The Turkish Invasion of Cyprus

Among several issues which complicate Turkey's possible entrance into the European Union is Turkey's continued dispute with EU member Republic of Cyprus over the Turkish military's invasion of the island in 1974. According to Wikipedia,

On 20 July 1974, the Turkish Armed Forces launched an intervention of Cyprus on the pretext of a coup which had been staged by the Cypriot National Guard against president Makarios IIIGreece, but the intervention ended up with Turkey occupying a considerable area on the north part of it and establishing a government on it that only Turkey recognizes. The intervention came after more than a decade of sporadic inter-communal violence between the island's Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots resulting from the constitutional breakdown of 1963. Turkey invoked its role as a guarantor under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee in justification for it. Turkish forces invaded the island in two waves, occupying 37% of the island's territory in the north-east. The operation led to the widespread displacement of Cyprus' ethnic communities, dividing the island between a Turkish Cypriot north and Greek Cypriot south.

In the aftermath, Turkish Cypriots declared a separate political entity in the form of the Turkish Federative State of Cyprus and by 1983 made a unilateral declaration of independence as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which was recognized only by Turkey. The United Nations continues to recognize the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus according to the terms of its independence in 1960. The conflict continues to overshadow Turkish relations with Greece and with the EU.

The Republic of Cyprus has sovereignty over the entire island of Cyprus and its surrounding waters except small portions that are allocated by treaty to the United Kingdom as sovereign military bases. The Republic of Cyprus is partitioned into two main parts, the area under the effective control of the Republic of Cyprus, comprising about 59% of the island's area and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, covering about 37% of the island's area.

Turkey's continued presence in northern Cyprus seems unnecessary and colonial. The former governmental turmoil in Cyprus during the 1970s looks like an excuse for Turkey's exploitation of this smaller country's economic and military resources.

Frontier Myths and Realities

I found S. Ilan Troen's article, Frontier Myths and Their Applications in America and Israel: A Transnational Perspective, to be enlightening. By comparing our American history of land division and ownership (based on Thomas Jefferson's yeomen farmer and a firm belief in the positive abilities of capitalism) with Israel's history of strictly communal land settlement and civil planning.

Troen argues that the differences lies in the two nations' fundamental ideals. American property ownership is based on the belief in individualism and the right to the "pursuit of happiness." Israeli property is owned by the government, which rents this property out to its citizens in the fashion most in accordance with the "common Jewish good."

Citizens from both countries are deeply unsatisfied with the outcomes of both governmental systems. American critics complain of their "pioneer inheritance of exploitation" and its destruction of the environment and community. They see capitalism as a system which is better for the growth of business than the sustainability of culture. Israeli critics of Zionist collectivism complain that it results in national neglect of the individual and the culture of the self. Israelis who are not Jewish are unhappy that their efforts go toward the betterment of the Jewish State, which they do not believe is looking out for their interests.

Both countries also boast strong proponents of their current economic and property systems. Proponents of American capitalism point to their system's material successes and its speedy economic growth, while proponents of Israeli socialism point to their esteemed city planning and Jewish cultural unity.

Perhaps within both systems unhappiness and longing for the other known way of doing things are products of "the grass is always greener" syndrome. Or feelings of unrest may be symptoms of the failure of both systems to meet the needs of their citizens, calling to question what sorts of governmental involvements in the economy and property systems are agreeable. Will citizens of a state ever be able to agree on such systems?

Obsession and Confusion in The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God

Etgar Keret's book of short stories follows the daily frustrations and confusions of its modern Israeli characters with a healthy dose of anger as well as confusion.

While Keret's characters range from schoolboys to hired assassins, I can empathize with many of their emotions, and while his plot lines border on the surreal, their blatancy becomes violently realistic.

In the first story, a man who is down on his luck and always late to everything is given the good fortune of being the only man who a most punctual bus driver will wait for. When this man is stood up on a date and doesn't even run after the bus, it still waits for him. This Israeli story hits close to home. Another story follows a boy whose parents try to teach him the value of a shekel by buying him a piggy bank instead of a Bart Simpson doll. But the boy grows to love the pig itself and rather than let his parents smash it with a hammer, he sets the pig free in a field. This story feels like the story of an American boy.

