AFP/Nicosia
Turkish Cypriots have proclaimed a week of mourning for veteran nationalist leader Rauf Denktash, as a hostile Greek Cypriot press reported that among his last words were a defiant defence in Greek of the breakaway state he founded.The cabinet of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) decided that the mourning would be until next Friday evening, its president Dervis Eroglu told reporters in the divided island’s capital Nicosia.After a ceremony tomorrow outside the Nicosia hospital where Denktash died late on Friday after a long illness, the former leader’s body will lie in state at the presidential palace until Tuesday morning, Eroglu said.Eroglu said that Turkey, the only government in the world to recognise the TRNC, would send a large delegation headed by President Abdullah Gul.Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu are also expected to attend, he added.The Turkish premier’s office declared national mourning for Denktash until the end of Tuesday, Anatolia news agency reported. Turkish flags in the country and its diplomatic missions would be flown at half-mast.“The loss of Mr Denktash is not only a loss for Turkish Cypriots, it is a loss for the whole Turkish nation. Our nation has lost a real hero,” Gul said in a statement on his official website.“Certainly, the TRNC is the greatest heritage of his life, dedicated to the rightful cause of his people,” Gul said of the statelet that Denktash proclaimed in 1983 after decades of championing the nationalist cause. “The success of Turkish Cypriots in this half-century-long struggle for justice and permanent peace in Cyprus, will be the greatest gain to keep Mr Denktash’s memory alive.”“Denktash, who has a special place in the heart of the Turkish nation, will live forever in the soil of the TRNC, to which he dedicated his life,” Erdogan said.The Greek Cypriot press, for whom Denktash was a hate figure during his lifetime, gave a muted response to his death.Politis newspaper reported on its front page that shortly before he died Denktash whispered something in Greek to his daughter Ender that she did not understand so her father translated.He told her to send a message to Cyprus President Demetris Christofias and the Greek Cypriot leadership that “here (TRNC) is an independent republic”, the paper said.There was no immediate reaction to Denktash’s death from the island’s internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government.But the United Nations, whose efforts at reuniting the island’s divided communities had been stymied for decades by Denktash, said it was “saddened” by his death.“Mr Denktash was a long-serving and historic Turkish Cypriot leader with whom the United Nations had a long relationship,” said a statement from UN chief Ban Ki-moon.Dentash’s devotion to the cause of a two-state solution to the Cyprus problem, rather than the bizonal, bi-communal federation championed by the international community, earned him the opprobrium of the Greek Cypriot press.Mass daily Phileleftheros described him as the “leader of Cyprus’s occupation”, referring to Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the island’s northern third that Denktash had consistently sought over the previous 11 years of communal unrest.Ironically, Denktash opposed the same UN blueprint for a Cyprus settlement that Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box in 2004. Turkish Cypriots failed to follow his lead and widely voted in favour.Denktash had suffered a blood clot to the brain last May that left him partially paralysed.In July, he received treatment at a military hospital in Ankara, but his condition failed to improve. He was 87.