Occupation + settler colonialism = Cyprus 71 years later
Legal terms alone do not adequately represent socio-political circumstances. They may also not be conducive to unification.
This post highlights the core wound of the Cyprus problem: competing traumas that are exploited by state powers. The Greek Cypriot refugee may fear that nuance will lead to the normalisation of partition and land theft. The Turkish Cypriot refugee lived reality may be that blunt terminology leads to our existential erasure.
A decolonial feminist framework holds both truths simultaneously: it demands the return of stolen Greek Cypriot property and the withdrawal of the Turkish military, while fiercely defending the indigenous rights, historical land ownership, and political autonomy of Turkish Cypriots against Turkey's settler-colonial project.
If you only care about the 'occupation' of your land, but not the colonial assimilation of our people, you are treating us as collateral damage rather than equals.
Furthermore, this revenge isolation of us does not only impact Turkish Cypriots, but every non-Greek speaking person on the island. We can untangle our communities from the agendas of our 'motherlands.' But, we cannot achieve collective liberation if your vocabulary for justice requires my community to be perceived as an illegal guest on our shared island.
