Lost in the Dark: Atrocity Fantasies in Cyprus

Accounts by "eyewitnesses" are accepted as proof of "widespread… state atrocities" to which Greek Cypriots were allegedly subjected by Türkiye. This couldn't be any further from the truth.

Image of Greek Cypriot women protesting to know the fate of their missing family members following the Greek Invasion of Cyprus, Greek Civil War and Cyprus Peace Operation. Many of those registered as missing were in-fact not actually missing, or their whereabouts were known by the government but not disclosed to the families, while many others were massacred by the Greek army and buried in mass graves, others were buried alive, and the majority are believed to be victims of the Turkish army but were in-fact victims of in-fighting.

In my article Kept in the Dark: The Silent Screams of Cyprus, I covered briefly the history of sexual violence and torture against Turkish women on Cyprus. I discussed the taxonomic violence against the Turkish Cypriots in the context of conflict and war, and analysed what international law says about sexual violence against women in particular, juxtaposing this with the culture of impunity prevalent in international society as well as with national, cultural and institutional indicators of how we can do so wrong in the of opposing gender equality and empowerment, giving Greek Cypriot culture as a specific example.

You can view that article here.

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Now after I wrote that article and shared it around, and others - who I hope found value in it - did the same, the responses that came were completely unexpected:

“I think it’s really inspiring that you are shedding a light on this. I must confess that I wasn’t aware of what was going on, but after reading it it’s definitely something that needs highlighting.” - Barry Farnsworth

“This for sure was a heavy topic. How have times changed. Good work tackling such a difficult topic.” - K. T. Somerset

“This was difficult to read… the atrocities are sickening and heartbreaking. It’s devastating how deeply humans can harm one another. But giving voice to this suffering matters. Culturally, we’ve been taught to silence survivors with shame. But perhaps bringing truth into the light isn’t about blame it’s about healing. And healing begins with bearing witness.” “The research and care you put into this piece is a form of witness. And it matters. Thanks for sharing” - Hannah Diaz

This was very encouraging. And it made me feel… good. It was a validation of my efforts, even though I wasn’t seeking any. I was just trying to do something that I felt was good, meaningful, helpful, and necessary, and that in and of itself felt good.

But then came the pretty sad and bleak yet completely understandable concessions:

“The world is guilty of prejudice against the Turkish Cypriots.” - Zihni Imamzade

Followed by the baseless froth-in-mouth accusations:

“(Your) aim is to promote hate,” “You’re an idiot, blinded by ignorance and narrow-mindedness,” “Your distorted vision,” “You’re full of BS,” “You are a troll who promotes hate at every opportunity,” “You are full of HATE,” “(Your) aim is to cause maximum offence and stir up problems,” “Greek hating,” - Maria KeeKee

The meretriciously racist digressions and curveballs:

“Turkey is still the number one place for domestic violence and kidnappings so please don’t pretend to care about women” - Yasmin Banks

The tasteless and de-humanising personal attacks:

“You are a disgusting human being.” - Costas Damianou

“You are nothing but animals.” “You are just animals and you belong in a cage.” “Scum bags and cowards.” “There is only one good Turk and that is a dead one.” - George Alexandrou

The abhorrent threats:

“Sleep easy - you never know the elite from ELDYK (the permanent, battalion-sized Greek military force stationed in the illegally occupied areas of Cyprus, and one of the responsible parties in the Turkish Cypriot genocide) might be hunting you.” - Giggs Kyriacou

And rhetoric mirroring the accounts by several "eyewitnesses" on the island, which are viewed as an undeniable testament to "barbaric… atrocities" to which Greek Cypriots were allegedly subjected following the Cyprus Peace Operation, which they frame as the “Turkish Invasion of Cyprus”, but these couldn’t be any further from the truth.

First of all, the Cyprus Peace Operation, or Turkish Intervention, was exactly that: it was a moral, legal and proportionate humanitarian intervention for peace, which achieved exactly that, peace, and also had the effect of toppling the fascist brutal dictatorships in Athens and Greek-occupied Lefkoşa (Nicosia).

It was the final and only remaining option, after all other efforts had been exhausted, and was a direct and inevitable response to the illegal Greek Invasion of Cyprus, the illegal Greek Occupation of Cyprus, the horrible atrocities committed by the Greeks against Turks on Cyprus, including an attempted genocide, and their attempted annexation of Cyprus to Greece, the culmination of their self-destruction and illegal cession from the bi-communal partnership Republic of Cyprus (ROC) in 1963.

Türkiye’s reluctance, aversion and hesitation to intervene militarily during those 11-long years provides yet another testament to the patience of Türkiye. It did not want to intervene militarily in Cyprus. Although it felt many times that it had no other choice, only this time, it really did have no other choice. And the actions of the Greeks provided the immediate context and legal justification for Türkiye's intervention.

And secondly, and this is very characteristic of the typical experience I have had in the course of my 8-year-long tenure chronicling and sharing the histories of the Turks and Cyprus, my efforts engaging in social and community outreach, in discussions that make transparent my emphasis on empirical reason - gathering and analysing data to support or refute given hypotheses - all intrinsically part of my inherent awakening and search for the truth.

Unforeseen Consequences

I never expected to become a researcher and specialist on these topics, or married to finding resources on countering denialism and supporting survivors, but when I began to delve deeply into things, first for my degree, and mostly inspired by my heritage, and I did my legwork, I reached out, and got involved, but I never would have thought that conscious disingenuity, perennial hatred and atrocity fantasies would star as the outcome.

