Cyprus complaining about Greek textbook

A NEW history textbook for children in the last year of primary school has incurred the wrath of Cypriot politicians, who are demanding its immediate withdrawal because it allegedly distorts and over-simplifies the island’s history. The textbook, covering four centuries of Greek history in 150 pages, devotes three pages to Cyprus, which refer to the anti-colonial struggle, the coup, Turkish invasion and the continuing division. Cypriot politicians found plenty to complain about in these three pages, while the Education Ministry has prepared a letter in which it lists the changes it wants made to the book.

It was not only Cypriot politicians who were outraged with the contents of the book. A small handful of nationalist politicians and academics in Greece have also lambasted it, because of the neutral terminology it used and its failure to mention the killing of thousands of Greek civilians by the Turkish troops in Smyrna in 1922. All it said was that the Turkish army had entered the town and thousands of Greeks had crowded to the port in order to get on a ship that would take them to Greece. The Greek Education Minister, responding to the criticism, said some corrections would be made to the book, but had no intention of withdrawing it from schools, as had been done in the case of other ‘nationalistically incorrect’ textbooks in the past.