Turkish Cypriot conscientious objector may be jailed for fourth time

Turkish Cypriot conscientious objector Halil Karapasaoglu on Monday announced that he had been informed by the police that he is once again to be charged with failing to complete his military service, having not attended a military refresher day last year.

If found guilty, he may go to prison for conscientiously objecting for a third time. He was previously jailed over the same issue in 2019 and in 2024.

He was also jailed in 2011 after writing an article in a newspaper alleging that soldiers in the unit in which he was serving at the time had been beaten by their superiors and then crossing to the Republic eight times while a soldier, which is forbidden in the north.

In a social media post, he said his trial will likely begin in the coming months, before explaining his reasons for not wishing to serve in the Turkish Cypriot armed forces.

“I am a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus. The Republic of Cyprus is not my enemy state. No Cypriot is my enemy. I will not take part in military preparations to raise a weapon against Cypriots with whom I share the same state and the same homeland,” he said.

He added, “I am a Cypriot north of the border, and I am a Cypriot south of the border. I am a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus”.

“The citizenship imposed on me by the colonial regime forces me to see the republic, of which I am a stakeholder, as an enemy. It tells me that I need to see Cypriots who do not speak Turkish as enemies. It imposes this on me as a civic duty. I reject this ideology, which was imposed by Turkish settler colonialism onto me as a Cypriot,” he said.

He added, “if a poet’s country is divided, if democracy and the right to a homeland are taken away from them, if they want to exterminate the Cypriots in the north of Cyprus, that poet will defend their country with civil disobedience in addition to writing poems”.

He also highlighted himself the fact that his statement was written in the Cypriot Turkish dialect and not in standard Turkish.

Karapasaoglu is one of a small group of Turkish Cypriot conscientious objectors who are typically jailed when they refuse to show up for refresher sessions.

Mustafa Hurben served a three-day sentence last year for failing to attend such a session, while the Republic of Turkey last year received a €9,000 fine from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for the imprisonment of Murat Kanatli, after ruling that Article 9 of the ECHR, Kanatli’s right to freedom of thought, had been violated.