Cyprus protests: Storm in a teacup

It is sometimes difficult to understand why people living in the same time frame and going through the same events remember them so differently. Cyprus is one of those cases. Listening to accounts of the same events on the island from Greeks and Turks, one would easily believe that there were two Cyprus islands, where one bad group of people is constantly trying to exterminate another group of people. Only under such a perceptional fiction can one understand why the Greek Cypriots behave as if they have so easily washed the blood from their hands and forgot about it.

Each time I talk with Archbishop Hrisostomos at his beautiful archiepiscopate office in the heart of the old quarter of Nicosia I feel as if he was just beamed down from outer space, with no idea about the great sufferings that the Turkish Cypriot people were compelled to go through by the Greek majority of the island. I could not stop myself and asked during my last interview with him how, as a man of religion, he could close his eyes to the inhumane isolation imposed on the Turkish Cypriot people by the Greek Cypriot government. Archbishop Hrisostomos is not just a man of religion; he is also a skilled politician capable of not hearing questions he dislikes. He simply pretended to not hear my question and continued telling me about how great it was when Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots lived together peacefully, celebrating each other's religious holidays. He thus made me believe once again that he must have come from moon.
 
But I still have high respect for the archbishop. He has been persistent throughout all the past decades, and in none of our encounters has he told me a different story - even if it was difficult to understand how a man of religion could be so committed to such...