Turkish Invasion

July-August 1974

As Cyprus after a peaceful and happy past suddenly and unexpectedly found itself living the horrors of war, the people of the Cyprus Red Cross were faced with a challenge they never could have imagined. The various military activities. Experienced for the first time in Cyprus, disorganised everything. Panic and chaos prevailed. Fear spread everywhere. The population in faceless numbers fled to the mountains in search for some kind of safety.

Although the first Turkish mortar on 20 July 1974 had flattened the Cyprus Red Cross headquarters, it did not scare away its volunteers and they did not become disorganized. They reacted immediately and efficiently and responding to the call of necessity they were from the first moment on the line of duty.  They served their fellow human being at every level. They worked in the hospitals and helped in their evacuation when this became necessary, they took part in the transportation and treatment of the wounded, distributed food and clothing, set up tents for the homeless and evacuated old or sick people who were stranded or isolated in the hostility areas. Even at the most critical hours of the conflict, in the almost deserted cities that were being bombed by the Turkish air force and artillery and when most of the services had been disrupted, the Cyprus Red Cross kept working. And it was working impartially. It provided its services to both Greek and Turk, to the wounded and disabled without any bias or discrimination. For the Cyprus Red Cross, as for the International Red Cross, man has no passport. They are simply people. And this entitles them to any possible help.

At some point the hostilities ceased. But the most difficult task for the Red Cross was just beginning.

In a small country with 200,000 refugees, 55,000 broken households, a very large number of missing persons for Cypriot realities, cut off from their community and relatives, the Cyprus Red Cross kept up its work with the same dedication. It helped in the reuniting of families, the passing of messages to the enclaved and the prisoners, in the effort to trace the missing, in the care of refugees. It was a manifold, multifaceted and arduous activity, an activity that continues to date and will continue for as long as there still are refugees, missing and enclaved.

Besides the Cyprus Red Cross, the International Red Cross also came to the rescue. But before an International Red Cross crew set itself up on Cyprus soil, the Cyprus Red Cross had already formed the nucleus of the service for establishing contact between relatives and began to collect the first information on the missing.

While the war wounds had not yet begun to heal and Red Cross activity was continuing on all levels, the return of the prisoners began.

The Red Cross worked round the clock at the Catering School where it relocated its activities. In close cooperation with the state and other agencies, the Red Cross received the prisoners and offered them every kind of help. The operation that went on at the Catering School in those days was not only one for saving human life but human dignity as well. When the prisoners left there, they were human beings again, not just numbers.