The Perceptions of Cypriot Youth Matter (original) (raw)
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The post-Annan generation: Student attitudes towards the Cyprus problem
The opening of the Cyprus checkpoints in 2003 resulted in a new experience of the island: one in which movement between the two sides was possible and relatively easy, even if the ceasefire line remained, and remains, intact. This report examines the “post-Annan generation,” that is, the generation of youth who can barely recall the time of closed checkpoints but who also experienced the excitement and the disappointment of the 2004 referendum. The report analyses the main socio-demographic and political attitudinal characteristics of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot students, and proceeds to examine their opinions on various aspects of the Cyprus conflict.
Policy Brief: Education in Cyprus
2020
Peace Players Cyprus conducted a survey on the challenges faced by the Cypriot youth as part of the Project Promoting Dialogue for Change: Peace Advocacy Through Youth Empowerment, funded by the European Union and implemented by Barış Oyuncuları-Kıbrıs and PeacePlayers-Cyprus. The overall objective of the Project is to contribute to the empowerment and inclusion of youth in the peace discourse in Cyprus. More than 180 young people across the island took part in the survey and identified education, the Cyprus problem and unemployment as the three biggest challenges they face. As part of the project, PeacePlayers Cyprus will organize three retreats in total to further explore each challenge, and produce policy briefs including possible solutions together with young people.
This chapter examines the communication process between youth organisations and the political parties that are linked. What leeway do such groups have in terms of freedom of expression within the global activity of a political party? Their participation is it a means of enriching and updating the ideas, positions and ideologies that circulate within a party? The analysis is based on a survey data collected between 2008 and 2012. These surveys include interviews with executives of the four major parties on the island, as well as with representatives of the youth organisations linked to these parties. The main conclusion is that there is a distinction to be made between “participation” and “contribution”. The contribution of young people in the production of politics cannot be considered as given, despite the possibility of “participation” provided by the formal and institutional ties between youth organisations and parties. While these links allow to members of such organisations to take part in the production of the electoral political discourse, they do not in any way guarantee the representation of an effective youth “voice” in politics.
Peace Education in North Cyprus: A Phenomenological Approach
Peace Education in North Cyprus: A Phenomenological Approach, 2007
This paper discusses multiculturalism and peace education in order to illuminate the significance of face-to-face, daily interactions. It argues that this could be a useful way to promote peace education in Cyprus. Although people could be able to cross the borders and can 'see the other half of their homeland' since 2003, Cyprus still lacks of a common educational policy as indicated by Michalinos Zembylas and Hakan Karahasan in 8th CiCe conference. The paper is qualitative and focuses on the curriculum in the northern Cyprus in general and how, on personal level, peace education could be promoted.
WHAT CYPRIOT CHILDREN THINK ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF PEACE?
European Journal of Education Studies, 2018
Cyprus is a Mediterranean island inhabited by two communities with a common culture, although they speak different languages. Efforts to reconcile these two communities, living apart from each other in different parts of the island since 1974, have become more important in recent years and efforts have been made to ensure a lasting solution on the island. Within the scope of these efforts, non-governmental organizations in Cyprus are also carrying out various studies with the support of the European Union. This is one of those studies, which was carried out with the support of the Grow Civil Program. The purpose of this study is to examine the metaphors of the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot children created about the concept of peace. The study group consists of 23 children, aged between six and ten. Children were given a form written in Turkish and Greek languages with an expression on it as "Peace is like........ because.........." and they were asked to fill in the gaps. The obtained data were analyzed and reported by the content analysis method. Results indicate that the metaphors produced by Turkish Cypriot children are related to emotions, behaviors and individuals, while the Greek Cypriots’ are related to space, aesthetic perception, and individuals. While politicians are seeking for a permanent solution on the island, non-governmental organizations and activists have been organizing various activities to increase mutual trust between the two communities. It is thought that this study will contribute to the bi-communal studies in Cyprus.
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
The shifting sands of relational peace in Cyprus
Manchester University Press eBooks, 2023
On March 31, 2004, Kofi Annan made an impassioned plea for local Cypriot leaders to support impending referenda to end three decades of division on the island. He framed the importance of these plebiscites in no uncertain terms: "Let me be clear. The choice is not between this settlement plan and some other magical or mythical solution. In reality, at this stage, the choice is between this settlement and no settlement" (Annan 2004). The Secretary-General's words proved to be hauntingly accurate. While a majority of the Turkish Cypriot population voted in favor of a federation of two states, more than three-quarters of Greek Cypriots cast their ballots in opposition. And in the decade and a half since the failed 2004 reunification plan, no fewer than four additional rounds of peace talks have been attempted and abandoned. 1 Today, the divided island remains the site of Europe's longest unresolved political dispute and an archetype of intractable conflict (Heraclides 2011). 2 The half-century of political stalemate in Cyprus raises challenging questions for peace scholars and practitioners alike. 3 Why has it been so difficult to reunify the island? Why have top-down negotiations such as the Annan Plan, as well as more recent bottom-up approaches, proved equally ineffective? What might a permanent settlement even look like at this point? There is, of course, no shortage of answers to such questions. Politicians, policy analysts, peacemakers, and conflict scholars have all weighed in over the years. This diverse set of actors has advanced varied and inventive plans of action, but most share a common perspective. Taking a negative peace framework as their starting point, they stress that the island has been free of extended periods of armed conflict since the 1974 ceasefire that divided Cyprus and express a strong desire not to undermine the current status quo. Policy suggestions, in turn, involve some variation of security guarantees and a plan for shared governance between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. The primary concern of these plans is to avoid a return to intercommunal violence. They overwhelmingly frame the Greek and Turkish
Reutledge,Taylor and Francis, Mediterranean Politics Online ISSN: 1362-9395 (Print) 1743-9418, 2017
In order to capture how young people in northern Cyprus see the Cyprus Question, we asked more than 300 students to ‘draw Cyprus’ and surveyed their political attitudes, as well as their identities and preferences for the future of the island. The results show that the Turkish Cypriot students, in comparison with the students from Turkey and from the other countries, are more supportive of a decentralized federative structure, identify themselves with the Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot identities, and more willing to embrace a consociational approach to the Cyprus Question.