THE PROBLEM OF PIGEONS: ORIENTALISM, XENOPHOBIA AND A RHETORIC OF THE 'LOCAL' IN NORTH CYPRUS

THE PROBLEM OF PIGEONS:
ORIENTALISM, XENOPHOBIA AND
A RHETORIC OF THE ‘LOCAL’
IN NORTH CYPRUS
Mete Hatay
Abstract
This article discusses the Orientalism at the heart of Turkish Cypriots’ visions of
modernity, as well as the more recent effects of this Orientalism on the immigrants
from Turkey who now both compose and symbolise old Nicosia within the walls. The
article, first, discusses the Kemalism of Turkish-Cypriot modernisation, looking at
Kemalism’s roots in a type of Orientalism aimed at the supposedly “backward” self.
The initial arrival of Turkish immigrants on the island after 1974 and Turkish-
Cypriots’ initial reactions to them are also described. Later the article sketches the
recent neoliberal privatisation in the north, its wealth effect, and the growing
distinction between Turkish Cypriots and working-class “others” that has become a
defining facet of a new Turkish-Cypriot identity. In this process, the article shows
how representations of those “others,” especially in relation to the walled city of
Nicosia, are inherently Orientalising, and it documents the ways in which this
representation affects the lives of those now living within the walls.
Keywords: Settlers, immigrants, Kemalism, Orientalism, xenophobia, Turkish-Cypriots and
Nicosia.
In one of the central squares of north Nicosia stands a statue of Dr. Faz›l Küçük,
the first recognised leader of the Turkish-Cypriot community and first vice-president
of the Republic of Cyprus after 1960. Dr. Küçük looks down benevolently on a child
who accompanies him, and two pigeons sit on his head. The casual observer is
likely to think the pigeons are part of the assemblage of the statue, since they are
usually the same grey as the iron from which it was cast. One might think that they
are there to show Dr. Küçük’s love of animals as well as children, except that on
more careful observation, unlike the child, the pigeons can be seen to move, flap
about, or trade places on their resting spot. The pigeons are intruders on this
homely scene, their intrusion visible in the white splotches that they leave on Dr.
Küçük’s shoulders and head.
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In recent years, the birds that have proliferated around the statue and in the
other squares of Nicosia’s walled city do more than provide entertainment for
children and retirees. Many Turkish Cypriots have cast the avian invasion as
something much more sinister: the symbol of a cultural and political colonisation
that threatens to sully local culture in the same way that the pigeons have dirtied
the main squares. Hasan Hastürer, a columnist for K›br›s newspaper, explained the
local perception of these feathered intruders:
“In most of the mudbrick houses of Nicosia’s walled city, pigeons were raised
in holes in walls or in empty cans that had been nailed into the walls as nests.
And the baby pigeons would be boiled and fried and afterwards served on a
bed of macaroni. After 1974 those living in Nicosia changed. While the
Cypriots who ate this dish known as palaz abandoned the old, historic city,
their places were taken by persons of Turkish descent. Palaz does not exist in
the cuisine of the city’s new inhabitants. The pigeons that had for so many
years lived in the holes in walls or cracks in roofs of the city’s houses slowly
began to gather in Sarayönü Square. The pigeons of Sarayönü have now
begun to symbolise the city’s changing human composition. And now in
Sarayönü there are women wearing flalvars and children in plastic sandals
who try to make a living selling seeds for the pigeons”.1
The pigeons’ multiplication, then, came to stand for the proliferation of cultural
others, persons with different cuisines and different habits who, like the pigeons,
were visible to them not only as a growing mass but also as one that dirtied the local
landscape.
