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Moutsis, Ioannis (2014) The Turkish Cypriots (1918-1931) : from a religious community to an ethnic minority. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/22805/ Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. The Turkish Cypriots (1918-1931): From a Religious Community to an Ethnic Minority. Ioannis Moutsis Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in History 2014 Department of History School of Oriental and African Studies University of London Declaration for SOAS PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the SOAS, University of London concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ 2 Thesis Abstract This dissertation examines the Turkish Cypriot community in the period from 1918 to 1931, that is, during the time that the ethnogenesis of the community took place. The thesis argues that this process took place within that period under the influence of three factors: the emergence of Turkish nationalism in mainland Turkey, the Greek Cypriot Enosis movement and the intransigence of the colonial government. Furthermore, I argue that the consolidation of nationalism among the Turkish Cypriots caused the emergence of a nationalist elite. This elite, which was not controlled by the colonial government, entered into a debate with the traditional elite about the control of the religious institutions and the transformation into a Turkish-Kemalist entity according to the principles set by Kemal Atatürk. I used newspaper articles and archival sources, part of which had not been used in the past, in order to reassess the process of the ethnogenesis of the Turkish Cypriot community. By doing so, I attempted to disassociate the issue of the ethnic transformation of the Turkish Cypriot community from the narration of the later stages of Turkish Cypriot history. In this way, the thesis moves away from the deterministic narration of classic Cypriot historiography. Furthermore, the thesis examines the role of the Turkish Cypriot press in the ethnic transformation of the Turkish Cypriot community. By rereading the press of the conservative and the nationalist elite, I attempt to deconstruct their image and analyze them under the light of social and political events. I attempt, thus, to present them not as two elites that were divided by ideology. Instead, I try to portray them as two groups that used ideology as a means to retain their position, in the case of the traditional elite, or in order to come to power, in the case of the nationalist elite. 3 For my parents 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I‟d first like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Benjamin Fortna, for his advice but most importantly for his patience all these years, as well as the State Scholarships Foundation of Greece, which provided me with the necessary funding to conduct my doctoral research in London, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, which funded my research in Cyprus and Turkey. I would also like to thank the staff of the State Archives of the Republic of Cyprus, the archives of the Press and Information Office in Nicosia, the State Archives of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Başbakanlık Arşivi in Ankara for their help and cooperation. Special thanks go to Stefano Taglia, Alekos Lamprou, Michalis Iliakis, Yiannis Bonos and Sam Hardy for their advice and support. Antonis Hadjikyriakou provided me with material but also with ideas about the thesis. Ioannis Grigoriadis offered his experience and motivation from the very beginning. Nadia Hadjipolycarpou and Düriye Gökçebağ in Cyprus and Jac Koumi and Haris Noutsos in London offered much more than their hospitality. Ayça Baydar helped me with the bureaucracy in the final stages. I owe a lot to my first history professor, Christina Koulouri, whose contribution during my bachelor years brought me to where I am now, and to Rabia Harmanşah, for motivating me when I most needed it. Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Nikolao and Georgia for their moral and financial support. 5 Note on transliteration Names and titles in Ottoman Turkish have been rendered in accordance with modern Turkish usage. Arabic terms are transliterated according to a simplified system based on that of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES). Greek names have been transliterated using the Latin script. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements Note on transliteration Chapter One – Introduction 7 Chapter Two – The Turkish Cypriot Elite: Its Legitimation, Role and Limitations 35 Chapter Three – Cyprus Politics and Society under the British and the Birth of Cypriot Journalism 68 Chapter Four – Mehmet Münir and Necati Özkan: The Evkâfçı versus the Kemalist 96 Chapter Five – Turkish Cypriot Education: The Fight for the Lycée 112 Chapter Six – The Turkish Cypriots in the 1920s: The Emergence of the Nationalist Elite and the Questioning of Loyalty to the Colonial Government 132 Chapter Seven – The National Congress of 1931, the October Riots and the End of Political Agitation 158 Chapter Eight – Conclusions 194 Bibliography 201 7 CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION The object of inquiry Fikret Halil Alasya, one of the most prominent Turkish Cypriot historians, wrote on the 20th of September 1963 an article entitled “Cyprus and love for Atatürk” (Kıbrıs ve Atatürk Sevgisi). In it we read: The Turks of Cyprus accepted and applied day by day without any legal obligation all the reforms that the great Atatürk initiated in Turkey. Even if the local government practically obstructed some of the reforms, their principles were implemented and a struggle was undertaken in order to convince the local government to apply them. The alphabet reform, the dress reform, the shutting down of the dervish lodges and secularism were implemented immediately. Even the elderly Turkish women removed their headscarves while the men immediately wore hats and started praying in Turkish and there was a struggle for the implementation of the civil code. This struggle lasted until the 1950s. […] This demonstrates that the Turks of Cyprus with their culture, mentality, behaviour, in a few words with their being, have safeguarded their existence as an inseparable part of the Turkishness of the motherland. The Turks of Cyprus sincerely accepted the Atatürk reforms and it is possible to understand their loyalty to Atatürk from the sparkle in the eyes of the young and the elderly alike. The Turks of Cyprus are born, raised and die with love for Atatürk.1 Almost the whole of Turkish Cypriot historiography agrees that the Turkish Cypriots adopted the Kemalist reforms and embraced Turkish nationalism already from the beginning of the Kemalist revolution. This narration served two purposes: first, it answered the Greek Cypriot argument that the Turkish Cypriots were Islamized Christians and therefore Turkish claims on Cyprus were groundless. Second, it was an appeal to the Turkish government to support a population that was always loyal to the principles of Turkish nationalism. Instead of examining the Turkishness of the Turkish Cypriots, this thesis will try to answer the following questions: Under what conditions did the Turkish Cypriots embrace Turkish nationalism? What was the nature of Turkish Cypriot Kemalism? Were the secularist reforms unanimously accepted? Did the social and ideological transformation of the community create a new elite? 1Halil Fikret Alasya, Kalemden Damlalar Cilt 1 (Lefkoşa, 1977), p.77. 8 How did the old ruling class experience this transformation? Finally, what is the nature of the conflict between the old and the new elite? The scope of this thesis covers the period from 1918 until 1931. Without disregarding the years that preceded and followed this period, I argue that the events that took place in 1918 and 1931 were crucial for the Turkish Cypriot national struggle and therefore limit the scope of this research. Turkish nationalism among the Turkish Cypriots was active already from the late 19th century. I argue, however, that it was the collapse of the Empire and the launch of the Kemalist revolution that provided the framework for Turkish nationalism. The establishment of the Turkish Republic and the institutionalization of Turkish nationalism, primarily through education but also through an organized state apparatus made possible the spread of Turkish nationalism first among the Turks in Anatolia and then among the Turkish populations that had remained outside the boundaries of modern Turkey. The Kemalist version of Turkish nationalism