Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Long Division

2011; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0740277511404974

1936-0924

Nicholas Bray,

Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History

Nicosia—cradling a skull in her hands, Popi Chrysostomou surveys a sea of bones laid out neatly on tables around her. Some are sorted by type; others form near-complete skeletons. Scores of vertebrae make up a macabre design on one table. On another, bones are tidily arranged into feet.A hole the size of a pea is clearly visible in the side of the skull. Dead bones don't talk, but the hole shows that this person was shot in the head. Chrysostomou refuses to speculate on who shot this person and why, but that question is at the heart of a conflict that has poisoned life on this once idyllic island for more than half a century.The skull and the bones around it come from a mass grave uncovered in a mountainside just an hour's drive north of Chrysostomou's lab near Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus. Chrysostomou leads a team of forensic anthropologists whose job is to fit the bones together and identify who they belonged to, using whatever clues they can gather and backing them up with DNA testing. Once identified, the remains are placed in coffins and handed over to the victims' families for burial. It's a grim task—and a reminder that, nearly 40 years after the violent upheaval that led to Cyprus's division into two separately ruled communities, deep scars continue to afflict this island in the eastern Mediterranean.The bones belong to victims of the wave of killings that hit Cyprus in July and August 1974, after an attempted coup d'état sparked fighting between the island's Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian majority and its Turkish-speaking Muslim minority. Amid violence triggered by the Greek-backed insurrection and an ensuing Turkish military intervention, some 5,000 people lost their lives. More than 1,000 “missing persons” are still unaccounted for. The bones on Chrysostomou's tables are all that remains of some of them.Cyprus is a small place—just one-third the size of Massachusetts. But the conflict that has divided it for four decades has major ramifications for Europe and the wider Mediterranean region. Though an island, Cyprus is also a fault line—between East and West, Christianity and Islam, atavistic nationalism and borderless globalization. It is a place shaped by conflicting histories and competing grand strategies, and the path it takes will reveal a great deal about the prospects for international cooperation in an increasingly polarized world.Less than 50 miles from the southern coast of Turkey and just 65 miles west of Syria, Cyprus has almost always been dominated by outsiders. For nearly three centuries during the Middle Ages, it was ruled by the descendants of Crusaders from France. In 1489, it was colonized by the Venetians, and in 1571 it was annexed to the Ottoman Empire. In 1878, it came under British rule, first through a leasing agreement and then, after World War I, as a British Crown colony.After World War II, leaders of the island's numerically dominant Greek-speaking population campaigned for self-determination and union with Greece. But Britain's military interests, and frictions between Turkey and Greece, prevented that option. Instead, Greek Cypriot agitation backed by terrorism finally forced Britain to agree, in 1960, to give Cyprus its independence under Greek Cypriot leadership. Britain retained ownership of two military bases covering 2.7 percent of the island, with Greece and Turkey awarded the right to station small military garrisons on the island while sharing joint responsibilities with Britain as guarantors of the island's independence, territorial integrity and constitution. The Turkish Cypriot community was granted the post of vice president and three government ministries. The arrangements specifically excluded the total or partial union of Cyprus with any other state or its partition into two independent states.But intercommunal disputes quickly undermined the functioning of the new republic's constitution. In incidents that began just before Christmas 1963, bands of Greek Cypriot extremists slaughtered hundreds of Turkish Cypriots and destroyed their property. Peace was restored under U.N. supervision, but the constitutional provisions originally designed to protect Turkish Cypriot interests were rendered inoperative and tensions between the two communities continued to rise. Greek Cypriots were effectively in charge of the island and many Turkish Cypriots were barricaded into cramped and impoverished enclaves.