Today we spent some time at the University of Nicosia learning about the history and politics of Cyprus as well as some basics of Greek and the Cypriot dialect.

One of the topics Dr. Solomou discussed was the second British rule of cyprus from 1878-1960 at which time Cyprus gained its independence. The change of power was from the Ottoman Empire, which was a peaceful transaction, a rarity in Cypriot history. The Ottoman Empire traded Cyprus to the British for their military help in holding back Russia from taking more territory. For a while, the British were good rulers of Cyprus, with not many significant changes to the politics of the island, the only main difference be the changing of the national religion from Muslim back to the previous Christian, but this did not have much of an effect on the island. British rule was peaceful until Cypriot nationalism gained popularity. Because Cypriots could not muster an army of their own, they used guerrilla warfare to rise up against the British beginning in 1931 with an attack on the governor’s mansion. Small attacks like this as well as riots and protests increased, even children joined the movement. Dr. Solomau even included a picture from 1955 of school boys waving around Cypriot and Greek flags to show their support of the movement. However, the Cypriots did not necessarily want independence, rather they wanted to assimilate into Greece. Instead, in 1960 the three major powers at play: Britain, Greece, and Turkey decided that Cyprus would gain independence and even write their constitution for them, without Cypriot representation, which concluded with Cyprus’s independence and the end of any intervention of greater powers in Cypriot affairs.

Dr. Solomau’s lecture covered far more than just the British rule of Cyprus, rather he discussed the evolution of civilization, change of power, modern history, and how they relate to the world as a whole. Cyprus’s change of power through history is very extensive with many changes of hands which added to Cyprus’s language, religion, and culture. It makes sense the Cyprus is as involved in world conquest as it was before of its strategic location in the Mediterranean. Dating back to the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and ottoman empires, Cyprus would have been an asset to have at any country’s arsenal. Not only that, but in the modern era, Cyprus was also used as a bargaining chip for the Ottoman Empire, and a colonial investment for the Franks and British to get taxes. Something that bought my attention was his discussion on how problems in Cyprus relate to and reveal much greater deep seated issues with the world. He spoke on how leaders use politics instead of values in their decision making, which leads to many inequities. For example, the US and some European countries assist Ukraine in their battle against Russia, but nothing gets sent to Cyprus to help with the issue of Turkish settlers. If the great powers made decisions based on values, they would do the same for Cyprus, but instead they are making decisions based on threats and wanting more control of the world via politics.

After our Cyprus lecture, we learned about Cyprus’s language, which is a dialect of Greek very similar to Ancient Greek interestingly. Greek is the oldest re order indo-European language to record, and has influenced many different languages of today. Language even plays a significant role in philosophy, and vice versa because philosophical development leads to creating more words and phrases to describe phenomenons in our world, emotions, values, etc. Some basic language we learned was how to greet, say thank you, and basic numbers. For example one, two, three, in Greek is ena, thio, tria. Note that Greek is a Romance language, so pronunciation is letters is not completely accurate because Greek includes stresses and good but not perfect transliteration to English, because of the language barrier. My number in the count off, 17, is thekaepta. The Greek language is an ancient one, and because of its dispersion of use, there are many different dialects that use the words, but even have different alphabets.