SOFT POLITICS AND HARD CHOICES: An Assessment of Turkey’s New Regional Diplomacy (original) (raw)
Related papers
Soft-Politics-And-Hard-Choices-An-Assessment-Of-Turkeys-New-Regional-Diplomacy;HR
Human Rights Documents online
and has been a member of staff since its establishment in 2005. He has written widely on minorities and religion in Cyprus, as well as on the politics of demography, Turkish-Cypriot politics, and the ambivalent relationship between Turkish Cypriots and Turkey. In addition, he is working on two PRIO research and information projects, one on property and displacement and the second on
South european society & politics, 2002
The context of the denial of existence of Greek Cypriot refugees by the dominant Turkish Cypriot nationalist discourse offers significant clues concerning the long-term impasse of negotiations about the future of Cyprus. Lack of acknowledgement of the suffering and deprivation caused by the pre-1974 uprooting of Turkish Cypriot civilians helped to breed an environment of a zero-sum game. In this context, within Turkish Cypriot society, post-1974 population movements on the island were largely regarded as 'war casualties'. This attitude led to the extended suffering of thousands of Greek Cypriots not involved in the atrocities or injustice that had affected Turkish Cypriots during the previous decades. The acknowledgement of the history and long-term effects of population displacements that have taken place since 1958 could thus be a crucial step in removing the Cyprus issue from the vicious circle of Greco-Turkish conflict. For scholars of Cypriot studies, with few notable exceptions, detailed analyses of the role played by the social, political and cultural make-up of the ethno-religious communities in Cyprus visa -vis Cypriots' own interpretations of war and conflict points to a necessary and yet largely lacking area of expertise. Well into the fourth decade after the physical division of the island, Cypriot society in toto has yet to come to terms with what happened during the active phases of the Cypriot conflict. A The author would like to thank Peter Loizos and Yiannis Papadakis for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this article. The original version was written during her tenure as a Past and Present fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London where she was funded for her work on modern Turkish Cypriot history between October 1998 and January 2000. She is also grateful to the balanced and nuanced guidance provided by Susannah Verney and two anonymous referees of South European Society & Politics during its revision.
Turkish-Cypriot Nationalist Drive toward State-Building: Politics, Violence, and Political Economy
in Trimiklionitis, N. and Bozkurt, U. (eds.), Beyond a Divided Cyprus: A State and Society in Transition, Palgrave, 2012
Scholarly research in northern Cyprus and Turkey, which treats the question of Cyprus from the perspective of the domestic dynamics of the Turkish-Cypriot society, is rather sparse. For the most part, the focal point of theoretical narratives regarding Cyprus is that the problem belongs to the realm of international relations, where the Turkish-Cypriots feature just as a unitary actor. There are a number of authors who highlight this literary deficiency. For instance, Hasgüler (2007, pp. 1–3) claims that Cyprus has from the outset been treated as a national question alone in both Turkey and Greece, with the Cypriots as the inept authors of their own history. Similarly, Egemen (2006, pp. 37–39) notes that popular and scholarly literature on the Turkish-Cypriots mostly concentrates on the question of Cyprus, at the expense of domestic politics and economics, ideology, and, particularly, power struggles for leadership.
Turkey's Cyprus policy: a research agenda
in C.Yallourides & P. Tsaconas (editors), Greece and Turkey after the end of the Cold War. New York: A. Carantzas publishers , 2001
This paper considers the paradox of the "independence" of the illegal (condemned by the UN Security Council Resolutions 541/1983 and 550/1984) secessionist entity that was set up in the Turkish military occupied area of Cyprus and accounts for the wider public debate over Turkey's Cyprus policy in the Turkish media of the late 1990s.
