University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

'Stuck in the middle'

A case study of the participation of inter-communal women's groups in the Cyprus peace process

Victoria Lecomte 11173173 Word count: 22,978

1 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

2 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Table of contents

1 Introduction...... 7

2 Theoretical framework...... 9

2.1 Background to the theoretical framework...... 9 2.1.1 Liberal Peacebuilding...... 9 2.1.2 Peacebuilding from below...... 11 2.2 'Local ownership' in peace negotiations...... 12 2.2.1 The inclusion of civil society in peace negotiations ...... 12 2.2.2 The inclusion of women in peace negotiations...... 14 2.3 Theoretical Principles...... 17 2.3.1 'Decoupling'...... 17 2.3.2 Who is 'the local'? Who's ownership?...... 18 2.4 The 'Third Space' of Cyprus' peace formation ...... 19 2.4.1 Cyprus' peace formation ...... 19 2.4.2 The 'Third Space of Conflict resolution' in Cyprus ...... 22

3 Research design ...... 24

3.1 Case study design...... 24 3.2 Operationalization...... 25 3.3 Research methods...... 26 3.4 Research location and population...... 27 3.5 Ethical concerns...... 28 3.6 Methodological limitations...... 29

4 The Cyprus peace process...... 30

4.1 The Cyprus conflict...... 30 4.2 The hegemonic national discourses...... 31 4.3 The peace negotiations...... 34

5 Women's groups in the peace process...... 37

5.1 Women's groups in focus in this study...... 37 5.1.1 Hands Across the Divide (HAD)...... 37 5.1.2 The Gender Advisory Team (GAT)...... 39 5.1.3 The Technical Committee on Gender Equality (TCGE)...... 40

3 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 5.2 Priorities for a “gender-just” Cyprus...... 42 5.3 Tensions between women's groups and the TCGE...... 45 5.3.1 Non-transparency of the TCGE...... 45 5.3.2 The TCGE: A broken link between the women's groups and the leaders ...... 47

6 Reaching Track-I ...... 50

6.1 International support for women's groups to reach Track-I...... 50 6.2 The TCGE: 'Ticking boxes'...... 53 6.3 The leaders' reaction to gender issues ...... 58

7 Reaching the grassroots...... 61

7.1 The 'Usual Suspects'...... 61 7.2 Explaining the 'Usual Suspects' phenomenon...... 63 7.2.1 Structural obstacles...... 63 7.2.2 Political obstacles ...... 66 7.2.3 Socio-psychological factors...... 68 7.3 The importance of reaching the population...... 70

8 Conclusions...... 75

9 References...... 78

10 Appendix...... 83

4 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Assistant Professor Jana Krause from Amsterdam University’s Political Science department, for guiding me through this research process and for having aroused my curiosity on the case of Cyprus.

I would also like to thank my family and friends for their encouragement and good insights throughout the research and writing process of this thesis. I would like to thank my dear Arnaud in particular, for supporting me, always.

Last but not least, I want to thank from the bottom of my heart all my respondents for their time, kindness, generosity and welcoming. This thesis would not have been possible to write without their precious help. I would like to thank my friend Evren Inancoglu in particular for his kindness and for having showed me around his beautiful country.

5 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Map

(Ker-Lindsay 2011)

List of abbreviations

CSO Civil Society Organization GAT Gender Advisory Team H4C Home For Cooperation HAD Hands Across the Divide RoC Republic of Cyprus SASG Special Adviser of the Secretary-General TCGE Technical Committee on Gender Equality TRNC Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus UNFICYP United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus

6 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 1 Introduction

In Cyprus, for over fifty years, in spite of great international attention, the peace negotiations have failed. Despite the United Nations' assistance to the ongoing round of peace negotiations that started in 2008, the peace talks remain elite-led and men-dominated. Indeed, women's participation in peace negotiations have been highlighted as a key priority for the United Nations with the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security in 2000. Furthermore, feminist researchers have highlighted the effect the inclusion of women in peace negotiations on the stability and length of peace. However, although being supported by international peacebuilders driven by international norms and standards on the participation of civil society and women in formal and informal peace processes, the participation of women in decision- making positions remain low.

The island of Cyprus is home to two main communities, the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots, physically divided by a UN buffer zone established in 1964 which impedes their interactions. Although Cypriots are allowed to cross the buffer zone from one side to the other since the opening of the first checkpoint in 2003 in Nicosia, the level of interaction between the two communities is low. Indeed, on both sides of the island, nationalism is strongly taught in history books and is reinforced by religious leaders and military services, mandatory in the South as is the North, which fuel ethno-nationalist discourses. However, in the 1990s, a feminist inter-communal movement emerged and stressed the need for having an inclusive peace process and for implementing the gender perspective in the negotiations, relying on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000). Hands Across the Divide (HAD), created in 2001 and the Gender Advisory Team (GAT) created in 2009 are the major inter- communal women's groups aiming at a solution for the Cyprus conflict. They are supported by the United Nations Good Offices in Cyprus, who assist the peace negotiations. In spite of this international attention driven by the international

7 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 norms and standards regarding the need for active participation of women in peace negotiations, these women's groups are not included in the Cyprus peace negotiations. This research paper therefore aims at analyzing how inter-communal women's groups in Cyprus are participating in the peace process. It examines the priorities of women's groups active in the peace process in order to understand their strategies to implement UNSCR 1325, with the end goal of attaining a 'gender-just peace' in Cyprus. This study contributes to a larger scope in the analysis of the way international norms and standards on women's groups participation in peace processes and peace negotiations are supported by international actors. Moreover, it aims at studying the obstacles that impede women's groups to participate in peace processes, despite being supported by international actors. In this study, I will answer the following question:

How do inter-communal women's groups engage in Cyprus' ongoing peace process?

The paper starts by presenting the theoretical approaches that were used to conduct this research. Used as a theoretical background, the debate around 'liberal peacebuilding' and 'local ownership' will first be explained. Then, the debate on the implications of the concept of local ownership in peace negotiations will be treated. Indeed, we will see that the participation of civil society and women is nowadays part of the 'liberal peacebuilding' agenda. We will then turn to the theories used in this research paper to explain the non-participation of inter- communal women's groups in the formal peace process: the concept of 'normative decoupling' as developed by Gizelis and Joseph (2016) and the concept of 'Third Space of Conflict Resolution' developed by Vogel and Richmond (2014). I then turn to the presentation of how the study was conducted, how I designed my research and operationalized the aforementioned concepts. By studying the relationship between the women's groups and the Track-I level, I argue that inter- communal women's groups have not been able to put their priorities on the leaders' agenda. Furthermore, the Cypriot population is face several obstacles that impede their interest in a solution to the Cyprus issue and to gender-related issues. I therefore argue that women's groups in the Cyprus peace process are stuck in the

8 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 middle, between the elite-level and the population, a position which impedes them to implement their priorities for a 'gender-just peace'. Although being supported by the international norms and standards on the participation of women in peace negotiations, women's groups are not able to impact the peace negotiations.

9 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 2 Theoretical framework

2.1 Background to the theoretical framework

2.1.1 Liberal Peacebuilding

While in 1960, the then Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold argued that the UN was ideologically impartial (Paris 2004:16), nowadays, scholars of peace studies agree to say that the UN's peacebuilding strategy can be qualified of 'liberal' (Autesserre 2014; Jarstad and Sisk 2008; Paris 2004). This evolution has been explained as been triggered by the collapse of the Western bloc's main competitor, the Soviet bloc, and thus the triumph of liberalism over communism (Paris 2002:641; Fukuyama 2004). Liberalization in the political sense means democratization, constitutional limitations on the exercise of governmental power, respect for basic civil liberties such as freedom of speech, assembly and conscience (Paris 2004:4). By studying the fourteen major peacebuilding missions that were conducted from 1989 to 1999 in post-conflict societies, Roland Paris concluded that they were all guided by the assumption that liberalization would help to create the conditions for a stable and lasting peace (idem:5). Furthermore, Paris argues that all the international peacebuilding agencies shared the same strategy for promoting stable and lasting peace, namely democratization and marketization1 (idem:19). It is this loose agreement on peacebuilding amongst a wide range of international actors that Richmond calls the 'Peacebuilding Consensus' (Richmond 2004:4). The latter was forged by the belief in the liberal peace thesis which supposes that liberal democracies rarely go to war against each other and what

1Paris analyzed the peacebuilding strategies of the UN, the OSCE, the EU, NATO, the OAS, the IMF, the World Bank, major national development agencies and INGOs, and concluded that they all aimed at transforming the local state into a liberal-market democracy (Paris 2004:22-35).

10 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Paris calls the 'Wilsonian thinking' which consists in the belief that rapid liberalization would create conditions for stable and lasting peace in countries emerging from civil conflict (Paris 2010:642). There are several mechanisms used by international peacebuilders to promote liberal democracy; one is the insertion of political and economic liberalism into peace settlements, by shaping the content of peace agreements while they are being drafted (ibid.). For example, at the end of the El Salvador's civil war, the UN urged the parties to include plans for free and fair elections in the peace agreements (ibid.). Another strategy to promote liberal norms is to provide expert advice during implementation conditionality attached to economic assistance and proxy governance (idem:644). In several war-shattered states such as El Salvador, Cambodia and Guatemala, the UN provided training to local human rights NGOs in order to make them adhere to liberal democratic values (ibid.). Then, several international agencies, in particular the IMF and the World Bank, constrained states to undertake liberal economic and political reforms in exchange of economic support. This was driven by the Washington Consensus of the 1990s which induced developing countries to adapt their political and economical system to the one of the western world (Fukuyama 2004). Finally, in the most obvious cases of liberal peacebuilding, international peacebuilders almost took control of the host authorities which were not able or willing to implement economic and political reforms (Paris 2002:645). An example of such 'proxy- governance' is found in Cambodia, where international peacebuilders were able to manage monetary and fiscal decisions and delve into a host of other civil administrative activities (ibid.).

Paris and most scholars of peacebuilding agree on one point: the vast majority of international peacebuilding operations has failed; tragically well illustrated by the Iraqi and Afghan quagmires (Mac Ginty & Richmond 2013:766). Although being a strong advocate of liberal peacebuilding, Paris criticizes the way in which democratization was promoted by the international peacebuilding agencies in post-conflict states (2004). Paris' critiques towards the international peacebuilding missions of the 1990s are directed against their design and practice of state- building. Indeed, he argues that peacebuilders' “desire to turn war-torn states into stable market democracies was not the problem; rather, the methods they used to

11 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 effect this change [...] proved to be the Achilles’ heel of peacebuilding” (idem:6). Thereby, Paris argues that, instead of focussing on monitoring quick elections for example, international peacebuilders should immediately build governmental institutions which could manage political and economic reforms (idem:8).

2.1.2 Peacebuilding from below

For many critical scholars of peacebuilding, the core problem of liberal peacebuilding is not an issue of design and peacebuilding strategies but rather the fact that international peacebuilders do not take the local into account and that for a stable peace to last, the solution has to be 'bottom-up' rather than 'top-down'. This vision of peacebuilding is affiliated with conflict resolution practitioner John Paul Lederach (Donais 2009:6). Liberal peacebuilding is, as aforementioned, based on the understanding that the liberal norms and standards can be implemented anywhere (Autesserre 2014:53) and international peacebuilders “promote liberal democracy as the prevailing ‘standard of civilization’ that states must accept in order to gain full rights and recognition in the international community” (Paris 2002:650). This conservative discourse of the liberal peace as Richmond and Franks call it (2009:7), which places liberalism states as the only legitimate form of political system, forged the international peacebuilders' habits, narratives and practices, as Autesserre noted (2014). Thus, frictions between international and local actors' everyday practices may occur. Based on a fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she had previously worked as a peacebuilder, Autesserre argues that the international interveners, or the Peacelanders as she calls them, share personal and social practices and create boundaries between them and the local population (2014:249). An example of such a practice is the valuing of thematic expertise over local knowledge and thus placing expatriates in management positions and local staff in subordinate ones. Autesserre notes that this practice is counterproductive because it international peacebuilding is more effective when it promotes local ownership because local actors feel it is “theirs” and are thus are more likely to maintain the results than if they do not participate from the conception of a project to the implementation (idem:37). Autesserre reported how

12 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Congolese people referred to an international aid project as the “muzungu's [foreigners'] projects” (2014:104). The 'liberal peacebuilding' approach has thus been criticized by scholars to be counter-effective. A 'bottom-up' approach to peacebuilding and the inclusion of 'the local' in peace processes has thus been advised by critical scholars.

2.2 'Local ownership' in peace negotiations

The concept of 'local ownership' in peace processes is a broad concept which can be applied to peace negotiations. In this part, we will examine the literature on the inclusion and participation of local actors. As the focus of this study is the participation of women's groups in the Cyprus peace process, I will first present the body of literature on the arguments for and against the inclusion of civil society in peace negotiations. Then, I will present the rationales used by researchers to argue for the active participation of women in peace negotiations.

2.2.1 The inclusion of civil society in peace negotiations

Until the 1990s, wars were mainly fought between states and peace negotiations were primarily carried out between governments, making use of traditional diplomacy. The post-Cold War era witnessed a shift in the nature of conflicts which were no longer fought between states but rather between non-state actors which causes a majority civilian fatalities (Themner & Wallensteen 2014:542). These hybrid forms of conflict are thus “posing new challenges to traditional approaches to mediation and negotiation” (O'Reilly et al 2015:3).

Jarstad points out that civil society is often excluded from peace negotiations which leads to “an uneven start for parties in a democratization process” (2008:23). As put by Barnes (2002:6), peace agreements resulting of high-level talks “rarely provides opportunities for those who did not take up arms […] to have a voice in shaping the agreements or endorsing them.” Indeed, peace agreements do not only serve as ceasefire agreements but they offer opportunities for “addressing the underlying issues generating conflict and developing new

13 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 ‘rules of the game’” (ibid.). Therefore, by participating in peace negotiations, non- state actors and relevant to our study, civil society, would have the chance to transform the structural issues which led to a conflict. Civil society can be defined as “the set of voluntary organizations and groups not created by the state” (Belloni 2008:182). Civil society comprises “organizations that take voluntary collective action around shared interests, purposes and values and that are distinct from those of the state, family and the market” (Paffenholz 2014:70). Paffenholz adds that these organizations can be divided along lines of power, hierarchy, ethnicity and gender (2010:414). In this study, I focus on peaceful civil society. Richmond and Pogodda (2016:4) calls the latter a 'peace formation' which they define as follows:

“‘Peace-formation’ processes are driven partly by local, peaceful forms of agency (though often critical and resistant). Peace formation arises through subaltern power/ agency in sectors of society where non-violent, peaceful change is sought. It aims to negate local violence and preserve and recondition local identity and political institutions. It engages with, and influences, international actors, from donors to the United Nations. It sees political subjects as formative of the state, economy, society, and the international community. Peace formation is limited in scale and scope but is often well versed in the historical, political, economic, social and cultural dynamics required in any stable and peaceful governance system in context. In other words, it comprehends the dynamics of legitimate political authority necessary to make a sustainable peace in ways which external actors cannot, rendering them reliant on extremely problematic blueprints that lack local legitimacy and any real capacity.”

The arguments for the exclusion of civil society are mainly practical in nature. Indeed, according to mediators, broadening participation in negotiations may unnecessarily complicate the process of reaching an agreement (Paffenholz 2014:72). Second, it is difficult to convince the conflicting parties to agree to include CSOs because belligerents are often unwilling to share power with

14 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 additional groups (idem:72). Finally, identifying the appropriate groups can present a challenge for mediators (idem:73). On the other hand, the arguments for the inclusion of civil society in peace negotiations are both normative and practical. From a normative perspective, as we have seen in the last section, international actors involved in peacebuilding are driven by the concept of 'liberal peace' or 'democratic peace' which ”requires the cultivation of a culture of democracy” (Lanz 2011:283). As public participation ”fosters the democratic education process”, international peacebuilders therefore promote the inclusion of society at large in peace negotiations and therefore the inclusion of civil society (ibid.). From a practical perspective, qualitative and quantitative research has shown that involving CSOs in negotiations arguably has a positive effect on creating conditions for long and stable peace (Wanis-St John & Kew 2008, Zanker 2014, Nilsson 2012). As put by Paris, the participation of civil society in peace processes fosters “sustainable reconciliation in divided societies” (2004:160-161). Indeed, Wanis-St. John (2006) highlighted that the exclusion of civil society in the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations in 1993 prevented “the formation of a “broad-based pro-peace constituency” (Lanz 2011:283). As a consequence, the Oslo Peace Accords failed to be implemented and undermined the whole peace process. As summed up by Lanz (ibid.): “The idea is that public participation in peace negotiations enhances the legitimacy of both the process and the outcome, effectively increasing the likelihood of durable peace.”

2.2.2 The inclusion of women in peace negotiations

The literature on the inclusion of civil society in peace negotiations appeared after the failures of numerous non-inclusive peace agreements. On the same line, researchers started examining women's participation in peace processes. This body of literature appeared after the end of the Cold War and examines the effects of armed conflicts on women and ”reflect on women as peacemakers and the nature of women organizing for peace” (Chang et al. 2015:17). Researchers in the 1990s mostly focussed on women’s participation in informal peace processes, stressing their roles as important ‘back-room’ actors, bridging divides and supporting the Track-I level (ibid.).

15 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 The United Nations organized four world conferences on women (UN Women). The first one took place in Mexico City in 1975, the second in Copenhagen in 1980, the third in Nairobi in 1985 and the last one in Beijing in 1995 (ibid.). At the last World Conference on Women, the Platform for Action was adopted. The latter recognized that “without the active participation of women and

the incorporation of women at all levels of decision-making, the goals for equality, development and peace cannot be achieved” (Chang et al. 2015:13). In 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on 'Women, Peace and Security', which acknowledged the gendered aspect of conflicts and therefore stressed the importance of the gender perspective in peace negotiations and peace agreements (UN Security Council 2000; Nilsson 2011:10). The UNSCR 1325 recognized that women bear a disproportionate burden during violent conflicts and that they therefore have indispensable roles to play in peace processes (Chang et al. 2015:13). Feminist academics and NGOs from Africa, Asia and Europe, active in the field of armed conflict, peace and security laid down the foundation work for the adoption of Resolution 1325 (GAT 2012:3). The former agreed to the creation of alliances: the ‘transnational Advocacy Network’ and the ‘Women and Armed Conflict Caucus', coordinated by WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom). The WILPF oversaw the process of drafting, redrafting and finalizing the Resolution 1325 (GAT 2012:3). As put by Demetriou and Hadjipavlou (2016:92): “The strategies the women’s NGOs used were effective mostly because they exemplified a moment of global agency that was nevertheless rooted deeply in diverse local experiences.” The resolution consists of eighteen points based on three pillars: the participation, prevention of violence against and protection of women (UN Security Council 2000). It also refers to the adoption of measures that support local women's initiatives and that involve women in all the implementation mechanisms of peace agreements (ibid.). As pointed out by Demetriou and Hadjipavlou (2016:95), the resolution is a foundational text for building locally relevant sets of measures: “the text itself is not a call to practice but a call to local application.” As UN member states continue hold the major responsibility for ensuring the respect and protection of women’s rights, they have been encouraged to develop national strategies as a form of compliance with UNSCR 1325 (WILPF

16 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 2016). These National Action Plans (NAPs) are therefore a tool to translate UNSCR 1325 into concrete action.

The second wave of literature on women's participation in peace negotiations emerged after the adoption of UNSCR 1325 and generally analyzes the effects of the latter and the successive resolutions adopted by the UNSC recalling the importance of the three pillars (Chang et al. 2015:17). This body of literature “consists predominately of normative studies that mix research and advocacy (ibid.). Such normative arguments are Equality and Rights, Utility and Social Transformation (idem:25). The rights-based rationale is the dominant narrative in the literature on women's participation in peace processes and lies in the argument that “women deserve a seat at the peace table because they are equal to men” (ibid.). Thereby, some researchers argue that since women constitute half of the world's population, they should have “a proportionate role in deciding plans that affect them” (Chang et al 2015:25-26). The utility rationale is claimed by many researchers who highlight that women's inclusion is crucial for a peace process to succeed and lead to stable and lasting peace (Chang et al 2015:27). Researchers using this rationale stress the behavioral characteristics of women which allow them to be, for instance, more suited to collaboration or be more empathetic (ibid.). These claims, although being scientifically proved, can however reinforce gender stereotypes. The social transformation rationale is used by some researchers who argue that peace processes are key moment to address structural and cultural violence against women (Chang et al 2015:27). The addressing of the gender-based structural and cultural violence is what Annika Bjorkdahl and Johanna Mannergren Selimovic named a “gender-just peace”:

”A gender-just peace is understood not as a reconstruction of the prewar situation, but as a positive peace that provides for social justice and equity. It is a peace that contributes to a fundamental shift in the provision of specific rights related to women’s gender roles, a transformation of gender relations in society, and redefinition of

17 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 gendered hierarchies.” (Björkdahl & Mannergren Selimovic 2014:202)

Some authors argue that peace processes are opportunities for women to changes gender dynamics as they often include the signature of a constitution (O'Reilly et al 2015). In fact, contemporary peace agreements do not only serve as ceasefire but also aim at rebuilding the state and societal institutions (Anderson 2015:2). The transformative experience for gender roles of peace processes has been analyzed by a number of feminist scholars (Anderson 2015, Viterna & Fallon 2008). Anderson argues that peace processes constitute a crucial moment for social change: “Women learn political skills, develop and expand political networks and may change public perception of women's capabilities in formal political” (Anderson 2015:5).

2.3 Theoretical Principles

2.3.1 'Decoupling'

As initially developed by Clausewitz, the concept of 'friction' is what arises when one moves from planning a war to actually executing it, friction being what emerges between what was thought and the local realities (Mac Ginty & Richmond 2013:368). Bjorkdahl and Hoglund (2013) stretched this concept from classical military theory to the field of peacebuilding. They thus defined frictions as being “the unexpected and uncertain process in which global and local confluence to mediate and negotiate difference and affinity” (idem:294). Bjorkdahl and Hoglund argue that frictions arise between actors, discourses and practices (idem:295). In the process of democratization, conflictual encounters between the international and the local actors' discourses – i.e. norms and ideas – may arise. As formulated by Bjorkdahl and Hoglund, the liberal peacebuilding discourse “regards the 'local' to lack agency and mobility, and understands post-conflict spaces to be empty spaces in need of new forms, practices and governing institutions” (idem:291). However, as we have seen, many scholars argue that the concept of 'local ownership' is nowadays used by

18 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 most international actors supporting peace processes but most of them have argued that this concept “is vague and difficult to implement” (Richmond 2012:358).

Decoupling has been defined as by Gizelis and Joseph as “the gap between international norms and local norms and the capacity to implement policies” (2016:539-540). As the researchers argue, the concept of decoupling “provides a possible explanation for the observed challenges in peacebuilding and reconstruction” (idem:540). Decoupling occurs through different pathways, either because locals are unwilling to accept the new rules and norms or because they lack capacity to implement policies. Gizelis and Joseph argue that there are three categories of decoupling: the technical decoupling, the normative decoupling and the resource decoupling. First, technical decoupling occurs when “the global norms are not properly configured to the local technical needs” (idem:543). Unlike the two other categories of decoupling, technical decoupling is not synonymous with a lack of compliance with international norms. Then, normative decoupling is the result of the “lack of willingness to comply with externally imposed values and norms” (ibid.). Gizelis and Joseph add that when normative decoupling occurs, there is a “public compliance to global values and practices” which does not match the “local practices, values and behavioural expectations” (ibid.) They argue that in this case, decoupling can be translated by “human rights violations, lack of implementation of gender mainstreaming policies, implementation of institutional reforms or effective taxation” (ibid.). Finally, resource decoupling is “a gap between embracing new policies and the local capacity to implement and monitor the adopted policies” (ibid.). When this form of decoupling occurs, “locals are willing to implement policies and adjust to international norms, but they do not have the capacity to do so effectively” (ibid.). In this study, the concept of normative decoupling is used to analyze why women's groups are not present at the Cyprus negotiations' table.

19 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 2.3.2 Who is 'the local'? Who's ownership?

A major issue in international peacebuilding and state-building interventions is when frictions arise between international and local norms, which have been named 'decoupling' (Gizelis and Joseph 2016). Many scholars argue that nowadays, the concept of 'local ownership' is used by most international actors supporting peace processes. Already in 1992, the UN referred to peacebuilding as

“actions to assist the establishment of indigenous capacity to resolve conflicts peacefully and to identify and support structures, which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid the outbreak of or relapse into conflict.” (Boutros-Ghali 1992)

In this definition, then Secretary-General of the United Nations Boutros-Ghali underlines the importance of the 'bottom-up' characteristic of peacebuilding for a stable and lasting peace. The inclusion of local actors is nowadays a UN norm and a component of the liberal peacebuilding strategy. As argued by Richmond and Pogodda (2016:3), “liberal peacebuilding normally occurs through the United Nations according to multilateral agreements on supporting democratisation, the rule of law, human rights, civil society, ‘good governance’ and economic liberalisation.” [my italics]. Inclusive and 'bottom-up' peace processes including civil society are therefore what the UN aims at assisting. However, in practice, most of international peacebuilders have argued that the concept of 'local ownership' “is vague and difficult to implement” (Richmond 2012:358).

2.4 The 'Third Space' of Cyprus' peace formation

2.4.1 Cyprus' peace formation

The Cyprus peace process has long been criticized for being elite-led and non- inclusive (Lordos 2009:163–179; Kaymak et al. 2008; Jarraud & Lordos 2012:271). Despite the fact that successive United Nations secretary generals have directly requested the leaders of both communities to involve civil society in the

20 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 peace process, the latter has continued to be high-level talks between the leaders. Indeed, in 2011, the Secretary-General stated the following:

“I reiterate my call to Mr. Christofias and Mr. Eroglu to engage civil society in the task of reaching a comprehensive settlement and to take into account these and other important civil society efforts to contribute to the peace process” (UN Security Council 2011).

After the Turkish invasion of the North of the island in 1974, a few bi-communal peace initiatives emerged. A notable bi-communal initiative that emerged in the 1970s is the Nicosia Sewerage Network in 1978, assisted by the UNDP and the World Bank to create a modern sewage system for the divided city (Loizos 2006:184). This initiative still exists and is known as the Nicosia Master Plan (ibid.). At a more informal level, the de facto partition of the island prevented the formation of inter-communal groups as communication across the Green Line was almost impossible (Broome 2004:192). Indeed, from 1974 to the opening of the Green Line in 2003, Cypriots were not able to physically cross to the other side and therefore had to find alternative methods to meet, such as through meetings in the mixed-village of Pyla, Cyprus or abroad (Jarraud et al. 2013:48; Richmond & Vogel 2013:2). Moreover, there was huge pressure on activists from ethno-nationalists on both sides as Greek Cypriot academic and activist Maria Hadjipavlou explained:

“I have been involved in bi-communal works since the 1980s. When I did my Ph.D, I was the first one to analyze the Cyprus conflict from a conflict resolution perspective which meant that you also need to include the Other's story, the Other's narrative, the Other's fears, concerns, needs and understanding of justice. That was an anathema at that time because, you know: “how could you talk about the enemy when our country is occupied, when there are 40,000 troops here, when there are violations of human rights and people are refugees?” So I had a lot of troubles, not only from the right-wing and nationalists but even from people who were at that time writing about the Cyprus conflict” (Hadjipavlou 2017).

21 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

It was only in the 1990s that civil society activists and academics started a real dialogue on how to find a solution to the conflict (Hadjipavlou 2004:202). As put by an observer of the Cyprus peace process: “By the year 2000, a bi-communal citizen peace movement, vaguely noticeable in the early 1990s, reached maturity as it developed a recognizable voice” (Anastasiou 2009:15). This evolution in the 1990s is linked to a growing in assistance by various international actors. In fact, because of the buffer zone, bi-communal meetings in Cyprus could only take place with special authorization arranged by international third parties (Broome 2004:194). The aforementioned social pressure activists suffered from was therefore exacerbated by the contact with international actors, as participants of peace movements “were sometimes accused of being 'used' by the internal community as political pawns to promote the interests of outsiders” (ibid.). As pointed out by Richmond:

“Many in the inter-communal movement quickly came to perceive international support as both an opportunity to undercut local and regional structures (such as ethno-nationalist politicians or the power of the Turkish state and military), as as patronizing and indicative of a lack of international awareness and sensitivity about the conflict” (Richmond 2016:5).

Since 2008, the year that marked the start of the current round of peace negotiations, significant progress has been noted “in terms of an enabling legal and financial environment for civil society” (Jarraud et al 2013:53). As we will see in the next section, the peace formation has thus been able to create its own space and has offices. Moreover, an increasing international help from the United Nations Development Program and United States Agency for International Development led to a strengthening of the peace formation by supporting them financially (ibid.). This international support is driven by the fact that Cyprus' peace formation values correspond to the 'liberal peacebuilding' agenda of the international peacebuilders:

22 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 “In the Cyprus case, “local” norms associated with progressive thinking about peace are more or less exactly in line with Western understandings of the liberal peace, human rights, minority rights, democracy, a rule of law, and the neoliberal framework for the state. Peace formation is mostly in line with external governmental forms of power, expressed through the high-level peace process, the work of the UN and the donors.” (Richmond 2016:111)

Thereby, international actors actors involved in the Cyprus peace process tend to regard Cypriot NGOs as “tools within the liberal peace framework” (Vogel & Richmond 2013:2-3). The aforementioned call from the Secretary-General to the leaders of both communities to include civil society in the solution to the Cyprus conflict illustrates the strategy of the UN to bring an “international envisioned solution” to the conflict and the Cyprus' liberalization and “Europeanization” (ibid.):

“There is a widespread feeling that a legitimate, liberal state needs such movements, even if only for symbolic reasons and as long as they do not challenge historical power structures. For this reason, the inter-communal movement treads a fine line between acceptance and sanction, impact and marginalization, and has to be extremely careful how it operates. To have political impact, it maintains a subtle profile and works very carefully over a long time frame, in ways that quietly resonate with local groups and international supporters, without raising the ire of state-level authorities.” (Richmond 2016:109)

2.4.2 The 'Third Space of Conflict resolution' in Cyprus

In May 2011, the leaders from both sides of the Green Line attended the opening ceremony of the Home for Cooperation, a building located in the UN buffer zone in Nicosia (Home For Cooperation). This space, created by Cyprus' peace formation and funded by international actors, hosts peace-related activities and is the “embodiment of inter-communal cooperation” (ibid.):

23 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 “One of the remarkable bi-communal achievements by a group of young inspiring and committed teachers, academics and activists has been the reconstruction and renovation of a bombed building in the buffer zone into a "Home for Cooperation" with funds from Norway, Sweden, the UNDP and others.” (Hadjipavlou 2012:109)

At the Home for Cooperation, six inter-communal NGOs and think tanks have their offices: the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR), the Center for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development (SeeD), the Peace Players, the Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process under the Auspices of the Embassy of Sweden, the Humanitarian Relief Mission and the Writing Room (Home For Cooperation). According to Vogel and Richmond (2014), the location of the Home for Cooperation in the UN Buffer Zone illustrates the place where the Cypriot peace formation is situated in the society. The scholars argue that the Home for Cooperation translates the results of both peace-related activities' weak local support from the population and from the state-level on both sides of the Green Line:

“In one sense, the island’s peace movements have retreated; in another sense, they have occupied an alternative space. This space is currently isolated, but it preserves ideas deemed too subversive for the wider Cypriot society, or the two states that currently exist, and even for the internationally sponsored peace process.” (Vogel & Richmond 2014:4)

Indeed, the NGOs located in the Home for Cooperation are contained in a “small, self-enclosed” space which is the UN Buffer Zone (Vogel & Richmond 2014:271). Vogel has therefore called this a “Third Space of Conflict Resolution” (ibid.):

“Peace-related civil society is ensnared in a third space of conflict resolution, literally speaking the UN Buffer Zone, Nicosia. While this is regarded as symbolic and convenient, without relocating such peace movements from the periphery to the centre of society an

24 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 important piece of the peace process is missing. By doing so it becomes clear where the peace process has actually been taking place.” (Vogel & Richmond 2014:267)

Cyprus' peace formation has a strong link with international actors as they are in line with liberal values but is disconnected from the local realities: they struggle to mobilize the nationalist population on both sides of the divide and also the state- level which remains inflexible on territorial sovereignty (Richmond 2016:111). The peace formation is therefore left in a 'Third Space of Conflict Resolution', illustrated by their geographical location in the no man's land which is the UN buffer zone.

