years or so.
#18:57###And in the Greek café across the street, they discuss the state of the world, as Greeks have done since Socrates.
###Pavlou in café
Super:
YIANNOS PAVLOU
Greek Cypriot#Pavlou: People live together for so many years, hundred, two hundred years. But because the politics, that’s the trouble. Politics my friend.
#19:15###Holmes: So do you go across and have coffee over that side sometimes?
####Pavlou: No problem. Listen my friend, this is the true story. It’s no problem. The problem is the big, big boss, the big fish eat the small fish, true? Of course!
###Amphitheatre at night#Compere: … due to the refusal of Mr Rauf Denktash to allow them to take part in rehearsals…
#19:47###v/o: The only bi-communal choir in Cyprus is putting on a concert, without its Turkish Cypriot members.
####Compere: The choir still insists in sending a message of friendship and peace…
####Choir song
####v/o: There have always been bigger fish than Mr Denktash keeping the two communities in Cyprus apart. Greece and Turkey, Britain and America, have all had their agendas here. But the island’s own history and hatreds are still powerful ingredients of the brew.
####When the message of peace and friendship must be sung by half a choir to a stadium which is three-quarters empty, the omens for would-be peacemakers aren’t good.
#20:28
Ends
20:45 ##
Denktash Interview - 5’00’’
Denktash interview#Holmes: Why are you causing, if I may put it this way, so much fuss? Why is it such an issue that the Greek Cypriots have imported, or are proposing to import, some missiles from Russia, when you 35,000 troops on this side of the island.
#00:22:00##
Super:
RAUF DENKTASH
Turkish-Cypriot Leader#Denktash: Why are we making so much fuss about it? Because this is an indication that they do not want an understanding with us. They are giving military bases to Greece. They are importing paid soldiers from Greece.
#22:21###Holmes: But you have a whole Turkish army on this part of the island?
#22:33###Denktash: But I don’t want to have this whole Turkish army in the island. We are working for a settlement which would remove the major part of the Turkish army, Turkish said, settle and I will go. I will only leave the guaranteed part of the soldiers.
####Holmes: But if you have a right to defence while these negotiations are going on why don’t the Greeks Cypriots?
####Denktash: The thing is this. Turkey has been here for 24 years now, and they have not moved 24 inches in the direction of acceptance. Turkey has a right, as a guarantor to come to our aid. How? By air and sea. What are the Greek Cypriots taking precautions against? Against the air force of Turkey. Why? Because this was ? ? until Greek Cypriots attack us. So they are taking precautions against that kind of eventuality because they have a policy and they say so, their commanders say so, we are here in order to take our sovereignty to ? and to the whole island. #22:58######Clerides interview
Super:
GLAFKOS CLERIDES
President, Republic of Cyprus#Clerides: What is the worry of that if it does not attend to attack us. These missiles are ground to air. They are purely defensive. If the Turkish Air Force does not intend to attack, why do they make such a big song?
#23:42###Holmes: Well I asked Mr Denktash exactly that and he said that you were planning to invade the north and you needed the cover to knock out the Turkish Air Force.
#23:58###Clerides: Oh come on. A country of half a million to invade to invade the northern face of 65-70 million. Turkey alone has in peace time one of the biggest armies in Europe. Five hundred thousand troops. It has over 1,200 modernised American tanks. It has at least 300 F16s and I am – do they take us for a lunatic that we are going to attack the north and bring Turkey into the play.
####Holmes: So you think this whole thing’s a ploy by Mr Denktash, do you?
####Clerides: Of course it is a ploy by Mr Denktash. He knows we may be patriotic but we are not mad.
#24:50##Denktash interview#Denktash: If they are not going to attack us, nothing is going to happen. Turkey has been here 24 years urging us to solve the problem, calling upon them to solve the problem. So why, all of a sudden, this movement into the direction of EU membership, Greece saying by doing so, when Cyprus becomes a member, the boundaries of Europe will come to Cyprus, meaning that Turkey will now confront Europe and not merely Greek Cypriots. And therefore what is that result, the result is Cyprus becomes virtually a Greek colony, through Europe. This is the game they are playing. And they are preparing for it because they know Turkey will never accept this.