The growing nostalgia amongst Turkish Cypriots has been discussed
elsewhere2 for the walled city of Nicosia, a place that historically has been the heart
of Turkish-Cypriot cultural and political life but which Cypriots began to abandon in
the 1980s in search of modernity in the spreading suburbs. In this article the
Orientalism at the heart of Turkish-Cypriots’ visions of modernity will instead be
discussed along with the more recent effects of this Orientalism on the women in
flalvars [traditional baggy trousers] and children in plastic sandals who now both
compose and symbolise Nicosia within the walls. This article will aim to sketch the
recent neoliberal privatisation in the north, its wealth effect, and the growing
distinction between Turkish Cypriots and working-class “others” that has become a
defining facet of a new Turkish-Cypriot identity. In the process, this article also aims
to show not only how representations of those “others”, especially in relation to the
walled city of Nicosia, are inherently Orientalising, but also the ways in which this
representation affects the lives of those now living within the walls.
The intention is to show the ways in which representations of the walled city
elide political and cultural “colonisation”, conveniently confusing labour migration
from Anatolia with accusations of a political colonisation by the Turkish state. It is
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argued here that the effect of this confusion is that many Turkish Cypriots cast
discriminatory attitudes and practices toward immigrants as a form of “resistance”,
thereby appearing to give that discrimination a political and social justification. This
has meant that even parties and organisations that claim to work for equality and
human rights do not include the immigrant labour force in the scope of their
struggle, and indeed often cast those immigrants as a group that they must struggle
against.
The article, then, will first discuss the Kemalism of Turkish-Cypriot
modernisation, looking at Kemalism’s roots in a type of Orientalism aimed at the
supposedly “backward” self. The initial arrival of Turkish immigrants on the island
will then be described as well as Turkish-Cypriots’ initial reactions to them, before
discussing the economic transformations of the 1980s and 1990s and their effects
on Turkish-Cypriot society. It was in this period of neoliberal change that a new
immigrant population arrived on the island, making their home primarily in Nicosia’s
walled city, which had been abandoned by Turkish Cypriots. The ways in which
media representations of that population vacillate between describing them as a
form of “Turkish colonisation” and a type of “Anadolulaflma [Anatolianisation]” will
be demonstrated. While the former implies colonisation tied to the policies of the
Turkish state, the latter representation points to a local form of Orientalism that
casts Anatolia as “the East”, a backward place where people are darker, more
conservative, and in general culturally different from Turkish-Cypriots’ self-
perceptions. The article concludes with a few remarks about the ways in which this
Orientalism has been reflected in Turkish-Cypriots’ everyday perceptions of the
divided city, in which many have also appropriated common ways of describing that
division as one between a “Western” south and an “Anatolianised”, or “Eastern”,
north.
Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus and the Orientalism of the Orientalised
In his groundbreaking work, Orientalism, Edward Said observes that the emergence
of a discipline describing a place called “the Orient” depends on a relationship
between knowledge and power, in which defining the place and its people and ruling
over them are intrinsically related.3 Moreover, the West, in this description, is
“modern” and “progressive”, while the East is “backward”, proved both for
colonisers and colonised alike in the fact of Western hegemony. Following on from
Edward Said, numerous postcolonial scholars have noted that Orientalism also
became part of the self-perception of the colonised. As James Carrier notes, “Said’s
concept of ‘Orientalism’ does not account for the potential for Orientals themselves
to use Orientalism in their self definition”. Carrier claims that Orientalism serves “not
just to draw a line between societies, but also to draw a line within” and that “this
process is likely to be particularly pronounced in societies that self-consciously
stand on the border between the occident and the orient”.4
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This observation may also be made with regard to the Turkish-Cypriot
community. Prior to the emergence of Turkish nationalism in Turkey, this community
identified itself as either Ottoman or Muslim. But in the context of British colonial rule
on the island, both these identities were also characterised by British rulers, as well
as by some members of the community, as “backward” and incapable of
modernisation. Although the Young Ottoman and Young Turk movements of the late
Ottoman Empire attempted to trace a path to modernisation, that path was also
defined by the belief that their own identities were, indeed, Oriental and in need of
Westernisation.5 At the same time, as Muslims, many in the community found it
difficult to accept what they viewed as ethical changes brought by a Western,
colonial modernity. For example, when the colonial administration attempted to
bring an English schoolmistress to the Muslim girls’ school in 1902, the newspaper
Mir’at-› Zaman protested, “We are not going to make our girls [serve as] English
schoolmistresses, or Interpreters in the Government Departments, or let them
dance a waltz at a public ball. If the intention of the Government is to drag us into
English Civilisation, such things can never be admitted by Moslem Civilisation”.6
They were, in other words, caught between the rock of “Oriental backwardness” and
the hard place of “English civilisation”.7
The contradictions experienced by the Muslims of Cyprus reached a critical
point during and after World War I, when Britain annexed the island, the Ottoman
Empire suffered a humiliating defeat, and Philhellene Europeans encouraged
Greek endeavours to occupy Anatolia.8 Mustafa Kemal’s stunning defeat of the
invading forces and subsequent establishment of a new state was met with
excitement by Muslim Cypriots, even though they found themselves excluded from
their “motherland’s” nation-building project. Some heeded Kemal’s call to Turks in
nearby territories to join in the establishment of the new nation-state and took
advantage of the opportunity to opt for Turkish citizenship.9 Those Muslim Cypriots
who chose to remain gradually embraced the ideology of Turkish nationalism.
