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I PERFORMING SOCIAL FORGETTING PERFORMING SOCIAL FORGETTING IN A POST-CONFLICT LANDSCAPE: THE CASE OF CYPRUS by Rabia Harmanşah BS, Public Administration, Hacetttepe University, 2000 MS, Middle East Studies, Middle East Technical University, 2006 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2014 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Rabia Harmanşah It was defended on September 9, 2014 and approved by Andrew J. Strathern, Professor, Anthropology Nicole Constable, Professor, Anthropology Bryan Hanks, Associate Professor, Anthropology Clark Chilson, Associate Professor, Religious Studies Dissertation Advisor: Robert M. Hayden, Professor, Anthropology ii Copyright © by Rabia Harmanşah 2014 iii anneme ve babama, daima. iv PERFORMING SOCIAL FORGETTING IN A POST-CONFLICT LANDSCAPE: THE CASE OF CYPRUS Rabia Harmanşah, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2014 This dissertation examines social practices of memory-making and forgetting in Cyprus after the partition of 1974, based on analysis of Orthodox Christian and Muslim religious sites in the Greek/Southern and the Turkish/Northern parts of the island. The central contribution of the dissertation is the development of the concept of social forgetting as a corollary of social memory. I consider forgetting to include selective remembering, mis/disremembering, and omitting, distorting, or silencing past events and experiences, in order to shape collective memory. In the literature, remembering is usually privileged over forgetting, which is taken as negation, neglect, failure to remember, or unintended social amnesia in which people are considered passive actors. This study, however, shows that forgetting can be a desirable goal and positive process for some social actors, accomplished by obscuring material evidence of what another community wishes remembered. The first chapter looks at official and individual narratives regarding the ethnic conflict. The second chapter analyzes topographies of memory, specifically the treatment of religious landscapes during the ethnic conflict and afterwards, by discussing three cases v of shared religious spaces. The third chapter examines temporalities of memories and collectivities, through the discussion of museumification of sacred sites that are converted to museums, and how the owners of the sites react to this process. This part also discusses the secularization of the Turkish Cypriot community and their relatively invisible conflict with the ‘fraternal other,’ Turkish settlers. I argue that Greek and Turkish Cypriots are haunted by memories of ethnic conflict, but their perceptions of and approaches to the past are different. Greek Cypriots, at least officially and publicly, center their identities on the trauma of partition and are waiting for the liberation of the occupied land, seeing the future through what was supposedly left behind. For Turkish Cypriots, the past life alongside Greek Cypriots is a closed chapter. Both also develop alternative narratives through which they undermine official discourses in their everyday lives and practices. Yet they mostly seem to turn their faces towards opposite directions: Turkish Cypriots long for a lost future, and Greek Cypriots long for a lost past. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................................... XIV 1.0 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 1 2.0 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................. 8 2.1 ANTHROPOLOGIST AS POTENTIAL FOE ............................................................. 11 2.2 NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY ....................................................................................... 17 2.3 NOTE FOR THE READER: FROM NICOSIA TO NICOSIA VIA BUCHAREST ...... 18 3.0 MNEMONIC AGENCIES ..................................................................................................... 20 3.1 SUBJECTIFYING MEMORY, QUESTIONING FORGETTING: THEORETICAL APPROACHES ..................................................................................................................... 20 3.1.1. KEY ISSUES ON MEMORY AND THIS STUDY’S APPROACH ............................. 21 3.1.1.1. Individual vs. collective ............................................................................ 21 3.1.1.2. Forgetting as a complex/active/positive process ............................... 25 3.1.1.3. Strategies of forgetting .............................................................................. 28 3.2. POLITICS OF MEMORY IN CYPRUS: OFFICIAL DISCOURSES AND (UN)SILENT OTHERS ............................................................................................................................... 31 3.2.1. Remembering the shared life ...................................................................... 31 3.2.2. A historY of controversy ............................................................................... 33 3.2.3. Whose memorY? ............................................................................................ 36 vii 3.3. PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE OR WE-IZATION OF THE OTHER: ARE TURKISH CYPRIOTS CRYPTO-CHRISTIANS? .................................................................................. 43 3.3.1. The Greek CYpriot discourses of peaceful coexistence .......................... 43 3.3.2. Common culture through marriage, language, and religion ................ 47 3.3.3. Linobambakoi ................................................................................................ 53 4.0 TOPOGRAPHIES OF MEMORY: LOUD SILENCE OF LAND .......................................... 61 4.1. SPATIAL EXPERIENCES AND DE-MATERIALIZATION OF MEMORY ................. 61 4.1.1. Landscape as an analytical concept ........................................................... 61 4.1.2. Landscape-memorY studies ........................................................................ 65 4.1.3. Religious sites as mnemonic devices ......................................................... 68 4.1.4. Treatment of religious landscape .............................................................. 70 4.1.4.1. Destruction of religious sites and cemeteries ............................. 71 4.1.4.2 Appropriation of religious landscape and cultural heritage ..... 85 4.1.4.3. Restoration and the technical committee on cultural heritage in Cyprus ................................................................................................................ 89 4.1.5. Homes, sacred spaces, and cemeteries: The sense of belonging ......... 95 4.2. (NON-)SHARED RELIGIOUS SITES ........................................................................ 103 4.2.1. Observations from the case studies in CYprus ...................................... 107 4.2.1.1. One-waY crossing ............................................................................. 107 4.2.1.2. Localness and marginalitY ............................................................. 113 4.2.1.3. Official/local discourses and the particularities of the sanctuaries ...................................................................................................... 115 4.2.1.4. Non-identitarian aspects of the sites ........................................... 124 viii 4.2.1.5. QualitY of shared spaces ................................................................. 125 4.2.1.6. Concluding remarks ........................................................................ 127 4.2.2. Case Studies: Kırklar Tekke and Hz. Ömer Tekke ................................ 130 4.2.2.1. Same place, different stories: The Shrine of HolY FortY ........... 131 4.2.2.2. Transference from ChristianitY to Islam? ................................... 133 4.2.2.3. Practices at the Site ......................................................................... 138 4.2.2.4. Concluding Remarks ....................................................................... 141 4.2.2.5. Dual(itY) of identities: Hz. Ömer Tekke/Agioi Phanontes ...... 142 4.2.2.6. Practices at the Site ......................................................................... 145 4.2.3. (Non)Sharing the sites and practices ...................................................... 146 4.3. WHOSE LAND IS IT ANYWAY? APPROPRIATING APOSTOLOS ANDREAS MONASTERY ..................................................................................................................... 151 4.3.1. About the MonasterY ................................................................................... 151 4.3.2. Sharing the place with “the Other” ........................................................... 157 4.3.3. Controversy over restoration ................................................................... 159 4.3.4. Appropriating the MonasterY? ................................................................. 163 4.3.5. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 166 5.0 (MULTI-)TEMPORALITIES OF MEMORIES AND COLLECTIVITIES ........................ 168 5.1. RE-CREATING MEMORY: MUSEMIFICATION OF RELIGIOUS PLACES ............ 168 5.1.1. The process of museumification .............................................................
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