25 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 3 Research design

This thesis investigates how inter-communal women's groups in Cyprus engage in the peace process. In the last Chapter, we have discussed the theoretical debate between 'liberal peacebuilding' and 'local ownership'. We have discussed the application of 'local ownership' in peace negotiations by examining how the participation of civil society and women are supported by international peacebuilders. We have then turned to the theoretical concepts which will be used to analyze the participation of women's groups in the Cyprus peace process, namely 'normative decoupling' as developed by Gizelis and Joseph (2016) and the 'Third Space of Conflict Resolution', developed by Vogel and Richmond (2014). In this chapter, I will present how I operationalized these theoretical principles and how I conducted my research by discussing the methods I used.

3.1 Case study design

The form of the research question determines the appropriate research strategy to use. As pointed out by Yin, explanatory questions, “how” and “why” questions, are likely to lead to the use of case studies, experiments and histories (Yin 2008:18). My research will examine contemporary events but does not need control over behavioral events, so I will neither use history nor experiment (idem:17). My research question requires direct observation and systematic interviewing (idem:19). I therefore opted for conducting a case study, which can be defined as

“an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident and in which multiple source of evidence are used” (Yin 2008:23).

26 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 This research paper is a single-case study where I will use well-formulated theories to explain a case, namely 'normative decoupling' developed by Gizelis and Joseph (2016) and the 'Third Space of Conflict Resolution' (Vogel & Richmond 2014) (Yin 2008:47).

3.2 Operationalization

In order to conduct my research, the theoretical principles needed to be deconstructed and operationalized. In order to investigate how international actors involved in the Cyprus peace process promoted the liberal peacebuilding component of women's participation in peace negotiations, I will answer the following question: How do international actors involved in the Cyprus peace process support inter-communal women's groups?

Using the concept of 'Third Space of Conflict Resolution' developed by Vogel and Richmond (2014), I will analyze whether the phenomenon applies to the women's groups. I will therefore first investigate how women's groups reach the state-level by asking myself: How do inter-communal women's groups reach the Track-I level and how did the latter respond to their priorities? Then, I will analyze how the inter-communal women's groups demands for participation in the peace process are received by the population in Cyprus and what their strategies for reaching the population are: How do inter-communal women's groups reach the population and how does the latter respond?

Finally, by using the concept of 'normative decoupling', I will ask myself whether the Track-I level's public compliance to liberal values regarding women's participation in peace processes match the local practices, values and behavioural expectations of the Cypriot society.

27 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 3.3 Research methods

In the research design of this case study, I used two research methods to collect data, namely qualitative interviewing and participant observation. In addition, literature research was used to understand the context of the research, i.e. the Cyprus conflict. The qualitative interview has been defined as “a site of social interaction in which resulting account will have constructed elements even where individual, biographical accounts are sought” (Miller 2016:1). In order to collect my data, I conducted qualitative interview with members of inter-communal women's groups from the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. By conducting narrative interviews, I aimed at understanding how they engaged in the Cyprus peace process. Therefore, I asked them about their priorities for a gender-just peace, the challenges that they face and how they cope with them. My aim was to understand their relationship with the Track-I level and with the population. I therefore asked my respondents about their strategies that they use to implement their priorities. I then used the method of participant observation, which is an ethnographic method which enables the researcher to be immersed in culture and context (Parlevliet 2017). This research method combines participation in lives of people studied with careful observation and recording of data. Almost every morning, I went to the Home for Cooperation's cafe to write. There, I could observe the interactions between the visitors. I participated to several inter-communal events. On a Sunday, I participated to a hike organized by an inter-communal network composed of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots from various backgrounds. They meet once a month to visit villages in the North or in the South, on a rotating basis. This time, we went to visit a castle in the North of Cyprus and had lunch in a small village. I also participated in a demonstration organized by the Leftist parties on both sides who occupied the buffer zone to show their support for a solution. Finally, I participated at an event organized by women's groups on April 28, 2017, in South Nicosia which I will describe later.

28 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 3.4 Research location and population

In order to conduct this research, I spent a month in Nicosia, Cyprus, in April 2017. The Cypriot capital is the largest city of the island and is cut from east to west by the Green line. Living in Nicosia for a month and talking with locals allowed me to better understand the master narratives dominant in each community. The experience of crossing the Green line and observing the physical divide of the Cypriot people gave a sense of the realities of the conflict on the ground. Furthermore, I chose the Cypriot capital as the base for my fieldwork because all the bi-communal women's groups are based there. In order to find my respondents, I used two types of sampling: In order to find my respondents, I used two types of sampling. The first is that of convenience sampling, in which I interviewed people who were easily available to me (Bryman 2008:183). The second mode of sampling I used was snowball sampling (ibid:184).. Through talking with my respondents, I was recommended to interview other people who they thought I should interview. I conducted eleven interviews, eight of which were recorded. I interviewed four Greek Cypriots, three Turkish Cypriots, one Armenian Cypriot and three internationals. Only one of my respondents is a man: Turkish Cypriot Evren Inancoglu who is a member of the Technical Committee on Gender Equality. I conducted an interview in Swedish with Sara Brandt-Hansen, one in French with Cecile Meunier and the rest was conducted in English.

Table 1. Recapitulative table of my respondents

Family name, first Nationality Occupation and Organization name Bozkurt, Umut Turkish Cypriot GAT, Technical Committee on Gender Equality Brandt-Hansen, Swedish Diplomat at the Embassy of Sweden in Sara Cyprus Çolak, Emine Turkish Cypriot Former Minister for Foreign Affairs to Northern Cyprus (2015-2016)

29 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

Eskidjian, Salpy Armenian Cypriot Office of the Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process, under the Auspices of the Embassy of Sweden Hadjipavlou, Maria Greek Cypriot GAT, HAD, Technical Committee on Gender Equality Inancoglu, Evren Turkish Cypriot AHDR, Technical Committee on Gender Equality Korpela, Sanna Finnish Wellspring Association Koukkides- Greek Cypriot Cyprus Women's Lobby, Center for Procopiou, Anna Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development, HAD Meunier, Cecile French Diplomat at the Embassy of France in Cyprus Papastravou, Greek Cypriot World Vision, HAD Sophia Zenon, Magda Greek Cypriot GAT, HAD

3.5 Ethical concerns

Before meeting my respondents, I made sure to obtain their informed consent (Fuji 2012:718). Thereby, I made certain that my respondents' participation was voluntary. Furthermore, the nature and aim of my research was explained to my respondents so that they could give me their full consent. During my time in the field, I kept in mind that entering the respondents' world “is a privilege, not a right” (Krause 2017). Therefore, in order to give my respondents a sense of “owning the research situation”, I let them choose the meeting place and let them set the boundaries, e.g. not insist if they did not want to share something that interested me. I respected the will of my respondents and cautiously took note of whether they agreed to be recorded and whether they accepted to let me use their names or if they preferred to stay anonymous. As put by Fuji, the questions that social scientists raise in interviews may cause, directly or indirectly, social, psychological and/or physical harms (2012:717). The scholar recommends to check with local contacts for insight into the risks that the researcher might cause to respondents (idem:719). The questions that I raised in regards to what it was like to be a feminist activist in Cyprus may

30 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 have caused psychological harms and brought back traumas when the respondent shared a private story that happened to her. The tensions between the communities being linked to the history of the conflict, a lot of research that I did before going to the field aimed therefore at becoming as familiar as possible with the contemporary history of Cyprus.

3.6 Methodological limitations

Prior to my arrival in Cyprus, I contacted the Embassy of Sweden to help me get contacts with members of women's groups. On my first day in Nicosia, I met the intern of the Embassy and we went to the Home for Cooperation. There, I was introduced directly to some of my respondents and continued meeting them throughout the time of my fieldwork. During my stay in Nicosia, I only had real conversations with pro-reconciliation Cypriots. I only had brief conversations with people with a nationalist discourse. The hegemonic national discourses presented in the next chapter are therefore only based on second-hand sources. Moreover, because of a lack of time, I could not interview Cypriots who are not active in the peace process or interested in the inclusion of the gender perspective in the peace negotiations. In the last chapter, I examine the obstacles to the participation of the population in women's groups. I therefore relied on the interviews with my respondents and on the existing literature. To conclude, my whole fieldwork experience in Nicosia has taken place in the “Third Place of Conflict Resolution” which Vogel and Richmond (2013) analyzed as I was only surrounded by pro-solution and feminist Cypriots.

31 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 4 The Cyprus peace process

4.1 The Cyprus conflict

The coexistence of several communities on the island is at the root of the current inter-ethnic character Cyprus. The Greek presence dates back to the second millennium BC. The Turkish-Ottoman presence dates back to the 16th century, since Cyprus was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1878 (Baider & Hadjipavlou 2008:72). In 1955, the Greek Cypriots began a guerrilla war against the colonial domination of the United Kingdom under which Cyprus was dominated since 1878. The Greek Cypriot claimed Enosis, or unification with Greece while the Turkish Cypriot minority aspired to Taksim, e.g. a partition of Cyprus between Turkey and Greece (Gavlanek 2013:68). In 1960, Greece, Turkey and the UK organized the independence of the island, which became the Republic of Cyprus (RoC). However, the constitution they outlined strengthened the divisions (Hadjipavlou 2006). The Greek Cypriots accused the constitution of guaranteeing the Turkish Cypriot minority a significant political weight in view of its demographic weight, as well as a right of veto over the decisions of the Parliament (Baider & Hadjipavlou 2008:73). This led the Turkish Cypriot representatives to leave the government in 1963. This year was punctuated by constitutional crises and violent inter-communal clashes perpetrated by extremist militias on both sides (idem:74). Consequently, the United Nations Security Council passed a Resolution under Chapter VII and set up a peacekeeping force in 1964: the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) (UN Security Council 1964). This peacekeeping force is still in place today and is one of the longest-running UN peacekeeping missions (UNFICYP). In 1974, the National Guard, headed by Greek officers launched a coup attempt to reattach Cyprus to Greece. Turkey intervened militarily to protect the

32 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 interests of the Turkish Cypriot community and occupied the North of the island. The period which followed was marked by human losses, destruction of the cultural heritage and displacement of the population: the Greek Cypriot population was displaced to the south while the Turkish Cypriots had to exile themselves in the north. The North/South division, embodied by the the Green

line1, was placed under the control of the Blue Helmets. In November 1983, the Northern part of island was proclaimed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) – a declaration considered illegal by the United Nations Security Council and recognized by Turkey only (Baider & Hadjipavlou 2008:74).

4.2 The hegemonic national discourses

The root causes of the conflict in Cyprus is perceived differently from the two conflicting parties' perspectives. Consequently, the aspirations of the two main communities regarding the future of the island are rather antagonistic. The Greek Cypriot hegemonic narrative sees the current situation as having started in 1974 with the Turkish 'invasion' and 'occupation' of the northern part of Cyprus (Anastasiou 2009:131). The Greek Cypriots generally perceive the conflict from a legalistic point of view and stress the illegality of the military invasion and occupation of a UN-recognized state by another state. The conflict is thus seen as a a “violation of the legality and territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus” (ibid.). The invasion led to the forced displacement of many Greek Cypriots who had to leave their property in the North. The 'property issue' is the most contentious point for the Greek Cypriots as they have not received compensation or recovered their properties. The Greek Cypriot community ideally aims at reuniting the island to recreate a unitary state by restoring the original form of the Republic of Cyprus, i.e. prior to 1974. Therefore, they emphasize the need for all Turkish troops to withdraw from the island (Galvanek 2013:71). While the Greek Cypriot narrative focuses on the period from 1974 to present, the Turkish Cypriots focus on the period from 1963 to 1974 (Hadjipavlou 1998:262). Indeed, the Turkish Cypriots generally argue that the other side overlooks the “injustices, indignities and deprivations” that they may have suffered before the Turkish invasion of 1974 (Stavrinides 1999:16). After the

33 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 independence of the island, the Turkish-Cypriot community started to become marginalized within the machinery of the state and were pushed by paramilitaries into overpopulated enclaves (Demetriou 2012:57). According to Hadjipavlou, Turkish Cypriots' memories of the decade following the first clash are tainted by a feeling of being “second-class citizens”: “exclusion from opportunities to study, […] working in low-paid jobs for the Greeks, neglected villages without electricity and running water with non-asphalted roads, threats by and massacres of whole families by EOKA B, no passports to travel abroad but Turkey, economic hardships, etc.” (Hadjipavlou 1998:262). The Turkish Cypriot community thus considered the Turkish 'invasion' as a peace intervention to protect them (Galvanek 2013:70). On the same note, the continued presence of Turkish troops in Cyprus is, according to the Turkish Cypriot community, seen as necessary for their own protection – as opposed to the Greek Cypriots to whom the Turkish army is seen as a threat (ibid.). However, as rightly pointed out by Galvanek, “the Turkish side tends to ignore the fact that both the military operation and the system of security that has been set up for the TRNC has led to massive and perpetual human rights' violations of the Greek Cypriots” (ibid.). The Turkish Cypriots see the acceptance of the Republic of Cyprus as the only legitimate government by the international community as a major injustice that has never been addressed (Broome 2004:1). The non-recognition of the “TRNC” is indeed lived by Turkish Cypriots as hard. Former Minister for Foreign Affairs for Northern Cyprus and activist Emine Colak claimed the following:

“This is the challenge of living in our environment which is one where you think and you hope for a certain standard of civilization, human rights, economy, prospect. But at the same time, we have to establish that without any kind of international formal recognition. In many cases, we are being attacked and deliberately excluded, downgraded by the aggressive politics of the South who thinks that any kind of contact with the Turkish Cypriots would have – both with them and with everyone else – a kind of upgrading effect or a kind of recognition of the TRNC” (Colak 2017:65).

34 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 She added that she felt that this non-recognition has a deep meaning on the everyday life of Turkish Cypriots: “they're 'first-class citizens' and we are 'second- class'. The 'so-called'. We are the 'so-called' people. 'The so-called police', 'the so- called ministers'. We are 'so-called humans'!” (Colak 2017:69). The Turkish Cypriots aim at reaching a solution that would allow Cyprus to remain a bi-zonal and bi-communal state, as they have “little interest in re-joining a government that discriminated against them in the past and in giving up their security guarantees from Turkey” (Galvanek 2013:70). Greek Cypriot academic and activist Maria Hadjipavlou summed up the hegemonic discourses of both communities as follows:

“The Turkish Cypriot narrative was built after 1974 on the premise that: “We are so different we cannot live together so we need two separate states. We speak different languages, we have different religions, cultures, etc.” […]. The official premise on this side was not that we cannot live together, it was the opposite: “We could live together in the past, why not today?” (Hadjipavlou 2017:43).

The hegemonic narratives on both sides of the island are constructed along the ethno-nationalist lines of the two major communities living in Cyprus: the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots. Thereby, the stories and sufferings of the smaller communities – the Maronite, Armenian and Latin communities who constitute 2% of the population – have been excluded of the dominant narratives. As noted by Hadjipavlou (2010:5), “the decade from 1963 to 1974 was a difficult period for the Turkish Cypriot community as it was for Armenian Cypriots, but this has not been recorded.” As we will see, and important to this study, the strong ethno-nationalist narratives which dictated the design of the peace negotiations have not only overshadowed the sufferings and the stories of the smaller communities, but also those of women.

35 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 4.3 The peace negotiations

Since 1974, the conflict's dynamics in Cyprus have survived vivid international attention: a United Nations Peacekeeping mission, peace negotiations under the UN auspices, the European Union's pressure for governance reform, etc... Indeed, from the outbreak of the conflict, there have been numerous unsuccessful rounds of negotiations which could be characterized by missed opportunities and general pessimism. However, in 2002, a glimmer of hope was felt when the UN presented a peace plan for Cyprus (Congressional Research Service 2017). The so-called 'Annan plan' envisaged a federation with two constituent parts, presided over by a rotating presidency. In April 2004, a referendum was held on whether to accept the reunification plan in order for Cyprus to enter as a united island in the European Union. The results of this referendum were quite revelatory of the positions of both communities regarding their resolution aspirations: 67% of the Turkish Cypriots voted in favor of the Plan while 76% of the Greek Cypriots voted against it (Galvanek 2013:69). The Republic of Cyprus was thus one of the ten new states that joined the EU on May 1, 2004, but did so as a divided island (idem:70). In 2008, the President of the Republic of Cyprus and leader of the Greek Cypriot community Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat (both leaders of the left-wing parties on their respective side) agreed to start working together towards a comprehensive settlement under the auspices of the United Nations (Demetriou & Hadjipavlou 2016:87). The Secretary-General therefore restored the Good Offices mission in Cyprus led by the Special Adviser of the Secretary General (SASG) “to assist the parties in the conduct of full- fledged negotiations” (UN Cyprus Talks). The Office of the Special Adviser was established to provide direct support to the talks and is therefore composed of political affairs officers and thematic experts (UNFICYPb). Since August 2014, SASG Espen Barth Seide assists the negotiators to reach a comprehensive settlement. The goal of the talks is “a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation with political equality and a single international personality” (UNFICYPc). With the facilitation of the UN Good Offices, the leaders created six working groups, each focussing on key points of the negotiations: 'governance and power- sharing', 'European Union matters', 'security and guarantees', 'territory', 'property'

36 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 and 'economic matters' (UNFICYPb). These key points represent the contentious issues that the leaders of both communities negotiate on in order to draft a constitution for a federal Cyprus. Furthermore, seven technical committees were created “to work on confidence- building measures aimed not only at improving the everyday life of Cypriots, but also at encouraging and facilitating greater interaction between the two communities.” (ibid.). Over the years, additional technical committees were created and today, there are eleven technical committees focussing on culture, humanitarian matters, health, economic and commercial matters, criminal matters, culture heritage, crossing points, broadcasting, environment, education and gender equality (UN Cyprus Talks). From 2015, the hopes for a solution for the Cyprus issue were high. The Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Anastasiades and Akinci met several times in Mont Pèlerin and Geneva, Switzerland, between December 2016 and January 2017, together with the European Union and the guarantor powers, Turkey, Greece and Great Britain (Congressional Research Service 2017). On February 13, 2017, the talks collapsed when the Greek Cypriot Parliament adopted a bill instructing schools to commemorate a referendum held in 1950 among Greek Cypriots on enosis – the union of Cyprus with Greece. Turkish Cypriot leader Akinci refused to continue the talks until the legislation was reversed (ibid.). Former Minister for Foreign Affairs to Northern Cyprus explained why this bill created this reaction:

“The crisis there was such a big deal. Everybody on our side thought it was a big deal – but especially when I talked to the leader, I could see that his heart was bleeding. It was not just to commemorate this in the army's ceremonies; it was in schools. He said: 'Look, we realize that there's a problem here, on the way we are raising the young and especially how the Greek Cypriot young are not motivated enough for reunification, and what are you doing? You are taking something of a nationalist commemoration which is a kind of an admiration of the Enosis struggle, which nobody particularly supports now. It's totally unacceptable for the Turkish Cypriots and it was also something that brought about the 1974 war, because there was a coup with the general from Greece to unite Cyprus with Greece... So you know,

37 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 everything bad that happened in Cyprus can be somehow connected to that 'Enosis' word and you are now passing this decision, right in the middle of negotiations to commemorate this in schools?'” (Colak 2017).

Finally, in early April 2017, the Greek Cypriot parliament “partially reversed the enosis legislation” (Congressional Research Service 2017). Consequently, on April 11, 2017, the leaders agreed to resume the peace talks and started meeting again in May 2017 (ibid.).

In addition to have been defined as elite-led negotiations, the formal peace process is also men-dominated. Indeed, as pointed out by Anna Koukkides-Procopiou (2017), “the six critical people of the process are all men.” She continued by saying: “We've got two leaders who are men, two negotiators who are men and we have two spokesmen who are men” (ibid.). “No woman, from any of the communities in Cyprus, has to this day been part of the high-level negotiating teams that discuss the future of the island” (Demetriou & Hadjipavlou 2016:97). As specified by former Minister for Foreign Affairs to Northern Cyprus:

“The negotiating table has women but they kind of take a secondary role: they're advisers or note-takers. The presidents on both sides and the negotiators are men – always been like that. It has become like an unchanging tradition” (Colak 2017).

The absence of women in decision-making positions in the peace negotiations and the lack of gender perspective to the negotiations led to the mobilization of pro- solution Cypriot women from both sides of the divide. In the next chapter, we will present the emergence of these women's groups, the women's groups in focus in this study, their priorities and the tensions between them.

38 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 5 Women's groups in the peace process

According to Cypriot feminist scholars, the importance given to the military conflict in the hegemonic national discourses has had the effect of eclipsing other debates about social inequalities and gendered social relations (Baider & Hadjipavlou 2008:75). This explains why, until very recently, feminist activism was above all related to the "Cypriot problem" and that only a minority of women's movements worked independently from a political party. Furthermore, as for the entire peace formation in Cyprus, feminist efforts are often criticized for being supported by external actors and are therefore seen as a kind of neo- colonization (ibid.). In spite of these obstacles, from the 1990s, several programs devoted to women and their empowerment have emerged, usually under the aegis of the United Nations (idem:76). During this decade, around 60 bi-communal projects emerged, all aiming at raising awareness on the issues of women's rights, domestic violence, integration of migrant women and assistance to single-parent families. In 2000, Greek Cypriots founded the Mediterranean Institute for Gender Studies (MIGS), a non-profit organization that organizes and promotes projects of seminars and other field activities on gender-related issues (ibid.). In 2007, a feminist training at the University of Cyprus was created with a program in Gender Studies. In this research, I mainly focussed on three different inter- communal women's groups which I will present in the next section: Hands Across the Divide (HAD), the Gender Advisory Team (GAT) and the Technical Committee on Gender Equality (TCGE).

5.1 Women's groups in focus in this study

5.1.1 Hands Across the Divide (HAD)

39 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Hands Across the Divide (HAD) was created after a two-days seminar named “Communication in Divided Societies: What Women Can Do”, organized by the British Council and facilitated by feminist academic Cynthia Cockburn in March 2001, in London (Cockburn 2004:10). This seminar brought together women from conflict areas such as Israel/Palestine, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland. The Cypriot women met again in London in February 2002 and created HAD, the first internationally recognized Cypriot bi-communal association (ibid.). Member of HAD Magda Zenon explained how the members managed to create the group in spite of the aforementioned communication obstacles present in Cyprus at the time:

”We actually had to go to the UK to come together and put together our constitution because that was before 2003, before the check-points were open. If we wanted to meet, we used to meet in Pyla, which is near Larnaca and has always been a mixed village. Even before the opening of the checkpoints, the Turkish Cypriot could cross over there, that was easier, even though they had a hard time. We often went to meetings and they would not let the Turkish Cypriots through.” (Zenon 2017)

HAD mostly did grassroots initiatives. Examples of such initiatives were given by Magda Zenon: “In 2001, when Clerides and Denktash met for the first time, we were standing at the checkpoints with white balloons in the name of peace, to show our support” (2017). At another occasion, HAD organized an event on Ledra Street together with GAT, as Magda Zenon explained: “we created this board at the checkpoint Friday the whole day and Saturday the whole day and people wrote about what peace meant” (2017). HAD members also wrote letters to the Cypriot negotiators in 2008 “inviting them to take into consideration UNSCR 1325 to include women in the peace negotiations and in the working groups” (GAT 2012:2). Magda Zenon explained that HAD's actions are in newspapers and that their work gets attention but that they never reached Track-I. Nevertheless, she argued that their “goal was not necessarily to go to Track-I” because they “are a grassroots movement” (Zenon 2017).

40 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 5.1.2 The Gender Advisory Team (GAT)

The Gender Advisory Team (GAT) was formed in October 2009 by a group of women academics and activists in gender and peace from both sides (Demetriou & Hadjipavlou 2016:90). The GAT defines itself as a “group of women who are interested in seeing gender equality integrated into the peace negotiations in Cyprus as well in all the peace building processes post-conflict” (GAT 2012:7). In March 2010, GAT sent a set recommendations to the leaders of both communities “to ensure that their discussions on ‘governance and power-sharing’ address issues

of gender equality” (idem:8). In September 2011, GAT submitted further recommendations to to the leaders regarding the gender aspect of the negotiation points of ‘citizenship’ and ‘property’ (ibid.). In 2012, GAT organized an international conference on Women and Peace together with the Cyprus branch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) (Demetriou & Hadjipavlou 2016:91). The conference focused on several key-points of the peace negotiations – 'governance and power sharing', 'citizenship rights', 'property rights' and 'economic rights' – and discussed them through a gender equality perspective (ibid.). The same year, the group publicized its set of recommendations (GAT 2012), which I will present in the next section. As explained by GAT members Olga Demetriou and Maria Hadjipavlou (2016:91), “these themes had been included in the negotiations as separate 'chapters' for discussions and GAT's goal was to propose specific recommendations for legal and institutional parameters that the final agreement should include.” The two GAT members further explain what the GAT's main achievement has been:

“Perhaps the most important of the group’s contribution so far has been the opening of a public discussion on the participation of women in peace negotiations and peacebuilding processes. This opens up the concept of ‘activism’ more generally as a plural one, a question of multiple voices and multiple perspectives. The mental shift required here is thus considerable, because the dominant rhetoric on the Cyprus problem has defined the terms of the debate as ethnic. This exclusive viewpoint has marginalized other issues including gender.

41 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Thus, the political settlements as proposed over the years, even though they have appeared as gender neutral, have been far from that” (Demetriou & Hadjipavlou 2016:91).

5.1.3 The Technical Committee on Gender Equality (TCGE)

As we have seen in section 4.3, since 2008, the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders, assisted by the UN Good Offices, established eleven technical committees, including one on gender equality. As pointed out by my respondents, the Technical Committee on Gender Equality (TCGE) is the fruit of pressure exercised by women's groups on the leaders to implement Resolution 1325. Member of HAD and GAT Magda Zenon explained how she used an international lobby to urge the leaders to create this

“Because I was on the European Women's Lobby, I was going to a plenary meeting and there, you're allowed to put an emergency motion. The negotiations were just going to start in 2015, and I put an emergency motion in front of the EWL to pressurize the leadership to implement 1325. That is one the things that encouraged them to do the confidence-building measures of the gender equality technical committee.” (Zenon 2017)

The leaders agreed to create a TCGE in May 2015. Member of the TCGE Evren Inangoclu explained that the technical committee “produce[s] legal and institutional recommendations for a federal Cyprus [that] ensure[s] gender equality” (2017). The mandate of the TCGE is confidential and so is the work they produce. However, my respondents who are members of the TCGE told me the recommendations they send to the leaders are legal suggestions for the drafting of the constitution for a united federal Cyprus. Maria Hadjipavlou added that the recommendations they put together with the members of the TCGE are the gender aspect of four of the different chapters under discussion during the negotiations which are “governance, property, economy, citizenship.” Activist and

42 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 member of the TCGE Umut Bozkurt summed what the technical committee has done since its existence:

“What we did in the course of two years: in the first year, we came up with a number of proposals and we took them to the leaders. Some of these proposals were OK for the leaders, some of them were not so OK. […]. The main thing we had started doing before what happened was going through the legal text and incorporating the gender equality principles.” (Bozkurt 2017)

The TCGE, as all the other technical committees, is jointly made up of Greek and Turkish Cypriots appointed by the two leaders. A TCGE member explained that there were no representatives of other communities and added that it was because the conflict is “defined as a Greek-Turkish Cypriot problem [and therefore], there are no Maronites, Armenians or Latins” (Hadjipavlou 2017). As explained by Evren Inancoglu (2017:29), the backgrounds of the technical committee members are diverse: “some of them are civil society activists, some of them are academics and some of them are government officials.” Members of all technical committees have their meetings at the UN Headquarters in the Buffer Zone, at the old airport of Nicosia. During these meetings, members of the TCGE discuss and put together recommendations that they send as suggestions to the leaders and the negotiators.

Even though these groups exist, it is important to note that they are overlapping and that women active in the informal peace process form a loose and flexible movement of Cypriot women from different backgrounds who share the same core feminist values and who wish to implement them in the peace negotiations. Many members who are part of one women's group are also members of another women's groups. Thus, some of my respondents are part of HAD, GAT and the TCGE. In the next section, I will first present the priorities for a 'gender-just' peace recommended by GAT in 2012 and I will then present the recommendations for the implementation of Resolution 1325 in Cyprus set up in 2017 by forty women volunteering in different CSOs active in the peace process, from the public and private sector. These recommendations are the result of a two-days

43 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 conference in Famagusta, Northern Cyprus, on November 3 and 4, 2016 and are publicized in a 'White Book' called “Pathways towards Sustainable Peace: Building United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Cyprus” (White Book 2017).

5.2 Priorities for a “gender-just” Cyprus

The women's groups' recommendations are tailored on four of the negotiations' key discussion points: 'governance and power-sharing', 'citizenship rights', 'property rights' and 'economic rights'. The priorities and recommendations made by inter-communal women's groups' in focus in this study are designed for a united Cyprus. The peace negotiations, whose goal is to set up a federal Cyprus, will result in the drafting of a brand new constitution. Member of the TCGE Evren Inancoglu explained the opportunity that writing a new constitution implies for gender equality:

“We, [the TCGE], can suggest some ministries, bodies of the government, institutions, and at the same time, we can suggest some things to be put in the constitution, which will enable positive discrimination. Because we know, in the West, how positive discrimination laws are anti-constitutional and they cancel them. But our advantage is that we are writing a brand new constitution” (Inancoglu 2017).

All my respondents have the same priority: having the gender perspective present in all the aspects of the new constitution. As former Minister for Foreign Affairs to Northern Cyprus highlighted this priority by stating the following:

“In every country I think, when you try to raise gender equality, what's the first that comes out: “Not now!” or “Let's solve this first!” Whereas, we need to emphasize that gender issues are not about a perfect time to raise them – it's all the time and in everything. It's

44 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 about having the gender perspective, the gender input and the gender sensitivity in whatever it is you're going to produce” (Colak 2017).

As aforementioned, in 2012, GAT publicized recommendations for including the gender perspectives on the issues of 'governance and power-sharing', 'citizenship rights', 'property rights' and 'economic rights'. The work the TCGE produced is not public. However, some members of the TCGE stated that their work is related to what has been done in GAT and that they took a lot of ideas from the 2012 recommendations. The key negotiation point on 'governance and power-sharing' relates to the “technical matter pertaining to numbers in the allocation of seats in government and state institutions and in the calibration of each citizen's vote” (GAT 2012:15). As pointed out by GAT, at the negotiations table, this issue is discussed in the ethnic sense only (ibid.). As we have seen, the Cyprus conflict is understood by the two major communities as an ethno-nationalist conflict. GAT members argues that “'sharing' must not be about ethnic ratios solely, but about gender ones as well” (idem:16). As put by Maria Hadjipavlou, when it comes to the question of property, there is gender aspect as well, as she highlighted by the following questions:

“[D]oes this property belong to the father or does it belong to the mother as well? […]. In an event of a settlement on property, how could we make sure that women are also right owners of that property?” (Hadjipavlou 2017)

Finally, GAT recommends measures “that aim to contribute to women’s economic empowerment and thereby reduce the gender gap in the economic field” (GAT 2012:33).

