Around 300 people on Wednesday evening joined a march to the Turkish embassy in northern Nicosia organised by the north’s ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli to show “respect to the motherland”, Turkey, in the wake of a wave of protests organised in the north against the ruling coalition’s legalisation of the wearing of hijabs by children at public schools.
Arikli had called the protest on amid a gathering of around 13,000 Turkish Cypriots on Tuesday night to protest the move, but took the most umbrage at a protest teachers had staged outside the embassy two weeks ago, at which Cyprus Turkish secondary education teachers’ union (Ktoeos) leader Selma Eylem called on ambassador Ali Murat Basceri to “go home”.
The protest began at Kugulu Park, in the moat of Nicosia’s Venetian walls, with demonstrators making the short trip to the Turkish embassy.
Protesters waved flags of Turkey and of the ‘TRNC’, while no secret was made of the fact that a significant proportion of those demonstrating were those who have moved to Cyprus after 1974, with a banner being unfurled at the front of the crowd reading, “we came, we settled, our only aim is brotherhood!”.
Other slogans on banners held aloft included, “this homeland is ours, all of ours”, “motherland, we are with you”, and, “we love you, Ayse”, in reference to the phrase “let Ayse go on holiday” uttered in July 1974 by then-Turkish Foreign Minister Turhan Gunes to give the go-ahead for the invasion of Cyprus.
One banner also read, “not go home, welcome!”, in reference to Eylem’s words aimed at Basceri at the protest two weeks ago.
Once the protest arrived outside the embassy, Arikli made a speech in which he first described the matter of whether hijabs will be legalised in school as an “artificial crisis”, and added, “we are here to respond to those who knowingly and willingly created the headscarf crisis”.
He also criticised Eylem’s “go home” comment, and offered criticism for other trade unions for “not reacting” to it and for “not asking, ‘is that not a shameful thing to say?’”, before adding, “they will call us discriminatory and racist for doing this, but there is no discrimination or racism in our blood”.
“The union in question will tell the ambassador to ‘go home’ and the choir next to is will say ‘Ayse, go home’. This is unacceptable,” he said.
He then called on ‘education minister’ Nazim Cavusoglu to open investigations into the teachers who even after the wearing of hijabs in schools was re-legalised on Tuesday night, refused to teach classes containing children wearing hijabs on Wednesday, before turning his attention back to Tuesday night’s protest.
“Was there even one photograph of Ataturk at yesterday’s demonstration? I did not see any. Was there even one Turkish flag or one TRNC flag? Maybe there were one or two, but people brought them for personal reasons,” he said.
The crowd responded to this first by booing and then by waving their own Turkish flags.
Arikli also made explicit reference in his speech to the number of people who moved to Cyprus after 1974 who had joined the protest, saying, “we, who came after 1974, consider these lands as our homeland, just as those of us who came after 1571 consider these lands as our homeland”.
1571 was the year Cyprus was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.
He closed his speech by saying his party the YDP is the “cement of this country” and by promising that on April 26, a bigger demonstration would be held to show the strength of the numbers of both his party and those on the island who support its ideology of Turkish nationalism.
Chants of “Cyprus is Turkish and will remain Turkish!” and “gratitude to the motherland” then erupted from the crowd, before Arikli and the YDP’s other ‘MP’ Talip Atalay gave a wreath to the policemen guarding the embassy’s front gate.
This was also a callback to the teachers’ protest at the embassy two weeks ago, with teachers having left a black wreath outside the embassy on that occasion.
“They left a black wreath here, we shall leave one which is red and white!” Arikli said.
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