Introduction by Chris Elliott....

Recently we shared on CyprusScene to the world, an article published by The PRESIDENCY OF THE TURKISH REPUBLIC OF NORTHERN CYPRUS  click here telling of the visit of 42 Swedish ex UN soldiers who had served in Cyprus trying to keep the peace during the troubled period upto 1974.

To my surprise I received an email from Anders Arvidsson a Swedish ex UN soldier who has been bringing back to the TRNC, fellow Swedish ex UN soldiers for the past 30 years, and who served in Cyprus during that period and he sent me a history of the battle in Gaziveren village.

Readers mail....

From Anders Arvidsson......

Attack by Greek Cypriots on Gaziveren

At the north coast, 40 km west of Nicosia lies Gaziveren as the only Turkish Cypriot village between the bigger Greek Cypriot places Morphou and Pendaia, the coastal road west passes through the southern part of the village. March 19 1964, just before the UN force had become operative, the village is attacked. Superior forces of Greek Cypriots equipped with grenade launchers and at least one armoured car that opened fire against the few defence positions that had been arranged in the village. Under continuous firing they started to advance closer towards the village.

Gaziveren had in the spring of 1964 a population of 700 of which about 200 had recently arrived as refugees from nearby villages where they had been in the minority or from dwellings not big enough to defend themselves from.

The few Turkish Cypriot defenders did not have much to protect themselves against the well-armed Greek Cypriots. In the village the armament consisted of a few British machine guns, which were Sten guns of WW II surplus, some ageing rifles and Enfield 303 rifles and all shotguns that worked in the village. With simple tactics the defenders succeeded in convincing the beleaguering Greek Cypriots to believe there were lots more defenders than in reality there was.

The young boys of the village ran between the different defence positions with most of the guns. On arrival there was a hail of fire from the defence position in question, they then reloaded and ran across the village and then sent another hailstorm of bullet in the opposite direction against the attackers. The surrounding force was thus given the impression that the village had a very strong defence force.

The Turkish Cypriots succeeded in keeping the Greek Cypriots out of the central part of Gaziveren. The attack on the village was well documented, as some journalists and a small British force, trying to stop the fighting  and they oversaw the whole struggle.

This had started when a Greek Cypriot force demanded that all weapons in the village should be handed over, the villagers refused and erected a road block and totally stopped the traffic along the coastal road. Two hundred women and the children had taken shelter in the school house when the fighting begun. There they were forced to lay on the floor while the Greek Cypriots shot at the house. Six of the villagers lost their lives during the fight: Ali Faik, Erol Hüsein,  Faruk Ahmet, Mehmet Dede, Niyazi Kumarci and Emin Izzet. The Greek Cypriot loss numbered to five people. After a truce had been decided the British decide to place a post in the village, and their position was taken over by Swedish troops as soon as the UN force went into operation.

The Canadian journalist Mark Harrison reported to his daily paper Toronto Star about the fight as follows.

Turkish women scream under hail of bullets.

By Mark Harrison Star staff writer.

Nicosia – Three hundred fear- crazed Turkish women and children were fired on yesterday by Greek Cypriots in the besieged village of Gaziveran, 30 miles west of here. None was hit , but at least 11 Turks and Greeks were reported killed in fierce new fighting in other parts of the village and at other trouble spots throughout the island. Some of the women lay cowering beside the road, screaming hysterically, as the Greeks opened fire. Others ran to the shelter of nearby buildings.

A few paralyzed with fright stood rigid on the bullet-raked village street until rescued by British soldiers and correspondents. An American reporter picked up an aged woman and carried her to the safety of the village school house. A boy of 10,carrying a baby on his back ran frantically through the gunfire to shelter. A flock of sheep, bleating in fear, milled aimlessly among the fleeing women and children while Bren gun and rifle bullets peppered the street. Fragments from a bazooka rocket thudded against the side of British armoured car and its commander grunted. “it´s getting too hot. Let´s get the hell out of here”

Bullets gouge plaster walls.

For five hours until daylight faded, the terrorized women and children lay crouched inside the school house while Greek fire hit the outer walls, From the fields surrounding the village we could hear the rattle of Bren gun fire and saw Greeks firing from fortified positions which obviously had taken days to prepare. A hundred yards from the village we passed a pool of blood where a Turk had been wounded an hour earlier. We could see the terrified faces of women and children peering at us through windows. From one hut rose a strange animal-like sound and I peered in. A Turkish woman was sitting on a bed, her face contorted with fear, a guttural, almost inhuman sound welling from her throat every few seconds. Five children stood around her their eyes filled with fear and incomprehension.”

Greek Cypriot “Marmon Herrington” armoured car and troops accompanied by journalists (right) during the attack on Gaziveren March 19th 1964.

Editors comment:

So that’s an introduction to what the Swedish UN troops were faced with on arrival in Gaziveren and with them was Anders Arvidsson who years later came back to Cyprus with his wife for a holiday and left on the last flight from Cyprus to Sweden on 13th July 1974 before the Turkish peace intervention started.

Since then with his the experienced of serving in Gaziveran he has been bringing back parties of ex Swedish UN soldiers on memorial trips but looking back at the division in Cyprus on July 20th 1974 and the subsiquent barrage of mis-information about the Cyprus issue by the so-called Republic of Cyprus, he has has decided he must tell the Truth of the Cyprus Issue to the world so they can see the injustice perportrated on the Turkish Cypriots for years and will be writing more of this in CyprusScene in the future.  
https://cyprusscene.com/2024/03/19/swedish-un-soldiers-came-to-gaziveren-after-the-greek-cypriot-attack/