At the core of this nationalism were the Kemalist values of secularism,
modernisation and westernisation. Muslim Cypriots voluntarily accepted Kemalist
principles and reforms introduced by sanction of the state in Turkey, such as the
introduction of the Latin alphabet, adoption of western dress and secularisation.
However, at the core of this Westernisation process was a belief that something
fundamental in the nationalist self needed to change. The old, “Oriental” traditions
and beliefs had to be discarded in the name of modernity and progress. Bobby S.
Sayyid eloquently describes the relationship between Orientalism and Kemalism:
“To modernise, the Kemalists had to westernise, but the very nature of
westernisation implied the necessity of Orientalisation since you can only
westernise what is not western, that is what is Oriental. Thus, to westernise
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you had first to Orientalise: one had to represent the Oriental, before one could
postulate westernisation as an antidote. To reject the Orient in the name of the
West meant the articulation of the Orient as ‘the Orient’”.10
The “Orient” for Turkish Cypriots in this sense had become the old traditions
and Islam. They perceived Kemalism as the only tool to civilise themselves.
Anything to do with Arabic or Persian had to be deleted in their daily lives. In the
meantime they demanded, too, that the colonial authorities recognise their Turkish
nationality and that education be of a “national” rather than religious character. That
Turkish Cypriots perceived Kemalism as modernising was also observed by British
colonial administrators. A.J. Dawe of the Colonial Office commented that some
British officers think that: “by supporting the die-hard Turks of the old regime … will
prevent the Cypriot Turks from becoming Kemalist. In fact, I believe that this attitude
is driving all the younger generation into the arms of the Kemalists. The only way to
win them over to the British side is to give them a chance of becoming ‘modern’ in
Cyprus”.11
By the time the Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960, most of the Turkish
Cypriots had either become or allied themselves with fundamentally Kemalist
Turkish nationalists, partly due to the “civilising” process they had undergone since
the late 1920s and partly because of the increasing Greek nationalism and violence
in the 1950s. For example, Bryant argues that once the new Turkish state initiated
certain reforms such as secularism and westernisation:
“Muslims in Cyprus immediately and voluntarily adopted these new statements
about their identity, even while their presumed ‘brothers’ in Anatolia were in the
throes of cultural upheaval. But they adopted them with a twist, for they had at
hand an enemy – their Greek Cypriot neighbours – who was constantly
agitating for a future that would not include Muslims. In other words, Turkish
Cypriots adopted the modernising framework, constructivist history, and
future-oriented rhetoric of the new Turkish republic, but they combined this
with a belief in a powerful enemy that has been the hallmark of ethnic
nationalism”.12
As part of this “civilising” process, there was also Turkification of the social
landscape. During the period leading up to independence, most of the village
names or street names in the cities where Turkish Cypriots lived were changed to
Turkish ones (even replacing some of the Islamic or old Turkish names).13 People
were encouraged to use öz Türkçe, or “pure Turkish”, to name their children and
were discouraged from using Muslim names. Turkish Cypriots found these names
in history books or in Turkish mythology or legends. Names like Mete, Ulus, Özer,
O¤uz, Vural, Hakan, and Kaan began to appear on birth certificates.14
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This Turkification reached its height in the period after independence, when
intercommunal fighting erupted and Turkish Cypriots withdrew into armed enclaves.
