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

Methodology

The research is based on focus group discussions with 20 Greek-speaking and 20 Turkish-speaking young people aged between 13 and 15 years of age, drawn from two schools in Nicosia, which claims to be the last divided capital city in Europe. Its de facto division in the aftermath of the Turkish invasion in 1974 cuts the city into two halves with the dividing line referred to locally as the ‘Green Line’. The two schools were located in each of the two halves of the divided capital. All of the young people had Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot parents. All were fluent English speakers (although their first language was Greek or Turkish) and attended middle-class private schools where most of the curriculum was taught in English. While this introduces a class bias into the research design, I justified this on the basis of avoiding the pitfalls of working through Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking interpreters and in the process losing some of the richness of the data generated. Temple (2002), for example, argues that using interpreters/translators in research creates a number of methodological problems around using other individuals to ‘voice’ or transmit the words and meanings of research participants and suggests that core differences are likely to exist between the translation and the oral account. Moreover, conducting the focus groups in English enabled me to ‘eavesdrop’ on internal conversations where national identity was hotly debated. While, as is usual in school-based research, permission was initially acquired via school principals, teachers and parents, I made it clear to the young participants, at the beginning of the research, that their own consent was crucial. Moreover, in each school, young people were asked to volunteer to take part in the research prior to parental consent forms being sent out. In each school, a private room was allocated for the research meetings to take place and no teachers were present during the research. I used these initial meetings to tell the young people participating about the research and what I hoped to do with the data. I also made it clear to the young people that their participation was voluntary, they could withdraw at any time and that the research would be written up in such a way that their responses would remain anonymous.

In all, eight focus group discussions took place (four in the Turkish Cypriot school and four in the Greek Cypriot school) comprising five young people per focus group, and each discussion was tape-recorded with the consent of the young people involved. The focus groups were initially structured around two activities and ended with general discussions around a set of themes, most of which emerged during the structured activities. In the first structured activity, young people were asked to write down three things they liked about growing up in Cyprus and three things they did not like. The main purpose of this exercise was to put young people at their ease and to develop a rapport with them which would pave the way for discussions around attitudes to Cyprus and its political divisions. Mauthner (1997), for example, argues that young people are often put at ease by engaging in activities alongside producing verbal discourses. The exercise generated discussions around the nice weather in Cyprus, good beaches and for the majority of young people, a perception of Cyprus as a small island where family networks were robust and where there was a corresponding strong sense of community. The physical separation of Cyprus into two parts dominated discussions around aspects young people did not like about growing up in Cyprus and paved the way for the second method of data collection which involved giving them a map which visually illustrated the divided island. The young people were asked to locate on the map where their parents/grandparents had lived prior to 1974. The majority of both Greek and Turkish Cypriot young people indicated that their families had to relocate because of the events of 1974 and this paved the way for discussions on their knowledge of these events and on the stories passed from the older generation to the younger generation about the events. Various themes emerged during these two exercises and these were explored in more depth during general discussions held within each focus group, by asking specific questions in order to tease out similarities and differences in the attitudes being expressed. The data presented in this article draw on focus group discussions only, around the general theme of national identity.

A core recurring theme that emerged during focus group discussions related to how national identity was being generally defined, in particular whether young people saw themselves as Cypriot or more specifically as Turkish Cypriot or Greek Cypriot. During the time period the research was carried out (during 2009), both leaders of the two opposing Cypriot communities were engaged in peace talks and notions of national identity were deeply related to the solutions on offer. Core debates centred on whether Cyprus should be united or remain divided. While the international community supported and continues to support the first option, difficult questions remain regarding the possibility of encouraging a Cypriot identity over a Turkish or Greek influenced one. Creating an overarching Cypriot identity is particularly problematic for young people as they have no experience of living together as Cypriots. Since the island has been divided from 1974, they have grown up against a backdrop of barriers and boundaries separating Turkish Cypriots from Greek Cypriots. They are further divided linguistically, religiously and culturally. This suggests that establishing an overarching identity based on Cypriotness is far from easy. Indeed, Volkan (2008) argues that the notion of an overarching Cypriot identity is a dubious concept, while Asmussen (2008: 1) suggests that ‘Cypriotism is not the result of a long process developed in centuries of identity building, but rather a concept developed by intellectuals aimed to overcome a political and social tragedy’. It is against this background that young people’s discussions of national identity are situated. The data analysis was structured around collating young people’s responses to a number of specific prompts around how they defined their national identity, the extent to which they referred to themselves as Cypriots or more specifically as Greek or Turkish Cypriots, how they referred to their country and the extent to which they used language that emphasises unity or division. It is to these themes that the article now turns.

