The march organised by Baraka and Bağımsızlık Yolu (Independence Path) started in front of the English Embassy. Second destination was the America Embassy. March ended with a press release in front of the Turkish Embassy.
The full press release is as follows:
“Dear press workers,
In the 45th year of the division of our country, we are once again in the streets on another anniversary of August 14th for the protest. We will continue, every single year, to walk for Independent Cyprus, as it has been for years. This year’s march is even more significant, as we are in an environment where separatist voices are becoming more and more louder and the liberal minds have done nothing other than passively waiting and hoping for peace in the north of Cyprus. We are going through a process where a federal solution based on the equality of two peoples (which is currently the only reliable method/framework to solve the Cyprus problem for two peoples of Cyprus), is pushed to be excluded from the agenda. In spite of the waves of attack against united federal Cyprus, many people who support peace and federation unfortunately have an approach that cannot go beyond “begging for peace” from the negotiators and domestic&international elites. The period of ethnic conflict and the decades we have spent in a divided Cyprus have clearly demonstrated and proved that a peace struggle which does not rely upon/takes its power from the islanders and grassroots is not capable of serving peace in Cyprus.
While the nationalist and fascist circles in both peoples define Cyprus Problem through accusing the “other side”, i.e. playing the “blame game”; significant portion of the pro peace and federalist circles see it as a legal problem. However, for us, the solution of Cyprus problem requires both the re-establishment of brother/sisterhood of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot peoples AND the capturing of power by the peoples of both sides in order to eliminate the sovereignty of the ruling classes of both sides.
Therefore, we believe that the Cyprus problem is not only related to what happened in 1974. Instead, the division of the island was an outcome of a process within which both internal and external factors/actors played various and several roles over the years, leading to the division of the island. Our homeland, Cyprus, is under the occupation of imperialism as a whole. Even though the occupation mainly maintains through Turkey and Greece (which are the subcontractors of imperialism on the island); American and British imperialism maintains to exert power in/on Cyprus. Therefore, it is not possible for our country to gain its independence without eliminating the domination of imperialism as a whole on the island. That is why, calling for Independence Cyprus, is not only a call for the legal/political unification but also a call for a struggle against imperialism and their domestic collaborators. We cannot establish a peaceful Cyprus without fighting against those who use our country as a money laundering place, those who see our country as a market zone within which the labourers are being forced to work like slaves, and those who create a war base in the Middle East. That is to say, when we are fighting against the casinos and the brothels, when we are shouting slogans to ban the usage of non-unionised and unorganised labourers in any economic sectors, when we are fighting against the discrimination between Cypriots and immigrants (immigrants of all sorts, including Turkish immigrants), when we are saying Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots are brothers and sisters and when we are opposing the ecological destruction in our mountains; what we are actually doing and saying is a call for an Independent Cyprus. This is because, the struggle for an Independent Cyprus is an effort to create a country without all of the above, without any sort of oppression. We will maintain the effort tomorrow as we do today. Someone may dream of a permanent division, but we dream of a completely different Cyprus. Another Cyprus is in our hands.
Independent Cyprus, All Peoples are Brothers and Sisters!”
