Human rights and the ethno—nationalist problematic through the eyes of Greek-Cypriot teachers

Ethno-nationalism and the universalism of human rights

Generally speaking, human rights are conceptualized within a universal frame of reference that applies to all human beings, without distinction of any kind (race, color, language, religion, etc.) (Tibbitts, 2002). In this perspective, human rights are viewed as given and they are considered ‘natural’, because they are based on nature—a short cut for God, the universe, reason, or other transcendental source, as Dembour (2006) writes. The universalistic conception of human rights, exemplified in numerous declarations since 1948, can be traced to Enlightenment ideas and the development of nation-states such as the American Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens (Donnelly, 2003). Whether it is Locke’s and Rousseau’s conceptions of rights stemming from natural law or Kant’s emphasis on rationality as the basis of rights, human rights are often essentialised and considered to be universal principles (Baxi, 2007; Donnelly, 2003; Douzinas, 2000, 2007). According to Douzinas, this sort of thinking—particularly its assumptions about a universal human nature and the sovereign subject—has been very influential in transnational discourses about human rights as universal values.

However, as Mutua (2002) argues, interpretations of human rights are not neutral but very much embedded in cultural and political assumptions, explaining that ‘[t]he grand narrative of human rights contains a subtext which depicts an epochal contest pitting savages, on the one hand, against victims and saviors, on the other’ (p. 10). Given that we live in a world divided into territorial states, nation-state structures, ethnic conflicts, and the like, it is not surprising that ethno-nationalist perspectives may challenge universalist understandings of human rights primarily by prioritizing the ‘rights’ of one’s own ethno-national community over others. Ethno-nationalism is bound by ‘a discrete particularist understanding of morality, as linked intimately to communal groups’ (Vincent, 2009: 351). Ethnic groups often ‘nationalize’ their claims about human rights, that is, they represent themselves as a homogeneous bloc and conceptualize violations of human rights through a narrow national(ist) lens (Zembylas, 2011, 2012).

Consequently, an important tension emerging in discussions about human rights is whether the particularism of ethno-nationalism can be compatible with the universalism of human rights (Vincent, 2009). On one hand, it is argued that human rights are regarded as having a universal or cosmopolitan dimension; they are moral entities or instruments of international law that are clearly independent from any particularist understandings (Osler and Starkey, 2010). On the other hand, ethno-nationalism is bound by particularist understandings of morality and politics (Vincent, 2009). If ethno-nationalism denotes a particular loyalty to a nation-state ideology, and human rights transcend all human particularities and loyalties, then how are human rights as universal values ‘translated’ within a particular ethno-national community? And most importantly, what are the educational implications of these ‘translations’ for HRE practices?

First, it has been suggested that principles of human rights are often ‘nationalized’, namely, human rights become less universal and more rooted in the organizational structure and agenda of the nation-state (see Philippou et al., 2009). Bromley’s (2011) study, for example, in the context of (multicultural) Canada shows how textbooks resolve the tension between the particularism of promoting a cohesive national identity and the universalism of human rights discourse by reframing human rights as part of national identity. This ‘reframing’ might take different forms—for example, human rights and diversity are celebrated as part of the ‘national’; at the same time, ethno-cultural discussions that focus on a single group are generally avoided. The argument advanced by Bromley is that there is a complex interplay between universalism and particularism, rather than a simple layering of one set of ideas over another, and that the tension between these two is not easily resolved. What happens in conflict-affected settings is that this inherent tension between transnational (e.g. celebrating equality of all individuals and diverse groups) and local/national (e.g. celebrating homogeneity and favoring one’s own ethnic group) discourses becomes even more heightened and perhaps palpable.

For example, there might be challenges that have to do with the differential appeal that human rights have to majority and minority communities and the differential interpretation of what qualifies as a human rights violation by different sides of the conflict (Zembylas, 2011). As conflict usually involves communities that hold differential political power positions over time, human rights might be emphasized to a different extent among political counterparts (Niens et al., 2006). Although some reframing is always expected and is actually inevitable as the concept of human rights is being transferred and (transformed) from the transnational context to the national or from one national context to another, it is not yet clear how this process takes place in the context of human rights teaching. While existing research indicates the complexity of the interplay between the particularism of ethno-nationalism and the universalism of human rights, very little research explicitly addresses how this relationship is manifest in teachers’ understandings of HRE and with what implications.