A Ay yl la a G Gü ür re el l PRIO Cyprus Centre M Ma ar ri ia a H Ha ad dj ji ip pa av vl lo ou u University of Cyprus M Me et te e H Ha at ta ay y PRIO Cyprus Centre Y Yi ia an nn ni is s E E. . I Io oa an nn no ou u University of Cyprus J Jo os se ep ph h J Jo os se ep ph h University of Cyprus M Mi ic ch ha ae el l K Ka am mm ma as s Director General, Association of Cyprus Commercial Banks E Er ro ol l K Ka ay ym ma ak k Political Science Association, Cyprus D Di ia an na a M Ma ar rk ki id de es s University of Cyprus C Ca ae es sa ar r M Ma av vr ra at ts sa as s University of Cyprus F Fa ar ri id d M Mi ir rb ba ag gh he er ri i University of Nicosia, Cyprus M Ma ar ri ia a R Ro ou us ss so ou u P Pe et te er r A Al ll le en n Rhode Island College, USA O Ot th ho on n A An na as st ta as sa ak ki is s University of Oxford, UK F Fl lo oy ya a A An nt th hi ia as s Roehampton University London, UK V Va as ss so os s A Ar rg gy yr ro ou u University of Hull, UK H He ei in nz z--J Jü ür rg ge en n A Ax xt t University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany G Gi il ll le es s B Be er rt tr ra an nd d Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux, France
Cyprus, during the period between the two world wars witnessed a political struggle between two groups within the Turkish Cypriot community: the traditionalists and the reformists. When the British took over the administration of the island in 1878, the existing Ottoman establishment aligned itself with the new rulers, in order to consolidate the power structure that served its interests. The position of the traditional Ottoman establishment in Cyprus came to be challenged with the emergence of a group of intellectuals who were inspired by Kemalism and the principles and policies of the Republic of Turkey. Calling themselves ‘halkçılar’, this reformist group criticized the traditionalists, particularly for guarding the interests of the British and themselves, rather than that of the Turkish Cypriot community. The British and the traditionalists tried to contain this political development, but the popular support for the halkçılar continued to grow. At one point the British realized that they could no longer continue their policy of supporting the traditionalists and so they undertook steps to acknowledge and win the sympathies of the reformists. Academic research has generally focused on the Greek Cypriot community and its relations with the British or the Turkish Cypriots. This paper will attempt to discuss the split within the Turkish Cypriot community between the world wars and the British reaction to it, and bring to light and analyze this hitherto unexamined area of Cyprus studies.
"The Other Cypriots and Their Cyprus Questions." The Cyprus Review 19 , no. 2 (2007): 57-82.
The island of Cyprus has a multicultural population. Today, besides its native Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Maronite, Latin Cypriot and Gypsy population, it is also the home of Anatolians, who have gradually settled on the island from Turkey since 1974; Pontians who came from Georgia via Greece together with various other immigrants since the 1990s; the Jews; and the British. Despite this diversity, a solution to the Cyprus problem is still under the monopoly of Greek-and Turkish-Cypriot aspirations, with a resolution oriented between either a bi-zonal/bi-communal federation or a liberal democratic unitary state. This paper presents the so far little pronounced 'Other Cypriots': the Armenians, the Maronites, the Latins, the Gypsies as well as the newcomers, the Turkish settlers, the Pontians, the immigrants, and their socioeconomic and political problems. In so doing, it aims to draw attention to the necessity of multicultural politics in today's governing policies, and in future settlement efforts of the Cyprus conflict.
The impact of domestic politics on the ongoing effort to overcome the division of the island following an unresolved dispute between both communities and a military invasion of Turkey in 1974 has been understudied so far. The paper will assess the interrelationship between the domestic developments in Turkey and both Cypriot entities and their implications for a solution of the Cyprus problem. More specifically, the paper will asses to what extent the resumption of talks in 2013 in the context of Hydrocarbon findings of the coast of Cyprus and renewed strong American involvement has been affected by domestic developments in Turkey, the Greek Cypriot dominated Republic of Cyprus and the internationally not recognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. At the core of the analysis is the ongoing power struggle between the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his opponents in Turkey, the impact of Greek Cypriot domestic developments on the policies of President Nicos Anastasis and the power struggles in the Turkish Cypriot community, which is gearing up for Presidential elections in 2015.
