Conclusions of the 2nd Youth Conference of YBH Youth

YBH Youth has done many activities since the First Youth Conference dated 24th of February 2001. Our struggle for the reunification of our common homeland and against the regime in the north has been continuing. Many decisions taken at the 1st Youth Conference have proven to be valid and necessary over time but some of them could not be implemented due to our own weaknesses and deficiencies.

Despite these YBH Youth has managed to be an effective youth organization both in Cyprus and abroad.

Since 2001 YBH Youth has been organizing various political meetings and activities together with different organizations in the north. Our activities in the south have continued increasingly.

YBH Youth has been having various political meetings and activities with different organizations in the north since 2001. Our activities in the south also have continued increasingly.

For years bicommunal activities were limited among a few organizations. But YBH Youth pioneered in this area by participating at the NEOS Congress that has political activities in the south. We also held activities with NEOS in the north. This was important in the sense that NEOS was participating in activities in the north for the first time. Currently we continue our relations with NEOS at a high level. In 2002 we also participated in the 1st Congress of the Youth Branch of the Green Party, NEOI. We were the pioneering Turkish Cypriot youth organization to address the young ecologists in their congress and developed our relations further. During this period we have also managed to advance our already existant relations with other political youth organizations. We further developed our relations with EDON with whom we have had a good relationship for years.

We took part at the Bicommunal Youth Forum, formed by 7 youth organizations and participated in many activities. Our membership application to the CYCIC (Cyprus Youth Council for International Cooperation) came to a positive result.

This was a positive process for us since we built positive and constructive relations with all youth structures having political activities in the south except NEDIK – with NEDIK we could not built relations in this period.

We also improved our international relations. We participated at the congresses of Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) and PASOK Youth, one of the pioneering Turkish Cypriot youth organizations to share ideas with the Greek Youth.

We participated in the activities organized by International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) and had a chance to share our views with various youth organizations. We took the initiative to develop a shared document about the Cyprus problem with NEOS Youth at the international seminar that taking place in Larnaca in 2002. This shared document was approved by the IUSY Presidency and became a General Document.

Among the activities of YBH Youth, it was very important for us to commemorate Dervis Ali Kavazoglu who was one of the leaders of the common struggle for a common homeland during the 1950s and his comrades. We would like to thank Kamil Korat, Hulus (Ibrahim) Caglar and Aziz Kutlay from here once again, who had struggled during that period despite the repression of the Turkish administration. As it is known, Kavazoglu was assassinated near Luricina with his trade union comrade Kostas Mishaulis. We want to once more underline the importance of sharing the experience of the ones who lived that period of common struggle of Turkish and Greek Cypriot trade unionists with the youth.

In August 2001 YBH Youth published the booklet called ‘What YBH Youth Thinks’ together with the results of the 1st Youth Conference. After a long time, this was the first time that a political youth organization was transferring their oral opinions to written documents. This brought a new dimension to the ongoing oral discussion platform among the youth organizations. However this activity was not effective enough. Nevertheless this document was valid at that time and continues to have valid aspects.

Socialism

YBH Youth has demonstrated its views about socialism in its published documents and continues to have the same stand. Since 2002 worldwide activities to create a new socialism based on freedoms is going on. The Labor Party of Brazil that had strong positions in this aspect came to power and many leftist, socialist and labor organizations gathered at Porto Allegre for the 3rd time at the World Social Forum and took decisions.

YBH Youth assumes responsibility for holding activities at this part of the world within this ongoing discussion of the new left.

Struggle against sexual discrimination, racism, nationalism and chauvinism

YBH Youth has declared that all sexual, racial, national, religious and lingual discriminations are a product of outdated and fundamentalist beliefs and that it refuses to accept the conflicts created by the outdated parties using religion and capital. Members of YBH Youth have the responsibility to struggle against these.

Our responsibility is to show that the problems of the Greek Cypriots and Maronites living in the north as minorities are not their own problems but ours as well and that disregarding these problems will not solve them. We have to create living conditions for these people to access to their rights and freedoms. Despite the Geneva Convention, people who have been brought to the north in order to control the political structure in the north after 1974 have to be dealt with in the same manner. We who are struggling against the repressionist regime and a dictative administration refuse the right to be given to those who don’t consider this island as their homeland to determine this country’s destiny. At the same time we also refuse the discrimination and repression on these people based on their identity. Acknowledging the difference between the right to live and the right to determine the destiny of a country, accepting that people with different identities are world citizens foremost, YBH Youth approaches problems based on humanity. YBH Youth struggles for the universal human rights and freedoms of all.

YBH Youth considers the paramilitary organizations formed with nationalist, racist and chauvinist beliefs as a serious threat to the reunification of the common homeland and assumes the struggle against these organizations as its primary task. YBH Youth cooperates both locally and internationally in order to fight against the paramilitary organizations.