#25:02##Clerides interview#Holmes: How dangerous do you think the current situation is?
#25:46###Clerides: I don’t think the current situation is any more dangerous than it has been in the past. But what I fear is that any prolonged period of deadlock creates a vacuum, it plays into also the hands of extremists on both sides. And when you have a long line, about 150 kilometres, with soldiers on the one side and soldiers on the other, with their fingers on the trigger, you may get an unforeseen development, an escalation.
###Denktash interview#Denktash: The situation is getting tenser and tenser. If these people do bring these missiles, they have already given bases to Greece and they’re giving a sea base to Greece, then I’m afraid that no one can know what will happen after that.
#26:37###Holmes: Thank you very much, Mr Denktash.
#
Ends: 27:00##
Credits
ABC Australia
Reporter JONATHAN HOLMES
Camera GEOFF CLEGG
Sound SCOTT TAYLOR
Editor WENDY TWYBILL
Producer IVO BURUM
_______________________________________________________________________________
VAT No. 564039833 Website: http://www.journeyman.co.uk Page # PAGE #1#
Divided We Stand
July 1998
Dur: 19’45’’
Reporter - Jonathan Holmes
Empty road, UN vehicle appears#Music#01:00:00#######Holmes: Station Sergeant John Hoitink of the Australian Federal Police has one big headache in his present job: hunters.
###Hoitink in car#Hoitink: They’ll come over this way looking for just about any form of wildlife, including sparrows. And they stand around blasting around at them with shotguns.#01:27###And of course as soon as they start shooting in the buffer zone, the Turks think they’re being shot at, it causes us a huge problem because we’re the one have to go and grab them.
###Checkpoint#v/o: Australian policemen have been patrolling the barren hills of Cyprus every since 1963; a contribution to the longest continuous peace-keeping operation in United Nations history.#01:48###The war that destroyed these villages ended in a cease-fire 25 years ago. But to the north an army of 40,0000 Turkish troops is still on constant alert. To the south, 80,0000 reservists of the Greek Cypriot National Guard can be in action within hours.####Between them, running right across an island that’s only one sixth the size of the Tasmania, runs a strip of no man’s land, sometime kilometres, sometimes only metres, wide. ####Officially it’s called the UN buffer zone. Unofficially it’s known as the dead zone.
####FX: Bell
#02:44##Nicosia/ Bell ringer#v/o: Sunday in Nicosia – one of the last divided cities in the world.
#02:50###FX: Church singing
####v/o: In the southern half of the city and the southern two thirds of the island, the faithful are gathered in the Greek Orthodox Churches. But while some are praying, others are watching. Seven days a week, the soldiers of the Cypriot National Guard stare over their sandbags at what they call the Turkish occupied area, which starts just a few metres away.
###Dead Zone #In between, through the heart of the city, runs the Dead Zone. Fifty metres away, on either side are cars and crowds and cafes. But here you’re in a time-warp a quarter of a century old.
#03:25##Holmes walks with police#Hoitink: Now this area here is the narrowest in the whole buffer zone. At the end of the street it’s only 3.3 metres wide between the two cease-fire lines. Now, prior to ’89 and the unmanning agreement, you had Turkish forces in this building, and national guard forces in that building. And there was a lot of problems with fighting back and forth across the building – bayonets tied on long sticks, throwing stones.
####Holmes: So they were right on these balconies, were they?
####Hoitink: On these balconies as you can see. And they used to tied the bayonets on with poles and try and stab each other across the balconies. And they used to also attach barbed wire to the end of poles and try and drag each other into the buffer zone. Then they could lawfully shoot them.
####v/o: Here in the centre of Nicosia, things are a good deal less tense since the two sides agreed to pull back a few metres nine years ago.#04:20##Holmes in car#But the buffer zone runs for 150 kilometres across the island. UN soldiers and police know all too well that trouble can flare any time, any place along its length.
#0430:###Hayward: I’m not quite sure how much further we can go up here. They’ve got a lot of blockades and barriers up here. So I’m not quite sure how far we can go.
