Even more remarkable is the degree to which his take on the “Cyprus problem” and how to resolve it is shared by his countrymen. If a visitor to the TRNC is not careful, he or she will be subjected to the “Denktash history lesson” by virtually anyone. Across the political spectrum—and with over a dozen political parties, that spectrum runs from hard socialist to neofascist—nearly all party leaders have adopted Denktash’s talk of a bicommunal confederation, even if they can’t quite articulate what that means. To a degree I’ve not encountered in any other ethnic conflict zone in the world—not in Bosnia or Sri Lanka, certainly not in Israel—the Turkish Cypriots appear to speak as one, and they have chosen Rauf Denktash to do the talking.
This is not to say, however, that the TRNC stands as some monoracial Volksland; rather, it is a place full of quirky little anomalies, reminders of the past that the government has never quite decided whether to tout or be defensive about. In the Karpas Peninsula, the long, thin finger of land that extends to the northeast, some six hundred Greek Cypriots have chosen to remain in their native villages rather than move south, as have a few hundred Maronite Catholics in the western town of Kormakiti; today these stalwarts continue to receive weekly deliveries of “emergency” supplies by United Nations troops. TRNC officials often cite the existence of these communities as proof of their live-and-let-live philosophy but become noticeably fretful at the prospect of a visitor’s actually going to them and hearing the residents’ litany of complaints against the government.
Throughout the countryside, Greek Orthodox churches have been either boarded up or retrofitted to serve as mosques, and with a frequency that defies coincidence, Orthodox shrines have the bad habit of occupying vitally strategic land, cordoned off behind barbed wire in militarily restricted zones and off limits to all outsiders. With those Greek monuments that the government simply cannot remove from view—like the beautiful little Monastery of Apostolas Varnavas (St. Barnabas) on the Mesaoria plains, one of the most important Orthodox sites on the entire island—they seem to rely on more subtle discouragement; although two major highways in the TRNC pass close by, neither posts signs to the monastery.
To fill up this landscape, with all its vestiges of Hellenistic culture, and to fill up all the formerly Greek villages that were abandoned after the invasion—after all, only 40,000 people moved north to replace the 175,000 who moved south—the TRNC has energetically tried to woo others to move in. Most controversial have been the “Turkish settlers,” thousands of peasants from Anatolia, one of the poorest regions in mainland Turkey, who have taken over entire villages on the Mesaoria and built new towns in the flatlands below Famagusta. Socially conservative and largely uneducated, the settlers are looked down upon by the far more liberal and cultured native Turkish Cypriots, and are a source of rage for Greek Cypriots, who see them as interlopers illegally occupying old “Greek land.”
At the other extreme are the expatriates, mostly British and Germans, who either have taken up permanent residence in the TRNC or maintain summer homes here, and nowhere is their privileged status more in evidence than in the picturesque village of Karmi. Nestled in the Kyrenia Mountains overlooking Five-Mile Beach, Karmi was a Greek Cypriot village until 1974; today it is “European only” by law, meaning that not just Greeks and mainland Turks are forbidden to own property there but Cypriots as well. Over a game of pool at the cozy Crow’s Nest pub, the owner, a good-natured Brit named Steve Clark, explains how that came about.
“Well, once the Turks came ashore in ’74, the fuzzies [Greeks] all took off across the mountains—can’t say I blame them—and this place just fell apart. A few foreigners were living up here, and they finally got together and went to Denktash and said, ‘The only way this village is going to come back is if you make it all European.’ Denktash agreed, and that’s the way it has been ever since.”
Given twenty-five-year leases in return for renovating the village’s dilapidated homes, the “Europeans” quickly transformed Karmi into a reasonable facsimile of a Cypriot hill town, if a bit abundant with flower boxes and cute house names. To judge by the minutes of their last town meeting—tacked up in an announcement box on the main square right next to the old Greek church—the residents’ most pressing concerns revolve around rising water bills, noisy dogs, and renters who play loud music. Oh, and the ongoing struggle to get their leases extended for another forty-nine years.
“President Denktash has done a lot for us—well, for the whole country,” says a slightly hammered Englishwoman at the Crow’s Nest, “but we’re having a very difficult time getting a clear answer on the leases.”
Although many of the other expatriates living along the north coast find the apartheid quality of Karmi distasteful, they share the sentiments of the town’s residents in at least one crucial aspect. Like determined expatriates everywhere, there is the tinge of the zealous convert about them. They tend to paint the Cyprus conflict in stark black and white: The Turks have done no wrong, are practically incapable of doing wrong; unification would be “a disaster, a holocaust”; the Greeks are lazy, scheming, vicious, never to be trusted. There is an anger, tinged with racism, to the “Europeans” that one rarely hears among the Turkish Cypriots, and many have directed that anger into lobbying politicians “back home” to grant full recognition to the TRNC, a point that will surely not be lost on President Denktash when the lease extension papers finally reach his desk.
Not surprisingly, the Greek Cypriots have seized on each one of these issues—the desecration of antiquities, the “flood” of Turkish settlers, the “illegal occupations” in Karmi—and added them to their Thousand Points of Plight campaign. For each one, though, Rauf Denktash has a quick and ready response.
As I listen to the president, I begin to wonder how many times he has answered these same questions, given the same lecture—to visiting diplomats, to journalists, to assemblies of his countrymen—and it finally dawns on me why he simply ignored my first question and led me back into history. Because there’s really nothing else to talk about. The current situation in Cyprus? Same as last year, same as twenty years ago. Albeit a Greek legend, there is something rather Sisyphean about Rauf Denktash. He has been saying essentially the same thing for twenty-five years, and no one but his choir has listened. The Greek Cypriots, the American and UN peace negotiators who periodically shuttle around the island have always looked for an angle, an opening, and there never has been one. Rauf Denktash is obdurate and unyielding and steeped in history because so are his people.
“Do you ever get tired of this?” I ask. “Hearing the same questions, giving the same answers? Do you ever think of just chucking it all and retiring to Switzerland?”
Denktash slips into a slight smile. “No. I feel it is part of my duty as president to get our message out to the rest of the world in any way I can. Of that I can never tire. And Switzerland is too cold.”