To rewrite history, you need to rewrite the history books
SURELY you should be applauding us, AKEL deputy Takis Hadjigeorgiou meekly pleaded yesterday in the face of the vicious onslaught against his government’s efforts to foster a climate of reconciliation and co-operation in schools in the hope of preparing the ground for a reunited Cyprus.
He’s quite right, we should be applauding the Education Minister. His aims are not just worthy, they are absolutely critical if we are the slightest bit serious about ever wanting to live side by side with the Turkish Cypriots in a reunited Cyprus – a broad aim for which there is supposedly consensus across the political spectrum, irrespective of the form that reunification might take.
First it was the teachers, worried about the bicommunal activities suggested in the circular: what if a school in the north invited them, and teachers and pupils refused to cross? Next thing, they’ll be asking us to refer to the Turkish Cypriots as our brothers, one outraged headmaster told this paper.
And then the political bandwagon swung into action, particularly outraged at the fact that the history books would be rewritten. We would be emasculating our identity thundered one DISY deputy, reminding the minister that he was not the Education Minister of the occupied areas or of rapprochement. The reforms suggested that our education system until now was chauvinistic, piped in an outraged DIKO deputy.
Well, yes… Let’s take a look at the History of Cyprus, the textbook taught in the first year of state secondary schools: the brutal intercommunal fighting of 1963-64, after Makarios tore up the 1960 Constitution, is headlined as “The Turkish revolt”, which saw the Turkish Cypriots unilaterally pull out of government and force their population into enclaves, from which Greek Cypriots were barred.
Then in the summer of 1964, the Turkish air force bombed Tylliria and Turkey threatened to invade. Out of the blue. Just like that. As they do… There is not a single mention of the vicious civil war that raged between December 1963 and the summer of 1964, an event as traumatic to the Turkish Cypriot community as 1974 to the Greeks.
If we think this is the kind of history that we ought to be teaching our children, then we should forget about reunification. If we think that an education that encourages children to drape themselves in the Greek flag and go out on nationalist political demonstrations during school hours is not chauvinist, then what are we doing even talking to the Turkish Cypriots?
Yes, our schools have actively bred the worst kind of chauvinism. Yes, it must be changed. But are we willing to make that change, and can it be effective overnight? The government is facing a very steep uphill struggle.
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