“The Turkish Cypriots had to rely totally on aid from Turkey, while on the Greek Cypriot side there was bravado that they were now masters of the island,” recalls Ergün Olgun, a Turkish Cypriot businessman. While an all-Greek Cypriot National Guard was being formed with Greek military backing, young Turkish Cypriots were drafted into clandestine combat training with rifles supplied from Turkey.On July 15, 1974, right-wing Greek Cypriot extremists backed by army officers from mainland Greece launched a coup to overthrow the left-leaning Greek Cypriot government and annex Cyprus to Greece. The presidential palace was blown up and hundreds of Greek Cypriot left-wingers were slaughtered and interred in mass graves. Wholesale massacre of Turkish Cypriots might have followed, had not Turkey, in the face of inaction on the part of Britain, launched its own armed intervention five days later.At dawn on July 20, Turkish troops landed on the northern coast of the island, backed by bombing raids and paratroop drops. The start of the offensive was chaotic. The brigadier general in charge of the landings was shot as he came ashore, and the Turks sustained heavy losses. But in successive waves of fighting over the following weeks, interspersed by fruitless diplomatic negotiations, the advancing Turkish forces strengthened their positions. Greek Cypriots fled in front of the advancing Turkish forces, and the attacks, combined with reprisals on both sides, claimed the lives of thousands of Greek and Turkish Cypriots.By mid-August, Turkish forces occupied approximately 38 percent of the island. Over the months that followed, some 170,000 Greek Cypriots were expelled from their homes in northern Cyprus. Thousands of Turkish Cypriots living in the south of the island fled or were forcibly transferred to the north.Gradually the two sides of the island began the slow process of rebuilding their economies. Sporadic reunification talks went nowhere, however, and in 1983 northern Cyprus unilaterally declared independence. U.N. resolutions condemned the move, with only Turkey recognizing the breakaway state. In the south, a tourism and property boom helped restore prosperity, but regular border incidents ensured that the conflict remained incandescent. By the early 2000s, the government of southern Cyprus was making headway toward membership in the European Union, while economic problems in Turkey were adding to the impoverishment of the north.In April 2003, soon after rejecting yet another U.N.-backed reunification proposal, then-Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktaş unexpectedly created a safety valve by opening four crossing points between the two parts of the island. Thousands of Cypriots began crossing back and forth, sparking renewed hopes for a settlement. In April 2004, Turkish Cypriots voted by a two-to-one margin in favor of a revised settlement plan put forward by then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.But a 3-to-1 majority of Greek Cypriots rejected the plan, at the urging of their Orthodox church leaders and in response to an about-face by their then-president, Tassos Papadopoulos, who initially had promised support for the plan. Days later, the still-divided island was accepted into the EU as one of 10 new members after Greece threatened to block the admission of other candidate countries from central and eastern Europe if Cyprus was excluded. It was a diplomatic victory for southern Cyprus that left northern Cyprus out in the cold.Today, southern Cyprus uses the euro as its currency and its politicians have become well versed in the maneuvering of EU politics. In a curious halfway-house arrangement, many Turkish Cypriots living in the north have Republic of Cyprus passports, granted on the basis that the whole island is EU territory even though the rule of the southern Cypriot government does not extend to the north. More than 2,000 northern Cypriots cross to work in the south each day, mostly on construction sites. Growing numbers of Turkish Cypriots also benefit from southern medical care and other welfare arrangements, placing an extra burden on the southern Cypriot budget.Traces of the era of British colonial domination are still evident. Cars drive on the left and square-pinned electric plugs fit into British-style sockets. Inside the British military bases—which were used as staging posts during the Iraq War and now for operations in Afghanistan—sophisticated electronic surveillance installations make a vital contribution to British and American intelligence. But Britain, aside from offering to hand over some of its military territory to a reunited Cyprus as a way of facilitating a settlement, has largely avoided involvement in attempts to resolve the conflict, leaving that thankless task to the U.N. and the EU.Since 2003, more crossing points for civilian traffic have pierced the barrier of barbed wire, mines and guard posts that still divide the two communities. But effective reunification of the island's approximately one million people is still an elusive goal. Derelict mosques disfigure the towns and villages of southern Cyprus, while ruined churches are eyesores in the north. Rats, cats and snakes inhabit the hotels and apartment buildings of Varósha, a resort area invaded by Turkey in 1974 and now sealed off under U.N. supervision.In