Women in progressive civil society organisations who have been struggling for peace and reunification of our island have always had an unchanging demand. Throughout the years, they have demanded peace and a complete demilitarisation of our island, free of military bases, free of armies so that they would raise their children and grandchildren without fear.
On the week of the International Women’s Day, the 8th of March 2026, I was at a gathering to address elderly women from the Kaymakli Branch of EKYSY. These were retired working women who had struggled throughout their lives to gain their bread, to help their family survive, who had seen wars and conflicts. Among were some of them who had been refugees and lost loved ones, who had “missing persons” but who still held onto the dream that one day, through the struggle of our communities peace would come to Cyprus.
I want to share with you what I had told these elderly women. I said: This time, there are war clouds over Cyprus.
The ones who have brought those war clouds are the same forces who have been playing around the island for the past century: Back in the 1950s, in the days of conflict of 1963-64, during the war in 1974 and during the conflicts of our area, that is the Middle East.
These forces of imperialism and colonialism have always found “cooperators” among our communities in order to “divide and rule”, in order to use Cyprus as a springboard to use against other countries of the Middle East, in order to “partition” Cyprus so that they can continue to use their military bases.
It is no coincidence that we as women of this island have been underlining in our joint declarations that we want a completely demilitarized island in order to be able to live in peace and harmony.
These forces who rule the military bases in Cyprus and their “baria”, they don’t care about human life, the sufferings of our communities, the daily problems we encounter as working women, the daily issues we need to deal with concerning our children and our grandchildren. They don’t really care if their missiles hit an elementary school and kill innocent children: They have even devised a saying for that, claiming such things are “collateral damage” of war. What a shame!
They don’t care that our communities have lived through the pain of loss, the pain of being displaced from their homes in the 1950s, 1963-64 and in 1974.”
Three times refugees
“I know families who had become refugees in their own countries not once, not twice but three times. An old Turkish Cypriot man from Prastio Avdimou whom I had interviewed had become a refugee three times in his life and he was living in a small room. In the room was his bed, his small refrigerator, a few plastic chairs and a small makeshift kitchen to cook his food. He had raised many children during the time of being a refugee three times and they all are among the most progressive teachers, trade unions’ leaders who were struggling for peace, democracy and human life with dignity on this land. I have seen many women who lost their homes, their husbands, their children and had to work very hard to survive on this land. And I am sure that such stories do not matter to those who have been using Cyprus like an aircraft carrier for the past century.”
Stories connect us
“But it is these very stories that we learn that help us to love our country even more. Stories of the past where our communities struggled together for a better life. Stories of being pushed to become refugees, to separate, not to speak with each other, not to cooperate so that they would be able to partition this island. Stories of hope for peace and stories of struggle for the reunification of our land. Stories of resistance to the division of our communities and stories of trying to connect with each other. Stories of those who tried to save each other’s lives even during the conflicts, hiding each other in their homes or warning each other about dangers or standing up against those who wanted to harm a neighbour or a friend from the other community.
Our country does not only consist of stones and land, hills and the sea and the sky and the fields and the roads. Our country consists of human beings, it consists of our communities. That is why, it is the stories of our people that connect us and make us love our country even more.
Such stories don’t matter to the ruling elites of this land and their cooperators but they are everything to us: They are the real life stories that help us raise hope for the struggle together for peace, for a better future for our children and for a country united, demilitarised, living together in mutual understanding and empathy instead of eyeing each other with suspicion or hate or fear.
Let us resolve on this meaningful day of struggle of women all over the world to continue to struggle for peace and reunification of our country, for better understanding and for a life in dignity for both women, men and children in this country, regardless of their ethnicity or the language they speak.
Let us resolve to continue to hold each other’s hands in this struggle and to continue to walk towards a better future. If we are together, there is no power that can stop us from creating a Cyprus in peace for our children.”
Unchanging demands of women
If we look back to 2009, that is exactly 17 years ago, we see in a common declaration of women trade union bureaus of PEO and DEV-ISH whose members we got together for workshops for two days in Pervolia, we will see the unchanging demands of women: Peace, reconciliation, demilitarisation of the island. At the end of the workshop, we had a joint communique to support the negotiations for finding a solution on the island… And as working women we had set out various concerns and demands. We had said:
- We are supporting the negotiations held among the two leaders and we want them to find a bicommunal, bizonal, politically equal federal solution that will have single international identity, single citizenship, single sovereignty and the solution should be based on the relevant UN resolutions as well as the EU norms.
- We want a completely demilitarized country where our children would not have to face each other at military posts with guns in their hands. Complete demilitarization also means dismantling of the British bases on the island and the ECHELON system that they have in the bases.
- We want the EU to show a more active interest in the solution of the problem and to help the two leaders in their efforts to solve the problem.
- While creating a new federal solution we call on the two leaders to create gender equality mechanisms where problems of gender equality can be taken up and resolved and where women’s knowledge and skills can be more visible in all areas of life.
- Women are the first victims of war and the intercommunal fighting of 1963 and the war in 1974 have reconfirmed that. Women from both communities have been victims of war crimes and the traumas they went through determined the rest of their lives.
- That is why we are struggling for peace and we call on our two leaders to support the victims of war. The perpetrators of such war crimes never being tried and punished, aggravates the traumas of the victims of war crimes and in general our communities. We demand that those who have committed crimes against humanity, those who have committed war crimes be punished and banned from public life.
- We ask our leaders to create systems that will unite our communities, not divide them. We ask them to create systems where any sort of racism, sexism, xenophobia and chauvinism would be punished and preventive measures be taken for any future conflicts based on these.
- New passages must be opened in order to ease crossings for both pedestrians and cars.
- We demand effective measures in order to create better communication and mutual understanding among our two communities. For instance, infrastructures must be provided for Greek and Turkish language lessons, bi-communal programmes in mass media must be increased and bicommunal cooperation must be given incentives and encouraged.
- Joint women projects as well as other joint bicommunal or multicultural projects must be encouraged.
We spelt these out back in 2009 and said it many times in many other meetings over the years… In essence nothing has changed, there has been no concrete results concerning the demands women had back in 2009… Which means that we need to repeat these over and over again and struggle for them so that we can create a better life on this island…