Giving voice to the women raped in 1974

Local 1974rapeTop Newsturkish invasion Giving voice to the women raped in 1974 Viasmoi Eisvoli 1 1536x864 Relevant News Giving voice to the women raped in 1974 17 August 2026 Fire guts abandoned Limassol house, arson suspected 17 August 2026 Firefighters free trapped driver after Nicosia crash 17 August 2026 newsroom 17 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber By Sotiroula Vasileiou The European Parliament has recognised the women of Cyprus at European level as victims of crimes committed during the Turkish invasion. Its resolution, passed on July 8, 2026, calls for accountability for sexual violence against women and for justice for those who suffered it. Rapes of women and of men The resolution carries historical, political and moral significance, MEP Costas Mavrides said. Mavrides, who has researched the subject himself, said the rapes of 1974 were an organised crime carried out by the Turkish army with the participation of officers, soldiers and a number of Turkish Cypriots, directed at the Greek Cypriot population and mainly at civilians. The victims were female, from young girls to elderly women, he said. Some of the rapes were unimaginably savage. Some took place in churches or in plain view. There were victims who were effectively killed by repeated rape, and cases in which death was the punishment for resistance, according to Mavrides. The least known aspect of the crime is the rape of boys and men, Mavrides said, adding that very few of those who suffered it have spoken. He said he holds personal testimonies from victims who found the strength to recount what happened to them, and that the effect of the crime on surviving victims, women and men alike, and particularly on their mental health, is beyond description. A poet returns to the testimonies The subject has also drawn renewed attention through Agonies, a 2023 collection by Dimitra Dimitriou, who holds a doctorate in General and Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne. Published in Athens by Smili, it centres on the rapes committed in Cyprus during the invasion, treating rape as a matter for women, a national matter, and an inhuman and barbaric one. Individual poems turn to personal histories drawn from press reports and testimonies. Rape appears in the collection both metaphorically and organically, as an imposition of power, Dimitriou said. The book draws on a range of primary and secondary sources and examines the social, psychological, historical and legal dimensions of the crime, she said. The poems carry women’s names as titles: Anna, Sofia, Milia, Iroula, Agni, Vasiliki, Eftychia, Maria, Myrofora, Margarita, Fylio, Androula, Dora, Frosa, Eleni, Nitsa, Marianna, Xenia, Ioanna, Irini and Rodi. The names are invented. Many women testified anonymously to what they suffered, out of shame and fear of rejection by their families and by society. Examples of such rejection are known within local communities and among relatives. Dimitriou condemns that second crime against the victims, alongside the ordeal of abortions. Born in Nicosia 11 years after the invasion, with family roots in Morphou, the poet does not confine herself to the rape of women. She extends the theme to the rape of Famagusta, Kyrenia, Morphou, the Pentadaktylos range and the whole of Cyprus. What the press reported in 1974 Agonies sits alongside the accounts of victims, witnesses and the press from the days of the invasion, when the horror was a collective experience that left no room for euphemism. The reports that follow appeared in Cypriot newspapers at the time, in the register of the period. Alithia reported on August 5, 1974 that Turkish troops had given themselves over to an orgy of killings and rapes in Kyrenia, and described a case in which four soldiers raped a young woman one after another. Tharros, on the same date, reported that representatives of the international press at a briefing had listened to victims of Turkish brutality describe nightmarish days in which killings and rapes were to the fore. Mesimvrini reported on September 21, 1974 on atrocities at Palekythro and Voni, saying women had been raped and murdered and young women violated in front of their parents. The same report described a 14-year-old girl who was raped four times, twice with her hands and eyes bound. Phileleftheros published on August 8, 1974 the account of E.K., from Agios Georgios Kyrenias. A bomb dropped from an aircraft destroyed the family home, she said, and she came out of the basement with her parents to find themselves surrounded by Turkish troops. Her father and mother were shot dead, she said. Three men approached her and one of them threw her into a field. She ran, but they caught her at a hut. She lost consciousness, and said she did not know what would become of her. The same account described E.M., from nearby Trimithi, who saw her husband and father murdered on the family farm along with other villagers. She was raped herself. Her two children, both infants, were present. When she found the courage to speak publicly about the crime committed against her, her husband’s parents refused to let her live with them once the family had fled. The Pancyprian Committee of Enclaved Persons alleged in October 1974 that systematic rapes were still being committed in the occupied areas, and that attempts were being made to make women dependent on drugs. The light that is needed It is time for justice. This island and its people lived through a great deal of horror, fire and violence, and the more light is brought to these wounds as knowledge and awareness, the more the importance of justice is understood internationally. Psychological and physical survival in the aftermath of rape is a personal feat, and it creates a heroism that ought to be recognised, doing away once and for all with the stigma of defilement. Sotiroula Vasileiou holds a doctorate in History from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. 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