The violent displacement that followed the Turkish invasion in 1974 left a lasting mark on the lives of those who were uprooted. Displacement continued for Greek Cypriots who remained enclaved in the occupied areas, while Turkish Cypriots left their homes in the government-controlled areas to move to the Turkish-occupied areas of Cyprus following the Third Vienna Agreement.
Testimonies featured in documentaries and archival material from CyBC, which is thanked for providing access to the material, show that Greek Cypriots did not want to leave their villages in the occupied north but were forced to do so, not only immediately after the invasion but particularly whenever an incident occurred in mixed or exclusively Turkish Cypriot villages in the part of the island controlled by the Republic of Cyprus. Likewise, the majority of Turkish Cypriots did not want to abandon their villages and homes, regardless of the conditions under which they were living. In some cases, Greek Cypriots were uprooted within a matter of hours, while Turkish Cypriots followed instructions from the Turkish Cypriot leadership at the time, under the pretext of ensuring their safety.
Most Turkish Cypriots living in the Larnaca area had moved to the British Sovereign Base Area of Dhekelia, while Turkish Cypriots from the Limassol area and some villages in Paphos moved to the British Sovereign Base Area of Episkopi, in the Happy Valley area. Strong Turkish Cypriot enclaves also existed in the Paphos villages of Ayios Ioannis, Vretsia, Gialia and Pelathousa.
Family reunification did not effectively help preserve the Greek Cypriot presence in the Karpasia peninsula and elsewhere.
Journalist Sotiris Paroutis from occupied Yialousa, producer and director Cemal Dermus from Ayios Ioannis in Paphos, and Leda Koursoumba, who was a young trainee lawyer and Red Cross volunteer in 1974 and is now its First Vice-President, shared their personal testimonies and experiences with the Cyprus News Agency.
Schools used as leverage to force enclaved residents to leave, says Sotiris Paroutis
Sotiris Paroutis remained in Yialousa with his mother and sister after the invasion. His father owned a truck which had been requisitioned by the National Guard, while he himself was called up as a reserve driver with the truck to the 291st Infantry Battalion. That battalion, like other National Guard units at the time, retreated as far as Anglisides and Alethriko. His father remained under requisition by the National Guard, receiving a small payment, for more than a year, until September 1975. Thanks to the Third Vienna Agreement, his father was able to return to his family more than a year later.
Paroutis said the return of Greek Cypriots took place in the village square.
“My father had not seen his daughter since she was two years old. She had already turned three and he did not recognise her. He asked where Elena was and we told him, ‘This is her,’ but she had changed and he had not recognised her.”
With the return of teachers and family members, he said, they believed that conditions would return to normal and schools would reopen. However, the Turkish Cypriot side did not allow the schools, particularly secondary schools, to resume operating.
“It was used as leverage to force the enclaved residents to leave.”
Sotiris recalls that on August 14, 1975, some secondary-school teachers had returned and begun preparations to reopen the schools, but this was never permitted. Primary schools, he continued, had operated from the previous year, the year of the invasion. He attended the fifth and sixth grades during the 1974–1975 and 1975–1976 school years. He remembers teachers returning to the primary school after days in detention with visible signs of abuse, including his own teacher, Andreas Poyiatjis from Gypsou, who returned to school on crutches following one such detention.
After completing primary school, he had to travel to the government-controlled areas to attend secondary school. On September 16, 1976, he boarded a bus alone and travelled to Nicosia.
“Completely on my own.”
He went to an aunt who lived in Larnaca and initially attended an afternoon secondary school, where, he said, “I realised that I was the little refugee everyone pointed at.” The following year, he attended Ayios Lazaros Gymnasium, which was attended exclusively by children from Greek Cypriot villages in the occupied areas.
By the end of 1976, he said, after the Turkish Cypriot leadership had brought Turkish Cypriots from the Kokkina enclave to Yialousa, who wandered around marking houses, Greek Cypriots who still lived there were asked to voluntarily sign a document agreeing to move south. One of his uncles asked the Turkish Cypriot police officers who had come to tell them to leave what would happen if they refused to sign. They replied that they would not be responsible for what happened to them.
Paroutis said the difference between the Greek Cypriots of Yialousa and other enclaved residents who had left earlier, in 1975 and 1976, was that those from Yialousa were allowed to take belongings with them. His parents even brought their rabbits, he recalls, as well as furniture from their home, which he still owns and uses today.
Because his father owned a truck, he transported their belongings himself, while other Greek Cypriots paid 50 Cyprus pounds at the time to hire Turkish Cypriot trucks to transport their possessions from Yialousa to the Ledra Palace in Nicosia. From there, the Cyprus Red Cross took over, transporting their belongings to its headquarters on Prodromou Avenue. Paroutis remembers piles of furniture belonging to enclaved people who did not know what to do with it because they did not know where they would eventually live.
