Armenia Finally Establishes Embassy in Divided Capital of Nicosia, Cyprus

Cyprus is home to around 3,500 Armenians, said Mahdessian, who officially represents his minority in the island’s Parliament as one of three non-voting members (the other two speak for Maronites and Latins)

“We go back to 578 A.D., when the first Armenians settled in Cyprus,” he explained in a recent interview.

Between 1915 and 1923, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by the Ottomans and Young Turks in a murderous wave of ethnic cleansing. During that time, some 9,000 Armenian refugees — mainly from Adana and Seleucia, as well as Istanbul, Smyrna and other cities — found refuge in Cyprus.

Like the later Ashkenazi Jews who arrived here from Poland and elsewhere in Europe, most of them eventually settled in other countries, though 1,300 stayed and made Cyprus their home. The Armenian community grew, and the newcomers quickly established themselves as prosperous physicians, writers, merchants, entrepreneurs and civil servants.

“The eight million refugees this diaspora created didn’t go to all these countries to be tourists. They were forced to leave Turkey and their properties,” said Mahdessian. “Compensation for these properties is a huge issue; maybe they don’t want to acknowledge the genocide for this reason.”

Not surprisingly, Cyprus was the second country in the world, and the first in Europe, to recognize the genocide in 1975. Since then, 32 more countries have followed suit.

In 2015, on the 100th anniversary of that tragedy, the Cypriot parliament unanimously passed a law criminalizing denial of the Armenian genocide. That law was spearheaded largely by Mahdessian, who has lived here all his life.

“Israel should be the first nation to recognize the Armenian genocide because of the Holocaust,” he said. “Maybe if the correct recognition was given at the time in 1915, the Holocaust would have been avoided. When Hitler was instructing his generals, he said, ‘Who, after all, remembers the Armenians?’”

Mahdessian spoke to this reporter from the grounds of the once-impressive but now abandoned Melkonian Educational Institute — built on a hill overlooking Nicosia.

The school was established as an orphanage in 1926 by two brothers, tobacco merchants from Egypt, who wanted to offer shelter to hundreds of Armenian children who had survived the massacres. Later on, it became a secondary school for Armenians throughout the diaspora — including children from Albania, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Russia and Turkey. Adjacent to the property is a small forest full of trees, each one of them planted decades ago by orphans in memory of their loved ones killed in the genocide.

“I’m very proud to say that we’ve done a lot of work to put these forests, these buildings and the headmaster’s house in a protected zone. It’s untouchable,” he said, gesturing towards its historical statues, plaques and inscriptions amid the weeds growing through the concrete. The institute’s legal owner is the New York-based Armenian General Benevolent Union, which closed it in 2005 on the grounds that the school was no longer economically viable.

“When my family and all these other families came here in 1923 to Cyprus as refugees with nothing in their pockets, they settled in the Turkish Quarter, and the Greeks asked us why. The reason was that these people had nothing, they had to trade to earn bread for their children, and housing there was very cheap — four families to a house,” said Mahdessian, who owns an electrical trading company.

“We never saw any animosity from the Cypriot Turks. They were very hospitable to us, and received us with open arms as neighbors,” he added. “Our problem is with the Ottoman Turks, the pashas who organized the genocide.”

Earlier this year, Armenians and Cypriots together organized a solemn event marking the 110th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Larnaca, at a sculpture marking the spot where thousands of Armenian refugees fleeing the atrocities of World War I first landed in Cyprus.

The nearby Church of Sourp Stepanos — considered one of the oldest monuments of its kind in the entire Armenian diaspora — was built to honor the victims of the massacre. It was completed in 1913, even while the killings were still going on.

At the event, Larnaca’s district governor, Angelos Hadicharalambous, noted how much the two countries have in common.

“Both our nations have suffered grave injustices,” he said. “As Cyprus continues its quest for justice regarding the ongoing occupation of its territory, we stand in unwavering solidarity with Armenia in its rightful demand for global recognition of the genocide. Justice is the bridge that connects our histories and our futures.”

Author and screenwriter Angelina Der Arakelian Dennington, 23, was born and raised in Cyprus.

“My dad is Armenian-Cypriot, and his grandfather went through a lot during the genocide, and I consider that to be a miracle,” she said. “If it weren’t for his story, I wouldn’t be here.”

She added: “Since Cyprus got independence in 1960, Armenians and Greeks have found common ground through religion. That’s allowed them to coexist. But the funny thing is that a lot of Greek Cypriots don’t recognize what an Armenian is.”

Dennington has never been to Armenia herself, but that should be getting easier in the future. WizzAir now offers daily nonstop service between Larnaca and Yerevan, and FlyOne services Yerevan from Paphos.

Just as Cyprus has long expressed support for recognition of the Armenian genocide, Yerevan would like to see the division of Cyprus soon become a thing of the past, said Torgomyan.

“Armenia always expresses its sincere hope for a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Cyprus question, in accordance with UN resolutions and international law,” the ambassador said. “We really trust that all parties can engage in constructive dialogue and build mutual understanding. It’s the only way for a peaceful settlement.”