I never expected that I would be ringing the bell on the British media’s grossly offensive language and conscious partiality, or start being called a “liar” and a “disgusting human being” for supporting the downtrodden victims of a genocide, or for clarifying exactly who was the native indigenous population on the island of Cyprus, and who was the settler colonial society high-on-hate, especially where ethnic and religious agitation, physical violence and racial hatred were used to reinforce systems of social, religious, cultural, political and legal structures to establish Greek domination on the island and justify their claims to have a “right to self-determination” and subjugatively control the native indigenous people, the Turkish Cypriots, their resources, and their territory.

And I never expected that others could believe and support that the aggressors, the Greek Cypriots and Greece, were the victims, and the actual downtrodden victims, my people, were nothing but some “terrible… unwelcome… foreign… pollutant” to their own native homeland, or “ungrateful… mutineers… thugs” slave to the mythical machinations of some monolithically omnipresent “evil”, that their nation, their struggle and their cause “doesn’t exist”, that “no one forced them to leave” their homes during the brutal ethnic cleansing and genocide committed against them between 1963-1974, and that they are somehow responsible for their own suffering and isolation, as well as other things for which they are not responsible, and should therefore be roundly vilified, demonised and condemned, or they should be vilified, demonised and condemned regardless because, after all, “the only good Turk is a dead one”, and that’s also why I should “just suicide” or “sleep easy” knowing some people might be “hunting” me.

Now to be clear, and on that last point in particular, I do have to say this:

Just how Medhi Hassan - the British-American broadcaster, writer, and founder of Zeteo - being told he should die on live television was completely barbaric and out of order, forcing him to walk off set during a live show, and leading to the far-right pundit, Ryan James Girdusky, being roundly condemned and then banned from CNN as a result, people who respond like this to anyone, such as in this case suggesting one might be hunted, kidnapped, raped, tortured, maimed, mutilated, and murdered in the way that Turkish Cypriot civilians were by the Greek and Greek Cypriot polity, armed forces and society… in what the former British parliamentarian Michael Stephens bluntly called: “the appalling behaviour of the Greek Cypriots... (who) are guilty of attempted genocide in violation of Articles 2(a), (b) and (c) and Articles 3(a), (b), (c), (d) and (e) of the 1948 Genocide Convention.” - anyone who casually suggests these things happen to anybody should not only be roundly condemned, although more crucially, they should be held accountable too, and in a court of law.

And I get it, when talking about the Cyprus Problem some people get emotional, it’s an emotional topic, we’re talking about people’s lives and losses here, we’re talking about trauma, and intergenerational trauma, and sometimes trauma leads to anger, it’s a natural human response, but despite my personal discovery that I am - literally - the descendant of genocide victims, victims of the Turkish Cypriot Genocide, and the son of two survivors of that genocide, but I never even thought to cash in on this whole victimhood and trauma industry that is so much the rage right now, turning what was experienced by my people into some ethnic supremacist weapon, and I never will, nor am I under any illusion to the futility of manufacturing false idols of victimhood or trauma like the angry Zealots of Hellenism or Zionism, let alone channeling that into deliberately violent, hateful, and disturbing content online and consciously spreading false information.

And about that, as you can imagine, there are usually policies in place to protect people against violent, hateful, and disturbing content online, as well as false information, although the complexity of balancing free speech with user safety could be a valid reason for not removing content that violates these policies when it flies under the radar, but there can be no ambiguity when some of these comments are reported and you are told:

“We reviewed the comment… we did not find this comment goes against the community standards.” - Facebook

If blanketly calling Turkish people “nothing but animals… just animals” that “belong in a cage”, saying they are all “scum bags and cowards” and reiterating the culmination of this line of thinking by concluding “there is only one good Turk and that is a dead one…”, and baring in mind, as you can see, that this goes hand in hand with actual death threats, being told you should just commit suicide, and being sent images of Greeks known by their moniker “the Butcher” of Turkish villages, proudly parading with their newly captured Turkish flag and their slaves behind them, after they butchered and massacred Turkish men, women and children, destroyed their homes, and looted what they could, with the suggestion you should “run” because it is being explicitly wished this will happen to you… if this isn’t violent, hateful, and disturbing content, I don’t know what is… and if it’s being repeatedly flagged but nothing’s being done about it, there’s something very wrong here.

I also think I should say this:

The logic behind being told I should just kill myself, or be on the lookout - even in my sleep - as someone could be trying to kill me, and even though I don’t take any of this seriously, and I never want to get into the head of the person who thinks like that, but I would like to try and understand it, because maybe, for example, it could be part of some bigger picture trauma, or it could go back to those claims that I somehow “hate… Greeks”, and am therefore “anti-Hellenic”, and therefore I am the one doing something wrong here and providing a platform - so to speak - for this albeit immoral and wrong response of sheer visceral hatred and wishing that I could just die.

But the other issue here is it proscribes without understanding or reason, and I’d be no more “anti-Hellenic” than they would make me out to be, or their actual actions and policies on Cyprus could actually make someone be. In addition, criticism of the state of Greece, its people and their diaspora, including the Greek Cypriots, and we have to say this again, specifically in relation to Cyprus, this does not mean you inherently “hate… Greeks” or are “anti-Hellenic”, any more than criticism of the state of Israel and its people, for the genocide they are committing in Gaza, or criticism of states, people and their governments who are aiding and abetting this genocide, this does not mean you are then somehow perpetrating some “anti-semitic… blood libel”.