Teachers’ understandings of HRE

There is considerable research focusing on the role of teachers in HRE initiatives and programs around the world (Bajaj, 2011b). Most of the studies which investigate the implementation of HRE emphasize that when teachers are confident, committed, and knowledgeable about human rights issues and how to teach them, it is more likely that learners will enrich their understanding of and their engagement with human rights issues (Cassidy et al., 2014; Flowers et al., 2000; Osler and Starkey, 2010). Teacher understandings of human rights and HRE in their local contexts of their everyday practices are an important part in the process of HRE implementation in concrete educational settings. However, despite the acknowledgement of the importance of context in the effectiveness and success of HRE programs (Carlson and Listhaug, 2007), research on teachers’ understandings of HRE practices in different contexts has been scarce (Messina and Jacott, 2013) and has not shed enough light on how micro- and macro-level factors shape teachers’ understandings of HRE practices (Cassidy et al., 2014; Messina and Jacott, 2013).

The few studies that have looked at the role of teachers in HRE provide two important lessons. First, that teachers’ knowledge about human rights generally tends to be quite limited (Messina and Jacott, 2013; Stellmacher et al., 2005) but can increase substantially with a few sessions about human rights, which change participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and commitment on the issue (Stellmacher and Sommer, 2008). This finding has important implications for the teaching of human rights, especially in conflict-affected societies, where interpretations of human rights might differ among conflicting communities and limited or one-sided knowledge of human rights violations might endanger the goals and philosophical orientation of HRE. Second, despite similar propositional definitions of human rights that people may share at a general level, when it comes to situated understandings and practices, individuals seem to be influenced by local ideologies concerning interpretations of human rights and HRE practices (Doise et al., 1999). Hence, paying attention to situated understandings of human rights is necessary for exploring not only the extent but also the manner in which transnational discourses are reframed. The following section provides an insight into the socio-historical background of the inter-ethnic conflict in Cyprus, which is necessary for gaining a deeper understanding of Greek-Cypriot teachers’ perceptions and stances toward the teaching of human rights.

Human rights and conflict in the context of Cyprus

At the heart of the Cypriot conflict is the ongoing ethnic partition of Cyprus between the Greek-Cypriot majority (about 80%) and the sizeable Turkish-Cypriot minority (about 18%). These two communities do not live together and have not done so for the last 50 years. Following a period of inter-ethnic violence in the 1960s, the Cypriot conflict culminated in 1974 with a Turkish military operation, which resulted in extensive relocations and in the island’s de facto partition into two ethnically homogenized parts: the Cyprus Republic, which controls the southern part and is practically dominated by the Greek-Cypriots, and the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (1983), a formation that has been declared legally invalid by the United Nations (so it is called a ‘pseudo-state’ by Greek-Cypriots) and is recognized only by Turkey. Despite the ongoing negotiations for a settlement under the auspices of the United Nations, and the opening of a few checkpoints in the buffer zone in 2003 that has allowed relative freedom of movement across the dividing line, the partition still remains in place. ²

The decades-long physical and cultural separation rendered the division in Cyprus almost complete—socially, emotionally, and politically—resulting in what Bryant (2004) described as ‘ethnic estrangement’. Ethnic estrangement has also been reinforced by intensive processes of ‘nation-building’ after 1974 on both sides, which have heightened their respective ‘Greekness’ and ‘Turkishness’, while constructing the other community as the ‘ethnic-Other’ and ‘arch-enemy’ of the collective Self. ³ Therefore, any talk about ‘rights’ in Cyprus—especially in relation to the values of tolerance of ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity—has to be examined through the lens of nation-formation processes aiming at achieving the maximum possible ethnic, religious, cultural, and linguistic homogeneity within the national borders. In fact, the limited research that exists on the understandings of human rights by the two conflicting communities shows precisely this (Webster, 2008).

