Demarcating the „Cypriot Core‟ Ideology and Pluralistic Cyprocentric Identification in the post- partitioned Republic of Cyprus Antonis Pastellopoulos Supervisor: Dr. A.T. (Alex) Strating UvA ID: 11665238 Second Reader: Dr. O.G.A. (Oskar) Verkaaik [email protected] Third Reader: Dr. B. (Barak) Kalir MSc in Cultural and Social Anthropology Universiteit van Amsterdam Graduate School of Social Sciences 8th of June, 2018 This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Cypriot sociologist Caesar Mavratsas, who passed away in the autumn of 2017, and who had the courage, like so many others, to engage in critical scholarship in a period when such scholarship was neither welcomed, nor widely tolerated within the troubled island of Cyprus. Declaration of Originality I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy [http://student.uva.nl/mcsa/az/item/plagiarism-and-fraud.html?f=plagiarism]. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper. Abstract Key words: Cyprocentrism, Cypriot identity, Postcolonialism, Cyprus Problem, Ideology, Republic of Cyprus, de-ethnicization. The present thesis investigates the ideological positions over Cypriot identity; expressed in the left-wing extra-parliamentary political networks of the city of Nicosia, in the post-partitioned Republic of Cyprus. Drawing its data primarily from participatory observation, interviewing, informal conversations and photographs, accumulated during a period of three months of ethnographic research, it aims to contribute to the critical understanding of the ideological formations located in the island of Cyprus, through the documentation of a previously unexplored political ideological position. Most anthropological work on Cyprus has approached the island as a site of ethnic conflict, focusing on the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities as the starting point of analysis, often on a comparative basis. The present thesis offers a break with this approach, setting as its starting point of analysis ideology itself, arguing, on similar grounds as anthropologist Yael Navaro, that by approaching the Cypriot conflict from an ethnicizing gaze, its political dimensions become oversimplified and its complex, multilayered socio- political sites of conflict, invisible. By interpreting the accumulated data through poststructuralist theories of ideology, Benedict Anderson‟s concept of the imagined community and the theoretical insights of postcolonial theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, it is argued that the political position studied is characterized an imagined community distinctly different from the competing imagined communities dominating Cypriot institutional politics, characterized by symbolic processes of decolonization and anti-exclusionary political claims. Acknowledgments I would like to express here my appreciation for the Department of Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam, and in particular for Oskar Verkaaik, Kristine Kraus, Yolanda van Ede and Thijs Schut, whose insightful teaching was fundamental in enabling me to acquire the skills necessary for the production of the present thesis. A special note of gratitude must be reserved here for Marieke Brand, who went out of her way multiple times to assist both myself and other fellow students in our various moments of need. The present thesis would had not been possible without the careful guidance and supervision provided by Alex Strating, whose insightful comments, tolerant approach and supportive attitude; made the production of the present thesis in general a most enjoyable endeavor, as well as bearable in those frustrating and difficult moments that so often accompany the process of research and investigation. A special note of gratitude must also be made here for my informants, the people with whom I spent a good three months of constant interaction, and without which the present thesis would had never materialized. It is an unfortunate contradiction that the acknowledgment of their role cannot be made here on a personal level, as this would destroy the preservation of anonymity that I have attempted to maintain throughout the text of the present thesis. I would also like to express here my appreciation for my parents Charis Pastellopoulos and Stalo Pastellopoulou, who have given me their unconditional support in what has been a most stressful and demanding academic year. A most exceptional note of gratitude must however be here extended to Eduard ten Houten, who I had the good fortune to meet at the café of filmtheater Kriterion. Our shared conversations, exchange of ideas and infrequent encounters, as well the generosity, sharpness of intellect and kindness of his character, have contributed more than anything else in making these last three months in Amsterdam worth remembering. List of Abbreviations AKEL Progressive Party of Working People DIKO Democratic Party DISY Democratic Rally ELAM National Popular Front EOKA National Organization of Cypriot Fighters EOKA B National Organization of Cypriot Fighters B HAD Hands Across the Divide RoC / the Republic Republic of Cyprus TMT Turkish Resistance Organization TRNC Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus UNFICYP United Nations Forces in Cyprus Contents 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Outline ........................................................................................................................................ 2 1.2. A Note on the Employed Terminology .................................................................................... 3 1.3. Historical and Contemporary Context...................................................................................... 6 1.4. Situating the Research in the Literature ................................................................................. 11 1.5. The Field and the People ......................................................................................................... 14 2. Theoretical, Methodological and Ethical Considerations ............................................................ 21 2.1. The Poststructuralist Analysis of Ideology ............................................................................ 21 2.2. Imagined Communities and the Postcolonial Condition ....................................................... 22 2.3. Epistemology and Methodology ............................................................................................. 25 2.4. Ethical Considerations............................................................................................................. 29 2.5. Reflections on my Positionality .............................................................................................. 30 3. Signifying the Division .................................................................................................................. 32 3.1. Beyond Negation ..................................................................................................................... 34 3.2. The Whole in Parts .................................................................................................................. 39 4. Hellenocentric Interpellation ......................................................................................................... 44 4.1. Constitutional Identities .......................................................................................................... 44 4.2. The Official Hellenocentric Narration ................................................................................... 47 4.3. The Fragile Meaning of Flags ................................................................................................. 51 5. Cyprocentric Identification and Heterogeneity ............................................................................ 59 5.1. The Cypriot Surplus ................................................................................................................ 59 5.2. The Postcoloniality of Language ............................................................................................ 62 5.3. A Pluralistic Cyprocentric Imagined Community ................................................................. 67 5.4. Pluralistic Cyprocentrism, Nationalism and the Prospect of Bi-Communal Federation .... 74 6. Conclusion and Recommendations ............................................................................................... 78 7. References ....................................................................................................................................... 84 Today is my day without hope no force can unite the United Nations as long as nations exist Taken from the first three lines of the poem „UN‟ by Cypriot poet Neşe Yaşın. 1. Introduction The thesis hereby presented is the result of an ongoing personal concern for the documentation, analysis and exploration of the non-dominant, academically marginalized political positions in the island of Cyprus, my country of origin. If it is to be placed within a particular paradigm in the study of Cyprus, it falls in line with the increasing shift of focus, particularly by new scholars and academics, from the Cypriot conflict itself, which has so long dominated academic research, to an emphasis on those social dimensions that have remained