Atleast when people say: “all Turks are scum… f*****g disgusting… gypsies… barbarians… thieves… shilli (dogs)… psofími (carrion)… katsarídes (cockroaches)… vróma (filth)… mongols… they should go back to Mongolia… you don’t look Turkish… you should take a DNA test… there are no Turks… human animals”, there’s much less room for ambiguity or argument here, and we can easily say they are just unapologetically and unashamedly anti-Turkish.

But who ever really cared about the Turks, let alone what people think about them, or what people do or say because they hate them? They are the so-called “terrible Turk”, after all, so surely there’s no human or victim equivalent.

But enough about that… for now.

Domestic Violence, Kidnapping, Slavery and Rape Fantasies

Now I also don’t feel the need to repeat here the full conversations I had with these people, or to feed their witless digressions to such feeble attempts at a clapback as “Turkey” being “the number one place for domestic violence and kidnappings”, or their calls for me to “condemn (my) ancestors” for “taking millions of slaves to rape and abuse”, thus justifying their perceived entitlement to hate and to spew hate and commit violence.

Though I do believe, in the context of this, there is one particular part of the exchange that would be worth sharing - and me providing evidence-based rebuttals backed by multiple strong, reliable and cross-verifiable sources, to counter otherwise baseless claims, will be a recurring theme here - because although these things surely happen everywhere, I reminded them that there is no evidence that shows or even implies the Turkish Cypriots were ever responsible for “taking millions of slaves to rape and abuse.”

Don’t just take it from me.

I challenge you, the reader, to find where it has been evidenced and documented that my people, the Turkish Cypriots, in any part of their history, have ever had a legal institution of forced servitude, or implemented a system where “millions” of people were kidnapped and stolen, then owned by them, treated as property, forced to work against their will - without the freedom to choose their work or negotiate terms, denied basic human rights and freedoms - including the right to own property, marry, participate in legal proceedings, and subjected to “rape” and physical or psychological “abuse”, as well as economic exploitation, or anything else that defines slavery.

Better yet, since we’re talking about Cyprus here, find where there is evidence of the Turkish Cypriots, or even Türkiye, “taking millions of slaves to rape and abuse” on Cyprus.

Find it and send it me.

I’d really like to see it.

And although of course, on the issue of domestic violence, that was also mentioned, and it is indeed a problem in Türkiye, something which I actually highlighted in my article, had they actually read it, but to seal the cracks and leave no room for any contention, I presented an authoritative study that showed that of the 14 countries with the highest prevalence estimates of intimate partner violence globally in 2022 (ranging from 25–36%) with 14 additional countries that had prevalence rates between 20-24%, Türkiye was not included in either, let alone in “the number one place”.

And in a similar report looking at the alarming rates of intimate partner violence faced by adolescent girls in 2025, again, Türkiye just does not feature.

One might also need reminding that it was in-fact their culture and society, the Greek Cypriot culture and society, which was the subject of analyses in my article which triggered them, and that has an even worse track record in these areas, though there’s no need to get into that.

Vengeance Fantasies

Not relenting, of course, they also accused the Turkish Cypriots and Türkiye of parallel atrocities and horrors in Cyprus, including sexual violence and rape, as part of an alleged rampant, systemic and systematic campaign to dispense great misery, death, looting and destruction on the Greek Cypriot population, at best an eye for an eye, and born from a purported hatred of Greeks, all in the name of Turkish Nationalism.

Their magnum opus, chef d'oeuvre, pièce de résistance is to use this false projection of their own collective narcissistic supremacist complex as a retort, to claim complete and total victimhood exclusive to them only, or at worst, to say “we did bad things, but you did too…” so this somehow justifies or nullifies what they did.

Because where there were many evidenced cases of sexual violence and rape against Turkish women on Cyprus, there were also claims of atrocities and rape in July and August 1974, by the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF; Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri, TSK) and Turkish Resistance Organisation (TRO; Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı, TMT) as well as other elements on their side, purportedly also under legal state orders, and based on some ambiguous conspiracy plan dating back to the resistance movement of 1963, and so they had therefore “weaponised rape as a weapon of war against the Greek Cypriots”.

That's what we were told.

And that’s what we keep being told.

But after so many years of simple, honest, humble, non-pigeon-hole research…

I’m sceptical.

Now you might think me biased, because I’m Turkish, I’m a Turkish Cypriot, but that gives me a unique standing to say it just doesn’t seem plausible to me because I'm Turkish, I'm a Turkish Cypriot, I know many Turkish people in Cyprus and London, I know Turkish people from Türkiye and China, I know Cyprus, I know the Cyprus Problem, I know the Cyprus Conflict, I know the history, the people, the cause…

We’re just not culturally, morally or politically geared that way as a society or nation.

Of course I’m not saying that Turkish people are somehow immune to the trappings of human nature or magisterially incapable of committing acts of violence. Were roles reversed and the Turks were the ones trying to ethnically cleanse and annex a Greek island, who knows what people could be capable of or how intentions might change.

But that’s not what happened.

And as anyone who was alive then and was there remembers, or anyone who has done their research and knows, from the very beginning of the Cyprus Peace Operation, but especially during the second phase, there were these claims that gang rapes occurred, that Turkish soldiers captured men and women, forced them to watch at gunpoint as they were maniacally tortured, raped, killed, mutilated, had their breasts cut off and thrown around while being hysterically laughed at…

Where these things may indeed have happened, if they happened, I condemn them, in the strongest possible terms, and with no reservations whatsoever, I support the victims and their right to justice, to dignity, and to reclaim power over their lives.