the southern, Greek part of the island, tourism, foreign investment and funds from the European Union have built an economy with modern infrastructure. The north, by contrast, is mired in underdevelopment and dependent on aid from Turkey, still the only country that recognizes the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Some 40,000 Turkish soldiers occupy military camps that dot the territory, which covers more than one-third of the island—including some areas that used to be among its most prosperous. They are the successors to the Turkish forces that intervened in 1974.In this troubled environment, a few well-intentioned souls like Popi Chrysostomou are seeking to bridge the divide. The slim, brown-haired 33-year-old, like the other members of her team, is part of a younger generation of Cypriots eager to turn a page on past conflicts and move on.Based in a compound in the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone, Chrysostomou's forensics team is funded by the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. Although it was established under U.N. auspices in 1981, it didn't get down to business until five years ago because of disagreements between the two sides about what it should do and why. Its staff includes both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, tasked with addressing one of the most sensitive issues in the ongoing conflict—the fate of Cypriots murdered by fellow Cypriots.The corpses of victims were disposed of in dry wells and caves, or buried in bulldozed pits. The skull Chrysostomou showed me when I visited her lab was found in a cave in northern Cyprus along with the bones of 24 other people, all Greek Cypriots. True to her mission, Chrysostomou refuses to speculate on how its owner met his death, merely acknowledging in neutral scientific terms that the hole in his head is “consistent with penetration by a projectile.”The justification for this aseptic approach is the need to avoid creating grounds for possible criminal charges against those who may have been responsible for past killings. The committee's mandate is defined as purely humanitarian—to establish the fate of missing persons. Its objective is to close a process of mourning for families whose anguish has been prolonged by unresolved doubts as to what actually happened to their fathers, brothers or sons. But it has no authority to establish the cause of death or attribute responsibility.As the only institutionalized, bicommunal body of its sort in Cyprus, its work is both highly symbolic and devastatingly practical. Once the victims are identified, the act of giving them a proper burial has an important cathartic effect, says Oleg Egorov, a U.N. administrator who oversees the project. “It bridges the abyss of pain,” he says.Such thoughts, and the need to go beyond them toward full-scale reconciliation, are fundamental to the painstaking endeavors of Chrysostomou and her team. “Our work is beyond politics,” she insists, winning a nod of assent from a Turkish Cypriot colleague beside her. “We are looking for missing Cypriots. Not Greek Cypriots. Not Turkish Cypriots. Just Cypriots.”On an island where old animosities die hard, finding Cypriots who see themselves as “just Cypriots” isn't easy. On both sides of the dividing line, school books for years fanned nationalism and hatred of the other side. Though there is no longer intercommunal violence, flare-ups of nationalistic fervor frequently threaten the détente. Last December, stone-throwing hooligans attacked a Turkish basketball team after a match in southern Cyprus, alarming politicians on both sides of the divide.“The Greek Cypriots have a saying: ‘The best Turk is a dead Turk,’” says Hikmet Uluçam, a 60-year-old graphic designer whose family was among thousands of Turkish Cypriots who moved from southern Cyprus to the north after the events of 1974. And the Turkish Cypriots? Mr. Uluçam reflects for a moment and comes up with a trenchant response: “You can't get fur from a pig, and you can't make friends with a Greek.”Even some who do identify themselves as “just Cypriots” have little expectation that the present stalemate will soon come to an end. One such person is a man I'll call Kyriakos, a building contractor based in the south who is a member of Cyprus's small Maronite Christian community. I joined Kyriakos's family on a recent Sunday morning for a memorial mass in honor of his mother-in-law. The mass was held in his family's native village in northern Cyprus. They had driven there from their homes in the south, showing their identity cards at one of the crossing-points on the cease-fire line in order to get a rubber-stamped “visa” on a sheet of paper from one of the uniformed Turkish Cypriot police officers staffing a line of booths on the northern side.After the service, the topic of the conflict came up—as it often does in conversations with Cypriots. Kyriakos was deeply pessimistic. “They tell us every year that this is the crucial year for reaching an agreement, and