When it comes to the participation in the negotiation process, the Conference's participants who are not members of the TCGE noted “an overall lack of transparency in the negotiation process” (White Book 2017:7). Indeed, while they conceded that a certain degree of confidentiality is needed, they argue that “excessive secrecy and non-engagement with the public might prove an obstacle

45 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 to “selling” any agreement reached” (ibid.). When it comes to “putting women at the table of negotiations”, I noted some divergences in my respondents' discourses. There are contradictions regarding this issue, even in the discourse of the same individual. Member of the HAD and GAT Magda Zenon argued that having more women at the table does not lead automatically to having more gender equal negotiations. She stated: “We don't want more women at the table – it's not an object!” In the meantime, she added the following:

“I had this conversation with a member of the Greek Cypriot negotiation team and she turned to me: “It is us, women, in the back- room, that are doing the work.” So I say to her: “So where are the women? If you are in the back-room, why should I, as a member of the civil society, think anything has changed? Because the picture I have seen is grey-suited men. Why should I assume that what is written is different? Because you are not visible! If you are speaking, I need to see you! I need to hear you!” (Zenon 2017)

There seems to be a contradiction but Magda Zenon summed up her thinking by stating the following:

“You do want to have women at the table because what happens then is that subliminally you change what people see. Because now what people see is a group of grey-suited men. So putting women at the table does change the way people look at things. But you want the gender perspective there” (Zenon 2017)

Former Minister for Foreign Affairs to Northern Cyprus and feminist activist Ermine Colak seconded Magda Zenon by stating the following:

“It's not choosing a woman just because she's a woman. She always needs to be apt for the job. I think woman should be more involved in politics so that they achieve a position so that they can be chosen, appointed to a higher position. It has to come from the bottom, you can't just sort of pick a woman and put them at the table – that's

46 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 artificial and it's not necessarily a good idea because you don't necessarily get the right woman.” (Colak 2017)

The priorities of women's groups and the TCGE are similar. To implement UNSCR 1325 in the peace negotiations, women's groups recommend to include the gender perspective in all the key contentious points, i.e. 'governance and power-sharing', 'citizenship rights', 'property rights' and 'economic rights'. They therefore transform the hegemonic national discourses by highlighting the fact that the Cyprus conflict is not only about ethnic divisions but that there also are underlying issues that need to be addressed to attain a 'gender-just peace'.

5.3 Tensions between women's groups and the TCGE

In May 2015, the creation of the TCGE triggered hope among feminist activists. However, as we will see in this section, the non-transparency of the TCGE's work and its lack of cooperation with HAD and GAT members led to tensions between the women's groups and the TCGE, which are still unrelieved today.

5.3.1 Non-transparency of the TCGE

The leaders from both communities appointed the members of the TCGE. As we have seen, some of its members are feminist activists and are part of the women's groups in focus in this study. However, non-member of the TCGE stated that they did not consider the appointment of certain members as legitimate. Activist and non-member of the TCGE Magda Zenon explained why she by stating the following:

“The women in the committee, none of them are feminists. No! Two of them are... […] The others are not feminist. They've never been around in events, activities. They've never been around. [The leaders] surely cannot put women there and assume they know what the CSOs are doing. How can you create a technical committee on gender without any criteria? We all know most of them were political

47 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 appointments: ”We want to make him happy, so we're going to put so and so. There was a lot of anger and I was one of the most vocal ones.” (Zenon 2017)

Magda Zenon's frustration over the appointment of the TCGE members that she deems illegitimate was seconded by activist Anna Koukkides-Procopiou, who is not a member of the TCGE either:

“There are some people in the technical committee on gender equality who are long-standing feminists and activists and you understand why they are there. But there are some people who have never been involved in gender. Appointing someone in the gender technical committee without the expertise, just because she's a woman, I think it's a fail, to begin with. A lot of us have been exposed to activism our whole life and it is very difficult to have any kind of respect to anyone who does not even have an opinion on gender.” (Koukkides- Procopiou 2017)

Activist Anna Koukkides-Procopiou denounced the fact that many people in the TCGE do not have the sufficient knowledge on gender issues to be part of the technical committee and that they therefore don't “speak the same language” (2017). Magda Zenon shares this view and went on by stating the following:

“We're fortunate to have got beyond the anger because there was a time where some of them were not talking to me. I was very vocal. I can't go to a meeting the gender equality technical committee leads and they tell me for the third time they are discovering gender budgeting. I can understand bringing people from different facets but you got to be basically a feminist!” (Zenon 2017)

Activist and member of the TCGE Maria Hadjipavlou explained that, indeed, some members of the TCGE had never met anyone from the other side before being appointed by the leaders to become a TCGE member:

48 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

“[…] [N]ot all members of the technical committee are involved in bi- communal work. There were at least three members in the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots who never met the Other before or who never did work with the Other. [...]. But it went very well because we have a shared agenda and a shared interest: to promote gender equality and Resolution 1325.” (Hadjipavlou 2017)

Thus, the creation of the TCGE and the appointment of its members by the leaders triggered some tensions between activists. Some non-member of the TCGE feet frustrated of not having been appointed and claim that some members of the TCGE do not have the legitimacy, experience and knowledge to be part of this committee. As we will see in the next section, the creation of the TCGE also disturbed the role of women's groups who do not feel included in the work of the TCGE and thereby in the peace negotiations.

5.3.2 The TCGE: A broken link between the women's groups and the leaders

As aforementioned, the TCGE is the result of the pressure exercised by activists, urging the leaders to apply UNSCR 1325. I assumed that the TCGE would therefore work as a link between the Track-I and the women's groups, i.e. that the women's groups and the TCGE would work together in a 'bottom-up' dynamic. To my surprise, members and non-members of the TCGE explained that their cooperation was quasi-inexistent. As explained by member of the TCGE Evren Inancoglu (2017), the TCGE does not “have the mandate to be the link between civil society and Track-I.” He added that the TCGE can cooperate with civil society but that it has to “get the confirmation from both authorities” priorly (Inancoglu 2017). Indeed, he gave me the example of the Technical Committee on Education which did some events together with civil society:

“We do not have the mandate to be the link between civil society and Track I. But normally, technical committee work with the civil society. For example, the technical committee on education, they did some

49 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 common events together with civil society” (Inancoglu 2017).

On the same line, activist and member of the TCGE Maria Hadjipavlou added the following:

“Our mandate is not to be in touch with the grassroots. The grassroots work is done by other people. If [a member of a women's group] comes and say: “I want to organize an event, as an NGO and I want the technical committee to sponsor it”, there is a procedure. We would take it up as the technical committee, put a request to the negotiators who would come back to us and say: “yes go ahead and sponsor it!” But us, as the technical committee, we do not have the power to initiate activities at the grassroots” (Hadjipavlou 2017).

According to member of GAT and HAD Magda Zenon, who, as aforementioned, has pushed for the creation of the technical committee on gender equality, the lack of criteria for the appointment of the members, the non-transparency of their work and the absence of communication with grassroots women's groups created “anger within the CSOs”. She stated the following:

“[...] [T]hey are not allowed to speak with the CSOs. They're First Track! Whatever that means... Because they are not part of the negotiations. The gender equality technical committee, as all the other technical committees, are not in the negotiations. If they are giving suggestions, why can't we talk to them?” (Zenon 2017).

Member of TCGE Evren Inancoglu recognized and deplored the lack of cooperation between the TCGE and women's group. He claimed that this non- cooperation is mainly due to a lack of time and to the suspension of the negotiations in early 2017:

“This is how it was supposed to be: the idea should come from the civil society. But we could not do it. First of all, we did not have time. We were more focussed on this legal and institutional

50 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 recommendations. And then, there was this problem, the atmosphere was a little bit more sensitive, and yes, we could not make it. Lack of time, crisis in the negotiation. But now the crisis is over, we will get back to work and we will, hopefully, work more with the civil society.” (Inancoglu 2017)

On the same vein, activist and member of the TCGE Maria Hadjipavlou added:

“I wish it were different but on the other hand, I see that there are so many other bi-communal women's groups that can do this work. So why expecting the technical committee to do that?” (Hadjipavlou 2017)

These tensions between women's groups and the TCGE have also been observed by Swedish diplomat Sara Brandt-Hansen: she explained that she witnessed activists complaining about the TCGE stating that they “are just sitting for themselves” (2017). Women active in women's groups and who are not part of the TCGE claim that they “have no influence on what's happening there and that [the TCGE members'] hands are tied up by political leaders” (Brandt-Hansen 2017).

To conclude, the women's groups in focus in this research have different roles and strategies to sensitize the population and the leaders on both sides of the divide to gender-related issues. The feminist movement in Cyprus started in the 1990s, to become a grassroots organization in the early 2000s with HAD. In 2009, the GAT was formed and mainly focussed getting international attention and drafting recommendations for the newly-started round of negotiations. Finally in 2015, the TCGE was created and is only working with the Track-I as a consultative committee. Since the memberships of these groups are overlapping, there is a consensus regarding the priorities for a 'gender-just peace' in Cyprus. However, the appointment of certain TCGE members deemed illegitimate by certain activists and the lack of cooperation between the grassroots women's groups and the TCGE broke the 'bottom-up' dynamic that the creation of this technical committee could have enhanced.

51 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 6 Reaching Track-I

6.1 International support for women's groups to reach Track-I

From 2009, the UN Good Offices mission in Cyprus indicated their willingness to include the gender component in the agenda of the peace talks. Two open-day events were organized in 2010 and 2012 to mark the anniversary of UNSCR 1325 where GAT participated to discuss the relevance of the Resolution to Cyprus. In addition, the UN Good Offices helped GAT put forward their 2012 recommendations to the negotiators (GAT 2012:5). Furthermore, the UN Good Offices also sent the 2012 recommendations to then Secretary General Ban Ki- Moon who had previously met GAT when on visit in Cyprus in 2010 (Demetriou & Hadjipavlou 2016:96). His report on his Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus on November 24, 2010, specifically mentioned GAT, stating that the group's contribution is in line with Resolution 1325 (UN Security Council 2010:9). Moreover, in 2012, for the first time, UN Security Council used “women peace

and security language” in its resolution on Cyprus by agreeing the following:

”[…] active participation of civil society groups, including women’s groups, is essential to the political process and can contribute to making any future settlement sustainable, recalling that women play an important role in peace processes, welcoming all efforts to promote bicommunal contacts and events including, inter alia, on the part of all United Nations bodies on the island, and urging the two sides to promote the active engagement of civil society and the encouragement of cooperation between economic and commercial

52 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 bodies and to remove all obstacles to such contacts, […]” (UN Security Council 2012:2).

As observed by Swedish diplomat Sara Brandt-Hansen, civil society in Cyprus is “weak and split”. However, she noted that when it comes to gender, “they have come quite far.” She referred to the Cyprus Women's Lobby where women from different parts of the society work together. According to the diplomat, that is what the embassy strives for: “to create a movement” and to “create a community” because that is how you “push a rock up the mountain” (Brandt- Hansen 2017). As aforementioned, in November 3 and 4, 2016, the women's groups organized a conference in Famagusta, Northern Cyprus named “Pathways towards Sustainable Peacebuilding”, which resulted in the publication of the 'White Book'. The event was attended by forty Cypriot women from civil society and the public sector who discussed the implementation of UNSCR 1325 and how it would look like in Cyprus after a solution is reached. On this occasion, as explained by Sara Brandt-Hansen, the Swedish Embassy supported them by helping them get permission to organize the event. For the Swedish diplomat, the goal was “to make the UN have them in mind.” Thus, the Embassy aims at working “behind the scenes” and to “coach [the women] on what they could do” (Brandt-Hansen 2017). Sweden has a feminist foreign policy which allows them to act but they are “quite the only one to have such a stated policy.” She therefore stated: “it is basically us and the UN who work the most on these issues” (2017). As Swedish diplomat Sara Brandt-Hansen and Salpy Eskidjian explained, the Swedish Embassy also managed to bring in the gender perspective in the discourse of religious leaders:

“The religious track of the Cyprus Peace Process, under the auspices of the Swedish Embassy, put the gender perspective in the agenda of the religious leaders with a condemnation statement. On March 8, we had a big event at Ledra Palace where all religious leaders condemned the violence against women in a statement. And they talked about this. They talked about gender equality more generally. It was a goal, to bring in the gender perspective in religious dialogue,

53 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 even though it was not the main purpose of the Religious Track. The main purpose is to get the religious leaders to cooperate. It is actually a Human Rights to have access to worship, to be able to cross the other side and have access to its churches or to its mosques, etc. But now we have managed to introduce a gender component in religious dialogue as well, which is important because these people have a great power in their own communities” (Brandt-Hansen 2017).

The 'White Book' was launched on April 28, 2017, in an art gallery in South Nicosia. I had the opportunity to be there and to meet the women who participated in the creation of this book. There was a visible international presence. Indeed, the opening speeches were made by Swedish ambassador Anna Olsson Vrang, Angela Bargellini from the UN Good Offices and Hubert Faustmann, Director of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Office in Cyprus, who all emphasized the importance of Cypriot women's participation in the peace process. Many activists recognize and appreciate the help and support of international actors. Activist Magda Zenon emphasized the fact that women's groups had the support of several embassies: “The Swedish ambassador, the Finnish, the Dutch and now the American ambassador. […] We also got a lot of support now from the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Elizabeth Spehar” (2017). No matter how appreciated this international support is, Magda Zenon argues that it is not sufficient for having an impact on the local level: “It's good to have them because it does bring people together but you got to find the way to get the support within your local governance as well. It got to be yours. If it's not yours, even the people you speak to will not believe you or they will believe you less” (Zenon 2017). The importance of the local ownership of the women's movement was seconded by Sara Brandt-Hansen. She explained that the Swedish Embassy in Cyprus is working with the UN, other countries and the women's groups “to put them together in order for them to create a 'movement'”. However, the diplomat stated that “it is the Cypriots themselves who have to do and want this.” She added that there were many women and men who wanted to have a strong gender perspective in the peace process but that the ones who make decisions are not “that interested” (Brandt-Hansen 2017).

54 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

The international actors involved in the Cyprus peace process supporting women's groups are driven liberal norms and standards embodied by different policy tools. Sweden has a feminist foreign policy which leads the Swedish diplomats to apply them in the states where they have embassies. In Cyprus, the Swedish embassy works behind the scenes to get the women's groups in the agenda of the UN. The UN's support of women's groups in Cyprus is driven by its inclusive and democratic values, the UNSCR 1325 and the belief in the need of local ownership for peace processes to be sustainable. As we have seen, the leaders of the two main communities, assisted by the UN Good Offices, created the TCGE in May 2015 in order to incorporate the gender dimensions in the peace negotiations. In the next sections, we will examine the result of the support of international actors by analyzing the work-relationship between the TCGE and the leaders.

6.2 The TCGE: 'Ticking boxes'

The creation of the TCGE in 2015 created hope among members of inter- communal women's groups as the TCGE directly sends its recommendations to the leaders of both communities. However, as specified by Turkish Cypriot member of the TCGE Evren Inangoclu, the leaders “collect all the suggestions but they don't have to follow them.” Indeed, the recommendations of all the technical committees are sent to the leaders and the negotiating teams but are not necessarily followed: they work as suggestions for the leaders and their negotiating teams. In January, the TCGE sent their recommendations to the leaders and the negotiating teams but did not get any follow-up: “For the last round of negotiations, we got a confirmation that our suggestions reached the leaders [but] we haven't got any feedback yet” (Inangoclu 2017). Some members of the TCGE admitted that they thought the committee would have more agency and that the work process is very long:

“Say you have a proposal to make to the Greek Cypriot side: you can't go and say whatever you want to them. First you have to draft it, you have to send it to the President, wait for his approval and only if you

55 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 have his approval, you can go ahead and say: “These are our proposals from the Turkish Cypriot side.” That is the difficulty. And it takes time! It is really time-consuming because you can't go ahead and meet once every week for example – that is what I would prefer you know, finish all the work. But you need to wait for the President to come back from wherever he is, look through the whole stuff and some of the things we didn't think were problematic but it was not found convenient for various reasons and for the Greek Cypriots the same” (Bozkurt 2017).

The heavy bureaucratic processes of the organization of the peace negotiations represent a source of frustration for the member of the TCGE whom I interviewed. Indeed, having all a background in activism, the organization and path of the work is different from what they have been used to. Activist and member of the TCGE Evren Inancoglu (2017) explained what made working with the committee different than with civil society: “In order to proceed, you always have to inform the authorities. […] If you are civil society, you do whatever you want – but here, we are not allowed to go public and make statements on behalf of the committee.” On the same note, Turkish Cypriot Umut Bozkurt argued that when she and the other members of the TCGE who are also members of GAT were appointed to be members of the technical committee, she started to be less active in GAT. She explained why by stating the following:

“When you are a member of the committee, you have to be responsible towards the committee rather than a civil society organization. It has different logics; when you are from the civil society, you can say whatever you want. But when you are in the committee, there are many things that you can't be saying because you represent the Turkish Cypriot officials” (Bozkurt 2017).

The climate of the negotiations has an important impact on the motivation and the work of the members of the TCGE. By referring to the crisis that broke out between the two leaders at the beginning of the year of 2017, member of the TCGE Evren Inancoglu stated the following:

56 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

“I must admit that the psychology of the negotiation affects as well. We were more motivated and we used to meet more often when things were going good, until two months ago when they had the crisis” (Inancoglu 2017).

Indeed, after the crisis of the Bill of memorandum of Enosis, the TCGE members did not meet for two months. As Maria Hadjipavlou explained, “it generates a lot of frustration because if the talks are not going well, the motivation is not so big” (2017). In April 2017, the leaders started to meet each other again and the members of the TCGE were therefore planning on meeting each other in May 2017. However, the frustration remains high and some members of the TCGE are questioning the committee's role. Turkish Cypriot TCGE member Umut Bozkurt explained why she felt frustrated by the suspension of the talks by stating the following:

“If the impasse continues, we cannot do much while being in the committee because the committee only functions if there is a progress in the negotiations. No progress in the negotiations, nothing happens in the committee because whatever we do depends on a federal settlement” (Bozkurt 2017).

Indeed, the work of the TCGE consisting in producing recommendations for the constitution of a federal Cyprus, if the negotiations are suspended and the leaders are not meeting to discuss, the TCGE is stuck and cannot make any progress, as Umut Bozkurt explained with the following statement:

“[...] [W]e are coming up with proposals for a united Cyprus, not for the current status quo. So, only if a federal solution can be achieved can we put our ideas into implementation. Because for example, we are talking about revising the constitution in gender-language but always with the vision of having a unification. But of course now, as you know, with the current impasse, it's not going so well. We are not making any progress; That's our problem right now” (Bozkurt 2017).

57 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

The heavy bureaucratic processes and the low motivation of the TCGE members resulting from the suspension of the peace talks between the leaders in the Spring of 2017 are the two main obstacles to reach the Track-I, according to TCGE members. On the other hand, non-members of the TCGE highlighted additional obstacles. Activist and non-member of the TCGE Anna Koukkides-Procopiou, recalling the appointment of TCGE members who have no experience with gender-related issues and the lack of cooperation between the grassroots women's groups highlighted in sections 5.3.1 and 5.3.2, argues that the TCGE has little chance to push a strong message across. Second, she highlighted that the TCGE only has a consultative power and that their recommendations are ignored by the leaders. She stated the following:

“We've never heard anything from this committee although I'm friend with a few of the members there and I have tremendous respect for some of them and I'm not negating the work they have done so far – I'm sure they are fighting. I know, because I know them. But if their message is a united bi-communal team that is mostly made up by people from the establishment, then they can't push any message across. Second, if the government completely ignores the message they have to give – they have no executive power, they have no resources, they've been forbidden from doing any kind of events or speaking to us – then why are they there?” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017).

Therefore, according to non-members of the TCGE, in addition to having created tensions between activists, the appointment of people from the establishment having no experience in gender-related issues resulted in the creation of a weak committee, controlled by the leaders:

“If there was genuine concern to get the people who push for change, they would have included more activists and experts in the committee. […]. They can control the people in that committee. It has happened in most committees in Cyprus. How will it amount to anything? It's

58 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 two factors. The one factor is that you do not have enough activists to have a critical mass in that gender technical committee. The second is that the government is not, in any way, willing to genuinely listen to their recommendations” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017).

By creating this technical committee, the leaders showed public compliance with the liberal norms and standards regarding women's participation in peace negotiations, supported by the international actors involved in the Cyprus peace process. However, the leaders created a weak committee which only has a consultative power and whose recommendations are being ignored. Activist Anna Koukkides-Procopiou therefore argues that by creating this artificial committee, the leaders have 'ticked a box' required by international actors:

“They're looking to appoint women just to say they have appointed some. You know, at low level positions, nobody pays attention to but “we appointed women.” I think that's despicable. You should not be appointing men or women to tick boxes.” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017)

On the same vein, another non-member of the TCGE argued that the leaders did not created the committee because they genuinely want to implement the gender perspective in the negotiations but rather because the international actors supporting the women's groups have pushed them to do so:

“The gender technical committee, I'm very happy that it's there but a part of my brain and heart says that it was like a gesture. It was symbolic more than real. We're not talking about women and women participation, I'm talking about the need for women participation at a point and in a way that we would make a difference. The gender committee is relevant but is it making a difference in terms of the gender outlook or women's contribution? I don't think so […].” (Colak 2017)

59 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 The TCGE therefore represents a box that needed to be ticked to comply with the international norms and standards related to gender equality, supported by the liberal peacebuilding agenda of the international actors supporting the Cyprus peace process. An activist therefore claimed that the TCGE is only symbolic and that there is no genuine political will to implement these norms in the peace negotiations:

I think we are a very hypocritical society in terms of that we are trying to Europeanize ourselves and appear to adhere to all these norms of the EU but deep inside, the hierarchical side, the patriarchal side, the Mediterranean side, is there. […]. In Cyprus, the underlying notion is that: “This is a man's business, this is an 'Old Boys Club' and maybe we give you the permission to enter.” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017)

6.3 The leaders' reaction to gender issues

Despite the attention given to bi-communal women's groups active in the Cyprus process by international actors, gender equality is not seen as a priority for the peace negotiations by the leaders of both communities. My respondents pointed out that both leaders had the same discourse: that gender-related issues are not a “priority”. Turkish Cypriot Umut Bozkurt explained how the leaders respond when they bring up gender issues with the TCGE: ”Constantly, whenever you bring up these issues they tell you: "We have bigger problems in Cyprus" (2017). As activist Anna Koukkides-Procopiou put it, “the negotiators usually off-the- record say: “we're really busy with other important things so don't bother us about this gender issue” (2017). Activist Magda Zenon feels that the leaders are tired of hearing the feminist activists saying the same things: “People almost end up not taking it seriously because we keep on saying the same thing” (2017). Anna Koukkides-Procopiou explained the consequences of the presence of women's groups repeating the same discourse over the years:

“This momentum created by women makes women appear as trouble- makers to the government. Maybe they will not say it to your face but

60 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 they would say: “Oh here they come again... These activists making demands... Treating the hell out of us!” But you have to keep doing it, otherwise they will not listen. Because now, 'women' and 'activists' goes hand in hand. If society had been different, we would no need to be activists, we would just be there” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017).

As put by Emine Colak used a metaphor to describe how gender equality is perceived at the negotiation table:

“It is as if gender equality was a luxury. As if it was icing on cake when you sorted out everything else. But you're never going to get there. You're never going to have a proper cake unless you get the women more involved.” (Colak 2017)

Turkish Cypriot member of the TCGE Evren Inancoglu expressed what he thinks the leaders think of gender issues by stating the following:

“It is not that they are not taking it seriously but – I think that is how they perceive it – they think that it can wait. This is the problem: “It's not that gender is not important but 'property' is crucial!” This is, unfortunately, the logic. It's not that they don't care – they do care but they say that it's not that urgent. Whereas for us it is urgent – as urgent as any other thing. And all the other things have gender- dimensions.” (Inancoglu 2017)

The reactions of the leaders towards the work of TCGE members left the latter disappointed and frustrated because of the hope the TCGE represented at its creation in May 2015. Turkish Cypriot Umut Bozkurt shared her frustration and fatigue by stating the following:

“We were coming with recommendations and we would hear things like: "This is not realistic." Well, if you are the one who is going to decide on the boundaries of the realistic, why did you appoint us? Because the whole point is making more flexible. Everything related

61 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 to gender is not realistic because there is a priority in politics. You have to prioritize certain things and gender-related issues are never a priority - it's always conjectural. It's always like: "We have more important things to discuss!" (Bozkurt 2017)

As we have seen previously, the women's groups' demands are tailored according to the key negotiation points and represent the gender-dimension of the contentious issues. However, as pointed out by my respondents, their recommendations, although being supported by important international actors, are not seen as a priority by the leaders who claim that there are more issues to solve first. As formulated by Anna Koukkides-Procopiou (2017), “the main problem we've had so far is that gender has been considered a topic and not a tool of analysis or a way of engagement to a participatory peace process.” The women's groups have therefore not been able to have a strong influence on the peace negotiations because of the lack of political will to implement the gender perspective in the talks. The TCGE which initially created hope for having more impact at the Track-I level has not been able to push forward the women's groups recommendations.

62 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 7 Reaching the grassroots

7.1 The 'Usual Suspects'

During my first day in Nicosia, I heard the term that inter-communal women's groups use the term to refer to themselves: the 'Usual Suspects'. Greek Cypriot activist Magda Zenon explained the reasons why they use this term': “We talk about 'Usual Suspects' because when there is an event, you know you can go there alone, you know who you are going to find there, so you won't be alone!” (Zenon 2017). She gave me an example of such an event where only the 'Usual Suspects' came up: on April 2, 2017, SASG Eide hosted a dinner for the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot leaders at Ledra Palace, in the UN Buffer Zone (UN Cyprus Talks b). Cypriots from both communities gathered for a picket parade to greet the leaders and urge them to restart the negotiations. The members of the gathering presented a petition to DSASG Spehar, who received it on behalf of the leaders (ibid.). About that gathering, Magda Zenon stated that she was disappointed about the small number of people who showed up:

“Hundred and fifty people? Usual suspects... I went there and I was visiting someone close by and I walked to the demonstration because I knew that I would find someone to take me home! It's very sad…” (Zenon 2017)

Activist Magda Zenon explained how she makes sure to invite people outside the 'Usual Suspects' circle at events:

“We had a conference in November. Before the conference, we had three or four workshops on the four pillars of 1325. I am very well-

63 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 connected, I know people. I sat down with my list of contacts in Cyprus to try to make sure that the people invited to the seminar were not the usual suspects only and to make sure that we did try to have people from the government, the municipality...“ (Zenon 2017:?). So I went through this all and I specifically invited one of the MPs from the Communist party, who came back to me and said: “Oh! I'm the representative of 1325 in Parliament.” “Great!”, I said to her, “You can bring your expertise!” She didn't come. I invited her to the conference, she didn't come. In December, all the findings of that conference were presented on an open-day, the UN open-day, on women, peace and security. I invited her again. […]. She never came! 'This is 1325. This is something that got the attention of the EU, the UN, it is supported by the Swedish embassy, and you're not there. What was more important?'” (Zenon 2017)

The 'Usual Suspects' phenomenon is due to the fact that only a small portion of the Cypriot population is active in women's groups and inter-communal civil society. Indeed, talking about the Home for Cooperation, former Minister for Foreign Affairs to Northern Cyprus Emine Colak said that it is a “very positive and constructive environment” but that it is “just a sector” (Colak 2017). She added: “I can't even begin to guess what proportion of the population it represents, but it is certainly not the majority that is open to this contact.”

The lack of participation in inter-communal groups and activities by the majority of the Cypriot population has been highlighted by Richmond and Vogel (2014) as we have seen in the Chapter 2. The phenomenon also applies to inter-communal women's groups. The majority of my respondents told me that one of their main problem is that they don't know how to reach out to people outside the 'Usual suspects' circle. Indeed, according to Umut Bozkurt, the GAT and the TCGE have not been able to reach the grassroots. She qualified GAT as being “an elite-level organization”. She explained why by stating the following:

“GAT was good because it came up with series of recommendations and policy-makers did take us into consideration – but when it comes

64 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 to mobilizing women, we are not successful because they don't know us.” (Bozkurt 2017)

The 'Usual Suspects' phenomenon is thus recognized by the Usual Suspects themselves and acknowledge the fact that they have not been able to mobilize the population. In the next part, I will present my findings regarding the reasons which, according to feminist Cypriot women, impede Cypriot women's participation and interest in the peace process and joining women's groups.

7.2 Explaining the 'Usual Suspects' phenomenon

In the 2012 GAT report, the members of the women's group pointed out four obstacles to women's participation in the formal and informal Cyprus peace process: historical reasons, structural obstacles, political obstacles and psychological factors (GAT 2012:5). My respondent' answers reflected the three last aforementioned categories.

7.2.1 Structural obstacles

The structural obstacles refers to “entrenched patriarchy and hierarchic, gendered institutions such as the family, religion, education and trade unions” (GAT 2012:5). First, in Cyprus, and especially in the South, the religious institutions carry patriarchal values. As put by Swedish diplomat Sara Brandt-Hansen (2017), in the South, there is a “very patriarchal culture where the Orthodox Church, which has conservative values, has a big influence.” On the other hand, former Minister for Foreign Affairs to Northern Cyprus Emine Colak argues that religion does not have that much of an influence in the Turkish Cypriot community compared to the Greek Cypriots: “[T]heir religion holds a much bigger place in their life than in the lives of Turkish Cypriots.” However, she pointed out the fact that the Turks coming from mainland Turkey come from more conservative and religious backgrounds which may lead Turkish women to be “more crushed in their marriages” (Colak 2017). Moreover, as Emine Colak explained, the Greek Orthodox Church has a direct role in education in the South: “the major actor

65 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 involved in the education system in the South and who decides what will be in the curriculum is the Church” (2017). Legislation on women's rights is in place in the South but the entrenched patriarchy and the non-awareness of women's rights lead to situations where women do not go to the police. Activist Magda Zenon illustrated this problem by women's ways of thinking women when their rights have been violated: “'I've been beaten up and I go to the police. Who's going to deal with me at the police station?' Or: 'If I get raped and go to the hospital, who's going to be there?'” (Zenon 2017). She told a story to illustrate how women may be treated at police stations:

“I have a friend that was verbally, emotionally and physically abused by her husband, regularly. It was the second or third time she went to the police station and they said to her: “What do you think this is? That it is a supermarket you can come to everyday?” (Zenon 2017)

Furthermore, the repercussions of reporting such women's rights violations deter women to go to the police:

“We appear to be European, we appear to have equality. But women actually don't go to court because here it's a small community. And if you go to court, no one's going to employ you afterwards because your name is going to be tainted. So here, there is the illusion because you do have a framework, but you don't know how aware of human rights the people are as well.” (Zenon 2017)

The patriarchal society and education seems also to have an impact on the trafficking situation on the island. Finnish psychologist Sanna Korpela works with the Wellspring Association, a center which helps survivors of trafficking, opened since 2014. She highlighted the fact that, until 2015, the United States Trafficking in Persons Report placed the Republic of Cyprus in the same category as Afghanistan and Liberia. Furthermore, the Republic of Cyprus was the only EU member state to be part of the 'watch list' (Department of State 2016:149). In 2016, the US TIP placed Cyprus as a “Tier 1” country. Even though the statistics

66 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 for trafficking in Cyprus have gotten better in the recent years, Finnish psychologist Sanna Korpela emphasized that “it doesn't give you the whole picture” because there is still a very long way to go “when you look at the grassroots level” (Korpela 2017). On the other hand, the Department of state assigned the worse category to the North by stating that the “Turkish Cypriot authorities do not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and are not making significant efforts to do so” (Department of State 2016:151). This situation can be explained by the fact that there is no external pressure regarding the legal framework on trafficking in the North since it is an unrecognized state. Sanna Korpela further explained why the government in the North is reluctant to take legal actions against trafficking:

“There is basically not any legal action taken against trafficking there, so none of the cases are brought to the Court […]. Of course, NGOs try to do some things there, they are in a very hard position. It's very hard. There are big forces against the little NGOs that are trying to survive and trying to help the victims when the whole big machine is on the side of making money with these women. The so-called 'nightclubs' are giving huge tax money for the government there.” (Korpela 2017)

Women victims of trafficking in Cyprus are predominantly foreigners, as explained by psychologist Sanna Korpela:

“Pretty much all the women who are part of our program are foreigners – we haven't had any Cypriot women. We are helping women that are coming from abroad. Most of the women are coming from Africa. We also had Asians and some Europeans but the majority is from Africa. […] Most of them are from sex trafficking. We have also victims of labor trafficking. [...] Again, not Cypriot women but immigrants” (Korpela 2017).

