photo: flickr

There is now a new Cypriot generation that has nothing to remember from the pre-1974 era.  People born after the division of the island into two different territorial and administratives zones, are now well into their thirties. This fact is a blessing and a curse at the same time. The lack of memories for those new generations of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, can either go a long way towards reconciliation or, simply, exclude it for good.

New Cypriots have no memory of the era where both communities in the island lived together. A common territorial space for them, has never existed. For a lot of people of both communities, their ‘world’ stops in the Green LIne that separates the two parts of the island. New Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots never worked, lived, existed together.

At the same time, those Cypriots have no memory of the intercommunal conflict of fifties or sixties; as long as they have lived, no armed struggle has occured in the island. Turkish Cypriots never had the feeling of exclusion at the enclaves of sixities; Greek Cypriots know nothing first hand of the Turkish invasion and for both the communities the war of 1974 is only history for them.

Now, it is up to those in a position to affect the new generations to decide wether this lack of memory will be a gift or a burden. If the history taught by the schools, the leadership, the parents, the media, the people in each community continues to be poisoned by nationalist narratives which want the Cyprus problem to finish for the Turkish Cypriots in 1974, exactly where it begins for the Greek Cypriots, next generations will be even more difficult to support any reconciliation and the solution will crush on the walls across the Green Line. If an effort to build a new Cypriot generation is taken up, free of any negative images and ghost of the past, then it is going to be this new wave of people that will place the very first foundations of a new Cyprus from all and for all the Cypriots.

What EU could do in this context? Keep on encouranging all those that promote and work for reconciliation in Cyprus and abroad. And, perhaps, provide a common ground for both people of the community to rediscover a new, EU-led, Cypriotness.