During the more than a year that his father remained in the government-controlled areas, the family communicated through Red Cross messages that were broadcast on CyBC radio at a specific time every day.
Sotiris recalls that on August 24, 1974, Turkish Cypriots gathered everyone in the village square, separated the women from the men and took males from around the ages of 14 or 15 up to their 50s as prisoners. Only women, children and elderly people remained in Yialousa. Some Greek Cypriot homes were also looted.
Initially, residents were subject to a curfew and required special permission to leave the village, even to visit the fields they cultivated, while patrols also carried out inspections of Greek Cypriot homes.
Food distributions through the Red Cross began shortly afterwards, he said, with trucks arriving in Yialousa every Friday.
Paroutis remembers fearing for their lives, although he did not personally witness acts of violence. However, the threat that they would be taken to the village square and killed, along with the phrase “death is sweeter when shared by many,” has remained engraved in his memory ever since.
During the two years he remained in Yialousa, he never saw the sea or even approached it, as access was prohibited.
Journalist Sotiris Paroutis is now 62 years old. Through his programmes and documentaries, he has examined displacement, population movements and the history of the period before and after 1974. He continues to return to Yialousa, where his home has since been occupied by others.
From Ayios Ioannis in Paphos to Lefka on foot – Cemal Dermus’ story
Cemal Dermus was born in Ayios Ioannis, Paphos, in 1962, where he lived with his family until the summer of 1974.
On August 14, 1974, when the second phase of what he described as the “operation” – referring to the invasion – began, “in the north, the Turks attacked Greek Cypriot villages and the Greek Cypriots attacked the Turkish Cypriot villages that remained in the south.”
That day, he was tending the family’s flock of sheep near his home when he heard gunfire. His mother immediately came to get him and brought the sheep back as well.
“A bullet passed between us and hit the wall of the house. The sound of that bullet still makes me shiver and become distressed even today when someone knocks on the door,” he says.
The fighting continued the following day. Five Turkish Cypriots were killed, the Greek Cypriots left the village, and UN peacekeepers arrived and established a presence there, he added.
Life then resumed its normal rhythm, Dermus said. After all, a month later they had to harvest the grapes to sell them. Nevertheless, he remembers that the adults remained anxious and worried about the children.
It was important to them that the children attend school, but this was not possible. Eventually, a solution was found.
“The village elders found a way to reach Lefka through the mountains. They knew the route to Lefka because they used to take their olives to the olive mill there. Some knew the way because they worked at the Lefka mine. Some became rehbers [guides].”
The first group of Turkish Cypriots from Ayios Ioannis travelled to Lefka towards the end of September 1974, Cemal recalls. When they arrived, they had to send a message back, which they did through Bayrak radio.
The message was: “Our operation was successful, we are alive and well.”
Encouraged by the message, he continued, villagers in Ayios Ioannis began organising more groups of children to take them north so they could attend school.
“My group was the third,” he says.
Describing their departure, Dermus said they did not know beforehand that they were leaving. He was playing with friends in the street when his father approached him and his brother and told them to get ready because their guide, Nazim Hodja, would take them north.
“We got ready, but we did not even take water or food with us,” he said.
“It is a little funny, but I thought we were going to some dance or party. Bayram was coming up shortly afterwards. Our parents had bought us new clothes and I wore those for the journey. We didn’t know we would be taking a complicated route or that we would face difficulties. I was 12 and my brother was 15.”
The group consisted of 14 people, eight or nine of whom were children, with the oldest aged around 15 or 16.
A 30-year-old man in the group angrily told the guide that they were children and that the route would be difficult and they would not be able to walk it. Dermus and two of his friends were initially removed from the group.
The children protested, however, arguing that they were old enough, regularly climbed mountains with donkeys for work and walked 10 to 15 kilometres a day.
“How could we not manage this route? We convinced them, and so we set off.”
Perhaps because they were among the first groups to follow that route, Dermus said, they encountered no serious danger. That night, they slept beneath the trees.
“We were hiding from the Greek Cypriot army because it did not allow Turkish Cypriots to cross to the north, because the Greek Cypriot administration at the time did not want that.”
He remembers reaching a paved road around midday the following day. They were lucky that no vehicles passed at the time, allowing them to cross easily and reach a valley. It was the first valley he had ever seen in his life, and he felt as though he were in a film.
Throughout the journey, which lasted approximately 26 hours, they drank only water from natural springs they encountered along the way. At one point, however, he became hungry. A friend had brought some boiled chicken prepared by his mother and shared some with him.
“Even today, since then, I cannot eat chicken. That’s because I will never find the taste of that chicken again.”
They walked a little further and eventually reached the Lefka reservoir. Dermus thought it was an ocean.
“There were streams in Ayios Ioannis, but until then I had never seen the sea.”
