The long-lasting impact of the invasion on Cypriot society and the importance of accounts and evaluations for the Cypriot tragedy of 1974, noted the President of the Republic Nikos Christodoulidis.
In his greeting during the opening ceremony of the conference "1974-2024. Fifty years since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus", at the University of Cyprus, noted that the completion of fifty years since the coup and the Turkish invasion is a milestone for assessments and necessary evaluations.
"These accounts are made by all of us, consciously or even unconsciously, since the tragic events of the coup, the invasion and the continued occupation of our homeland, as well as the consequences of the current state of affairs, did not and do not leave any Cypriots unaffected," he said.
As the President said, in addition to the fallen, wounded, captured soldiers, civilians, the elderly, women and children experienced the invasion even more tragically, as tragic victims and eyewitnesses of horrific war crimes and mass executions, as trapped and as dishonorable refugees in their own homeland.
"A collective river of memory that has not stopped dripping pain and suffering for the martyrdoms, the loss of loved ones, the violent uprooting from the ancestral homes, the lives and dreams that were violently shattered," noted President Christodoulidis.
He spoke of huge unsalvageable consequences, immediate and long-term, that the ordinary people of the island experienced and have been experiencing for five decades.
He also said that both the older ones who have memories of Cyprus before the Turkish invasion and the younger ones, like the generation he belongs to who was born and raised in an occupied homeland, an island scarred and crippled by barricades , the outposts on the "Green Line", the flag on Pentadaktylos, the suffocating presence of the occupying army.
He added that the burden and costs are similar for the Republic of Cyprus that "we did not love it as much as we should have loved it, especially in the first years of its establishment".
At the conference, the President said, it is expected that answers will be given, truths will be told, but also new questions will be raised about the Cypriot tragedy of 1974.
Thanks to the organizers of the conference, the Department of History and Archeology of the University of Cyprus, the Law School of the University of Nicosia and the Tassos Papadopoulos Study Center for their initiative.
He added that among the dozens of conferences there are renowned speakers, with a great deal of work in their specialty and in separate topics of Cypriot studies, but also young researchers, from whom both our society and their scientific branches expect a lot.
The role of D. Ioannidis in the Cyprus tragedy was analyzed by A. Papachelas
The need for absolute honesty between Athens and Nicosia as the main conclusion of his research on the events of 1974 was noted by the Greek journalist Alexis Papachelas who was the main speaker during the first part of the conference.
Mr. Papahelas' speech was about the role of Dimitris Ioannidis in the Cypriot tragedy.
Referring to the days of 1974 after the manifestation of Turkey's intentions to invade Cyprus, he mentioned that from the first moment even those "straw man" generals, or officials of the then Greek government, dismissed Dimitris Ioannidis for his wrong assessments and choices on the subject.
Ioannidis, he added, realizing the impasse and the trap he had fallen into, is in such despair that according to the testimony, he even goes to the Russian embassy - where he is received by a military attaché in the absence of the ambassador - asking for help and even giving military bases in exchange. The Russian, as Mr. Papahelas said, told him that alliances cannot be changed overnight.
The Americans, he said at the same time, realize that Ioannidis is dangerous and as Kissinger said in a conversation, Ioannidis may turn out to be a Gaddafi-style leader in the region. There was, as he said, concern about two things, that he could go to war with Turkey, which would upset all the balances of the Western bloc at the time, and that he could do extreme things, such as entering warehouses where there were nuclear missiles in Thrace, take them and use them.
He added that the Americans made a very big operation to prevent the war between Greece and Turkey and to cancel the orders of Ioannidis to send aircraft and send submarines, which resulted in the last episode of the drama.
Mr. Papchelas referred to three conclusions he came to by studying the episodes, and the entire history of Cyprus in that dark decade.
The first, he said, is that "we must always know the moods of friends and adversaries, in a very blunt way, and never get carried away by what we want them to believe," which, he said, is important even in this day and age. .
The second, he added, is that it is always important for decision-makers to know exactly what the country's capabilities are and what the opponent's capabilities are.
And the third and most basic, as he said, is the great importance of having clear conversations between Athens and Nicosia.
"Because we have paid very dearly, the neo-Byzantineisms, the egos, the misinterpretations and this I think is the most crucial thing to understand, that we are in the same boat, that Hellenism is in the same boat," he said.
He concluded by saying that the best armor is absolute honesty between Athens and Nicosia.
Source: KYPE
