Cypriot Nationalisms in Context

History, Identity and Politics

Thekla Kyritsi, Nikos Christofis, Thekla Kyritsi, Nikos Christofis

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319978031
• eBook ISBN: 9783319978048
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book explores the different perspectives and historical moments of nationalism in Cyprus. It does this by looking at nationalism as a form of identity, as a form of ideology, and as a form of politics. The fifteen contributors to this book are scholars of different scientific backgrounds and present Cypriot nationalisms from an interdisciplinary framework, including approaches such as history, political science, psychology, and gender studies. The chapters take a historical approach to nationalism and argue that the world of nations, ethnic identity, and national ideology are neither eternal, nor ahistorical nor primordial, but are rather socially constructed and function within particular historical and social contexts. As a land that was, and still is, marked by opposed nationalisms – that is, Greek and Turkish – Cyprus constitutes a fertile ground for examining the history, the dynamics, and the dialectics of nationalism.

© The Author(s) 2018

Thekla Kyritsi and Nikos Christofis (eds.)Cypriot Nationalisms in Contexthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97804-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Cypriot Nationalism(s) in Context

Nikos Christofis¹ and Thekla Kyritsi²

(1)

Center for Turkish Studies and College of History and Civilization, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China

(2)

Political Science and History, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Nikos Christofis (Corresponding author)

Thekla Kyritsi

End Abstract

The word “nation ” stems from the Latin verb nasci, “to be born,” initially coined to define a group of people native to the same area. The word has assumed various meanings throughout the centuries: Once referring to students coming from the same region or country , it later acquired a new sense as a designation of the social elite representing any political or spiritual authority in the medieval arrangement (Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot 2005, p. 2). By the sixteenth century—largely as a result of political liberalization in England —its meaning had crystallized, coming to be identified with “the people ,” thereby elevating the latter as the new bearer of sovereignty , a concept that is, of course, closely linked with the state . As Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot (2005, p. 2) suggest “sovereignty became embodied in a state which had acquired the profile of a centralized apparatus.” Thus, from the state as a political entity ruled by the monarch, or the state as being the monarch—reflected in the famous quote L’etat, c’est moi which is attributed to the French king Louis XIV —we passed to L’etat, c’est le peuple, namely to the nation as being—and ruled by—its people.

This led many theorists to argue in favor of the idea of nationalism (like sovereignty) as a quintessentially modern phenomenon. Kedourie (1960), for example, argued that nationalism is “a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century” (p. 9), while Gellner (1983) asserted that it was a necessary political doctrine that appeared in the modern world after the industrial revolution because political units were organized along nationalist principles , suggesting that “the political and the national unit should be congruent” (p. 1). Hobsbawm (1990) supplements Gellner’s views with an understanding of nationalism as a tendency to collective identification , which is concomitant with the state’s extending reach (p. 9). This collective identification for Anderson (2006) is depicted in the widely used notion of imagined community . In other words, we could agree, at least as a starting base, with the following definition, suggested by Antony Marx (2003, p. 6):

Nationalism… [is] a collective sentiment or identity , bounding and binding together those individuals who share a sense of large-scale political solidarity aimed at creating, legitimizing or challenging states. [And] as such, nationalism is perceived or justified by a sense of historical commonality which coheres a population within a territory and which demarcates those who belong and those who are not.

Nationalism, broadly conceived, has penetrated and interacted with a whole array of different ideologies and political attitudes, ranging across the political spectrum, including some segments of the Left . For example, many historians have observed that, in its initial stages, nationalism was associated with liberal movement s (such as the French nationalism linked to the French Revolution ) but through time it was “increasingly taken up by conservative and reactionary politicians” (Heywood 2007, p. 145). Similarly, one can talk of liberal nationalism as well as left-wing nationalism or anti-colonial nationalism et cetera (e.g., Nimni 1994; Christofis and Palieraki in this volume).