But the problem with this is it presumes a level of sheer visceral hatred, an unabatedly detest-driven psychopathy as the condition of the Turkish heart, an actual libel we’ll go into another time, and which some people may surely have, every society has it’s fringes, and everyone has their prejudices which if left unchecked by the common sense to tolerance and morals can surely transform into monstrous things, but most of the men who made beach and proceeded to establish a foothold on Cyprus, before liberating the northern-third of the island, were unlikely to have this condition.

Everybody knew, and you can wrestle with this personally if you wish, but this was a tight military operation, this was a peace operation, and it had to follow the clearly established protocols of the Turkish army as well as domestic law and international law, but more crucially, it had to respect the laws of war, it had to maintain exactitude and proportionality, and refrain from doing anything that would fuel external actors such as the U.S. and the U.K. - already hawking with the fervent hope they could weaponise something against Türkiye - and allow what would become a warranted condemnation of the operation, or possibly even threaten it somehow, or at worst, jeopardize the operation altogether through an international diplomatic or military intervention.

So when the Turkish army had to choose who's going to go in, they would have had to have chosen those who would not go there intending to break rank, to disobey strict orders not to fire unless fired upon nor dispense any harm to non-combatants, but to just go AWOL and start trigger happy massacring and gang raping Greek Cypriot people, just because they are Greek Cypriot people, out of a selfish desire to enact vengeance, which is completely immoral and unjustifiable, most relevantly by Turkish cultural standards and moral codes, but also logically, it just doesn’t make sense to me.

We know these forces were definitely made up of men who, despite knowing what was happening across the pond, which was horrific, and deplorable, and without a doubt informed them of what had been going on for so long, as well as the very nature of the threat they were facing, would have just been normal and decent human beings.

And of course, there is every logical possibility that there may be some who indeed were out for vengeance, and splintered off to inflict whatever “judgement” they deemed “right”, or they were just consciously disgusting human beings, though they would have been few and far between, but the Greek Cypriots were describing fantastically evil and harrowing tales of north Cyprus being turned into a human abattoir, a human slaughterhouse, with scenes of wanton death, looting and destruction, and what you might call rape bravado of a kind from some demented temple of EOKA worshipping serial killers and rapists straight out of the Greek Cypriots’ own hubristic universe.

Then there are the many reports, and I’ve read over them very carefully, starting with the reports by the UN, the report by Iain Walker published by the Guardian, which we’ll definitely get into at some point, as well as later the reports and legal rulings by the European Commission of Human Rights (ECHR) commissioned by Greece and the illegal, illegitimate Greek occupied “Cyprus” government, and there’s everything else you can think of, and this so-called widespread blanket sexual violence and rape by Turkish and Turkish Cypriot elements against the Greeks, in accordance with legal state and military orders, it figured very largely, and they were entirely on that.

I read through them all, hundreds of pages between them, and there is no evidence.

Now I’m not saying that where things happened, they didn’t happen. Who am I to say that to anybody? Let alone the victims of atrocities so horrific as those that were so clearly and vividly described?

But there’s something else that really cannot be overlooked here, and it really needs to be stressed, because that’s how important it is.

There were literally during the course of the Cyprus Peace Operation, apart from the “eyewitnesses”, there were thousands of photographs, hundreds of hours of video footage, scores of reporters zooming around observing the conflict and recording it in their notes, articles, interviews and broadcasts, the United Nations (UN) was there, the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces in Cyprus (UNFICYP) was there, the British Armed Forces were there, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was there, the British Security Service (MI5) and American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were all-eyes on the island, and if you know about it, cameras were used as documentary “tools” by war correspondents and photographers, as well as evidence collecting “weapons” by the Turkish Cypriots, to record what was happening to them between 1963-1974, but zero photographic or video evidence of sexual violence by the TAF or TRO in 1974?

How is that possible?

We were told there were rapes and gang rapes literally happening everywhere, out in the open, in the suburbs, in the villages, in the fields, in the barns… everywhere. And although amassing photographic evidence during the acts would have been difficult, what about in the aftermath? And where were the impartial forensic investigations?

There was a good deal of video evidence and live broadcasted reporting of the Greek military and militia’s movements, their blockades, their siege, military assaults and stormings of Turkish Cypriot villages, the remnant concrete carcasses of Turkish homes, businesses, and mosques, riddled with cracks and holes and draping walls, engulfed in screeching white flames, burnt out and blackened in the powerful infernos.

There was video and photographic evidence collection in the aftermath of all the wanton death, looting and destruction against the Turkish Cypriots, which made us all after-witnesses to those scenes, which are so horrific I shouldn’t show them here.

There were impartial forensic analyses and full-body examinations, post-mortems following severe and sickening cases of capture, torture, as well as sexual violence and rape, even wartime rape against Turkish Cypriots. And it was widespread. Repeated. Over and over and over again. North to south. East to west. Atrocity after atrocity after atrocity.

But no evidence of what the Greeks claimed to have happened to them in the north?

If not out in the open, not even in the enclosed?

I’m also not sure if you’re very familiar with Cyprus, but it’s so sparse in the density of buildings especially out in the country, which is most of it, it’s so easy to see and hear things in the fields, in the villages, or out in the open plains that blanket much of where the Cyprus Peace Operation took place, especially if there was screaming or congregating, people would have heard or seen it, except perhaps for up in the mountain forests, but what military operations took place there? And except for those drawn by the Greek military camps and their hostile fortifications, maybe, where civilians would not be, let alone in such numbers to convince some “bloodthirsty” platoon to say: “hey, there are so many civilians here… lets get to it, boys!”

