Not yet Cypriots, no longer Turks: settlers face a grim future
‘I would rather die than leave, everything I have worked for in the past 30 years is here, I have nothing in Turkey’
‘My homeland is the place where food is placed on my table, I was born here, this is my homeland’
By Gokhan Tezgor
FORTY kilometres east of Kyrenia, on the foothills of the Pentadaktylos mountain range, perched high above the blue waters of the Mediterranean, lies a village seemingly forgotten by the rest of the island.
A narrow country lane surrounded by lush green shrubbery, olive trees and occasional mature cypress trees winds its way up to the village of Kalogrea.
Most villagers in the mornings and late afternoons tend to small herds of cattle to earn a modest living to support their large extended families. Many houses in the village are abandoned, and much is falling into ruin.
Village elders slowly hobble down the main road to attend prayers at the mosque, in the converted village church.
Few children play in the otherwise quiet streets, which offer visitors a hesitant sense of calm and serenity.
All but a few of the people settled after 1975 in what had been a purely Greek Cypriot village are from the mainland Turkish city of Trabzon on the Black Sea coast.
The appearance of the villagers reflects that of Black Sea Turks; renowned in the mainland for the men’s prominent noses.
Their accents are purely from the Black Sea region, making it at times difficult for another Turk to understand their dialect.
The only residents of the village who speak Turkish with a Turkish Cypriot accent are the children educated in Turkish Cypriot schools.
On the façade, the residents of the village seem to reflect more the rural life of Anatolia than the island life of Turkish Cypriots.
When they had first arrived on the island, some of the original settlers sold what little they had to invest in their new environment.
Others came from Trabzon with hopes of finding prosperity and happiness in the recently war-torn island, just after the Turkish invasion of 1974.
Now many of the villagers are afraid that one day in the near future they could lose their homes if the United Nations plan is signed.
Even though the village, located on the northern coast of the island, is not earmarked for return to Greek Cypriot administration on any of the maps put forward by the UN plan, villagers are apprehensive.
Fears are further raised by the knowledge that most Greek Cypriots want all settlers to be returned to Turkey.
Eighty-year-old Hamit Aygun has been living for nearly 30 years in a house he explained belonged to the wealthiest Greek Cypriot landowner in the village.
Like most of the villagers, Aygun arrived from Trabzon to work as a lorry driver, carrying goods between the mainland and the isolated north.
But after an initial boom in transportation that went bust, villagers turned to livestock and agriculture.
“If they want me to leave the island, I will leave. I would have to respect the decision of the lawmakers. But I would rather die, because everything I have worked for in the past 30 years is here, I have nothing in Turkey,” said the elderly man, adding that he came to the village – which is now known as Bahceli – to live in one house, and subsequently built four more.
“I will not go, the state brought me here, then if they want me to leave the state will make me leave after giving me back what I have put into this land for the last 28 years,” said Aygun.
Another village elder, 80-year-old Yusuf Tuncturk, said: “I have worked here and toiled on this land for 28 years. I built a house here. I have nothing to go back to in Turkey and I don’t have the ability to go back.”
Tuncturk proudly stated that he had 22 grandchildren that were born on the island.
“The only way I would go back is if they take my life,” he added.
Most in the village are closely related, a tightly knit community with three main extended families.
Serkan Aygun, a 20-year-old university student, born in Cyprus to mainland Turkish parents explained his parents had settled in the village in 1975 after immigrating from Trabzon.
Asked where he considered to be his homeland, Aygun replied: “My homeland is the place where food is placed on my table, I was born here, this is my homeland.”
“Peace is necessary, I’m not against peace, but it has to be a just peace, no one should be uprooted from their homes. People should be allowed to travel from the north to the south and the south to the north freely,” said Aygun.
“I was born in Cyprus, I was given a TRNC identity card and passport, but like other Turkish Cypriots I cannot travel to the south, the Greek Cypriots turn me away because my parents are mainland Turks,” said Aygun.
“This is not fair,” he added.
From high above the main village street, his 39 year-old mother Guner Aygun called down: “He was born here, he is a citizen here, I came here with my family when I was nine, even I feel this is my home and I am a citizen here.
“I don’t remember what we left behind, I know only this to be my homeland,” the mother of four added.
“I don’t consider myself a mainlander (Türkiyeli), OK, I was born there, but I don’t know anything about the place I was born,” said Aygun.
“We cannot leave here and start a new life. If we would have stayed in Turkey we would have established our lives there, but we have established our lives here, we have nothing to go to in Turkey.
“My children consider themselves Turkish Cypriots,” she added.
Asked which party she would vote for in the December 14 elections, Aygun said: “I have not decided yet, but I will vote for the party that protects our rights.”
Emine Sengun, 39, also arrived on the island in 1975 when she was nine years old: “Why should we have to leave our homes?” she asked. “However many rights the Greek Cypriots have here on the island, we have the same rights, we have raised children and families here.
“My 15 year-old daughter considers herself a Cypriot, not a mainland Turk from Trabzon,” she added.
Most of the village looks set to vote for right wing parties in December – the National Unity Party (UBP) and Democrat Party (DP).
Both the UBP and the DP support the policies of Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, who has rejected the UN plan, and insists the island can only join the EU together with Turkey.
Village mukhtar Mustafa Gul said there were a total of 70 households in the village, with a population of 430, and most of them would support the right wing parties.
“People in the village are going to support a party that will defend and protect their rights as mainland Turks,” said Gul, one of the few in the village who is not from the Black Sea coast, but from Mersin on the southern Mediterranean coast.
Talip Sengun, another villager, who works in Kyrenia as taxi driver said: “In the past, people in the village use to support specific parties, but it is no longer like this, the villagers are going to vote whatever party that comes along that protects their interests (as mainlanders).
“If these people and other mainlanders who have lived here their whole lives are forced to move off the island, they will be like fish out of the water, they will eventually die,” said Sengun.
