"Besides suppression of freedoms,
Turkey is also Committing Cultural Genocide in the occupied part of Cyprus”
The Greek Cypriots are not the only victims of Turkey’s aggression in Cyprus, as Ankara is pursuing a cultural genocide campaign against the island’s Turkish community, Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute said in an article on September 20 2021.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “poses a greater threat to Turkish Cypriots than the Greek junta did prior to 1974,” Rubin said in the National Interest on Sunday.
Cyprus was forcefully divided along ethnic lines in 1974 when Turkey occupied the northern third of the island in response to a brief Greek Cypriot coup backed by the military junta then ruling Greece.
The internationally recognised government of the Republic of Cyprus controls the southern two-thirds of the island, and the self declared “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (“TRNC”), recognised only by Turkey, the remaining northern third. Turkey keeps about 30,000 troops in the “TRNC”.
Since its foundation in 1983, the “TRNC” has relied heavily on financial assistance from Turkey. There is an increasing fear among indigenous Turkish Cypriots that the Turkish government seeks to Islamise and demographically re-shape the “state” through migration and other means. Turkey of course denies the accusations.
Since 1974, Turkish forces remained on the island, seeking a long campaign of ethnic and sectarian cleansing, Rubin pointed out.
Following the invasion, Turkish settlers began arriving in the north of the island in a bid to bolster the numbers of ethnic Turks and Muslims on the island, Rubin said, adding that according to many estimates, now the Turkish settlers and their offspring outnumber the Turkish Cypriots in the Turkish-occupied area.
Erdoğan’s motivation is religious intolerance, according to Rubin and here lies the problem for Turkish Cypriots, as “Historically, Turkish Cypriots are very moderate and tolerant,” he said.
“They drank alcohol and, at least until the 1974 invasion, they socialised with their Greek neighbours. They were, in essence, Muslims in the way many Kemalists are Muslims: They appreciated their cultural heritage and might get married in a mosque, have the village imam bless a new child, or fast for the first few days of Ramadan, but they did not let Islam dominate their life,” Rubin said.
Rather than creating jobs and building schools for the Turkish-occupied zone, Erdoğan is constructing new mosques and funds radical preachers, Rubin said.
“The lasting damage, will not only be political and diplomatic but also cultural. Erdoğan’s policy now subordinates and suffocates the population whose protection was the justification for the Turkish invasion in the first place,” according to Rubin.
