Former justice minister Emily Yiolitis has returned to the controversy sparked by her remark that she does not agree with Cyprus' use of the Greek national anthem, saying in a post that she had spoken of her vision for "a Cyprus that is free, united, democratic" and accusing her critics of distorting her words. The Republic of Cyprus has used Greece's national anthem, the Hymn to Liberty, written by the poet Dionysios Solomos in 1823, as its own since 1966, and questioning its place remains a sensitive subject among Greek Cypriots, for whom it is closely bound up with national identity and the island's modern history. In her post, Yiolitis said that "some chose to sell pseudo-patriotism by reproducing a clickbait headline instead of listening to an entire conversation. Some out of ignorance, others out of expediency. Patriotism, however, is not proven by shouting or by distorting statements."
Her remarks were made in a conversation with Fidias, which she said had been followed by many thinking viewers who "simply do not shout about it." In it, she said, she spoke of a vision of a free, united and democratic Cyprus "from Paphos to Kyrenia and Rizokarpaso", naming the western town in the government-controlled areas alongside two places in the north, which has been under Turkish occupation since 1974.
Honouring the past, imagining a shared future
Yiolitis said the Greek anthem is "inextricably linked to the history and struggles of Hellenism," adding that "the heroes of EOKA fought and sacrificed themselves with freedom as their highest ideal. I honour this history; I neither question it nor renounce it." EOKA was the Greek Cypriot guerrilla organisation that fought British colonial rule between 1955 and 1959, and its fighters hold a central place in Greek Cypriot collective memory. She went on to say that she never stops envisioning "the day when a truly free Republic of Cyprus, the fruit of a genuine agreement between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, will be able to acquire a common anthem expressing freedom, democracy and the peaceful coexistence of all its citizens in an independent state."
She described that future state as "a democracy without constituent parts and rigidities, one person, one vote, without divisions and communities of different speeds." Her wording takes aim at the model of a bizonal, bicommunal federation (BBF), the framework on which UN-led reunification talks have been based for decades, which envisages two constituent states and political equality between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. "Such an anthem would not cancel out the sacrifices of our heroes. It would vindicate them," she wrote. "This is the essence of my position. Not its convenient distortions. Because patriotism is not imprisoning the homeland in the past. It is fighting to give it a future." She closed by saying that "if with my statements I laid even a small stone for a dialogue to begin on the real liberation of Cyprus, far from BBF-type rigidities, I am truly glad."