The cities of Girne (Kyrenia) and others along the path to Mağusa (Famagusta), Güzelyurt (Omorphita) and the capitol Lefkoşa (Nicosia), were also dotted with war correspondents and reporters, the eagle-eyed patrols of the UN and the UNFICYP, and their many observation posts which were heavy in presence, the ICRC…

Any such incidents occurring so brazenly and out in the open as was being described… and they had so much video footage, so many photographs, so many written reports, all the diplomatic correspondence between the various heads of state describing what was happening, just to put into perspective how transparent everything was…

And those who know that period also know, for the alleged rapes that occurred during the Cyprus Peace Operation, hundreds of “eyewitnesses” came out and claimed they were raped, or saw rape, some said they were hidden, some said they were forced to watch it at gunpoint, they all purportedly saw what happened, but not one thought to document it? Or initiate, or pursue, or cooperate with, or support an investigation to forensically evidence it? And make it part of the indisputable documentary record?

There is no evidence at all, except for these “testimonies” and token “related incidents” which do nothing to prove or verify what had happened?

Not credible.

Perennial Hatred

Now there are certainly some other eyebrow raisers out there on the question of war crimes committed by the Turkish army in Cyprus, including those that cite the ECHR’s judgments that recognise - again without any actual evidence - a number of violations of the European Convention on Human Rights committed by Türkiye in Cyprus, such as “the illegal deprivation of life, the violation of the right to property, torture and inhuman treatment”.

Now without a doubt people were killed, people did have to leave their homes, exactly why people were killed, who forced them out or why they left, you can ask the people themselves. Whether they’ll reply in honesty, that’s another question. But about the former, it was because they took up arms against the Turkish army, about the latter, it was either for their own safety, or they were forced out by Greek and Greek Cypriot elements to make way for their artillery, tanks, snipers and foot soldiers, to besiege the Turkish Cypriots taking shelter, or because they were genuinely afraid of this myth of the “terrible Turk” as the “enemies of Hellenism” out on a crusade, for the Greeks had been making the Turkish Cypriots suffer for so long, or they were forced by their own hubris, that arrogant refusal to stop attacking Turkish Cypriots…

Or it could just be because of their unapologetically inherent and unashamedly proud predisposition to prejudice and hatred for the Turks:

Reporter: “You come from a village now under the control of the Turkish?”

Man: “Yes!”

Reporter: “Would you go back there or not?”

Man: “I don't want to go back. Nobody wants to go back...”

Woman: “We want to go back to our village but not under the Turkish control. We want to live free as we lived before."

Man: “We hate these f*****g people anyway! Hate them! Since we are so small boys, because our grandfathers, grandfathers from our grandfathers, I mean years ago, they knew that they came to this island... and to Greece, to..."

Reporter: "You mean you've hated them for forever, for a long long time?"

Woman: “Yes!”

Man: "That's the...”

Reporter: “The struggle between the two people has always been there?”

Man: “Yes, yes, because they are (hardcore)... they are not same the Greek Cypriots which they like everybody."

Reporter:" “If the Turkish authority said it would be perfectly alright for you to live there under their jurisdiction, their control, would you be happy about that?”

Woman: “No, because the Turkish are the more barbar people that there is in the world.”

Reporter: "Barbarous you mean?"

Woman: "Yes, barbarous people which in this world, so it is somewhat difficult to live under the Turkish authority."

Reporter: "You wouldn't do that?"

Woman: "No!"

Reporter: "You would prefer even if you had to lose your house to live in the (illegally occupied) Greek side?"

Woman: "We prefer to be dead than to live under the Turkish authority."

Man: "You know how many thousand pounds I left in my house?"

Reporter: "How much?"

Man: "I left my tractor. I left my combine. I left my wheat and barley which I... is all my things and I left them..."

Reporter: “You have nothing to go back to now?”

Man: "No! Nothing I could find back. I couldn't find anything."

Reporter: “What do you think you will do now?”

Man: “Kill myself. Kill myself. Yes. Better to kill myself. If I go back find, I mean, my house..."

Reporter: "Why do you think they will have destroyed things? There's no evidence that they have looted on a widescale..."

Man interrupts, angrily pointing at some trees: "What! Look that! What’s that!?"

Reporter: "Famagusta. In Famagusta. The (Greek) bombings."

Your friendly neighbourhood - not “hardcore” - Greek Cypriots (who “like everybody…”)

Not like the Turks indeed.

Elite Cadres of Conspiracy, Disingenuity and Dishonesty

These are further compounded with unsubstantiated conspiracy-like claims, such as the photographs depicting Greek and Greek Cypriot prisoners alive and unarmed in the captivity of Turkish soldiers, who were then allegedly found in mass graves, thus purportedly proving “that they were executed in cold blood after being captured”.

And I’m not going to suggest what may or may not have happened here, beyond these loose conspiracies and suggestive fragments the Greek Cypriots don’t seem to be offering much else by way of evidence, so all I can say is they may indeed have been “executed in cold blood after being captured”, but we simply don’t know that for certain, or rather, we don’t know what we can’t verify, and I for sure haven’t been able to find this photograph, or learn what the names of these prisoners were to investigate this any further and verify what is being claimed here, or to see if there were any post-mortems done on the bodies which verify their identities and likely causes of death.

