Have you heard the Turkish Cypriots?

Have you heard the Turkish Cypriots?

Quebec is respected across the world for its distinctive culture. It is a remarkably rich culture, shaped by centuries of isolation from the Hexagon, the country of origin of a large number of the first Canadians. Quebec culture has been influenced by the British, the Scots, the Irish, Indigenous peoples, the Basques and many others. The present-day province of Quebec is no longer “New France” of the sixteenth century, but an autonomous, distinct and multicultural region.

Now imagine an exacerbation of Anglo-Francophone tensions in Quebec. Imagine foreign-backed nationalist militias launching a campaign to divide the province into two linguistic zones. In this chaos, there would be no Prime Minister like Mr Pierre Trudeau, but rather a silent Outaouais, powerless to control the paramilitaries.

Imagine the majority of a people, manipulated by these militants, believing themselves to be victims of their ‘barbaric’ Anglophone neighbours, to the point of no longer being able to share the province. Imagine this Canadian province brutally divided one day by the French Republic. That division would then become the cause of thousands of refugees, disappearances and victims of violence. Imagine the same people, still manipulated, believing that they had been saved by the Mother Country. Now imagine that no one recognises the “NRFCE” (New French Republic of Eastern Canada), created outside Quebec, along the maritime borders of Labrador, Newfoundland and much of Nova Scotia.

In this new homeland of French Canadians, residence would be denied to Anglophones. Imagine the ‘saviours’ from the Mother Country having relocated large numbers of their citizens from Lyon, Marseille and Paris, to the point where they would outnumber the native Quebec population by three to one.

Imagine the French army controlling a large part of this New Republic and demanding that the citizens of this new state never forget the debt of gratitude they owe to France.

This debt would become a means of controlling this ‘new nation’. Québécois, the Parisian French of the seventeenth century, would be immediately banned and replaced by the French of France. The symbols of the French Republic would replace the fleur-de-lis. Every flag of the “New French Republic of Eastern Canada” would have to be accompanied by a French flag, and the names of the country’s towns and villages would be changed to invent a new France. Maple syrup and blueberries would be banned, and a new law would require the citizens of this province not to identify as “French Canadian” or Québécois, but solely as “French of Canada”.

Naturally, in today’s Europe, the organised cultural extinction of a people would deserve critical attention from journalists, writers and politicians, who would underline the importance of recognising cultural differences. When reading this story, you may think you are dreaming. And yet this is the story of the Turkish Cypriots, my people, a people of the EU of twenty-five. We love Turkey and we wish to see Turkey in Europe, but we are not an extension of Turkey. We are a people of diverse origins: Yörüks, Karamanlis and Alevi Turks from Ottoman Anatolia of the sixteenth century. Over four hundred years, we have developed our own culture and idiosyncrasies in the isolation of the island of Cyprus. Older than many European nations and those of the New World, the Turkish Cypriot people had already intermingled with Greeks, Syriac Maronites, Latins, Armenians, Africans from Sudan, the English and many others.

We are a people who speak an archaic, syncretic Turkish of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. We have our own versions of Céline Dion, René Lévesque and Pierre Trudeau, and our own Monseigneur de Laval.

Canadians bear names such as “Tremblay, Gagnon and Prévost”; we have names such as “Mehmet Valentino” and older names like “Behiye Mevlit”. We do not have blueberries or maple syrup, but we have molokhia, gologasse, zivania and bumbar. Canadians say, “My country is winter”; for us, “Our country is the spring of the orange groves.” Assimilation, the displacement of voters, the presence of Anatolian Turkish settlers, and the economic problems created by the absence of a solution to the Cypriot question threaten the existence of our people.

The emigration of our young people abroad continues. Only a political solution to the Cypriot issue, which has endured for far too long, can resolve our problems and prevent the extinction of the Turkish Cypriots: the French Canadians of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Alkan Çağlar

Translation: Jean-Marc CAVALIER LACHGAR