Indigenous Cyprus
Cypriot Claim to Traditional Land, Language, Culture and Identity
Native Cypriots have endured millennia of multiple invaders, yet retain their cultural integrity and claim to land, despite losing half their island to Turkish invaders.
The Cypriot Academy proclaims, "For the Cypriot people have endured long: through century upon century of foreign domination. It is an experience that has served to strengthen and enrich us. Invaders may have contributed to our culture, our language, our genes. But they could not supplant us. Nor could they crush our indomitable spirit."
Such long exposure to the depredations of colonialism has brought its hard-won lessons for the aboriginal people of Cyprus. That wisdom regarding the colonial experience can be seen in some of their traditional proverbs:
Ab’ apia bolla balluja, mbenni je ganenan ston golon du.
He who jumps over many posts gets one up his arse.
Abo ’grusen, fisa je ba’ sto yaurtin.
He who’s been burnt blows even on yogurt.
Abo ’n andrebede, o gosmos ullos en dhigos du.
He who has no shame owns the whole world.
The indigenous language in those proverbs is Gibreiga (Cypriot), grounded in the ancient Greek used long before Christ. Their traditional Assizes (laws) were written in this lanuguage. Colonial education and media have attempted to stamp this traditional language out, classifying it as an inferior dialect or brogue of standard Greek. However, it is so different that mainland Greeks cannot understand it. Cypriot students are made to feel ashamed of the "vulgar dialect", rather than proud of this legacy from their ancestors.
Indigenous Cypriots were hunter-gatherers until 8200 BC, when ocean-going peoples introduced subsistence agriculture. Subsequent colonists included the Greeks, Mycenæans and Phoenicians. Then in 6 BC Cyprus was conquered by Egypt, and the Persians soon after that. Within three years Rome had annexed the island as well, and then four hundred years later it became part of the Byzantine Empire when the defunct Roman Empire was divided up.
British invasion began when King Richard I of England captured the island in 1191 in the crusades, looting and massacring. The following year Cyprus was "purchased" by a Frenchman. Three hundred years later it was taken over by the Republic of Venice, and then by the Ottoman Empire the following century. The Turkish colonial minority remained, even after Britain annexed the island yet again in 1913.
A Cypriot resistance movement called EOKA fought the British and won their independence at last in 1960. But fourteen years later the Turks invaded again and gained control of 37% of the island through air strikes. In that invasion 160000 Cypriots were ethnically cleansed.
New wave Turkish invaders formed a separate state in the north, despite the fact that the UN declared the action illegal and demanded the withdrawal of Turkish troops. The illegal colony, founded on genocide, has failed to prosper, and depends on the mother country for aid. It also survives by selling Cypriot land illegally to private buyers from around the world.
The invaders claim indigenousness from the time of the Ottoman invasions in the 1500's, even though they are in fact the product of a new wave of invasion direct from modern Turkey.
Those opposing the Cypriot claim to indigenous rights to land, language, culture, identity and autonomy should bear three facts in mind:
1. The native Cypriots (known as ethnic Greek Cypriots) are the sole indigenous people of Cyprus.
2. The native Cypriots have a history on Cyprus spanning over 10,000 years.
3. The oldest native Cypriot settlement found is older than that of anything ever found in Turkey or Greece.