General notions of Cyprus as a divided or unified country

In order to begin to explore general notions of national identity, I asked young people where they would say they were from if I met them outside Cyprus. While this may seem like an obvious question, the intention was to gain an initial insight into national identity construction based on the terminology employed. Nationalism often emerges in banal ways and answering seemingly simple questions could reveal the myriad of mundane ways in which national identity is perceived (Billig, 1995). I was particularly interested in whether the young people would refer to Cyprus as one country or as two separate parts. Hence, in response to this seemingly straightforward question, I wanted to ascertain whether young people would simply respond by saying ‘Cyprus’ or whether they would refer to their country as made up of two separate entities by specifying that they were either from the north or the south of the island. The question drew different responses from Greek Cypriot compared to Turkish Cypriot young people, suggesting that each perceive their respective communities as having a different relationship to the overall island. For the most part, Greek-speaking young people stated that they were ‘from Cyprus’ in response to this question and for the most part, answers appeared spontaneous. Indeed, the answer was so seemingly obvious that no further response or explanation was required. I subsequently asked Greek-speaking young people how they would respond to a follow-up question asking them if they came from the north or the south of the island. For the majority of young people, this question was regarded as an irrelevant one. This attitude is reflected in the following quotes:

I would say there is no north side and no south side it is all one country. (Greek-speaking girl)

I would not say that I come from the north or the south or the east or the west. I would say that everyone says there is a north side and a south side but it is not like that. It is all one country so that means that coming from the north or the south is the same thing so I would just say I am from Cyprus. (Greek-speaking boy)

I would say to you that there is no north or south part of Cyprus. Cyprus is just one island and one nation. (Greek-speaking boy)

By contrast, the majority of Turkish-speaking young people, in initially responding to my general question, distinguished north Cyprus from Cyprus by stating that they specifically came from ‘North Cyprus’. Yet, none used the official terminology of the TRNC (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which was declared in 1983). In order to probe these general comments further, I subsequently asked young people if they would ever reply to this question by saying that they were simply from Cyprus. During the ensuing discussion, many Turkish Cypriot young people stated that if they said they were from Cyprus, then the likelihood would be that they would be considered as Greek. Hence responding in this way would render their nationality invisible. These responses are illustrated by the following quotes:

I would say North Cyprus because there are two different nations living in two different places and where we live is in the north. (Turkish-speaking girl).

I would say North Cyprus because there are two different countries living in Cyprus and also two different people. (Turkish-speaking boy)

I would say North Cyprus and would never change that name to Cyprus because there is a problem and that problem is that other countries don’t know our country. We don’t exist. (Turkish-speaking boy)

These differing attitudes to defining identity emerged during further questioning when I asked young people if I addressed the question differently and asked them ‘what is your nationality?’ rather than ‘where do you come from?’, would their replies differ? The majority of Turkish-speaking young people indicated that they would emphasise that they were Turkish Cypriot rather than simply Cypriot in order to challenge the perception that Cyprus is solely Greek. Only a few of the participants indicated that they would use the term Cypriot to classify their national identity. However, in each case, this was not linked to any internalisation of a Cypriot identity but was based on their exasperation with the unrecognised status of north Cyprus which means that they always have to offer detailed explanations to outsiders if they refer to themselves as Turkish Cypriots. While some young people welcomed this questioning as a way of publicising to outsiders the complex nature of Cyprus, for others it was easier to avoid the issue. This is illustrated in the following extract from a focus group discussion with a group of Turkish-speaking young people:

Similar variations emerged in the focus group discussions with Greek Cypriot young people. Responses were almost equally divided regarding whether they would define themselves as Greek Cypriot or simply Cypriot, with just over half of the overall sample specifying the term Greek Cypriot and just under half using the term Cypriot. However, further discussion with the young people who indicated that they would describe themselves as Cypriot suggested that the term Cypriot was being interpreted as Greek Cypriot rather than a more inclusive label. As one Greek-speaking girl put it, ‘It’s all the same, Greek Cypriot or Cypriot. It’s all the same.’ This identification of an overarching Cypriot identity with a Greek Cypriot identity was a common theme throughout the four focus group discussions with Greek-speaking young people. In this vein, Turkish Cypriot identity was rendered problematic as the following extract from one of the focus group discussions indicates:

The specific right to a nationality is a fundamental right enshrined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and other international human rights frameworks. But what happens when children are born and grow up in a state whose very existence violates international law? Moreover, as the above extract illustrates, some Greek Cypriot young people argue that Turkish Cypriots are a minority group and therefore do not merit recognition. Article 30 of the UNCRC argues that children have rights to a non-national sub-group identity within the nation-state. In the conversations with the participants, the complexity of this statement was clear in terms of whether it is appropriate to consider Turkish Cypriots within nationalist frameworks rather than as sub-groups of the nation-state which itself is hotly contested. These competing discourses often mean that in practice Cypriotness is expressed largely in terms of a Greek Cypriot identity.

These initial discussions, for the most part, produced largely consensual views, although these views became messier as the discussions developed, as is outlined later in this article. Nonetheless, these discussions suggest that young people hold different perceptions of national identity and suggest an overall weak commitment to a notion of an overarching Cypriot identification that would incorporate both communities. For the most part, Turkish-speaking young people described Cyprus as two countries sharing a border or as two nations occupying one country. Greek-speaking young people, by contrast, produced discourses describing Cyprus as one country but they also described Cyprus as one nation and one that, for the most part, excludes Turkish Cypriots. In this vein, Cypriotness was for the most part expressed as an exclusive rather than an inclusive identity. However, further elaborations on the relationship between Turkey and Greece and the island of Cyprus revealed more contradictory relationships between Greek and Turkish Cypriot identities and those of Greece and Turkey.

Links with Greece and Turkey: History, language and religion

The construction of an overarching Cypriot identity is made more problematic because of the historical links between Greece and Turkey and Cyprus. It is beyond the remit of this article to give a detailed account of these messy and often contradictory links (for a detailed discussion, see Loizides, 2007; Mavratsas, 1997; Papadakis, 2005). At the risk of oversimplifying the picture, nationalist discourses often reflect right/left-wing ideologies within the two main communities with the right more likely to support ‘motherland nationalism’ and the left more likely to support ‘Cypriotism’ (Loizides, 2007). Yet to present a unified left-wing or right-wing agenda in each community would gloss over divergent interests within each group and indeed how each group strategically changed its positioning at various times in the recent history of the country to win or maintain political support. Superimposed on this left/ring-wing divide are class issues and the status of the church in Greek Cypriot Cyprus, which often played a political role in national politics. The history of Cyprus can be seen as a political football bouncing back and forth between ‘motherland nationalism’ and ‘Cypriotism’ but with the latter being interpreted as Greek Cypriotism and Turkish Cypriotism rather than as an overarching all-inclusive identity (Loizides, 2007). Moreover, as Stavrinides (2008: 1) points out, the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot community ‘have different conceptions of what exactly the problem consists of, how it arose and what would be a proper and just way of settling it’. Most Greek Cypriots believe that all Turkish troops should leave Cyprus as soon as possible, all Turkish settlers who settled in the north after 1974 should also leave and all Greek Cypriots who were forced to leave their homes should be allowed to return and take possession of their former homes and land. Turkish Cypriots by contrast support the establishment of their new state, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and feel that this state needs to assert and maintain its identity as a distinct entity alongside the Republic of Cyprus. They also feel that the ongoing presence of the Turkish army guarantees their security given their minority status in relation to the whole island and enhances their bargaining power in current and future negotiations. While not all Turkish Cypriots or Greek Cypriots support these broad viewpoints, it remains difficult to reconcile the competing interests of both major communities. Hence, children’s understandings of national identity in Cyprus need to be situated within these larger internal and external political discourses.

The creation of an overarching Cypriot identity is further complicated as Cyprus has no all-inclusive national symbols, such as its own anthem. There is also no national flag, recognised and supported by both communities. When Cyprus became an independent state in 1960, it adopted a Cypriot flag. However, the flag was abandoned by Turkish Cypriots, particularly in the aftermath of 1974 and the establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983. Now, the Turkish Cypriots have their own flag, which usually flies alongside the Turkish flag. While Greek Cypriots retained the flag of the newly created republic in 1960, it generally flies alongside the flag of mainland Greece and is recognised only by the Greek Cypriot community. Both Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking Cypriots celebrate the main holidays of Greece and Turkey. Both communities view the neighbouring countries of Greece and Turkey as their ‘motherlands’ and a host of cultural practices are followed to show loyalty to the ‘motherland’. There is also no official Cypriot language. Instead, both communities speak the language of the ‘motherland’ but using dialects that are often downgraded by their respective mother countries. For some young people, this produced confusion and anxiety as they struggled to balance feelings between identifying with Cyprus as a separate state with notions of attachment to the mother countries.