67 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 The clients of trafficking victims are both Cypriots and tourists in the South and in the North. As explained by the Finnish psychologist, “there is a long tradition that men find it completely fine to go and buy a prostitute. So it's quite deep in this culture that 'prostitution is my right as a man'” (Korpela 2017). She pointed out the fact that Cyprus was appealing for traffickers because it is easy to find customers for the victims of trafficking. She emphasized the fact that Cypriots usually do not realize the problem of trafficking on the island. When she speaks to people about the problem of trafficking, she usually got the following reactions: “No! trafficking doesn't happen Cyprus! It used to be very bad here, we had cabarets all over ... But now we are better! The problem is only in the North now!" (Korpela 2017)

7.2.2 Political obstacles

The political obstacles to women's participation in the peace process are “the male-centered culture in political parties, the gendered separation of private and public realms of life, gendered stereotypes and a hegemonic male discourse that leaves no space for women to voice their concerns and needs” (GAT 2012:5). The patriarchal culture of the island is reflected in the few number of women in decision-making positions. While there are women in the negotiating teams, all my respondents stressed the fact that none of them were in fact in decision-making positions. As summarized by Anna Koukkides-Procopiou (2017): “we've got two leaders who are men, two negotiators who are men and we have two spokesmen who are men. The six critical people of the process are all men.” Indeed, on both sides, there are some women in the negotiating teams, but ”they kind of take a secondary role: they're advisers or note-takers”, as highlighted by Emine Colak (2017). As pointed out by Swedish diplomat Sara Brandt-Hansen, the absence of women in decision-making positions in the peace negotiations is linked to the absence of women in decision-making positions in politics:

“In peace processes, there are a lot of women but they are not present in the decision-making processes. […] It's a problem in other countries but Cyprus is though an EU member which has very few

68 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 women in politics, in decision-making institutions, in the parliament... In the government, there's one woman and in the parliament there are 16% of women” (Brandt-Hansen 2017).

In the North, the proportion of women in the parliament is the same as in the South, as there are four female MPs out of fifty. Emine Colak emphasized the fact that women occupy high decision-making positions in the public sector as the President of the High Court in the North is a women, the President of the Parliament is a woman, etc. However, as she put it, “when it comes to party politics and decision-making bodies, the absence of women is still very big” (Colak 2017). According to Emine Colak, former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Northern Cyprus and first woman to occupy this post, appointing women at the negotiating table is tricky precisely because women are not represented in political parties and at the parliament. Indeed, she explained that the negotiator for the North was an MP. Therefore, she stated that: “If there would be more women MPs, the president could say: “Well this woman could do this job well.” But you know, four out of fifty, he doesn't have that wider choice” (Colak 2017). In the event that a women is appointed to the government, they generally get a smaller post than men. In 2014, the government of the Republic of Cyprus created a new post: the Commissioner for Gender Equality and appointed a woman at its head. Activist Anna Koukkides-Procopiou explained that the government “had to have one because at the EU, there's a box that needs to be ticked about gender and human rights commissioner” (2017). In addition, according to the activist, a “very damaging report” filed by the UN pointing out that “the government had not done anything about gender equality” led to “the necessity to appoint a gender equality commissioner” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017). Right after the appointment of the Commissioner for Gender Equality, MIGS criticized the decision pointing out the fact that it was “decided behind closed doors, without first consulting NGOs or civic society in general.” (Cyprus Mail 2014) MIGS further asked the President to give details on the exact mandate of the Commissioner and what budget she was allocated. According to Anna Koukkides-Procopiou, she is the most lowly paid commissioner, has only one or two assistant and did not have any physical office for a long time. The activist concluded by saying the following:

69 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 “If you have no budget, no people, no expertise and can't get any expertise because you can't hire people and can't train people, how can you have expertise on creating a National Action Plan, on dealing with family law, on working on empowerment, on pushing for quotas? You can't!” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017)

According to my respondents, the absence of women in politics over the years tainted the hegemonic national discourses of the Cyprus problem. Consequently, these discourses left no space for women to voice their concerns. As put by activist Magda Zenon:

“Women have always been a sideline, they've never been part of the mainstream. And because patriarchy has dictated the Cyprus problem rules, they have never been allowed to be concerned about things like participation, education, health, streets, municipality.” (Zenon 2017)

Furthermore, women's victimization has been utilized by the nationalists in the construction of their discourse. Magda Zenon highlighted this phenomenon by stating the following:

”The Women Walk Home: a group of women who decided to get together and tried to walk home. You've had women involved in the 'missing person', the 'mums of the missing'. But there again, we have been utilized by the leadership because whenever we have to pull out the hard strings and make people feel sorry for us, they say: “These poor women! They've lost their sons, their husbands, their grandfathers!” So women have always been the victims.” (Zenon 2017)

7.2.3 Socio-psychological factors

Finally, there are socio-psychological factors explaining the absence of mobilization of Cypriot women in the Cyprus peace process. The Cypriot patriarchal culture has an impact on the psychology of women, in terms of how

70 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 they perceive their role in the society and consequently their role in the peace process. Activist Magda Zenon argues that “because of the way society is, [the women] always believed that the men can do it” (2017:?). Activist Anna Koukkides-Procopiou (2017) specified how the Cypriot society wants women to act: “the society expects you not to speak up, not to be a trouble-maker, not to pester politicians with demands for participation.” These expectations have a significant impact on women's self-confidence. Indeed, through a research she did with the Center for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development (SeeD), Anna Koukkides-Procopiou found that women suffer from a “confidence-gap” which leads them not to self-nominate themselves to positions of power, not to stand up to make their voices heard and to wait for someone to address them before they speak. She argued that “gender stereotypes and social stereotype in traditional societies like Cyprus […] are even more enhanced” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017). Past crimes committed during the Turkish invasion in 1974 have left Cypriot women traumatized, especially among Greek-Cypriot women:

“Rape is often projected as a salient image of the barbarity of the Turkish army in 1974 in Greek-Cypriot discourse while the sexual assault that Greek-Cypriot policemen inflicted, according to Turkish- Cypriot discourse, on their women at enclave border crossings during the 1960s is silenced. Unsurprisingly, on both sides, the needs of the women victims of such military tactics have largely remained unaddressed by the patriarchal discourse that ‘privatized’ individual trauma in the interest of ‘honor’” (Demetriou 2012:64).

On the same vein, activist Magda Zenon stressed the fact that women's sufferings have neither been acknowledged nor spoken about:

“The rapes have never been acknowledged during the invasion. The only acknowledgement to the rapes in 74 was in the South. The legislation was changed in terms of abortion. If you'd been raped, you could get an abortion. That was the only acknowledgement to the

71 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 rapes that took place during all the troubles. It was never spoken about.” (Zenon 2017)

As highlighted by the aforementioned research she conducted with SeeD, Anna Koukkides-Procopiou concluded that Cypriot women, and especially Greek Cypriot women, are more reluctant to a solution in Cyprus than men. She explained this result by the stating following:

“A social-psychology explanation that could be applied on generic terms is that since women are more risk-averse than men, from the moment there is something they don't know about – because nobody has cared to inform them or include them – they think that it is better to be safe than sorry.” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017)

Anna Koukkides-Procopiou (2017) argues that since women have been victimized during the war with and since “the atrocities conducted against them were never addressed”, women are “very reluctant towards reconciliation.”

Women on both sides of the divide are refrained from participating and feeling concerned by the peace processes because of structural, political and socio- psychological obstacles. The Cypriot population is therefore not receptive of the struggle of the inter-communal women's groups, which is a 'gender-just' reunified Cyprus.

7.3 The importance of reaching the population

Members of the women's groups are aware of the 'Usual Suspects phenomenon' and try to tackle it by using several strategies. Many of my respondents explained that they have observed that the word 'gender' tends to repel people. Magda Zenon explained that she “took out 'gender' out of the title because people don't buy 'gender'.” She further claimed that this is because “people don't realize that gender is in fact broad and [that] it does not only apply to women.” As formulated by activist Anna Koukkides-Procopiou:

72 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

“Gender is sexy as far as international organizations are concerned. But on the local level, they don't care. When you see the word 'gender', you know it's going to be a bunch of women that is going to talk to another bunch of women, so it's not a funny blend.” (Koukkides-Procopiou 2017)

According to Magda Zenon, the 'Usual Suspects' phenomenon is a vicious circle. Because the inter-communal women's groups have existed for so long and has suffered from the 'Usual Suspects' phenomenon, the Cypriot population has been repelled by them because they have had the same discourse over the years without having a real impact:

“As women that have got more of a consciousness or feel they have a voice, it ends up being... Not a cartoon... But people almost end up not taking it seriously because we keep on saying the same thing.” (Zenon 2017)

My respondents stressed the fact that they are aware of the lack of mobilization of the Cypriot population on gender-related issues. Member of GAT and TCGE Umut Bozkurt argues that the TCGE may not be the solution for making things change in Cyprus and she considers being more active in grassroots women's groups to reach the population:

“The next step should be coming together with grassroots women's organizations: trade-unions and different organizations' head are usually conscious of these gender issues and they are generally pushing for these equality policies. So what could be done now? To join forces with them and that is right now what I'm thinking. Because to be honest, I'm not sure if things are going to move in the technical committee. I think that what we need to do is try to mobilize women – reaching out, going to the villages – but also joining forces with these bigger organizations that can mobilize women and bring them together, discuss what can be done.” (Bozkurt 2017)

73 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

Activist Magda Zenon seconded Umut Bozkurt's thought by acknowledging that more has to be done at the grassroots-level:

“So we've got to do more at the grassroots maybe, to make women realize that if we speak louder as civil society... I put a lot of blame on civil society because for too long we let everyone else make decisions for us. Civil society has got to mobilize. Let's speak together! Let's go to demonstrations that support the peace process!” (Zenon 2017)

Activist Umut Bozkurt reflected on the reasons why women were reluctant to peace and claimed that older generation of women are still traumatized by the atrocities they suffered during the Turkish invasion as highlighted in the previous section. Therefore, she argues that the activists have to focus at the grassroots level to tackle these issues:

“So now, I think we have to try other ways; try to mobilize grassroots women's organizations more. Because you know, we feminists always think that women believe in peace and stuff but when you look at research, they have no hope with the peace process. Mostly, older generation women, who have experienced 1974, they are more fearful to reconciliation.” (Bozkurt 2017)

The importance of having a broad local support for attaining long and stable peace has been pointed out by activist and academic Maria Hadjipavlou who stated the following:

“The problem is not only at the macro-level but is also at the societal level. […]. Therefore, we need to do work at that level as well in order to build this human infrastructure which will help the implementation of a solution which will be reached at the political level. But unless the society is ready to implement it, then even the best solution will not be sustainable.” (Hadjipavlou 2017)

74 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Former Minister for Foreign Affairs to Northern Cyprus and activist Emine Colak also stressed the need for including the population in their struggle and for having a strong local support on both sides for implementing the peace agreement:

“Equality won't come with a magic stick. Equality is also about culture, understanding, habits, equal treatment and non- discrimination. We don't have that now and we expect it to come automatically with a solution – if we reach one. I have serious concerns that even if we did reach a solution, there would be many years in which we would have to continue this battle […].” (Colak 2017)

Indeed, Emine Colak highlighted the fact that even if an agreement is signed, it has to be supported by the population because a referendum would be held in the case of the signing of a peace agreement for a united federal Cyprus:

“This is why the climate is so important; it is not just about peace being signed by the two leaders. Then, you have to take it to the people and everybody, or enough people, have to say “yes” for it to work. Otherwise, nothing is agreed and we're back to zero. That is what happened in 2004.” (Colak 2017)

On the same vein, the importance of mobilizing the population has also been stressed by member of the TCGE Umut Bozkurt who acknowledged the weak power of the technical committee to push their recommendations forwards when the negotiations are stuck. However, she highlights the capacity of civil society to continue fighting, even when the peace talks are suspended:

“[With the TCGE,]We can put ideas on the table and produce a lot of stuff but whether it will be implemented or not is entirely dependent on the fact that there will be a federal settlement. Whereas if you are in the grassroots, even if there is an impasse, you can continue pushing. You can mobilize women, put pressure on civil society organizations, ... But as a technical committee member, there is very

75 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 limited stuff that we can do at this stage. As I said, if there was political will and things were moving forward, yes I still would have some faith in the committee. Some, not so much. I think it's a good opportunity but unfortunately, it didn't turn out the way we expected it to be, because of the general context.” (Bozkurt 2017)

As we have seen in Chapter 5, the group of feminist activists that emerged in the 1990s gradually evolved from focusing on grassroots activities to serving as a consultative committee for the leaders. Indeed, the loose movement which emerged in the 1990s led to the creation of HAD in the early 2000s, which focused on grassroots peace activities. In 2009, several members of HAD set up the GAT, which drafter recommendations for including a gender-perspective in the negotiations. Finally, in 2015, the TCGE was created and is only working with the Track-I as a consultative committee. The Usual Suspects have therefore gradually focused on the Track-I level of the Cyprus peace process and focussed less and less on mobilizing the population. However, the impasse faced by the TCGE when the talks were suspended in the Spring of 2017 led the Usual Suspects to realize that more focus should be given to grassroots activities because civil society is able to “push things forward” even when the talks at the Track-I level are blocked. As formulated by Maria Hadjipavlou (Cyprus Mail 2017): “peacebuilding activities seem to be connected to whatever is happening in the peace process at the official level.” Therefore, over the years, by neglecting grassroots activities aiming at sensitizing the Cypriot population to gender-related issues, the Usual Suspects have not challenged the 'top-down' dynamic of the Cyprus peace process.

76 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 8 Conclusions

In this study, I have sought to answer the following question: How do women's groups engage in the Cyprus peace process? First, we have analyzed the different women's groups priorities for implementing UNSCR 1325 in the Cyprus peace process in order to attain a 'gender-just peace'. We have seen that there are tensions between the members and non-members of the TCGE resulting from the frustration of their lack of cooperation and the fact that certain TCGE members' appointments are deemed illegitimate by non-members of the TCGE. Observer of the Cyprus peace process for the last four years and supporter of the women's groups Swedish diplomat Sara Brandt-Hansen stated that she witnessed these tensions. However, she stressed the fact that the 'Usual Suspects' constitute only a small group of Cypriot men and women who care about the implementation of Resolution 1325 and that they therefore should join the forces and overcome the tensions. We have seen that the 'Usual Suspects' as they call themselves are stuck between two levels: the Track-I and the Track-III. First, the 'Usual Suspects' struggle to reach the Track-I, i.e. the leaders of both communities and their negotiating teams. They are supported by the international actors active in the Cyprus peace process, especially by the UN and the Embassy of Sweden who are driven by liberal norms and standards regarding gender-related issues which they wish to implement through supporting the participation of women's groups in the peace negotiations. The feminist activists pushed for creating a Technical Committee on Gender Equality, which was created by the leaders, assisted by the UN Good Offices in May 2015. As we have seen, the TCGE is mandated to create a legal framework including a gender perspective for the constitution of a federal united Cyprus. However, as all the other technical committees, it only has a consultative power. Moreover, the leaders tend to ignore their recommendations by arguing that gender is not a priority. Therefore, the TCGE is therefore perceived by the activists as a box that needed to be ticked, set up by international actors, driven by liberal norms and standards. To show public compliance with

77 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 these liberal values, the leaders indeed created a technical committee on gender equality but they created a superficial, consultative committee with no real agency. Second, the 'Usual Suspects' have not been able to reach the population. We have seen that structural, political and socio-psychological obstacles have impeded the interest of the Cypriot population in the peace process and gender- related issues. The 'Usual Suspects' are therefore 'stuck in the middle': the leaders do not perceive gender-related issues as a priority to discuss in the peace negotiations and the population is not mobilized for the struggle of inter- communal women's groups because of structural, political and socio- psychological obstacles. The apparent absence of political will for integrating the gender dimension in the future constitution and the 'Usual Suspects phenomenon' echoes the 'Third Space of Conflict Resolution' spotted by Vogel and Richmond (2014).

The non-participation of inter-communal women's groups in the Cyprus peace process is therefore a case of 'normative decoupling', which occurs when there is a “public compliance to global values and practices” which does not match the “local practices, values and behavioural expectations” (Gizelis & Joseph 2016:543). Indeed, the public compliance to international norms and standards regarding the participation of women's groups in peace negotiations have been demonstrated by the creation of the TCGE. However, there is no genuine political will to implement the work of the TCGE and the women's groups. Moreover, the Cypriot population do not feel concerned by the struggle of the women's groups. The aforementioned structural, political and socio-psychological obstacles only partially explain this lack of mobilization. Indeed, we have seen that the strategy of the 'Usual Suspects' was to make recommendations for the leaders to implement in the future constitution of a united federal Cyprus. However, they have neglected the importance of sensitizing the society at large. Therefore, as pointed out by some of my respondents, even in the case of the signing of a peace agreement, it may not be accepted by the population who generally is nationalist and anti-solution, especially on the Greek Cypriot side.

78 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 To conclude, we have seen that the normative argument on the necessity for including civil society in peace negotiations to lead to a broad-based peace constituency is possible but not automatic. Women's groups therefore have to operate on two levels: on the elite level and on the grassroots level. The 'Usual Suspects' have focused on the Track-I level and sought to reach the negotiations at its closest. However, they have not been able to mobilize the Cypriot population, on both sides of the divide, which impeded the creation of a large movement, which may have had more impact. Therefore, the international support of, in particular, the UN Good Offices and the Embassy of Sweden in Cyprus have focussed on helping the women's groups reach Track-I. However, in the case of Cyprus, where the a large segment of the communities on both sides of the divide support ethno-nationalist discourses, more efforts should be focussed on the grassroots-level. Mobilizing the population would create a bottom-up dynamic in the peace process and lead to a broad-based pro-peace constituency and which would enhance local ownership.

By interviewing members of the inter-communal women's groups in the Cyprus peace process, I realized that all my respondents were of a certain age and had studied abroad, mostly in England. For further research, a question that would be interesting to examine is the arrive younger women's view on gender issues in Cyprus. On a larger scope, the concept of 'normative decoupling' could be applied to analyze other cases where women's groups are isolated in the society and have been unable to get a sit at the negotiations table.

79 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 9 References

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84 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 10 Appendix

Interviews

Magda Zenon

Nicosia South, Cyprus, April 14 2017, 11:30.

I met Magda at the Daily Roast, a café in the South of Nicosia on Good Friday.

This café is what could be called a 'hipster place', outside the walls surrounding

the old town of Nicosia. Magda was wearing casual clothes and was very

friendly. She gave me three hours of her time and she seemed to be very familiar

with being interviewed so she kept talking about the things I was interested in.

So women have always been a sideline, they've never been part of the

mainstream. And because patriarchy has dictated the Cyprus problem rules, they

have never been allowed to be concerned about things like participation,

education, health, streets, municipality. It always was the Cyprus problem that

needed to be solved, and the Cyprus problem has always been solved by men...

They've done a fine job! *Laughs*

There has been a certain amount of sporadic movements of women trying to get

involved at different levels, like the Women Walk Home. A group of women who

decided to get together and tried to walk home. You've had women involved in the

'missing person', the 'mums of the missing'. But there again, we have been utilized

85 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 by the leadership because whenever we have to pull out the hard strings and make

people feel sorry for us, you say: “These poor women! They've lost their sons,

their husbands, their grandfathers!” So women have always been the victims.

Because of the way society is, they've always believed that the men can do it.

They've always thought that was a man's job. Even women in active women's

groups. Five years ago, I remember telling them: “Peace process and equality, we

need equality in the peace process!” And the initial reaction was: “Let's do the

peace process and then we'll get equality.” They could not understand the fact that

equality is not ethnic – it's not just the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot.

Equality is a principle and it includes gender, sexual orientation, religion,

economic class, educational level; it includes everything! It is not just ethnic. So

you can't just have ethnic equality and then work on other things. It has taken a

while because patriarchy has done such a good job. It has controlled the media,

the schools, etc... So the women have not questioned.

I remember, about a month ago, there was an article with me in it, in the Cyprus

Weekly. So I went to the convenient store, to buy the newspapers and I said to the

young man, he must have been about thirty: “Can I just open the newspaper?

Because there is an article about me.” So I opened it, he sees my picture and asks

me: “What's this about?” And I said: “It's about women's participation in the

peace process.” And I said to him: “Do you feel that you are represented?” He

asked me in what way and said: “I haven't thought about that.” I asked why:

“Why assuming that these old men, why expecting that the elite are representing

you at the peace negotiation?” He said “Hm I had not thought about it.” Because

86 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the rhetoric has been so subliminal and so overt at the same time that people don't

question.

I've got a son of twenty-two: “Elections. Why should I vote? It's not going to

make any difference. And if I vote it's going to be a repetition of the same things.”

So I told him to bring some of his friends to have a conversation. I told them: “So

tell me what party you want to vote for and I will give you new names. And if you

tell me ELAM, I am not interested in you”. ELAM is the right-wing, it's the

fascist, nazi party. “But any party you want to vote for, come to me and I will give

you three or four names. It would be nice if you voted for one of the women in the

party. Fortunately, most of them like the Greens. But people are not interested in

participating.

As women that have got more of a consciousness or feel they have a voice

[inaudible]. It ends up being... Not a cartoon... But people almost end up not

taking it seriously because we keep on saying the same thing. But even I mean,

they will always claim: “It's not about women's participation per se, it is about the

gender perspective.” Because, coming from Sweden, you know you don't need to

be a woman to be a feminist. You need someone that is at the table who knows

that there are different perspectives, who needs to think about things like – and I

am being totally stereotypical about it – maternity leaves, women's healthcare,

daycare centers, public transport, lighting in the street, because lighting in the

street makes us safe... A lot of things.

Even now the [inaudible] say “Why haven't you put women at the table?” And I

say “We don't want more women at the table – it's not an object!” I had this

87 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 conversation with a member of the Greek Cypriot negotiation team. And she

turned to me: “I really get upset when I see people treating … It is us women in

the back-room that is doing the work.” So I say to her: “So where are the women?

If you are in the back-room, why should I, as a member of the civil society, think

anything has changed? Because the picture I have seen is grey-suited men. Why

should I assume that what is written is different? Because you are not visible! If

you are speaking, I need to see you! I need to hear you!” So it's a battle. But we

don't stop.

Also, we've always had the support of some of the ambassadors. The Swedish

ambassador, the Finnish, the Dutch, now the American ambassador... We've had

the support of embassies. But that's not the point. It's good to have them because it

does bring people together but you got to find the way to get the support within

your local governance as well. It got to be yours. If it's not yours, even the people

you speak to will not believe you or they will believe you less. We also got a lot of

support now from the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General,

Elizabeth Spehar. She's the head of mission.

But the whole point is that we, as women, have got to come together. Because

another thing that patriarchy has done, is that it split the women up. Firstly, they

are divided in political parties. POGO is the women's group of the Communist

Party. It's the biggest women's group in Cyprus. It has got the biggest

membership. When they have an event, they don't invite anyone else. When you

have an event and you invite them, no one comes. Because they like control... I

don't know! And also, it's only recently that NGOs have a strong voice. Until now,

they've been considered as not important. But they don't participate.

88 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

We had a conference in November. Before the conference, we had three or four

workshops on the four pillars of 1325. I am very well-connected, I know people. I

sat down with my list of contacts in Cyprus to try to make sure that the people

invited to the seminar were not the usual suspects only and to make sure that we

did try to have people from the government, the municipality... Because in

Cyprus, peace is not considered as part of trafficking and trafficking is not

considered being part of peace. It is not considered as being part of the same

puzzle. So I went through this all and I specifically invited one of the MPs from

the Communist party, who came back to me and said: “Oh! I'm the representative

of 1325 in Parliament.” “Great!”, I said to her, “You can bring your expertise!”

She didn't come. I invited her to the conference, she didn't come.

In December, all the findings of that conference were presented on an open-day,

the UN open-day, on women, peace and security. I invited her again, I got an

email back saying: “Am I coming as a member of Parliament or am I coming as

POGO?” I said: “You're coming as whatever you want and if you want to bring

members with you, bring them.” She never came! And I met her afterwards, and

as I am not aggressive, I said: “It's such a pity you couldn't make it!” This is 1325.

This is something that got the attention of the EU, the UN, it is supported by the

Swedish embassy, and you're not there. What was more important?

We have a national machinery for women's rights to which we are all registered.

Why don't invitations go out to all of us? Within the national machinery for

women's rights, there's a board and there's the rest of us. Two years ago, they put

together, within the national machinery for women's rights, a committee on bi-

89 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 communal activities. I am in Hands Across the Divide. Hands Across the Divide is

the first organization in Cyprus that brought together women from both sides. I

was not invited to the meeting. I got a telephone call two days after the meeting

from a friend of mine who said: “We had this meeting yesterday and I think I am

going to push them to invite you.” And I said “What the fuck are you talking

about? I am in the national machinery for women's rights, how can you have a

meeting without me? And I am not saying me as 'Magda'. How can you have a

meeting without any organization within the national machinery that is bi-

communal? So I called the committee and I said: “Why are you not using the

resources you have with the ministry? I understand you don't have a lot of

financial resource. Why don't you look at the two hundred names that are on the

list and invite them all?” They could not give me an answer except that they are

understaffed. So it is also a problem of bad management.

I am actually very fortunate because I arrived in Cyprus in 2000. I am South

African-born, grew up in the Apartheid-years. I went to Greece and then moved

here in 2000. A week after, I got a job at a newspapers that had just opened. My

main responsibility was Human Rights because I have a Master's in International

Law and International Relations. Two months after we started the newspaper, the

British Council set up a seminar about what women can do in divided

communities. They invited women from Israel/Palestine, Bosnia-Herzegovina,

Northern Ireland and us. At that conference, the Cypriot women gathered and it

led to the creation of Hands Across the Divide. We actually had to go to the UK to

come together and put together our constitution because that was before 2003,

before the check-points were open. If we wanted to meet, we used to meet in Pyla,

which is near Larnaca and has always been a mixed village. Even before the

90 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 opening of the checkpoints, the Turkish Cypriot could cross over there, that was

easier, even though they had a hard time. We often went to meetings and they

would not let the Turkish Cypriots through.

For easy communication, we created an e-group. In this group, we spoke a

language which is not everyone's first language. There were eight of us in this e-

group and most of us did not know each other. I made a few rules; one of the rules

was that if you have something personal to say to me, you take it out of the group.

If you're angry with something that has happened, you write an email. Take out

your anger, put it in an draft and then come back two hours later. Because you've

got to realize that your internal voice is not in your email. The people that are

reading it are not of the same fluency as you.

So there were some clashes, but it was a learning process. We realized that you've

got to be careful of using words like 'invasion', which I disagree with because

there was an invasion. If we don't actually say the words, you don't get past the

words. You had got to stop using the words, which the Greeks automatically say,

'occupied area'. Even it is the occupied area, you got to start using the words in a

softer way not to make the others to back up.

The other bad thing that did happen was that about eight years ago, three members

of Hands Across the Divide, that were founding members, actually decided to

come back. I said to one of them which was then my friend: “Come to the

meetings, see how the group is developing.” Because a group is organic. People

create a group, but the people that stay are the ones that actually develop it. I have

got an adopted son. I have contributed to make him slightly a different person

91 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 compared to what his birthmother might have because there are lots of variables

involved. So I told them: “Join our conversations, see if you like what you're

hearing and you can make changes.” The three of them decided “no”: “They were

the founding members, they were all in London...” And they launched an attack

online. Online. It was very difficult, it was exhausting. But it was me, Sevgül and

Nana, frontline, and the group did not fall apart.

It caused damage but the group didn't fall apart. It was us frontline, no one else

was speaking. And people were asking themselves “How can they come, ten years

after the process – they had not been to a meeting in the last five years – what's

their problem?” They have not paid their membership, first of all. They were

criticizing the budget, but they are not accountable! It was exhausting... But

because there was honesty, because we had not done anything wrong. Of course

the group had taken a form not everyone agreed with but you have a chance to

stay and bring it back on track or to leave!

Hands Across the Divide is still around but not active. We still meet every now

and then. Technically, at CCMC where I am at the board, I am there as a

representative of HAD. Hands Across the Divide is part of the Cyprus Women's

Lobby. The good thing about Hands Across the Divide is that when we went

through the application to join the European Women's Lobby. In 2008 or 2009, the

Secretary General of the European Women's Lobby was a Greek Cypriot woman.

There were only two European countries that were not part of the Lobby, which

were Cyprus and Poland. She made a concerted effort to bring us together. Poland

was not a member because when you join the Lobby, there are certain principles

you have to adhere to. One of them is freedom of choice in terms of abortion.

92 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Poland had a problem with that. Eventually they got it but then got kicked out

because the [inaudible] changed in Poland.

You cannot be in the Lobby if you belong to a political party – you have go to be

apolitical. There was a clash there because the women's groups thought: “Oh!

Another place I can go to, to go to Brussels!” And they tried to manipulate it but it

didn't work. We put this together and the application was sent to Brussels. When

we went to support our application, I was specifically chosen to go to represent

because we had to appear bi-communal. So even though we don't represent the

whole island, we do have a certain representation of Turkish Cypriots. We made

the application as the Republic of Cyprus. For some reason, Oya Talat, who then

was the wife of the leader of the Turkish Cypriots, was there. She had started a

women's platform and they tried to make an application by using Turkey which

they had connections with, to push them through. And for better or for worse, we

were the legitimate application, so they tried to cause us a lot of damage.

The night before the vote went through, the members of the board of the European

Women's Lobby got an email from the North to reject us. So when you do your

application, you make a presentation and you're allowed to questions from the

plenary. One question came from France, to see if we represented Turkish

Cypriots. They were a constant effort to discredit us. But we went through, with

one abstention from France.

