The Broken Olive Branch: Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and the Quest for Peace in Cyprus: Volume Two: Nationalism Versus Europeanization

By Harry Anastasiou

In the second volume, Anastasiou focuses on emergent post-nationalist trends, their implications for peace, and recent attempts to reach mutually acceptable agreements between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. He documents the transformation of Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey within the context of Europeanization and globalization. While leaders of both communities have failed to resolve the conflict, Anastasiou argues that the accession of Cyprus into the European Union has created a structure and process that promises a multiethnic, democratic Cyprus. With great depth and balance, The Broken Olive Branch presents a fresh analysis of the Cyprus conflict and new insights on the influence of nationalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Release date: Jan 19, 2009
• ISBN: 9780815650904

Book preview

The Broken Olive Branch

Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution

Louis Kriesberg, Series Editor

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The Broken Olive Branch

Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and the Quest for Peace in Cyprus

VOLUME ONE

The Impasse of Ethnonationalism

Harry Anastasiou

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2008 by Syracuse University Press

Syracuse, New York 13244-5160

All Rights Reserved

First Edition 2008

080910111213654321

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.∞™

For a listing of books published and distributed by Syracuse University Press, visit our Web site at SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu

ISBN-13: 978-0-8156-3196-5

ISBN-10: 0-8156-3196-0

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING–IN–PUBLICATION DATA

Anastasiou, Harry.

The broken olive branch : nationalism, ethnic conflict and the quest for peace in Cyprus / Harry Anastasiou. —1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8156-3196-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Cyprus—History. 2. Cyprus—Ethnic relations. 3. Nationalism—Cyprus. I. Title.

DS54.5.A82 2008

956.9304—dc22

2008032776

Manufactured in the United States of America

The Broken Olive Branch is dedicated to the Greek and Turkish people, with special recognition to the Turkish Cypriots, Greek Cypriots, Greeks, and Turks, in both high and low places, who have toiled for peace in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Born in England and raised in Cyprus, HARRY ANASTASIOU, a Greek Cypriot, has lived in his native land and has experienced first-hand most of the tumultuous years of civil and interethnic strife that shaped the Eastern Mediterranean island. In his quest to understand conflict and its transformation in the modern and postmodern world, he earned degrees in political science, philosophy, and peace and conflict studies from universities in the United States, Canada, and Holland.

Harry Anastasiou holds a Ph.D. in the political sociology of peace and conflict from the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a doctorandus degree in social science from the Free University of Amsterdam, Holland. He is a long-standing academic in interethnic and international peace and conflict studies, and an experienced practitioner of conflict resolution. At present, he is a core faculty member of the Conflict Resolution Graduate Program and an affiliate of the International Studies Program at Portland State University. For over a decade, he has been playing a leading role in the development and growth of a citizen-based peace movement in the ethnically divided island of Cyprus and in Greek-Turkish relations. He has also been a participating member of the Harvard Study Group, a bicommunal think tank comprised of policy leaders and academics working on ideas and approaches for the peaceful resolution of the Cyprus problem. As an academic, he has published numerous articles on peace and conflict issues, focusing on Cyprus, nationalism, peace-building, and the European Union.

Contents

Acknowledgments

1.The Legacy of Nationalism and the Tragedy of Cyprus

2.A Profile of the Nationalist Mind: Historical Origins and Mental Patterns

3.A Profile of the Nationalist Mind: Abstract Absolutism and the Heroics of Life and Death

