c. 1996 Religion News Service

NICOSIA, Cyprus (RNS)-On a busy corner in the northern part of Nicosia’s old city, the Mosque of the Martyrs is at once conspicuous.

At a glance, its gated courtyard, high facade and arched entrance tell that it once was a church. In place of a minaret, the loudspeakers that call the faithful to prayer are wired to the roof-at points where, in all likelihood, crosses once stood.

Before the 1974 Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus, the corner was home to the 19th-century Greek Orthodox St. Andrew’s Church, a house of worship for Nicosia’s majority Greek Cypriots. But today there is not a single Greek Cypriot in the Turkish-held old city, and few here even remember the church’s name.”It wasn’t a very old church, I know that,”says Ismet Ozal, a shopkeeper across the street.”It used to have Greek owners,”says Omer Topcu, 17, who attends services here once a week.”But now it’s Turkish, it’s a mosque now and that’s okay. It’s a place of God and that’s what’s important.” Since the Turkish military occupied the northern third of this eastern Mediterranean island, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots have lived apart, divided by a U.N.-patrolled demarcation line that cuts the country in two.

During and after the heavy fighting of 1974, when the Turkish army responded to an ultra-right Greek military coup against the legal Cypriot government, hundreds of centuries-old Venetian, Byzantine and Greek Orthodox churches were looted and ransacked.

Today, most of the wanton destruction and banditry has ceased. But Greek Cypriot authorities and the Orthodox Church claim that by other means the Turkish-backed nationalist regime is systematically wiping out Greek Cypriot culture in the north, part of a larger policy to foster a Turkish national identity and eventually integrate the northern part of Cyprus into mainland Turkey.

In Washington, Namik Korhan, the representative in the United States of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus-whose self-declared independence is recognized only by Turkey-dismissed the charge as Greek propaganda.”Some”churches have been converted to mosques, he said, but only because Turkish Cypriots have been unable to build enough new mosques to meet their needs.”There is no official policy of converting churches into mosques,”he said.”The Greeks complain about everything we do to make us look bad to the world. It’s propaganda, part of our larger dispute with them.” From its introduction to Christianity in the first century, Cyprus was a bridge between East and West, between the Holy Land and Rome, and then later Constantinople. The island’s geopolitical position has also been its bane, as superpowers, both ancient and modern, have bitterly contested its control.

During eight centuries of Byzantine rule, the island produced some of the Eastern church’s most significant works of art. In Venetian and then Ottoman hands until the late 19th century, the Orthodox churches were well preserved, and the dominant role of the Greek Orthodox hierarchy established.

Since the 1974 invasion, the Turkish military has refused to budge from the north, despite international condemnation and countless U.N. resolutions protesting the occupation. The internationally unrecognized statelet of northern Cyprus has also come under heavy criticism for its treatment of Christian monuments, including monasteries, shrines and artwork that date back to the fifth century. The legal Cypriot government and the Orthodox Church say the Turkish authorities have turned a blind eye to a thriving black market trade in priceless artifacts and icons.

Although the Cypriot authorities have responded with new laws and stricter regulations to halt smuggling and treasure hunting, their moves may have come too late.”Recently they’ve tightened things up a lot,”explains Oya Gurgel, a well-known Turkish Cypriot journalist.”Now they’re trying to preserve what’s left behind, but sadly that’s not much.”(BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

The more than 450 churches, chapels and monasteries of northern Cyprus have suffered different fates. Few were left unscathed in the post-invasion chaos, and the most badly damaged have been left to deteriorate with the aid of time and weather.”With isolated exceptions, most of the plunder has stopped,”says Greek Cypriot political science professor Maria Trigeorgis.”But whether fanatics are destroying the churches or whether they’re simply falling into ruin, the effect is the same. The regime wants to erase any memory or trace of Cypriot culture so they can say this region was and always has been Turkish.”(END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