So if anybody knows who these prisoners were, where they were from, where they were when they were captured, what they were doing when they were captured, why they were captured, when they were captured, how they were captured, and any information related to their release, or any other information that could help us determine their fate, please feel free to let me know.

In the meantime, we can only say that what is being alleged here, based on every informed logic, likely did not happen, but it also may indeed have happened, but without verification, we cannot take that beyond mere speculation.

Another possibility, for example, is that they could have been among the significant number of Greek Cypriots, both prisoners of war and others, who disappeared before, during and after the Cyprus Peace Operation, and are still listed as missing, or, and this is what has been verified, they could even belong to those Greek Cypriot prisoners of war who were detained in transit camps in Cyprus before being taken to Turkish prisons in southern Türkiye, and looked after well, provided with aid and care, allowed access to international humanitarian organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and reporters, before being released and repatriated in several stages as part of a series of negotiated mutual prisoner exchanges, which happened under the auspices of the UN and international supervision, and with priority given to the wounded, sick and other priority cases.

Because among these exchanges, which took place in Lefkoşa, outside the Ledra Palace Hotel where a UN Command Post had been set up, and under the auspices of the ICRC by virtue of the mandate entrusted to it under the agreements of 13 and 20 September 1974, signed by Rauf Denktaş and Glafkos Clerides, for priority cases and the able-bodied respectively, as well as with the technical assistance of the UNFICYP:

• 1,222 Turkish Cypriots and 884 Greek Cypriots, all priority cases, were repatriated in five operations carried out between 16 September 1974 and 3 October 1974.

• A total of 153 wounded and sick Turkish and Greek Cypriots were exchanged on Saturday, 21 September 1974.

• The first batch of able-bodied prisoners were then released by the end of the month, before another batch was released three weeks later starting Saturday, 19 October 1974 through to Monday, 21 October 1974, where more than 1,000 prisoners were freed, among them a total of 650 prisoners who were freed on the Saturday, while 320 Turkish Cypriots along with 145 Greek Cypriots who were freed on the Monday.

• The last of the prisoner exchanges occurred on 28 October 1974, enabling 261 Turkish Cypriots and 279 Greek Cypriots to join their families. A total of 5,980 persons including 9 Greek citizens and 18 Turkish citizens had been repatriated.

And I really never want to speculate, as they do, but where there were multiple cases of false flag exploitations of the human tragedy of Cyprus committed by the Greeks and Greek Cypriots, with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning the blame on the Turkish Army, such as with the erasure of dates from the graves of Greek Cypriots killed in the five days 15th - 20th July, prior to the arrival of Turkish troops, in order to blame their deaths on the subsequent Turkish military action, this then forces us into a position where much of what comes out of south Cyprus needs to be treated suspect, which then becomes a hotbed for speculation.

So while such a link could certainly be made between those photographs and the discovery of the remains in those mass graves, which were tied to those specific names, with the support of evidence we could easily move this beyond being just a strongly suggested possibility, or a very likely possibility, but there just isn’t any.

The fact that they have this track record of lying and conniving also doesn’t help here.

I also won’t aggravate the situation concerning responsibility behind the missing persons, especially given the majority of missing persons, one of the most pressed-at issues by the Greek Cypriots, despite being blamed on the Turkish Intervention, were in-fact disappeared prior to the Cyprus Peace Operation, and many of those declared missing in the aftermath of this humanitarian military intervention for peace were not only in-fact known to be dead, but the whereabouts of their remains were also known, and had been withheld from their families, while some of these missing persons were not even actually missing, such as Andreas Mayas (Missing Person no.572), who was not only very much alive, but also receiving a state pension:

"Most of the missing persons disappeared in the first days of July 1974, before the Turkish intervention on the 20th. Many killed on the Greek side were killed by Greek Cypriots in fighting between supporters of Makarios and Sampson." - Ambassador Nelson Ledsky (17 April 1991)

"(Greek) Cypriot governments have found it convenient to conceal the scale of atrocities during the 15th July coup in an attempt to downplay its contribution to the tragedy of the summer of 1974 and instead blame the Turkish (intervention) for all casualties. There can be no justification for any government that failed to investigate this sensitive humanitarian issue. The shocking admission by the Clerides (regime) that there are people buried in Nicosia cemetery who are still included in the list of the "missing" is the last episode of a human drama which has been turned into a propaganda tool." - Cyprus Mail (3 March 1996)

"I was serving with the Foreign Information Service of the (Greek occupied) Republic of Cyprus in London.... I deeply apologise to all those I told that there are 1,619 missing persons. I misled them. I was made a liar, deliberately, by the (Greek occupied) Government of Cyprus.... today it seems that the credibility of (south) Cyprus is nil." - Georgios Lanitis (19 October 1996)

So the reality both then and now is that of those Greek Cypriots still listed as missing most who we can say for certain are in-fact missing were actually killed prior to the arrival of Turkish Army, as casualties of the merciless internecine civil war raging on the island, while there were also instances of Greek officers requiring people to bury truckloads of Greek Cypriots in mass graves, sometimes while they’re still alive, and sometimes including Turkish Cypriots, meaning many listed as missing ended up in such mass graves, while the remainder have no known grave.

We also need to accept that during the fighting with Turkish troops between 20th July and 16th August 1974 many Greek Cypriots died in combat and not as civilians, and that is a fact, and that is, of course, a very real and visceral source of trauma for the Greek Cypriots. The only solace for them being that so far as possible their bodies were recovered and identified by Turkish forces, and there were very few deaths of Greek Cypriot civilians, while those taken as prisoners of war were looked after well and returned in one piece.