The only time he became frightened, he said, was as they approached the Lefka reservoir and heard Greek Cypriot soldiers shouting at them from higher ground behind them.
“They opened fire and started running towards us. But they were very far away and by then we were very close to the border. Our rehber had told us that once we were 100 metres from the reservoir, the Turkish army would be very close, so I wasn’t afraid.”
The Turkish army received them and took them to a military unit, where they were given food.
“And then I realised that although we had made it, our parents, our father and mother, were still in the village. Where would we go? We didn’t know where we were going.”
The next day, they were put on buses and transported to Nicosia, where they stayed in a hostel for two weeks before being settled in Zodia.
His father, Hussein, found them in Nicosia six months later after making the same journey, following two failed attempts during which Greek Cypriots had found him and sent him back.
His mother, Ayşe, arrived a year later, also walking through the mountains.
His maternal grandparents crossed into the occupied north on August 16, 1975, as part of a group with other Turkish Cypriots. The entire family eventually lived together in Zodia.
Cemal Dermus is now 64 years old. As a producer and director at Bayrak, he has made numerous documentaries about the movement, departure and exchange of populations in 1974–1975.
His longing for his village never disappeared. Since retiring, he frequently visits Ayios Ioannis, where he looks after village homes now inhabited by Greek Cypriots who were themselves forced to leave their own villages in 1974. He also tends the village vineyards, helps with their upkeep and harvests the grapes.
Leda Koursoumba recalls experiences that marked her for life
The Red Cross played a pivotal and crucial role during the events.
Leda Koursoumba, First Vice-President of the Cyprus Red Cross, spoke to CNA about this role. In 1974, she was a young trainee lawyer working at Stella Soulioti’s law office, the mother of a one-month-old newborn, and a Red Cross volunteer.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was called in the day after the invasion and immediately sent a team to Cyprus to take action.
Meanwhile, the Cyprus Red Cross building near the Central Prisons had been bombed, and its then-president, Stella Soulioti, had relocated to the basement of the old Nicosia General Hospital, knowing that assistance would certainly be needed there.
Koursoumba was called upon to help. She was assigned to the Hotel School, where enclaved people returning from the occupied areas and released prisoners were received, as well as women and girls who had been raped.
She worked with the women in these cases, an experience that marked her for the rest of her life.
Koursoumba explained the roles played by the ICRC and the Cyprus Red Cross.
Communication between enclaved people in occupied villages and their relatives in the government-controlled areas was carried out through a specific procedure involving a special Red Cross document.
Volunteers delivered the documents to the enclaved people, who completed them before they were brought back. There were strict rules, including a word limit, and messages could contain only family news.
She said they heard that replies were censored by the Turkish Cypriot leadership and that, on some occasions, messages from the south never arrived.
These messages were read over CyBC radio at a specific time, when everyone would tune in to listen. Koursoumba said examples of these messages have since been donated to and displayed at the ICRC museum in Geneva, as no similar examples existed from any other country.
Food and medicine packages were also sent through Swiss members of the ICRC team, who recorded the needs of enclaved people and provided information about what was happening in the occupied areas, as Greek Cypriot Red Cross members were unable to travel there.
The delivery of such packages through a specific procedure continues today, although they now mainly contain medicines and are handled by the United Nations.
Koursoumba explained that the Cyprus Red Cross received aid for displaced and enclaved people at a building provided by the Trust youth association. At the time, the main needs included baby food, other food supplies and medicines.
The Red Cross, through the ICRC, also sent messages to the mukhtar of villages where Greek Cypriots remained enclaved, requesting information such as the number of adults and children so that appropriate clothing and shoes could be sent.
Asked whether the Red Cross had also been approached by Turkish Cypriots living in specific areas after 1974, such as the British Bases, Koursoumba said she did not know. However, she stressed that if such a request had been made, the Red Cross would certainly have responded because it did not discriminate.
Koursoumba also said the ICRC holds records containing the names of prisoners held both in Cyprus, including at locations such as Pavlides Garage, and in Turkey, including Adana, compiled during visits by ICRC teams to detention facilities.
Fifty years later, she said, these records have been made available for use by the Cyprus Red Cross.
Koursoumba also recalled that the Welfare Service was established at the time and Giorgos Iacovou was appointed to work with the International Red Cross.
Through Stella Soulioti’s efforts, legislation was also amended to temporarily permit medical termination of pregnancy for women who had become pregnant as a result of rape.
Another tragic scene Koursoumba remembers was the arrival of buses carrying prisoners from the Ledra Palace to the Hotel School, where hundreds of relatives waited anxiously to see whether their loved ones had returned.
The Cyprus Red Cross provided the returning prisoners with clothes, a first meal and initial financial assistance of two Cyprus pounds.
“There were people whom no one was waiting for, probably because their families were in the occupied areas. We made sure they could reach relatives in the government-controlled areas,” Koursoumba concluded.
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