The Genocide Files

by Harry Scott Gibbons

The Genocide Files is a thorough research into the so called "Cyprus problem". It exposes the bias of the United Nations organisation towards the Turkish Cypriots and its apparent inability to protect them against their more numerous and militarily more powerful co-inhabitants of the island, the Greek Cypriots. The book describes how the Greek fixation with Enosis - Union with Greece - led to a one-sided war against the Turks and the brutal massacres of their men, women and children.

494 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Harry Scott Gibbons is a journalist. He served in the Middle East, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and the United States and is the author of some published books. He is married with popular novelist Marion Chesney (aka M. C. Beaton), and they had a son Charles.

Reviews

[Haso · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book a number of years ago. It's a necessity in order to understand the Turkish Cypriot perspective of the Cyprus problem.

The opening chapters offer a personal look at what Turkish Cypriots went through well before the closely covered events of 1974. I don't believe the average person would know anything about Cyprus in 1963, so in this regard the book is very insightful.

The next third of the book is somewhat dry as it explores Greece's past with attention to the second world war. The context being that how could a country with its people going through such struggles, then apply similar cruelty to others (Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus).

The final third relates the political situations around the time the book was written, so if you don't have any knowledge of this it is ok. If you are around the news and political situation then it may seem dry and somewhat dated.

Either way, I believe this book helps to uncover the real personal struggles and atrocities Turkish Cypriots endured throughout the modern history of Cyprus. It puts the events of 1974 into context as well as established the clear ethnic division along language, religious and cultural lines between the two people's of Cyprus.

[MrFusion182 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't my first rodeo with books on Cyprus. This was a very difficult book to read. Not so much the content, just the way it was written. It kind of grated on me at how staccato his memoirs were and the lack of citations. I'm not disputing what is written in the book, I just thought it was going to be a history book rather than a personal memoir. He doesn't really say anything different to the rest of the books on Cyprus regarding the atrocities experienced specifically by the Turkish Cypriots and any Greek Cypriot that got in the way of EOKA, but my word does he drive home the severety of it all as an eye witness. In summary, is this book crucial to developing your knowledge on the Cyprus problem? Yes and no. No, if it is the first book you are going to read about it and yes, if you love reading about Cyprus and you are on a quest to understand as much as possible.

[Rob Cook · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a slog this was. Split into three books, the second is the best written of the three. The first felt like it had no structure and was poorly written and the final book slipped back into the random structure of the first but was easier to read. This felt like it could have done with a proper edit rather than have gone straight to print (as is how it reads).

[Kerim Ramadan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found the content interesting, being loosely familiar with some of the events it helped with details of key events, although it doesn’t feature many references.
Not the easiest read and it certainly could have been more to the point but valuable for its eye witness accounts - which on checking matched other sources like the European Court of Human Rights.