###Holmes and Hayward#v/o: Like the time two years ago when Sergeant Bruce Hayward was sent to the eastern end of the green line.
#04:53###Hayward: And two years ago, these didn’t, these large mounds didn’t exist. They just had a free access road.
####Holmes: And you could walk straight through?
####Hayward: Absolutely, yes.
####Holmes: You certainly can’t do that now. ####Hayward: No.
###Bikies#v/o: In August 1996 Greek nationalist bikies invaded the buffer zone en masse, to protest against the Turkish occupation. #05:14#######A few of them got through to the Turkish side, where on bikes, in full view of news cameras, was beaten to death by Turkish Cypriot civilians and police.
####Three days later, after his funeral, the furious bikies came back into the buffer zone, determined to lay a wreath where their comrade had died.
###Hayward#Hayward: We came to assist the Irish police and the crowd broke through the ranks, they got very emotional, and several thousand demonstrators came into the buffer zone. It was impossible to stop them all.
#05:50##Demonstrators#Singing
####v/o: One Greek-Cypriot man succeeded in getting as far as the Turkish side of the zone. He escaped his UN pursuers and tried to climb the flagpole to remove the Turkish flag. It was the last action of his life.
####Demonstration
####Hayward: I was probably about 15 to 20 metres distance away and I could see it was about to happen, but there was nothing I could do.
#06:32###Shooting
####Hayward: When the firing started, there was mad panic by all the demonstrators.
#06:49###Holmes: Could you hear the bullets going by?
####Hayward: I could hear them, and they were actually landing in the ground in front of us. I really thought at that stage that we’d be killed.
########v/o: Two British UN soldiers and eleven other demonstrators were wounded by Turkish gunfire.
####So what’s the history that’s led to this astonishing hatred and bitterness?
###Holmes rents binoculars#Well, as you rapidly discover in Cyprus, that depends whose eyes you’re looking through. #07:28###Just as in Northern Ireland or Israel, there are two different accounts for almost everything that’s happened here. The Greek Cypriots who stare north across the dead zone at the port city of Famagusta where so many of them used to live, see only a brutal occupation by an alien army. ####The Turks had no right to come to Cyprus, they say, and even less to stay.####Eleni: Cyprus was a Greek island, ###Eleni in museum#and Cyprus is a Greek island, and Cyprus will stay a Greek island.
#07:59###v/o: The Museum of National Struggle in Nicosia is a shrine to the Greek-Cypriot version of history.
####Holmes: There have been Turks living here since 1570.
#08:11###Eleni: Yes.
####Holmes: Do they have any right to be on this island, do you think?
###Super:
ELENI CHRISTOFORIDOU
Curator, Nat. Struggle Museum#Eleni: Nobody is against them. The Greek side, we don’t want to kill them, but they are 17%, 17% it’s a minority. All over the world, in all countries there are 17% minority.
#08:20##Holmes in museum#v/o: The museum is dedicated to the martyrs of EOKA, the nationalists who fought the British through the fifties, not for independence, but for enosis – the union of Cyprus with Greece. The Greek Cypriots call them heroes. The British call them terrorists , and hanged them when they could catch them. #08:39##Archival footage of EOKA##08:58###For the nationalists of EOKA, the independence granted Cyprus in 1959 was a bitter disappointment. The constitution forced the Greek Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios, to share power with the Turkish minority. But the young republic was making the best of it, they argue, until Turkey invaded in 1974.
###Invasion footage#FX: Invasion
#09:24###v/o: Tens of thousands of Greek Cypriots were forced out of their homes in the north. They were replaced by settlers from mainland Turkey.
####Eleni Christoforidou was one of those made homeless. And after 25 years, her bitterness is unabated.
###Eleni#Eleni: In the occupied area we have 500 churches. The Turks change to mosques, to museums, to stable, to coffee shop, to showroom, to anything. Five churches changed to toilet. #09:47###They say let’s have a negotiation. We have 120,000 Anatolians, barbarians, thieves, killers, gypsies and soldiers. They are sitting in our houses, they have all the guns, and – let’s have a negotiation. What kind of a negotiation can we have, what?