Cyprus problem

YBH Youth considers the latest developments of the Cyprus problem as positive and hopes that peace is coming fast. Considering that Annan Plan will provide better conditions than the prevailing ones and that it will give Cypriots the opportunity to determine their own future by reunifying the common homeland, YBH Youth demands that the plan should be signed immediately. Although this plan has mistakes and deficiencies, YBH Youth believes that it’s not possible for the ones who does not have political power to change or develop this and stresses that the solution is only a tool on the road where the decision making is expercised by people. YBH Youth stresses once again that solutions to the problems must not be seeked within the alternatives put forward by the existing system. It is not possible to solve the problems by assuming positions with no authority under the prevailing system and therefore it is useless to take such positions in the showcase prepared by the regime. This is a country where elections cannot take part according to international law, where the Turkish Embassy and the Turkish Aid Mission is authorized like a governor in a province of Turkey. The army is not within its camps but in every aspect of daily life and can intervene at any time and to anything. Military authorities have full dominance over the civil bureaucracy. Under these prevailing conditions, YBH Youth stresses that a ‘New Cyprus is Possible!’ while struggling against those who create hopelessness under the slogan ‘Freedom, democracy, equality RIGHT NOW!’

Considering that the time is quickly running out for a solution, YBH Youth believes that the struggle should be based on cutting off all relations with the regime and taking up the fight to a level of revolutionary youth struggle. With these in mind YBH Youth will struggle for the masses of youth to be politicized.

During this process YBH Youth considers each case of cooperation within its context and takes decisions accordingly.

YBH Youth considers that each case of cooperation should be based on equality, principles and tolerance. Criticisms should have a scientific basis.

YBH Youth calls once again on all youth organizations fighting for the reunification of the common homeland and for a life based on freedom, democracy and equality to come together and make more efforts in order to rebuild Cyprus.

We would also like to call on the youth living on the other side of our common homeland: we need to raise our cooperation in order to get rid of the division within our daily lives and create conditions for living together.

Believing that all the problems in Cyprus are shared, we need to show understanding to all concerns and problems of each other in all aspects of political, social, economic and sportive areas. Such an understanding will contribute to the reunification of the island. In this respect we would like to stress that YBH Youth gives great importance to the creation of bicommunal structures or cooperation within the existing structures.

Problems of Turkish Cypriot youth

We would like to stress that the Resolution No.2 taken at the 1st Youth Conference in 2001 concerning the problems of Turkish Cypriot youth is still valid. We still need to revitalize this resolution into action. We need to create subcommittees in order to take up the solutions of the problems of the youth in different aspects of life in line with the resolutions of the first conference. The Youth Assembly has the task to do these in the coming period.

We are not isolated from the world

The global resistance of the left, socialist and labor organizations against the global neo-liberal attacks continue. We cannot alienate ourselves from the struggle given by anti-globalization movement under the slogan ‘Another world is possible’. That’s why YBH Youth is determined to support the fight against the neo-liberal policies within its limits.

Apart from this we would like to stress that the Decision No.3 of the 1st Youth Conference concerning the tension between Israel and Palestine is still valid. As we were against the military operation in Afghanistan, we are also against the upcoming war against Iraq.

As YBH Youth we believe in the struggle against alliances of warmongers consisting of various multinational monopolies and their satellite countries. YBH Youth is against such alliances that destroy civil life, nature and historical heritage and stress that such wars serve only the interests of the alliances themselves and nothing else.

YBH Youth believes that it is the shame of humanity that in some parts of the world while some people live in prosperity some are still dying of hunger, disease and lack of habitat. We underline that everyone has a shared responsibility in the solution of these problems.

YBH Youth believes that human beings should be able to live anywhere in the world with respect to their language and culture, to be able to be educated, to have the right to the basic conditions for these and that these are basic human rights. More effort should be made for the satisfaction of these basic human needs.

YBH Youth draws attention to the fact that wars relocate people and relocated people live as immigrants under inhuman conditions and that millions of people seeking better life conditions are on the move around the globe.

YBH Youth believes in the cooperation with organizations for the recreation of an EU which would be more respectful to labor rights.

Neo-liberal policies create grave problems for a sustainable environment. Nature is seriously destroyed, drinkable and usable water resources are destroyed, a lot of life species are becoming extinct. YBH Youth calls on everyone to be more sensitive against these attacks on nature. It’s impossible to regain what’s been destroyed…

We would like to stress once again that YBH Youth is ready to assume responsibility in cooperation with international youth organizations for the struggle in all the above-mentioned areas.

Conclusion

We are successfully completing our 2nd Conference today at a period where serious developments in the Cyprus problem are expected.

We are facing the truth that Turkish Cypriot leadership does not represent the people any longer and that Turkey is controlling the northern part of the island. The slogan of the New Cyprus Party of years ago ‘This country is ours! No to an administration of dictation!’ is now embraced by masses. Under these conditions YBH Youth believes that the struggle has entered into a new phase and in order to face this new phase, a revolutionary youth struggle should be raised. YBH Youth calls on the representatives of the regime to give up their positions to the real representatives, that is the people and quit politics. They should know that it’s no longer possible to carry on the current regime. There’s no longer tolerance for any pretense. If there are still those who would like to take part in the showcase created by the regime, people living on this soil need to get rid of them.

The hope of doing this lies with us.

We will resist, we have no other choice, we shall win!

22/2/2003, Nicosia