Living on the margins of "the Turk" and "the Cypriot": the Cyprioturk as the subject of ambiguity

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to conceptualize the meaning of the Annan Period (November 2002- April 2004) in understanding the contemporary identity politics in North Cyprus. It analyzes the roles of different national narratives, contradictory fantasies and power struggles generating around the two conflicting national imaginations, in shaping Turkish Cypriots’ processes of identification with Turkishness and Cypriotness. This research elaborated as a map whereon the discussions of the discourses of the Motherland and Cypriotism, their roles in interpellating and subjectifying Turkish Cypriots as “the Turks” and “the Cypriots” and the illustration of the ideological tensions generating around “the Turk”, “the Cypriot”, “the Turkish Cypriot” or “the Cyprioturk” become possible. This map is based on the narrative analyses of the historical texts and the writings and practices of the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot elites, and on an ethnographic research conducted in various villages and cities of North Cyprus, with a focus on the political subjectivities, narratives and performances of the different segments of the Turkish Cypriot society. As a map that illustrates the splits in Turkish Cypriots’ identification processes, this thesis sheds light on the ways in which the Cyprioturk “as the subject of ambiguity” and the Cyprioturkness as “a space for the politics of difference and equality” appear inside the narratives, discourses and practices emerged during the Annan Period. In addition, it attempts to crystallize the role of the dialectical relations between the local and the global in transforming the problems of sovereignty, nation-state and international recognition into the enunciation struggles of the Turkish Cypriots.