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Dr. Frithjof C.
Küpper |
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Santa Barbara, Dec 10th, 2002 Dear Cypriots, of Greek and Turkish descent, I am writing to you as a European individual, with strong sentimental ties to Cyprus and with close personal friends on both sides of the divide. Almost 29 years have passed since the last violent outbreak of that sad conflict. Since then, Cyprus has remained the last divided country in Europe, and Nicosia is still the world’s last split capital. It is time for a change for the better. My memories of your island are marked by the extraordinary hospitality of several of you Cypriots that I will never forget. My visit in December 1997 – at a time when a solution still appeared as distant as the moon – will always be in my mind. I was visiting a Greek Cypriot friend in Nicosia whom I knew from a European scientific event a couple of years earlier. I had learned a few months before my arrival that the Turkish Cypriot inhabitant of their former house somewhere in the north of Cyprus had sent to his parents the film of their wedding (left behind in the house at the outbreak of war in 1974) together with his business card by way of an unknown Greek Cypriot whom he had met abroad. That Greek Cypriot managed to find the former inhabitants of the house in the north of the island – i.e., my friends in Nicosia -, delivering the parcel from the Turkish Cypriot: a complete surprise, 23 years later. Learning about this in an e-mail from my friend (who was working at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena), I was stunned by such a manifestation of goodwill and personal courage by the unknown Turkish Cypriot, contrasting so dramatically with the largely negative headlines in the political scene at that time. I found a way to contact him during my vacation in Cyprus whereupon he invited me to come to the northern part of the island, three days before Christmas 1997. I accepted and off I was for a one-day visit, crossing at the UN-controlled Ledra Palace checkpoint at the cease-fire line. I was received by him and his family with great hospitality. It turned out that the situation of this Turkish Cypriot family paralleled that of my Greek Cypriot friends in Nicosia – themselves having left properties behind in the south, valuable in more than economic terms, and only dreaming of a return. I returned to the south covering the last few hundred meters across the buffer zone on foot and carrying gifts from my newly found Turkish Cypriot friends to my Greek Cypriot friends – their framed wedding photograph and two big bags of oranges (as a proof to the Greek Cypriots that this region still had thriving orange plantations). Two of the oranges ended up with the Greek Cypriot commander of the checkpoint on the Greek side of the buffer zone, who turned out to be a refugee from that very town in the north that I had just visited, and who said that the oranges in his former home town used to be the best in the whole of Cyprus. With a sad voice, the Greek Cypriot soldier said that there was nothing bad about the Turkish Cypriots, but that tragic historic circumstances had forced them apart. It is not hard to imagine the impact of these events in 1997 on my Greek Cypriot friends, 23 years after having left their home during ongoing fighting with only hand luggage and being told that they would be able to return a few days later. I had thought of organizing a meeting between the two families whose experiences were so similar, and I had actually considered inviting them to France or Germany, since, at first glance, this appeared impossible in Cyprus. Two years later, upon my next visit to Cyprus in the first days of the year 2000, when suggesting the idea of a meeting to my friends, the Turkish Cypriot had the idea of getting together in the bi-communal buffer zone village of Pyla, which was brilliant. It was a unique experience for everybody involved – celebrating our peaceful reunion first in the Greek seafood tavern (with the lookout post of the UN peace keepers on the roof) and then in the Turkish coffee shop just across the village square. We exchanged gifts and old memories. Before our lunchtime meeting, I had wondered what the actual language of communication would be, if I might have to act as a Greek-English interpreter. There was no need for this, since the Turkish Cypriots turned out to be still fairly fluent in Greek (with a charming Cypriot accent, stronger than that of my Greek Cypriot friends). If it had been up to us, the Cyprus problem would have been solved on that sunny January day in 2000 with Greek wine and Turkish coffee, but diplomacy was still lagging behind at that time. The background of my own and my family’s life fully fits into the context of reconciliation and reunification in a European context after a past marked by violence and separation. My mother’s family became uprooted at the end of WW II from a region that is now in Poland. My father, having lost his father in