Of late, the Turkish administration has made a new effort to quiet international critics, putting the churches to use in other functional capacities. Some, such as the famous 5th-century St. Barnabas Monastery, have been renovated with Turkish funds and are open to the public. In the cities of Famagusta and Nicosia, churches have been turned into cultural centers, art galleries and even libraries. More controversial, many have been transformed into mosques, with minarets grafted onto the churches’ frames.”If these buildings are being used,”says archaeologist Tuncer Bagiskan, an official of the northern Cypriot Ministry for Antiquities,”then someone here has an interest in maintaining them. Otherwise, they will simply fall apart. We don’t have the funds to protect and restore every church on our territory.” Entering the village of Yeni Iskele (Trikomo in Greek) on the eastern side of northern Cyprus, one is greeted by a billboard, which in giant red letters reads:”I’m happy to be a Turk,”a famous slogan of Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founding father. Before the invasion, Trikomo was a Greek Cypriot village. Today, every sign and street name is in Turkish, and the village is inhabited by Turkish Cypriot refugees and Turkish settlers repatriated from mainland Turkey.

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One of Yeni Iskele’s Orthodox churches, the diminutive 15th-century St. Jacob’s Chapel, sits forgotten and neglected in the middle of a small intersection. An old cart tire and rusty tin cans litter its courtyard. Through the boarded windows, one can see its empty interior, the cracked walls home to several families of swallows.

Here, too, it’s hard to find anyone who remembers the chapel’s name.

Until 1993, a handful of elderly Greek Cypriot women stayed on in the village to look after the churches. Their presence explains the relatively good condition of the 12th-century Panagia Theotokos Church, which, since the last woman’s death, has been turned into an icon museum. Inside, the exhibition of largely less valuable icons from surrounding churches is well maintained, if sparse.

Although the museum receives few visitors, its caretaker, Hussein Yucekok, insists it has a purpose.”This isn’t just Greek Cypriot culture, you know, it belongs to all Cypriots,”he says, noting that for centuries Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots had coexisted peacefully with one another.”This is part of Cyprus’ history.” But Yucekok’s convictions are characteristic only of the north’s dwindling Turkish Cypriot population, estimated at about 50,000. Over the past two decades, the administration has resettled here more than 100,000 Turks, mostly from rural central and eastern Turkey. The settlers have no experience living with Greek Cypriots and, like the administration, favor northern Cyprus’ integration into mainland Turkey.

(END SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM)”This process of integration has been going on for 20 years,”says Turkish Cypriot writer Sevgul Uludag.”Everything Cypriot is being replaced with its Turkish equivalent. Our flag is Turkish, our money, our children’s school books, our media and gradually even our culture. I speak Turkish but I’m a Turkish Cypriot, not a Turk.” The northern Cypriot authorities’ use of churches as mosques has sparked an outcry from Orthodox leaders in the south. But defenders of the practice say that in Islam, Christian figures such as Jesus Christ are considered prophets, and churches therefore are also respected holy places.”We don’t see anything wrong with this”(using churches as mosques), says Bagiskan of the Department of Antiquities.”Both churches and mosques are houses of God, and as mosques they’re kept in excellent condition. If Cyprus is ever reunited, they can easily be turned back into churches.” But even many Turkish Cypriots object to the government’s policy.”It’s not right to use a church as a mosque,”says Kemal Hayri, a Turkish Cypriot restaurant owner.”It’s not the feeling of the religion. If it belongs to the Orthodox Church, then I think it should be left as it is and just visited.”(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Richard Burger, a Turkish Cypriot art historian, says he has unsuccessfully appealed to both state and religious authorities to stop the practice.”I said to them, `Why don’t you build your own mosque next to the church, if that’s so important?’ They could get money from the Middle East with no problem.” After 22 years of division, mutual recriminations and massive population exchanges, the two peoples of Cyprus remain far apart. The legacy of a common culture is becoming the faded memory of an older generation, and the longer Cyprus remains partitioned, the further it recedes into the past.

LJB END HOCKENOS