Cyprus PEN’s European Writers Symposium Europe Writes Itself
NicosiaFebruary 19-23rd 2004-03-02
The symposium took place in the euphoric atmosphere of hope that strife between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots will end before the May 1 deadline for Cypriot accession to the European Union. Cyprus joins the EU with nine East European incumbents.
If adopted the [Kofi] Annan plan will create a new independent state connecting two equal cantons in an “insoluble partnership” under single sovereignty. Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash will become co-presidents of the united Cyprus, alternating monthly as head of state over the first 30 months.
Nineteen European countries were represented at the symposium. There were some genuinely creative writers drawn together in a strangely spiritual harmony (particularly between Greek and Turkish speakers) although Alev Adil has cautioned me not to be too sentimental about this. My views are based on a very cursory visit.
If the Annan plan’s recipe for a peaceful federation fails, the impoverished TRNC will be left out in the cold and southern (Greek) Cyprus will join alone. Greek Cyprus is 68% of the island with a population of 643,000. The value of the economy of northern (Turkish) Cyprus (population 88,000) is a fraction of that of the Greek south, partly as a result of an international embargo in place since 1974.
When I last visited Cyprus for the EU’s Med Media Programme in 1994 I had to cross the buffer zone into the north by foot (at the checkpoint were huge photographs of those killed on both sides when the Turkish army invaded in 1974; prompted by the Greek Colonel’s Putsch). I had a meeting with Denktash in 1993. A British-trained lawyer, he was very eager to benefit from Med Media although the EU does not recognise the TRNC. Today, however, he is considered by many Greek Cypriots a main obstacle to the island’s transition to peaceful coexistence.
Since last April 23rd anybody can drive across the green line/ buffer zone as long as they are willing to show their passports to Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot checkpoints (many Cypriot Greeks are not willing to because they do not recognise the TRNC). I crossed with a Turkish Cypriot poetess (Nese Yasin) and a Berlin-based Turkish novelist (Emine Sevgi Ozdamar), a German translator married to a Greek Cypriot and a Greek woman driver. In the lovely northern fishing port of Kyrenia we even met the Greek Cypriot deputy mayoress who had hosted the symposium; she was trying to claim back the home she fled in 1974.
While Greek Cyprus appears far more developed than Greece, entering Northern Cyprus is entering an impoverish country frozen in the 1950’s. In 1974 the Turkish army built in stone on the mountainside overlooking Greek Nicosia a huge Turkish flag with the words beside it in Turkish ‘Happy to be a Turk’, a constant reminder of power to the anxious Greeks below. The ‘Happy to be a Turk’ banners great you in English after you cross.
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(The next two paragraphs are not relevant to Cyprus but may be of anecdotal interest)
I last met Nese Yasin at a poetry festival in Pergamon in southern Turkey in 1996. The Turkish poets who attended had suffered greatly under police cruelties. Theylived the Homeric legends, but in Turkish. They were just as immersed in the Greek Classics as any Greek academic. The festival was held a hotel out of town to deter Islamic militants who had carried out an atrocity in July 1993 at a symposium in Sivas in which the famous writer and humorist Aziz Nesin played a leading role. The militants had set fire to the hotel in central Sivas where he and the other poets were staying, to protest against Nesin's presence. Many of Turkey's greatest poets, some as young as 19, perished in the flames. Those who tried to escape were thrown back into the fire.
Nesin had been widely criticized for translating and publishing some sections of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in an Istanbul newspaper. Nesin was one of the few survivors of the fire. He died of a heart attack, unrelated to the arson attack, in July of 1995.
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The last time I visited Cyprus I didn’t tell my Greek friends I was visiting the north. Today, the atmosphere has changed. Cypriots told me of men squabbling over the right of way until the Greek realizes the other is not Greek, but Turkish and says,“Oh, I am so sorry. I didn’t realise you were Turkish.”
At a poetry festival I attended in a huge, beautiful restored, stone Lusignan Crusader vault the invited Turkish poets were lionised, given the places of honour and enjoyed their role. Poetry seems to travel exquisitely through Turkish, Mehmed’s Yasin (Nese’s brother’s) verses sounding to me as fast and quiet and soft as water whispering over stones.
It appears that what I saw was not entirely representative. There are many Turkish Cypriot poets whom I did not meet.
Turkish Cypriots have also come across insulting behaviour in the South. The hardliners have by no means disappeared. Everyone tells you that there have been no incidents since the borders opened but they may be living in a dream- world. Our tourist guide added the phrase ‘when the Turkish army occupied a third of Cyprus in 1974’ at almost every sentence. When we passed a Byzantine church and the minaret of a mosque she described the church in detail but did not mention the mosque. The green line buffer zone at the end of Ledra street still has a huge photographs of the missing from 1974.