#10:02###Woman on microphone: We believe in democracy! We believe in
Freedom! We believe in justice! We also believe in peace!
#10:27##Women holding photos#v/o: On the Greek Cypriot side of the main crossing point in Nicosia, every weekend, mothers and sisters and wives display portraits of their loved ones arrested by the Turks in 1974. Most are no doubt long since dead. But these women insist that they are being held hostage, somewhere.
#10:37###Children singing
####v/o: This is a society where no one, from oldest to youngest, is allowed to forget the past. Most Greek Cypriots will tell you that they no long want union with Greece. They just want a united island. They’ll tell you too that any strife between Turkish and Greek Cypriots was manufactured by outsiders.
#11:02##Eli interview
Super:
ELI STAVROU
Greek-Cypriot#Eli: A solution will be in Cyprus, we shall be together as lived centuries and centuries with the Turks together. Because I must tell you the truth, I love everybody sir. Our religion says love everybody, even the enemies of your, and Turks are not the enemies of us.
#11:22##Blue and white flag#v/o: And yet everywhere in the supposedly independent Republic of Cyprus, the blue and white flag of Greece takes pride of place.
#11:48##Holmes walking through checkpoint#If you’re a foreigner, you can walk through the Greek checkpoint and pass the old Ledra Palace Hotel, where the UN soldiers live. #12:00###A 100 metres to the north, it’s as though you’ve walked through the looking glass. Through another barbed wire barrier and you’re in another country with another motherland, another flag, and another set of posters remembering other atrocities, a different history.
###Holmes in Turkish Republic of North Cyprus#The Turkish Republic of North Cyprus is recognised by no other country on earth except Turkey itself. But its leader justifies its existence by referring to his version of history.
#12:34##Denktash interview
Super:
RAUF DENKTASH
Turkish-Cypriot Leader#Denktash: We were confined to three percent of the area, and in little enclaves surrounded by Greek troops and Greek Cypriot troops for 11 years – denied all our rights. This was the policy for 11 years and no one cared. #12:48###This dividing line, as everybody says, what a shame, is it necessary, should it be, has an answer to it. The common graves, go and see it.###Car arriving at memorial#Village after village was surrounded up, and people were lined up, irrespective of age – 16 day old babies, 1 year old, 2 year old, 3 year old, the whole population of an elementary school and killed. Why? Because Makarios had made a statement in 1964, if Turkey comes to save Turkish Cypriots – and Turkey had the right to come and save us – Turkey will find no Turkish Cypriot to save.
#13:17##Homes at memorial#v/o: Elaborate memorials to obscene massacres dot the landscape of northern Cyprus. On their marble walls, the subliminal message is driven home: when Greeks and Turks share the same territory, you were not safe, your families were not safe.
#13:48##Holmes walks among old city#Holmes: The whole of this tiny island is crisscrossed with walls and fences and boundaries, some old, some new. These walls in fact were originally built by the Venetians to protect the city of Famagusta from the Ottoman Turks. But eventually the Turks won, and the beautiful church over there became a mosque. Four hundred years later, in an independent Cyprus of the 1960s, this old city here was in fact an enclave for Turkish Cypriots who very seldom dared to venture outside its walls.
#14:08##Famagusta port#The Greeks who were expelled from Famagusta in 1974 remember it as the wealthiest city in Cyprus.#14:37###It’s not so rich now. Many young men have no jobs. All trade must come through turkey. So must the tourists, and few of them find their way to Zeka Hosgur’s little antique shop. But at least now, unlike the 1960s he says, he feels secure from Greek Cypriot oppression.
###Hosgur interview
Super:
ZEKA HOSGUR
Turkish-Cypriot#Hosgur: They were blocking the roads, they were arresting us. So I myself, three times, has been arrested for nothing. And I was very afraid, because they had many shotguns with many armed guards, you know, automatic guns. Up to 1974 we were not safe. It is true, believe me, I’m not talking with my military thing. Don’t worry.
#15:04###Holmes: How do you think Turkish Cypriots would feel if the Greek Cypriots could move back here.
