The warning signs appeared well before a ball was kicked. At the World Cup draw in Washington in December 2025, FIFA president Gianni Infantino presented US President Donald Trump with the inaugural 'FIFA Peace Prize - Football Unites the World'. The newly created award, and Infantino's very public...
Thousands of people flocked to this year’s Turkish Cypriot cultural festival on the Donkey Lane playing fields in Enfield, North London, and once again they left with smiles and happy memories.Now a firm feature in the British Turkish social calendar following its first event back in 2017, the festi...
I recently watched new documentary The Divided Island. In fact, I saw it twice in one month. The highly acclaimed film has attracted a lot of interest from diverse media, including The Guardian, The Morning Star, and even The Church Times. Why has this film generated so much interest? One...
Conservative Party leadership contender Rishi Sunak said, in writing to the Conservative Friends of Cyprus, that the British Cypriot Community has “made a hugely positive contribution to the United Kingdom”. It is important this statement applies to the UK’s Turkish Cypriot community, equa...
Two photographs, two family tragedies. The first of these show a three-year-old girl, Ayşe, wiping tears off her grandmother’s face with a tissue, oblivious to the tragedy her family has just suffered. The grandmother, also called Ayşe, is shedding tears for her daughter, little Ayşe’s mum Sonya Kay...
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, DUE TO THE CORONAVIRUS Ladies, if you are after some fun and want to support a good cause, get yourselves a ticket to the Rauf Raif Denktaş Turkish School Ladies Night. Taking place at the Orpington branch of the stylish Hisa...
One of the most closely contested constituencies of this General Election is one in East London. Labour are after a big scalp: that of Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader and architect of the widely despised Universal Credit benefits system. Standing against him is Faiza Shaheen, a...
I do not like the word ‘Diaspora’. Its dictionary definition is “the dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland”. This evokes feelings of temporariness and permanent homesickness. For third, fourth generation Cypriots these feelings are meaningless. Their original homeland is Br...
My last wish When I die Is that you bury me in Cyprus Let my body be merged With the soil of my native land My head to my guts in the South My loins to my feet in the North Let me have two graves In the North and in the South For I must lie in both Yaşar...
I heard the bad news on a cold November night. 17th November 2015 to be exact. Two friends had gone to see him at Croydon Hospital. They rang to tell me in floods of tears that we had lost him. I had visited him a few days before, and was planning to go and see him again the following day. Alas, it...