As Demetriou and Gürel (2008) argue, both parties to the Cypriot conflict focus on the communal identification of victims and perpetrators along a rhetoric that campaigns for the human rights of one community only, while ignoring violations and suffering of the other side. ⁴ Demetriou and Gürel explain that the exclusion of the other’s perspective is achieved through processes of silencing and of constructing one-sided arguments to dismiss the other’s claims (see also Papadakis, 2008; Sant Cassia, 2005). With respect to the Greek-Cypriot side, in particular, the most dominant claims concerning human rights violations in relation to the Cyprus conflict have focused on Greek-Cypriot missing persons and their relatives, home and property of displaced persons, and the living conditions of Greek-Cypriots who live in enclaves in northern Cyprus. An important element of these claims is the ‘European’ involvement in this conflict; in the Greek-Cypriot community, there is generally the perception and expectation that European institutions have to ‘force’ Turkey to respect human rights in Cyprus, to accept its responsibilities for human rights violations, and to pay for the consequences of these violations (see Vural and Peristianis, 2008).

Finally, it is important to acknowledge the role that education has historically played in the Greek-Cypriot educational system. Three developments have been particularly influential in the last few decades: the ethnic segregation of education provisions (Bryant, 2001), the dependence of both communities on the motherlands for policies and teaching materials (Bryant, 2004), and the influential role of the Orthodox Church in Greek-Cypriot education matters (Koutselini-Ioannidi and Persianis, 2000). After 1974, the education systems on both sides sought to cultivate ethnic self-containment and to ensure the collective remembering of the conflict for the younger generations. In the Greek-Cypriot community, the war of 1974 and the territorial losses were taught and ‘remembered’ through the policy framework known as ‘I don’t forget and I struggle’ ⁵ (Δεν ξεχνώ και αγωνίζομαι, thereafter ‘I don’t forget’) (Charalambous et al., 2014). The policy was first introduced in the early 1980s with the aim of preserving—and later constructing anew—memories of the occupied north for the younger generations (Christou, 2007), but also encouraging a militant spirit for reclaiming these territories. Importantly, the policy of ‘I don’t forget’ did not include references to Turkish-Cypriots and pro-rapprochement perspectives but generally adopted a Hellenocypriocentric perspective, which emphasized the cultural Greekness of the occupied territories and the sufferings induced to the Greek-Cypriot community by Turkey (Charalambous et al., 2014).

An alternative educational policy in Greek-Cypriot education only emerged in 2008, after a pro-rapprochement leftist party came to power. With a circular distributed to schools, the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus designated ‘the cultivation of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect and cooperation between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots, with the aim of getting rid of the occupation and re-unifying our country and our people’ (thereafter ‘Peaceful Coexistence’) as the ‘primary educational objective’ for the school year 2008–2009 (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2008: 1). The circular signaled a departure from dominant Helleno(cyprio)centric discourses, by calling teachers to ‘cultivate the elements that unite us and characterize us [Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots] as one people’ (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2008: 1). Thus, for the first time after the decades-long predominance of the ‘I don’t forget’ policy and of the related Hellenocentric discourse, this circular came to introduce Cypriocentric and reconciliatory ideas in Greek-Cypriot education (Charalambous et al., 2014). Unsurprisingly perhaps, the initiative had stirred up fierce public debates and has been rather poorly implemented by teachers (Charalambous et al., 2014). In education, these debates centered mostly around (a) the ‘timeliness’ and the ‘appropriateness’ of this initiative, given that the Cyprus conflict remains unresolved (Zembylas et al., 2011) and (b) the fact that the policy was seen as imposing a leftist ideological agenda to Greek-Cypriot education (Charalambous et al., 2012).

As to the place of human rights in Greek-Cypriot curricula, a recent analysis as part of the present study (Zembylas et al., 2015) has shown that there are obvious differences in the way human rights have been understood and presented in the old (1996) and the new (2010) national curriculum in Cyprus. Both curricula emphasize the potential of human rights to shape active citizens who respect fundamental values and claim their rights. However, in the old curriculum, this goal is inextricably linked to the Cyprus conflict, the Turkish invasion, the policy of ‘I don’t forget’, and the human rights violations by Turkey, whereas the new curriculum follows a more holistic and comprehensive approach to human rights, making limited references to the Cyprus conflict in relation to human rights violations by Turkey. Human rights in the new curriculum appear in a more concrete way, in relation to reproductive rights, consumer rights, children’s rights, and the rights of the European citizen. As our research shows (Zembylas et al., in press), these human rights standards—as they are present in various conventions and interpreted by courts (e.g. the European Court of Human Rights)—are reflected in the new curriculum as universal or European rights and values. All in all, there seems to be a rhetorical shift of emphasis from the dominance of localized discourses of human rights to more universal themes of human rights discourses.

