STOP, MR JOURNALIST by Dervish Ali Kavazoglu

(from a blog in wordpress.com)
DERVISH ALI KAVAZOGLU AND COSTAS MISHAULIS (picture)

These two lovely people were the real Cypriots who gave their lives for their people. May they rest in peace, for those who wanted them dead as well as those who killed them, may they burn in hell.
The four TMT men who were involved, had an accident not to far from the location in early 70s, when a JCB went to help pull them out of their vehicle, it slipped and crashed them to death. A fifth deaf and dumb person in the vehicle came out unscratched.
Long live all Cypriots.

on April 11, 2011 at 13:40 | Reply Tim Drayton 

Perhaps on this occasion I could post here a translation I made from Turkish into English of a 1964 article by Derviş A. Kavazoğlu that I first posted on another site a few years ago. The article was published in the Bulgarian Communist Party’s Turkish-language newspaper “Yeni Işık” on 20 October 1964 and I found it in Ahmet An’s book “TMT’NİN KURBANLARI” (TMT’S VICTIMS). I am just the translator, so please do not attack me if you disagree with his ideas. I am just happy to post this in memory of the anniversary of his demise.

Incidentally, the poster you have displayed above is hanging from many pillars beside the streets of the Limassol suburbs of Nesa Geitonia and Agios Athanasios today.

The translation of the article, entitled “STOP, MR JOURNALIST”, follows:
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What a gem of truth was spoken about us by the Bulgarian Turk, 67-year-old grandfather Kadir Hüseyin.

From what I have heard, a group of five journalists from Turkey recently came to Bulgaria.

One particular gentleman from among this group of journalists apparently collared the 67-year-old Bulgarian Turkish grandfather Kadir Hüseyin and would not be satisfied until he had imposed his views on the old man:

- “Don’t you know, dad,” said the journalist, “The Greek Cypriot gavurs are slaughtering our Turkish brothers in Cyprus for no reason.” Grandfather Kadir Hüseyin had clearly seen and heard plenty of things like this in his 67 years and was ready with the reply:

-“For heaven’s sake, my good Sir, somebody must be putting them up to it [herhalde onları kestirenler var]”. The journalist, not expecting such a reply, lost his temper and reprimanded him with the words:

-“You seem to have lost your Turkishness, old man.”

Hold on, journalist, don’t be in such a hurry. Grandfather Kadir Hüseyin has not lost his Turkishness, or anything like that, he just has no time for charlatanism and demagogy. According to you, the grandfather’s entire fault is that he is this way inclined.

Anyhow, leave Bulgarian grandfather Kadir be and come and talk to me, a Turkish Cypriot; listen to me Mr journalist. Bulgarian Turks, lend an ear, too. Grandfather Kadir, you lend an ear as well.

Let me start by saying that thirty thousand of the nearly one hundred and ten thousand Turkish Cypriots have been driven into a life devoid of civilisation and humanity, living in cinemas and like nomads in tents on the open plain, away from hearth and home, far from the soil which they had tended with the sweat of their own brow and yearning for the places where they were born and grew up! But why?

For ten months the vast majority of the Turkish Cypriot community has been condemned to a life of unemployment, hunger, absence of medicine and wretchedness! But why?

According to Rauf Denktash’s group, having taken charge of the Turkish Cypriot community by coercion, armed force and fascist methods and with the support of the imperialists and, at the time, of the reactionaries grouped around Menderes, the blame for the Turkish Cypriot community’s current woes lies with them, fairly and squarely with the Greek Cypriots. However, I will attempt to demonstrate with evidence that this claim is nothing more than baseless demagogy and that the blame and guilt for the Turkish Cypriot’s current woeful situation rests in the final analysis with the imperialists and the fascist Denktash group that is their tool.

I shall examine Emin Dirvana’s article as the first piece of evidence. Emin Dirvana, who was appointed as ambassador to Cyprus by the National Unity Committee government which took charge in Turkey following the 27 May action and who gained the love and respect of the Turkish Cypriot community – with the exception of Denktash’s fascist group – during the two years in which he served as ambassador, wrote the following in a long article which was published in the Milliyet newspaper in may 1964:

“…For the time in which I was in Cyprus in the capacity of ambassador not a single Turkish Cypriot’s home was destroyed and burnt. Not a single Turk was shot at by Greek Cypriots; nobody at all rejected Turkish rights in Cyprus…”

Mr Emin Dirvana, having stated these facts, wrote the following, exposing the true face of Rauf Denktash, the head of the fascist group:

“Denktash needs to comprehend the responsibility that he has, as head of the Turkish Cypriot Community Assembly, to the Turkish Cypriots and to the Turkish government.” “I attempted in vain for months to caution Denktash to concentrate his efforts on matters concerning the Turkish community’s development. But Denktash preferred to quarrel with the Greek Cypriots, on several occasions without cause, over and above considering the Turkish community’s development.”

