When I was small, my Bappou (Greek for grandfather – mums dad) used to tell me stories about Cyprus. They were rather biased and one sided affairs: bappou had moved to London from Cyprus after the war, and was rather staunchly Orthodox. Thus I grew up thinking that the situation in Cyprus was all the fault of the Turks, although I should probably point out that Bappou was prone to exaggeration and dramatisation, and probably didn’t intend to give such a one sided account.
Between this that and the other, I hadn’t thought about the Cyprus problem in a while, but a couple of days ago I came across this concise but very informative YouTube video on it. At last I see how complex the situation is on that small island. It is a largely forgotten conflict, which is why I thought the video was worth flagging up. It’s decades old and has been left to languish; and the more that happens the more attitudes become ingrained. The situation I first learned about from my grandfather is actually a sad, forgotten situation, as complex and bitter as the ones in Israel, Ireland or anywhere else. Surely it must not be forgotten.