Finally, it is interesting to note that there has not been any official teacher training on HRE by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Cyprus. There are several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have been active in advocating and promoting human rights (especially in relation to migrant’s issues, gender equality, sexual discrimination, young people’s rights) among teachers and youth, but this takes place on a voluntary basis, not as part of any official training of Greek-Cypriot teachers or youth. Notably, in 2012, the Ministry of Education and Culture distributed a free copy of Compasito ⁶ in all elementary schools; it also sent a circular informing all elementary schools that if they wanted, they could request a free training of 45 minutes (which would take place during a weekly staff meeting) offered by certified trainers from the NGO Support Center in Cyprus. Compasito was presented as educational material supportive of the teaching unit ‘Configuration of the Active Citizen’, which was part of the new Health Education curriculum Ministry of Education and Culture, 2012.

The Cyprus conflict limits understandings of human rights

One of the first things that our analysis revealed was that the Cyprus conflict—when evoked in the conversation—seemed to ‘limit’ teachers’ understandings of human rights, foregrounding conflict-related violations suffered by the Greek-Cypriot side and backgrounding other (e.g. contemporary) human rights violations in the Greek-Cypriot society or the conflict-related violations experienced by the Turkish-Cypriot community. In particular, the policy of ‘I don’t forget’ imposed or reinforced a rigid and restricted framework that was grounded in the ongoing sufferings of the Greek-Cypriot community as a result of the Turkish invasion in 1974.

First, all teachers appeared to consider the Turkish invasion of 1974 as the ‘primary’ point of reference in discussions about human rights violations in Cyprus, implying though the violations of Greek-Cypriots’ rights; this was not challenged in any of the 24 interviews. This is shown, for example, in the following excerpts:

As in the case of the second example above, a number of participants constructed the association between human rights violations and the 1974 Turkish invasion as a recognizable idea that circulates widely within the Greek-Cypriot society and is well established and readily available as a discursive resource in discussions of human rights violations. It is particularly interesting that in a number of cases, participants who did not refer to the 1974 Turkish invasion immediately as an example of human rights violations later appeared rather apologetic and justified their delay by constructing it as a ‘self-evident’ category of human rights violations—self-evident to such an extent that it may not require special reiteration and attention (e.g. ‘I consider this self-evident, that’s why I didn’t mention it earlier’).

As to contemporary violations accruing due to the continuing Turkish occupation, a number of interviews conveyed a broader sense of lack of ‘freedom’ and ‘injustice’ occurring from the continuing occupation and represented the ethnic-Other—either Turkish-Cypriots, Anatolia settlers, or the occupying army (without making a distinction though)—as ‘violators’ of Greek-Cypriot rights. Unsurprisingly the rights more frequently mentioned were the following:

the right to property, violated by the Turkish occupation of the north part of the island (18/24);

Besides the more predictable war-related violations, it was particularly interesting that four interviews gave rise to another perceived category of conflict-related violations: these teachers expressed discontent for the privileges that Turkish-Cypriots enjoy in the south as part of the ‘Measures for the support of Turkish-Cypriots’ introduced in 2003 (e.g. priority in hospitals and other public services; sponsored fees for students in private schools). These participants were not pleased with the fact that the Republic of Cyprus concedes some special rights to the Turkish-Cypriot citizens, which they perceive as having a negative impact on the rights of Greek-Cypriots themselves.

When asked about the policy of ‘I don’t forget’, many teachers saw compatibility between this policy and human rights teaching, emphasizing once again the violations of Greek-Cypriot rights. The following is a characteristic excerpt:

The above idea was reflected in many teachers’ views who saw the policy of ‘I don’t forget’ as another opportunity to teach younger generations about the ongoing violation of Greek-Cypriot human rights.