Archbishop Makarios proposed changes to the constitution in 1963, resulting in
violent clashes. The enclaves to which Turkish Cypriots retreated were primarily
controlled by the formerly underground organisation, Türk Mukavemet Teflkilat›, or
Turkish Defence Organisation, usually known as TMT. The TMT surfaced above
ground during this phase, joining with elected Turkish-Cypriot representatives in
reorganising their community in these armed ghettos. In this period, due to the
perceived and real threats coming from Greek Cypriots, most of the Turkish
Cypriots submitted themselves to the nationalist projects initiated by TMT and the
Turkish-Cypriot authorities. Anthropologist Moira Killoran claims that “during the
turbulent and vulnerable period when a Turkish-Cypriot minority population was in
direct conflict with the Greek-Cypriot majority, and after the end of British rule in
1960 through the war in 1974, Turkish Cypriots sought protection from Turkey as if
from, in the words of Turkish Cypriot scholar Kizilyurek, a “tribal God”. Turkey and
things Turkish became a kind of religion for Turkish Cypriots”.15
This “religion”, discussed elsewhere,16 also had its own apocalyptic history that
appeared inevitably to lead to Turkey’s military intervention. When a Greek military
junta overthrew Archbishop Makarios in 1974, Turkey’s invasion and division of the
island were welcomed by most Turkish Cypriots, who perceived the so-called
“Peace Operation” as a relief from the oppression of nationalist Greek-Cypriot
forces. The people greeted the Turkish soldiers as “liberators”.
According to Özk›r›ml› and Sofos, “Nationalism is almost invariably haunted by
a fixation on territory, the quest for a ‘home’, actual or imagined”. They also note
that this kind of fixation involves a “reconstruction of social space as national
territory, often with a force and intensity that erase alternatives and graft the nation
onto the physical environment and everyday social practices”.17 Following the 1974
war and after the flight and expulsion of the Greek Cypriots all the Turkish Cypriots
gathered in the northern part of the island to construct their imagined state. All
geographical names immediately changed into Turkish ones. The landscape was
transformed into Turkish territory. Slogans like “how happy to say I’m a Turk” and
Turkish flags decorated the mountains and hills of north Cyprus.
Moreover, in the period that immediately followed, Turkish Cypriots desired to
consolidate their gains and give a jump-start to the new state’s economy. This
required people who could work the lands and factories left behind by fleeing Greek
Cypriots. And so there were initially no protests when Turkey and the Turkish-
Cypriot administration entered into an agreement to facilitate the migration of
several thousand people from rural Turkey.18 Immigrants who were part of this
policy received empty Greek-Cypriot properties and citizenship in the Turkish-
Cypriot “state” almost upon arrival.19 This facilitated migration ended by the late
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1970s;20 a further amendment of the citizenship law in 1993 restricted citizenship
rights to persons who had been resident on the island for at least five years.21 By
that time, however, approximately 25,000-30,000 persons had arrived on the island;
of those, approximately 15,000-20,000 of the original “settlers” and 15,000 of their
Cypriot-born descendants – many from marriages with Turkish Cypriots – have
remained.22
The ‘Other Turks’ and the Discourse of ‘Demographic Danger’
Following what can be described as an initial honeymoon period, some negative
reactions surfaced among the Turkish Cypriots toward the influx of this large
number of mainlanders. The rural background and lack of education of these
immigrants provided Turkish Cypriots with grounds for prejudice and discrimination.
The immigrants’ dress and appearance appeared to contradict the Kemalist ideals
to which Turkish Cypriots had been accustomed for the previous four decades.
