Identity In Cyprus Research Articles

Loss of Black Identity in Cyprus

“Wake up Ali, wake up!” repeats the folk song. “Arap Ali” (Black Ali) was a folk hero and my paternal grandfather, who was murdered by British colonial soldiers. The song motivated the production of the first-ever Turkish Cypriot opera in 2019. The art form presented actual Black people as white. Connecting personal memories to the symbols of staged whitewashing, this study seeks to understand hidden colorist cultural practices in Cyprus. I discuss the ways in which global racism and colonialism are strongly entangled with local racist and colorist practices. This autoethnography is a call to wake up and take a stand against silencing and oppression.

The Transformation of Greek Orthodox Ecclesiastical Institutions in Cyprus, 1878-1931

In this discussion, I outline the transformation of Greek Orthodox identity in Cyprus during the first 50 years of British rule over the island. The year 1931 marks the first Greek Cypriot anti-colonial revolt (Oktomvriana), and the post-1931 period constitutes the period in which the Greek Cypriot goal of union (enosis) with Greece is forcefully put forth in the political agenda. In the article's opening section, I outline the main institutional and political changes of the post-1878 period. In this era, ecclesiastical institutions underwent a major internal transformation as the religious hierarchy reasserted its authority in the face of new and threatening legislation enacted by the British. In pursuing this goal the church hierarchs became increasingly involved in the politics of Greek Cypriot nationalism. This involvement was expressed in a twofold manner: on the one hand, the hierarchs succeeded in legitimizing themselves as elected representatives of the Greek Cypriot community in the colonial administrative and legislative structures; while on the other hand, the church's extensive involvement in education allowed it to identify its own authority with the defense and propagation of pro-Greek national sentiment.

Writing Gifted Baby Cyprus: Anticolonial Ethnic Motherland Nationalist Literatures

This essay assigns the literary as the preferred means to write Cyprus because it exposes the power of place and space in postcolonial partitioned cases; it shows that spatial production determines the formation and agency of identity in Cyprus, which serves to sharpen and to blur the dominant binary legacy of historical–political deadlock discourse, so as to generate conflict and solidarity between the deeply divided people in postcolonial partitioned Cyprus. The focus is on the Greek-cypriot and Turkish-cypriot nationalist identification that dominated throughout the last decades of British colonial and into postcolonial Cyprus. This is an examination of ethnic motherland nationalist literatures, with emphasis on capturing the ways writers actively write, read and construct the dominant production of Cyprus. Even though nationalists’ writings are based on deeply competing narratives, they have used the same processes and practices to produce a Cyprus for their ethnic selves. This spatial competition and solidarity will be examined through various empirical–theoretical spatial approaches, with emphasis on illuminating the postcolonial and partitioned inventions of gendered nationalism, through making use of Yi-Fu Tuan's healthy balance between experiencing place and space and Henri Lefebvre's spatiology. The essay demonstrates the shared ways in which nationalist writers attempt to produce an ethnically homogeneous mental place through two gendered processes – a maternal principle and ancestral journeys operating with fetish spectacles, objects and substances – that manipulate social, historical and spatial practices to make the abstract nation appear concrete. This place is thus depicted as a gift from the mothers to the children of Cyprus and as Baby Cyprus.

Beyond water security: asecuritisation and identity in Cyprus

Forty years after the division of Cyprus, the unstable political agenda still prevents a meaningful bi-communal discourse on the joint management of natural resources, especially water, a vital resource for all islanders. Until now, both communities have deployed unilateral, tactical methods to securitise the water discourse by linking it to high politics; yet, the situation remains deadlocked. Processes by which the water discourse in Cyprus acquired multiple meanings of securitisation over time and across different groups remains understudied, as does the concept of asecurity. We suggest moving water management in Cyprus into an asecuritisation realm, where decision-making processes are founded on a shared social identity with water acting as a unifying agent. Based on empirical findings from multiple methods employed dealing with social dilemmas involving scarce natural resources, we conclude that an alternative way of organizing political space with no a priori reference to the securitisation logic would create new opportunities for transforming the discourse beyond the political lock-in and incorporating bi-communal dynamics into natural resource management, laying the groundwork for future cooperation on other emblematic issues.

An Ethnographic Study of Migration from Turkey to Northern Cyprus: Interaction of Confl icting Identities During the Day and Shared Intimacy at Night

Seeking an ethnographically informed understanding of the immigrant/settler experience from Turkey to Northern Cyprus characterised by frozen confl ict, this study can provide an insight into people’s experiences, values and perceptions by focusing on social expressions of identity-based division and the relations between locals and immigrants/ settlers. Participant and non-participant observation and in-depth, informal interviews are the main research tools. Th e article will fi rstly focus on the transformation of identity in Cyprus under socio-historical considerations. Secondly, there will follow an analysis of how identity is performed at hand of two diff erent protests that took place in August 2016. Thirdly, the article will focus on a new meyhane (Turkish tavern) concept particular to Northern Cyprus, where “alternative modernities” (Bozdogan and Kasaba 1997) can be expressed along with repressed practises, portraying the similarities between populations “at night”. Th ese practises may be perceived as a form of resistance by the marginal majority in de Certeau’s terms: eating, drinking habits and music associated with meyhane will be investigated by touching briefl y upon Herzfeldian concepts of cultural intimacy and social poetics.

