Ethno-communal struggles for recognition and legitimation in Cyprus

Abstract

This research addresses the inter-communal dimension of the Cyprus problem. As a severely divided society Cyprus has received little attention, the overwhelming focus having been concentrated on international dimensions. The inter-communal dimension is approached in this research by placing the Greek Cypriot majority as its primary object.

The process through which political categories are secured at the level of the undisputed or commonsensical is investigated through an analysis of historical appropriations which have lent themselves to the dominant political discourse of the Greek Cypriot community. Simultaneously, the political categories through which this community was substantiated over time suggests that the orthodox-heterodox relationship between the discourses of the two communities have sustained a distinct doxic realm over time even if the form through which this relationship has been reproduced would suggest the importance, as Rogers Brubaker has recently insisted, of treating the nation as an event.

The transition from tradition to modernity was marked in Cyprus by the succession of Ottoman rule which gave way to British rule in 1878. The nationalisation process of the two communities was predicted on this transformation. By the time the Greek Cypriot majority engaged in armed insurrection with the aim of uniting the island with Greece - enosis, the Turkish Cypriot minority articulated a nationalism against both enosis and majority rule. Conflict over the right to self-determination prior to independence manifested itself as a majority/minority conflict over the issue of rights in the period succeeding independence and persisting through to the present.

This research explores these manifold issues through an examination of how these processes were produced and reproduced both in the pre and post-independence period. In doing so, it is suggested, the saliency of how inter-communal conflict proceeded remains vital in any understanding of why the Cyprus problem continues to persist in the present.

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