Although the regime in the North is democratic it does not always appears to be. One Cypriot Turkish writer told me of her arrest for insulting the government of Denktash. “I was wearing a silk evening dress. They put me in a cell. I had no time to change”, she told me. “However, in the morning, far from molesting me, the male prisoners were sorry for me and did everything they could to help me”. As an act of rebellion against the division of her island this lady now lives in a flat in Greek Nicosia and travels freely back and forth. However, her situation is somewhat exceptional.
Europe writes History, European Writers Symposium
The conference itself lasted a day and a half and was attended by representatives from Bulgaria, Cyprus (seven Greeks, one Turk), Finland, France (Alexandre Blokh), Germany, Greece (two representatives), Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey (although the representative is a German national living in Germany and writing in German) and the UK (myself). Nese Yasin happened to hear about the conference and at our urging attended most of it. It was hosted with hospitality and efficiency by Cyprus PEN and its President Mr. Panos Ioannides.
Themes suggested by Cyprus PEN were 1. how an author views the expansion and integration of Europe 2. will expansion challenge national identity and/ or language 3. how will accession affect writers from minority languages 4. what opportunities will be opened up 5. how will political and economic expansion affect Europe’s cultural personae 6. is unity achievable in diversity 7. In the internet revolution is Europe building a tower of Babel ?
Generally-speaking I picked up the following lines of thinking:
Eastern European representatives as well as Marita Conlon-McKenna, head of Irish PEN, tended to associate themselves with Cyprus. Guergui Konstantinov, President of Bulgarian PEN noted that before the wall came down the Samizdat poet had great influence in defending freedom. However, economic pressures have now replaced ideological pressures and young people have turned away from high literature towards trashy visual media. He also notes that the poet is very important for European unity because ‘the poet is a liar who always tells the truth’. He said that in Bulgaria 400 books of poetry in up to 800 copies are printed every year. Good poets, he said, today outnumber good politicians. He took up a pessimistic line of poetry, ‘The bird has roots and the tree has wings’. The Maltese poet Maria Ganado took up the argument that freedom does not encourage good writing. With affluence, she said, people replace culture with entertainment. She is worried about the Maltese entry into the EU in May for this reason.
The theme of the mutation from physical violence to literary creativity was a constant theme, Aeres, the god of war being invoked by Greek writers. Violence is within us, mutating for the writer into artistic competition. Reflecting this view, Gustav Murin, the President of Slovakian PEN, noted that the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo had created greater interest in literature. The Greek Titos Patrikios noted that Dostoyevsky had written the dark and terrifying end of The Idiot sitting in a peaceful, sunlit villa on the banks of the Arno in Florence.
The other two main themes that emerged from presentations were that of ‘The other’ (Sartre; L’enfer, c’est l’autre) and the ghetto mentality reflected in the writings and ethnic dislocation of Franz Kafka; writers from Eastern Europe clearly associate with this feeling of rootlessness. Europe’s biggest ghetto is in Germany: it was noted that in Germany today there are 3 million Turks of whom 1 million are now German nationals. This culture was evoked in a reading from the German of Emine Sevgi Ozdamar.
The writer’s search for Utopia was another theme which was constantly referred back to.
In Cyprus, we learnt, there are more poets than readers. Speakers were anxious because they believe that the EU wants us to be consumers at the expense of creativity. In Cyprus being a poet still has far more kudos than in northern Europe. Someone quoted Neil Portman ‘Amusing ourselves to death’. EU bureaucracy was a worry. The East European writers noted that poor countries subsidise writers but that rich countries don’t.
Marita Conlon-McKenna, President of Irish PEN and a well established children’s and adult author, encouraged Cyprus to follow the Irish example; Ireland has prided itself in knowing every trick in the bureaucratic book in order to obtain funding (reflecting its successful agricultural sector). It also offers writers and other artists tax and other incentives. In 1994 The Ireland Literature Exchange set up to encourage Irish writing and finance translations into other languages. The Writers in School scheme gave children access to writers. The Taoiseach (prime minister) Charles Haughey brought in a new tax regime for writers. Ireland offers new tax breaks for film makers.
Marita’s suggestion was for the EU to create and finance a centralised fund for translation from minority languages, funding of co-editions of children’s books and a supportive network of TV stations to show films and dramas from different regions.
She believes that countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia and Cyprus and Malta have much in common with Ireland’s position when it joined the EU in that they have only recently become independent (Ireland was still in the shadow of its British big brother) and that they need to improve their infrastructures, grow their economy and find work for their people. Ireland had the advantage of speaking English. Irish literature has spread worldwide through the English language. Where would Ulysseshave been had it been in Gaelic? She believes that the EU should create a translation centre for all these new countries so that their literary works are widely know. Significantly the new countries join the EU in May under an Irish presidency.