Relevant to that last point, and Cyprus for that matter, is the contribution made by anti-colonial scholars and Marxist ideas . For example, the leftist and anti-colonial intellectual Aimé Césaire (2000), although he removed himself from association with the USSR , made reference to Marxism and the role that socialism could play in the liberation of colonized people : “It is a new society that we must create… For some examples showing that this is possible, we can look to the Soviet Union ” (p. 11). For Césaire—as for many leftists —the oppressed people under the term proletariat remained “the only class that still has a universal mission, because it suffers in its flesh from all the wrongs of history, from all the universal wrongs” (p. 24). A few years later, the Marxist philosopher and revolution ary, Frantz Fanon (1963) argued that “The Third World must not be content to define itself in relation to values which preceded it” (p. 55), namely the capitalist and the socialist system . For Fanon, the underdeveloped countries “which made use of the savage competition between the two systems in order to win their national liberation , must, however, refuse to get involved in such rivalry” (p. 55).

Fanon’s analysis was quite revealing in many respects for the case of Cyprus, when he argued that “the colonialist bourgeoisie frantically seeks contact with the colonized elite ” (p. 9), referring to the colonial powers ’ attempts to maintain control of the colonies through control of the “independent” governments. For Fanon, the process of decolonization as a response to colonialism was part of the struggle that the colonized faced to become free. He advocated that decolonization unified the people “by the radical decision to remove [it] from heterogeneity, and by unifying it on a national, sometimes a racial bias ” (p. 30). Indeed, decolonization brought with it the rise of nationalism, which would rally anti-colonial movements and solidify cultural identity , and in doing so it would exclude other groups. This is apparent in the case of Cyprus where anti-colonial forces within the Greek Cypriot majority brought nationalism forward while “a Greek national identity missed out those who identified themselves as Turkish or as other minorities living within the two major ethnic groups” (Papastavrou 2012, p. 97).

It becomes evident that nationalism has proved to be one of the most powerful forces in the modern world (Hutchinson and Smith 1994, p. 3). As is well known, it has come to permeate, in various degrees, almost all aspects of daily life, from politics to economics and social relations. Nationalism is, however, not static; it therefore makes no sense to talk about a single nationalism; rather we must give credence to the existence of multiple nationalisms. Beyond the different forms of nationalisms based on internal characteristics and their relationships with other identities or affiliations—e.g., liberal/conservative/socialist /feminist nationalism —different distinctions between nationalisms have been suggested by scholars according to criteria such as their characteristics and their place in the history or the geography of the world. For example, some scholars have advanced a distinction between formal/informal (Eriksen 1993) and official/unofficial nationalism (Özkırımlı 2002). While official nationalism ought to be understood as a process imposed from above—involving bureaucracy and state institutions to structure and support it, becoming thus part of the official ideology that seeks to homogenize and discipline society (Katsourides, Kalantzopoulos, Christofis in this volume)—unofficial nationalism refers to more sentimental and reactionary values closely related to daily life. Of course, the two forms inevitably form a symbiotic relationship, even if at any given moment they are in harmony, overlap or are in competition with each other (Özkırımlı 708–709; also, Öztan 2015, p. 75). Another distinction, which is quite evident in some of the chapters in this volume (e.g., this chapter and Kıralp), is Smith ’s (1991) distinction between “civic ” and “ethnic ” nationalism . The former refers to a specific nationalism putting emphasis on common civic or political belonging and shared territory, while the latter refers to a national identity stressing common ethnicity , culture, and tradition s—characteristics which could also be linked with “liberal” and “conservative ” nationalism , respectively.

This brings us to the geography of nationalism and the distinction between Western /non-Western nationalisms . Although there is a distinct and recognizable continuity with nineteenth-century European forms and ideologies, there have been at the same time inevitable mutations, as nationalism has adapted to or been reconstructed by cultures with different traditions from the West. In this scheme, the dichotomy between colonizer s and colonized nationalisms is quite relevant. It can be argued, as Krishna (1999) pointed out, that “the metaphor of nation as journey, as something that is ever in the making but never quite reached [is] central to nationalisms everywhere” (p. 17). In the non-Western space, however, this is a process which “[s]ecu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Cypriot Nationalism(s) in Context
• Part I. Early Agents of Nationalism
• Part II. Moments of a Mass Movement
• Part III. National Identity and the Development of Prejudice
• Part IV. The Local and the Global
• Back Matter