Cypriot poppies. My photo, although not a November 11 one. Actually taken in March of 2018. North Cyprus doesn’t celebrate a Remembrance Day on November 11, having just the day before had a day to remember Atatürk and the founding of Türkiye. Not precisely the same thing of course. And modern Țürkiye came into existence after the first War as the Treaty of Lausanne created its borders. In the second War it attempted to remain neutral - benefiting as much as possible from both sides - until an extremely late (February 23, 1945) union with the Allies and declaration of war on Germany and Japan. Basically in order to acquire a seat at the post war United Nations.
Cyprus, of course, somewhat different. It was a British colony until 1960, with no division between North and South and a large number of Greek and Turkish Cypriots fought with the British in the Cyprus Regiment. We met an aging Turkish Cypriot veteran in Girne (Kyrenia) about twenty years ago.
Borders change and so do allegiances, not always for the noblest of reasons. A young Japanese student of mine, attending a Remembrance Day ceremony in his Canadian school said cheerfully “last war we were the enemy”. And then there was the girl I knew in university (yes, post war but not by an incredible amount - we are now as far away from the mid sixties as the mid sixties were from the Boer War) whose father joined his local branch of the Legion saying truthfully that he was a veteran but not mentioning which side he’d been on.
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