So as not to forget Cyprus and not let it be forgotten: Once Upon a Time

The AB and the Greek Cypriot side criticize Turkey over its stance of not coming to terms on the Cyprus issue while ignoring what happened before 1974. Does their approach guarantee that what happened will never be repeated from now on? If only there could be such a guarantee, and if only one could really be given the feeling that what happened was the result of a very exceptional, momentary eclipse of reason in the history of a society. Yet there are very clear signs that what happened could always happen again in a graver form.

Unfortunately, the attempts at genocide against the Turkish community before 1974 were carried out with the support of European actors themselves, the so-called guarantors of peace and guardians of rights and freedoms. That what happened in Cyprus was not an exception was in fact shown some twenty years later "in the middle of Europe," that is, in Aliya's words, "and in the last quarter of the twentieth century at that." The Dutch commander acting in the name of the BM, on the grounds that Srebrenica was under BM protection, collected the weapons of the Muslim Bosniaks and left them completely defenseless against the Serb genocidaires.

The European missions charged with keeping the peace between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities living together before 1974 likewise did nothing but facilitate the massacres by the Greek Cypriots. That is why the Peace Operation was born as a necessity, and when you scratch the words of those who today describe the situation Turkey created with this landing as an "occupation," what we see underneath is only the grudge of a genocide that could not be accomplished.

How can Turkey ignore what the solution approach demanded of Turkey on the Island by the AB, which showed its open hand against Turkey by admitting the Greek Cypriot side into the Union, actually means, and for the sake of what? In fact, even looking at its Cyprus policy alone reveals the real intention behind the AB's approach to Turkey's accession policy.

That is why it is necessary not to let the pre-1974 period be forgotten, and to remind those who have forgotten, better and more strikingly. In this respect, TRT's series "Once Upon a Time in Cyprus" is a very important project for bringing what happened back onto the agenda. The series tries to tell what happened in the period before 1974, when Turkey made its landing, in as gripping and striking a language as possible, with a drama logic that goes beyond a documentary. Truly, every episode is watched in one breath. But the fact that it is watched in one breath does not mean that the content of the series is free of problems.

First of all, let us admit that making a series about the recent past is both much harder than is supposed, but also that there are greater possibilities that offset these difficulties and make the work easier. The fact that living witnesses of the period, or those who heard the events directly from those witnesses, are still alive makes fictional dramatic production very difficult. Making actors resemble real persons is a serious difficulty. Replacing a well-known personality who died more recently with an actor is a claim that cannot be fulfilled no matter what is done. Especially if the personality is the leader of a society, one of the principal actors of a liberation movement. And if on top of that the details of the events are known to everyone in some way, following it amounts only to listening well to the testimonies of several voices. Because when events are taken from a single voice, problems inevitably arise. For no event that has been lived has a single account.

Indeed, my valued friend from the newspaper Haber Kıbrıs, with whom I spoke, says that at first they approached the series Once Upon a Time in Cyprus as a chance to have a television classic on our Cyprus realities, but that some obvious errors in the series created serious disappointment. Quoting the Cypriot journalist Ahmet Tolgay, who also lived through the 1960s, he says they appreciate that the series is not a history documentary and is ultimately also a drama, but that dramatic freedom should not include misrepresenting historical events and historical characters.

For example, in the series, is making the terrorist Samson chase Rauf Denktaş through the streets of Nicosia, and portraying him and Fazıl Küçük, another leader of the movement, as such weak and tearful figures, a choice of fiction or based on historical documentation? If the latter, they are remembered for personalities who never let go of their resolve even in the hardest conditions of war and who spread morale around them. Moreover, depicting Denktaş constantly with a camera hanging from his neck is probably the result of a carelessness that attributes to his whole past a hobby he acquired later. Indeed, a simple search turns up his statements that he took up the hobby of photography as a consolation after losing his son. His own daughter, Ender Denktaş Vangöl, also expresses this with a somewhat harsher reproach.

In fact both Tümerkan and Tolgay also point to some obvious mistakes made in the series. For example, the public-servant doctors and nurses of the Republic's state hospital, which was brought down in Bloody Christmas, who were taken captive, did not have the "Red Crescent" emblem on their caps. The female doctor shown in contact with Ankara was not "Mesude" but "Ayten Berkalp." Medical Major Nihat İlhan Adiloğlu, an important figure of the dramatization of the Kumsal massacre, did not work at his clinic. The British High Commission was a diplomatic institution, not a military headquarters, and the high commissioner was a diplomat, not a high-ranking officer. Grivas, who was in Athens at that time, was not the implementer of AKRİTAS at the very heart of local events. Moreover, he held the rank of "colonel," not "general." Denktaş and Dr. Küçük did not go all the way to the Nicosia International Airport to see off the plane that took off to carry our wounded to Ankara.

And of course there is also the superhero role attributed to the inspector sent from Ankara. This role also requires depicting the Cypriot mujahids as helpless, unable even to hold a rifle. Perhaps such heroism may have an equivalent for the television viewer, but when we have the chance both to own a television classic on our Cyprus realities and to tell these realities to the whole world, is that chance not being squandered for the sake of a viewer who is a customer for "Turks' propaganda to Turks"?