Paphos, Cyprus. Kemal Ataturk Street in the Moutallos neighbourhood will be renamed “Nikos Kapetanidis Street” after Paphos council voted to approve the change, Disy councillor Nina Gkaraklidou said on Thursday.
Council decision and proposal
Gkaraklidou told the Cyprus Mail that a proposal she put before the council was approved by a majority of councillors and that the street will be renamed in due course.
Rationale cited by councillor
In a social media post, Gkaraklidou said the street name, referencing the Republic of Turkey’s founding president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, “creates and provokes a painful emotional reflection” among current residents of Moutallos, most of whom are Greek Cypriots displaced from the north in 1974 and their descendants. She said street names “reflect our values, roots, history and choices,” adding that she proposed the renaming “with the awareness of the burden and responsibility towards the truth and future generations”.
Historical context of Moutallos street names
Before 1974, Moutallos was historically the town of Paphos’ Turkish Cypriot community, and street names in the neighbourhood reflect that history, often bearing the names of Turkish and Turkish Cypriot figures such as poet Namik Kemal, late Turkish president Ismet Inonu, and the Republic of Cyprus’ first vice president Dr Fazil Kucuk.
Previous renaming efforts
Since the neighbourhood became home to displaced Greek Cypriots after 1974, and as the wider Paphos area saw an influx of Pontic Greeks following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, some streets have been renamed after names were deemed offensive by those communities.
Talat Pasha Street was renamed Justice Street in 2021, after Paphos’ Pontic Greek and Armenian communities pointed out that the late Ottoman grand vizier had been convicted and sentenced to death for organising massacres of Greeks and Armenians during his time as grand vizier and earlier as interior minister. Talat Pasha was sentenced in absentia, escaped execution after fleeing to Berlin as the Ottoman Empire faced defeat in the first world war, and was later shot dead during organised assassinations carried out by the Armenian revolutionary federation.
Background on Nikos Kapetanidis name
The article cites distaste for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk among Pontic Greeks stemming from the Greco-Turkish war, during which both sides committed atrocities including massacres, torturing, and the burning of towns and villages.
It also states that Nikos Kapetanidis, a journalist from the Black Sea city of Rize who published a newspaper in Trabzon, was convicted and sentenced to death during the Amasya trials in 1921 in the Black Sea town of Amasya. The trials were carried out by the Turkish national movement, which at a national level was led by Kemal.
What do you think local councils should consider when deciding whether to rename streets with historically contentious names?