The anniversary of the 15thof July 1974, reminds to all of us the need to preserve and strengthen the unityand understanding on all levels on the basis of national reconciliation andwith political cooperation as the ultimate aim. AKEL is attacked because itdoes not allow the politics of forgetting (lithi) to conquer undisturbedthe consciousness of the younger generations. We are accused of dividing thepeople (to lao).. When those responsible for the catastrophe, instead ofasking the
people's forgiveness try to appear in the right, insistence on thehistorical truth is an act of self-defence on the behalf of this people. Thewording of these statements by these parties and also the newspapers thatsupport them is interesting in itself. Greek Cypriot NarrativesMy research in the GreekCypriot side was carried out in the area of Kato Enories (LowerParishes), lying within the medieval Venetian walls of the Old Town. Thepopulation of the area is diverse, fragmented and unhomogeneous due to themovements that took
place as a result of interethnic conflict, the 1974 war,and a movement of people to more fashionable outskirts of Nicosia. A reading ofthe
history of the island would also give one good a priori reasons toexpect this, as will become clearer in the light of the following discussion.The category of age is usedto indicate
different generations. The different experiences of these twogenerations give rise to different views of the
past.The role of directintergenerational transfer is not easy to asses even as a 'participantobserver' as much of it takes place in the private domain of the home. Overall,my impression was that the influence of education and the media was morepronounced.In general the youngergeneration recounts the modern history of Cyprus as follows: 'In 1955 the EOKAstruggle started for the independence of Cyprus. This narrative is clearlystructured around the public commemorations that take place on the GreekCypriot side, the celebration of the start of EOKA , the anniversary ofindependence, and the rituals of lament for the coup and the invasion.It is only after about 1980that the history of Cyprus was included in school curicula; before there wasonly the history of Greece. Furthermore, even after the introduction of thehistory of Cyprus, it has been given much less time than that of Greece. Themost serious attempt to teach the history of Cyprus is made during the finalyear at high school. Even then, very little is taught on the modern
period, asthe bulk of the syllabus deals with the ancient and Hellenistic period. 21> If one is not aware of theintercommunal fighting during the period of independence and the GreekCypriots' official demands for enosis during the EOKA struggle andlater, then the Turkish intervention of 1974 seems to have come out of theblue. The political problems of Cyprus have made Greek Cypriots painfully awarethat to a great extent the solution of the Cyprus problem depends on foreignpowers and the ability of Greek Cypriots to persuade them of the truthfulnessand validity of their claims (both past and present). 24>It is also likely that theofficial history has come to provide a way in which to structure theirexperience of the past. In being narrated as a story, in the form of history,the multiplicity of experience and reality is given form, continuity andcoherence by the official history. In order to illustrate this I will take uptwo issues, namely the changes in the perceptions of the EOKA struggle and ofTurkish Cypriots.
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