‘Kind Of Apartheid’ Found In Cyprus

Press, Volume C, Issue 29504, 4 May 1961, Page 17

‘Kind Of Apartheid’ Found In Cyprus

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

• LONDON, May 3. There is a “kind of apartheid” today in one of the newest Commonwealth States—Cyprus, This was admitted by the President, Archbishop Makarios, in an interview, says the “Daily Telegraph” correspondent in Nicosia.

The Archbishop said that Greeks and Turks did not mix either socially or in business. This aloofness had arisen since the days of the emergency but he hoped it would gradually subside as the people of Cyprus came to realise they were now one nation. Greeks with whom the correspondent discussed the situation placed the blame on the “monstrous inhuman Constitution” which they said had brought racial segregation and must sooner or later be revised if economic disaster was to be averted. “It is indeed the tragedy of Cyprus at the present time that this apartheid does exist with Greeks and Turks standing aloof from each other. It is rare to see a Turk in the Greek quarter of Nicosia or vice versa.” says the correspondent. “No Greek will buy goods from a Turkish shop or enter a Turkish coffee shop as they used to do in pre-emer-gency days and it is the Turks who suffer most from

this apartheid for it was the Greek majority who used to patronise their markets and shops in the ‘good old days’ when Cyprus was under that ‘oppressive colonial rule’ which many Greeks and Turks still pine for, although they dare not say so.” Asked why no Cyprus flags were to be seen; why Greek flags flew over Greek schools and Turkish flags over Turkish schools, President Makarios said: "We are a new State; not a new nation; and, therefore, both Greeks and Turks will continue to have their respective attachments to their respective motherlands.” On the division of Greek and Turkish municipalities in towns, which is a sore point among Greeks. President Makarios admitted that there were serious difficulties in implementing this article in the Constitution but he denied that in Nicosia, which would be divided practically in half, there would be Greek majorities in some parts of the Turkish area.