Mission impossible in Cyprus? Legitimate return to the partnership state revisited

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-292
Author(s):  
Eiki Berg ◽  
Raul Toomla

Cyprus has been divided for far longer than it has been united. There have been many attempts to reconcile conflicting parties but without remarkable success. The two communities — Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots — see the solution to the “Cyprus problem” in opposite terms. Although recent public opinion surveys have concluded that the most preferred option for the Turkish Cypriots would be “independence of the TRNC” and “reunification of the country”, for the Greek Cypriots, there is much less information about the legitimacy of these competing regimes and their respective claims. This paper seeks to fill this gap by identifying different legitimacy sources and their effect on the course of conflict settlement. Somewhat paradoxically it appears that those most strongly identifying themselves with the Republic of Cyprus, and approving the regime legitimacy of the Greek Cypriot government, are actually for status quo and not for the reunification of the country which makes the return to the partnership state mission impossible.

STADION ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-77
Author(s):  
Nikos Lekakis ◽  
Dimitris Gargalianos

This paper employs the history and politics of football looking at discussions about Cyprus’ national identity, the relationship between the Greek-Cypriot state and its self-declared Turkish-Cypriot counterpart, and the possibility of reunification. It explores these issues from both sides of the divide, something rarely undertaken in Cyprus, and within a wider European perspective, by comparing it briefly with the modern football histories of Ireland, Spain and Bosnia & Herzegovina. Football and its inherent developments reflect not only the political rivalries in the world of Greek-Cypriot football, but also the encounters between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots. The history of Cypriot football has no similar precedent in the selected European space. In Ireland, the peace process has not ended historic civil society divisions, while football agents with opposing political ideologies across the Greek and Turkish divide in Cyprus have been able to overcome their differences, political elites on one side of the border have prevented unification. In Spain’s Catalonia, while the football-fed movement for independence, yet to materialize, remains subject to approval by Spain’s institutions, the independence of the de facto Turkish-Cypriot state would require the approval of the governments of the Republic of Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and Britain. Finally, while FIFA and UEFA have successfully dictated the terms for the final admission of Bosnia & Herzegovina’s football Federation into their membership, they have failed to repeat this achievement in the Cypriot case.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gjore Nakov ◽  
Nastia Ivanova ◽  
Stanka Damyanova ◽  
Viktorija Stamatovska ◽  
Ljupka Necinova

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-266
Author(s):  
Avra Pieridou-Skoutella

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Greek Cypriot elementary school children in urban and rural areas of the Republic of Cyprus, the author describes and analyses the ways in which national musical identity is constructed in and out of school in connection with Cypriot traditional music. Findings reveal the development of fluid and often insecure, ambiguous and contradictory national musical identities as a result of the ideological messages children receive from their musical enculturation contexts. In addition public music education not only fails to assist pupils to become familiar with the tradition's inherent meanings and processes of creation and performance, but enhances children's contradictory ideological understanding and construction of an ambiguous national musical identity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 586-588
Author(s):  
Alev Adil

This creative piece explores traces and erasures of a Cypriot Ottoman heritage by transposing autoethnographic and psychogeographical practice to Europe’s southernmost capital, Nicosia. It walks the border zone in Nicosia, once the site of the river Pedios, later a major Ottoman commercial street, a boundary from 1958 to 1974, and since then, a Dead Zone and the internationally contested border between the Republic of Cyprus and the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Photography and writing are presented in conjunction with pages in Ottoman Turkish by my great-grandfather, the poet Imam Mustafa Nuri Effendi, who made a notebook from the English periodical The War Pictorial while incarcerated as an enemy alien in Kyrenia Castle by the British during World War I. I explore how these pages speak of my transcultural Ottoman, Turkish-Greek-Cypriot and English heritages and of changes in Cypriot culture in the century between his war and ours.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 147470491772530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Wang ◽  
Menelaos Apostolou

