A recent poll recently taken in Cyprus shows the perception that many Greek Cypriots have of the Pontic Greeks that have moved to the island in the past decade. (Coming mostly from the former USSR states and Russia.)
The poll, which was set up by Focus Consultants, said that the majority of Greek Cypriots think Pontians are not real Greeks, are unreliable, shoddy workers, violent, unassimilated and unfriendly. The highest percentage of negative attitude toward the Pontic Greeks came from Paphos and Larnaca, where large Pontic Greek communities exist. About 55% of those polled said that they had a negative image of Pontians, but when asked if they were racist, many answered no. (ARE YOU KIDDING US?)
Pontians on the other hand had very favorable views of their Greek Cypriot counterparts (over 90%), and said that most of them had Greek Cypriot friends.
DF: You would think that after all that Greeks have been through in the past, that we would at least be accepting of our ethnic kin that come from other parts of the world. This is not the first time that Greeks have perceived other Greeks as 'less or not Greek.' After the Asia Minor Catastrophe in 1922, the millions of Greeks that left Turkey and fled into Greece were many times seen as "Turks", dirty and uneducated.
Whether you are a Greek from Turkey, Russia, Albania, Greece, Cyprus or wherever; we are still all Greek. This regionalistic and sometimes xenophobic attitude has only hurt us in the past, and its time for our generation to eliminate that attitude now.
Cyprus Poll
posted on Monday, November 12