But the propogandisation continues.

Genocide Denial on Cyprus

The scandals of these weaponised tales of the missing persons, a round-the-bush way to try and salvage the military, political, economic and territorial losses of 1974 by manipulating and exacerbating their own people’s suffering and trauma… they have built this vast victimhood and trauma economy surrounding this issue, to cash in on.

These fantasies of, or fantasized and exaggerated Turkish “atrocities” star as the root “cause” of all Greek Cypriot “suffering”, even though no one is willing to recognise that those killed in the fighting with the Turkish army would not have died if the Greek Cypriots and Greece had not tried to annihilate the Turkish Cypriots and annex the island to Greece, and then proceed to attack the Turkish army when it intervened.

The act of spreading selective disinformation, lies, myths and rumors with the intent to influence public opinion or behaviour in support of the beloved darling do-no-wrongs, the Greek Cypriot aggressor, and to punish the downtrodden and unfavoured Turkish Cypriot victim. The systematic dissemination of selective disinformation to promote that agenda reins supreme, and it gets picked up and further propagandised.

Due to the negligible absence of a will to pursue a military response by Türkiye and the TRNC, the Greek propaganda machine, in its effort to cover up Greece’s crimes and horrors, and in order to achieve its long term expansionist ambitions over Cyprus, has managed to manipulate successfully the truth and the real facts over the Cyprus Problem, and prevent any further threat to its tight grip on the south of the island.

Evidently, the Greeks consciously and willingly pay full obedience to their new “Ephebic Oath”, which forbids any Greek or Greek Cypriot to refer to Greek atrocities, the Greek Invasion of Cyprus, the Greek Occupation of Cyprus, Greek crimes, the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot genocides and anything that puts any blame on the Greek government or Greek Cypriot administration.

Even worse, they have been embarking on a full scale international campaign of full denial in an effort to impose the provisions of this on all Turkish Cypriots, as well as anyone who dares to speak of Greek atrocities and a Greek Invasion in Cyprus.

At worst, they can say both sides suffered, equally, that two-sideism must reign supreme, even though no such parallels or equivalencies exist. But they know, but are unwilling to accept, that the blame for their losses must rest firmly upon their own leadership or, and I never wanted to say this, but also upon themselves.

And you know what?

I get it.

Because it is more often the case that people who commit genocide are naturally prone to responding with denial, as well as hatred toward the survivors, and their descendants, as well as those who condemn the atrocities, and this can happen for several interconnected reasons, including:

• Ideological commitment and cognitive dissonance, as they are likely deeply invested in their own nationalist, ethnic, or political ideologies that glorify the perpetrators or denies their crimes. That is why when Greek Cypriots are confronted with evidence or testimonies, they experience cognitive dissonance, meaning their worldview clashes with reality, leading to defensive aggression rather than acceptance.

• Dehumanisation of victims, as any genocide itself relies on dehumanising the targeted group, and deniers continue this rhetoric. By dismissing the survivors, the Turkish Cypriots, and their pain, or accusing them of "lying for sympathy", Greek Cypriots reinforce the same bigoted narratives they used to justify the genocide in the first place.

• Fear of accountability, as acknowledging genocide could lead to legal, financial, or moral consequences for the perpetrators, their descendants or affiliated groups. Hatred is a tool Greek Cypriots use to intimidate the survivors, the Turkish Cypriots, and activists into silence, preventing justice or reparations, while employing “shared trauma” strategies helps to further convince some of the victims to support this Greek Cypriot position.

• Conspiracy mentality, as believing the genocide is a "hoax" fabricated for political gain (e.g., to discredit their nation / ethnic group), such as where Greek Cypriot claims that their sudden, violent and illegal seizure of power in 1963, and their illegal cession from the bicommunal partnership republic, was actually an act of “self-defense” in response to an ambiguously termed “Turkish mutiny”, orchestrated as part of some “genocidal” conspiracy. The Greek Cypriots see the survivors, the Turkish Cypriots, and any serious historians as part of a malicious plot, fueling paranoia and hostility.

• Tribalism and identity defense, as admitting the genocide feels like a betrayal of their own group (ethnic, national, religious and political). The Greek Cypriots attack the victims, the Turkish Cypriots, to preserve their group's "honour", even at the cost of the truth.

• Psychological projection, as Greek Cypriot deniers often accuse the survivors, the Turkish Cypriots, of the very hatred they themselves exhibit, for example, claiming the victims, the Turkish Cypriots, "hate our country" to deflect from their own bigotry.

• The impact of this hatred, as this hostility isn’t just rhetorical, it perpetuates cycles of trauma, emboldens modern hate movements, and undermines reconciliation. The survivors, the Turkish Cypriots, and their descendants face not only the pain of suffering and struggling through that period, and loss, but also the cruelty of being told their suffering never happened, or that they were somehow responsible for the “suffering” of their oppressor.

This is also evident, for example, in the responses following an interview with Nicos Sampson - also known as the Butcher of Küçük Kaymaklı (Omorphita) - which took place shortly after his sudden, violent and illegal seizure of power (coup) in July 1974.

Despite in this interview his denial of Greece’s involvement - in-spite of all evidence and intelligence revealing he was, in-fact, in full collaboration with the Greek military regime in Athens - many support the view that he was acting independently. Yet his honest concession that "it is accepted by the people, and the people are happy because they are free now," leads many to condemn him, and to argue that the entire interview was “(not) real… fake… bullshit” and “Turkish propaganda…”

“I don't believe this video is real. This is fake. All bullshit.” - Kyriaki Papapetrou

“That is fake for sure. Turkish propaganda……” - Antonis Hadjisofroniou

“His talking bullshit People didn’t accept him” - Vassos Vronti

But in the end, all this does is show them up for who and what they are, and through it, and our condemnation of it, they will naturally become a better people.

