IN NOVEMBER of 1973 I spotted an advertisement in the Sunday Times: One room house for sale in the village of Trimithi, Kyrenia District; unobstructed views of the sea and Turkish mountains, £3,000.
The following weekend I met the vendor at the Birmingham Hilton where, over Tournedos Rossini accompanied by a bottle of Chateau Neuf, I learnt that he was the foreign correspondent of the Telegraph based in Beirut, a dangerous place to be at the time. I also learnt, towards the end of the bottle, that Cyprus would eventually be invaded by Turkey, who would nab the north, ethnically cleansing it of Greek Cypriots, thus dividing the island and its two embattled communities indefinitely – his words not mine!
I chose not to divulge my Cypriot origins, saying I was British and of the Jewish faith. He assured me that any property owned in the north by Her Majesty’s subjects (excluding Anglo-Greek Cypriots) would be respected by Turkey.
I thanked him for his advice/information and the meeting ended amicably with a promise of further discussions once I’d put together the required capital – three grand was a lot of money back then!
On the morrow I rang my father, who was living in a bungalow situated along the coast from Trimithi. I asked him to take a look and evaluate the house. He did, saying that it was not worth a grand, never mind three! I mentioned the vendor’s claim that Cyprus was about to be invaded and partitioned. He laughed.
I spoke again with vendor, who offered to accept two grand for a quick sale.
A few days later I told my father that I was considering a purchase at two. He said that he’d seriously reflected on the likelihood of an invasion and had decided to put his bungalow up for sale. I told him that I would withdraw from the purchase of Trimithi and asked him to sell a piece of land I owned in the village of Bellapais and two corner plots near the ancient Roman city of Salamis, purchased in 1967 from an Israeli property company – Dan-ya Developments.
My holdings in Cyprus were sold successfully by the spring of 1974. By contrast, although my father had found a purchaser for his bungalow, he was awaiting my family’s habitual summer visit in late July before exchanging contracts – a fateful decision since we all know what happened on the 15th of that month followed by the invasion on the 20th.
He and my mother, British passport holders, were airlifted onto the aircraft carrier, HMS Hermes and deposited in the Dhekelia Refugee Camp, where they vegetated for six weeks in anticipation of being allowed to return to their home.
In September of that year, I advised they take the boat to Athens, where I promised to meet up and bring them back to the UK – the nightmare was over.
My mother died in 2004 followed a year later by my father, both having waited in vain 30 odd years for a satisfactory solution to the Cyprob.
I and my brother now jointly own, on paper, a bungalow by the sea in the Kyrenia District. We do not expect to return to live there…ever!
Prime Minister Erdogan is sabre rattling again – not directly with two-tank Cyprus, although we are most definitely involved in the fray – but with armed-to-the-teeth, Israel.
I no longer have the benefit of information/advice from an ‘in the know’ foreign correspondent, nor can I discuss the worsening relations between Israel and Turkey with my father. I, like many others, suddenly feel extremely vulnerable.
This past week, the Republic chose to stand up to Mr Erdogan’s threats concerning the Noble Energy start date to drill for gas in our now infamous, Block 12, threats that seek to create a ‘grey zone’ of what is internationally accepted to belong to Cyprus (see 1995 ‘war footing between Greece and Turkey’ over sovereignty of a number of small islets/rocks in the Aegean, notably Imia/Kardak).
I’ve since been inundated by callers wondering whether they should raid supermarkets to stock up or better still, just get out of Cyprus. One, a Cypriot lady from Paphos, rushed to renew her passport and have one issued for her five-year-old daughter. She asked, after booking flights to the UK, if I expected the EU, UN and USA to guarantee the Republic’s security.
I told her that if, at the end of September, there was a sudden massing of Turkish troops at the border/Green Line, followed by Turkish warships entering Israeli/Cyprus waters, I might decide to take my family to the Akrotiri SB, recalling how the 1960 guarantors of the Republic’s sovereignty led Turkey to invade in 1974, Britain to sit watching on the sidelines and Greece to rid herself of a seven-year, CIA-backed junta, while Cyprus succumbed to death, destruction and, now permanent, partition due to Turkey persistently ignoring all post invasion UN resolutions.
Should the worst imaginable scenario prevail, I will not, this time, succeed in selling my holdings in Cyprus. But that is of little consequence given the huge losses incurred by millions of embattled citizens of Middle East oil and gas rich countries.
Oh for solar, wind and wave energy, which nobody will fight over or steal. And Cyprus is a goldmine of these alternatives!
