For the third time since April 8, thousands of Turkish Cypriots took to the streets to protest against the north’s ruling coalition’s decision to legalise the wearing of hijabs by children at public schools on Friday, with the day’s protest coming at the end of a general strike across the north.
The protest began outside Nicosia’s old train station, with the march snaking its way around the centre of northern Nicosia before coming to a halt on the four-lane Cemal Gursel Street, which is located outside the old town and ends at the junction with 2. Selim (Markou Drakou) Street.
There, a stage had been set up, with the Turkish embassy immediately to its left, and behind it the north’s now former ‘parliament’ building, disused since Wednesday, with its imposing replacement to be inaugurated on Saturday.
Speeches were then made by trade union leaders on the stage, with Cyprus Turkish secondary education teachers’ trade union (Ktoeos) leader Selma Eylem the first to speak.
“Today, we are on the streets again, we are on strike, we are in the squares. We are calling out to those who ignore our secular education and our secular society, and those who want to stand in the way of our fight by illegally banning it. We will not give this fight up. On the contrary, we will only fight harder,” she began.
The reference to an “illegal ban” was made after the north’s ruling coalition had on Friday morning ordered essential workers to return to work, saying that had the strikes been allowed to go ahead, they would have “seriously disrupted essential services and caused disorder”.
She then said the effort to legalise hijabs in schools is part of a plan to “impose political Islam on society”, adding, “we say once again to the representatives of the AKP: keep your hands of our children and keep your hands off our society!”, “AKP” being the name given to Turkey’s ruling AK Party by its deriders.
Next, it was the turn of the Cyprus Turkish teachers’ trade union (Ktos)’s Mustafa Baybora and Burak Mavis, with Baybora beginning by saying that “[‘education minister’] Nazim Cavusoglu and his ilk, who wanted to force us to act in a certain way, will go down in history as a black mark”.
He then made reference to Turkish poet Dadaoglu.
“The state has issued a decree about us. We are following in the footsteps of Dadaoglu, who said that if the decree belongs to the sultan, the mountains belong to us. We also say to [Turkish President] Recep Tayyip Erdogan that if the decree is yours, the square is ours, the streets are ours! If the decree is yours, our country is ours! AKP, get your hands off our children!”
Mavis made reference to death threats issued to both Eylem and journalist Aysemden Akin, who had interviewed Cemil Onal, the man shot dead in The Hague on Thursday after making allegations of deep corruption in Cyprus linked to the top of the Turkish government.
“Selma Eylem is here, she received hundreds, thousands of threats, but she was not afraid. Aysemden Akin is here, she is not afraid to write!”
He also referenced Saturday’s opening of a new official residence for Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar and a new ‘parliament’ in Ayios Dhometios.
“While 124 schools are on the verge of collapse and hospitals all around are waiting for doctors, you decided to build a 45,000-square-metre palace. They think, because they built it all the way over there, that we will not go there, but we will go there as well!”
During and after the speeches, chants of “AKP, get your hands off our children” and “Cyprus is secular, and will remain secular”, before Mavis concluded his speech by starting a chant of “whoever doesn’t jump is a Tayyip fan”, with the crowd in front of him then beginning to jump in unison.
The lights on the stage were then turned off, with thousands of mobile phones then pulled out of pockets with their torches on, lighting up the dusk sky.
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