As a Turkish person whose family fled to the UK from Cyprus, I'm excited about Erdogan's visit to Greece

My mother didn't want to tell me about the war in Cyprus, so instead I found out one day when a girl at my primary school started yelling racist insults, telling me to 'get out of Cyprus – it's our country'

'I'm no fan of Erdogan, but this is a significant moment for anyone whose family comes from Cyprus' (Reuters)

Next week Recep Erdogan will become the first sitting Turkish President to visit Greece in 65 years. Let that sink in: after decades of hostility and racial tension, Erdogan (the unlikely peacemaker) will be travelling to Athens for two days to talk about trade agreements.

There is much speculation about what this will mean for Turkish-Greek relations, and even though I cannot stand the Turkish President myself, I’m still pretty excited.

Like Erdogan, I will also be a Turk visiting Athens for the first time in my life next month. I’m the first person in my family for three generations to visit Greece, and he’s the first President in three generations of an entire country visiting Greece – granted, these two things don’t have quite the same global significance. Nevertheless, this holiday carries with it real political baggage for me – and I can’t even begin to imagine how much Erdogan will be carrying when he visits.

I can only guess that Erdogan, like me, must be feeling incredibly nervous (that is, if he feels at all). Although I’ve been told that “things are different now” between Greeks and Turks, I’m not sure how different they really are. I say this as a second-generation immigrant who grew up in an area of London where the demographic was about 50 per cent Greek and Turkish, and 50 per cent anyone else.

I was raised far away from my culture, far away from the conflict and far away from the war that my grandparents left Cyprus to escape. I begrudged going to Turkish school every weekend, and got hooked on the album Olurum Sana by Tarkan, but apart from that, and the Turkish I spoke with my grandparents, I was blissfully unaware of my cultural roots as a child.

One day in primary school – I must have been about six or seven maybe – a girl in my class began shouting words at me, insults. “You Turk!” – like Turk was a dirty word. “Get out of Cyprus – it’s our country!” and so on.

And I went home to my mum crying. Because as far as I was aware there was no conflict in Cyprus and we didn’t have “sides”.

My mum sat me down, and I remember the heaviness in her face when she said, “I didn’t want to have to tell you about the war.”

That was when I learnt about the history of Cyprus. And after a long explanation about my grandparents, their surnames and my country’s history, interwoven as it was with our own family politics, my mother added: “I didn’t want to have to tell you because I didn’t want your generation to go on hating each other like our generation did.”

I can’t describe how much I love my mum for this. But unfortunately history creeps up on you eventually, and the first time I discovered mine was through that act of racism by the girl in my class.

Throughout primary school, this girl continued to torment me. Looking back, I don’t believe she really hated me, or really even knew what she was saying. Children of a certain age simply repeat the words of their parents.

By the time I got to secondary school, kids stopped repeating words of a previous generation. But even though no one was shouting slurs anymore, conflict and difference was still marked into us, indelible.

“Jokes” between Greeks and Turks at school were always only half-jokes, and even though everyone made friends, you could feel the tension.

After all, in this London suburb, I lived across the road from and went to school with kids whose grandparents had also fled Cyprus because of the conflict. Maybe they’d lost more than one relative in the war, like I had. Maybe their parents had even lost their parents. We had everything in common – except that some of us were Turkish and some of us were Greek.

I was speaking to a friend recently who grew up in the same area of London as me, but who is neither Greek nor Turkish. She said to me that she’s always nervous when introducing people from those cultural backgrounds.

The thing is, our names are so distinctive. I wear my name like an identifier – Yasemin Necati is so typically Turkish, just like many names that are “so Greek”. If I’m ever introduced to a Greek person, I immediately know their baggage, and they immediately know mine. Sometimes we share it, but I’m always nervous they might be one of those people who wants to batter me with it.

I hate this underlying tension over a small piece of land. I hate it because even generations after the war, we are influenced by it. Even in a foreign country we are haunted by it. And even though Erdogan’s trip shouldn’t be a big deal, it really, really is.

On 7 September, when Erdogan is due to land in Athens, I will be glued to the Turkish news at my grandparents’ home. You can’t solve generations of hostility in one visit, but I’m hoping the more trips we take, and the more conversations we have, the more we’ll move forward. I’m not saying I’m not scared, for his trip or mine – but I’m hopeful.