####Hosgur: I don’t trust them. Maybe still now, I have many friends, we talk as friends, but I don’t trust them.
###Holmes with Nami#v/o: But some Cypriots on both sides of the battle zone have been trying to build trust between the two communities. #15:44###Kemal Nami is an Australian-born Turkish Cypriot who is a student in Famagusta. Several times last year he attended meetings with Greek Cypriot students, organised by the United Nations.
####Holmes: So what did you expect ###Nami interview#before you met the Greek Cypriots. What did you think they were going to be like?
#16:05##Super:
KEMAL NAMI
Turkish-Cypriot#Nami: Everyone had this kind of vision that they were going to meet with some creatures, some monsters.
####Holmes: So what did you actually discover?
####Nami: Well, everyone found out that it was quite different, and they were astonished. First of all we realised that we’re all human beings, as a starter. And then we started to realise that we had a lot of common things.
####Holmes: You’re all Cypriots for example?
####Nami: Yep, yep. It was quite interesting and successful.
###Exterior radio station#v/o: Back on the Greek Cypriot side of Nicosia I found another voice calling for reconciliation.
Nese: Hello everybody, hello Cyprus as a whole.#16:37##Holmes and Nese in studio#Welcome to the Peace Garden, the first bi-communal program of Cyprus.
v/o: Trying to rebuild trust between the divided communities is almost a subversive activity. In Cyprus.#16:45###Nese Yasin is an unusual woman. A Turkish Cypriot poet and peace activist who’s decided to live in the Greek Cypriot side.
####Nese: You can dial 1010 and do not worry that your English is not good enough…####v/o: Nese’s weekly radio show is in English because it’s the only language Greek and Turk have in common. But there’s a problem with the new direct-dial telephone connection from the north, and only Greek Cypriot listeners get through.
####Woman Caller: My salutations to my Turkish Cypriot friends, Amreah, Kalih, and Geoff…
#17:25##Holmes question to caller#v/o: I discovered that like Kemal Nami in Famagusta, the Greek Cypriot caller had made friends across the buffer zone at UN-organised bi-communal meetings. And her reactions were the same as Kemal’s.
####Caller: I discovered that the Turkish Cypriots are just people like us and they want peace too, and I love them, I want to be friends with them.
#17:46###FX: Sirens
###UN Training exercise#v/o: But the UN Peacekeepers have had to stop trying to bring the two sides together. Instead, they’re now training to keep them apart.
#18:02###FX: Sirens
####v/o: The Greek Cypriot government’s application to join the European Union, without consulting the north, has infuriated the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Denktash. Earlier his year, he abruptly put a stop to the bi-communal meetings. Now threats and accusations are being hurled by both sides.
####Music
###Pyla, Holmes in car#v/o: One of the few places that Turkish and Greek Cypriots can still meet is at Pyla, a village within the UN Buffer Zone, where members of both communities have always lived peaceably together. #18:40###Mind you, most of the time they keep themselves to themselves.
###Men playing backgammon in café #In the Turkish café, the old men play backgammon, as their forefathers have done in Cyprus for 400 years or so.
#18:57###And in the Greek café across the street, they discuss the state of the world, as Greeks have done since Socrates.
###Pavlou in café
Super:
YIANNOS PAVLOU
Greek Cypriot#Pavlou: People live together for so many years, hundred, two hundred years. But because the politics, that’s the trouble. Politics my friend.
#19:15###Holmes: So do you go across and have coffee over that side sometimes?
####Pavlou: No problem. Listen my friend, this is the true story. It’s no problem. The problem is the big, big boss, the big fish eat the small fish, true? Of course!
###Amphitheatre at night#Compere: … due to the refusal of Mr Rauf Denktash to allow them to take part in rehearsals…
#19:47###v/o: The only bi-communal choir in Cyprus is putting on a concert, without its Turkish Cypriot members.
####Compere: The choir still insists in sending a message of friendship and peace…
####Choir song
####v/o: There have always been bigger fish than Mr Denktash keeping the two communities in Cyprus apart. Greece and Turkey, Britain and America, have all had their agendas here. But the island’s own history and hatreds are still powerful ingredients of the brew.