Other stories get more bizarre, like the story of a man, whose mother's cancerous uterus is removed and put on display in a museum, and his obsession with his place of fetal origin. Another man wishes for a friend who is an angel. When the angel actually arrives, the angel turns out to be a liar and in the end, not even an angel at all. One woman falls in love with a man who comes out of the gate to Hell, which is located next to her house.

Still other stories get political, like the story of an Israeli soldier who finally beats to death a taunter to avenge the death of his friend. He argues that as long as he plays the same game as the other side, he can't lose. One boy who visits a Holocaust museum is taught that buying things from Germany is an insult to his Jewish ancestors. Another boy is almost beat up by two other boys on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Keret's short stories hit home, making me consider the complexities of the everyday lives of Israelis. These are as fresh and moving as any modern American stories.

Curiosity Over Assumptions

Listen to their conversation: Malka and Aziza

This morning, Michigan Public Radio's Speaking of Faith covered the story of a group of people living in LA, called NewGround, who are working to build understanding in the heart of political conflict. Two girls participating in the program, Malka and Aziza, were chosen for a radio interview. Malka, a Jew and Aziza, a Palestinian discuss their persistence in attempting to understand one another and develop a friendship.

They claim that the key is realizing your similarities and constantly trying to tackle the "elephant in the room." For them the word "Zionism" is one of the hardest to overcome. To Malka the word means salvation and community and to Aziza it means oppression and exclusion. By continuing to ask questions, the two girls say they have been able to reach a deeper understanding of conflict and resolution.

The People of Lake Tiberias

Yahya Yakhlif's novel, A Lake Beyond the Wind, depicts Palestinian life in 1948 during the rise of Israeli power within Palestine. The Palestinian townspeople that this novel focuses on still believe that the Arab Liberation Army will succeed in defeating the Israelis, whose new settlements begin to neighbor their villages.

Yakhlif effectively characterizes Samakh, a Palestinian village on the banks of Lake Tiberias through the intricate lives of many of its residents. Radi, a boy coming of age works in his uncle's shop, a gathering place for the townspeople. When a British soldier sells Radi a bulletproof vest, Radi believes that the wearer of such a powerful vest must be a courageous warrior. Radi happily sells the vest to Ahmad Bey, an officer in the Arab Liberation Army, who has come to Samakh to recruit soldiers. The unpopular Najib readily volunteers and the story follows Najib and the vest to Beisan, the training camp.

At Beisan, the situations of several characters become more dire than they had seemed to the hopeful residents of Samakh. Though the first battle fought by the Arab Liberation Army (at Tirat-Zevi) results in bloody defeat, Ahmad Bey tells his superiors it was a success. Najib finds that Bey is a liar and a coward. Najib, however, turns out to be a strong character and friend to his fellow soldiers, such as Abd al-Rahman, an Iraqi volunteer.

As the novel progresses, perspectives change and the intimate thoughts of characters like Abd al-Rahman and his friend Asad al-Shahba, a young man forced to part from his potential bride, are revealed. Readers find out what characters in the town were up to during the battle at Tirat-Zevi. Radi and his aunt Fatima (Najib's ex-wife) were washing a tent in Lake Tiberias, a town gathering place and life force. While Najib is at Beisan he imagines the lake, wishing he can return there. Najib's feelings express the wish of all the characters to return to the peaceful lake of the past, undisturbed and unthreatened.

When Ahmad Bey returns to Samakh to relay a tip that Israeli forces are planning to attack the village itself, residents realize that they are no longer separated from the battlefield. Their hopes dwindle and many men want to purchase rifles, including Radi's uncle and father. This planned attack on civilians becomes personal through the scope of Yakhlif's well developed characters. His novel celebrates the lives of Samakh's former residents by demonstrating their passions, weaknesses, and humanity. His is a fiction that tells many truths.

When the Outside World Doesn't Care

The film Paradise Now put me in the shoes of the suicide bomber. When you are born in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, terrorized by Israeli soldiers, forced to cross through military checkpoints daily, kept from building or joining a Palestinian army or government (because such institutions are disallowed by Israel), then you are left with few options for resistance against tyranny.

