Cyprus PIO: Turkish Press and Other Media, 06-01-17

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From: The Republic of Cyprus Press and Information Office Server at <http://www.pio.gov.cy/>

[A] NEWS ITEMS

[01] ORTAM paper reported that there is a flock of wild ducks that may be infected in the occupied part of Cyprus.

[02] The breakaway regime in occupied Cyprus denies reports of bird flu incidents.

[03] The bird flu situation in Turkey.

[04] AFRIKA: Talat: I will meet with Jack Straw on 25 January.

[05] The European Parliament contact group with the Turkish Cypriots convenes for the first time.

[06] Mr Kutlay Erk attends Socialist International´s Local Administrations Conference in Budapest.

[07] Mehmet Ali Agca: Let me free and I will go and bring Bin Laden.

[08] Turkish officer to be tried for bomb attack against Kurdish bookshop in Semdinli.

[B] COMMENTARIES, EDITORIALS AND ANALYSIS

[09] Columnist in CYPRUS TODAY gives a human approach view of developments in Cyprus.

[A] NEWS ITEMS

[01] ORTAM paper reported that there is a flock of wild ducks that may be infected in the occupied part of Cyprus

Moreover, according to the paper, a flock of birds believed to be infected with the bird flu virus is now at the lake of Panagra in the occupied territories of the Republic of Cyprus on the main road of Myrtou-Kyrenia. Eyewitnesses said these wild ducks are standing motionless in an unusual way, do not fear people when approached and continuously scratch their feathers with their beak. The eyewitnesses said that they informed the authorities of the illegal regime about the incident.

The self-styled deputy Minister of Health, Mr Asaf Senol, commenting to the paper, said the incident is monitored not only by them but also by the self-styled Veterinary Department.

Replying to the papers questions, the self-styled Director of the Veterinary Department, Mr Kamil Aktolgali, confirmed the news that there is a flock of wild ducks in the lake and added that they have already sent a team at the lake, which took samples.

Mr Aktolgali said that testing has begun on the samples and would be completed by Friday at the latest. He added that he has nothing further to say about the situation with the ducks.

(DPs)

[02] The breakaway regime in occupied Cyprus denies reports of bird flu incidents

Poultry and other birds being kept in the open and not in enclosed coops, are being confiscated in accordance with a decree issued last week by the `Council of Ministers´.

The measure is part of a wider precautionary program endorsed by the `TRNC government´ earlier, to fight the risk of bird flu spreading into North Cyprus.

This is in addition to the ban on the import of eggs, poultry, other birds, and pork from South Cyprus where local officials earlier announced they spotted salmonella in two different poultry farms.

The Director of the `TRNC Veterinary Department´ Kamil Aktolgali told the BRT that technical teams have been working round the clock in and around the areas where dead birds have been found.

Meanwhile the `Minister of Agriculture and Forestry´ Hüseyin Öztoprak has categorically rejected the claims that bird flu has been detected in the `Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus´.

Speaking today during inspections at two of the biggest integrated poultry farms in North Cyprus, the `Minister´ stressed that until now theres been no report of any bird flu cases in either birds, or humans in North Cyprus.

He said the reported dead chickens found in a few places across North Cyprus were just normal deaths of the animals.

`There's absolutely no need for panic, and our people can consume poultry with ease of mind´ he said, in response to reporters' questions put to him during his inspection of two of North Cyprus's biggest poultry farms - Haci Ali and Çelebi enterprises, this morning".

[03] The bird flu situation in Turkey

According to the center, bird flu was detected in 13 cities and there were suspected bird flu cases in 23 others.

The cities where bird flu was seen are as follows: Igdir, Erzurum, Agri, Sanliurfa, Erzincan, Bitlis, Yozgat, Ankara, Bursa, Istanbul, Van, Aydin and Kars.

Meanwhile, the cities of Mus, Kars, Yozgat, Bayburt, Sanliurfa, Ardahan, Erzurum, Isparta, Izmir, Elazig, Diyarbakir, Karaman, Sivas, Konya, Siirt, Samsun, Eskisehir, Mugla, Karabuk, Batman, Van, Malatya and Edirne are under risk of the disease.

[04] AFRIKA: "Talat: I will meet with Jack Straw on 25 January"

According to the paper, Mr Talat said, inter alia, the following: "Our meeting with the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Jack Straw, is valid for 25 January. Our side has been informed of no change until now.

The information that major changes will be made in the law passed regarding the property issue, the Compensation Committee and the compensations, the return and the exchange (of property) is not true. Only minor (changes will be made). For example, we have discussed the issues of the formation of the Compensation Committee and whether or not the part regarding whether the members of this Committee will be able to have a second job can change or not. The information that experts from Turkey came on this issue is made-up by the Greek Cypriot side and it is untrue.

