We are a community.
We are not a mistake in the script.

Subject:Tell ITV plc to acknowledge Turkish Cypriots — escalation of complaint reference 320170

Dear ITV plc,

I am writing to ITV plc about the public statement issued by ITV Studios in response to complaints about references to Cyprus in Coronation Street, in which ITV described the language used as “imprecise” and apologised for the upset caused.

That apology did not read as a neutral correction. It read as an erasure — a public signal, broadcast to a national audience, that the very mention of a Turkish side of Cyprus is something to be regretted, walked back, and tidied out of the script. Turkish Cypriots are a human population with a homeland, a language, and a living community of hundreds of thousands in the United Kingdom. We are not an inconvenience to be swept away. We are not vermin to be denied a place on the map.

Cyprus is not a single-narrative island, and Turkish Cypriots are not a footnote. Our community has lived on that land for centuries. We survived intercommunal violence, displacement, and the destruction of villages within living memory. Many of us in Britain are here precisely because our families were forced from their homes. For one of the UK’s largest broadcasters to issue a public apology that treats the acknowledgement of our side of the island as a mistake is not a small editorial matter — it is a message, broadcast to millions, that our existence is the offensive thing.

This is what dehumanisation looks like when it is done politely. It does not always arrive as a slur. Sometimes it arrives as an apology. Sometimes it arrives as a silence where a community’s name should be. When a broadcaster tells the country, in effect, that referring to a “Turkish side” of Cyprus was regrettable and imprecise, without ever naming the Turkish Cypriot people who live there and who live in Britain, it tells its audience that we are the error. That framing has a name, and its logic is the logic of ethnic cleansing carried out in language rather than on the ground: first the people are denied, then the place is denied, then the history is denied, and eventually the audience is taught that there was never anyone there to begin with.

This is also, at heart, a request about awareness. Most people in the United Kingdom have never been taught that Turkish Cypriots exist as a distinct community — with a language, a history, and a homeland — and that silence is precisely what makes an apology like ITV’s possible in the first place. I am not writing to be angry. I am writing so that we can be known. The four questions below are the practical steps; the deeper ask is simply that Britain, and its national broadcaster, learn to see us.

I am not accusing ITV of intending this. I am writing to ITV plc to say that its Studios label has participated in it, whether it meant to or not. The absence of any acknowledgement of Turkish Cypriots in ITV’s public statement is not a neutral omission. To a British Turkish Cypriot, or to anyone who stands with the community, it lands as a message that we are invisible, disposable, and not entitled to be named on our own island or on the channel we grew up watching.

Most people in the UK have limited knowledge of Cyprus. That is precisely why a broadcaster of ITV’s reach carries a duty of care here. By issuing an apology that appears to validate the claim that referring to a “Turkish side” of Cyprus is inherently improper, ITV risks legitimising narratives that deny our identity, dismiss our history, and treat our community as an embarrassment to be corrected off the screen. That is not balance. That is complicity in erasure.

A formal complaint has been raised with ITV under reference 320170. A parallel complaint has been submitted to Ofcom under Sections Two (Harm and Offence) and Five (Due Impartiality) of the Broadcasting Code, reference 02275657. ITV Studios has replied at Creative Director level, but has not answered any of the substantive requests put to it. Those requests were, and remain:

1. Whether any Turkish Cypriot voices — internal staff, external community bodies, or subject specialists — were consulted before ITV Studios’ public statement was issued.
2. How ITV intends to ensure that Turkish Cypriot viewers — licence-paying, tax-paying, British citizens — are seen, named and represented, rather than apologised out of existence.
3. Whether ITV will commit to engaging directly with Turkish Cypriot community organisations, including the Council of Turkish Cypriot Associations UK, when responding to any future Cyprus-related complaint, so that one community’s grievance is not resolved by erasing another community’s identity.
4. Whether ITV will issue a follow-up public statement that explicitly acknowledges the existence, history and lived experience of Turkish Cypriots, and recognises that Cyprus is a subject of more than one legitimate perspective.

I am writing to ask ITV plc to answer those four questions in substance, and to confirm the name and role of the person now responsible for the response at plc level.

ITV serves a diverse country. That responsibility does not end at the communities whose complaints are loudest or most familiar to the newsroom. It extends to the ones the newsroom has to actively remember. Right now, Turkish Cypriots are being forgotten by a national broadcaster, and being forgotten by a national broadcaster is not a neutral experience — it is a form of harm.

We are a people. We are not a mistake in the script. I am asking ITV plc to reflect on that, and to correct it publicly.

Yours sincerely,
[your name]