But who is keeping Palestinians from returning to their former homeland? Who ensures that the Israeli army is funded and equipped with the bombs they drop on Palestinian homes, schools, and churches when Palestinians have no army and no government to fight back?

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. From 1976-2004, Israel was the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, having recently been supplanted by Iraq. Since 1985, the United States has provided nearly $3 billion in grants annually to Israel.

How can we expect anything else from Palestinian youth? I realize that words like "suicide" and "bomber" are not synonymous with peace, but they have become synonymous with "fighting for your country" and "defending your loved ones" for some (definitely not all) Palestinians because they have no alternative. Israel continues to dominate and attack Palestinian refugees because of continued and biased U.S. support.

The United States has never provided aid to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). U.S. economic aid to the Palestinians has averaged about $85 million per year since 1993. There has been no military aid.

By continuing to favor the oppressor, the United States government becomes the oppressor.

Fall Into the Gap

David Newman and Ghazi Falah's article "Bridging the Gap: Palestinian and Israeli discourses on autonomy and statehood" helped clarify the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for me. Israel's power, as a nation-state, over Palestinians, who make up a stateless nation, has weakened due to the end of the Cold War and increasing demand by world superpowers, such as Norway and Egypt, for the acknowledgment of Palestinian interests, which have been formulated by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). At the same time, the interests of Palestine have gone from a demand for the return of the entire Israeli territory (former Palestine) to the acceptance of only part of this territory.

As the PLO has become willing to acknowledge the state of Israel, their demands have in turn been given more attention by world powers, and thereby Israel (which is looking out for its evolving global economic interests). It seems that in order to advance and end the violence, Palestinians must forget the painful past and the Israeli invasion and takeover of Palestine is seen as water under the bridge. This is, if the the Palestinians are given a say at all. Only after the Madrid conference in 1990 were Palestinians involved in the territorial decision making process. Israel, faced with pressure by the new, post-Gulf War American commitment to end the conflict, was ready to acknowledge the PLO. This willingness of Israel to negotiate rather than enforce will be key in Palestine's progress toward becoming a state again.

It seems that Palestinian history and human rights have fallen into a gap, created and misunderstood by Israel and other superpowers whose colonial interests dictate the final territorial and political outcome. Letting Palestinians enter the playing field has been a consequence of external economic affairs, not compassion. Also, their entrance into the discussion of their future does not guarantee that their interests will be realized, especially while Israel continues to dominate militarily, territorially, and politically.

A Diverse Iraq

The Dreams of Sparrows is the most moving film I have seen all year. This documentary brought me much closer to the lives of real Iraqis than any American-made film has, because it was a collaborative work imagined and realized by Iraqis, whose only motivation was to fairly and accurately portray the whole spectrum of current Iraqi viewpoints.

This film focused in on Iraqi opinions about the fall of Saddam Hussein and the current American occupation. I was surprised by how varied public opinion is. While living across the ocean from Iraq and not knowing any Iraqis, it has been easy for me to lump all Iraqis together, assuming that "they" all think "such and such." But this is not so. Iraqis are as diverse and politically active as Americans. This film even showed an Iraqi communist party demonstration. The opinions of people from all different classes and ideologies were given equal time.

Many artists said they are happy about the fall of Saddam because they were oppressed artistically during his reign. One woman showed the camera her photographs of George W. Bush, exclaiming, "I love Bush!" This is certainly not what I expected. But other Iraqis acknowledge that Saddam was only able to come to power through the aid of the U.S. According to this film, many Iraqis saw Saddam as an oppressor, but they are uncertain about the future of Iraq under U.S. occupation. One woman said, "What's better, Saddam's mass graves or American tanks rolling through the streets?"

Others expressed their continued support and love of Saddam. One man said, "I only hope that Saddam will regain power and set this country straight." While many Iraqis disagree about possible solutions, there seems to be a consensus on the issues that need to be addressed immediately. The gas crisis and garbage cleanup are on everyone's minds. Before seeing this film, I had no idea that Iraqis were waiting all day in lines spanning city block after city block just to fill up their tanks. One man said, "I thought we were an oil country. Why can't we get any gas? We never had these problems under Saddam." This made me wonder what the connection is between the Iraqi gas crisis and the motivations of U.S. politicians. The lack of a municipal garbage service has also been devastating, especially for orphan children living in city streets. The heaping garbage is not only a daily symbol of Iraq's current instability, it threatens the health of all Iraqis. Many people living surrounded by garbage wonder why it is taking so long for the Americans to rebuild Iraq as they have promised.