4.A Brief Historical Overview of the Cyprus Problem

5.Conflict and Alienation

6.Communication Across the Ethnic Divide

7.The Pattern of Political Negotiations for a Cyprus Settlement

Works Cited

Index

TABLE

3.1. Ethnically mixed villages on Cyprus, 1859–2001

Acknowledgments

For their support of the Cyprus Peace Initiatives Project of Portland State University, under which the research endeavor for this book was undertaken, I wish to extend my gratitude to E. John Rumpakis, Cleo Rumpakis, Al Jubitz, the Jubitz Family Foundation, Douglas C. Strain, Gary Watson, Chris Garos, Effy Stephanopoulos, Isidoros Garifalakis, Maria Garifalakis, and numerous members of the Greek community of Portland, Oregon. By sharing a vision of peace and common humanity, they have morally and financially empowered our academic and practical efforts of contributing to democracy, peace, and reconciliation in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

I wish to extend a special thanks to Marvin Kaiser, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Science of Portland State University; Birol Yesilada, my colleague from the Hatfield School of Government of Portland State University; and Robert Gould, chair of the Conflict Resolution Graduate Program of Portland State University, for their encouragement and support.

For reviewing the manuscript, I wish to thank, Louis Kriesberg, professor emeritus of Social Conflict Studies at Syracuse University; Sean Byrne from the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice of St. Paul’s College, University of Manitoba, Canada; Benjamin Broome from the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication of Arizona State University; Maria Hadjipavlou from the Department of Social and Political Science of the University of Cyprus; and Erol Kaymak, chair of International Relations at the Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus.

I wish to also express my appreciation to Roxane Christ and Pieter Dykhorst for their valuable editing suggestions.

For challenging as well as empowering my spirit, while on the long journey that concluded with the completion of The Broken Olive Branch, I wish to extend a very special thanks to my wife, Theodora, and two sons, Anastis and Michaelangelo.

Lastly, I wish to thank my parents, Anastasios and Maria, for nurturing and orienting my early steps toward a world above and beyond the belligerent era in which I was raised.

The Broken Olive Branch

1

The Legacy of Nationalism and the Tragedy of Cyprus

FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE CYPRUS PROBLEM

A makeshift operation by today’s standards, my father’s cinema was a novelty that attracted audiences from both my home village and the surrounding areas; my mother was in charge of ticketing there. Of all the films shown, The Red Roses, a romantic drama, was the one that marked my memory for life. On the night of the premiere, my neighbor, his wife, and their adopted child were sitting two rows in front of me, on the right-hand side of the theater. It was approximately half an hour into the film when I noticed the dark silhouettes of four men who walked into the cinema and sat immediately in front of me, in the row separating me from my neighbor. The romantic drama continued to unfold on the screen, captivating audience members as they were imaginatively transported to a world sweeter than their own.

Unexpectedly, I noticed a slight commotion among the four men, as I had to peer between their heads to follow the film. Then, in one chorus of movement, they bent forward and pulled dark hoods over their heads that fully concealed their faces. Thereupon, in a flash, they stood up, extended their gun-bearing arms in the direction of my neighbor, and filled his body with bullets. The repeated rounds of deafening gunfire, and the screaming and commotion that ensued, immediately filled the cinema with terror and panic. The perpetrators rushed out of the cinema hurling hundreds of declaratory revolutionary leaflets into the air.

What had occurred was a political assassination, one no different from the many taking place in Cyprus during the 1950s. I was just five years old when I witnessed this dreadful event. I was stunned—uncomprehending of what had just taken place in front of my eyes. My mother, fear-ridden over my safety, ran breathlessly to the scene, grabbed me by the hand, and forcibly dragged me out of the cinema through one of the exit doors that had been flung open.

Some men took no time to carry the victim—still alive—out of the screening room, where they laid him on the floor of the foyer. He was bleeding badly. People shouted that someone should rush him to the hospital, but no one dared do so. It was common knowledge that anyone assisting the dying man would put his own life in jeopardy. The man just bled to death.

Within minutes, British troops arrived on the scene. They promptly arrested my father, who had been the operator in the projection room, and my grandfather, who had been assisting my mother with ticketing. The officers took them to prison in the nearby city for questioning. The colonial authorities assumed that they were prime accomplices to the assassination. They released both my father and grandfather a few days later, however, upon determining that they had nothing to do with the killing.