So we decided to make an effort to bring in Turkish Cypriots. I sent an email to

Oya Talat who was also my friend – I knew her. I sent her a very lighthearted

email saying: “Can we meet? We can have a conversation.” It was very

93 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 lighthearted, it was certainly not in an official capacity. So I got a “yes”, got

picked up at the checkpoint, taken to the presidential palace and got stuck in a

corner, between five women who started attacking me: “Where are the Turkish

Cypriots? Where's the representation?” They claimed not to be invited. I said:

“First of all, I am here as Magda. I have come here for a conversation.” We had

made the decision as well, that within the lobby, we would have a rotating

presidency. So I said: “The way we're represented in the lobby, is 'one

organization, one vote'. It's as simple as that!” I came out of that meeting

exhausted. But I kept thinking: “I am here for having a real conversation. We've

got to work together, we're one island. It's about women's rights, it has nothing to

do with divide, it has nothing to do with checks and balances in terms of ethnicity.

It's got to do with human rights, trafficking, it's not different in the North.

Trafficking is trafficking.”

I got a call from my colleague who works in Brussels, to say to me: “What the

fuck happened at the meeting yesterday?” I said to her: “Why?” She was in

Brussels, with the Secretary General, the Greek Cypriot. She said she got such a

public attack from the Turkish representative because of the meeting we had with

each other. I said: “What happened at the meeting? Because I was just having a

conversation!”

It is very difficult to include Turkish Cypriots because the Turkish Cypriot groups

that are pro-reconciliation are already marginalized. So if they join a group where

they will meet Greek Cypriots, it marginalizes them even more. And it is still

difficult. Now they do projects on violence or trafficking. The realities in terms of

human rights in the North and in the South are different because we have a

94 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 European framework whereas there, the acquis communautaire is frozen – there is

no framework. There is a different reality. The other problem is the North is, if

you think there are few activists in the South, in the North it's half. Because it's a

smaller community, that's pure numbers. So they cannot be involved in every

activity.

Here, you do have a certain protection from the European Union. Our problem in

the South is that we are in a conflict zone, so we do have the directives. We appear

to be European, we appear to have equality. But women actually don't go to court

because here it's a small community. And if you go to court, no one's going to

employ you afterwards because your name is going to be tainted. So here, there is

the illusion because you do have a framework, but you don't know how aware of

human rights the people are as well. Trafficking might be a little bit more

[inaudible] in the North because there is no framework and there are actually only

a few NGOs working on trafficking.

The realities are slightly different because here we do the legislation on women's

rights is in place. We also have just ratified the Istanbul Convention. But this

applies only to the South. But a lot have got with the fact that women are not

aware of women's rights: “I've been beaten up and I go to the police. Who's going

to deal with me at the police station?” Or: “If I get raped and go to the hospital,

who's going to be there?” So that problem is also a deterrent. I have a friend that

was verbally, emotionally and physically abused by her husband, regularly. It was

the second or third time she went to the police station and they said to her: “What

do you think this is? That it is a supermarket you can come to everyday?” So there

are lots of issues.

95 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

Because of this lack of awareness, because of all these things in place that

patriarchy has [inaudible], why would they be in the peace process? When we did

these workshops in November, peace process is not a separate industry. I

remember one of the young girls, that is a scientist. The woman that was leading

the seminar asked her to present the findings. We had international people leading

the seminar and the next day the findings were presented at a conference.

Fortunately, we did not say this to any of the internationals, but they allowed the

locals to present the findings. And the young girl – she is a post-doctoral student

in Science, she's incredible – says to me: “I am not part of the context” and I say:

“What does it mean you're not part of the context? Are you not a human being? If

you are a human being you are part of the context because peace is the

environment. It's not a separate sector, it's the entire environment you work in.”

You have got to make these women realize that we are all part of the same thing.

That's the beauty of 1325. It's not the panacea for all but it started to bring people

together to realize that the four places that are important in peace is prevention,

participation, relief and recovery.

Though, not all women do join women's groups. There is a group of 'usual

suspects'. There are a lot of Turkish Cypriots that would say their challenges are

different. And the challenges are different. Our legitimacy makes our life easier.

The women in the North have no legitimacy: they're invisible. They live in an area

that is unprotected, or unrecognized, and has no voice. I could just take an

airplane and leave, I am a legitimate EU citizen. I can get a passport in two or

three days, it takes a month for Turkish Cypriots. The challenges are different. I

do have a certain protection by the law. No matter the degree to which it is

96 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 implemented, but the law does exist. In the North, the law doesn't exist. Here it is

not always implemented, but it's there.

Being part of a bi-communal NGO is important firstly because I think that it is

only if we get together that we will be strong. I think bi-communal women's

movements, and I prefer “multicultural”, or “island-wide”, because we are not bi-

communal. “Bi-communal”, the more I say it, the more I see the binary, ethnic

dimension. I prefer the “island-wide” because I think that if the women come

together, we can solve the problem in Cyprus. I think there will be more strength

if we speak as a whole, despite the fact that there are different challenges. Coming

together also means speaking at peace together. So using words like “invasion” or

the fact that Greek Cypriots never talk about what happened before 1974, whereas

a lot happened after 1963. Talking the truth, speaking about the rapes. The rapes

have never been acknowledged during the invasion. The only acknowledgement

to the rapes in 74 was in the South. The legislation was changed in terms of

abortion. If you'd been raped, you could get an abortion. That was the only

acknowledgement to the rapes that took place during all the troubles. It was never

spoken about. So bringing together groups and having these conversations, the

most important part, and we know this as a fact, is that women do love narratives.

So if you can actually have a safe space, stories come out. That's the only way to

get it.

We talk about 'usual suspects' because when there is an event, you know you can

go there alone, you know who you are going to find there, so you won't be alone!

Our biggest challenge is to cope with this. I don't know what else I can do. No one

knows anymore. We just have to continue the conversation, continue the

97 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 workshops and making sure that you invite more than the usual suspects on

Facebook. Although I realized that Facebook was not enough. I invited people to

the launch of the White Book and I invited everyone via Facebook. But not

everyone had seen it, so I sent emails to everyone.

When we did our conference in November, we took out 'gender' out of the title

because people don't buy 'gender'. People don't realize that gender is in fact broad

and it does not only apply to women. There was a conference in the North last

month, in Famagusta. Fatma asked me to put together a group for the South, to

see who we could invite. We cautiously invited men as well. Issues like rape,

issues like violence, also have to be discussed with feminist men.

An effort is made now by all of us to actually start including men, to try and step

out of 'just the women'. Equality is equality. The challenges for women are

slightly different than the challenges of the LGBT community. We must not think

that we can put everyone in a box together. So you've got to leave a space for

gender alone. We are all on the same side because we all want to live together, we

all want to have access to rights. We all want to have healthcare.

We have a challenge to reach the mass society and the Track I. There are women

that don't really believe in the peace process and you also got the patriarchy and

the leaders that certainly don't want you there. In 2003, after the opening of the

checkpoints, we were there as Hands Across the Divide and we broke up in two

groups and did a gender-friendly Cyprus solution proposal, focusing on education.

We sent it, at the time it was Papadopoulos and Mehmet Ali Talat who were

negotiators, and the three relevant embassies. We got no answer. None. I visited

98 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the Greek embassy, someone visited the one of the UK and in the North they took

it to the Turkish embassy.

Some of the members of Hands Across the Divide are members of the Gender

Advisory Team, which was created in 2009. The GAT is operating at a different

level. We put together recommendations. When Christofias and Talat met, we

went to the Buffer Zone and presented our declaration. We were very forward-

thinking, knowing that no other NGO had actually been on the streets. In 2001,

when Clerides and Denktash met for the first time, we were standing at the

checkpoints with white balloons in the name of peace, to show our support.

Again, it is the usual suspects. We saw the results of it on sunday when the leaders

met at the Ledra Palace, there were 150 people!

Hands Across the Divide did a lot of grass-root initiatives. We did a lot of work on

the ground, we were in the newspapers but we never got to Track-I. But our goal

was not necessarily to get to Track-I because we are a grassroots movement. We

also did event at Ledra Street. We brought an expert on 1325. Together with GAT,

she did a talk on 1325 and what it means. We created this a board at the

checkpoint Friday the whole day and Saturday the whole day and people wrote

about what peace meant: hundred and fifty definitions. The GAT came together

and put together some recommendations on governance and citizenship. We were

helped by the good offices that facilitated meetings with the negotiators. We had

meetings, we had discussions. Then, the negotiators changed and we carried on

having meetings. There was communication. When they restarted the meetings in

2014 and they put together the technical committees, and they were all men, we

asked: “Where are the women?”

99 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

When they have an event, you invite yourself. They don't want to see you.

Because I was on the European Women's Lobby, I was going to a plenary meeting

and there, you're allowed to put an emergency motion. The negotiations were just

going to start in 2015, and I put an emergency motion in front of the EWL to

pressurize the leadership to implement 1325. That is one the things that

encouraged them to do the confidence-building measures of the gender equality

technical committee. They created the gender equality technical committee: no

criteria, no transparency, no communication. No one knows what criteria they

used to appoint the members. Names were just thrown on the list. And like all the

other technical committees, they are not allowed to speak with the CSOs. They're

First Track! Whatever that means... Because they are not part of the negotiations.

The women in the committee, none of them are feminists. No! Two of them are...

Maria Hadjipavlou and Olga Demetriou. The others are not feminist. They've

never been around in events, activities. They've never been around. They surely

cannot put women there and assume they know what the CSOs are doing. We as

the Cyprus Women's Lobby approached the heads of the technical committee

because it's a bi-communal one. We asked for a meeting and we were brushed off

two or three times. There was anger within the CSOs. How can you create a

technical committee on gender without any criteria? We all know that most of

them was political appointments: “We want to make him happy, so we're going to

put so and so.” There was a lot of anger and I was one of the most vocal ones.

This is where we are now. Still trying!

100 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 The women in the North are more active feminists even though the Turkish

Cypriot community had the same complaints as we had: that they were political

appointments. You cannot assume that just because you think you know, you put

something together that expresses.. You might think that legalizing abortion is

good. Why assuming? In a lot of these things, there are different schools of

thought. Why being arrogant in assuming that what you think is best? The

recommendations that were sent by GAT, not everyone agreed with them. There's

a certain bias. So why assuming your recommendations are best and not talking

beyond that?

We're fortunate to have got beyond the anger because there was a time where

some of them were not talking to me. I was very vocal. I can't go to a meeting the

gender equality technical committee leads and they tell me for the third time they

are discovering gender budgeting. I can understand bringing people from different

facets but you got to be basically a feminist! She was talking about 'things' women

didn't want to give up. Women don't want to give up their security, their safety.

They want to make sure their kids are going to be OK. It's not about material

things I am worried about. It's whether I can walk in the streets. Or get a job.

Those aren't 'things'. Those are values, ways of life. The gender equality technical

committee, as all the other technical committees, are not in the negotiations. If

they are giving suggestions, why can't we talk to them?

Even now, when we asked them now what they were going to do to unblock the

negotiations, they said to me: “What?” and I said: “So you're not going to put

women at the table?” And they both said: “But we have women at the table!” And

I: “Yes, but do you have the gender perspective? Just because there are women at

101 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the table doesn't mean there's a gender perspective.” I shut down the conversation,

they both came back to me, but I am not interested in the diplomacy. You get

stuck at a conversation because you get stuck at a certain perspective. If you bring

in another perspective, things might change! You do want to have women at the

table because what happens then is that subliminally you change what people see.

Because now what people see is a group of grey-suited men. So putting women at

the table does change the way people look at things. But you want the gender

perspective there.

So we've got to do more at the grassroots maybe, to make women realize that if

we speak louder as civil society... I put a lot of blame on civil society because for

too long we let everyone else make decisions for us. Civil society has got to

mobilize. Let's speak together! Let's go to demonstrations that support the peace

process! Hundred and fifty people? Usual suspects... I went there and I was

visiting someone close by. And I walked to the demonstration because I knew that

I would find someone to take me home! *Laughs* It's very sad...

102 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Sara Brandt-Hansen

Nicosia South, Cyprus, April 19 2017, 10:00

I met Sara at Caffè Nero, a very nice café on Ledra Street, the main street in South Nicosia. She was accompanied by my friend Paulina Lindén who is the intern at the Embassy of Sweden in Cyprus. Sara's mission in Cyprus lasted four years as she will head to the Embassy of Sweden in France in August 2017. She was talking positively about her mission but I noticed a certain fatigue and understood the expression: 'Cyprus is a diplomatic graveyard'.

Vi har ju en feministisk utrikespolitik. Vi har en utrikesminister som pratar om en

'sustainable' eller 'sustaining' peace, där man alla får vara med for att det ska vara

en långvarig fred. Det ska inte bara bli fred, utan folk ska kunna leva med

varandra. Det finns en massa forskning som du säkert har sett som visar att det

blir mycket mer långvarig fred om man har kvinnor med, om de får med på

'negotiation table'. Det finns en massa kvinnor. Men de kanske inte sitter med i

beslutsfattande processerna. Det är ett stort problem. Och det är ett problem här på

Cypern. Det är ett problem i andra länder men Cypern är ändå ett EU-land och

som har ändå väldigt få kvinnor i politiken, i beslutsfattande myndigheter, i

parlamentet... I regeringen finns det en kvinna. I parlamentet finns det 16%

kvinnor.

Det är väldigt patriarkaliskt kultur där ortodoxa Kyrkan har stort inflytande och då

har dem konservativa värderingar. Det aldrig har varit någon kvinna som har varit

chef. Sen finns det så klart väldigt duktiga kvinnor i 'negotiating teams', absolut.

Så det är inte så att det inte finns kvinnor men de når inte riktigt upp till där

besluten tas.

103 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Jag kom hit 2013 och forsta året där man är på en plats så forsoker man se var

man kan gora saker. Var finns det nånstans en plats for mig och for Sverige?

Ekonomiska krisen tog mycket tid eftersom Cypern precis hade gått in i ett

[inaudible]-program med IMF och EU. Men sen så kände jag: ”Ah men det här är

ett område!” Och sen så kom den här feministiska politiken. Det var mycket som

jag forsokte, och som jag tänkte att ambassaden kunde vara en aktor igenom att

stodja de här krafterna som man dor att få frågan hogre upp på agendan. Forsta

året så gick jag runt for att prata med de här kvinnorna for att kartlägga hur det ser

ut. Och de såg vi ju att det här behovs mer stod. Det behovs goras mer, och det

behovs få upp hogre på dagordningen.

Vi har arbetat ganska systematiskt även de är innebär att prata med FN, andra

länder, med de här kvinnororganisationer och sätta ihop dem, så att det blir en

'movement'. Vi hjälper till, men det är Cyprioterna själva som ska gora det här och

vilja det här. Och det finns ju många starka kvinnor och män som vill det här. Men

de som bestämmer är ju inte så intresserade... De har ingen National Action Plan

for 1325. I ett EU-land är det faktist ett krav att man ska det egentligen. Och vi

befinner oss i en konflikt som då borde man ju ha en 1325.

Man säger ju: ”Oh, gender is good!”, men sen så gor man ingenting. Man har inte

gjort något. Men nu vill kvinnorna att det ska bli 'action' här! Varav den här 'White

Book', som Magda säkert har pratat om. De hade ett mote i November där

ambassaden var väldigt stodjande for att få tillstånd, for att få FN har de i ogonen.

Där var Elizabeth Spehar, som vi samarbetar mycket med. Även 'the Good

Offices' är intresserade av det här. Så det handlar att 'mobilize' och 'join the

forces'. Sen har vi, som ambassad, arbetat med att få fler kvinnor på

104 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 beslutsfattande position och vi har berättat om 'the Swedish Case' osv. Det är ett

spår men här arbetar vi mer bland de här personerna for att de kan lyfta bollen,

stenen uppfor berget.

Vi jobbar därfor 'behind the scenes' ganska mycket. Vi kanske inte har så stora

events. Utan vi kanske coachar dem om vad de kan gora. Vi har en politik som gor

att vi kan agera så. Det är en politisk vilja men det är också att vi ser att här finns

det verkligen utrym att arbeta med de här frågorna.

Den här religiosa dialogen som är 'under the auspices of the Swedish Embassy'

precis fick upp gender under dagordningen från de religiosa ledarna med en

fordomande 'statement'. 8 Mars hade vi ett stort event på Ledra Palace där alla

religiosa ledarna 'condemned the violence against women' i ett uttalande. Och de

pratade om det här. De pratade om jämställdhet mer generellt. Det var ju som ett

mål att få in den jämställdhetsperspektivet i den religiosa dialogen, även om det

inte var huvudsyftet med den religiosa dialogen. Huvudsyftet är ju att få de

religiosa [inaudible] att samarbeta. Det är ju egentligen en 'Human Rights' access

to worship, inte religion per se men att man ska kunna gå over på andra sidan och

ha access till sina kyrkor eller till sina moskeer osv.

Men nu har vi lyckats introducera en gender komponent i religiosa dialogen

också, vilket är viktigt for att de här personen har en stor makt i sina egna

communities. Nu sitter vi i Nicosia men om man åker runt på landsbygden på

bägge sidorna så är det en helt annan bild som du får. Personer som bor i

Limassol, de är rika och går ut och ha kul. De struntar fullständigt i konflikten, de

flesta. Paphos, det är ju liksom 'rural area', de kan inte se varfor de ska... Och det

105 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 är kanska traditionellt också. Så det finns en ganska stor att gora i hur kvinnor ska

'reach out in the whole Cyprus'. Och det pratar kvinnorgrupperna om, och det gor

gender kommitten också; de ska arbeta med det egentligen.

Vi pratar med alla, så att säga. Civil society säger att de här technical committee

bara sitter for de själva: ”Vi har ingen påverkan på vad som händer där och deras

händer är bakbundna av politiska ledarna.” So what's the effect? Så kan det ju

vara. Men jag tror inte att man ska. Det gäller att se att man har ett gemensamt

mål här och de arbetar man mot det. Och det har dem verkligen! Man måste inte

vara for kritisk mot varandras arbete utan man arbetar gemensamt. Jag vet ju vad

de tycker, jag ser de här problemer. Jag tror inte att gender kommitten stycker

stolen med att det är svårt och att de är lite bakbundna av negotiating teams, som

vill hålla dem lite borta: ”Nu håller vi på med ett 'top-down process'! 'Top-down'!”

Det är fel egentligen. Egentligen borde de ju ha mer 'bottom-up' och folk ska

efterfråga det här. Men i stället är det top-down: ”Vi bestämmer där uppe, och sen

så kommer allting att ordna sig.” Så är det ju inte! De kommer att ju få problem

med hållbarheten av den här freden.

Det är ett stort problem med hela fredsprocessen egentligen. De har inte arbetat

med 'reconciliation', 'trust-building', 'peace activities'. Det är utlänningarna som

gor det mest, som finansierar sådana projekt. Det har varit mycket Amerikanerna,

de hade US Aid här. Sen är EU stort, de har ett kontor på Norra sidan också. Vissa

ambassader – vi har 'Religious Track', som finansieras via UD. Men det här är inte

biståndsland alltså. Det är ett EU-land. Så det finns inte hur mycket pengar som

helst att använda sig av. Det är ett ganska rikt land. Nu finns det ett ganska stor

skillnad mellan Norra och Sodra men... Norra Cypern är inte ett land. Det är en

106 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 del av Cypern, det är ett ockuperat territorium där 'the EU acquis is suspended'.

Turk Cyprioterna är ju ändå EU-medborgare.

Det är otroligt komplicerat och allting kokar ner till 'recognition': ”They don't

recognize each other.” Republiken säger: ”Vi erkänner inte Norra Cypern.” Och

Norra sidan erkänner inte Sodra Cypern, och det gor inte Turkiet heller. Den enda

som erkänner Norra sidan är ju Turkiet. Inget annat land gor det. Men det är det

som 90% av allt det handlar om – hur Cyprioterna beter sig i FN och olika fora.

Det är det det handlar om. Och de glommer man lite om 'the daily work', i alla fall

på hogre nivå. Man tänker: ”Det ordnar sig, vi har ju civil society.” Men civil

society på Cypern är svagt och splittrat.

Alla jobbar lite på sina horn. Men när det kommer till gender, då har man ändå

kommit ganska långt. Där har man skapat Cyprus Women's Lobby, där flera

kvinnor, från olika delar av samhället arbetar tillsammans. Och det är lite det vi

vill. Vi samarbetar mycket med business women. Från academia och civil

society... Det är det det handlar om också, att skapa en gemensamhet. For att i

Sverige till exempel är man väldigt bra på det. Och det så man har lyckats flytta

stenarna uppfor berget. Är man for splittrad då händer det inte så mycket – då

finns det ingen så kan ta bollen upp till the decision-making level.

Det finns många kvinnor som har jobbat med den frågan i säkert 20-30 år. Även

från '74, efter invasionen. Så det är inte så att det inte har hänt någonting. Men

politikerna har inte varit 'sensitive to this', tillräckligt i alla fall – och det är ditt de

måste komma, tycker vi då. Vi vill ju bara hjälpa till, sen är det ju då upp till dem

att forsoka få tillstånd. Men jag tror också att man behover ha bra exempel. Men

107 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Sverige är kanska ensamt som har en sån där uttalat politik. Det är inte många

andra länder som har det. Det skulle vara Norge då, men de är inte här. Finland till

viss del, men de har inte en sån där uttalad utrikespolitik. Så vi är ganska

ensamma också. FN är ju ganska starka när det handlar om gender. Då har ju

också den här platformen, det är en del av deras uppdrag. Så det är egentligen vi

och FN som kanske jobbar mest. Just nu i alla fall, sedan jag har varit där. Det har

säkert ändrats over tid.

Det är också lite person-baserat också. Nu har vi en nu ambassador. Forre

ambassadoren, han var ju väldigt bra. Han var ju man och han var äldre. Han var

väldigt stodjande. Nu har vi Anna Olsson Vrang, hon är ännu mer inne i det här,

så kan vi gora ännu mer. Jag tror att min efterträdare kommer också att jobba med

det här, for att det är ju Sveriges politik och vi ska jobba med det.

Vi organiserar inte workshops och events, vi har ju inte den här kapacitet

egentligen. Det är väldigt svårt att få någon from Sverige vilja komma till Cypern.

Ofta så får vi själva prata om sådana saker. Det gor vi gärna. Vi kommer att prata

när det är olika events och workshops. Det är inte så ofta som vi organiserar

någonting själva, men vi kan har luncher och middagar, networking... Mer lite på

den nivå. Sen har vi pratat i parlamentet om gender-budgeting som är väldigt

intressant. Då har vi fått gora det som ambassad. Sen har vi religiosa dialogen. Vi

gjorde ett event, vi var på TV på nyheterna, alla tidningar. Cyprioterna säger: ”It's

the Swedes... Ja ja, de håller på med sin gender” ungefär. Men vi har ju flera

platformer. Det är inte bara det vi gor. Vi är ganska starka på flera ben, så att man

inte hamnar i ett fack bara.

108 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Peace activities måste nå ut: Tänk nytt! Skådespelare, musiker, tänk lite nytt! Vi

har pratat om det här. Yngre social media... man kan ju gora en massa saker. Jag

har forsokt ge lite sådana tips. Det finns ju också andra länder som har gjort

youtube-filmer, clips. Man kanske borde ha en ambassador for den här frågan,

kanske en skådespelare, en musiker. Man kan ha konsert, man kan ha sådana

grejer. Men det är inte något som vi kommer att gora. Det måste de gora själva.

De måste outreach brett i hela Cypern. De måste har bättre ingångar i Parlamentet,

politikerna måste lyssna. De måste arbeta sig in i systemet. Det är väldigt

parallellt att ha women's political party. De är väldigt marginaliserade i

parlamentet också. I Sverige så hade dem mycket att säga om dagordningen. Det

har dem inte här. Alla länder är ju olika. Det här är inte Sverige; det här är Cypern.

Det är ett helt annat sätt att tänka på. Det är bysantinsk, det är väldigt mycket

annorlunda – och där har jag svårt att se hur jag kan komma upp med en losning.

Utan det måste de gora själva. Man måste arbeta brett: universitet, skolor,

education ministry, så att man får nå de unga.

Jag har forsokt att jobba med journalisterna. Men gender är inte något 'sexy to

write about'. Nu har vi haft ett ganska stort program om press freedom i Februari.

Forra året så firade vi det 250-år jubileum av tryckfrihetsforordningen i Sverige

och Finland. Och det faktist var forsta gången som man hade haft något liknande

här på on, och då hade vi forsynen på Home For Cooperation. Då hade vi Grek

Cyprioter och Turk Cyprioter journalister tillsammans. Det var inte det om gender,

utan det vi hade journalister utan gränser – reporters without borders – från

Sverige. De diskuterade lite om hur pressfriheten ser ut på bägge sidor – och så

klart är den bättre på den här sidan – men samtidigt så var det så ganska klart att

109 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 man kan inte skriva om vad som helst här. Man måste få någon journalist att

skriva, man måste få någon slags debatt om det här.

Det som är bra med diplomater, det är därfor vi åker runt som en cirkus liksom:

det är for att man inte ska vara på ett ställe for lång tid. Skulle jag vara kvar här

nu, skulle jag bli dodstrott. Man har ju en energi som man kan komma med och

forsoka vara en aktor, som jag verkligen har forsokt. De forsta två år, jobbar man

upp sin plattform och verkligen forsoker vara med overallt, se till att ha ett bra

kontaktnät och sen så gor man man vad man kan utifrån de forutsättningarna och

direktiven vi har. Sen så blir man ju trott for att det här är ju... Frågan är om det

här är seriost: ”Vill dem det här på riktigt eller är det bara en show?” Vissa säger:

”Vi behover processen. Den är ingen som dor, vi lever i fred. Vi kan leva så här.”

Det är kanske så man får se det lite. Det är väldigt, väldigt jobbit att tänka så. Men

det är så det har varit de senaste 42 år.

Eliterna är glada med status quon, tyvärr. Det är inte tillräckligt många som lider

och befolkningen efterfrågar inte något annat. De är väldigt nationalistiska bägge

sidor. De är 'brainwashed in schools': de lär sig från borjan att hata Turkiet här,

och på andra sidan lär de sig att ”Greek Cypriots are all bad.” Där måste man ju

bryta. Men det gor man inte: why not?

Nu finns det forfarande en generation som har levt tillsammans i mixed-villages

och de levde sida vid sida – kanske inte 'mixed' men sida vid sida i fred. Men de

borjar du do ut. Nu kommer de här unga, och Cypern är ett land som har haft en

väldigt ekonomisk tillväxt på de senaste 30 år. Många är ju rätt så bortskämda. De

har fått allting: ”So why should I want this?” Jag vill ju så klart att det ska hända

110 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 och vi forsoker, vi ser på långt sikt. Sverige har även finansierat en studie som

PRIO skrev 2014 om de ekonomiska fordelarna om fred på ett 20- årigt

perspektiv, långsiktigt. Och det var enorma ekonomiska fordelar. Men det

forutsätter ju att man får en bra fred och det kommer att vara svårt att bestämma

tillsammans och allt det här. De forsta 10 åren kommer att vara jätte svåra.

På Norra sidan rostade dem 'ja' till Annan Planen i 2004. Det var ju ett slag i

ansiktet att de rostade 'nej' här. De har ju mycket mer att vinna på ett sätt. De är ju

isolerade! Det är svårt, det är tufft for dem. Här så har de alla fordelar – de är EU-

medlemmar, de är 'internationally-recognized', de kan resa hur de vill, de har

ganska bara ekonomi nu; medan Norra Cypern är det 70% av budgeten

finansierad av Turkiet. Det är liksom inte ett funktionerande ekonomi. Det är en

demokrati, det kan man säga men Turkiet av ju ändå mycket att säga till dem. Jag

forstår att de är mer positiva på Norra sidan. Men jag tror att det sakta sakta håller

på att ändra sig. For att om de säger att det aldrig händer någonting, så kanske

säger dem då att ”det är kanske bättre att gå for separation.” Varfor inte? Om jag

ska nu hålla på att forhandla äktenskap som inte vill ingå så kanske kan vi

forhandla en skilsmässa som vi ändå på något sätt kan leva med.

Det finns UPOP, som jobbar for International Crisis Group, han skrev 2014. Då

hade dem ett helt forslag på separation, hur det skulle kunna se ut – ganska

intressant. Sen om det är mojligt är en annan fråga. Men nu om inte de här typen

av forhandlingarna fungerat så här långt, kanske ska man prova någon annan

metod. Det är det man pratar hela tiden: en ny metod, ”new method”, ”new

methodology”, där då man lyssnar med på civil society, mer bottom-up approach.

Man är inte vann vid det här. Man styr inte så på Cypern utan det är the political

111 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 parties, det är dem så bestämmer. Så är det ju väl i andra länder; politiken

bestämmer. Men det är lite mer kooperativistiskt, det är det ju i Sverige i alla fall,

där alla är med lite grann.

I allmänhet, ser kvinnorna att det är eliten och männen som ska forhandla

fredsprocessen, men det kan man ju krossa. Det gäller bara på att komma på hur.

Jag tror absolut att det är mojligt. Det finns en massa fantastiska kvinnor här.

Starka och duktiga, pålästa. Problemet är kanske med det är att många gor det lite

vid sidan av, de har ju ett jobb. Då frågar man hur mycket kraft man har till det

arbetet.

Det är olika problem på Sodra och Norra sidan. Trafficking är ett enormt problem

på Norra Cypern. Där gor de lite som de vill. Det finns ingen EU-ramverk. Det är

en mecka till folk som vill kopa sex. Där har vi haft experter. PRIO hade

trafficking seminarium 2 år sen där jag hade tagit hit två personer från Sverige.

Någon som är trafficking-koordinator i Skånesregion och hennes kollega som var

sexolog. Det är en ganska intressant kombination for att hon berättade hur man

arbetar med männen. I Sverige som har man ju forbjudit att kopa sex – och hur

jobbar man med dem som koper sex? Och det var helt nytt här, och det var jätte

intressant. Det har vi gjort, och vi forsoker att bidra. På Norra Cypern så var det

ganska klart att där är det lite liksom: ”Man kan gärna kopa sex.” Det är lite som i

Sverige på slutet av 1800- borjan av 1900-talet: Kvinnorna får åka och checka på

sjukhuset for att se om de inte har sexual diseases.

Men det var ju så här också. Fram till EU-medlemskapet sådana 'cabaret' där man

kunde ta med kvinnor på sådana ”show”. Det var ju ganska forstått att på sådana

112 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 cabaret så kunda man kopa sex. Men det har man slutat med. Sen har du ju då

kanska många tredje-landsmedborgare som jobbar här som housekeeping. Det är

ganska mycket 'labor-trafficking' som då korsas med sex-trafficking. Så det är ju

ett stort problem på bägge sidor. Det är värre där men det är stort – det är ett jätte

problem här. Jag skulle säga att mycket av de problem de har är gemensamma.

Trafficking är värre på Norra sidan. Political decision-making tror jag är ungefär

lika samma.

Du kan gora din politisk karriär med Cypern-frågarn, det är så du kommer fram.

Det är inte så komplicerat – du kan gomma dig bakom Cypern-frågarn hela tiden.

Så det blir enkelspårig politik. Man märker det ganska fort.

We can provide the space, men Cyprioterna måste gora det här själva.

113 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Evren Inancoglu

Nicosia North, Cyprus, April 19 2017, 18:00

With Evren, we went to Luna Café Art Shop, a really sweet café in a small street

on the North side of Nicosia. I met Evren at the Home for Cooperation; I was

introduced by my Swedish friend Linnéa who works with the Religious Track of

the Cyprus Peace Process. Evren is a realist – he always reminded that it already

was a big step for the leaders to agree on creating the Technical Committee on

Gender Equality two years ago.

