By Alkan Chaglar

Most people in the West have never heard of the Maronites, yet alone the Cypriot Maronites despite the fact that Cyprus is now an EU member state and major tourist destination. Yet in an island country where every single issue is perceived in either a “Greek” or “Turkish” way of thinking, this small community have effectively been condemned to die without so much of a raise of the eye brow; the tragedy is not just the impending death of their language itself, but that it is largely avoidable. Deep-rooted in their own ethnocentric policies, both the authorities of North Cyprus and the Government of the Republic of Cyprus are too preoccupied protecting their Greek or Turkish Cypriot interests, including a new cheese war (is it Halloumi or Hellim?) to worry about Cyprus’ many silent minorities.

The 1200 year old Cypriot Maronite community are descendants of 9th century Lebanese Maronites Catholic Christians who fled turmoil in their native lands settled in Cyprus, where they had as many as 19 villages in the 14th century. Following the partition of the island in 1974, the entire occupants of three of the four remaining Maronite villages were forced to flee to the areas still controlled by the Republic of Cyprus, while those few who remained under occupation no longer had school for their children; a method used by the Turkish military to encourage them to leave. As a result of the division of the island, Cypriot Maronite Arabic, which has been described as the closest living language to that of Jesus of Nazareth is spoken today by no more than 130 enclaved people in Kormakitis (Kormacit) in Northern Cyprus and under five hundred in the Republic. The language and its speakers are in the ill-fated position of living in a country divided along ethnic lines, where everything rests upon a mutually acceptable settlement between the larger Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities.

Yet with a majority of the residents of Kormakitis over the age of sixty, and with most Maronite Cypriot children and their parents now living for reasons of schooling in the Republic, the community language that had been preserved for over a millennia is dying fast, while the community itself which is now mostly Greek-speaking is facing assimilation into the Greek Cypriot community. In the North, according to village residents of Kormakitis the language will be completely extinct within 20 years as no Maronite school exists there and therefore few families can realistically return. Three other Maronite villages still remain firmly closed by the occupying Turkish military forcing the inhabitants to live away from their homes in cities in the Republic.

A Turkish Cypriot diplomat once argued that since the Maronites were not ‘TRNC citizens’ that they should not expect a school, basically it was hard luck that they were not Greek Cypriots who through negotiation had already secured their own school in Karpaz / Karpasia. But does it matter if a community who has lived off the soil of North Cyprus for 1200 years are citizens of a 23 year old phantom state? Surely, it is a disgrace and outrage to any country or indeed political entity that claims to identify itself as a democracy and uphold the principle of human rights to deprive a community of a school leading to its dispersal and death of its language.

For the Maronite Cypriots the death of their language in effect means cutting off any remaining links with their past, from which their unique religious sect, its hymns and prayers derive. Language is not just another way of saying the same things; it is a different thought process with new ideas and perspectives, as is commonly said in the Czech Republic: “You live a new life for every new language you speak.” Like a museum, language contains within its cluster of words the story of how we came to our present time, from where we came and who we encountered along the way – essentially it reflects who we are.

Despite the fact that many Maronite elders as a form of defence refused for decades to speak “Romaika” (Greek) with their children, the community’s moribund language is dealt a final blow by a double failure by the Republic of Cyprus to appreciate the resonance of the language to the Cypriot Maronite identity by teaching it in schools. Within the Greek Cypriot community who have a monopoly over the Cyprus government since the withdrawal of Turkish Cypriot deputies from the House of Representatives in 1964, attitudes are shaped by an unofficial assimilation policy whose undercurrents are a yearning by some for Hellenism. When I questioned a Greek Cypriot politician what is being done to reverse the death of a language spoken by Cypriots, his response astounded me. “Maronites belong to the Greek Cypriot community,” he asserted. It was as if I had over stepped the mark by daring to ask him about ‘a piece of property’ of the Greek Cypriot community. The politician was not in the slightest interested in the death of Cypriot Maronite Arabic, he had never heard of it, pointing out “Maronites speak Greek, they don’t speak…eh…this Arabic - they are Greek.”

Following this incident, a Greek Cypriot colleague asked me: “Who cares about the Maronites anyway? Are you Maronite? He asked me.” Sadly, such attitudes reflect for me the crux of the Cyprus problem, that each of the main communities can only see matters through their own ethnocentric eyes. Unless you are a Maronite, you are not expected to challenge any injustice against that community, and vice versa. The expectation of many for a solution is that human rights will eventually be secured when each of the two main communities enters dialogue and negotiates their human rights using bargaining chips and powerful ‘motherlands’ to exert pressure.

Naturally the problem with this is the lack of equality, as the most militarily, politically and economically powerful negotiator will always secure greater rights for their own ‘people,’ Annan Plan anybody? And I’m curious with these expectations, exactly what ‘motherland’ will help communities like the Cypriot Gypsies?

The bitter truth is, regardless of the multitude of ‘other’ ethnic and religious communities, and claimed universality of human rights, unless you are either Greek or Turkish Cypriot in Cyprus, you simply do not stand a chance of getting anybody to listen to you and take you seriously. Perhaps Maronite leaders should react to this Greco-Turkish ethnocentrism by using the religion card, seeking ‘divine intervention’ from the Vatican and enlisting the help of hundreds of millions of world Catholics to see the reopening of their villages and school, and to get the government to treat the death of their non-Greco-Turkish language as a priority.