Conflict , Alienation , and the Hope of Peace : The Struggle for Peace in Militarised Cyprus
2010
In 1960 the Cyprus Republic was. established as a single, ethnically mixed bicommunal state, with a single flag and an army numbering merely 2000 men. Today, Cyprus is geographicalfy, ethnically and communally divided, with foreign troops on its soil, with all the male members of the population trained as soldiers and equipped with all powerful, up to date weapons. An island of half a million inhabitants, Cyprus stands divided since 1974 into de facto two states, one legal and one illegal, and with four flags; the Cyprus Republic flag and the Greek flag in the Greek south and the Turkish flag with the flag of the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" in the Turkish occupied north. And for more than thirty years, the island has been under the direct supervision of the peacekeeping forces of the United Nations. Briefly, this is the tragedy of Cyprus. For more than forty years, the history of this island has lived through successive and varied confictual relationships, even through relationships of violence. In view of this irrefutable reality, it is essential to reflect and acknowledge that as inhabitants of the island, we have all been inevitably formed in and through this history of many and different conflicts. As individuals and as political groups, as communities and as a culture, we have been haunted and stigmatised, one way or another, by this protracted, never-ending confrontation with "the others", whoever they may be, the right, the left, the Greeks or the Turks. It must also be noted that following the violent events of 1974, the various intra communal conflictual relationships, especially among the Greek-Cypriots, has been subsumed and reconstituted around the henceforth major axis of Greek-Cypriot community on the one hand and Turkish-Cypriot community and the Turkish army on the other. And by implication. due to the Turkish military invasion and the pain it induced, the adversarial attitude was generalised. espeCially through the nationalist prototypes. to one of universal animosity between Greeks and Turks."On both sides. the same nationalism which originally created the problem comesf' after the fact. and finds justification in the very historical events which itself ci;eated. It validates, in other words, the nationalist stereotype that enmity between Greeks and Turks constitutes a diachronic, invariable and existential fact, an immutable CONFLICT. ALIENAnON AND THE HOPE OF PEACE: THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE IN MIUTARISED and eternal phenomenon. This stance, or better, this perspective, whether it originates from Turk or Greek, leads to the same outcome. It precludes, in advance, the prospect for peace and reconcitiation. And under these conditions, the search for a "solution" is transformed into a vain, time-consuming preoccupation. Under the nationalist rubric, even if '''the solution" is found on the diplomatic plain. whatever it may be, even the most ideal, it becomes historically unfeasible, even most dangerous. On account of the general impact of nationalism on public culture, the mentality of "us and them" has been shaped not so much by the historical experiences of peaceful coexistence and symbiosis, which have indeed existed, but, rather, exclusively from the events of hostility and violence. The kind of events which the nationalist spirit. wherever it comes from, onesidedly and selectively prefers and utilises in constituting its historical hermeneutic, in which the values of man and civilisation become determined by conflictual prototypes (Anderson 1991, p.6; Kitromilides 1990). And this is the mentality which has tended to become an inseparable dimension of the process of socialisation in the established culture of Cypriot society, in its entirety. inclusive of both communities. By the nature of things, if peace is to be sought and pursued in Cyprus, it is imperative to begin with a diagnosis of the dynamics of conflict as they pertain to both the adversarial attitude itself, and the hostile interactive relationship between the two communities. What is of utmost significance as a starting point for peace in Cyprus is the acknowledgement that each community has its own experience of injustice and subsequently and by implication its own sense of justice. The difference between the two, hinges on the fact that the traumatic experiences that each side has reaped from the conflict refer to-and derive from different events, incidents and historical periods. For the Turkish-Cypriots, the painful memories concentrate mainly on the period 1963-1974. Their recollection concerns the constraining underdeveloped life in their enclaves, which encompassed just 3% of the territory of Cyprus, the defeats in the bloody conflicts with the Greek-Cypriots, with a loss of human life staggering in the eyes of the Turkish-Cypriots as a numerical minority. It concerns the missing persons (483 Turkish-Cypriots over 32 Greek-Cypriots in 1964) and generally the feelings that they were living under conditions of perpetual siege (Volkan 1979, pp 18-25, 119). For the Greek-Cypriots, on the other hand, the experience of injustice originates mainly from the more concentrated, but inundating events of 1974. with the Greek Junta's coup d' etat and the Turkish military intervention. The tragic memories refer to the unprecedented loss of human life, to the mass uprooting from t~ir homes, from one moment to the next, to the unrepeatable destruction 01 prop~rty, to the refugees and the 1619 missing persons. Most significant is also...the fact that the pain and injustice that resulted from the coup d' etat, with all the'mixed feelings of confusion and guilt over the civil bloodshed, were unconsciously transferred and