Which alphabet on car number-plates in Cyprus?

Since the 1990s, language-planning interventions have changed the alphabet on car number-plates in Cyprus three times, while a fourth change is expected to take place in line with the parliamentary decision of 2010. An investigation of the alternating adoption of the 24-letter English (Latin) and the 12-letter Helleno-Latin alphabetical system demonstrates that a minor matter, such as the alphabet on the plates, can be a multilevel language planning issue. It was initiated at the micro-level by individuals and small groups who exercised pressure on the government to change this language practice, but through interventions by government officials and politicians it snowballed to the macro-level. Examination of the issue reveals the pragmatic and symbolic roles attributed to the alphabetical systems as well as the beliefs, perceptions and ideologies about language and identity in Cyprus held among Greek-Cypriots who were involved in the controversy.

Vaisselle de terre et pouvoirs politiques à Chypre aux époques comnène, franque et vénitienne

The comparative study of the written sources, of the literary, architectural, artistic and archaeological data has highlighted a Frankish identity in Cyprus between the late twelfth and early sixteenth century. The question that arises here is whether the Frankish identity appeared also in the pottery used in the island at the time of the kingdom of Lusignan. To measure the impact that the Latin presence has had on the production and the supply of pottery in Frankish Cyprus, it is necessary to examine the situation before the arrival of the Latins when the island was a Byzantine province in which the potters did not manufactured glazed ceramic. Considering this situation, the creation ex-nihilo of workshops in the middle of the thirteenth century asks the question of the origin of artisans. Until now the Medieval Cypriot pottery was considered as a production under Byzantine influence. However the fine glazed wares were probably more connected with the Christian Levant than with Byzantium. We shall also consider the evolution of the pottery trade after the conquest of the island by the Venetians in the late fifteenth century. Thus, in this well-defined framework, we will try to give a definition of the “ Frankish Pottery” in Cyprus, terms that refer to different realities during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Us and them: Young people’s constructions of national identity in Cyprus

The purpose of this article is to explore young people’s constructions of national identity in Cyprus. The article is based on focus group discussions with 20 Greek-speaking and 20 Turkish-speaking young people between 13 and 15 years of age, drawn from two schools in the divided capital city of Nicosia. The article explores both the ways in which Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot young people understand their own identity and the degrees of their allegiance to an overarching identity as ‘Cypriot’, rather than Turkish/Greek Cypriot. The article reflects on the contradictions young people face in divided societies where there are competing discourses around national identity.

The Impact of Personal Educational Experiences and Communication Practices on the Construction of Deaf Identity in Cyprus

The aim of the study was to investigate for the first time the impact of educational experiences on the development of Cypriot deaf people's identity. To obtain relevant information in depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 24 Cypriot deaf individuals ages 19-54 years who had graduated from a variety of school settings. The findings indicated that the type of school, and the academic and social experiences shared within the school between the participants and their classmates and teachers, played a crucial role in these deaf individuals' identity development. The findings have implications for curriculum development for deaf pupils, and for parents' counseling about their deaf children's development of "healthy" identities.

On the Borders of Europe: Citizenship Education and Identity in Cyprus

This paper is about the concept of and how it could be used as an educational framework to alleviate existing tensions regarding education and Euro-pean/national/state identity in the context of Cyprus. To this end, the paper serves both a descriptive and a normative agenda, in that it largely describes recent theoretical and political development in civics and education in Europe and in Cyprus, in order to explore, in the last part of the paper, the potential of using and citizenship as tools for reflection and dialogue over (Greek)-Cypriot and identity. The study of European citi-zenship is complicated due to its different meanings and associations with national identities; I argue that in Cyprus this is further complicated by a political problem of community conflict and partition, which has long been challenging peoples' national identities. Cyprus, an island lying on the borders of (traditional geographical definitions of) Europe and one of the European Union's most recent member-states needs to revisit its approaches to as a condition of EU membership. The paper illustrates how ongoing discussions and debates over the political problem of Cyprus render it extremely difficult to take decisive steps towards reconceptualising existing Greek-Cypriot civics and education curricula, exactly because notions of national identity have so far been inextricably interwoven into these curricula. It is proposed that a revisiting of the meaning of and the discourses of post-national, multicultural and European citizenship, as well as human rights and democracy might be useful tools to address and identity dilemmas deriving both from EU membership and the political problem in Cyprus.

On the Borders of Europe. Citizenship Education and Identity in Cyprus

On the Borders of Europe. Citizenship Education and Identity in Cyprus

The Making of a Refugee: Children Adopting Refugee Identity in Cyprus (review)

The Making of a Refugee: Children Adopting Refugee Identity in Cyprus (review)

The Making of a Refugee: Children Adopting Refugee Identity in Cyprus

The Making of a Refugee: Children Adopting Refugee Identity in Cyprus

Book Review: The Making of a Refugee. Children Adopting Refugee Identity in Cyprus

Book Review: The Making of a Refugee. Children Adopting Refugee Identity in Cyprus

1. Archaeology and the Politics of Identity in Cyprus

1. Archaeology and the Politics of Identity in Cyprus