The Greek Cypriot side wants to prevent the aid which will be made to us with projects of the UNDP, but with time this will be realized.

The information that I have rejected the 120 euro financial aid planned to be given by the European Union is completely untrue."

I/Ts.

[05] The European Parliament contact group with the Turkish Cypriots convenes for the first time

"The North Cyprus Contact Group within the European Parliament convenes officially for the first time this evening in Strasbourg.

It is reported that the group has an action plan which includes a visit to be paid by its members, to the `Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus´.

The group's main objectives include trying to put the EU Financial Aid and Direct Trade regulations into implementation in order to help lift the international isolation of the `TRNC´. (occupied territories of the Republic of Cyprus)

It is stated that the group consists of eight deputies - including the European People's Party representative - French deputy - Francoise Grossete who is expected to be the coordinator".

[06] Mr Kutlay Erk attends Socialist International´s Local Administrations Conference in Budapest

The two day conference is taking place in the Hungarian capital Budapest; and delegates from 12 nations are attending.

Kutlay Erk will also be holding bilateral contacts on the sidelines of the two-day event".

[07] Mehmet Ali Agca: "Let me free and I will go and bring Bin Laden"

HURRIYET writes that it has in its hands the "nonsense" letter, as it describes it, that Mehmet Ali Agca sent from the jail on the 1st of September 2000 to Mr Senkal Atasagun, the person who at the time was the permanent undersecretary of MIT in Turkey. According to this letter, parts of which are published in the paper, Agca stated that if he was set free, he would have gone alone to Afghanistan and he would have offered Bin Laden to America "dead or alive".

"You know well that I, Mehmet Ali Agca, I am a true patriotic and Turk nationalist" wrote Agca to Senkal Atasagun, noting that with his close friend Abdullah Catli he has offered many services to the Turkish state, "which may not be found in the Turkish archives, but they are true", as he wrote. "America gave us Apo (Abdullah Ocalan) as a gift. Let us give America Bin Laden as a gift, as well. I will go alone to Afghanistan, I will penetrate into Laden's organisation and I will offer Bin Laden, dead or alive to America", wrote Agca in his letter.

C/S

[08] Turkish officer to be tried for bomb attack against Kurdish bookshop in Semdinli

Hakkari Criminal Court will start trying Cavus on January 18th on charges of killing one person and injuring five others.

One person was killed and another was injured as a bomb was hurled in a bookstore in Semdinli on November 9th, 2005. Following the blast, demonstrations were staged in the town. Tanju Cavus, who was in his car with his family members during the demonstrations, opened fire to protect himself and his family. During the incident Ali Yilmaz was killed and five others were wounded.

[B] COMMENTARIES, EDITORIALS AND ANALYSIS

[09] Columnist in CYPRUS TODAY gives a human approach view of developments in Cyprus

"My friend Arto flies back from California to find the "fourth world", as he calls it. His definition embraces all - he is young, restless, a "starchild", as he likes to describe himself; someone over here, on this earth, to fight darkness so that light can come into it. You can even think of him as a crusader, but not for religion, rather for goodness to win. He swims against tidal wages coming to destroy what´s natural in people.

We have failed as humans and he wants to remind us how it could have been. He is connected with everything around us: the blue sea that we pollute, the beaches where we throw garbage, the scenery where we build apartments and the animals who have a natural kindness. The natural kindness that people used to have once.

I encounter this natural kindness in a printing house in Strovolos. It is the Yalluris Printing House where I go for the printing in Greek of my book, Oysters with Missing Pearls. It is in the movement of Alexia, the daughter who lays out the pages of my book. It is not just Alexia, it is her mother, her father, her brothers. The whole family is like an archaic picture from a Cyprus which does not exist any more; they want to feed me, they smile a natural smile, their eyes shine and you think: "Can this really be Cyprus? Are they real? Are they from the past or the present?"

The natural grace and kindness we used to have, once upon a time in Cyprus, is there - it does not matter what language I speak, how much money I have, where I live and what I like or dislike. They are ready to embrace others, not questioning or scrutinizing the "other" but creating enough space to breathe. It is in the coffee they make, the red mushrooms they cook, the sweets they offer. It is reflected in their work - they work as a family in the printing house and even the dogs look happy and kind. It goes into the atmosphere, this positive energy, and you just want to sit there and observe what they are doing and be part of the scene. The small dog would come running and greeting. The printing machines would work non-stop and life would go on here, with love and care for those around them.

I walk back down the Leda Palace road, smiling at people. People have lost the natural reflex of smiling. People get surprised when you smile at them and perhaps even question why you are smiling at them. The natural grace and kindness of human beings as a species is gone; it is archaic to smile, it is archaic to offer help or to try to be friends. Life is full of hectic running around and working hard to raise your status or your position. Life is not about love and smiles; it is about money, it is about traffic, it is about things to get, it is about consuming more and more. It is about not caring whether you need what you get but in the end it turns ugly and destructive, rather than nice and simple.

