PSU Magazine Fall 2005

Biro! Yesilada remembers playing in his backyard in Cyprus one day when Greek militiamen scoped in on him and started using him for target prac– tice. He remembers sniper bullets zip– ping over his head, his mother rushing out to fetch him, and the Greek militia overrunning his neighborhood , killing a few people, and then moving on. "I don't know how l grew up to become a normal person, " says Yesi– lada, Chair in Comemporary Turkish Studies, who spent the first 15 years of his life in a Turkish Cypriot enclave. Across the table sits Harry Anasta– siou, associate professor in Connict Resolution. He also spent most of his childhood in Cyprus, but on the Greek side. Sectarian violence was a constant presence in his world, too-he once witnessed a political assassination– but it wasn't until he was a student in the United States in 1974 that war forced a third of the Greek Cypriot population to leave their homes and move Lo another pan of the island. "To this day there are people in hope of having their homes returned ," he says. Complex, deep-seated networks of resenLment permeate this small island in the eastern Mediterranean. The "Green Line"-a United Nations– patrolled buffer zone that runs from coast to coast and right up through the capital city of Nicosia-separates the Greek side from the Turkish side. Nothing would please Yesilada and Anastasiou more, they say, than seeing the Green Line go away. Long before the two grew to manhood , they real– ized the futility of the status quo. Three years ago the two came together Lo form the Peace Initiatives Project (PIP) at Portland State. Through PJP, which received private funding from 16 PSU MAGAZINE FALL 2005 Portland businessmen E. John Rumpakis and Al Jubitz , they're pro– viding assistance to the peace move– ment already existing in yprus. They are also creating opportunities for Greek and Turkish Cypriot students to study at PSU and for U.S. students to study in Cyprus. Recently they received $10,000 Lo help fund a survey of the islands population, which will Lake place this fall. "lL will enable us to pinpoinL simi– larities and differences in beliefs, val– ues, and expe Lations of the people," Anastasiou says. Finding common ground lies al the center of PlP's mission. To get there , all sides will have Lo weed through-and , ultimately, set aside-the damaging effects of history. 1e Greeks and Turks have been at odds for nearly 200 years. Meanwhile, Cyprus was occupied by one empire after another-most recently the British-for nearly two millennia, all the while maintaining a mixed Greek and Turkish population. Violence by both the Greek and the Turkish Cypri– ots bloomed in the 1950s, largely against the British, but also against each other and within factions of their own ethnic groups. The assassination Anastasiou wit– nessed as an 8-year-old-boy was one such incident. As he was watching a movie in the cinema his father owned, four Greek Cypriot men in the row in front of him rose and emptied their pistols into the man sitting in front of them. The victim was also Greek Cypriot and an auxiliary policeman in the British administration. "The assassins were the revolution– aries fighting against the British. They escaped retribution; their actions were considered heroic," says Anastasiou. The British finally left, and in 1959 an agreement involving Britain, Turkey, and Gr ece set up a constitu– tional framework for the island , giving the Greeks and Turks virtual political equality-something the Greeks, with their much larger population , resented. The new constitution proved unworkable almost from the start. Hostilities between the two sides came to a head in 1964, and for the next decade , Greece and Turkey threatened war against each other over Cyprus. Then in 1974 the Turks LOok over the northern third of the island, forcing 180,000 Greek Cypriots Lo 0ee their homes. As many as 45 ,000 Turkish Cypriots also became refugees. Thus for Anastasiou and Yesilada and thousands of other Cypriots, 1974 forms an hisLOrical dividing line. Before then , in the minds of the Cypriot Turks, the Greeks were the bullies, exerting an undue share of power and forcing the Turks Lo live in scattered enclaves throughout the island. After 1974, it was the Greeks who felt stepped on. "Nationalism has completely alien– ated the two groups," says Anastasiou. "For years, the Greek Cypriots had no appreciation for what the Turkish Cypriots went through, and vice versa. You will find nothing in their books of what each did Lo the other side." By the mid-'70s Yesilada had begun to consider himself more American than Cypriot. His parents had shipped him off LO live with a cousin in Califor– nia in 1971 because of their fearful life in Cyprus. Within six months he wenL