Levent, Shener

Levent was born in 1948 in Nicosia , where he graduated from high school. In 1960, when he was 12 years old, Cyprus gained independence from the British Empire.

In 1963, clashes broke out between the Greek and Turkish communities of the island and Turkish nationalists put him on guard in the “border” booth of the Turkish quarter, handing him a rifle that was longer than himself. However, he did not feel that the Greeks were his enemies. Distancing himself from the Turkish nationalist idea of Taksim (partition of the island), he was soon influenced by the Communist Progressive Party of the Working People of Cyprus (AKEL).

At the age of 21, among other young AKEL supporters, he went to study in the USSR, as he later wrote, "full of socialist feelings in his chest." During the preparatory course in Baku, he first felt the grotesque side of Soviet reality, when foreign students were given the task of writing an essay on the topic "The Soviet Constitution is the best constitution in the world." He continued his studies at the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University .

Here he was caught by the tragic events in Cyprus - the military coup of 1974, which provided Turkey with an occasion for a military invasion of the island and the occupation of its northern part. By this time, Levent’s relations with fellow students and AKEL had cooled somewhat. After the USSR, he lived for two years in Sweden, where, as he writes, he became convinced of the superiority of socialist democracy. It was a different world. According to Levent, if there was a country that jumped over the era, it was probably Sweden . She took the first step into the 21st century. The idols of Levent at that time were Olof Palme , the Secretary General of the European Communist Parties of Italy and Spain, E. Berlinguer and S. Carrillo and the Turkish writer Aziz Nesin .

He returned to Cyprus in 1979 and settled in the northern part of Nicosia, where his family lived. No one offered him a job - "We have no job for the Communists." Having been unemployed for six months, he found it difficult to find a job in the Sez newspaper ( Slovo ), where he worked for three years. After which he worked in the newspaper “Kybrys Postasy” ( Cyprus Post ), and then in the newspaper “Ortam”. In 1990, he returned to Moscow as an accredited journalist for the Turkish newspaper Güneş . He survived the collapse of Soviet power and the collapse of the USSR.

In 1997, he returned to the north of Cyprus, asserting himself in his conviction that the state formation formed in the north of the island, occupied by Turkish troops since 1974, is illegitimate and that he remains a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus.

In September 1997, a month after his return to the island, Levent published the newspaper Avrupa (Europe) ^[2] . The appearance of the newspaper, which opposed Rauf Denktash’s policies and the role of Turkey in Cyprus ^[3], provoked an immediate reaction from the authorities of the state formation created in the north of the island, recognized only by Turkey. In an attempt to close the newspaper and confiscate its property, more than 100 lawsuits were brought against “Europe” ^{[4] [5] [6] [7]} . In December 2001, all the newspaper’s property was confiscated and, according to Levent, some members of his journalistic group were taken out of the city, where they were threatened by militants of the “National Popular Movement” ^[6] . However, Levent was not broken. He began to publish another newspaper, which, emphasizing the political situation in the north of the island, ironically gave the name " Africa ". In November 2004, Africa was besieged by Turkish nationalists who shouted “Don't test our patience, Africa” and “your fate will be worse than the fate of the Romans” (Note: unlike Greeks from Greece, Turks refer to the few remaining Greeks of Constantinople and Greeks -kipriotov rumlar, that is, the Byzantine Romans). In January 2018, Africa came into conflict with Turkey, triggered by criticism of the newspaper against the invasion of Syrian Afrin under the heading “Another Turkish Invasion”. The newspaper draws direct analogies between the Turkish invasion of Syria and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. After defiant remarks about the newspaper Africa made by Turkish President R.T. Erdogan and Erdogan’s statement that “our compatriots in Cyprus must give the necessary answer to this,” a group of 500 demonstrators besieged the newspaper, while the police did not intervene ^[8] . The situation was discharged after the intervention of M. Akıncı , president of an unrecognized republic, except for Turkey itself ^[9] . In response to this attack, part of the population organized the March for Peace and Democracy movement. The attack on the editors of Africa was denounced by the European Union ^[10] . The Government of the Republic of Cyprus issued an appeal to the UN and members of the Security Council, in connection with aggressive actions against the Afrika newspaper, demanding intervention to protect journalists and freedom of the press in territories under Turkish occupation ^[11] .

