For years Turkish propaganda has successfully painted Cyprus as an issue between two rival ethnic communities, Greeks and Turks, in an attempt to legitimize the ongoing Turkish military occupation of the island’s northern territory. By twisting history and religion, Turkey has been able to mislead millions into believing that the issue at hand in Cyprus is between two feuding ethnicities, rather than about an illegal military occupation that causes all Cypriots to suffer. Cyprus is less of an ethnic conflict and more about two religious communities divided by imperialism and the colonization.
In Turkey’s continued campaign to separate Christian and Muslim Cypriots into ‘Greek’ and ‘Turkish’, the Turkish government has allowed the Turkish company BOZGROUP to build the largest tourist resort on the island in its illegally occupied territory. The BOZGROUP has invested over $220 million into the Cratos Premium Hotel-Casino-Port-Spa in the occupied city of Kyrenia, in hopes of luring unsuspecting tourists to the self pro-claimed ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ to party the night away on the graves of innocent women and children. What is the ‘TRNC’ one may ask, well its nothing more then a code name for the Turkish Military used in order to masked Turkey’s military occupation and paint it into a peace mission protecting the ‘Turkish Cypriot’ community. The majority of which are Turkish settlers brought to the island after the 1974 illegal invasion, in hopes of changing the ethnic makeup of the island.
Which brings us back to the issue at hand. The Cratos Premium tourist resort and the recent controversial cancelation of Jennifer Lopez, who was scheduled to perform at a concert celebrating the opening of the resort, as well as the 36 anniversary of the Turkish invasion of the island. Lopez’s cancelation came as a result of an online campaign initiated by the Cyprus Action Network of America, CANA, which was supported by AHEPA and thousands of individuals on facebook that wrote the celebrity. In an official statement, Ms. Lopez claimed she ‘would never knowingly support any state, country, institution or regime that was associated with any form of human rights abuse’. J.Lo’s appearance was to be used to bring ‘legitimacy’ to the illegal entity in the North, which proclaims itself independent from the internationally recognized government in the South.
The question now is whether other celebrities, like Sean Paul who is scheduled to perform in the Occupied Zone in August, will follow in J.Lo’s footsteps and boycott Cratos Premium, Cyprus’ own ‘Sun City’. Some of you reading may remember Sun City, the luxury casino and resort in South Africa, which was boycotted in 1980s by Artists United Against Apartheid. With musicians today boycotting shows in Israel over human rights abuses against Palestinians, as well as boycotts against performing in Arizona over a new immigration law, it is not too farfetched to imagine a similar boycott against Cratos Premium in order to bring attention to Occupied Cyprus and perhaps finally see the removal of Turkish troops and settlers from the birthplace of the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite.
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About Me
- Archangelos
- Ioannis Fidanakis is a Hellenic-American Activist. He was the youngest elected President of Panthracian Union of America “Orpheus” serving as President from November 2007 till November 2009. As President of Panthracian Union he was responsible for organizing the first ever Hellenic Genocide Commemoration outside the United Nations on April 6, 2009. He is currently the Panthracian Representative to the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, where he served as a Board Member from 2009 till 2010. A member of the Hellenic League of America, HLA and Cyprus Action Network of America, CANA he has been featured as a guest speaker at several different grassroots rallies, lectures, and functions up and down the American East Coast. His writings have been published several times in Hellenic-American newspapers from Chicago to New York, as well as on Global Politician.com. His various articles have been republished on numerous blogs and web sites such as Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History. Ioannis has a Masters in Public Policy and a B.A. in Political Science; with a concentration in International Politics and a minor in History.
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WARNING: *Enocism does not support hatred against individuals based on race, pigmentation of skin color or religious affiliation. Our ideology supports the struggles of native and ethnic people being oppressed, enslaved, manipulated or exploitated by foreign elements within their own natural and historical homelands. We call on these natives and the international community to take responsibility for the crimes being committed and resist by all ethnical means. To construct truly free states based on their own true cultural identity and right to self-preservation.*