Across different times and cultures, parents exercise considerable influence over their children’s mate choices. When they do so, parents are looking for specific traits in a prospective daughter- and son-in-law. Using a sample of 674 parents, the current research investigated in-law preferences in China. Participants rated 88 different traits, which were clustered in 10 different preference domains. In-law preferences were found to be contingent on the sex of the in-law and the sex of the parent. The data from the current study were compared with data from a different study which took place in the Republic of Cyprus. It was found that preferences varied in the two samples, but specific cultural differences were identified. It was also found that for both samples, the 10 different domains clustered in two supra-domains. The first supra-domain, where personality traits clustered, was preferred more by both Chinese and Greek-Cypriot parents than the second domain, where the rest of the traits clustered.


2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitra Karoulla-Vrikki

Language planning in the domain of the courts in Cyprus is of interest because of the concealed salience placed upon the link between language and either state or ethnic identity. The article first examines the dominant role of English in court from 1960 until 1988 as reflecting Cyprocentric state identity associations. It then investigates the establishment of the use of Greek after the enactment of Law N.67/1988 brought the reversal of the linguistic situation. The law, which aimed at putting into action the provisions on language of the 1960 Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus and at safeguarding the use and protection of Greek, derived from Hellenocentric tendencies and its ultimate purpose was to foster Greek ethnic identity rather than to enhance the identity of the state of Cyprus. The above observations are illustrated in the analysis of the legislation on language in the courts, the linguistic situation in the judicial proceedings, and the court verdicts/judgments pertaining to language use. Finally, the article draws parallels between Fishman’s ‘nationism’ and ‘nationalism’ and the Greek-Cypriots’ language selections and identity orientations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 560
Author(s):  
Ayhan Dolunay ◽  
Gökçe Keçeci ◽  
Fevzi Kasap