One hopes.

So it strengthens my resolve, and my response, and what annoys them most is that I use the solidity of the well documented, uncontestable facts, and the law, to tell them who they are, to put them in-front of a mirror, through which they not only dislike me, but are forced, through hook or crook, to confront this reality, and they dislike the image that through me they get of themselves: genociders or supporters of genocide.

So we can just let these people continue.

Because another thing that comes to mind is an old adage that goes:

“Hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue” - Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections or Sentences and Moral Maxims

This phenomenon of naked hatred against Türkiye, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), and the Turkish Cypriots represents the ripping off in Greek Cypriot society of this veneer of their civilisation. These people know that what they’ve done and said, and are still doing and saying, is wrong. That’s why they never admit to it.

They know, for example, that they are not who they say they are, that they are in-fact an extremist, racist, narcissistic, settler colonial society high on hate, and when they came to Cyprus they didn’t do so with open arms, but with hatred, racism, ethnic-religious discrimination, agitation, violence, segregation, the intent to invade, occupy, reappropriate, destroy, displace, exterminate, wage war, terror, death and destruction…

They’re hypocritical.

And they either don’t know, in which case they are naive or innocent, or they do, in which case they are conniving and don’t even believe in what they’re saying.

So why do they do it?

Because again, they know that they’re wrong.

They're hypocritical because even as they are thinking of vice they know they’re wrong.

They know that even they themselves go against the virtues they cry about.

And so they can find additional support in token Turkish Cypriots who, disillusioned with their freedom that is not accepted by their aggressor, while only wishing to live in peace, and bring an end to their cruel, unjust, international isolation and economic hardship, have through their trauma developed a form of psychological response whereby they inhibit positive feelings and loyalty towards their oppressors and abusers as a coping mechanism - or Stockholm Syndrome, as you and I know it - and join the Greek Cypriots in accusing Türkiye of illegally occupying 37% of the island, and add to these accusations the claims that Türkiye “subjugate” and “control” the Turkish Cypriots with an “iron fist”, that they are forcing demographic changes on the island, pumping in illegal settlers, displacing the Turkish Cypriots and destroying their “Cypriot” culture.

“Cyprus has been occupied by Greece illegally? Are you confused or stupid. They are the legal side... It’s North Cyprus that’s occupied by Turkey and we are still under restrictions corruption and assimilated by Turkey’s illegal population… our government is corrupt puppet Turkey holds their strings… have you come here lately there are no (Turkish) Cypriots left on the streets (Turkish: sen geldin mi buralara lately Kibris’li galmadi sokakta)…” - Ediz Pnx

But it’s all for nothing when everything they have is based on lies and hypocrisy.

They can struggle with this personally if they wish.

But it’s all for nothing.

Nothing, but feeding their own disingenuous and hypocritical atrocity fantasies.

"The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!" - Tennessee Williams

"Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation, part of the chosen trappings of folly." - Samuel Johnson

"There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny." - Frederick William Robertson

And I will continue to challenge them and their maxim that "everything started with the ‘Turkish invasion of Cyprus’… nothing can justify what Türkiye (purportedly) did… but everything can justify what we did before that, in-fact, we didn’t actually do what we know we actually did, and will continue trying to do to this day..."

It sounds almost beyond parody. And that’s because it is.

And everyone who has been reading my articles and comments, or knows me on a personal level also knows that I passionately oppose any and all dishonesty and lies.

All the Greek Cypriots and their ardent supporters have are lies, or half-truths at best, their trauma is real, their suffering is real, the inspirational passion with which they defend their community and condemn us, it’s all real, but the causes and the reasons for it aren’t, yet that is the central plank of their strategy, because without lies and half-truths, they’ve got nothing, whereas we, on the other hand, have truth, justice and humanity.

That is what our leaders fought for.

That is what we fought for.

And that is what we, as a brave and proud nation, will continue to fight for.

Truth.

Justice.

Humanity.

And so I stand against the lies about Türkiye invading Cyprus, the lies about Türkiye occupying north Cyprus, the lies about the illegitimacy of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), the lies about the legitimacy of the Republic of Cyprus (ROC), the lies about the Missing Persons, the lies about the widespread state-ordered Turkish atrocities on Cyprus, the lies about cultural destruction, the lies about these malicious Turkish demographic restructurings, but most of all, I stand against the illegal, unjust and inhumane isolation of the Turkish Cypriots and their legitimate state, I stand against all Greek attempts to return to a position of dominance over us, whereby we know they would continue to finish what they started and exterminate us once and for all, just like Israel is doing now with the Palestinians, just like Greece had previously done just in our backyard, I stand against all of these, and I do it now, despite knowing, that I will be villified, threatened and attacked.

Because it’s obvious how this all ends.

As Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - whose reforms, values and inspired leadership we as Turkish Cypriots follow - consistently reflected in his actions and words, truth and justice wins, and we achieve this through progress and national unity.

"My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go."

"Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men."

"Justice is the infrastructure of proprietorship."

"A nation without religion cannot survive."

"If a society does not wage a common struggle to attain a common goal with its women and men, scientifically there is no way for it to become civilized or developed."

The TRNC lives.

Flags of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Republic of Türkiye

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