I go deeper and deeper to encounter the morals, the attitudes, the mixed reactions of people. I can´t live without them - I need to walk through their hearts and minds, I need to find out how they feel about what´s been happening around them, I need to hunt their memories that they have kept locked and hidden. Each person becomes a tragedy untold, a novel, a secret treasure to open up and embrace. Each person has a child locked up inside and I need to uncover the child, to let the child show me the pain and the tears, the joy and the laughter so we can walk together on this road called life. Through this journey I will grow more, I will cry more, I will laugh more. Through this journey, I will catch feelings to put on paper so others can read and reflect on their own feelings. Through this journey I will be a mirror to reflect what is on the ground - not in political circles but amongst real people with real stories and real tragedies and real happiness; something genuine which is becoming extinct.

Like Huseyin Cakmak, for instance, a cartoonist who has been drawing things all his life to upset the regime in the northern part of the island. He was born in 1964 and was a refugee from Alifodes. He grew up around Victoria Street in Arabahmet, close to the Paphos Gate. Growing up there was growing up with the barricades, the barrels, the barbed wire, the gun posts of Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots and the UN. Growing up there was fearing what might come from "the other side", and he remembers that when women would go out shopping, they would practically run to pass these military posts quickly, fearing that a stray bullet might hit them any moment. "Nicosia was full of barrels and barbed wire and checkpoints", he remembers, and as they built a village for refugees called "Goçmenköy" he remembers moving there with his family, just a kid to encounter open spaces and fields looking up towards Dikomo.

"This was freedom for the first time! There were no checkpoints, no gun posts, no military posts, no barricades any more! This was a dream place for children. We could run and play and create our own games. All of a sudden, this freedom was reflected in our games - we started creating our own world, our own games. We would build our own little villages, and each `mahalle´ could create three football teams from the children living there. Each family had lots of children. These were refugees from different parts of Cyprus".

We sit at home and talk; I make tea from the Black Sea and we drink it as we talk. Then I make coffee Arabica and we drink and talk. The sun is shinning outside but we concentrate on life in Nicosia: How it was before, how it is now The changing relationships The small things that made people happy back in the ´60s and ´70s and how they are not enough any more.

How nothing is enough! How you must continuously search for other means and ways to be happy, forgetting the essence of life, the simplicity, the basics.

Cakmak has been repressed severely; he is been watched, his phones tapped, he is been persecuted but he persisted, never bending his head to the regime. He is unemployed still and tries to survive by writing political humour stories in the Turkish Cypriot dialect in AFRIKA newspaper. He has won prizes for his cartoons from around the world but the greatest gift he has is the child he has managed to keep alive inside himself. The real treasure is his laughter and sincerity about his efforts at reunifying the island. Many times, the exhibitions he organized with his Greek Cypriot compatriots have been banned, but he never gave up. "Marazi" (sadness) is not a sentiment for him because the child who was amazed by the open spaces around the refugees´ village of Göçmenköy, is still there, thinking of mischief and laughter.

I collect his memories and publish them, speaking of how he was as a young boy, going to the cinema to watch comedy films, how it was when he first began journalism and drawing cartoons, how he felt when he saw his cartoons published, how he felt when he had to leave newspapers because all the time his cartoons would be in trouble with censorship from the ruling elites of political parties that owned the newspapers. How he felt when Sener Levent and his friends from AVRUPA/AFRIKA newspaper were arrested and how he started writing there. His articles reflect the "self-defence" of Turkish Cypriots as they become extinct from the island of Cyprus: using the Cypriot dialect is common while speaking, but the written language is Turkish, not Turkish Cypriot. Even the advertisements on TV and in the newspapers now reflect the same line: all of a sudden the advertisements are made in the Turkish Cypriot dialect. This is like a form of "self defence" - it is like embracing yourself in order not to lose yourself; like shouting out loud your real identity in the face of the politically changed structure of population in the northern part of the island.

"We don´t have an alphabet, that´s the real problem", he says, because some sounds we have in Turkish Cypriot dialect can´t be written. The alphabet in use is the Turkish alphabet and a Turkish Cypriot alphabet does not exist. Turkish Cypriot words, developed over centuries of living together with Greek Cypriots, Armenian Cypriots, Latin Cypriots and Maronite Cypriots are not known by younger generations. They watch the TV channels from Turkey, their textbooks at school come from Turkey and every day, a few words we used to use in the past disappear from the spoken language, just as we are disappearing from this part of the island.

Cakmak is waging a struggle to keep these words alive, swimming against the tidal waves coming from Anatolia. He is trying to save what was natural from disappearing completely".

/SK

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