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>The Ottoman citizens together with the local community had generally lived a peaceful life in Cyprus, conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1571, until the island was handed over to the England in 1878. Following such period and subsequent process, the Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots continued to live together in the island until the foundation of Republic of Cyprus in 1960; yet, with the impact of British policies, the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities had started to disintegrate. In 1950s, the island began to lose its nature and the concept of living together peacefully was disappeared due to the armed attacks of Greek Cypriots launched within the scope of underground military organisation and the responses of Turkish Cypriots through their underground military organisations together with the limited resources. The events, which stopped with the foundation of 1960 Republic of Cyprus, had become more severe following the obligatory leave of Turkish Cypriots from the partnership republic in 1963, and continued until the military intervention of Turkey in 1974 and both communities had losses, more in the Turkish Cypriot side. Until 1950s to 1974, the Turkish Cypriots, who did not feel secure in the southern part of island, migrated to the northern part of island. The relevant immigrants had shared their common lives with the Greek Cypriots before 1950s and then the following conflicts through oral narratives to their children born in the northern part of Cyprus; therefore, the perceptions of children of migrated families were only shaped with the narrations and some written references since a direct communication was not possible particularly until the opening of border crossing points. The original value of this study is the non-availability of any oral history research on the Turkish-Greek Cypriot relations before 1974 conducted with the generation after 1974; the aim of this research is to identify the perceptions of Turkish Cypriots born in the northern part of Cyprus mainly after 1974 that was shaped within the framework of oral narrations within the families through the individual interviews with the reference people sharing their experiences within the history via the press screening for the identification of social-political structure during the historical process, and the formation of such perceptions through the interviews.</p><p><strong>Öz</strong></p><p>1571’de Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nca fethedilen Kıbrıs’ta, Osmanlı vatandaşları ile, yerli halk, 1878’de ada İngiltere’ye kiralanana kadar, bir arada, genel olarak huzurlu bir yaşam sürmüşlerdir. 1878’de, adanın İngiltere’ye kiralanması ve izleyen süreçte adada, 1960 Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti kurulana değin, Kıbrıslı Türkler ve Kıbrıslı Rumlar, bir arada yaşamaya devam etmiş ancak, İngiliz yönetiminin politikalarının da etkisi ile, Türk ve Rum toplumları süreç içerisinde ayrışmaya başlamıştır. 1950’li yıllarda, önce Kıbrıslı Rumlarca yer altı askeri yapılanma kapsamında başlatılan silahlı saldırılar ve Kıbrıslı Türklerin kendilerini müdafaa kapsamındaki yer altı askeri yapılanmaları aracılığıyla ve kısıtlı imkanlarla verdiği karşılıklarla birlikte, adada kayıplar yaşanmış, bir arada huzurlu yaşam olgusu yitirilmiştir.  1960 Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti’nin kurulması ile duran olaylar, 1963’de Kıbrıslı Türklerin ortaklık cumhuriyetinden ayrılmak zorunda kalmasının akabinde, yeniden şiddetlenmiş ve Türkiye’nin adaya 1974’de gerçekleştirdiği askeri müdahaleye kadar sürmüş; Kıbrıslı Türk toplumundan daha fazla olmak üzere, iki toplum da kayıplar vermiştir. 1950’lerden, 1974’e kadar, çatışmalar nedeniyle, adanın güneyinde kendilerini güvende hissetmeyen Kıbrıslı Türkler, adanın kuzeyine göç etmiştir. İlgili göçmenler, Rum toplumu ile 1950’ler öncesi ortak yaşamlarını ve sonrasındaki çatışmaları sözlü anlatımlarla, adanın kuzeyinde doğan çocuklarına aktarmış; özellikle 2003 yılında sınır kapıların açılmasına kadar, doğrudan iletişimin mümkün olamaması nedeniyle, göç eden neslin çocuklarının algısı, sadece anlatımlar ve bazı yazılı kaynaklar ile şekillenmiştir. 1974 sonrası doğan nesil ile daha önce, 1974 öncesi Türk-Rum ilişkileri hakkında sözlü tarih araştırması yapılmamış olması, çalışmanın özgün değerini ortaya koyarken; çalışmada, tarihsel süreçteki deneyimlerini aktaracak kaynak kişilerle gerçekleştirilen bireysel görüşmeler ve yine tarihsel süreçteki sosyal-siyasi yapıyı tespit adına basın taraması ile birlikte, temel olarak, 1974 sonrası kuzeyde doğan Kıbrıslı Türklerin, aile içi sözlü anlatımlar çerçevesinde şekillenen ilgili algılarının, gerçekleştirilecek mülakatlar ile şekillendiğinin tespiti hedeflenmektedir.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euripides Antoniades

This text is based on research aiming to record the period of negotiations at Mont Pèlerin, Switzerland between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot community in November 2016. Articles from three newspapers (Alithia, Politis and Haravgi) were studied, with an emphasis on political coverage regarding the negotiations. The choice of newspapers was based on the fact that they have been around for many decades, they have a different ideological orientation and they have contributed to the modern history of Cyprus. Moreover, they all have a full electronic archive of their issues which makes it easy to access and study the articles.The overarching aim is to understand the efforts to solve the Cyprus problem through the recent negotiations in Switzerland and to examine the positions of the Cypriot press regarding this thorny and crucial issue over which the Republic of Cyprus has been agonising for more than forty years.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Riskiansyah Ramadhan

This paper analyzes how Muslims, as a religious community in the Republic of Cyprus, became an object of discrimination. Furthermore, the paper tries to understand and describe how Muslims’ daily lives are as a minority in the country through a case study approach. The study found that Islamophobic incidents often occur in the form of hate speech and discrimination in the workplace, schools, and even government institutions. These Islamophobic behaviors are an attempt to securitize Islam on the island. Moreover, prominent figures like political and religious leaders actively contribute to the phenomena of this securitization. Although religious freedom is protected by law, the Christian Greek Cypriot is not ready to accept multiculturalism. Thus, both government and society, and the community must support each other in bringing about peace in the country


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