The gender-equality technical committee is under UN Resolution 1325. These

technical committees have always existed in order to help the leaders on various

issues. There is the technical committee on property, the technical committee in

economy, the technical committee on Human Rights – different technical

committees. But there never had been a technical committee on gender-equality.

So this is the first time they established such a committee. It was always

established last year, when the negotiations started again, with the election of the

Turkish Cypriot leader. A new momentum started and they established new

committees. Most of them were the committees that always had been established

on economy, property.... And this time, for the first time in the history of the

Cyprus issue, they formed this technical committee on gender-equality.

They appointed 12 people there: 6 Greek Cypriots, 6 Turkish Cypriots. Four

women from the North, four women from the South. Two men from the South,

two men from the North. Some of them are civil society activists, some of them

are academics and some of them are government officials. I think I was elected as

114 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 a civil society activist because I am also involved in the the Home for

Cooperation and the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research, which are

bi-communal associations where we do bi-communal civil society events in order

to bring the two communities together.

We were appointed last year and we started to meet regularly. We are meeting,

like all the other technical committees, in the buffer zone, at the old airport in

Nicosia. From Ledra Palace, it's a ten minutes-drive. It's not far away, but

normally from the buffer zone you cannot walk there. We got special permission –

I'm talking about Turkish Cypriots. Greek Cypriots I think they directly drive

from South to the airport. So they come to the UN, the UN has their names and

they let them in. But for us it's a little bit more complicated: we go to the third

checkpoint which is for the cars and there, there's a regiment from the Turkish

army. Our names are there, given from the President's office. So the Turkish

military escorts us until the UN and the Turkish army leaves. Then, the UN checks

us and we enter to this airport which is now used by the UN and the leaders who

meet there as well. When we were first established, the two leaders welcomed us.

The negotiators had a special meeting with us and there are also rapporteurs at

every meeting and a mediator.

We also formed some sub-committees and we started meeting outside the buffer

zone, unofficially. Sometimes, Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots separate and

sometimes together, usually at Home For Cooperation. The problem is that it is

very bureaucratic. In order to proceed, you always have to inform the authorities.

In this way, it is different from civil society. If you are civil society, you do

115 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 whatever you want – but here, we are not allowed to go public and talk on behalf

of the committee. We cannot make statement on behalf of the committee.

But what we can do is cooperate with civil society. Of course, before, we have to

get confirmation from both authorities. We can be like an umbrella-organization

for both sides to make a new event which would help peacemaking. So we are

different than civil society because we always have to report what we do to

authorities, both sides.

What we are supposed to do: we have a mandate and under this mandate, we are

supposed to produce suggestions, recommendations to the leaders. But I must

admit that the psychology of the negotiation affects as well. We were more

motivated and we used to meet more often when things were going good, until

two months ago when they had the crisis. First in Geneva and then when they

came here, the Parliament in South passed the Memorandum Bill of Enosis, which

means the unification of the island with Greece. The Turkish Cypriot leader

reacted and there was a crisis. There was a time when the negotiations had

stopped.

Now, the leaders restarted the negotiations. We continued but the motivation was

low: we started to meet less. Despite of this, we managed to produce some written

recommendations and we submitted them to the leaders. We haven't got feedback

yet but we were told that they received our recommendations. I cannot give you

details of what we recommended but basically our recommendations were legal

and institutional recommendations for a federal Cyprus – what can be done to

ensure gender equality.

116 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

There were other things as well, which were more related to peacemaking, like

gender and peacemaking relation, including truth and reconciliation. But to be

honest, because the process was going fast, there was a point where we had to

finish what they had to put in the Constitution and everything. So we focussed

more on the legal and institutional than truth and reconciliation. Although there is

no trade-off, there is time-limitation and also we all have other jobs. We were

meeting day-time, taking days off of our own jobs.

Almost everything has an agenda-dimension. So in theory, we were supposed to

work in accordance with other technical committees, like the committee on

economy – because economy has a gender-dimension. But that, we couldn't do,

because of the limitations I mentioned earlier.

Personally, I went to Norway, Oslo, four months ago. It was the time when the

two leaders were in Geneva. Bad timing actually – everybody was focussing on

Geneva and I was in Oslo. So I went there for a seminar/workshop on gender-

sensitive budgeting which is related with economy. I knew what it was but I

learned a lot more. At this seminar, they tried to combine three pillars:

peacemaking, gender and public finance. Of course I shared what I learnt with the

others but it would have been good to having shared it with the committee on

economy as well. But we could not do that – we could not work with the other

committees.

Gender budgeting is applied in other countries – in Austria it is applied, in some

Nordic countries as well. It can be at the local level – like for a municipality

117 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 budget – or it can be central – for the government. So what you do is that

meanwhile you are doing your budget, you take into consideration the gender

perspective. Some people take it as an extra money, but it is not actually. It is

about reallocation – you don't need more money. You take into consideration the

gender aspect. A very simple example for the municipality level: lightning.

Women feel safer at night when the city is lightened. It was interesting because

these two pillars, peacemaking and gender, yes, they're discussed together.

Peacemaking and economics together, yes. But the three altogether, no. So it was

interesting. There were some academics, some NGO activists, representatives

from IMF...

The technical committee make suggestions and provide recommendations to the

leaders. We managed to produce some but it's not enough – we need to meet

more. Unfortunately, for the last month, we haven't met, but now I think it is

time... It was because of this climate. But now the leaders started to meet each

other again so I believe that we will be back to business. And we did this “women

film's festival”, three weeks ago. The technical committees leaders – we have

people in charge on both sides: Xenia Loizou is for the South and Mine Atli for

the North. They both made a speech at the launch of this festival. We also produce

this small clip for the women's day. So it was Xenia, Mine, me and also Nikolas,

he is Greek Cypriot.

So we did these kinds of things as well. OK, we are not doing grassroots things as

the NGOs but we are also trying to make things... So yeah, at least we did this. We

have our mandate, which we can't get out of. In our mandate, we can produce but

118 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the thing is, whenever we are going to suggest something, we have to go and

check with the negotiating teams. In the end, they may accept or not.

We do not have the mandate to be the link between civil society and Track I. But

normally, this technical committee work with the civil society. For example, the

technical committee on education, they did some common events together with

civil society. So you can do this as well. But it's not your only mandate – it's part

of it, but your mandate is more about producing suggestions to the leaders. But

you can also be a linkage and you can help the civil society as well. It's time for us

to do this.

We wanted to talk to the civil society, it was on our mind. What we did is, as I

said, this women film festival: they went there, there were some conferences.

Mine and Xenia attended... But it's not enough. At the same time, we are not civil

society. We cannot go and say: “As the technical committee, we decided to have

an event together with Magda Zenon's organization.” We cannot do this. But what

we can do is to go and talk to Magda Zenon and other NGOs and ask them: “Is

there anything on your mind that you want to do? We can help you. We can be

like an umbrella organization.”

This is how it was supposed to be: the idea should come from the civil society.

But we could not do it. First of all, we did not have time. We were more focussed

on this legal and institutional recommendations. And then, there was this problem,

the atmosphere was a little bit more sensitive, and yes, we could not make it. Lack

of time, crisis in the negotiation. But now the crisis is over, we will get back to

work and we will, hopefully, work more with the civil society. Meanwhile, we

119 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 will also work on other suggestions, which have more to do with truth and

reconciliation, beyond institutional and legal.

The technical committee was the idea from the civil society, the fruit of the

pressure from civil society. We have some civil society activists, some very well-

known figures of women's organizations. They're also having some problems

because of this bureaucracy: you cannot get out of your mandate, you cannot

make any official statement, we cannot act like civil society.

I cannot give details, but some of our suggestions are similar to the 2012 GAT

recommendations. We can suggest some ministries, bodies of the government,

institutions, and at the same time, we can suggest some things to be put in the

Constitution, which will enable positive discrimination. Because we know, in the

West, how positive discrimination laws are anti-constitutional and they cancel

them. But our advantage is that we are writing a brand new Constitution.

[Regarding the transparency], this is how the committees work, it is not specific to

the technical committee on gender equality. Whatever your produce is

confidential. It is for the sake of a solution. It is not that we are against

transparency but it is how, unfortunately, how all committees work. From the first

day, we were told that we cannot make any official statements on behalf of the

committee, we cannot share what we produce and we cannot go to a TV channel

and talk on behalf of the committee. For this clip we did for the UN, I wrote to the

coordinator of the Presidential Palace saying that there was this thing. They

approved it and we made this clip. So even for that we need permission, because it

was in the name of the technical committee.

120 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

There are coordinators: one Turkish Cypriot coordinator, responsible for all

Turkish Cypriots in technical committees and one Greek Cypriot responsible for

all Greek Cypriots in technical committees. So these committees come together

and work together. But at the end of the day, they're responsible to their own

coordinator. So we are one mix, but at the same time, all Turkish Cypriot

members report to our coordinator and the Greek Cypriots do the same to their

coordinator.

So you have the two leaders who have their teams, who are negotiating. And then

you have technical committees. For economic issues: Greek Cypriots and Turkish

Cypriots come together. For property, they come together and they discuss: “How

can we solve this? What about this? What about if we do this with the

compensations?” If they agree, the members send this as a suggestion to the

leaders and the negotiators. They collect all the suggestions but they don't have to

follow them – they're just suggestions. When the two leaders come together and

are going to talk about the property, they have the suggestions of the technical

committee. So the negotiators try to solve it with the suggestions of the

committees.

Our technical committee is different than other in this respect: let's say, for

economy or for property, there's a trade-off. The more one side gets, the less the

other gets. But for our technical committee, there is no zero-sum. We can have

win-win. In this sense, we are more like a big team. If you are a member of the

property committee, you are again bi-communal, but at some point you can try to

121 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 preserve the rights of your own community. But we don't have this. It is better for

us to work as a team: we can win altogether.

We have had some issues that I am not going to tell. There were some problems,

leakage, this kinds of things. But when it comes to work, I think we are on the

same page. We are a big team, we are not clashing. I think that we have the same

priorities. The patriarchal system is strong on both sides. Legally-wise, they are

ahead, because of the EU and everything. But what I heard from many of them is

that changing the law doesn't help. You have to change the culture. Of course in

order to change the culture, you have to change the laws as well, until the point

where you don't need positive discrimination. But in the beginning, you need

these kinds of things. We have a long way to go for both sides. We have common

concerns. Sometimes there are clashes. I am more of a realist. I don't want to

make suggestions that they never are going to accept. But others say: “No. You

have to challenge.” This kinds of clashes can happen. But we are on the same

page when it comes to priorities.

The establishment of this committee is a message. We could have been more

visible but as I said, when it comes to be public, we need authorization. Even

discussing and producing these things is a big thing. Having this committee is a

message: “In this island, we have a gender issue and we need to improve this.

Gender and sustainable peace are interrelated.” It took a long time to set it up, I

mean it's the first time. The negotiations are running since the late 60s. It's the first

time they have it. But they made this decision and the next week, the committee

members were appointed.

122 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 For the last round of negotiations, we got a confirmation that our suggestions

reached the leaders. We haven't got a feedback yet. It was in January that we sent

it to them. They were all in Geneva then. And when they got back, there was this

crisis. Now they are back to work. We were supposed to meet two weeks ago.

Somehow, we could not meet with the technical committee. We will meet at some

point in the next weeks and I think we will push to get a feedback: which

suggestions are accepted and which ones are not.

Before the crisis, we managed to see both negotiators and their teams at the

airport. We told them about what we had been doing. We told them that we had

made suggestions and they told us that they got it. But after that, we did not get

any feedback. It is not that they are not taking it seriously but – I think that is how

they perceive it – they think that it can wait. This is the problem: “It's not that

gender is not important but 'property' is crucial!” This is, unfortunately, the logic.

It's not that they don't care – they do care but they say that it's not that urgent.

Whereas for us it is urgent – as urgent as any other thing. And all the other things

have gender-dimensions. But they don't know, for example, about gender

budgeting. I asked the technical committee about it and they don't know anything

about gender budgeting. We were supposed to work together but we could not

because of time. But before I went to Norway, I talked to some of them and I

asked if it was being discussed in the committee and they said “no”.

123 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Maria Hadjipavlou

Nicosia South, Cyprus. April 25 2017. 16:00

I interviewed Maria Hadjipavlou at her place, in South Nicosia. Maria is a pioneer in the field of conflict resolution and feminism in Cyprus. She is an academic and could be quite impressive sometimes during the interview. She is very self-aware of what she does, from a conflict resolution perspective, because she writes about it herself. She is a founding member of HAD, GAT and the TCGE.

I started speaking about gender in the 1990s. I was working on conflict resolution

and looking at the different aspects of the problem. And we never really had

looked at the gender aspect. What triggered me was when I was at one of the

workshops, a Turkish-Cypriot was telling her story and her experience in 1974; I

was so touched, so moved, that tears came down my eyes. And then, a man, a

participant of the workshop who was next to me, padded me and he said: “Oh!

You're so emotional as a woman.” That immediately triggered me to look at what

that meant, both in terms of delegitimizing my experience at that moment and at

the same time not really paying attention to the aspect of emotion. After that, I

started thinking about how can we really integrate this discussion into a conflict

resolution process. And then I started looking at the literature and Hands Across

the Divide gradually came up.

I have been involved in bi-communal works since the 1980s. When I did my

Ph.D., I was the first one to analyze the Cyprus conflict from a conflict resolution

perspective which meant that you also need to include the other's story, the other's

narrative, the other's fears, concerns, needs and understanding of justice. That was

an anathema at that time because, you know, “how could you talk about the enemy

124 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 when our country is occupied, when there are 40.000 troops here, when there are

violations of human rights and people are refugees?” So I had a lot of troubles

also, not only from the right-wing and nationalist, but even from people who were

at that time writing about the Cyprus conflict.

It was taking a risk both as an academic and later as an activist: integrating the

whole story. Not just “us and them”, which had been the practice. And this is how

protracted conflicts are based on, over-simplifying the “us vs. them” and

promoting a narrative of enemy-image which deepens both the separation and also

the fears and possibilities for rapprochement and for working together, to

challenge the master narratives which are so polarized and so divisive. I tried to

challenge this bipolarity and to bring in my analysis the whole story and therefore

develop a shared-narrative.

Before Hands Across the Divide, we did bi-communal workshops. At that time, we

addressed the question: “What has brought pain in Cyprus?” from a woman's

perspective. It was Benjamin Broome who was the facilitator at that time. But it is

something that we had also asked, to have a separate workshop to address women

abuse and perspective and so on. So that was before we started Hands Across the

Divide. I trained the trainers group so that we don't rely on outside facilitators but

we do it ourselves so we build local capacity and at the same time we overcome

the language barrier. In order to come to these workshops, you had to know

English. With this group, you could have conversations in Greek and in Turkish.

At this level, already, most of the participants had already gone through a conflict

resolution and analysis training. So they had an opportunity to share their fears and

125 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 grievances. There were, of course, at the beginning some tensions, because there

were women who were feminists, others didn't want to use the terms 'feminism'

and 'feminist' and there were women who had internalized the official discourse. It

was a diversity of experiences and views that were brought into the meetings. We

needed a process to go through this diversity and bring out our identity as women

– not just as ethnic subjects. What does our identity as women tell us about

experience of violence, displacement, war here? What are our needs today?

The Greek Cypriot women are more privileged, coming from the dominant group

and the recognized Republic of Cyprus in opposition to the unrecognized

“TRNC”. The needs and urgencies differed. For the Greek Cypriots it was more to

talk about gender equality, about more philosophical understanding of needs

whereas for the Turkish Cypriots it was more 'everyday-things'. Although

patriarchy is very strong in both communities, it is experienced differently.

Freedom of speech, was at some point in the 1990s, when Denktash was the

leader, anybody who would be critical of Denktash would not be seen favorably.

Many outspoken women lost their job, put under surveillance and so on.

There were more urgent, daily things, for the Turkish Cypriot than for the Greek

Cypriots who felt much more safe, much more comfortable. Security, it was an

issue for both but experienced differently. For us, security was the bigger question

of the army – the Turkish army, the occupation – whereas for the Turkish Cypriot

women, it was their daily lives which were very often at risk. And also having a

job, having freedom of communication. You know, these were needs and issues

which were much more urgent for the Turkish Cypriots because of this isolation

from the international arena which we had much more access to, especially after

126 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the accession to the EU. We had to harmonize our laws and the acquis did not

apply in the Turkish Cypriot side. They had very anachronistic or no laws.

Looking at women's rights: “What is this?”

There were tensions, a lot of discussions but this is the purpose of these meetings:

to try to understand each other's realities and how can we together build a common

agenda that could really transform the military and patriarchal and nationalist

conditions and narratives in our respective communities. There were a lot of

crying, of empathy-building and also we acknowledged our ignorance of each

other. I remember in 1991, a Turkish Cypriot journalist that we met at the Ledra

Palace after a lot of problems to get permission. She interviewed me and she asked

me what I know about the Turkish Cypriot women's conditions and live. And I

said: “I know more about Palestinian women's struggles than I know about Turkish

Cypriots who live only a stone-throw away.” Because of the communication

embargo and no contacts – you had no way of understanding or let alone being

aware of what the other is going through. It was a very long journey.

To reach Turkish Cypriot women, we would use a third party: somebody who

could cross and get permission to speak to Turkish Cypriots, speak to us, come

back and then try to arrange and get permission to get together at Ledra Palace.

They were facilitators from abroad, academics or UN people.

We always feel that governments and states always, in their national histories, are

very selective. They don't tell us the multiple truths and we knew this. When I was

reading about the 1960s and there was no mention of what happened in 1963 to the

Turkish Cypriots, immediately I knew that: “Something is wrong here – I want to

127 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 discover it, I want to found out.” And the same with Turkish Cypriot women. I

think there are many people who change their mind and start becoming much more

open and suspicious of their own sides' policies but also official narratives. The

official narratives are here to show that we always are the victims of the other – of

outside interventions etc … So we build a story on certain premisses that make

you justify your victimhood and your right to justice. So, in order to that, you have

to de-humanize the other. You have to exclude the other. So it was our desire to

challenge these adversarial narratives and to say that there is another narrative

there, which is not included. The people's narratives, the unspoken truth which we

feel that is missing. Through this, we need our own space to articulate, to take

them out and to challenge these narratives.

The Turkish Cypriot narrative was built after 1974 on the premise that “we are so

different we cannot live together so we need two separate states. We speak

different languages, we have different religions, cultures, etc …” All built on this

ethnic division. And when people meet and they see that they can really be

together and can coexist, then they break down this premise. So we also

challenged the political position because we want a reunified island and not one

that is separating us and deepening all the other divisions. This is the power of bi-

communal work – that they are challenging both sides' official premises.

The official premise on this side was not that we cannot live together, it was the

opposite: “We could live together in the past, why not today?” But in their

understanding, the premise was that: “If the people meet, then they are

undermining the international aspect of the problem which is outside interference,

which is outside invasion and so on.” When we meet, we say: “No! There are

128 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 many things that need to be done at the societal level. The problem is not only at

the macro level but is also at the societal level.” So, by meeting together, we also

said that generations are being socialized without knowing the other and they have

misperceptions, stereotypes, etc … Therefore, we need to do work at that level as

well in order to build this human infrastructure which will help the implementation

of a solution which will be reached at the political level. But unless the society is

ready to implement it, then even the best solution will not be sustainable.

The people who cross to the other side, they often change their mind about the

other. I remember when I first took one of my sisters to the other side she said:

“My god! These people are so clean! Their streets are cleaner that ours!” I said:

“What did you expect?” She said: “I don't know, I had this notion that they would

be dirty!” So going there challenged her misperceptions, her stereotypes. And all

the studies we've done about inter-communal contact have shown over the years

that prejudices, stereotypes, misperceptions are smoothed out through this contact.

Do you know about contact theory? Allport, an American, he started bringing

Soviets and Americans together. During the Cold War, they had all these

perceptions about each other. Through these contacts, he found out that through

living contact, doing work together, these misperceptions and stereotypes they had

of each other, were gradually gone. They looked at each other not as 'Soviets' and

'Americans', they came to the stage of looking at each others as human beings. He

developed after a lot more research with Arabs and Israelis the contact theory,

emphasizing the value of contact. I was the first one to bring this contact theory

and really talk about this and take it to our work here. So we used that kind of

theoretical underpinnings and also the psychological assumption that international

129 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 conflict does not concern only the state and diplomats but also the citizens, the

society. There's a lot of contributions to a solution that societies can also make.

Conflict resolution and feminism, they have a lot in common. With regards to

values, to the kind of society we want to build. Both are academic fields but at the

same time they can be applied as well – they give us tools, they give us skills of

how to build a more humane society.

We included women from other minorities and women from diaspora in our work.

This inclusion, I think, is very important because they give different perspectives

and they introduce different questions. That's why it's enriching – increasing our

understanding of ourselves through the other. It's interesting you know, to view

yourself through the other's lens. In the 1960 Constitution, which I think was

extremely divisive, the smaller communities – Maronites, Armenians and Latins –

had to decide with which of the two major communities they would go with. And

being Christians, all of them decided to go with the Greek Cypriots. Then, they

had the right to vote of course. The bigger community was the Maronite which had

four villages in the North. The Maronites too became displaced as the Armenians

but nobody wrote about them. So in the research I did, this came up of course.

There is an Armenian quarter in Nicosia, along the wall, which was really wealthy.

They became displaced in 1963, when there was the first bi-communal crisis. We

had the first constitutional crisis in 1963. But their story does not feature in the

mainstream Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot History books – or there might be a

line or two. So when I was doing this research, I found out – and also through my

students at university, asking them what they know about the Armenian

130 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 community and Maronites – ignorance. We live in the same place, but they are not

integrated and known to each other. The Turkish Cypriot women were surprised

when they heard Armenians also speaking Turkish. Some Greek Cypriot also: they

thought they were Greek Cypriots but they were Armenians.

For me, one problem of democracy is that when there are multi-ethnic groups,

there usually is exclusion. Who is visible and who is invisible? So of course, the

state comes and says: “You need aid for church or something? We will do this.”

And of course the background of each is different. Because the Maronites came

mostly from Lebanon whereas the Armenians, they came after the genocide. The

Latins from the Venetian and Frankish rule. There is a hybridity of identities in

Cyprus but because of the conflict, we make it either Greek or Turkish. This

richness and hybridity gets either silent or marginalized. I wanted to bring this out

in my research, in my books, and complicate the situation more. At the same time,

the communities on both sides are changing because we have the migrants. We

have all kinds of other groups who are coming to the island; either to work or for

political reasons like Denktash was doing – bringing settlers and Turks from

Turkey, giving them the right to vote.

The technical committees are jointly made up of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. In

our committee we always meet together. There can be intra-communal meetings

and inter-communal meetings but when we meet officially, we are all together.

Because it's defined as a Greek-Turkish Cypriot problem, there are not Maronites,

Armenians or Latins. They haven't changed that; they're going by the 1960-

framework.

131 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 The technical committee's mandate is to give recommendations and proposals on

the gender aspect on the different chapters under discussion like governance,

property, economy, citizenship and so on. These proposals go to the negotiators

and the negotiators to the leaders. So there is a procedure. Our mandate is not to be

in touch with the grassroots. The grassroots work is done by other people. If

Magda comes and say: “I want to organize an event, as NGO-blabla and I want the

technical committee to sponsor it”, there is a procedure. We would take it up as the

technical committee, put a request to the negotiators who would come back to us

and say: “yes go ahead and sponsor it!” But us, as the technical committee, we do

not have the power to initiate activities at the grassroots. And we explained it to

Magda, all of us, as the technical committee, so many times! But she seems not to

understand it. So that's wrong what she assumes.

I wish it were different but on the other hand, I see that there are so many other bi-

communal women's groups that can do this work. So why expecting the technical

committee to do that? I am there but I have other three or four hats, in NGOs of

women where I do this work. That background of technical committee might

inform me of certain ideas and things that I put out on the table as an activist. The

same for the technical committee on education – for them to do an activity, they

have to propose it to the negotiators and they might say: “Yes go ahead, do it!”

with the Home for Cooperation or the Association for Historical Dialogue and

Research. The Gender Advisory Team recommendations of 2012 are really similar

to what we produced with the technical committee on gender.

We haven't met for some time now with the technical committee; it depends on the

negotiations. We are thinking to meet now, unofficially, the Turkish Cypriot and

132 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the Greek Cypriot members, to see what is our role now. But usually, it's done

officially at the UN headquarters and there are UN people sitting in the room and

the two Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot coordinators there. We try to generate

more ideas together and then we have allocation of tasks, who writes what, how it

circulates to finalize the documents … We haven't met for some time and it

generates a lot of frustration because if the talks are not going well, the motivation

is not so big.

When we have talked with negotiators, they told us they've read our

recommendations, they have them in mind and so on. Our work will start when

they will start drafting the constitution. That's where we want to make sure there

are articles in the constitution where we address women's rights, women's equality,

women's participation and representation in the various aspects of life as outlined

in the constitution. So, I think we would have expected much more contact with

them than at present. But I also understand their point when they say that most of

the work will be when they'll be asking us: “Give us concrete articles that you

want to see in this new constitution and documents.” This will come about as soon

as they reach a mutually acceptable solution.

But in the meantime, as technical committee, we did participate in a number of

events – either with the UN or by foreign representatives or meetings with some of

the embassies – diplomats, especially with women ambassadors. There is still a lot

of work to be done in Cyprus on the issues of gender equality, on the issues of

gender-based violence, yes. Sensitizing the public is very important.

133 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 There is the same number of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot members in the

technical committee and they're appointed by the two leaders. For me, I know,

they called the university and they asked a teacher in gender courses and because

of my bi-communal work, that I was considered a traitor once, that I meet with the

enemy, there were people in the ruling party who didn't want me there – because

there are still nationalists in the parties. The parties do not all believe in the same

ideas. There are people who might say: “She has this label, bi-communal.” They

didn't like it.

You see these nationalists everywhere. There is a spectrum: liberal, very

progressive and there are some people who are still stuck in the past. And not all

members of the technical committee are involved in bi-communal work. There

were at least three members in the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots who

never met the other before or who never did work with the other. But the technical

committee's work has to be bi-communal. So you get to know each other, you

build trust, you are in the same kind of agenda on the issue of gender equality. But

it went very well because we have a shared agenda and a shared interest: to

promote gender equality and Resolution 1325.

Because there is a mandate that we both agreed on and we both share, and because

we have a shared interest, all the other divisions are less relevant. And this is

proven by research as well: when there are shared interest, people cooperate. But

when there are competing interests, people go on their own way. For the technical

committee on property, it's the most problematic issue because of the time factor. I

wrote in some of my work on the crossings: “To whom does the house belong? I

was born there but then I go and find forty years later that another person was born

134 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 there and he or she is over thirty years old. So he or she considers it to be her

house too. So how can we negotiate? Whom does the house belong to? Shall I get

it back and the other goes? Or should we find other options?” It has to do with

identity, with history, family history, with memories. That's why property issue is

much more multi-level and complex. Who has the first say to what will happen to

that house? The present owner or me, the legal owner? That's why I think there

should be different options given to people.

And does this property belong to the father or does it belong to the mother as well?

So gender aspect here as well – to whom does the property belong to? In an event

of a settlement on property, how could we make sure that women are also right

owners of that property? It's part of our questions. There is a gender aspect in all

the chapters of the negotiations. The governance: representation of women. Do we

have quotas? How many women? At what level? How do you distribute the

power? Not only according to ethnic division but also according to gender.

According also to minorities, to age. So all this, we need to take into account and

discuss and make a constitution that is representative of the democracy of today

and all the societal groups that constitute the implementation of such a document.

Because if you feel excluded or certain groups feel excluded, there is no provisions

for their rights. Then, this will generate tensions and crises in the end. It needs to

be pluralistic when you live in a pluralistic society. You have to represent this in all

the documents. This is the work of civil society to voice this and also of technical

committees.

We did meet from time to time with other technical committees. But that's another

thing that we've been saying: that there should be more meetings. But I think it

135 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 will come when the talks are really close to reach a solution and they start the

actual drafting. Then we need to intervene there and put the gender aspect in all

these decisions.

We need very early on to break these decisions and these gender stereotypes and

also understand the structures that hold these divisions. Patriarchal structures,

hierarchical structures and divisive structures which are based on biologism, very

often. Not very often, always I believe. Biology is transferred into social division

and inequalities and the development of the citizen as an individual in a patriarchal

society is very often based on these biological differences. So we need to break

that, from the kindergarden.

136 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Anna Koukkides-Procopiou

UN Buffer Zone, Nicosia, Cyprus, May 3 2017, 10:00

I think that the main problem we've had so far is that gender has been considered a

topic and not a tool of analysis or a way of engagement to a participatory process.

The process has not been participatory and inclusive to begin with. And of course,

the main group of people who suffer from this is half of the population; it's the

female population, on both sides. I started doing some research on how women are

involved in decision-making in the Cyprus problem. Since 1960, since the creation

of the Republic of Cyprus, we've only had three Greek Cypriot women having any

impact on decision-making. On the Turkish Cypriot side, we had one in the last

fifty-seven years. It's ridiculous. The numbers show you exactly what the situation

on the ground is.

You have a lot of secretaries or note-takers who are women, but women are never

at the forefront and they are never sitting at the negotiation table as equals. So, it's

one thing being there taking notes, and it's another to do the talking and deciding.

We've got two leaders who are men, two negotiators who are men and we have

two spokesmen who are men. The six critical people of the process are all men.

Now, when you make the argument “Where are the women? We should have more

women involved”, they say: “Oh but we have her and her, who is heading the

property commission.” But you know, that's one woman! It's quite a ridiculous

situation. The negotiators usually off-the-record say: “We're really busy with other

important things, so don't bother us about this gender issue.”

137 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 We have seen that since 2013, when we disaggregate the data on gender basis, it

always shows that the women are more negative that the men towards

reconciliation and the peace process. And it's very obvious among Greek Cypriot

women. A social-psychology explanation that could be applied on generic terms is

that since women are more risk-averse than men, from the moment there is

something they don't know about – because nobody has cared to inform them or

include them – they think that it is better to be safe than sorry.

If we go through the focus groups we did in December, and it is gender-

disaggregated, the women would say: “What about the future of our children?

What about the healthcare system in this new system? What about the social

security system? How exactly are we going to be saving up for pensions? Have

people thought about this?” And when you ask the men similar questions about

security, they ask about the armies and the guarantees. So you see, their concerns

are different: women think about the long-term implications of a solution because

they have been victims in this process, as usually women are in wars. They were

victimized on a massive-scale. There has never been any retribution or

acknowledgement of their suffering during the war. The atrocities conducted

against them were never addressed, so nobody seemed to care. It was brushed

under the carpet for reasons of social honor or sensibility. Therefore, they are very

reluctant towards reconciliation.

It is very different from other countries where you see the women leading the

initiative towards peace. But of course, this is a frozen conflict. For the moment it

is a frozen conflict and you are in a comfort zone. When people are not killing

each other around you, you prefer to be safe than sorry. That's one possible social-

138 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 psychology-conflict-resolution explanation. You should go and check out on our

website our SCORE Index and see the findings for gender for 2013 and 2015. It is

quite interesting. The Turkish Cypriot, I think they are reluctant, but not as

reluctant as Greek Cypriot women.