Another issue on many Iraqis minds is, of course, the high levels of violence as a result of the occupation by American troops. This film is dedicated to Sa'ad Fakher, an Iraqi producer killed during the production. His friends said that he was the first to praise the fall of Saddam and the American occupation, and yet he was mistakenly shot at least twenty times by American soldiers while riding in his car. Many Iraqis asked the camera, "What is terrorism? How is what the Americans are doing not terrorism? If you say that to them they do not understand. If Iraq took over the U.S., wouldn't they fight back? We are not terrorists. We are part of the resistance. If the U.S. does not get out, we will have to kick them out." This made me realize that during American political debates about whether to (and how to) get out of Iraq, we have forgotten to ask the Iraqis what they think. This unwillingness to let Iraqis vote the U.S. out or even protest against American troops is undemocratic and, at best, colonialism. Some children that were interviewed in this film (those who are still able to attend school) showed the camera their drawings of warheads and bomb shelters. One girls said, "We used to draw pretty, colorful things, but now we have to draw war. I don't know why, we just have to."

Kurtlar Vadisi Irak

Valley of the Wolves Iraq alerted me to a current wartime event which has been largely ignored by the American media. During the so-called "Hood Event," which has become famous in Turkey, Turkish soldiers, who were allied with NATO forces, were led out of their headquarters at gunpoint with hoods over their heads on suspect for terrorism. They were detained for sixty hours. This was the first time such an incident had ever taken place between the two NATO allies, the United States and Turkey. In the film, the Turkish soldiers are bewildered that people who quite recently had tea with them could force such inhumane humiliation upon them by putting bags over their heads.

The film also reenacts wartime events which have received more attention from the American media, such as the raid by American soldiers of an Iraqi wedding, which results in the massacre of a number of civilians. This scene alludes to allegations of a wedding party massacre in Mukaradeeb on May 19, 2004. Also, American soldiers are shown torturing detainees in Abu Ghraib prison, which includes a female soldier (in Sabrina Harman garb) making a human pyramid, referring to the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. This scene is the first filmed depiction of actions by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison.

During the scene where the American soldiers' captives are being held in a semi trailer, one soldier tells another that the prisoners might die of suffocation because there is no air supply. The other soldier responds by shooting hundreds of bullet-holes into the trailer. He then says that now they won't die of suffocation. The captives are shown screaming for help as they collapse in a bloodbath. A similar event is reported by the American media to have occurred in Afghanistan after the battle for Mazari Sharif on November 9, 2001, with Taliban soldiers in the trailer and soldiers of the Afghan Northern Alliance as their guardians. During the film, the American soldiers arrive with their trailer of massacred prisoners at an American Army hospital, where an Army doctor scolds the solders for not leaving the prisoners' organs intact. It is revealed that this doctor is in the business of removing organs from injured civilian prisoners to sell to rich people in New York, London, and Tel Aviv.

While the film's portrayal of actual events made me more conscious of the impact of the U.S. invasion and continued occupation of Iraq on public opinion in Turkey, it also over dramatized certain events and placed blame on American soldiers for acts they have not committed, such as the containment trailer massacre. Still, events such as the "Hood Event" and Abu Ghraib prison torture and abuse scandal ought to continue to be publicized. Films such as this raise the question, "What ought to be the role of fictional film in reenacting controversial wartime events? Should filmmakers remain loyal to the truth (at least as we know it)? Or should they fictionalize real events to get at a larger truth?" It seems that the important thing is that we as viewers remain cautious while watching films (fictional and documentary) and that when we are presented with new information, we ask ourselves, "Is this the whole story?"

Even Valley of the Wolves Iraq's scriptwriter, Bahadir Ozdener, has defined the film by saying, "Our film is a sort of political action. Maybe 60 or 70 percent of what happens on screen is factually true. Turkey and America are allies, but Turkey wants to say something to its friend. We want to say the bitter truth. We want to say that this is wrong."