nothing happens,” he said. “Things will just go on as they are.”Kyriakos's pessimism is understandable. For decades, the international community and the parties to the conflict have failed again and again to find a resolution. The current effort began in 2008, after a four-year impasse, when former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer was named as the U.N.'s special envoy to Cyprus and took up the task of trying to bring the two sides together. Talks between Greek Cypriot President Demetris Christofias and his then-Turkish Cypriot counterpart, Mehmet Ali Talat, seemed to be making progress until elections in northern Cyprus in April 2010 led to Mr. Talat's defeat and his replacement by nationalist hardliner Derviş Eroğlu. Talks between the two sides resumed the following month, and at a meeting in Geneva in late January, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pressed Mr. Christofias and Mr. Eroğlu to step up their efforts to reach an agreement.“Both communities in Cyprus want more than talks: they want a solution,” Mr. Ban told journalists after the meeting. “The leaders have heard that message and they are acting. I welcome the steps that the leaders have taken today which give a clear indication of their commitment to reunifying Cyprus as soon as possible.”Despite these pressures, a settlement to the “Cyprus question” seems unlikely to emerge any time soon. Turkey continues to refuse access to its ports and airports to southern Cypriot ships and planes in retaliation for northern Cyprus's isolation, and Turkish ministers have reiterated that they will not abandon the Turkish Cypriots in order to buy progress in their EU talks. Meanwhile, the domestic political situations in Cyprus and Turkey aren't favorable for those supporting a negotiation between the two sides. Southern Cyprus will hold parliamentary elections in May; a month later, there will be elections in Turkey. In southern Cyprus, Mr. Christofias will be anxious to avoid showing any sign of weakness that could cost his left-wing party votes. In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to wrest votes from the right-wing nationalist mhp party, precluding early concessions on Cyprus from his side.Meanwhile, northern Cyprus continues to suffer, cut off from world commerce by a trade embargo and ostracized by the international community. Modest amounts of aid have been provided by the EU for projects such as improvements to drainage and the restoration of monuments. But northern Cyprus is still unable to export to the rest of the world other than through Turkey or, under rigorously restrictive conditions, through southern Cyprus. At times, the south's desire to isolate the north from the rest of the world has become almost comically zealous. Last July, the American singer and actress Jennifer Lopez was forced to cancel a performance at a luxury hotel in northern Cyprus after Greek Cypriot campaigners accused her of supporting an illegal regime that violates human rights.It's widely agreed that the key to any settlement is Turkey. “Cyprus is an issue close to the hearts of the Turkish people,” says Amanda Paul, an analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. “Being in Cyprus gives them a sense of power. Nobody likes to give anything up if they don't have to, and the Turkish government does not want to be seen as losing face.”Progress toward a settlement is linked to Turkey's bid for EU membership, with both sides using it as a bargaining chip. The southern Cypriot government has repeatedly blocked the opening of new rounds in the talks in retaliation for Turkey's intransigence over northern Cyprus, while France and Germany, whose governments are opposed to Turkish membership in the EU, are taking advantage of this situation to keep Turkey at arm's length. This stalemate is unlikely to change unless new governments are someday elected in France and Germany that are more open to Turkish accession. So, for the moment, Turkey is playing a waiting game, insisting that it is still firmly committed to EU membership while at the same time pursuing a foreign policy strategy increasingly focused on neighboring countries including Iran, Iraq and Syria, as well as near-neighbors like Russia.In a worst-case scenario, if the reunification talks go nowhere and Turkey is ultimately turned down for EU membership, some predict that the island's division may become permanent. Encouraged by broad recognition of Kosovo's independence, and more recently by the vote in favor of independence for southern Sudan, there is a growing feeling among northern Cypriots that some form of internationally recognized independence may be possible, even though this is adamantly rejected by southern Cyprus and forbidden under the 1960 agreement that ended colonial rule. “Without a settlement,” says Emine Çolak, a Turkish Cypriot lawyer and civil rights campaigner, “we will have to reshuffle the cards and look for a solution that consolidates the status quo.”Even without