At times, both Greek- and Turkish-speaking young people engaged in discourses identifying themselves with either the Greek or the Turkish nation and culture. However, the strength and ‘purity’ of these links were often hotly contested. One way this was expressed was in terms of how the Cypriot dialect was considered by both motherlands. In relation to Greek, Papapavlou (1998, 2001) makes a distinction between ‘standard modern Greek’, which is taught in schools and is mainly used in the media such as television and radio presenting, and ‘Greek Cypriot dialect’, which is used more informally especially in conversations with family and friends. Several young people not only mentioned these language differences but expressed concern at how their dialect was regarded as inferior by mainland Greeks. As one Greek-speaking Cypriot boy put it:

Greece and Cyprus are different because they have got a different language. Like England and Scotland speak English differently and the Cypriots as well have a different accent and sometimes when we visit Greece they tell us that we don’t speak the language properly.

However, while their usage of the Greek language at times undermined the purity of their Greek roots, several young people produced essentialist discourses tracing their origins to ancient Greece and identifying with Greece’s past glories as the birthplace of ‘democracy’ and ‘western civilisation’. Part of this, however, involved constructing discourses based on ‘us’ and ‘them’ and presenting Greek history in oppositional terms to Turkish history particularly in relation to the decline of the Byzantine Empire, blame for which was placed firmly on Turkey’s shoulders. This link with classic Greece also reflected the Christian roots of Greek-speaking Cypriots and was presented as a further layer of difference between them and Muslim Turkish Cypriots. At the same time, these positions were not uniformly adhered to. In some focus group discussions, clear tensions emerged between Greek-speaking young people regarding the prioritising of a mainland Greek identity over a more localised Cypriot identity.

In a similar vein, Turkish-speaking Cypriots are taught ‘standard Turkish’ in school while the more informal ‘Turkish Cypriot dialect’ is used to converse with family and friends (Kizilyurek, 2005), as the following extract illustrates:

In this way, young people are encouraged to consider the local Turkish Cypriot dialect as not as refined as the mainland Turkish language. During focus groups, some young people spoke with pride tracing their roots to the Ottoman Empire and discussed how Attaturk was the ‘father of Turkey and step-father of Cyprus’. However, at times this pride was undermined by holiday visits to Turkey. Cyprus is located only 30 miles from mainland Turkey, hence visits to Turkey were a common occurrence for young people and the majority had visited Turkey at least once on holiday. However, some Turkish-speaking young people indicated that when they visited Turkey, some of the Turkish people they encountered appeared ignorant of the existence of Turkish Cypriots in the northern part of Cyprus, as the following extract illustrates:

Some Turkish Cypriot young people spoke of feeling let down by this state of affairs. They found it difficult to gain recognition for a Turkish Cypriot identity in Cyprus; they were also aware of the difficulties Turkish Cypriots faced in attempting to gain international recognition, and their ‘motherland’, the country that above all else should support them and promote their interests, at times enhanced their invisibility. Moreover, a further contradiction emerged when the conversation turned to mainland Turks who had settled in northern Cyprus after 1974. Here young people drew on more class based-discourses, seeing the settlers as uneducated and more traditional and ‘backward’ in their views, and as one girl put it ‘they don’t have any Cypriot blood in their bodies’. While, these tensions can be utilised as a way of enhancing a more localised Cypriot identity, they also create further difficulties.

Conclusion

While responses to two seemingly straightforward questions: ‘where would you tell outsiders you are from?’ and ‘how would you define your national identity?’, at times produced uniform responses from Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot young people, reflecting on links between Cyprus and the respective mother countries produced messier attachments to national identity. As Tilley (2006: 15) points out:

. . . national identity categories are fine so long as they remain unexplored. Once these categories are further probed, the resulting diversity of views that are likely to emerge calls into question any unitary understanding of nationality.

