Speech by Aristos Damianou, Member of the Political Bureau of AKEL at the commemorative event in memory, honour and the struggle of the mass organisations of the Left of Aradippou

 

Apostolos Louka Square, Aradippou Municipality, 21 July 2025

Compatriots,

Comrades,

Dear relatives and friends of our heroes and missing persons,

Yesterday was the horrific 51st anniversary of the Turkish invasion. Our people and homeland are still divided. The barbed wire of the occupation prevents the development of a common life of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The Turkish Cypriots live under the suffocating stranglehold of the Turkish establishment, with a leadership that acts as a mouthpiece of Turkey and the partitionists of Ankara. The Greek Cypriot community lives with the uncertainty caused by more than half a century of being uprooted as refugees and the ongoing occupation.

On 15 July we marked 51 years since that dark day when the tanks and Kalashnikovs took to the streets and neighbourhoods of Cyprus. When, in full agreement and alignment with NATO, the Athens Junta, EOKA B, Grivas and other Cypriot traitors opened the gates for Turkey to set foot in Cyprus.

The task of preserving the memory and paying tribute to our fighters and heroes is always heavy and difficult duty, but it is imperative. That is precisely why every July we stand in awe and lay wreaths before the graves and busts of our heroes. Because, back then when democracy and freedom were attacked, the fighters and heroes took a clear stand, they made a conscious choice (to resist) That is why they deserve the greatest honour bestowed on them. On the other side are the coupist traitors who deserve our people’s eternal condemnation.

Dear friends,

Our thoughts all these July and August days inevitably turn to all those people who have been waiting for five decades to return to their homes they had left, the city they abandoned, the life they lost. Our thoughts are with the families of our heroes, our missing persons, our prisoners of war, our enclaved people (in the occupied areas), our refugees. But our thoughts must also be with the future generations to whom we owe a peaceful, free, reunited and prosperous Cyprus.

Aradippou, like the rest of the district of Larnaka, has made its own bitter share of heroic sacrifices – long before 1974. However, in those dark days of 1974, from 15 July when the traitorous coupists overthrew the lawful government until the temporary ceasefire by the Turkish occupiers, Aradippou paid a heavy price. It has its own heroes. It has of course its own traitors who turned their guns on the lawful government of their own country, on their fellow compatriots. But it has mostly to say about heroes who resisted the treason, about the heroes who defended the territorial integrity of our country from the occupiers.

On 20 July 1974, Georgios Ttooulos, a soldier of the 182nd Artillery Squadron, fell fighting against the Turkish invader in Kyrenia. Georgios was buried by his comrades-in-arms at the place of his sacrifice, his remains were recovered after efforts by his brother and others and he is now buried with honours in his hometown.

In the same month Aradippou lost Kyriakos Kallikakis Piripitsi who served in the 251st Infantry Battalion and fought in the area of Kyrenia. For 33 years Kyriakos’ name was on the long list of the missing persons, until his remains were discovered in the summer of 2007, when he was buried with the proper honours he deserved

With the beginning of the second phase of the Turkish invasion, on 14 August 1974, in the battles in the area of Kaimakli, two friends, Tasos Papathanasiou and Marios Siari, were to breathe their last breath. On the same day in Lapatsa in Kyrenia, the long-missing Giannakis Giannakyi also lost his life.

In Palikythro another tragedy was written for Aradippou, which lost three more of its lads, who had been registered as missing for years. Stelios Eleftheriou (Livadiotis), Lefteris Georgiou and Andreas Misis fell heroically in the battles to prevent the second invasion. All three were found and their remains were identified by DNA and a few years ago they were buried with heroic honours.

Five years ago, Aradippou buried another hero who for years had been on the long list of the missing persons. Nikos Kyriakou Kaki, who left four children and his pregnant wife when he enlisted as a reservist to fight in defence of our country.

Dear friends,

It is well known that Aradippou was counting heroes long before the tragedy of 1974.

For this reason, today we also honour and commemorate two innocent family men who were murdered in cold blood in 1958 by Turkish nationalists of the TMT organisation, Ioannis Karipi and Pantelis Michaelas.  Ioannis Karipis was murdered on 19 July 1958, while he was driving his cattle near Sellia, while Pantelis Michaelas was murdered by a Turkish assassin in Nicosia a few days later, on 4 August 1958.

In 1964, Aradippou made yet more sacrifices in defence of our homeland. Pavlos Michailas enlisted as a volunteer, took part in the battles of Mansoura and fell in combat on 7 August 1964, while one day later, on 8 August 1964, Pantelis Kontos died.

In 1968 another lad was lost on duty, Kostakis G. Frangou, who died in a military accident at Aspri Moutti, on 4 July, the day he was discharged from the National Guard.

While on duty, another National Guardsman, Lefteris Eftihiou, originally from Aradippou, died after the military vehicle he was in crashed.

Of course, the long list of the fallen is not the only one. There is also the list of our missing persons. Ascertaining their fate is one of the many wounds that still remain open and unhealed in our society, with relatives carrying their own cross of pain for 51 years. Aradippou was unfortunate to have many lads who did not return that black summer of 1974. We honour and do not forget our missing persons:

Dimitris Kontonikolas, Dimitris Moiseos Malekidis, Dimitris Phili, Kostas Simeou, Michalis Pagoni, Savvakis Hadjimatthaiou, Filippos Douris and Christos Hermogenous.