Did you hear, Mr journalist, who was the cause of quarrels and fights between the Greeks and Turks? Or, in your estimation, has Mr Emin Dirvana also lost his Turkishness? No, mate. I don’t think you’d go that far!

Now, let’s move on and hear from Denktash himself who was responsible for driving 30 thousand Turkish Cypriots from their homes and turning them into nomads. Denktash said precisely the following in an interview broadcast on the evening of 22 March 1964 on a programme entitled “Window on the World”:

“We wish to establish a federal administration in Cyprus. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to move a portion of the Turks from one place to another place and to concentrate our people in certain parts of the island.”

Are you listening Mr journalist? You who are determined to set out on a mission to stir up the Bulgarian Turks with the demagogy that “The Greek Cypriot gavurs are slaughtering our Turkish brothers in Cyprus for no reason.” Denktash in that interview himself admits that 30 thousand Turks were made homeless, not to escape slaughter at the hands of Greek Cypriots, but were forcibly uprooted from their homes by himself and like-minded people.

Denktash and those who think like him have lied to the Turkish Cypriots in order to satisfy their own racist political ambitions and to benefit their masters, the imperialists, and have uprooted 30 thousand of our brothers from their homes and villages by exploiting the Turkish Cypriot peoples’ decent national sentiments with demagogy about “mass murder” and driven the Turkish Cypriot community into its present woeful state!
Denktash and those who think like him have deceived a section of our population with talk of a “national struggle” and whipped them up into a frenzy; they have caused the deaths of hundreds of Turks and as many Greeks and caused them to kill one another.
A brief examination of the history of Cyprus over the past ten years easily reveals that the thing that Denktash calls the “national struggle” amounts to nothing more than serving the British and American imperialists.

Here I will try to give a few examples from this history.

The year was 1954. In the British parliament Mr Henry Hopkinson states that “The status quo on Cyprus will never change”, i.e. British imperialism will never grant Cyprus freedom and independence. Britain in the same year argued at a General Council meeting of the United Nations organisation that “the Cyprus problem is a domestic affair.”
In the same year, the “thesis” with the name “the Turkish thesis” that was defended by the imprudent Turkish leaders in Cyprus and the Menderes administration was absolutely identical to the British thesis. Such that at the General Council meeting of the United Nations a representative of the Democratic Party government defended, in common with the British representative, the thesis that “the Cyprus problem is Great Britain’s domestic affair, thus the United Nations has no right to interfere in member state’s domestic affairs.”

The year was 1955. September. Britain changes its policy and at the Tripartite London Conference offers Cyprus limited home rule. Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu, who was participating at the same conference and at the time was representing the Deocratic Party government, announces that the limited home rule offered by Britian was accepted by the Turks and in passing mentions “equal representational rights”.

The year was 1956. December. The Greek Cypriot community having rejected the British offer of limited home rule, the British imperialists this time propose the Radcliffe constitution. On 20 December 1956 the Turkish prime-minister at the time Adnan Menderes announces that “the Radcliffe constitution is a reasonable basis for discussion.” The imprudent Turkish leaders in Cyprus also state that they accept the Radcliffe constitution. However, as is known, the Radcliffe constitution is not based on the “equal representational rights” to which Zorlu had referred in 1955. Thus, the so-called “Turkish thesis” kept step with British policy in line with the wishes of the imperialists.

Subsequently, the Greek Cypriot community having rejected the Radcliffe constitution that did not grant Cyprus full independence, the notion of “partitioning Cyprus” began to be floated around in the British parliament, purely with the aim of instilling fear and serving their own imperialist interests.

The Menderes administration and those who had been imposed by force on the Turkish Cypriot community as leaders accept the notion of “partitioning Cyprus” first floated by Britain, which wished to retain Cyprus as a springboard, a warship and an aircraft carrier so that it may protect its own imperialist interests in the Middle East, continue to steal petrol in this area and stifle the Arab people’s wars of national liberation, for these very purposes and present this divisive policy of the British imperialists as “Turkish policy”.

Henceforth, the Turkish Cypriot and Turkish people are whipped up with slogans of “partition or death” and the conditions are created for the first intercommunal conflict in Cyprus.

Subsequently the British imperialists come up with a new imperialistic plan for Cyprus named the “Macmillan Plan”. The same people who had sent the Turkish Cypriot community to its death with the slogan “partition or death” now immediately consented to the Macmillan Plan. However, this plan was not based on “Partition” or anything like it.

