[MGSA-L] Spinning the Turkish Cypriot cause in the UK

[June Samaras]

Spinning the Turkish Cypriot cause in the UK
By Simon Bahceli

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=26876&cat_id=9

A YOUNG, attractive and impressively energetic Turkish Cypriot woman
bursts into a boardroom in a dauntingly prestigious advertising agency
in London's Soho Square. Out of breath, she informs the lawyers,
academics and myself that the seminar is about to begin.

Filing into a larger and plusher boardroom, we meet the BBC's James
Robbins. He will chair the seminar aimed at telling journalists and
British political figures the problems currently faced by the Turkish
Cypriot community in Cyprus. Dark-suited men and women from the
Foreign Office look on and take notes as Robbins, in clipped and
eloquent BBC English, introduces the guest speakers.

For decades, groups on both sides of the Cyprus divide have found it
in their interests to lobby foreign politicians on the numerous
injustices being perpetrated against them by the "other side". With
formidable effect, the Greek Cypriots have used the tactic to expose
to the world the horrors and losses of the 1974 Turkish invasion.
Likewise, Turkish Cypriots have, albeit seemingly to lesser effect,
sought friends in Westminster, Washington, and more recently Brussels,
to lend support to their feelings of injustice over what happened to
their community prior to 1974. Both sides' arguments are convincing.
Both sides' grievances are without doubt valid.

However, since 2004, when the Turkish Cypriot community did a
political about turn and began seeking the reunification of the
island, a new grievance has come to the fore – not so much about the
past, but about the present.

"Just about every aspect of life is blocked by Greek Cypriot action,"
Ipek Ozerim, the energetic co-ordinator of London-based pressure group
'Embargoed!', tells the audience. Her list of grievances is long,
ranging from the community's 48-year banishment from international
sports competitions – "not even friendly matches" – to its inability
to export products from its ports or fly planefuls of tourists
directly into airports in the north.

But today's seminar is by no means one of those no-holds-barred
Greek-bashing sessions so common in the past. Here British-trained
lawyer Emine Erk and US-educated international relations expert Erol
Kaymak, articulately and without resort to recrimination, explain the
dilemma facing the Turkish Cypriot community when faced with the
realities of living in an unrecognised and illegal state. They even go
as far as outlining, albeit briefly, Greek Cypriot grievances
regarding issues such as property and traveling to the northern part
of the island.

"I accept the anger created by the property boom on Greek Cypriot
land," Erk concludes, while also rationalising the Turkish Cypriot
point of view that "they felt they had done enough by backing the
Annan [UN peace] plan, which, had it been implemented, would have
prevented the boom".

Kaymak too focuses, not on what the Greeks Cypriots have done to the
Turkish Cypriots in the past, but on how different perspectives
prevalent in the two communities have led to the exacerbation and
prolongation of the conflict. More importantly still, Kaymak and Erk
seek solutions, not approbation or the moral high ground.

This seminar took place last Tuesday, but it was not the first time
Embargoed! had sought to put what it terms the decades-long plight of
the Turkish Cypriot minority into the minds of the masses. Earlier
this year, the "independent, non profit-making organisation" shocked
the somewhat conservative folks back home in Cyprus with a protest
depicting naked Turkish Cypriot footballers with their genitals
obscured only by a banner reading "Balls to Embargoes!" Another
protest in the spring chose the occasion of an EU summit to highlight
the fact that the community has no voice in the European bloc. Here,
members of the organisation turned up in Brussels to picket the
entrance of the summit with their mouths covered with pieces of
masking tape with the word "Gagged!" printed across them.

Ozerim says Embargoed!'s approach – unorthodox by Cypriot standards –
stems from a wish to "reach out to a broader range of people", and to
focus on human rights issues, rather than politics.

"We want it to appeal to non-Turkish Cypriots," she says, insisting
that Embargoed! "is not about recognition of the TRNC". But nor, she
adds, is it campaigning for reunification.

"If you sit down with a bunch of members, you'll get people who will
say both. But we see ourselves as apolitical," she says.

The non-partisan nature of Embargoed! is a factor that attracted the
renowned London-based Turkish Cypriot fashion designer Huseyin
Caglayan MBE to lend his support to the organisation. He says it is
also the "non-nationalist" approach that he feels comfortable working
with.

Being an artist, Caglayan is keen to see the organisation launching
cultural events that highlight the difficulties the Turkish Cypriot
community finds itself in. In particular, he feels the Greek Cypriot
community need to be made aware of what it is like to be a Turkish
Cypriot in north Cyprus today.

"A lot of Greek Cypriots don't know about our predicament, either in
terms of history or the present. Many of them think we are a breakaway
state happy with things the way they are," he says.

In order to get the message across, Caglayan believes organisations
like Embargoed! need to get around what he describes as the
"heavy-handed approach" of the Cyprus government when dealing with
anything involving Turkish Cypriot participation. He points to its
pulling the plug on the Manifesta project that was to see artists from
both sides of the dividing line working together throughout the second
half of 2006.
"I am not happy to condemn the government for its action, but this is
typical of its attitude. This is not ethnicity, this is art," he says,
adding that the Cypriot government has effectively sent the message
that intercommunal co-operation was undesirable and left people
wondering how, if co-operation could not be achieved in relatively
innocuous the field of art, could it be found on other, more complex,
levels.

Caglayan's presence in and contributions to Embargoed! clearly exert
influence, but another predominant factor in the formulation of its
style and methodology is Ozerim's experience working in London with
what she describes as "the top ten agencies".

"It's a lot about synergy," she explains, using a term that would
probably leave many Cypriot politicians both sides of the Green Line
searching for a dictionary, and adds: "It's also nice to have access
to such resources and knowledge of the techniques used by big
organisations like Oxfam and Greenpeace."

Talk of resources leads one naturally to wonder where the money is
coming from to fund these imaginative but also relatively expensive
campaigns.

Embargoed! has around 250 members, and each one pays a fee of £25
annually, Ozerim says. She adds, however, that "many give more".

Unfortunately though, it is the question of where funding and other
forms of material and moral support come from that could create a
potential pitfall for Embargoed!. One cannot help but be aware there
are those among its ranks who feel the organisation should be used to
counter what they see as the overly pro-solution sentiments of the
current Turkish Cypriot administration. And more worrying is the
tangible danger that the greatest contributions could come from
companies profiting from the lucrative sale of Greek Cypriot
properties in the north. But while saying she is not in the practice
of disclosing the identity of donators Ozerim gives assurances that
Embargoed! will not be diverted from its chosen course by the
interests of individual donators.

"People give us a cheque and we say 'thank you very much, see you
later', and so far no one has tried to influence us in this way."

Copyright (c) Cyprus Mail 2006

-- 
June Samaras
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