According to Volkan (2008), constructing an all-island, inclusive Cypriot identity has been both an official and unofficial policy of the European Union and the USA as a way of reducing conflicting identifications based on ethnic differences between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. However, the contribution of the participants indicates a low internalisation of Cypriotness among young people from both sides of the island. While on the surface, Greek Cypriot young people appear more eager to adopt a Cypriot identity, in practice this was viewed as a Greek identity with some young people unable to see any difference between being Cypriot and being Greek. This exclusive usage of the term calls into question the ability of Cypriotness to accommodation Turkish Cypriots. Volkan (2008), for example, suggests that attempts to create a common national identity for the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities is little more than ‘chasing an illusion’ and a more realistic strategy would be to find ways whereby both communities could hold on to their respective national identities while respecting each other’s internal diversity. Both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot young people produced discourses which suggested that they are caught between feelings of belonging to their mother countries and a more localised Cypriot identity.

Of course the creation of collective identities is often fraught with difficulties. Often seemingly collective identities are fraught with internal divisions. Some of these divisions are already apparent in relation to an uneasy tension between Turks who settled in Cyprus after the 1974 invasion and Turkish Cypriots. Similarly, Greek-speaking Cypriots are caught between allegiance to a glorified Greek past and a more localised Cypriot identity. These strains within, as well as between, the two communities create a further layer of complexity to bringing both communities together but they do suggest that nationalist discourses do not enjoy universal acceptance and within these tensions, the possibility exists for the construction of more inclusive identities.

Schools could play a prominent role in this process. Schools are prime sites for the construction of national identities as national identity is often closely related to how history is taught within schools. As Papadakis (2008: 128) points out:

. . . in many societies, especially those divided through ethnonational conflicts, history is often used to propagate a narrative focusing on the suffering of the nation and to legitimate its political goals. The suffering of others is silenced, their historical existence is questioned, and sociocultural interactions are ignored.

Papadakis outlines how Turkish Cypriot school textbooks were reformed in the aftermath of the leftist Republican Turkish Party (CTP) coming to power in 2003. ¹ Rather than presenting nationalism as a homogeneous, essentialist process, more attention is paid to how nationalism is socially constructed under specific historical circumstances. This involves presenting nationalism as a negative, divisive and conflict-driven ideology prone to creating internal divisions among both Turkish and Greek Cypriots, rather than serving as a unifying force (Papadakis, 2008).

While this is an important development, education alone cannot compensate for societal strategies, experiences and norms. Change needs to take place at various levels. In particular, opportunities need to be created for Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot young people to meet so that ‘imagined others’ can be challenged. While there are some bi-communal activities on the island, for the most part these are piecemeal and not directly connected to the daily lives of young people. For example, none of the young people who took part in this research had any formal or structured contact with the other ethnic group. Indeed, the majority had never met with the other cultural group other than sightings during periodic ‘border’ crossings since the ‘borders’ opened in 2003 and even then, these crossings were always undertaken with adults as young people under 16 years of age are not allowed to cross the border without being accompanied by adults. The ongoing presence of the de facto ‘border’ in itself encourages discourses which naturalise and reify differences between Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking Cypriots. Sameness and otherness become two sides of the same coin and while national identity constructions are full of inconsistencies and contradictions, children have less independent opportunities to create occasions whereby difference can be challenged or subjected to empirical investigations.

And yet the teenage years are often a crucial milestone for the creation of peer identities through music, dress codes and so on. Indeed, Hengst (1997) in his comparative study of Turkish, German and British children’s notions of nationalism argues that while some children constructed national identity in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’ characteristics, others saw themselves as more similar to children across nationalities than to adults who shared the same nationality. Hengst (1997) points to the role of global consumerism as having the potential to create an international teen identity. Similarly, Scourfield et al. (2006: 4) argue that ‘exposure to global advertising campaigns and promotional media and products might well inculcate a kind of “McDisney” attitude that would supplant more locally based kinds of identification’. There was some evidence from discussions with Turkish Cypriot young people that they were already using the recently opened ‘borders’ to access the more developed south side of the island with its chain of McDonald’s restaurants and other forms of consumerism which traditionally appeal to younger people. Such venues could promote opportunities for children to question traditional, taken-for-granted discourses based on constructions of national identity as fixed and permanent although the extent to which neoliberal discourses around consumption is necessarily a good thing needs further researching. However, some participants were questioning the fluid and permeable disposition of national identity construction and its context-dependent nature, but without significant opportunities to meet with ‘imagined others’, the potential of these contradictions remains muted and notions of Cypriotness as an inclusive identity positioning remains a distant goal.