fully recognized independence for northern Cyprus, others fear that the combined effects of emigration by native Cypriots in search of better opportunities off the island and the immigration of Turkish workers from the mainland will rob the territory of any specifically Cypriot identity. If those trends continue, warns Alexis Galanos, an influential Greek Cypriot businessman and politician, “in some way or another, the northern part of Cyprus will be absorbed by Turkey.”That's not a prospect that Turkish Cypriots relish, attached as they are to what they see as their more free-wheeling Mediterranean culture. But in many ways, it has already happened. The Turkish lira is used as the breakaway territory's currency and its telephone system is accessed from abroad through the Turkish mainland. Because of the international embargo of northern Cyprus, the north is barred from the Universal Postal Union, so foreign mail addressed to residents of the north has to transit via Turkey. And every effort is made to symbolically link the north to mainland Turkey.Throughout northern Cyprus, the red Turkish flag bearing a white crescent and star flies alongside the white Turkish Cypriot flag with an identically sized red crescent and star between two red bars. On winter evenings, a mountainside north of Nicosia morphs into a massive light show, as a giant flag painted on its rocks and shrubs slowly changes its silhouette—first matching the Turkish flag, then the flag of northern Cyprus.At the heart of the ongoing conflict is a surprisingly resilient nationalism, stoked on both sides of the divide by competing historical narratives and fueled by propaganda that assigns all blame to the other side. The official southern Cypriot line charges that Turkey's continued military presence in northern Cyprus is all that stands in the way of peace. This glosses over the historical justification for that presence—the failure of the 1960 constitution and the well-documented violence against Turkish Cypriots that took place from 1963 onwards.But inconvenient facts are sometimes ignored in Cyprus, as is often the case in conflict zones. In a brochure distributed to tourists south of the U.N.-patrolled “Green Line”—a strip of derelict buildings, barbed wire, rotting sandbags and old packing cases that cuts through Nicosia—the city's Greek Cypriot mayor, Eleni Mavrou, describes how the line “brutally divides our city following the Turkish invasion in 1974.” In fact, the line was instituted 10 years earlier, to impose peace between the two communities after violent attacks launched by Greek Cypriots against their Turkish Cypriot neighbors.In northern Cyprus, the continued presence of Turkish forces is presented as a guarantee of peace and security. Memories of past violence are kept fresh by installations such as a one-room museum on a highway near the village of Sandallar. There, a stark memorial consists of 29 empty desks and chairs in a reconstituted schoolroom, a commemoration of the August 1974 assassination by Greek Cypriots of 29 Turkish Cypriot schoolchildren and dozens more infants, women and elderly people. Just inside the medieval walls of Famagusta, a village now in the Turkish Cypriot part of the island, a memorial surrounded by the graves of victims with Turkish names makes no mention of Greek Cypriot deaths.Each side's grand narrative of victimization is built upon the stories of pain and loss experienced by families and individuals—often involving homes and property. In southern Cyprus, many properties belonging to Turkish Cypriots who moved northwards are occupied now by Greek Cypriots, while others lie vacant or in disrepair. The same is true of properties in northern Cyprus once owned by Greek Cypriots. Not surprisingly, property rights are one of the principal stumbling blocks in negotiations for a settlement. Greek Cypriot leaders demand the right for all to recover properties to which they have title. The Turkish Cypriots, by contrast, favor a solution in which property rights would be evaluated and appropriate compensation paid to former owners, while people who had re-settled would be allowed to stay put.In his office on the grounds of the Republic of Cyprus presidential palace, George Iacovou, a 72-year-old former foreign minister and current advisor to the Greek Cypriot president, reaches to a shelf behind his desk and takes down a photograph. The photo shows a villa behind the wall of a tree-filled garden. It's the home in Famagusta that his family was forced to leave in 1974. A few years ago, his sister went to visit the house and found a family of Turkish Cypriots living in it.“It was a painful experience for her,” Iacovou recalls. “Not much had changed in the house, apart from the fact that they had cut down the trees. They hadn't even bothered to paint the woodwork.”North of the Green Line, Iacovou's counterpart is Kudret Özersay, a 36-year-old constitutional lawyer and academic on the staff of the Turkish Cypriot president. Özersay remembers his disturbed reaction when a Greek Cypriot woman came to revisit her childhood home— which also happened to be his childhood home, where he grew up with his mother and two elder siblings. Özersay's family had fled to northern Cyprus when he was six months old, after his father and two of his mother's brothers were shot dead in 1974 by Greek Cypriots.