####When the message of peace and friendship must be sung by half a choir to a stadium which is three-quarters empty, the omens for would-be peacemakers aren’t good.
#20:28
Ends
20:45 ##
Denktash Interview - 5’00’’
Denktash interview#Holmes: Why are you causing, if I may put it this way, so much fuss? Why is it such an issue that the Greek Cypriots have imported, or are proposing to import, some missiles from Russia, when you 35,000 troops on this side of the island.
#00:22:00##
Super:
RAUF DENKTASH
Turkish-Cypriot Leader#Denktash: Why are we making so much fuss about it? Because this is an indication that they do not want an understanding with us. They are giving military bases to Greece. They are importing paid soldiers from Greece.
#22:21###Holmes: But you have a whole Turkish army on this part of the island?
#22:33###Denktash: But I don’t want to have this whole Turkish army in the island. We are working for a settlement which would remove the major part of the Turkish army, Turkish said, settle and I will go. I will only leave the guaranteed part of the soldiers.
####Holmes: But if you have a right to defence while these negotiations are going on why don’t the Greeks Cypriots?
####Denktash: The thing is this. Turkey has been here for 24 years now, and they have not moved 24 inches in the direction of acceptance. Turkey has a right, as a guarantor to come to our aid. How? By air and sea. What are the Greek Cypriots taking precautions against? Against the air force of Turkey. Why? Because this was ? ? until Greek Cypriots attack us. So they are taking precautions against that kind of eventuality because they have a policy and they say so, their commanders say so, we are here in order to take our sovereignty to ? and to the whole island. #22:58######Clerides interview
Super:
GLAFKOS CLERIDES
President, Republic of Cyprus#Clerides: What is the worry of that if it does not attend to attack us. These missiles are ground to air. They are purely defensive. If the Turkish Air Force does not intend to attack, why do they make such a big song?
#23:42###Holmes: Well I asked Mr Denktash exactly that and he said that you were planning to invade the north and you needed the cover to knock out the Turkish Air Force.
#23:58###Clerides: Oh come on. A country of half a million to invade to invade the northern face of 65-70 million. Turkey alone has in peace time one of the biggest armies in Europe. Five hundred thousand troops. It has over 1,200 modernised American tanks. It has at least 300 F16s and I am – do they take us for a lunatic that we are going to attack the north and bring Turkey into the play.
####Holmes: So you think this whole thing’s a ploy by Mr Denktash, do you?
####Clerides: Of course it is a ploy by Mr Denktash. He knows we may be patriotic but we are not mad.
#24:50##Denktash interview#Denktash: If they are not going to attack us, nothing is going to happen. Turkey has been here 24 years urging us to solve the problem, calling upon them to solve the problem. So why, all of a sudden, this movement into the direction of EU membership, Greece saying by doing so, when Cyprus becomes a member, the boundaries of Europe will come to Cyprus, meaning that Turkey will now confront Europe and not merely Greek Cypriots. And therefore what is that result, the result is Cyprus becomes virtually a Greek colony, through Europe. This is the game they are playing. And they are preparing for it because they know Turkey will never accept this.
#25:02##Clerides interview#Holmes: How dangerous do you think the current situation is?
#25:46###Clerides: I don’t think the current situation is any more dangerous than it has been in the past. But what I fear is that any prolonged period of deadlock creates a vacuum, it plays into also the hands of extremists on both sides. And when you have a long line, about 150 kilometres, with soldiers on the one side and soldiers on the other, with their fingers on the trigger, you may get an unforeseen development, an escalation.
###Denktash interview#Denktash: The situation is getting tenser and tenser. If these people do bring these missiles, they have already given bases to Greece and they’re giving a sea base to Greece, then I’m afraid that no one can know what will happen after that.
#26:37###Holmes: Thank you very much, Mr Denktash.
#
Ends: 27:00##
Credits
ABC Australia
Reporter JONATHAN HOLMES
Camera GEOFF CLEGG
Sound SCOTT TAYLOR
Editor WENDY TWYBILL
Producer IVO BURUM
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