We mustn’t betray the dead… – Article by Eleni Mavrou, AKEL Political Bureau member

 

Sunday 10 April 2022, “Haravgi” newspaper

“Two Cypriots brothers in life, in struggle and in death. One was a Turk, the other a Greek. Both were children of this poor country and of a bitter sweet people. A people in mourning for them both, as if the shedding of tears is for one and one only dead…But this isn’t the time for mourning. It is also a time when the living are determined more than ever before to take their great decision: to march on the path of the dead. The two Cypriot brothers are gone. The living remain, to continue the struggle, in the name of both the living and the dead….” (Cypriot communist writer/poet Theodosis Pierides, 15/4/1965)

57 years have elapsed since that Sunday on April 11, 1965 when the fascism of the TMT murderers dealt Cyprus a fatal blow in the heart and fired those shots. Many more black Sundays have passed since then for our country and people…

Their murder did not happen in some historical vacuum. Certain forces and circles believed that by killing Dervis Ali Kavazoglou and Kostas Misaouli they could kill the vision of the Cypriot people to live in harmony and fraternity. After all, the murder of Kavazoglou and Misaouli was preceded by assassinations aimed at ensuring that chauvinism would prevail so as to serve imperialism’s plans against Cyprus. Some people seemed to believe that their bullets could kill not only people but also ideas, that they could put an end to the struggles for justice, for a better world.

No one is born a hero. The two comrades were on a mission to fulfill their duty to their country and ideology. An ideology that wants the interests of nationalities to be common and united. They knew the dangers. The danger was audible at every step they took. But what took precedent was the need to change the harsh life of Turkish Cypriots who were suffering in the ghettos of the Turkish Cypriot quarters where they were driven by the intercommunal conflicts of 1963-64 and the threats of the chauvinists – both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The principal task was to develop the struggle, Greek and Turkish Cypriots to learn that their future lies not in confrontation, hostility and misery, but in forging unity to defend the homeland from the ongoing foreign conspiracies.

With the death of Kavazoglou, a black sheet covered the Turkish Cypriot community. The provocations of Grivas – and of the then National Guard, of course – in Kofinou in 1967 enabled the most fanatical and zealous chauvinist circles to impose their domination over the Turkish Cypriot community.

The separation of the two communities became absolute shortly afterwards, in 1974 when thousands of Greek Cypriots fled their homes in the north, pursued by the Turkish invading army, and thousands of Turkish Cypriots were forced, ostensibly for their own safety, to move from their homes in the south 9to the occupied territories).

“I am a Turk who loves my homeland, Cyprus”, said Dervis Ali Kavazoglou, a member of the Central Committee of AKEL, in a speech.

The vision is still alive! It becomes a wreath of honour for the sacrifice of Kavazoglou and Misaouli! It becomes a banner that is raised high and even higher by the new generations of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots who are struggling to live their common future in their common homeland.