“The woman asked to see the bedrooms,” he remembers. “When she came to my room she recognized the cartoon figures decorating the bedstead and cried out, ‘That's my bed!’ My first reaction was to think: It's my bed, not hers!”This is the emotional background to negotiations between men like Iacovou and Özersay, who as advisors to the leaders of the two communities are tasked with finding a way toward a settlement. Other key issues for negotiation include territorial boundaries; power-sharing arrangements such as an alternating presidency, to guarantee equal rights for each of the two communities under a proposed bicommunal, bizonal federation; and security arrangements needed to assure members of both communities that there will be no repetition of past intercommunal violence. All these topics have been extensively debated over the past few years, to the point where the possible components of an agreement are well known. What's still missing is a clear commitment on both sides to equitable reunification, and an insistence on the part of the international community on the need for what will inevitably have to be a compromise.“I could switch with Mr. Iacovou tomorrow and we could continue the negotiations uninterrupted,” says Özersay. “I know their arguments and counter-arguments by heart. The Cyprus problem is exhausted. If you really want to solve it, you can do so in three weeks. But the international community has not decided what it wants.”As the stalemate drags on, there's a risk that new causes of aggravation will develop. One that has already surfaced is immigration. In the northern part of the island, thousands of people were imported from rural Turkey to till the fields and fill other jobs left vacant following the expulsion of the Greek population. In recent years, more migrant workers have joined them from mainland Turkey. Many would be required to return to Turkey under a settlement. In the south, people from Asia and eastern Europe work in restaurants, home-care and other services. Northern Cypriots argue that they too must be taken into account in a settlement.The island's porous internal frontier has made it a target for illegal immigrants seeking to enter the EU. Owing to a combination of lax regulation and marginalization, Cyprus has also become a haven for money-laundering and prostitution. Gambling is prohibited in southern Cyprus but allowed in the north. On highways outside Nicosia and near Kyrenia in northern Cyprus, the flashing lights of so-called “night clubs” with names like Playboy, Lipstick and Tutti Frutti signal the availability of sexual services from women, many trafficked from former Soviet republics.If a settlement can be reached, on the other hand, businessmen predict a prosperous future. Tourism and property development would take off. Northern Cyprus would be able to export its fruit and vegetables to the EU. The island's favorable geographical position and the professional expertise of its legal and financial sector could make it a hub for business with the Middle East and Turkey. As a low-tax jurisdiction, southern Cyprus is already an active center for investment in Russia, which has a bilateral tax treaty with Cyprus that allows investors to avoid double taxation. Similar arrangements could be envisaged between a unified Cyprus and Turkey, says Manthos Mavrommatis, the president of southern Cyprus's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.“The Republic of Cyprus wants to establish itself as a regional business center. By joining forces with our Turkish Cypriot colleagues, we will be able to channel foreign investment into Turkey via Cyprus,” he predicts. Without a solution, by contrast, “the two communities will limp along on their own separate ways, doing well or not well but definitely worse than if the Cyprus problem is solved.”Tough-talking southern Cypriot diplomats insist that reunification is possible, on the condition that the “barbarian” Turks withdraw. But some of them have learned to talk in more conciliatory tones. “We have to learn to live together,” says Constantinos Eliades, the Republic of Cyprus's ambassador to Belgium. “We lived together for centuries. We should not allow the past to prevent us from having a common and better future.”In a coffee bar in northern Nicosia, Havva Andind shares a similar aspiration. In preparation for the day when Greek and Turkish Cypriots can live harmoniously together without foreign interference, the bright-eyed 21-year-old Turkish Cypriot primary school teacher is taking classes in Greek from a teacher on the other side of the Green Line.“We live on the same island,” she says. “We should live together peacefully.”