Our View: Outrage over Netflix series is manufactured grievance

It seems the Turkish Cypriot leadership enjoys presenting itself as the wronged and unfairly treated side in Cyprus. This sentiment was fueled a couple of a weeks ago by the alleged scrapping of the day trips to the north by the German tour operator Tui, at the behest of the Cyprus government.

Ersin Tatar claimed it was part of the Greek Cypriot plan to crush the economy of the north and he was seconded by a host of politicians and Turkish Cypriot associations. After all the fuss, it emerged that no such a decision had been taken by Tui (it was all a misunderstanding caused by an email sent by a local employee) and that excursions to the north were still available to tourists holidaying in the Republic.

This week there was another perceived injustice for the Turkish Cypriot leadership to rally against – Netflix decided to put the television series Famagusta, which deals with the Turkish invasion of 1974, on its streaming platform. This caused another bout of mass outrage, but this time Turkey’s government also participated with the foreign ministry issuing a statement about the series, which “constitutes great disrespect to the precious memories of the Turkish Cypriots’ who were killed by Greek Cypriots between 1963 and 1974. Inevitably, there was a response from Greece’s foreign minister, Giorgos Gerapetritis, who said the Turkish invasion was “not open to multiple interpretations.”

President Christodoulides also expressed his opinion about the series, as did Tatar. The issue was not the series, which had been shown in Cyprus a few months ago, but the fact that it would be available on the Netflix platform, which is used all over the world. The fact that world audiences would see Famagusta, which deals with the Turkish invasion, is seen as a victory for the Greek Cypriots, the Turkish Cypriots feeling aggrieved because other aspects of the Cyprus problem were ignored. Then again, this is just a television series based on some historical facts and not a history lesson on the causes and effects of the Cyprus problem since 1955.

It is very doubtful the series will have the slightest effect on the situation in Cyprus, although some commentators have read great importance into it. A reviewer writing in Phileleftheros argued that Netflix was a “medium of diplomacy” and that it was very important that a platform of “global reach” would show the Cyprus problem, “contributing in an indirect and more contemporary way to the effort for its internationalisation.” Could this be what the Turkish Cypriot leadership is afraid of, and its members felt duty-bound to pan the series?

Probably not. They just wanted another excuse to make a fuss about the Greek Cypriots’ alleged machinations directed against the north. Even the provincial politicians of Cyprus have enough sense of perspective to know that a television series is unlikely to have any effect on the Cyprus problem, even if it is seen as far away as New Zealand.