In 2019, Levent led the Jasmine Turkish Cypriot movement, which ran for the European Parliament . His motto “Jasmine” chose the phrase of the Greek poet and Nobel Prize winner Jorgos Seferis “when it dawns and when the sun shines, jasmine remains white” ^[12] .

The participation of Turkish Cypriots in the elections does not contradict the legislation of the Republic of Cyprus, in the archives of which are recorded about 115 thousand Turkish Cypriots with identity cards or passports of the Republic of Cyprus ^[13] .

The right to participate in the elections naturally does not extend to several hundred thousand Turks and Kurds resettled from Turkey to the north of the island in violation of UN resolutions, in order to change the demography of the island (according to information today about 300 thousand people live in the north of the island, of which only 100 thousand are Turks - Cypriots, the remaining 200 thousand are immigrants from mainland Turkey ^[14] .

Levent himself in his election statements claimed that migrants from Turkey were five times the number of Turkish Cypriots. He stated: “We are in danger that the colonists will become local, and the locals will be left without the Fatherland, while the robbery of the lands of the Greek Cypriots expelled by force of arms from their Fatherland in 1974 continues ^[15] .

Despite opposition from the Turkish authorities, in the last European Parliament elections (2014), 1,500 Turkish Cypriots decided to cross the line of demarcation and exercise their voting right. But in 2019, it was not only about the right to vote.

Levent expressed bewilderment when asked for what purpose and for what political proposals he asks the voice of the people: “Is it possible to ask such a question to someone whose country has been under occupation for 45 years? Could such a question be asked to the French anti-fascist when his Fatherland was under Nazi occupation and Hitler took pictures at the Eiffel Towers? ”He continued that the only voice against occupation in the occupied territory was the voice of“ Jasmine ”, the voice of“ Africa ”.

The first and immediate measure of confidence, he considers the transfer to the old Greek owners of the closed city of Famagusta .

He stated that he takes any decision on the Cyprus issue, except for the division into two states. He believes that the federation will lead to the decision of one state, one Fatherland, one people. He recalls that after Cyprus joined the European Union , for 15 years now I have been a European citizen, but I live under the rule of Turkey. The south of Cyprus is Europe, while the northern part of the island is Turkey ” ^[16] .

Some of Levent's proposals seemed too simple and were described by the Cypriot journalist N. Stelpias as “the illusions of Mr. Levent”.

Levent believes that, first of all, 24 Turkish Cypriot deputies should return to their seats in the House of Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus, where discussions should begin on resolving the issue, bypassing the negotiation scheme of the two heads of communities.

Levent states that the return of the Turks of deputies to parliament should be accompanied by the dissolution of “this strange phenomenon-focus, which is called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” ^[17] , without however indicating how this could happen without the expulsion of the occupying army. In addition to the six candidates proposed by Jasmine, the Communist Party (AKEL) nominated and supported its candidate from the Turkish minority, Professor of the University of Cyprus Niyazi Kyzylurek , who was elected to the European Parliament, receiving 25.051 votes, becoming the second among AKEL candidates, after Georgios Georgiou ^{[18 ]} If you take into account that up to 10 thousand Turkish Cypriots were expected to participate in the 2019 elections, but 5,604 Turkish Cypriots ^[20] voted and 75% of them voted for AKEL ^[21] , it becomes obvious that for the election of Kyzylurek these goal wasps were not enough, and that his election was made possible thanks to the votes of the Greek Cypriots. 25% of the votes of these 5600 Turkish Cypriots were given to the Jasmine Party of Shener Levent ^[22] .

Levent warns the citizens of the Republic of Cyprus that they should not be trusted in those of the Turkish Cypriots, who claim to be “supporters of a solution and peace,” but have not “shown any resistance to the invaders for 45 years.” He rhetorically wonders, “show me the Turkish Cypriot academics, professors, writers, poets who dared to claim that the Turkish operation of 1974 was an invasion and occupation while you placed them on the throne of the supporter of a solution and peace.” He recalls that these peace supporters are silent when today Turkey encroaches on the territorial waters and economic zone of Cyprus, which makes it possible to proclaim the “fascist dictator Erdogan” a national hero ^[23] . Levent writes that in 1974, the Athenian junta did evil to Cyprus. Today, "the fascist dictatorship rules Turkey." Aggressive Turkish politics in Syria recalls that it (again) can do harm to Cyprus.