It is for this very reason that our main effort remains the identification of all our missing persons and the determination of their fate. The torment of uncertainty for the relatives of the missing must end.

The question is, of course, whether the sacrifice of our comrades and all the other children of Cyprus, who sacrificed themselves for the cause of a united homeland, for peace, freedom and democracy, has been vindicated. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Beyond the powerful symbolism, the importance of the sacrifice for our beliefs, for values and ideals, their struggle has still not been vindicated.

The meagre results of the informal meeting in New York may have confirmed the gap between the two communities as a result of the unacceptable Turkish positions, but they have kept the process alive with the aim of the resumption of a meaningful dialogue in the autumn and certainly before the end of the year.

We know who Turkey is. It is tough, provocative and unacceptable. The question is what we should do. How do we act to shake off the stain of political unreliability as a result of the handlings made over the past decade characterised by regressions and the serving of expediencies.

Because only a solution can vindicate the sacrifice of our heroes.

Because only a solution can create conditions of peace, prosperity and security for our people.

But this demands the resumption of a meaningful dialogue, not the continuation of a prolonged stalemate on the Cyprus problem. Only through dialogue will the Turkish side be held accountable so that we can demand a solution. On the contrary, the barren passage of time serves Turkish plans and consolidates the partition, both bn the ground and in the hearts of the people.

Our path is long and arduous. The dangerous deepening of the de facto partition and the given hardening of the Turkish position separate us from the critical point to which the Cyprus problem has been driven to until the day of its solution. In our view, the path to reversing passive contemplation of developments and overturning the partitionist status quo demands realistic assertion and genuine patriotism. Not patriotic sloganeering bordering on the deliberate exploitation of patriotic sentiments that usually emanates from the political descendants of the extreme right and EOKA B, from those who unashamedly honour Grivas, praise the Greek military Junta and refuse even from the floor of Parliament to denounce EOKA B. From those who equate the resistance with the coup d’état, who unashamedly speak of “violence and counter-violence”. Back then, of course, they and their fathers had called the coup a “revolution”!

Derailing the Cyprus issue by adopting damaging political policies, such as the militarization of the Cyprus problem, such as the NATOization of the Cyprus issue, but especially with ambiguous references to the Guterres Framework and the negotiating acquis, can be a dangerous prospect for our country and people.

The Cyprus problem doesn’t need any revisionism, nor reorientation. We need to stick to what has been agreed, especially now that the Turkish side is putting forward dangerous and partitionist positions. A solution to the Cyprus problem, which, instead of being based on the UN resolutions and decisions that will lead to complete demilitarisation, the abolition of existing or any unilateral interventionist rights, a solution that perpetuates any military presence and therefore foreign bases in Cyprus, will constitute a permanent source of danger and a fuse for future flare-ups.

In the face of the prospect of a renewed effort for a solution, responsibility and unity around agreed objectives are demanded. We are ready to support handlings that will keep the Cyprus problem on track. We are here to build the Cyprus of tomorrow. A Cyprus shared by all its children, Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Armenians, Maronites and Latins.

Compatriots,

AKEL, faithful to the roots, struggles and sacrifices of all the children of our small, bitter homeland who sacrificed their lives for a free, democratic, common homeland, will continue to fight for:

• The end of the occupation, the withdrawal of the Turkish occupation troops and the end of colonization of the occupied areas.
• The restoration of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus, as well as the restoration of the unity of the state, the people, the institutions and the economy.
• The transformation of the unitary but divided bicommunal state of the 1960s into a bicommunal bizonal federation with political equality.
• The abolition of all intervention rights and the anachronistic system of guarantees.
• The safeguarding of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Cypriots, including the right of return and property of refugees and lawful owners from both communities
• The full demilitarisation of the Republic of Cyprus.

We state clearly that the danger of permanent partition is now immediate and visible. Judging that there is still at least some room to halt this disastrous course, it is imperative that tactical games and the handling of the Cyprus problem to serve communication purposes be abandoned immediately. It is imperative to demonstrate consistency to the basis of a Cyprus solution, as well as a readiness in practice and not in words to resume the negotiation procedure.

Dear friends,

Paying due tribute to our heroes and fighters is a minimum political duty and a moral obligation because these people honoured ideals. Freedom, honour, patriotism, democracy, dignity. But political duty does not end here.  We too must repay our debt to them and to our own children by fighting for a solution to the Cyprus problem. Genuinely fighting for the liberation and reunification of our Homeland and people.

We commit ourselves, in memory of our heroes, to struggle until the day when the occupied Pentadaktylos mountain range, with our own realistic political assertion and struggle for a solution, will lift and liberate it from the Turkish occupation.

Until the day when the abomination flag of the pseudo-state will be wiped off from Pentadaktylos and Cyprus will be reunited.

Until the day when the Cypriot people will determine for themselves,  masters of their own land, their present and future.

Honor and glory to our heroes!

Honour and glory to the fighters for democracy and freedom!

Long live our Cyprus!