There have been 39 years already since the day that the turkish state invaded the cypriot land.
Many years of bicommunal and intra-community conflicts preceded this as the aspirations of the dominant nationalists of both communities were completely opposite. The peak of the conflict within the Greek-Cypriot community between the right wing sides of Makarios and Grivas was the military coup d’etat from the Greek Junta on the 15 of July 1974. This coup d’etat essentially gave the opportunity to the turkish state to invade under the pretext of protecting the Turkish-Cypriot community. Even at the most conservative discourses of that time, there is no question that the developments in Cyprus were directly linked with the lethal chessboard of the cold war and that the invasion as a “solution” was predetermined, as it would prevent future conflicts amongst NATO allies (Greece and Turkey) and it would negate any possibility of Cyprus being in “red” hands.
“Cyprus is a whore from which both Greece and Turkey could profit from” Dictatorship Papadopoulos
Nationalism is a phenomenon which occurs in all class societies. In order to reproduce it needs to continuously re-invent the common interest of the nation. In reality, however, in a class society this is impossible. So what it really does is that is transforming selfish capitalist interests into a common one. Within this context anyone who is a stranger to the national backbone, poses a threat of stealing the joy, to ruin the perspective of the nation towards happiness, prosperity, peace, and the local capitalist appears to have the same interests as those of the oppressed classes.
In this way, nationalism becomes automatically a useful tool for the reproduction of a class society.
In Cyprus we have experienced over the last century this reversal of reality into nationalism, which turned the oppressed against each other and led them into a merciless war of mutual extermination on the basis of national origin. This allowed capitalism to develop rapidly turning the biggest part of the population into paid slaves.
Things could have been different had the disaster of 1974 been a lesson for the Cypriots. Instead what we experienced after the war was of climax of the hatred between the two communities and the submission of the class to “nationalistic interests”. Since the coup d’etat and the war, we witness the same people who dragged us to the catastrophe being on the foreground of the political life, perpetuating the status quo with endless conversations accelerating capitalist accumulation via their tools and the financial and banking pyramid.
The current economic crisis was easily included within the nationalistic discourse as being a threat from the ‘Other’. Firstly, it was the immigrant and the Turkish-Cypriot worker but as the crisis worsened it was the hotel worker, the the civil servant, and then that of the bank…
Let’s stop fooling ourselves whilst waiting for our turn in this slaughterhouse
The economic crisis is the result of contradictory and chaotic nature of a diseased system which cannot survive without a continuous exponential “growth” at the expense of the lower classes and of the planet itself. The crisis allows nationalism and fascism to spread with an even greater audacity its racist poison in the society.
We can and we need to intercept them. We have nothing separating us from the Turkish-Cypriot worker, the immigrant, or the other who is oppressed just like us. We need to self-organize with them in our neighborhoods, our streets, our workplaces, our cities. Together, we must dispel this cancerous nationalism and the barbaric capitalism.
Nicosia, July 2013
Syspirosi Atakton
translation department of Syspirosi Atakton 