Finally, when asked about the new objective on ‘Peaceful Coexistence’ and its potential compatibility with human rights, most of the teachers reported that, in principle, there seemed to be some degree of compatibility between ‘Peaceful Coexistence’ and the teaching of human rights. Yet, the explanations they provided gave rise to very disparate understandings of both what ‘Peaceful Coexistence’ involved (in teachers’ views), and of how it related to human rights. These understandings revealed once again, with some exceptions discussed in the next section, that the Cyprus conflict imposed a restricted understanding of human rights. Consider the excerpt below, for instance:

A particular source of difficulty and frustration for several teachers seemed to be the complications that the unresolved conflict posed to the application of human rights in the context of the present (and the future). Teachers appeared confused as to what this would involve with respect to the rights of the two communities in the two parts of the de facto partitioned island and appeared hesitant to introduce these issues in their classrooms before a final settlement was reached:

Teachers like Gavriella thought that talking about human rights within an expanded framework that included all Cypriots (both Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots), while the conflict was unresolved, was problematic because it brought up unsettling issues. Another teacher put it even more strongly and constructed a rather negative understanding of the policy of ‘Peaceful Coexistence’ in relation to human rights.

All in all, the above evidence shows how the Cyprus conflict, and particularly the policy of ‘I don’t forget’, imposes or reinforces an understanding of human rights that is limited to nationalized perspectives, that is, the violations of human rights suffered only by the Greek-Cypriot community. The fact that this localized understanding of human rights begins to be taught from an early age at school shows the pervasiveness of the view that human rights violations are primarily suffered by Greek-Cypriots. There are a few exceptions, of course, as shown below, but these seem to be marginalized views; yet, it interesting to see how they offer a different understanding of the local conflict in relation to universal discourses of human rights.

The new policy as an opportunity to acknowledge the suffering of the ‘Other’

Some teachers realized how conflict might limit understandings of human rights and therefore projected a different interpretation of the policy of ‘I don’t forget’ as well as the potential of the policy of ‘Peaceful Coexistence’ to acknowledge the suffering of the ‘Other’. In all, 5 out of 24 teachers appeared to problematize, to a larger or lesser degree, the usefulness of teaching human rights through the perspective of ‘I don’t forget’. Three of these teachers constructed human rights teaching and the policy of ‘I don’t forget’ as compatible, while they appeared somewhat skeptical as to the usefulness of emphasizing the violation of Greek-Cypriot rights when teaching ‘I don’t forget’. In these accounts, the underlying argument appeared to be that the legitimacy of the claim about human rights violations did not automatically render the practice pedagogically appropriate in a conflict-affected society that struggled to overcome conflict and move toward a more peaceful and reconciliatory future. These teachers viewed the teaching of Greek-Cypriot human rights violations during the conflict as exacerbating the tension and hatred between the two sides rather than contributing to building a peaceful and sustainable future. The following account is indicative of this line of argumentation:

Two teachers also constructed the teaching of human rights through ‘I don’t forget’ practices as rather incompatible, because the idea of discussing that human rights violations were suffered only by Greek-Cypriots did not enable proper understanding of the concept of human rights. These teachers understood the focus of ‘I don’t forget’ on Greek-Cypriot rights as inhibiting a comprehensive view that also took into account the violations of human rights on the other side of the inter-ethnic conflict.

These few teachers also justified their view of the new policy of ‘Peaceful Coexistence’ as being compatible with human rights with references to the violations of Turkish-Cypriot human rights during the conflict in the second half of the 20th century.

In this view, the underlying assumption was that the teaching of violations of Turkish-Cypriot human rights could contribute to the objective for ‘Peaceful Coexistence’ by undoing the dichotomous-schema of victim-perpetrator that predominated in the ‘I don’t forget’ discourse, thus demonstrating the mutuality of pain and suffering from the conflict.

Another emerging line of argumentation for supporting the compatibility between the objective of ‘Peaceful Coexistence’ and human rights teaching was the distinction that five teachers suggested between the political level, that is, seeing people as part of an ethnic and political community, and the human level, that is, seeing each person as a human being regardless of collective identities. Consider the following example:

In this excerpt, the participant suggests that the more universalist humanist discourse that underpins human rights could be used as a counter-discourse to the particularism of the dominant ethno-nationalist discourse, which promotes antagonism rather than coexistence and reconciliation.

All in all, the few teachers who seemed to realize how conflict may limit understandings of human rights provide a discursive space that acknowledges the suffering of the ‘Other’. These teachers sketch a different interpretation of human rights that draws in particular on their universalist humanist appeal and embraces the human rights of the ‘Other’ as well. However, these teachers recognize that there are certain limitations—for example, they point out complications when using human rights to talk about peace due to unresolved human rights violations and the power of nationalism.