Petition addressed to: European Parliament

During its October 2025 second plenary session, the European Parliament, at the initiative of MEP Michael Hadjipantela (DISY / EPP), approved the creation of a ‘memorial in honour of the victims of the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus’, to feature in one of the institution’s buildings.
 
The Greek Cypriot losses and missing are unquestionably tragic. But tragedy in Cyprus does not begin in July 1974. The purposeful omission of Turkish Cypriot deaths, displacements and disappearances, not only during 1974, but throughout the prior decades, is a blatant attempt at rewriting history. One that obscures the uncomfortable reality and responsibility of intercommunal violence and shared sorrow. The issue of lost and missing persons concerns all Cypriot communities, a reality acknowledged by the European Institutions and United Nations through the celebrated work of bi-communal initiatives such as The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (founded in 1981). For the European Parliament, which has all the historical and forensic information at its disposal, to solely commemorate Greek Cypriot victims is to be complicit in the deliberate erasure of Turkish Cypriot suffering from the history of Cyprus and Europe. Either the monument commemorates all victims, or none.
 
This initiative, from its conception to its politicised phrasing, is an ideologically driven manipulation of history catering unilaterally to a one-sided and incomplete narrative. As such it seeks to instrumentalise institutional privilege and power to further disguise biased perspectives under the cloak of official European history.
 
This project has been swiftly criticised and deplored by Cypriot activists from bi-communal organisations celebrated by and collaborating with the EU institutions, such as Petros Suppuris and Hüseyin Akansoy (European Citizenship Award, 2012), Christos Efthymiou and Erbay Akansoy from ‘Together We Can’ (Cyprus Peace Award, 2023), United Cyprus Platform (2006), as well as academics specialised on Cypriot communities warning on diplomatic risk this proposed monument poses (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2025/10/27/turkish-cypriots-federal-cyprus-tufan-erhurman-2025-election/)