By Natalie Alkiviadou
On 8 July 2026, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution on the Impact of the 1974 Turkish Invasion on Cypriot Women and Girls and the Crimes Committed by Turkish Forces and Consequences on Gender Equality. The Resolution acknowledges that Cypriot women’s experiences of violence during 1974 are “often being excluded from official historical, legal and institutional recognition” and thus calls to document testimonies and provide support for survivors. This is particularly significant from the perspective of the expressive dimension of justice. Justice requires creating the conditions in which those whose voices have long been silenced can tell their stories, contribute to the historical record, and participate in shaping the collective memory of conflict if they wish to do so. The Resolution therefore provides an important opening for such recognition, but its transformative potential will ultimately depend on whether its commitments to documenting testimony and promoting historical awareness translate into meaningful opportunities for survivors to speak and be heard openly and safely and to have their experiences incorporated into Cyprus’s public memory of the conflict.
[. . .]At the core of any such mechanism should be the recognition that, in traumatised societies, freedom of expression entails more than the liberty to speak. It must also enable those whose experiences have long been excluded from public discourse to become part of a shared public memory. In doing so, it can serve both individual dignity and the broader pursuit of reconciliation.
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Natalie Alkiviadou is a Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Free Speech. Her research interests lie in the freedom of expression, the far-right, hate speech, hate crime, and non-discrimination.