1. Background

2. Events
     21 December: eruption    21 December to 23 December    Later events    Mass grave of Agios Vasilios  

3. Commemoration

4. Greek Cypriot official view

5. See also

6. References

Bloody Christmas ({{lang-tr|Kanlı Noel}}) is a term used mainly, but not exclusively, in Turkish Cypriot and Turkish historiography, referring to the outbreak of intercommunal violence between the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots during the Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, on the night between 20–21 December 1963 and the subsequent period of island-wide violence^[1][2] amounting to civil war.^[3] The violence led to the deaths of 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots.^[4] 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 104 villages, amounting to a quarter of the Turkish Cypriot population, fled their villages and were displaced into enclaves.^{[4][6][7][5][6]} Thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses left behind were ransacked or completely destroyed.^[4][6] 1,200 Armenian Cypriots and 500 Greek Cypriots were also displaced. The violence precipitated the end of Turkish Cypriot representation in the Republic of Cyprus.

The term Bloody Christmas is not used in official Greek Cypriot and Greek historiography, which contends that the outbreak of violence was a result of a Turkish Cypriot rebellion (Tourkantarsia) against the lawful government of the Republic of Cyprus.^[7][8][9]

Background

Events

21 December: eruption

During the early hours of 21 December 1963, Greek Cypriot police operating within the old Venetian walls of Nicosia demanded to see the identification papers of some Turkish Cypriots who were returning home from an evening out. These Turkish Cypriots were being driven in a taxi by taxi driver Zeki Halil and were around Hermes Street en route to Taht-el Kale. When the police officers attempted to search the women in the car, Halil objected and a discussion ensued.^[10] As word of the incident quickly spread a hostile crowd gathered.^[11] Upon this, the police called for reinforcements from Paphos Gate; and Cemaliye Emirali, the ex-lover of Zeki Halil, who was similarly returning from a night out, saw the incident and got involved. One of the policemen that had been called as part of the reinforcements took out his gun and shot and killed Zeki Halil and Cemaliye Emirali.^[10] By dawn, two Turkish Cypriots had been killed and eight others, both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, had been wounded.^[12]

21 December to 23 December

After the shooting, crowds of Turkish Cypriots gathered in the northern part of Nicosia, often led by the Turkish Resistance Organisation (TMT). On 22 December, the funerals of the two Turkish Cypriots killed were held without incident.^[19] However, shooting broke out on the evening of 22 December. Cars full of armed Greek Cypriots roamed through the streets of Nicosia and fired indiscriminately, and Turkish Cypriots fired at patrolling police cars. Turkish Cypriot snipers fired from minarets and the roof of the Saray Hotel on Sarayönü Square. Some shooting spread to the suburbs and to Larnaca.^[3] The Greek Cypriot administration cut off telephone and telegraph lines to Turkish Cypriot quarters of the city of Nicosia and the police took control of the Nicosia International Airport.^[13]

On 23 December, a ceasefire was agreed upon by Makarios III and Turkish Cypriot leadership. However, fighting kept on and intensified in Nicosia and Larnaca. Machine guns were fired from mosques in Turkish-inhabited areas. Later on 23 December, Greek Cypriot irregulars headed by Nikos Sampson committed the massacre^[13] of Omorphita: they attacked the suburb, killing Turkish Cypriots, including women and children, "apparently indiscriminately".^[13] The Turkish Cypriot residents of the quarter were expelled from their homes.^[14]

Later events

A number of Turkish Cypriot mosques, shrines and other places of worship were desecrated.^[15]

Greek Cypriot irregulars attacked Turkish Cypriots in the mixed villages of Mathiatis on 23 December and Ayios Vasilios on 24 December.^[16][17] The entire Turkish Cypriot population of Mathiatis, 208 people, fled to nearby Turkish Cypriot villages.^[18]

A joint call for calm was issued on 24 December by the governments of Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom.^[20]

The Republic of Cyprus states that between 21 December 1963 and 10 August 1964, 191 Turkish Cypriots were killed and 173 went missing, presumed killed, while Greek Cypriots suffered 133 killed and 41 missing, presumed killed.^[21] Overall, 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed in the 1963-64 conflict.^[22] 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 104 different villages abandoned their homes. These consisted of 72 mixed and 24 Turkish Cypriot villages that were completely evacuated and eight mixed villages that were partially evacuated. The displacement amounted to a quarter of the Turkish Cypriot population. 1,200 Armenian Cypriots and 500 Greek Cypriots were also displaced.^[23][24]

Most of the property abandoned by Turkish Cypriots was ransacked, damaged, burned or destroyed by Greek Cypriots. A 1964 UN report that used aerial photographs determined that at least 977 Turkish Cypriot homes had been destroyed and that 2,000 Turkish Cypriot homes had suffered severe damage and ransacking.^[23] The report by the UN Secretary General on 10 September 1964 gives the number of destroyed houses as 527 and the number of looted houses as 2,000. This included 50 totally destroyed and 240 partially destroyed houses in Omorphita and surrounding suburbs, and 38 totally and 122 partially destroyed houses and shops in the town of Paphos.^[4]