EU likes big projects, not small ones, which worries the new East European countries lacking experience of bureaucracy and form-filling. Hungary PEN’s Gyozo Ferencz noted that in Hungary the 1960s and 1970s were perpetual revolution. ‘The poet, too, must be a revolutionary. As a lecturer you are battling against the wolves at the door”. He said that Hungarian is very difficult to translate. I noted the same with translating early Arabic poetry (e.g. the sound of the camel-beat in the pre-Islamic Mu’allaqat poetry). I also noted that Russians had told me that Tolstoy is often considered by them better in English than in Russian because the English translations clean out his repetitions.
Alexandre Blokh noted that Europe, whose borders were set arbitrarily in 1815, is an ideal, not a reality. Cyprus plays an important role because Saint Paul converted here the first gentiles and the Crusaders established their kingdom. It was also here that Othello murdered Desdemona in Cyprus.
The Cypriot experience will help the integration of Muslims in Europe. Ganado noted how many Maltese words are Arabic. The EU fosters small languages like Maltese. The Norwegian Svein Lancer told us the anecdote of a couple meeting on the beach and discovering that Latin was the only language they shared.
I attach my own presentation as an annex. The written presentation concentrates on the EU’s Med Media Programme I created and ran from 1990-96 but I added more material when I spoke, some related to comparisons between Arab and European literature and some related to the problems of EU bureaucracy.
The Slovak delegate Gustav Murin told us of awful bureaucracy to get government support for literature. Writers and poets cannot deal with this bureaucracy. Brussels diplomats don’t like small boys, only big projects. So only ‘red rats’ succeed; those in Greece who translate Agatha Christie, for example. Writers only received half promised EU funds to begin with, have to wait, may never get any at all. I said that I knew of film makers who had to mortgage their homes waiting for promised finding.
To sum up, Cyprus at this time of apparent harmony seemed a good location for such a symposium and if reunification comes before the May 1 deadline, it may find itself becoming one of the most important cultural and ethnic bridges in the region, linking Europeans with Arabs and Greeks with Turks and allowing an Arab-Israeli dialogue close to the area of conflict.
Annex
Presentation to Cyprus PEN
February 19th to 23rd 2004
My own experience of the European Union dates back to the period 1990-1996 when I launched and ran a post-Gulf War initiative called Med Media as well as a subsidiary programme called Peace Media. Both programmes were financed by the European Commission’s DG1 or foreign affairs section. Med Media, which enjoyed some EU 6 million a year funding from Brussels, aimed to create partnerships between the 12, then 15 EU members, and the 12 neighbouring countries, the Mediterranean Non Member countries. These included Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.
Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominated our programme, other political problems qualified for our funding. The goal of Med Media was to create understanding between different communities through the delicate relationship of television, newspaper and radio networks. In 1994 and 1995 the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU’s) Peace Economics Forum was held in Nicosia. Inside the seminar room the debates were fierce; but by the pool there was total harmony and friendships flourished. Cyprus plays an important role in such enterprises because it faces West and East and has no stigmas attached. A small political party in Syria actually regards Cyprus as part of a classical region which includes Cyprus.
Since the 17- year civil war started in Lebanon in 1976, media outlets have moved to Cyprus and many have stayed. Many Middle East correspondents based themselves there during the war. Journals like Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) and the Middle East Times are still here today.
When I visited both sides of Cyprus regularly for Med Media I always made the same mistake. Forgetting where I was I would tell my host that I wanted my coffee metrio (medium-sweet) on the Turkish side and orta on the Greek. Happily, nobody ever took any offence at my linguistic blunder. Such is the strength of ignorance, in this case my own ignorance. One of the many projects we discussed was a joint union of journalists on the green line but was told by the existing Cyprus Union of Journalists that this was already underway on the Greek side of the line.
Twenty seven countries were involved in Med Media, 15 EU countries and 12 Mediterranean non- member countries from Turkey in the East to Morocco in the West. I also ran a subsidiary programme called Peace Media whose raison d’etre was the post-Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Those were days of hope.
Cyprus was involved in many of our projects. The Cyprus Union of Journalists was part of an International Federation of Journalists-led course involving visits to editorial departments of newspapers and broadcasting stations in the UK. They discussed the future of the British media, in particular the BBC which has been placed under so much pressure this month from the Hutton Enquiry. A second practical course involving professionals talking to documentary film makers, specialists in new media technology and distributors, took place in Paris in 1994