This was my first encounter with the complex historical and political realities that evolved into the now proverbial Cyprus problem.

The victim’s name was Zanetos. He had been married for only a few years to his wife, Vathou, when he met with that awful death. Maria, their little girl, was a child that Zanetos and Vathou had adopted, as they could not have children of their own. To this day Maria carries a the scar of a bullet wound on her leg—a permanent reminder of the dreadful night when she lost her adoptive father.

The street in front of Zanetos’s house had been our regular playground. Zanetos was an outspoken Communist who, ironically, had secured a job as an auxiliary police officer for the British colonial government. I remember him entering and exiting his house wearing his conspicuous police uniform. He would always walk by us with an air of pride and defiance. This attitude prevailed upon us as children. We felt as if we were invisible to him. The particular manner in which Zanetos had designed the exterior of his house was evidence of the excessive infusion of politics into daily life, so typical of the times. He had painted a huge image of the Communist scythe and sickle on the façade of his house.

His assassins were Greek Cypriots—right-wing, militant nationalists who had launched an armed struggle to end British colonial rule and unite Cyprus with Greece. It was common knowledge that the people who carried out the cinema operation were outsiders, not members of our village community. Using the guerrilla tactics of the time, Zanetos’s fellow villagers, who had been members of the anticolonial underground movement, had identified him to their comrades from neighboring communities well in advance of the incident—and it was these outsiders, men unknown to our villagers, who had carried out the assassination.

These right-wing Greek Cypriot (GC) militants had already declared that anyone associating with the British authorities would be guilty of treason. This declaration paralleled the one issued by Turkish Cypriot (TC) nationalists forcefully advocating the ethnic partition of Cyprus in vehement opposition to the GC nationalist goal of union with Greece. The TC nationalists had launched their own ethnocentric policy of severing ties with the GCs and issued a deadly warning to those members of their community who had sustained associations with them. Conflict in Cypriot society was evolving along multiple lines, ranging from the anticolonial struggle against the British, to interethnic tensions between GCs and TCs, to intra-ethnic rivalries among the GC as well as the TC community. My neighbor’s death was but one of the manifestations of intra-ethnic conflict within the GC community.

During the days that followed Zanetos’s assassination, people frequently said, He spoke too much! At a time of global war, cold and hot, Zanetos, echoing his party’s ideological rhetoric, viciously criticized the right-wing militants, labeling them fascist thugs who operated against the national interest of Cyprus. In a stance mirroring that of the GC right wing, the left wing had its own version of nationalism, no less belligerent in spirit than that of the Right. At the time, the conflict between the Right and the Left within the GC community was not merely over whose socioeconomic ideology was correct and viable. In a climate of mutual enmity and hatred, a deeper level of rivalry concerned who was worthy to lead the national struggle more effectively. Highly emotive and entangled with Right-versus-Left ideologies, this intra-GC rivalry was primarily motivated by an overall nationalist world- and life view that was bound to both clash with and fuel the rising counternationalism in the TC community. These complex intra- and interethnic rivalries were set on an unimpeded course of escalating conflict, exacting their toll at each step along the way.

As I beheld in stunned silence my neighbor’s assassination in my father’s cinema on that horrific night, my childhood vision of the world was shattered. The shock I received from witnessing the killing erased much of my memory of the incident for years; only vague images persisted, largely preserved by the fact that the event was talked about, though cautiously, for many years thereafter. It was not until my early twenties, almost two decades later, that the memory of the cinema incident began to emerge. Image by image, the pieces came together, reconstituting a coherent whole. Henceforth, my memory of the incident has become a crystalline recollection. Today, the images, the commotion, the smell, the sounds, and the terror, with utmost clarity and immediacy all in fine detail, are stubbornly imprinted in my mind, as though the event had occurred yesterday.

