Islam and Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus

Abstract

The reaction of Cypriot Islam to Turkish Nationalism and to the westernisation which Atatiirk enforced in Turkey is of peculiar interest, since Cyprus is one of the few parts of the former Ottoman Empire where a considerable Turkish minority still lives under alien rule. Having been governed by the British since 1878, the Turks of Cyprus, like those of Rhodes and Cos, who had been under Italian rule since I912, were not affected by the transfer of populations which followed the Treaty of Lausanne in I923, and which eliminated every sizable Greek community in Turkey except in Istanbul and every sizable Turkish community in Greece except in Western Thrace. At the time of Atatiirk's most drastic laws the