When the Greek Cypriot community also fail to accept this invention of imperialism known as the “Macmillan Plan”, the so-called Turkish Cypriot leaders and Menderes administrators fall in behind the British in the quest for other imperialist inventions and the Zurich-London agreements appear on the scene.

The Zurich and London agreements, which served no other purpose than to drive a wedge and sow the seeds of enmity between the Greek and Turkish communities that had lived in a spirit of peace and mutual assistance in Cyprus for over four hundred years, whip up nationalist hysteria and create separatism were imposed on both communities and these agreements were not submitted to a referendum.

From three years of experience it became abundantly clear that these agreements along with the constitution and state based on these agreements were incapable of working normally.

Consequently, President Makarios proposed that the constitution be amended in order that the state may function normally and submitted a 13-point draft for discussion. This 13-point draft did not essentially infringe on the Turkish Cypriot community’s genuine and democratic rights. However, neither the so-called Turkish leaders in Cyprus or Turkey showed any inclination to discuss the draft. As a result of this the political atmosphere in Cyprus became electrified. Imperialism managed to exploit this electric atmosphere and on 23 December 1963 by means of its agents conflict began.

The conflict which has continued until today has claimed the lives of hundreds of Turkish and Greek Cypriots, destroyed families and turned women into widows and innocent children into orphans. For the sake of the interests of imperialism and its organs, Turkish Cypriots as a whole have been taken to the brink of disaster.

Had the parties sat down at a round table to negotiate the 13-point draft which President Makarios had submitted to make the constitution workable, the current disaster would not have hit the people of Cyprus and in particular the Turkish Cypriots.

How painful and instructive it is that those who refused to negotiate Makarios’ 13-point draft are now flirting with the 5-point Acheson plan of imperialist making whose first article begins with “Enosis”. They flirt in this manner because the Acheson Plan gives the Americans, British and Turkey, i.e. NATO, the right to establish a military base on Cyprus. We will not be in the least bit surprised if the Acheson Plan, whose first article begins with “Enosis”, i.e. the joining of Cyprus with Greece, will be presented to us – a phony moon and star having been placed on it – as a “Turkish thesis” or “Turkish plan”, just like we have seen above with the other imperialist plans, since it contains NATO bases.

“Mr journalist” who collared the 67-year-old Bulgarian grandfather Kadir, saying, “The Greek Cypriot gavurs are slaughtering our Turkish brothers in Cyprus for no reason,” are you unaware of all of these facts? Do you not see that Turkey is on course to become friendless like Franco’s Spain for acting as a lackey to imperialism in the Cyprus question? Have you never, as a journalist, compared Turkey at the time of Ataturk and Turkey’s current international situation? Have you never examined the way that Turkey, which under the leadership of Ataturk opened the banners of national salvation against imperialism for the first time in the Middle East, opposes peoples who are conducting wars of national liberation and the baleful consequences of this?

Mr journalist, if you really love your country and people, leave the Bulgarian Turkish grandfather alone and join the fight of Turkish patriots, progressives and true supporters of Ataturk who are struggling that Turkey may once more take its honourable place on the anti-imperialist front and to open the way to a happy future for the Turkish people. This is the only way you will serve the interests of the Turkish people and the Turkish Cypriots, in whom you purport to show so much interest.

on April 2, 2012 at 19:18 | Reply Ahmet An

Dear Tim Drayton,
As fas as I understand from your posting, which I found through Google by chance, you have read some of my books and translated some parts. Why don’t you write me directly, if I can be of some help in your studies. twilight@kibrisonline.com

Best regards,
Ahmet An

on April 13, 2012 at 07:55 | Reply Tim Drayton

Dear Ahmet,
It is good to hear from somebody who, as your published work shows, is very knowledgable about Cyprus’ recent history.
I have heard it said that Kavazoğlu, while publicly remaining loyal to the AKEL party line until the end, in private had great misgivings about certain policy changes within the party, in particular its support of Enosis, which was alienating Turkish Cypriots. I wonder how sincere you feel that the article published in a Bulgarian magazine that I translated above was; to what extent were these his real views, and to what extent was he simply toeing the party line?
Clearly the split that took place in the trade union movement – particularly the creation of separate Turkish Cypriot trade unions – and on the political left was a victory for the policy of divide and rule and thus played a role in the tragedy that unfolded in Cyprus. While the shift in AKEL’s policy on the national question was probably not the only, or even main, reason for this split, it must have been a contributory factor.
If you have the time to pass on your thoughts about these points, I would be interested to hear them.