Simon Bahceli’s article in the Sunday Mail (“Renovating the Armenian spiritual home”, May 31) does not go far enough with regard to the close relations that existed between the Cypriot Armenians and Turks.
It will not be an exaggeration to say that ,when our grandparents were forced out of Turkey during the First World War, Cyprus was the safest and most convenient option for them.
Firstly, in those terrible times when 99 per cent of them only spoke Turkish, the Turkish quarters in the main towns was like a godsend. This helped them to settle in Cyprus and to all intents and purposes a vast number lived, worked and died in the Turkish quarter.
Most Armenian businesses were in the Turkish quarter. They did not have to learn the Greek language. My parents spoke Turkish with my grandparents and also their siblings. Although my parents had attended the Armenian primary school and spoke Armenian, I grew up in a household where Turkish was widely spoken.
It was my father’s generation who had been born in Cyprus that started integrating more with the Cypriot Greeks. Gradually they left the Turkish quarter and started opening businesses in the Greek Quarter.
For a time in the 1940s and 1950s, there were shops owned by Cypriot Armenians in both quarters. This was possible because Cypriot Armenians had become trilingual (Armenian/Turkish/Greek) and a some who had began attending the English School and the American Academy had become quadrilingual, learning English as well as the other three.
All this came to an abrupt end in 1963 when the first inter-communal clashes began. At a referendum earlier, Cypriot Armenians as followers of the Christian faith had chosen to be bunched together with the Cypriot Greeks and were regarded a religious group.
So constitutionally and in the eyes of the law, Cypriot Armenians are regarded as Cypriot Greeks. Consequently, when the troubles began, they felt that they had to leave their homes in the Turkish quarter and move into rented accommodation in the Greek quarter.
When my grandparents and my parents generation passed away, Cypriot Armenians started severing their ties with the Cypriot Turks.
Of course, the Green Line prevented any contact between the communities and also in more and more Armenian households, the Turkish language was not spoken any longer.
It was not until the Green Line restrictions were eased in 2003 that contacts were re-established between the communities.
The monument on the Larnaca seafront was the brainchild of the late Bedros Kalaydjian, who later became our MP in the House of Representatives. For many years he had been trying to get one erected, to show our gratitude to the Cypriot people of both communities.
The monument indeed is a sign of our love and affection for the island and its people.
Armenians have had a long history in Cyprus .My ardent wish is that we carry on enhancing the multicultural society that exists today on the island.
Nazaret Shamlian,
London, UK
