Paris Demetriades
To be honest, I didn’t expect it. At least not for this reason. Still, it happened. One of the remarks made by the Hungarian-Israeli investor connected to the abandoned Trozena project, during an interview he personally gave me last week for Kathimerini, sparked intense reactions on social media. Speaking about why he chose to invest in Cyprus, Mr. Uriel Kurtz said that besides the beauty of the landscape and the island’s proximity to Israel, he was also drawn to the fact that we Cypriots speak English. As a European citizen, he explained, he could live and invest anywhere in the EU. What made Cyprus attractive to him was that he could communicate in English without having to learn the local language.
Many Cypriot users reacted angrily, and in some cases furiously, to that particular comment. They clearly felt insulted because, as many of them wrote, “our mother tongue is Greek, not English.” At the same time, these may very well be the same people who, if they owned a restaurant or entertainment business in a tourist area, would put up signs and menus in English and Russian but not in Greek. The same people who, if they had the opportunity to pocket easy money from a golden passport scheme, would take it without hesitation. The same people who, if asked for their opinion on foreign investment in general, would answer in one word that it is welcome, without any “backward reservations or hesitation.”
Moments like this genuinely make me wonder about the contradictory and erratic behavior of part of our society. Because the real issue in the case of Trozena, and every Trozena, is not ultimately how investors treat us. It is how we choose to deal with them. Do we, as a state and as a society, put serious safeguards in place to protect our cultural and architectural heritage, or is quick money the only God we recognize while everything else is treated as quaint and unimportant? Have we passed laws that actually protect people, nature, and our homes? Have we ever seriously thought about the need for a sensible and complete policy on foreign investment, one that prevents the violent displacement of local communities from neighborhoods undergoing “gentrification,” reckless demolitions of buildings that should have been protected but never were, and salary gaps that create societies divided into multiple classes and speeds? And when it comes specifically to preserving our traditional identity, what exactly are we ourselves doing to defend it in a genuinely patriotic rather than nationalistic way?
Back to Trozena. Why should any investor be allowed to begin construction in an area already classified as Natura land without even formally securing the permits required? Why has almost the entire coastline of this island, over the decades, turned into what it is today, permanently losing the authenticity it could and should have preserved, at least to some meaningful degree? Why have our mountain villages, the only places that have truly kept their identity intact, been abandoned and left to decay so badly, only for us to remember them every so often so we can mourn over the ruins?
Out of all these issues, and dozens more like them, why was the thing that offended us most the comment by some Mr. Kurtz making the perfectly reasonable and not remotely negative observation that we also speak English? Did we once again feel shocked by our own reflection simply because it came through the words of a foreigner?
Yes, we do speak English too. Why should that be treated as an insult instead of an advantage? We really are a fascinating case study for sociologists and anthropologists.