Mass grave of Agios Vasilios

A mass grave was exhumed at Ayios Vasilios on 12 January 1964 in the presence of foreign reporters, Officers of British Army and officials from Red Cross. 21 Turkish Cypriots' bodies were found in this grave.^[25] It was presumed that they had been killed in or near Ayios Vasilios on 24 December 1963. It was verified by the observers that a number of the victims appeared to have been tortured, and to have been shot after their hands and feet were tied.^[26][27]

An investigating committee led by independent British investigators then linked the incident to an ostensible disappearance of Turkish Cypriot patients in the Nicosia General Hospital, but evidence that was to emerge decades later indicated that many of the bodies had been murdered elsewhere, stored in the hospital for a while and then buried in Ayios Vasilios.^[25] However, several of the village's residents were also amongst those killed by radical Greek Cypriots.^[28] The exhumed bodies were interred by the Turkish Cypriot authorities to the yard of the Mevlevi Tekke in Nicosia. The bodies were exhumed in the 2010s by the Missing Persons Committee, the eight villagers of Ayios Vasilios identified and buried individually.^[29]

Commemoration

It is generally accepted on both sides of the island that it’s clearly not an occasion for celebration, less importantly by association with the issue of inter-communal violence and what that led to, and more so by its own string of tragic events.^[30] It is also often contributing to reflections that the island of Cyprus is still divided more than 50 years later, which is a constant reminder to both sides that there has hardly been any joint communal achievement since, and is therefore seen by many as a time for reflection and trying to find a solution for future generations.^[31]

Turkish Cypriots annually, and officially, commemorate 1963 as ‘Kanlı Noel’ (Bloody Christmas) on 21 December, as a collective tragedy, for which Greek Cypriots have no official commemoration.^[32] The anniversary is commemorated by Turkish Cypriots as the 'week of remembrance' and the 'martyrs struggle of 1963-1974', and follows the TRNC's Independence Day, which is on 15 November and is marked by protests in the south.

There are those on both sides that view these commemorations or lack thereof as issues for contention during Cyprus peace talks.^[33] It is often the case that the few public gestures made by Turkish and Greek Cypriot officials that signal possible reunification are often contradicted by these elements which have the effect of reinforcing the conflict mentality.^[34]

Though Greek Cypriots do not commemorate the events of 1963, they do however officially commemorate the events of 1974, as do the Turkish Cypriots, albeit differently; the Greek Cypriots commemorate 1974 as ‘the dark anniversaries of the coup and the invasion’, while in contrast the Turkish Cypriots know it as their liberation by Turkey during the ‘Cyprus Peace Operation’.^[35]

Greek Cypriot official view

The Greek Cypriot official discourse follows an approach to the events of Bloody Christmas described as "parallels denialist strategies".^[49] This is still reflected in their history textbooks today, and has the effect of presenting the Greek Cypriots as the victims of Turkish Cypriot aggression, although the majority of the victims were Turkish Cypriot.^[36] This has been used by the Republic of Cyprus to legitimise human rights violations against Turkish Cypriots, the suspension of their political rights, and, until 2003, the exclusion of Turkish Cypriots from the framing of the missing people by the Republic of Cyprus.^[37][36] In 2004, Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos said in an interview that no Turkish Cypriots were killed between 1963 and 1974. Reaction to this claim appeared in the Greek and Turkish Cypriot media,^[38] with some Greek Cypriot media calling Papadopoulos's claim a blatant lie.^[39][38]

The use of the term "Turkish mutiny" (Tourkantarsia) to describe the events of 1963–64 contributes to the Greek Cypriot master narrative that the Cyprus problem started in 1974, under which the Greek Cypriot and Armenian Cypriot people displaced in 1963-64 are not classified as "refugees" but as "those struck by the Turks" (Tourkoplihtoi).^[36][37][40]

See also

• Cypriot intercommunal violence
• Cyprus dispute
• List of massacres in Cyprus
• Northern Cyprus
• Republic of Cyprus
• Akritas plan

References

• St. Clare's church
• St. Clare's Church (disambiguation)
• St. Clare's Convent
• St. Clare's Convent (disambiguation)
• St. Clares Hospital
• St. Clare's Hospital (New York)
• St. Clare's Priory, Copenhagen
• St Clare's School (disambiguation)
• St Clare's School, Porthcawl, South Wales, United Kingdom
• St. Claret College
• St Claret College, Ziro
• St Claudine Thevenet School, Wainuiomata
• St. Clement Catholic Church (Ottawa)
• St. Clement Church
• St. Clement Danes Church
• St. Clement Danes School
• St Clement Eastcheap
• St. Clement F.C.
• St. Clement High School
• St Clement (hymn tune)
• St. Clement's Basilica, Hanover
• St. Clement S.C.
• St Clements Caves
• St. Clement's Chapel
• St Clement's Church, Bornholm