What stayed with me from that terrible experience was a question: Could anything good, noble, or humanly edifying ever emanate from violent actions, such as the one I witnessed? This question, emerging out of my childhood experience, has echoed throughout my life, as lethal violence again and again intersected the innumerable historical, political, and ideological events and phenomena that have come to shape life in Cyprus. It was as though the question had a transcendent quality, perpetually pushing beyond the human circumstances from which it arose in order to address human nature itself.

The question born out of the cinema incident also permeates the present work. The criterion orienting the inquiry that follows hinges around the consequences of the struggle within the spirit of the Cypriot people, between belligerent nationalist approaches on the one hand and peace-enhancing conciliatory approaches on the other.

A TURBULENT HISTORY OF THE VIGOR AND PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

The island of Cyprus (hereafter the Island) is situated in the Eastern Mediterranean. Its immediate geographic neighbors are Turkey to the north; Greece to the northwest; Syria, Lebanon, and Israel to the east; and Egypt to the south. The ethnic composition of its population (totaling about nine hundred thousand) is 80 percent Greek, 18 percent Turk, and 2 percent Armenian, Maronite, and Latin. Since 1974, an unknown number of Turkish settlers has been living in the northern part of the Island under the auspices of the Turkish regime.

At the crossroads between Western and Eastern civilizations, and between the developed Northern Hemisphere and less-developed Southern Hemisphere, Cyprus is marked by a long, complex history of outside influences and conquerors. The Island’s fate has always been intertwined with the coming and going, and rising and fading of external powers.

In its turbulent history, Cyprus went through various phases. The year 1571 marked the beginning of Imperial Ottoman rule. In 1878, Cyprus fell under British administrative control, becoming a British colony in 1923. In 1960, it emerged from its recent colonial past to establish itself as the Republic of Cyprus, yet the Island still did not break free from rivalry and conflict.

Against the backdrop of the cold war and irreconcilable, intracommunal, ideological divisions, the major ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots (GCs) and Turkish Cypriots (TCs), along with their respective motherlands—Greece and Turkey—became entangled in a bitter conflict that opened new wounds for Cyprus. Rising tensions, both interethnic and intra-ethnic, culminated in a Greek-led coup d’état in 1974, succeeded in less than a week by a Turkish military intervention and partial occupation of Cyprus, which resulted in the de facto ethnic partition of the Island.

Needless to say, these events have left deep scars in the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of Cyprus. In modern times, the spilling of blood has repeatedly stained the history of the Island, demarcating the alienating bond as well as the separating chasm between GCs and TCs, and between Greeks and Turks. Although rooted in the distant past, the Cyprus problem has occupied a key place in the worldwide list of protracted, ethnonational conflicts since the 1950s. Upon completing his term of office as the American ambassador to Greece in the summer of 2001, Nicolas Burns noted that the Cyprus problem still constitutes one of the most complex political problems of our times. Bridging the historical divide between GCs and TCs, as well as between Greeks and Turks, has inevitably emerged as an integral and indispensable dimension of any effort aimed at establishing and securing peace in Cyprus and in the Eastern Mediterranean region as a whole.

Since the nineteenth century, the multiplicity of divisive and explosive events that marred the history of the Island have been grounded in and motivated by a pervasive single factor: the phenomenon of ethnocentric nationalism. Nationalism is, in its essence, a world- and life view deeply rooted in social and historical realities that transcend the classical, political ideologies of both the right-wing and left-wing traditions. As Denitch noted, Nationalism can be formally left-wing or right-wing in theory, while in practice, having a strong distaste for intranational differentiations and distinctions, nationalism places primary emphasis on the people of a given nation, as against an emphasis on classes or programs (1994, 142–43).