When I am on TV, I try to explain things in a very simple, straightforward way. A

lot of people came up to me and said: “Oh, you talk in simple terms and finally we

understand what is going on!” I think there is an obnoxious attitude in the Cypriot

society, an elitist approach towards the Cyprus problem and people use these fancy

terms. Being academics and being researchers, we do have that language and

terminology which is natural to us, but is not for other people. We should try a

little bit more to put our concepts into simple terms and language that the average

person in the street understands. It's very nice to talk with complicated

International Relations terms or conflict resolution terms but people don't get it. It

is as if I go to the doctor and he started explaining to me in medical language and

I understand zero: I would feel scared because I would not understand what is

going on.

The narrative needs to change. Because of a confidence-gap which is a fact

between men and women: the women are scared to ask questions if they don't

understand anything. Or even to participate in a dialogue that they feel is at a

different level because the men will use all the fancy words, even if they don't

understand what they mean. But the women are always more reluctant to indulge

themselves into any kinds of discussion about something they are not comfortable

with. That is something that I found through the focus groups.

139 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 We know that women suffer from a confidence-gap, it's a worldwide phenomenon.

It's a confidence-gap, it's the fact that women would not self-nominate to positions

of power, it's that they will not stand up to make their voices heard, they wait for

someone to address them before they speak, … This is standard gender stereotypes

in full-play because this is how women grow up to be. And you see it even in

corporate environments – whether it's Google or Facebook, anything: women

usually behave differently than men in decision-making processes. And of course,

behavior stems from these decision-making processes.

I give you an example: in the Syrian peace process that took place in Geneva, I

don't remember if it was two years ago... The women supposedly were taken to

participate. Now if you read the transcript of the discussions that happened within

those meetings, women were attacked: “Why do you want to be here? Do you

think you can stop the atrocities and we can't? What to you have to contribute to

the dialogue?” Women are treated as impostors sometimes and their willingness to

participate is questioned. Their value at the table is always questioned by the men

because their underlying assumption, their narrative is that the men are in control:

“This is how the world is – we're not questioning that.” But the moment the

women want to participate in the process, that is questioned: “What credentials do

you have to be on this table, discussing Syria along with us?”

It is always this permission that we expect to be given to us, to voice our concerns.

It is an innate characteristics that women are programmed to bring with them and

use: that we wait for permission to be given to us. Gender stereotypes and social

stereotypes, especially in traditional societies like Cyprus, which is a patriarchal

society, are even more enhanced. Exactly because society expects you not to speak

140 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 up, not to be a trouble-maker, not to pester politicians with demands for

participation. It is ridiculous that EU-states which have no conflict have a National

Action Plan for 1325 and Cyprus doesn't. It's an oxymora! It's a conflict-ridden

society where nobody cares to have a NAP for conflict resolution including

women. Sweden has one and Cyprus doesn't have one. Lithuania has one and

Cyprus doesn't have one. But nobody seems to care.

This momentum created by women makes women appear as trouble-makers to the

government. Maybe they will not say it to your face but they would say: “Oh here

they come again... These activists making demands... Treating the hell out of us!”

But you have to keep doing it, otherwise they will not listen. Because now,

'women' and 'activists' goes hand in hand. If society had been different, we would

no need to be activists, we would just be there. This entitlement that men have and

don't even realize, that they have this.

Magda and Sophia had to push for a conference to be organized on this. Once they

pushed it through, they managed to get a little bit of endorsement from the

Swedish embassy, from the EU office, from FES... But this should not have been a

private initiative. And now Cyprus is realizing: “Oh we need to have this National

Action Plan made maybe just to keep people quiet.” So it remains to be seen, once

this National Action Plan will be made, as a nice piece of paper with a lovely

hypothetical plan based on the nice philosophical principles of the National Action

Plan or will there be a practical and of course bi-communal? – but I prefer to say

multicultural.

141 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Honestly, as an activist, if they ask me to help them to come up with a lovely plan

just to tick the boxes, I will not do it. Honestly, I will not do it at least it is

substantial. I think activists should abstain from any effort to be the alibi of the

government. There is always this possibility that they appoint one woman... Like

the government of Anastasiades, back in 2013, they appointed a cabinet of

ministers and there was not a single woman. Not even one woman. And after a lot

of protests, at some point, the President appointed one woman in the cabinet. And

he said: “Oh, we've got a woman now!” She's much better than most of the men in

that cabinet. She's the minister of labor. She's got a very tough job because she had

to deal with the recession, with collective bargaining agreements, with shop

opening hours, etc… She's been dealing with that trouble better than any man

would have, in my opinion. She's there but she's so better than the men in the

cabinet... But that's always the case!

And then what happens is when they have to appoint these commissioners, who

have no executive power. They are there to ticking the boxes for EU

recommendations: “You need to have a commissioner for this, a commissioner for

that.” They're looking to appoint women just to say they have appointed some. You

know, at low level positions, nobody pays attention to but “we appointed women.”

I think that's despicable. You should not be appointing men or women to tick

boxes. The underlying assumption is that we're doing them a favor. It's not as

saying “OK, how can this be diverse? Because diversity pays!” They don't even

understand that the outcomes of any group that is diverse are always of better

quality than outcomes of non-diverse groups – and this is proven by research.

142 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 The technical committee on gender equality, it's the same thing as the gender

equality commissioner. We have a gender equality commissioner. I'll give you

stories for both things, how they came about. They had to have one because at the

EU, there's a box that needs to be ticked about gender and human rights

commissioner. So they had to do that. Also, there was a very damaging report at

the UN. The UN said that the government had not done anything.

So basically, the response to the report that was filed was the necessity to appoint a

gender equality commissioner. But it's the most lowly paid among the

commissioners and she has no executive powers. Nobody knows exactly what her

mandate is and she had no office for quite a long time. Now they placed them at

the ministry of justice and she has one or two people. That's ridiculous. She has a

personal assistant and someone who's doing various stuff. But I mean, if you have

no budget, no people, no expertise and can't get any expertise because you can't

hire people and can't train people, how can you have expertise on creating a

National Action Plan, on dealing with family law, on working on empowerment,

on pushing for quotas? You can't!

So it's there, we've ticked the box. And who did they appoint to this position? She's

a very nice person, but they appointed someone who was not really an activist; she

led the governing parties of women's association. She was a partocrat, she was part

of the party people who's friendly to the government. She is very friendly to the

president and part of the ruling party. I think her hands are tied. Even if she wants

to make a fuss about things, she probably wouldn't. She's one of the establishment.

If you are one of the commissioners, you belong to the establishment. You are very

143 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 lowly paid. You have no resources, no staff. Exactly how are you going to do

anything about change?

The area in the North is “territory of the Republic of Cyprus not controlled”. That

is why we are not part of Schengen – because there is an inability to control the

borders. The whole Cyprus is part of the EU but the acquis communautaire cannot

be enforced in the Northern part. So when the government is endorsed with the

responsibility of doing the National Action Plan, it's the legitimate government.

Because, you know, the government in the North is a government in quotes, it's not

recognized. A lot of people would tell you: “It's a public state, everything's paid by

Turkey, there are 40.000 troops there. Seriously, it's not a legitimate, democratic

government making its own way, participatory, exclusive, blablabla.”

So the National Action Plan will be done by the Republic of Cyprus which is the

official government. But on the other hand, you cannot ignore the realities on the

ground. Because if this needs to be inclusive and participatory, you can't just

exclude 18% of the population. And even if you invite them, most probably the

invitation is done in a very high-handed way: “We are allowing to come and tell us

what you think.” They would not come! I mean, I would not come either! I am a

Greek Cypriot you know and if I put myself in the shoes of the Turkish Cypriots, I

would not go either. So it's a big question mark, how realistic this National Action

Plan can be.

There are some people in the technical committee on gender equality who are

long-standing feminists and activists and you understand why they are there. But

there are some people who have never been involved in gender. Appointing

144 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 someone in the gender technical committee without the expertise, just because

she's a woman, I think it's a fail, to begin with. A lot of us who have been exposed

to activism our whole life and it is very difficult to have any kind of respect to

anyone who does not even have an opinion on gender.

That's a big problem because you don't speak the same language – these people

haven't been around throughout the whole process of pushing for a technical

committee on gender. For example, Magda Zenon had orchestrated this whole

campaign at the European Women's Lobby. She passed a petition that a gender

technical committee should be established. We wrote letters as the Cyprus

Women's Lobby to push the two leaders to create a gender technical committee.

Suddenly, this gender technical committee appears and it's just some party who

appear to be women, plus two or three people who can get the job done because

you need them. You know, you can't have non-experts in a committee like that. So

you mix. You bring in the experts to do the work and then you bring the party-

establishment women who tick the boxes for compliance.

I'm sorry that I'm very blunt but I think that's the case. We've never heard anything

from this committee although I'm friend with a few of the members there and I

have tremendous respect for some of them and I'm not negating the work they

have done so far – I'm sure they are fighting. I know, because I know them. If their

message is a united bi-communal team that is mostly made up by people from the

establishment, then they can't push any message across. Second, if the government

completely ignores the message they have to give – they have no executive power,

they have no resources, they've been forbidden from doing any kind of events or

speaking to us – then why are they there?

145 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

The culture committee has been organizing events every single year. There's a lot

of outcry of money being spent, of doing things in cultural heritage sites without

proper authorization and the gender technical committee has not even endorsed a

conference on gender, has not even planned a conference on gender, has not even

had a formal meeting with any of the women's organizations. Not even with the

Cyprus Women's Lobby which is a platform and has all the women's organizations

and is part of the European Women's Lobby. And it's a campaign of the European

Women's Lobby, facilitated through Cyprus Women's Lobby and Magda. I am

mentioning Magda because she was very vocal about that and she was not even

part of the committee that she helped set up. And I think that's very unfair.

If there was genuine concern to get the people who push for change, they would

have included more activists and experts in the committee. If the intention is just

to have just a few people who know what they're talking about with lots of people

who don't know what they're talking about, there is one from each party, and we

keep all the parties satisfied. They can control the people in that committee. It has

happened in most committees in Cyprus. How will it amount to anything? It's two

factors. The one factor is that you do not have enough activists to have a critical

mass in that gender technical committee. The second is that the government is not,

in any way, willing to genuinely listen to their recommendations. So it's a

combination of factors. Maybe I'm wrong but that's my personal evaluation of the

situation. I don't know much about the Turkish Cypriot women in that group. What

I've just said reflects my opinion on the women from the Greek Cypriots.

146 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Magda has done bi-communal work all her life. If they meant business, she would

have been the obvious candidate! Magda and Maria would have complemented

each other very well. It would have been a great team …

Armenians, Maronites and Latins make up 2% of the population. The moment you

start including 0.5% of the population, it gets very complicated. It should not have

been like that to begin with. It should have been women – not: “so many from this

community, so many from this community.” It should have been the other around.

The previous leader of the Cyprus Women's Lobby is a Maronite. Her mother is

Argentinian, her father was a Maronite. But she's so integrated into the Greek

Cypriot community that most people think that she's Greek Cypriot. I completely

forgot! She's called Susana Pavlou, so she has a Greek Cypriot surname, probably

her father was hellenized.

You know what bothers me is when you start ticking boxes and classify people – I

don't like that. But then, it's the Catch-22, if you don't do it, how do you include

people? One the one hand we don't like it but on the other hand, sometimes you

need to do that. I think we are a very hypocritical society in terms of that we are

trying to Europeanize ourselves and appear to adhere to all these norms of the EU

but deep inside, the hierarchical side, the patriarchal side, the Mediterranean side,

is there. It's not like the Scandinavians, where I think genuinely, they have become

gender-blind and they don't even get this whole thing. In Cyprus, the underlying

notion is that: “This is a man's business, this is a old boys club and maybe we give

you the permission to enter.”

147 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 In the corporate sector, the women get lower bonuses. Even if they get the same

salary theoretically, the men always get higher bonuses. We've done this project,

this pan-European project gender in decision-making positions in seven different

countries in the EU and I was the project manager for Cyprus. It was good to know

that what happens usually is that women are given smaller departments. When

they're allocated a project, they get smaller budgets so the chances to get any kind

of dividends or bonus on smaller project with a smaller team are smaller by

default, if you're not given the big deals to handle. So the chances to get a bigger

bonus than the boys … It's not there! This project was with Germany, Spain,

Cyprus, Lithuania, Estonia, Turkey, Poland and Italy. The results were so

disappointing for everyone!

I was looking at the case of Norway because it is the best country where

supposedly women can live according to the World Economic Forum. And you

know what percentage of women are top business leaders? Only 3%! Which is

shocking!

So I think it's not just institutional barriers that stop the women but it's also inside.

I don't know if you have seen this Ted Talk with Sharon Sandberg, she's the chief

operating officer of Facebook? She's like one of the most powerful women on this

planet as we speak. She established this foundation where she's working on female

empowerment. And what she calls centered leadership, empowering women to

lean in, to seat at the table, there are some very lovely stories on women in that

book and in that talk because she used to work for the Federal Reserve, she used to

work for Google and then she went on to Facebook. And she said: “We went to

this big investment bank to pitch a deal. We were on the top-floor, we were having

148 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 a meeting and we had a break. I asked: “Where are the ladies' toilets?” And

nobody knew. And she said: “Have you just moved into this building?” And he

said: “Well we never had a woman on this floor before …”

We are doing this project 'Women Fit for Business', it was an EU project and I was

the project manager. It was run in different countries all over Europe. And then the

money runs out and the EU doesn't renew the money for a program that already

ran. The EU gives once, it's successful and they don't give you any money to do it

again. As a volunteer – because I volunteered on behalf of my organization, which

is Women of Europe the chapter in Cyprus – we found funding through Ernst &

Young. We put this project together with them, which is quite interesting. I was

managing that, as a volunteer on behalf of Women of Europe. So I'm doing it over

and above my day job.

You see most of gender activists do things voluntarily because nobody is going to

pay you to do that. Unless it's EU money or universities or things like that. It's

good that we found the funding from Ernst & Young. Gender is sexy as far as

international organizations are concerned. But on the local level, they don't care.

When you see the word 'gender', you know that it's going to be a bunch of women

that is going to talk to another bunch of women, so it's not a funny blend.

149 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Emine Colak

North Nicosia, Cyprus. May 4, 2017 – 10:00

All these issues I have been involved in civil society because it is an area I have a

particular passion for. But at the same time, I always had a legal career. So there

have been times when, in a case – maybe it's about property rights, maybe it's

about equality, discrimination or whatever – where I and other lawyers will refer

or draw from international treaties where we domestically have passed through

our own parliament, claiming that these are laws and rules binding on us. To the

point of, even if they're not specifically stated in our constitution, our constitution

says that these rules bind us so, you know, you find a legal route to make those

norms a part of your domestic law. And in court, we are lucky that the judges are

open and they do embrace these kind of arguments, they are open-minded.

This is the challenge of living in our environment which is one where you think

and you hope a certain standard of civilization, human rights, economy, prospect

but at the same time we have to establish that without any kind of international

formal recognition. In many cases, being attacked and deliberately excluded,

downgraded by the aggressive politics of the South who thinks that any kind of

contact with the Turkish Cypriots would have – both with them and with everyone

else – a kind of upgrading effect or a kind of recognition of the TRNC. They feel

very passionately about this, almost paranoid.

150 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 It just makes life harder, when life is as hard as it is in any country. It also makes

an imbalance between the two sides: they're sitting at the table, discussing political

equality under a federal structure but there's no equality as it is now. Equality

won't come with a magic stick. Equality is also about culture, understanding,

habits, equal treatment and non-discrimination. We don't have that now and we

expect it to come automatically with a solution – if we reach one. I have serious

concerns that even if we did reach a solution, there would be many years in which

we would have to continue this battle, jointly, because there are many people on

the other side who are very mature and understand this need.

I have been Minister for Foreign Affairs between 2015-2016, for nine months, I

was the first woman Foreign Minister, from my community. It was interesting, it

was a challenge. It was also a time when the two leaders really had got going:

there was a momentum in the talks and that gave me great motivation. I was going

everywhere. In nine months, I have travelled thirteen times. I was going to

European countries, to the United States, to Gulf countries, I went to Turkey

several times. I went to Brussels, to Strasbourg. Again, just trying to carry the

message of my community: “We are here, leaders are at the table, we really need a

solution, you have to keep an eye on us, help us along and encourage us, the

leaders, be supportive when the time comes. It's been agreed, because we need

both political support and financial support to implement it. Keep your eyes on us

and know that we as Turkish Cypriots, with our present leader, are committed.”

But then we were back to 2004, when we voted yes and the other side voted no.

There are always blocks put in front of you from having international connections

and discussions – it's a battle to even talk to people. You just get refused or people

151 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 talk to you and they say: “no pictures!” or “this is not going in the press”. On the

other side, again, they would talk to me, anytime, but not when I am minister;

because that would be recognition. Whereas they know me! They've known me all

these years, I was among the first people to take part in bi-communal groups and

think tanks, even when it was impossible to cross to the South. We were all

labelled as “traitors”, criticized in the press for talking to the enemy. So I was still

me when I became minister but when my community appointed me to represent

them internationally, I became someone not to talk to, because if they talked to

me, that would have been recognition.

I didn't let these challenges stop me; I went everywhere, I knocked on doors. I was

not there to ask recognition of the TRNC. I am aware of the sensitivities, but I also

have to tell you that we are an entity there. We are at the table to form a new

federal Cyprus and we do have our own democracy. We have elected and

appointed representatives of our community. We have a system to govern

ourselves that you have to deal with. I was trying to explain this, make a little bit

of impact on the brains of people who are in important positions throughout the

world and especially European countries because they are the ones that take

serious decisions and if there is solution, we would automatically become a

member.

I call it not “walking into the EU” but “coming in with a parachute”: if there is a

solution, the Turkish Cypriots will automatically be inside the EU. So: “What do

you know about the Turkish Cypriots? How much have you listened to them?

Their needs, their problems, their economic issues, their concerns about

reunification with the Greek Cypriot side? If you don't talk to us and you accept

152 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the Greek Cypriots in position of avoiding us completely, then again, that is not

going to happen over night, that suddenly we're going to be loved by the EU or

that we love the EU.”

You know what I compare it to? It may be a sexist comparison but if you think of

a couple who is engaged. They're going to have the same roof, family, children but

until the wedding day, one or the other say: “You can't go anywhere. You can't go

shopping. You can't talk to anybody. Why? Because we're not married yet! But I

love you! I want to marry you! But I don't you to be seen, I don't want you

speaking.”

The Cyprus problem has certain elements. One element of course is 'the table': the

leaders. Another element is the text, the headings, the issues of governance,

property. The other element is the environment; the relationship between the two

sides, how much confidence, trust, compassion, how far have we done to

overcome or reduce all those years of enmity? The other irony – the more I think

about it, the more it drives me crazy – is if, for the Republic of Cyprus, there is a

crime whereby the North, in their terminology, is invaded and occupied... Who did

that? Turkey. But who are you punishing? Who are you excluding and stopping

from having contacts? The Turkish Cypriots! You say that the Cypriots are all

brothers and sisters but you are punishing them and then you want to expect them

to reunify with you. And I think they haven't thought it through.

The TRNC does not get recognized by young people going and play football at

international competition. It's not recognition. You know the legal methods of how

to recognize a country – and that's not it. But they're so paranoid about it that that's

153 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the policy implemented. And then it backfires. Its spoils and reduces the chance. It

gives them a kind of superiority complex; they're first-class citizens and we are

second-class. The “so-called”. We are the “so-called” people. “The so-called

police”, “the so-called ministers” … We are “so-called humans”! It's got out of

hands and I don't think there is enough research in the psychological impacts on

the community of years and years of this. Even to today, when we are getting

reading to be married and it's still going on. What do they think is going to

happen? Just by the two leaders signing a piece of paper that all of this is going to

disappear? It's not going to be that easy.

It's a very positive and constructive environment at Home for Cooperation but it is

just a sector. I can't even begin to guess what proportion of the population it is, but

it is certainly not the majority that is open to this contact. When you get too deep,

maybe something will come out and they will also be reluctant because they

would be into trouble if they go too far with connections. But on the whole, they is

a lot of people in academia who have the right spirit, the right culture. Some of it

is just being hostile and against but especially the young, they just don't care. It's

not part of their everyday life. They live in Paphos or Limassol and Turkish

Cypriots have absolutely no place in their life, interest, business, school or

whatever. There are exceptions, a few mixed schools but on the whole, and this

was observed in the Annan Plan exit polls: the further away you get from the

center or the Green Line, the less interested the population in the South is in

reunification or solution. So how do you put that into their agenda? I don't know.

The other issue about the young is that the education system, on both sides. In the

South, it's even more nationalistic. The major actor involved in the education

154 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 system in the South and who decides what will be in the curriculum is the Church.

The Church has a direct role in education in the South. The Greek Orthodox

Church, as we know, has always been a hellenism-advocate. When you look at

History, the Republic was founded in 1960 and broke down in 1963. From the

Turkish Cypriot point of view, we would always blame Makarios, who was both

the President and the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church. So the religion

and the tension that it can cause on Hellenistic nationalism in Cyprus has always

been an issue in the same way that on our side, it's not religion but the impact of

Turkey. The affiliation with Turkey has strong ties with nationalism here and

creates problems with Greek Cypriots. Nationalism is hard on both sides, but to

have this kind of impact on the education means you are everyday, including

today, raising children with that outlook. And if you stopped it today and you

changed it completely, you'd need to wait for a whole generation to have a

different outlook.

Today, in the South, there are young people who are not interested. They would

say: “Oh our country has been invaded” because they have been built up by the

education system with the influence of the Church which encouraged them to

think in that way. On our side, in the past, more left-wing governments changed

the textbooks. And that was quite a brave move because when it comes to

nationalism and so on, you've got to be really careful. But they just went through

the textbooks and tried to give them a more fair portrayal of history, remove

terminology that was demonizing Greeks. So our textbooks have been a little bit

toned down but they never succeeded in doing it in the South.

155 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 They formed a technical committee on Education. When did they do that? When

there was an attack on Turkish Cypriots by a group of high school kids in the

South. And again, it was the news, there were discussion, “this is terrible.” There

was a discussion on education systems because the children in that particular event

– and it's happened, on special national days or days where past tragedies are

being commemorated – they've been rounded up by schools. Schools are an

influence, so they formed an educational committee, based on that event.

The other thing that is interesting here is the crisis related to the plebiscite decision

in parliament on the Greek Cypriot side. The crisis there was such a big deal.

Everybody on our side thought it was a big deal – but especially when I talked to

the leader, I could see that his heart was bleeding. It was not just to commemorate

this in the army's ceremonies; it was in schools. He said: “Look, we realize that

there's a problem here, on the way we are raising the young and especially how the

Greek Cypriot young are not motivated enough for reunification, and what are you

doing? You are taking something of a nationalist commemoration which is a kind

of an admiration of the Enosis struggle, which nobody particularly supports now.

It's totally unacceptable to the Turkish Cypriots and it was also something that

brought about the 1974 war, because there was a coup with the general from

Greece to unite Cyprus with Greece... So you know, everything bad that's

happened in Cyprus can be somehow connected to that 'Enosis' word and you are

now passing this decision, right in the middle of negotiations to commemorate this

in schools.”

Everybody was confused. I've never seen all our political parties this united on

anything. Because if they think the leader is too hardline they would say: “Oh you

156 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 must be more friendly” or if he's too friendly, others would say: “Oh you must be

more careful!” But on this point, right across the community, in every political

wing, everybody agreed: “this is just not right.”

We don't know what happened on the Greek side... “Are you insensitive? Are you

this stupid? Do you not care? Or are you trying to score a point against the Turkish

Cypriots?” Which is it? All of them are bad! None of the answers to this question

can be good. Now, again, this is politics, but there is a big party like AKEL, and

they opposed it from the beginning and immediately when the crisis started they

came to this side and met with parties to try to patch up and reverse the harm that

had been caused. But you have two ELAM members – very right-wing and

nationalist – who were able to do this. And this is Anastasiades, who is our only

hope to get this thing forward, to get it done, and also to persuade his people to

say “yes” - because we'll have a referendum. And this is why the climate is so

important; it not about peace being signed by the two leaders, because then you

have to take it to the people and everybody, or enough people, have to say “yes”

for it to work. Otherwise, nothing is agreed and we're back to zero. That is what

happened in 2004.

You need to look at these issues who make the relations better or worse between

the two sides. It is also the issues of confidence-building measures: opening new

crossings, making interconnectivity between electricity, telephones, car

insurances, … All kinds of everyday issues that could be better, that people could

feel the impact of. You'd be surprised, it must have been about ten years since

there's been a decision – we really must do this: on all our roads, have signs in

both languages. For example, if it says “Dur”, which means “Stop” in Turkish,

157 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 you should also have the Greek and vice and versa. So when people do cross over,

they suddenly see their own language. Just that! It looks small but it's so big! It

has not been possible to implement that decision – it's something I will never

understand. Is it recognition? Is it cost? It's not a big deal but it would make so

much difference to our minds, to our psychology, to see both languages when you

travel all around the island. To see that both languages and both people live

together.

I have been involved in bi-communal groups, as we call them, or movements –

they've never been 'organizations' because to be an organization, this whole issue

of recognition, status comes into play. One of the few ones is the Association for

Historical Dialogue and Research in the Home for Cooperation, but that has come

so late. The bi-communal groups that we have since the 1990s are mostly loose

groups, facilitated by the Americans, the British, the UN, embassies... They try to

get the two sides together to talk. That has been a kind of movement rather than an

organization but it's important: it means that someone like me, now in this age and

position knows many many people in the Greek Cypriot side in similar posts. I

know people who are or have been ministers, I know the president, I know

lawyers, academicians and women activists. I know a whole group of people

which means that if one day there is a solution and the leaders say that “we need

some people to put in a group of mixed-cabinet”, I would be able to accept

something like that and also to know that I am acceptable to other people who'd be

chosen on the other side. We know each other and we have trust and confidence

between us because of all this past. There's a seed there, a little bit of beginning

there, of people that can... You know we talked about that bubble at Home for

Cooperation but a little bit bigger than that, the business community.

158 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

There is a little of people who can cooperate there but in order to get to that stage,

you need more widespread change in culture and behavior towards each other.

And you need it just to make the solution work but you also need it to make the

solution start, at the time of the referendum because you need more than 50% on

both sides.

The organizations who do polls, they try to analyze the different views of the

conflict according to the young, the old, the men, the women, … They analyze and

they say that maybe women are more conservative: they want to preserve their

family, their home, the situation. They don't want upheaval; if it means moving

and relocating, if it means to leave your home. I don't know how accurate it is to

say that women are more reluctant to take that lip of faith than men. I don't see it

like that personally, as a woman. I feel that we need to take that lip to make the

future more stable – you can hang on now to the stability you have but for a better

future, one that is more reliable and more recognized, internationally connected –

you have to take this step now, you have to make concessions. If it means moving,

if it means giving up territory, you know, I'm not scared by that. I don't prefer to

stay as I am rather than to make concessions, personally.

But if statistics are showing on the whole, the average woman doesn't to have new

upheavals in her life, maybe this is the case. But these polls, they don't always

convince me … I don't think that if there was political will to agree on a written

agreement and the political leaders to support and recommend it to the public at

large and explain it to them, I don't think it would come to the point where “Oh the

men suggested, the women said no.” I don't think that would happen. There may

159 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 be a difference in numbers but that would be the same for young and old,

difference in proportion.

Overall, I think the answer is for good political leadership that would carry the

solution. As we feel now, Anastasiades' focus has gone away from the talks and

more into getting reelected as president … How is that going to be strong

leadership to carry the people to believe that he's doing his best at the table? There

is a discussion that says that he will be more hardline and less willing to negotiate

and engage because he wants to be reelected and he needs the nationalist vote.

And I want to say back to people: “Yes but doesn't he also need the vote of the

people who want a solution?” I would so like to believe that they are the bigger

part of his community. And if it's not the case, then we have a problem anyway. If

he's going to be elected for being hardline then this whole thing is a dream.

On our side, every elections, even the hardliners and the nationalist become peace

supporters. They say: “Vote for me! I will bring a solution for the Cyprus problem!

I'm going to solve it.” So they get vote, from the public at large, if they appear

more reconciliatory. On the other side, they increase their votes by being more

hardline. It reveals the states of mind and the difference between the two sides.

In the North, we have four women in parliament, out of fifty. But at the same time

we have the President of the High Court who is a woman. The President of the

parliament is a woman. The Ombudsman is a woman. The professional doctors,

lawyers, judges in the High Court, the women and men are in equal numbers. In

the judicial profession as a whole, women represent more than fifty percent. As

you can see, women in daily life, in the economy are visible in public service.

160 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 When it comes to party politics and decision-making bodies, the absence of

women is still very big. The negotiating table has women but they kind of take a

secondary role: they're advisers or note-takers. The presidents on both sides and

the negotiators are men – always been like that. It has become like an unchanging

tradition.

At the table you have the teams of experts on all the subjects of the technical

committees – you have the expert on property, or governance or economy and

they're sort of rotating and attending the meetings depending on their subject.

There are a few women involved there, on property for example. But where it

would make a difference: a woman – not any woman and not any man – but a

woman who has a special skill for negotiation, solving a problem, finding a way

around, being creative, having the right approach and commitment. That kind of

woman would make a huge difference at the table at the higher level. But there is

not and I think it is a big gap. I don't know how to solve it because we are talking

about 1325 but how do you put a woman there? How does a woman get elected or

selected or appointed? When you look at our negotiator for example, he's an MP.

So, if there would be more women MPs and among them, the president could say:

“Well this woman could do this job well.” But you know, four out of fifty, he

doesn't have that wider choice. It's not choosing a woman just because she's a

woman. She always needs to be apt for the job. I think woman should be more

involved in politics so that they achieve a position so that they can be chosen,

appointed to a higher position. It has to come from the bottom, you can't just sort

of pick a woman and put them at the table – that's artificial and it's not necessarily

a good idea because you don't necessarily get the right woman.

161 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 The gender technical committee, I'm very happy that it's there but a part of my

brain and heart says that it was like a gesture. It was symbolic more than real.

We're not talking about women and women participation, I'm talking about the

need for women participation at a point and in a way that we would make a

difference. The gender committee is relevant but is it making a difference in terms

of the gender outlook or women's contribution? I don't think so, just by forming a

committee on gender equality. Maybe we're being too optimistic in thinking that it

is possible to get women involved more in peace processes without ensuring that

women are involved in politics and decision-making bodies overall. Then again,

it's going to be an artificial jump in. When you think of methods like positive

discrimination, we need to think of creative ways to do that. The major problem is

the general lack of participation of women.

That would be the point; to make a gender equality committee that is effective, not

just a bubble to who you say: “Sit there and talk about women's issues.” Domestic

violence, it's very important, it affects women, so let's talk about domestic

violence together. But it's not the full impact of what you would want to see as a

gender perspective being rounded into discussions at every point. If you talk about

property you say: “How is that going to affect women?” Talking about territory

and having to move … So there is something being done but I don't think it's

enough and it is not having the full impact that we need.

There are two different communities, two different levels of economic prosperity;

they have different issues, the whole status thing: the Turkish Cypriots with their

relationship with Turkey and also in terms of influx of Turkish people coming to

settle in the North. They come from maybe more conservative and religious

162 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 background, they are more crushed in their marriages or they're being exploited in

labor and domestic workers. There are different issues inside each communities

but there are of course common issues.

Then again, I don't know how much is being done or can be done to look jointly or

combine – but they don't have to be combined. You don't have to have a single

solution to everything, all the problems of women across the board. They can be

different and you have to accept and appreciate that and be compassionate and

understanding of the needs of women on both sides. But we're not there yet – there

so much we have to do on every level. Whether it's on the negotiations, on the

joint-government – federalism, what it means – the communities being more

tolerant to each other, the economy, … The more I think about it, the less I believe

that it's going to happen in the foreseeable future. We are not going to be ready.