Hitler’s invasion of Russia, grew up under the Stalinist dictatorship of East Germany in the 1950s. Both of my parents (being 7 years old at the end of the war as refugees) have traumatizing memories of the war itself and of the post-war suffering of the civilian population. I was born in the divided Germany of the cold war, under more fortunate circumstances than my parents. Still, I was never able to meet some of my family’s friends and relatives in the east - until the wall came down when one of the greatest politicians of the last century, Mikhail Gorbachev, had the unprecedented courage to step out and to end decades of confrontation, and when a handful of courageous East Germans stood up against the totalitarian and oppressive regime cemented over 4 decades. Experiencing the peaceful reunification of my country 13 years ago and then spending several years of my life in other European countries dramatically revealed to me the values of freedom (including the total freedom of residence) and democracy. Having lived in four different European countries and now in the United States, I feel more like a European prototype or as a cosmopolitan, rather than like a German citizen. I lived in France for 6 years (before moving to Santa Barbara, California a year ago), in a small seaside community in Brittany - in a country that had been the “arch enemy” of my own country of origin until fairly recently. From my home, I had a beautiful view over the sea and, in front of it, the old village cemetery in which literally laid the history of this community – including the only two war graves of this village (one of them a fighter pilot from New Zealand and one from Canada, shot down by Nazi-German occupation forces), reminding me every day of the blessing of living now, and not half a century earlier. The family histories of my future French wife and of myself parallel those of our countries – each family had casualties in the mutual French-German wars. Our generation was fortunate to be born at a time when we would be able to build a common future after many centuries of conflict. In our conscience, we are well aware of how important it is to remember what happened in the past – not to continue living in the past, but as a lesson for doing better in the future. In my view, the most important success of European unification lies in the permanent resolution of the long-standing conflicts between west European nations, which have devastated our countries at frequent intervals in the past. It is now time for Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and the entire south-east of Europe to enjoy the same benefits of peace. Let me urge you in both communities to seize this historic opportunity to make peace on your island, for once and ever. Think about the implications of the above story from 1997 and 2000, in which Cypriots from both communities were the protagonists. I trust that there must be enough people of such goodwill in the whole of Cyprus. I feel that a just and lasting solution is within reach. There is currently a unique window of opportunity, with the world community being more determined than ever to help to end decades of conflict on your island. The outside world can assist in the process, but the decisive steps need to be made by you, the Cypriots yourselves. Cyprus needs more than a return of personal property (or adequate compensation) - a nation can and will only be built upon mutual understanding, trust and appreciation for both what the communities have in common and what makes each unique. Cypriots need the freedom to live in a peaceful neighborhood with the other community again, learning the language of one another once more, in order to mutually understand the mentality, worries and joy of their fellow Cypriots. Thus, they will begin to appreciate their differences as the actual wealth of their homeland, not as a threat. May you Cypriots find the courage to build a better future together! Don’t allow yourselves to be told that the two communities cannot live together. What has happened in the last 4 decades in Cyprus cannot be changed, but it is up to every single Cypriot to improve upon the past, now and in the future. Let me finish by wishing you a happy new year 2003 that will hopefully be remembered for the centuries to come as the year that lasting peace was sealed in Cyprus, and between Greece and Turkey altogether, ending 6 centuries of armed conflict. In these decisive moments, my thoughts are with the Cypriots and I am looking forward to my next visit to your beautiful, by then reunited island on the other side of the Earth. I am now living in a part of the world of a climate and nature fairly similar to that of Cyprus, which makes it easy to remember your island – together with my daily cup of Cyprus coffee (a Turkish invention, appreciated by Greeks, Turks and foreigners alike) in my office, prepared in a treasured pot (briki) from that very visit in December 1997. With all good wishes from California,
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