Throughout modern history, nationalist visions of life and their political variances have asserted that justice, democracy, and liberty should come out of the barrel of the gun. Yet other nationalist perspectives propounded a milder version of this thesis, asserting that the barrel of a gun, at the very least, can defend justice, democracy, and liberty. The credence given such assertions ultimately depends on one’s beliefs and attitude toward life. However, whatever these beliefs may be, one ought not to evade the existential question of whether violent means can ever deliver justice, democracy, and liberty, or whether, by their very nature, violent means merely generate phenomena that contradict these lofty human ends. Central to the historical legacy of nationalism that most of us have inherited has been nationalism’s refusal to confront this vital question, let alone to articulate a viable answer.

The phenomenon of ethnocentric nationalism has been at the heart of the turbulent historical odyssey of the Cypriot people—Greeks and Turks alike. As a world- and life view, with its accompanying modes of thought and action, nationalism has shaped political identity in adversarial terms and has skewed democracy by restricting it to an exclusively monoethnic state polity. It has denied the existence of cultural and identity overlaps between the Turkish and Greek people and has severed traditional community-based ties between GCs and TCs. Over a half-century, the result was to forge a deep estrangement between the two Cypriot communities, highlighted by cycles of both interethnic and intra-ethnic violence.

Having rendered the idea of the nation sacred, the nationalist mind has always rationalized its aggressive and intolerant nature by accrediting violence with moral justification in the name of the nation—by invoking violence in support of the nation’s justice, democracy, and freedom. Perhaps it was in concealing the problematic nature of violence behind its moral assertions that nationalism assumed its immense historical power in influencing and mobilizing societies and groups to engage in full-fledged violent conflicts.

As the only form of political culture in modern history to legitimize the taking and the sacrificing of human life, nationalism has been the major perpetrator in the erosion of the human spirit. Since nationalism places the value of the nation above the value of human life, its supporters are characterized by a profound form of alienation from both themselves and others. In Cyprus, even during the periods when there was a relative cessation of violence, the ethnocentric nationalist conditioning of attitudes, policy, and diplomacy was largely responsible for decades of political impasse, as the nationalist mind fundamentally rejects any form of multiethnic polity and any kind of international multilateralism.

The Cyprus problem, engaging GCs, TCs, Greece, and Turkey, has been one of the many protracted ethnic conflicts of modern time decisively shaped by both the vigor and paradoxes of nationalism. For this reason, one cannot grasp or appreciate the full scope and nature of the Cyprus problem unless one approaches and scrutinizes it from the vantage point of a critical understanding of the nationalist mind. One can only subject the Cyprus problem to sociohistorical assessment and appropriate conflict analysis within the perspective of nationalism. Once the basic parameters of nationalism are laid bare, the Cyprus conflict not only becomes understandable as a political problem, but it also becomes intelligible as a major factor that has shaped, structured, and conditioned the culture, the social process, the psychology, the communication process, and the anthropology of Cypriot society. Diagnosing the Cyprus problem from the perspective of nationalism is thereby also a sine qua non for seeking directions, strategies, and options for its resolution. In the final analysis, the spirit of nationalism and the spirit of peace may be fundamentally incompatible.

Any sociopolitical or historical reflection on the struggle to establish and sustain peace in Cyprus has meaning only if held against the tragic history of the Island. This history began with two ethnocentrically oriented nationalist movements: that of the GCs advocating union (enosis) between Cyprus and Greece, and that of the TCs pursuing the partition (taksim) of the ethnically mixed Cypriot society in order to secure an ethnically separate, purely Turkish state. These nationalisms have driven the history of the two major Cypriot communities to a continuously conflicted relationship that, in spite of its many historical phases, did not show signs of substantive change until the late 1990s. Moreover, nationalism still weighs on the soul of Cyprus for three main reasons.

First, by its very nature and history, nationalism has left behind a legacy of aggression and suspicion, and an exclusivist, totalitarian concept of ethnic identity.