We are not ready. We can sit and discuss about a piece of paper in which you

decide technical issues, that's one side of it. And even that is not ready. The other

issues, I can't see that we're ready right now, I'm afraid.

In every country I think, when you try to raise gender equality, what's the first that

comes out: “Not now!” or “Let's solve this first!” Whereas, we need to emphasize

that gender issues are not about a perfect time to raise them – it's all the time and

in everything. It's about having the gender perspective, the gender input and the

gender sensitivity in whatever it is you're going to produce. It's like gender

equality was a luxury. It's not a 'must'. It's like icing on a cake when you have

sorted out everything else – then you can look at gender. But you're never going to

get there. You're never going to have a proper cake unless you get the women

more involved.

163 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

Sorry I can't be more optimistic at the moment. I'm trying to be honest and frank

on how I see it. The two leaders are going to meet again – that's good. But I feel

that they've been climbing up a very slippery poll and they've slipped down in the

past months. I can't see them climbing back even to the way they were in terms of

relationship – not just content – before the crisis. It's just too much damage, lost

too much time.

A year and a half ago, during my time as a minister, I had hope. Things were going

really well and I was really excited to support that, in terms of confidence-building

measures. For example, I was the one giving permission for worship in churches

in the North. The foreign minister does that. I was giving as many permissions as I

possibly could to get that flow, to get people come. As you said, there are so many

people who have never come to the North. But suddenly, you would have people

that if they can go to their church to worship, they would come for that church.

You need to get that flow and be glad that they're being given permission. Maybe

in that village, some Turkish Cypriots have never seen Greek Cypriots or it's

people from Turkey who came and settled in that village and have no notion that

there are still some Greek people who want to come and worship in that building.

Because that building is not yours; it's Greek. It belongs to the Church and you

have to respect that. That's freedom of religion human rights and also, if we're

going to share Cyprus then yes, of course the churches are going to be used by the

Greek Orthodox Church. To get people living in these villages used to see Greek

Cypriots. This was my perspective. So when the applications come, should I say

yes or no? If it's safe – because you know, some of the buildings have not been

164 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 used for forty years – and it's not full of youth groups or something and if it's not

proper and there is a lot of grass, we ask the municipality to clean that up quickly

and get the police and security for the security, so there is no clash and no issue.

When you take all these precautions, we have a huge increase in the number of

religious ceremonies being held in the churches in the North and then, after the

government fell and we have a new minister now, he is more hardline: “they're

just doing it to make a political point, we should give that many permissions, a

few is enough, there's no need for this, there's using it for political purposes.”

Turks tend to be more religious and there is an important religious monument they

visit in the South, Hala Sultan Tekke. But I have to say this: you can't compare and

consider reciprocity on this point. For Greek Cypriots, their religion holds a much

bigger in their life than in the lives of Turkish Cypriots. They are born, they are

married, they go there every Sunday, the priest in the villages is a very important

man … Religion for the Greek Cypriots and their church, they worship the

building, they worship bits of wood with pictures on it and they kiss it. This is not

the same for us and the Turkish Cypriots are not your average Muslim either –

we're quite secular. So it's a little bit strange for us.

There's an imbalance in how important it is for both sides. That's why I felt this

was important, not to think about: “Well, how many permission have we been

given for mosques?” Because there is no big demand! But for them it is very

important to be able to cross, especially to military areas which have been given

permission for the first time in forty years, and the people are coming and

*touches wood* with not a single clash. The villagers were quite nice, they came

out and made them cakes and pastries because we did the work beforehand, telling

165 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 the civil police about what was going to happen, and asking the people to be polite

and understanding. The villagers were prepared and no bad incidents happened.

But the new minister doesn't agree with me, he's about macho politics, it's about

sovereignty. He talks in that sense. And I am talking about confidence-building,

getting people used to each other and accepting that Greek Cypriots are going to

the North and the Turkish Cypriots to the South. To get that new vision, that new

culture of understanding and he's talking about who's the boss. I think he has a

point, I don't deny this. The intention of the request for worshiping in the churches

were expansionist. They also want to emphasize their ownership. Fair enough!

That is another reality – you can't blame them for wanting to that because it is

theirs. It is religious freedom. You need to be aware of it but you don't need to

reject them because of that.

Mixing of school children, political parties, women's groups, youth groups, sport

activities between the two sides – anything to get the people at large more used to

each other and accept the reunification. It might be bi-zonal, bi-communal but still

we're going to share the island. A federation has joint bits – foreign affairs, natural

resources... There will be competencies under the federation that will be joint.

How is this going to happen and be a reality if you're not starting to learn each

other's languages? We don't have a language! I don't speak Greek and the average

Greek doesn't speak Turkish. Even in the Home for Cooperation we always speak

English. It was in the Annan Plan, to bring it to schools, to learn each other's

language. But if you leave it to the people, some will make that effort but a very

small minority.

166 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Umut Bozkurt

North Nicosia, Cyprus. May 3, 2017 – 18:00,

The Gender Advisory Team was set up in 2009. I came back in 2009 and it took

me another year and then a year later they said: "Would you be interested in

joining the Gender Advisory Team?" They were just looking for new Turkish

Cypriot members and I said yes. It was an interesting experience for me. I really

enjoyed it. I have good friends from there such as Olga, Maria, Magda. What we

did essentially with GAT is that we came up with recommendations. There are six

issues on the negotiating table right now such as property, EU relations, territory,

security, citizenship and all that. And we said: "there is a gender dimension to all

of this. How can we bring it on the table?" So we put together a series of

recommendations, on the economy, on security, territory, citizenship and all of

that.

The UN took us seriously because we brought in the gender dimension so they

helped us reach the leaders. We met the Special Advisors as well. We kind of

raised the issue: “We want this thing to be on the table - the gender dimension of

things.” Because gender was never on the table and there are very few women at

the table. It was in 2012 that we came up with these recommendations and we

continued working. After putting together the recommendations, we essentially

started meeting with decision-makers and some people in the negotiating team

who could help us out to include this gender dimension.

167 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Then, the real breakthrough came after Akinci was elected President in the North.

His wife, Meral Akinci, had been working on gender issues for a long time. One

day after the election, I got this phone call from her saying: "Would you be

interested, we are forming this bi-communal technical committee?" They wanted

to appoint some people so our names came up because we were in GAT. So from

GAT there was me, Olga and Maria Hadjipavlou. Only the three of us. The only

Turkish Cypriot from GAT is me. We are around sixteen or fourteen members

from each side, Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot. Four men, two from each side

and then it should be twelve women from each side. Twelve Turkish Cypriot

women, twelve Greek Cypriot women. But you know, not all people come to the

meetings all the time. At the beginning, they put together this list but later one,

there are some members who almost never showed up, so I almost forgot they

existed because they are not coming to the meetings.

So what is our mandate: we want gender mainstreaming basically. We want to

make sure that gender, somehow, becomes more visible in negotiations. Because

it's like it doesn't exist: not enough women at the table and gender-related issues.

Constantly, whenever you bring up these issues they tell you: "We have bigger

problems in Cyprus." You have to the big problems to resolve but when it comes

to gender it's never a priority. We have this mandate and then we put together a

number of recommendations. I can't say you much about what we are doing in the

technical committee; I'll just say that we did come up with a number of

recommendations but it was not very easy to implement them. In any case, what

we were talking about was that they can only be realized after a federal solution

because we are coming up with proposals for a united Cyprus, not for the current

status quo. So, only if a federal solution can be achieved can we put our ideas into

168 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 implementation. Because for example, we are talking about revising the

constitution in gender-language but always the vision is having a unification. But

of course now, as you know, with the current impasse, it's not going so well. We

are not making any progress; That's our problem right now.

Maria, Olga and I left GAT, it was inactive for some years. When I say "left GAT",

we just couldn't be active there because you know, when you are a member of the

committee, you have to be reponsible towards the committee rather than a civil

society organization. It has different logics; when you are from the civil society,

you can say whatever you want. But when you are in the committee, there are

many things that you can't be saying because you represent the Turkish Cypriot

officials. You can't go ahead and say: "I don't agree with the President." You can't

say that because you represent the Turkish Cypriot viewpoint. So it kind of really

limits. I never worked in such kind of environment, you know. I did activism, with

GAT, but we were always very free to say whatever we wanted to say. But now,

it's a different cup of tea. That's why it may be a good opportunity but I feel like

we can't go anywhere right now because the whole process is almost dead.

People lost hope, to be honest with you. We were putting all these efforts; for

what? And now there is this aim to reactivate GAT again. I think that, at the end of

the day, we need something that will come from grassroots. There are limitations...

OK the committee is important but the committee in itself cannot achieve

anything. If there was a strong grassroots women's movement, I think it would

have an impact. So in our secret meeting yesterday, we were also talking about

mobilizing and doing something crazy, make sure that we are all arrested and

169 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 hopefully make it to the headlines. We all want our fifteen minutes of fame.

*Laughs*

With the technical committee, we can meet with the grassroots but on our

individual capacity. We can meet but we cannot do anything on behalf of the

committee. Because at some point, we were saying: "Oh we have to go at the

grassroots and do that..." But they said: "This is the mandate. Stick to the

mandate." So we came up with this serie of recommendations and initially, we

were aiming at organizing a big workshop with representatives from all women's

organizations and talk to them about these recommendations: do they make sense?

Is there something that we can change? We were intending to do that. But the

issues is, we came up with these recommendations - some of them were approved,

some of them were not approved - and we were stuck at that stage where we

couldn't take our work any further. And meanwhile, because of the impasse in the

negotiations, our work had to stop basically.

This is kind of inescapable; if we had reached this point where we could come up

with a list of recommendations which was approved by the leaders, the next stage

would be easier. Of course, organization is never easy but you know what I mean.

So now, I think we have to try other ways; try to mobilize grassroots women's

organizations more. Because you know, we feminists always think that women

believe in peace and stuff but when you look at research, they have no hope with

the peace process. Mostly, older generation women, who have experienced 1974,

they are more fearful to reconciliation.

I read two research about this: one is something... South Africa.

170 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 Then there was another research done by Seed actually: "Cyprus 2015". It was a

research project done by Seed especially with Greek Cypriot women, who had a

lot of hesitation about reconciliation. This is another question; we should not

assume that women are ready to be mobilized for peace. They are usually more

suspicious and according to research, they are less informed about the implications

of the Cyprus problem - men know more. Think about women in the rural regions,

they don't know much about the details but they have trauma since the 1970s. So,

they are not so keen on supporting the process.

Our main problem in GAT and in the committee is that we can't reach to the

grassroots organizations; it's like an elite-level organization. I'm not sure if we, in

terms of access, were very successful. OK, GAT was good because it came up

with series of recommendations and policy-makers did take us into consideration

but when it comes to mobilizing women, we are not successful because they don't

know us. What we could do is we could join forces with other grassroots

organizations and we do try to do that. At least we came up with tangible

proposals aiming to bring the gender equality perspective into the picture. It's

quite something I think, it hasn't been done in this country.

The next step should be coming together with grassroots women's organizations.

Trade-unions and different organizations' head are usually conscious of these

gender issues and they are generally pushing for these equality policies. So what

could be done now? To join forces with them and that is right now what I'm

thinking because to be honest, I'm not sure if thing are going to move in the

technical committee. I think that what we need to do is try to mobilize women -

reaching out, going to the villages – but also joining forces with these bigger

171 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 organizations that can mobilize women and bring them together, discuss what can

be done. But I don't know, the conjecture is also very problematic right now -

elections in the South ...

The Cyprus Women's Lobby, it is there. There is a platform in the North, it's called

in Turkish... Basically Gender Equality Platform. It's not a bi-communal thing, it's

only organized by Turkish Cypriots. It's a platform organization that brings

together all women's organizations. In my university, we have a union for lecturers

and this union is also a member of this platform. There are also some political

parties and unions. It's the biggest platform that brought together groups and

organizations for equality issues, for gender equality. They are also very active and

try to do things. They organize a lot of things. They are trying to do things but so

far, we haven't been... I mean at this particular conjecture, I think there is a real

feeling of impasse and women's organizations couldn't go beyond that either. We

need a push. We need a push because everybody is looking to what the leaders are

saying - that's why I think we have so-well behaved... Until now. We have to go

more grassroots. I'm so depressed! *Laughs*

I am not saying that we cannot do anything in the committee. We can still do it.

But I didn't guess that we would reach this impasse again. I was really hopeful two

years ago with Akinci because I know him since a long time, he's a center-left

leader. This was his only motivation to become President. This guy has no other

interest in becoming President apart from solving the Cyprus problem so we never

thought that it would come to this. The main frustration is that if the impasse

continues we cannot do much while being in the committee because the committee

only functions if there is a progress in the negotiations. No progress in the

172 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 negotiations, nothing happens in the committee because whatever we do depends

on a federal settlement.

We can put ideas on the table and produce a lot of stuff but whether it will be

implemented or not is entirely dependent on the fact that there will be a federal

settlement. Whereas if you are in the grassroots, even if there is an impasse, you

can continue pushing. You can mobilize women, put pressure on civil society

organizations, ... But as a technical committee member, there is very limited stuff

that we can do at this stage. As I said, if there was political will and things were

moving forward, yes I still would have some faith in the committee. Some, not so

much. I think it's a good opportunity but unfortunately, it didn't turn out the way

we expected it to be, because of the general context.

Akinci is taking gender equality seriously, because of his wife anyway.

Anastasiades didn't take it that seriously, as far as I can remember. But the UN

Good Offices really took it very seriously and they pushed this. If you look at the

appointments made by Anastasiades, they appointed those women who were

mainly closer to his party and some people from the GAT. Similar things happened

in the North as well but in our case, the President tried to give representation to

almost all political parties: there were people from the Left, from the Right... He

tried to give this more representative picture. We were under the impression that

the Turkish Cypriot side took it seriously whereas on the other hand, on the Greek

Cypriot side, this technical committee on gender equality was seen a little bit as a

new ... really.

173 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 We were coming with recommendations and we would hear things like: "This is

not realistic." Well, if you are the one who is going to decide on the boundaries of

the realistic, why did you appoint us? Because the whole point is making more

flexible. Everything related to gender is not realistic because there is a priority in

politics. You have to prioritize certain things and gender-related issues are never a

priority - it's always conjectural. It's always like: "We have more important things

to discuss!" It's like we're saying: "We're talking! We represent 50% of the society

and you're telling us that this is a marginal issue?" I'm so sick of this! In this

country, constantly, we are coming across this thing. We are 50% of the population

and we have no voice in this process! These negotiations have been going on since

1968 and we have no voice. Yes, OK, there are a few women. Very well educated

on the negotiating team but what we want is not just a few women sitting at the

table but we want gender equality principles and we want to give a voice to

women. For example, there is a gender dimension to everything! For example,

citizenship, territorial security... It's never taken into consideration!

We have a long way to go because the mentalities are very difficult to change in

this country. It's very "men" mentality you know. Politicians, seventy-year old

male politicians. Somebody invited us; a leader and he said: "I'm inviting you

guys, all women's organizations, because you are the mothers of the nation." Can

you imagine? Can you imagine a bunch of men being invited to a meeting

somewhere and being addressed as "The fathers of nation"? It would not happen,

right? This is the mentality we are face to; that's why it is so depressing!

We have some links with the education committee. We want to be involved in a

legal committee, which would draft a constitution of the new federal state. And we

174 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 were pushing to have one or two people there who would have legal background

and who would review this process from a gender equality perspective. So we

tried to include ourselves in this committee. And at that time, meetings started to

be less and less frequent and that's when the whole thing ended.

What we did in the course of two years: in the first year, we came up with a

number of proposals and we took them to the leaders. Some of these proposals

were OK for the leaders, some of them were not so OK. At some point, because of

the whole thing, we had to stop. Not completely stopped but we slowed down. The

main thing we had started doing before what happened was going through the

legal text and incorporating the gender equality principles. It's related to what we

had done in GAT, basically. We took a lot of stuff from the recommendations of

2012. I'm sorry I can't tell you a lot about it.

We thought we would have more agency. We didn't know that all our proposals

would have to be read by ... Say you have a proposal to make to the Greek Cypriot

side, you can't go and say whatever you want to them. First you have to draft it,

you have to send it to the President, wait for his approval and only if you have his

approval, you can go ahead and say: “These are our proposals from the Turkish

Cypriot side.” That is the difficulty. And it takes time! It is really time-consuming

because you can't go ahead and meet once every week for example – that is what I

would prefer you know, finish all the work. But you need to wait for the President

to come back from wherever he is, look through the whole stuff and some of the

things we didn't think were problematic but it was not found convenient for

various reasons and for the Greek Cypriots the same.

175 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 The Turkish Cypriot side, they want a federation but they want a federation as

weak as possible. Almost a reminiscence of a con-federation. Because they want

the constituent state to be as independent from the federal as possible. For the

Greek Cypriots, it's the total opposite. They are against a federal solution, they

would like to continue to have the Republic of Cyprus with us being a minority

there, which our side would never accept. So because of these different official

concerns, it was a very strange experience for us because most of us come from

civil society. Few of us come from Foreign ministry. But even these women are

critical: they don't adhere to the governmental policies.

So the most difficult thing was, if we were civil society, we would just talk and

discuss and also join forces with our Greek colleagues. Because now, we have to

seek approval, we have to talk, ... I don't know. That's why it's not moving very

fast, that's why ...

I don't think the situation is brighter in the Greek Cypriot community. Our side

still is a very patriarchal society in many ways but when I speak to my Greek

Cypriot colleagues, I hear that the situation is not that different in the Greek

Cypriot community when it comes to gender equality principles. Still, it's like “the

old men who are ruling the political parties.” Even if you look at our Left-wing

party, it's very men-dominated. Middle-aged men especially. They don't really

give an option for young people to talk. For example when you look at

Scandinavian democracies, you can see young people being in the parties from a

very young age. But here, it's also very related to the culture.

176 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 I know myself, even if I become a professor in my fifties, my word would never

be considered as worthy as a male professor's word. This is an open bias towards

male. It's always like that and I encountered this many times. I came back to this

country, having a Ph.D from an English university. Many times, there were silly

people, most of the time middle-aged men, who would not let you speak in your

field. I got so furious afterwards, I said: “When is this going to end? You are

trying to intimidate me and I'm trying to talk about a topic that I think I know

something about and it never happens to a man.” I don't think this is very different

in the Greek Cypriot community either. You again see men in key positions in the

media. Sexism is everywhere, in their community, in our community. I can tell you

that we had only sixteen female MPs on the Turkish Cypriot side from 1960 to

today. Can you imagine? In all these years. And right now we only have 3 MPs in

the North. So that tells you. It's not so easy.

We tried quotas and all of that but still, it's not so easy for women to run as

candidates and it's not easy for them to be elected to it. They don't have the social

capital most of the time. You need to have connections, you need to have the time

to spend – if you are married, you have a job, you have kids to look after and

household responsibilities are not split equally in this country – then how can you

do it? That's why most of my feminist friend they're either not married or they

don't have kids. Because if you are married and have kids, you are still expected to

prioritize the household duties.

I really hope that this is going to change for the newer generations but I'm not

sure. We have some friends in the technical committee on education and they're

more active than us. And to be honest with you, we wanted to work on education

177 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 as well but then we were strictly told not to go beyond our mandate. We thought it

was related to our mandate but they said: “Stick to your mandate!” So we have

some informal connections with some members of the education committee, but

there's no formal cooperation between the two committees because we are

constantly pushed back to our rather limited mandate, as they understand it. I think

our mandate was open to interpretation but their reading of it was rather strict, so

whenever you're trying to do something related to gender equality, peace

education for example, they would say: “Concentrate on your thing.” Our mandate

is basically monitoring laws in language of gender equality principles. That is our

main mandate.

178 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017

Sanna Korpela

Nicosia South, Cyprus, April 28 2017, 15:30

Caffè Néro

Pretty much all the women who are part of our program are foreigners – we

haven't had any Cypriot women. We are helping women that are coming from

abroad. Most of the women are coming from Africa. We also had Asians and some

Europeans but the majority is from Africa. Our main target group is victims of

trafficking but I prefer to say “survivors of human trafficking” because it means

that the trafficking is past and they have survived it. Most of them are from sex

trafficking. We have also victims of labor trafficking. Also we help some asylum

seekers and refugees but that's not our core target group. When we have resources,

we also try to include asylum seekers, refugees and women in vulnerable positions

in Cyprus. Again, not Cypriot women but immigrants. The reason for that is that

refugees and asylum seekers, they quite often have gone through physical or

179 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 psychological violence. So we are not talking about two completely different

groups but they are rather overlapping.

We work pretty much only in the South. We would potentially like to work also in

the North, or cooperate with our partners in the North but at the moment, with

these resources, we are working in the South only. It's also because of safety - it's a

safer place to work for me, for our volunteers. We would have many security

issues working in the North because there is basically not any legal action taken

against trafficking there so none of the cases are brought to the Court, the

government is not taking any action to stop the trafficking, ... So of course, NGOs

try to do some things there, they are in a very hard position. It's very hard. There

are big forces against the little NGOs that are trying to survive and trying to help

the victims when the whole big machine is on the side of making money with

these women. The big nightclubs are giving huge tax money for the government

there. The so-called government does not have any motivation to stop the

trafficking because it's huge money.

There are different stories of how the women end up here. Typically, traffickers

have an agent in one African, one Asian or one European country and they are

"recruiting" women there that they see are in vulnerable positions. They are telling

them: "Hey there! Would you be interested? We have a job for you in Southern

Europe, in France. Would you like to go there? You would have a chance to make

good money to send back to your child, you could have a new life there." And

women take that opportunity and they end up here and the reality is completely

different. Their legal documents are taken away, they are raped, forced to see men

night after night... That what it's like if I'm simplifying a typical woman's story. Of

180 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 course, if you have refugees, asylum seekers who haven't gone through trafficking

background, then it can be quite a variety of different stories where they are

starting from: from the really poor, from the midst of the war, up to just coming

from quite good background and hoping to get a better future. Of course with

trafficking, simplifying doesn't do justice but it gives kind of a core idea.

They usually are referred to us by another NGO we cooperate with. They started

supporting the women already earlier, when they are at the governmental shelter.

So they are telling them: "Hey, there is a psychological support group, would you

like to go there?" And usually they want to come because they don't have anything

to do. They are usually really willing to come to our program and start learning

some handcraft skills and getting out of the house and getting some sense to their

days instead of just staying inside doing nothing, being completely alone with all

the trauma memories coming back. Usually they are willing to go out and see

other people and slowly start realizing: "Hey! I'm actually capable of doing

something!" Every morning we have a psychological talk that will help them in

their situation and we for example have a parenting group - many of the women

are pregnant. We have had quite many pregnant women recently so we started a

group that is supporting parenting skills. Usually, when you have your own trauma

background, it's quite a job to keep yourself together. Left apart you have a child

and you're trying to think: "How can I take care of someone who is completely

dependent on me and I am not even able to take care of myself?" So we are trying

to understand how you can overcome all these trauma memories coming to your

mind and why you are suddenly reacting that way when your child is crying or

expressing his or her emotions.

181 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 To get out of their situation, maybe the women have managed to run away or the

police has made a raid or somebody has helped them. Different ways. But I have

to say that, statistically, it's not a big majority that makes it out of the trafficking.

There's a huge number of women who, right now, are victims of trafficking, not

able to get out. So it's an ongoing battle. If you look at statistics, if you want to

check TIP, Trafficking in Persons Department records, which is made by a

Department of State, it's about trafficking in different countries around the world.

You look at the Cyprus rating; it has gotten better in the recent years but of course,

it doesn't give you the whole picture, the fact that Cyprus is taking some actions -

which is very good! Cyprus has improved, it has taken some steps forward, there

is a special unit at the police. Some cases are taken to court. Things are getting

better but when you look at the grassroots-level, there is still a very long way to

go. Statistically, yes, we have gotten better here but that's not all - the numbers

don't tell the whole picture. The South is meeting the minimum requirements but

the North, pfff... There is no EU pressure there, so it's completely different rating,

if you consider North as itself, compared to South.

Both Cypriots and tourists are big groups of clients, in the South and in the North.

I know the situation better in the South but I would say that it's the same. I have

heard talks about tourist trips coming from Turkey to Northern Cyprus, as a sex-

holiday destination. And in Cyprus, there is a long tradition that men find it

completely fine and OK to go and buy a prostitute. So it's quite deep in this culture

that "prostitution is my right as a man."

To limit this, it should start from the men. Our lovely Sweden, who has a very

good model for the whole thing, is like that: "Let's play on the buyers' side. Let's

182 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 understand and realize that the prostitute is in a victim-position. Even if they do it

in a so-called "volunteer" manner." That's understanding the whole thing from a

different angle. So I would say that changing the attitudes on the buyer side is the

best thing to do. As long as there is demand - that's basic business law - there

needs to be some kind of supply for that. As long as there are men buying sex,

somebody will be delivering women for them. That's the root cause. If there

wouldn't be any men buying, there would be no need for that kind of trafficking

business. Now I'm talking about sex trafficking - labor trafficking is a little bit

different.

That's where it should start. But of course, in the sense of government, there

should be a common will that the government should take all possible actions to

prevent the whole trafficking problem and support the victims. But that's not the

case in Cyprus. There are, sometimes, articles in the media, that the police is using

associates that are collecting hard data. So they are going and buying women and

they say they used condoms to prove that: "OK, there is this trafficking

happening." So they are used as evidence that trafficking is taking place ...

Obviously we can see that, from a human rights perspective, this is the

recommended way of investigating ... *Laughs*

Some people think that trafficking is a big problem here, but there is a big majority

that is still surprised: "No! Trafficking doesn't happen Cyprus! It used to be very

bad here, we had cabarets all over ... But now we are better! The problem is only

in the North now!" So people are like: "No! This was before! Not anymore!" They

used to have artist visas, that many women were coming under that and then they

didn't work as artists but as something completely different. I can't remember

183 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 when it was pulled out but people think that: "OK, because that was changed, we

don't have trafficking anymore." So there is no commonly accepted and embraced

understanding of trafficking in Cyprus. You still see some cabarets in the North -

it's very obvious what's going on there.

Prostitution is legal in Cyprus. Of course buying sex from victims of trafficking is

not legal but buying from a private person who is selling sex; that's legal, if the

woman is doing it so-called "voluntarily". But having a cabaret that is selling sex,

that's illegal. But let's say, you have a private apartment, selling sex, that's

basically legal. But if you are in a public space, the corner of the street, that's

illegal. There used to be a tradition here - that fathers are taking their sons to have

sex for the first time with a prostitute. That's how you learn how to make sex: go

to cabarets and practice. That used to be a traditional way here. I think that some

people do it still. Welcome to the macho society! I think that people around our

age, their fathers have taken them but it's not something that you would maybe

very publicly announce: "Yes, I was taken to a prostitute." When there is a macho

way of thinking, it justifies that you can take whatever you want. And when you

can take whatever you want, then women's opinion it doesn't matter very much.

Legalizing prostitution or not is something that divides human rights

organizations. There is this part that is thinking that it is better to make prostitution

legal because that's the way we can keep it public and protect the women - it's not

stigmatized, you can go and get check-ups for STDs and everything: "that the way

we can make the positions of the women better." Then, there is this other part of

human rights organizations that see it like: "No! That's fueling the whole problem

when you make it legal. You just make the whole thing even easier for the

184 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 traffickers because there will never be enough so called "voluntarily" prostitutes."

So then trafficking comes in the picture when you force women to sell themselves.

Of course I see it a lot in the psychological sense. I'm trying to see what it does for

women when they're selling themselves, over and over again and again. Of course,

it's slightly different if you think you're doing it voluntarily or if it's very clear for

your that: "I am forced to do this." But anyways, how does it affect you

psychologically? That is something that I am very interested in. There are human

rights actors who see it in the way of "women have a right to choose this

occupation if she wants." I'm more seeing it from the psychological perspective:

does this woman really have options? Is she really realizing, feeling, able to

understand all the consequences? Is she really able to cope with that life? How

does it make her feel about herself?

It would be naive to say that all the prostitutes are victims, that they don't realize

what they're doing. There is this very small group that is sometimes quite loud and

public about expressing how they enjoy this lifestyle and they're actually making

big money and they are selecting their clients: "I'm a luxury prostitute so I choose

the top-men and I make huge money!" Maybe, if they're able to handle it - but it's

a super risky game! These are usually white women, quite good background, able

to run the business, play the game, be even smarter than the client. But that doesn't

justify the whole picture of these women that are traveling, coming to Cyprus from

poor countries: "I hate this lifestyle but this is the only way I can bring some

money for my child back in my country. I come here for a little while to make

some money." If you are working as a so-called voluntarily prostitute, you know

that you come to Cyprus to sell yourself. But you might start like that and you

185 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 realize suddenly: "No, I'm not controlling my situation at all. There's someone

pimping me around." But some women manage to come here - I think there are

quite many coming from Ukraine at the moment - for some months, selling sex,

saving some money and then going back to their country. Some of them are doing

completely voluntarily and some of them end up realizing that: "No, this is turning

out to be trafficking."

Trafficking starts when your freedom is limited - someone else is taking actions

instead of you: limiting your freedom and you're not earning the money you're

supposed to. It starts when your freedom is taken away, one way or the other. It's

varies, it can be different ways. Maybe you still get a little bit of money but it's not

like you decide your hours, you decide the number of customers or you decide

how much you ask. So the whole phenomenon is so big, it makes it also difficult

to understanding what trafficking is because it's not black and white. Some cases

are super clear: "Yes, you have been locked in, you have been forced to have

men." How about someone who is living on her own but somebody has still

control over her. That's trafficking: somebody controlling your freedom. You were

walking on your own, you are going with your own feet to the place where you are

selling sex. You get maybe a little bit of money out of that. But what makes the

traffickers able to control you so much?

They really know the ways to break down a person, psychologically. They are

breaking on purpose women's trust to any governmental authorities. It's easy when

you already come from a country where you cannot trust authorities: "No no no,

who would help you? They would blame you, you came here illegally! You

remember that, we faked your papers, you came here illegally." They make the

186 University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Jana Krause MSc Conflict Resolution and Governance Spring Semester 2017 women think that no one is going to help them. That's how you can make a person

stay under your control.

We are doing something that social welfare, governmental agencies, hospitals,

healthcare should take care of. NGOs are filling a huge gap here. They are doing a

lot. Especially filling social work. Our center was opened in the Fall 2014 but we

are not the only NGO here; there are a couple of others as well. Cyprus is an

interesting hub in a way because if you think of the location: Asia, Europe, Africa,

everything is here. So it's a fascinating hub for transferring women, being it a

destination or a source. I think it makes it very appealing for the traffickers and

also the macho culture. It is easy to find a customer here for the victims of

trafficking. And also the corruption here and the way that not everyone on the

governmental side is on the same line taking action against trafficking. There is

space for running a trafficking business here, especially in the North. And yes,

there's a point here, the North is such an easy to bring anyone. It's such an easy

place to bring women there and then to here. From North to South or the other

way around.

The Cypriots are usually surprised: "No! We don't have this problem here! They

are here voluntarily! It's not a big thing! And the small number that is here are here

voluntarily. It's good money, it's a good job for them." And then there are some

people who realized the problem but then are feeling desperate: "What kind of

actions this country would actually take against it?" They're not trusting, not very

much. They see it as a long way to go.

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