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Join Embargoed! – in collaboration with the Council of Turkish Cypriot Associations UK (CTCA UK), the British Turkish Cypriot Association (BTCA) and Young Turkish Cypriots (YTC) – in commemorating the tragic event which took place in Cyprus on 21st December 1963.
The event, known as ‘Bloody Christmas’, marked the beginning of a Greek Cypriot onslaught against the Turkish Cypriot community and led to the destruction of the newly founded Republic of Cyprus only three months later, in March 1964. That partnership state of the Republic of Cyprus, founded jointly in 1960 by Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, should have been a demonstration of how the two communities could live peacefully together in their common home. Instead, the desire to turn the island into a Greek state, and to unite it with Greece (known as Enosis), drove elements of the Greek Cypriot community to murder Turkish Cypriot men, women and children in cold blood. Those who were maimed and killed were not only their partners in the new Republic of Cyprus, but their neighbours.