Second, under the banner of their respective nationalist orientations, the two rival ethnic communities of Cyprus, in different ways and at different times, have experienced an erosion of their nationalist, political objectives. Their specific ethnonational goals, as set by their nationalist perspective, have been undermined by the very history of violence they have produced—a history brought about by the absolutist attitudes of nationalism and the incompatibility of the respective ethnocentric political objectives mutually pursued in a society of mixed ethnicity (Kizilyurek 1998).

Third, the attainment and sustainability of peace is contingent on the willingness and ability of the TCs and the GCs and their respective motherlands, Turkey and Greece, to forgo the ways of the past and move beyond nationalism.

In 1960, the Republic of Cyprus was established as a single, ethnically mixed, bicommunal state with a single flag and an army numbering merely two thousand men. The events between 1963 and 1974 violently polarized Cypriot society, leaving it captive to historical and political stagnation up until 2003. Throughout the turmoil of the 1950s and the 1960s, and following the events of 1974, TC nationalism merely managed to establish a travesty state, an illegitimate regime recognized by Turkey alone. Likewise, GC nationalism, with its sacred goal of union with Greece, underwent a fundamental regression as the forceful separation and Turkification of the northern part of the Island in 1974 cast a heavy shadow on any residual urges for union with Greece. This was the net outcome of a series of interactive historical events that culminated, during the summer of 1974, in the unionist-driven Greek coup d’état, followed by the secessionist-motivated Turkish military intervention.

With foreign troops on its soil, with thousands of TCs and GCs turned into internally displaced refugees, with all the male members of the population trained as combat-ready soldiers, and with a cease-fire line cutting across the entire island, Cyprus became definitively divided into two de facto ethnically pure states. While the GC south claimed the right of jurisdiction over the whole Island vis-à-vis the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, the TCs claimed the right of self-determination by secession vis-à-vis their self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), recognized solely by Turkey. The situation on the ground had become reflective of the nationalism represented by the four flags flown in Cyprus: the Greek flag and the flag of the Republic of Cyprus in the Greek south, and the Turkish flag and the flag of the TRNC in the Turkish north.

Moreover, since 1964, the physical separation between the GCs and the TCs has been under the direct control and supervision of the peacekeeping forces of the UN (Kaloudis 1982). Since 1974, as in the pre-1974 period, the two sides have increasingly stockpiled weapons and upgraded their military might. In 1996, the secretary-general of the UN, Boutros Ghali, reported that relative to population, Cyprus was one of the most militarized areas in the world. All of the above has come to mark the historical tragedy of Cyprus (Attalides 1979; Clerides 1989; Crawshaw 1978; Denktash 1982; Joseph 1985).

Economically, the two communities have developed in divergent directions as each has followed the sketch of its respective nationalism, with its exclusivist interpretations of ethnic identity, socioeconomic morphology, and cultural patterns. While physically adjacent to each other, each ethnic community evolved in isolation and essential separation from the other. Within the Republic of Cyprus, the economic interests of the TC and the GC communities have never coincided, and after the events of 1974, they assumed a relationship of definitive conflict. Viewing themselves as the guardians of the Republic of Cyprus, the GCs imposed an internationally accepted economic embargo on Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus, in retaliation for the forceful appropriation of GC properties and businesses by the Turkish army in 1974, and in reaction to the unilateral declaration of independence by the TCs in 1983.

The Turkish and TC side, in contrast, linked the economy of northern Cyprus to that of Turkey through financial assistance from the motherland and through an influx of settlers from Anatolia designated as working hands. In an effort to counteract the economic embargo imposed by the GCs, the TC community thus created an inexorable and exclusive dependency-relation to Turkey. This, in turn, exposed the TC community to the inflationary tendencies of the Turkish lira, which retarded economic development and undermined the private sector of its economy for decades. Northern Cyprus became dependent on an artificially sustained economy through direct state aid from Turkey. In the name of physical security and political independence, the TC community was compelled to bear economic stagnation and regression, and, most importantly, isolation and exclusion from direct international commerce and trade.