Turkish Cypriots used the mainlanders’ religiosity, appearance, language –
including spoken Turkish or other languages – and other cultural differences as
“strong boundary-maintaining mechanisms”. Anthropologist, Sarah Ladbury, who
carried out fieldwork in north Cyprus in 1976 and 1977, claims that:
“The mainlander is respected for his fighting ability, but not for his cultural
ingenuity (‘they saw the legs off tables’), commonsense (‘after two years they
still ride their bicycles on the right’), or Western ways (‘they wear shalvar’)23 …
Even the religiosity of the mainlander is used in the process of ethnic
delineation (‘they build mosques before schools’)”.24
Turkish Cypriots also resented the government’s distribution of the “rewards” of the
war, as many of the settlers received empty Greek-Cypriot land and property in
what appeared an indiscriminate way. Ladbury notes this relationship between the
exaggeration of cultural “otherness” and other motivations:
“Here the cultural differences between Cypriot Turk and mainland Turk, non-
existent to the uninitiated observer, are emphasised and exaggerated by
Turkish Cypriots in order to justify their exclusive claim to certain resources
which seem to be both scarce and, at present, unjustly distributed”.25
Moreover, certain isolated criminal incidents involving Turkish immigrants, such as
fights between neighbours, or in one case someone trying to marry a Turkish-
Cypriot girl before divorcing his first wife, also caused anger among the secular
Turkish Cypriots. The late Turkish-Cypriot leader Dr. Faz›l Küçük wrote a series of
articles in 1978 criticising the “immoral behaviour” of the settlers. He said that they
should all be sent back (the ones from the East) because they were not “civilised”
enough to stay in Cyprus:
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“Thus an ‘Eastern sultanate’ has been established in many villages. … The
earlier [mainland Turks,] those who have such bad manners and little
civilisation that they would even spit in the face of the policeman on duty are
sent back to their villages, the earlier they could reach the freedom they desire,
and Cypriot Turks and the people who settled on the island could live in peace.
Those coming from the western provinces [of Turkey] are as unhappy as we
are”.26
Despite such criticisms, however, the issue of immigration from Turkey was not at
the top of the Turkish Cypriots’ political agenda. One reason for this was, no doubt,
the fact that many of the first immigrants were settled in remote villages and had
little contact with Turkish Cypriots. As a result, any criticism of the policy at the time
of the initial migration primarily concerned the distribution of Greek-Cypriot property.
Real criticism would surface only much later, with the emergence of an emphasis
on the “Cypriot” part of Turkish Cypriots’ identities.
In the Turkish nationalist discourse, Turkish Cypriots are perceived as an
extension of the people of Turkey. There is no difference between the Turks of
Cyprus and the Turks of Turkey. The former Turkish-Cypriot president and Turkish
nationalist Rauf Denktafl has always emphasised his Turkishness rather than his
Cypriotness. In one of his speeches he declared that he is a “Turk coincidentally
born on Cyprus”.27 As a result, right-wing parties have not attempted to impede
Turkish migration to the island.
Since the 1980s, however, there has been an emerging identification with
Cypriotness that has been especially strong on the political left in the north. Apart
from the mismanagement by the nationalist government of daily affairs and land
distribution, another reason for the left’s attitude could be explained by their
reactions against the Turkish nationalist hegemonic historiography which
dominated the public sphere until recently. In this apocalyptic history anything
Greek was erased. According to this historiography, “Turkish Cypriots suffered the
attempted genocide of the Greeks” and “if Turkey was not there to help them they
were all going to be killed”. This kind of understanding prohibited any form of
criticism of Turkey, i.e. Turkey was the “saviour” who should not be challenged,
regardless of who was in power in Turkey. Turkey was the one and only: the one
who should, without doubt, be worshipped at all times.
In addition, during the three decades that were perceived by many as “the
Denktafl period”, Turkish Cypriots underwent an attempted and only partially
successful state-building process. During this era, there was only one direction in
which people and goods could flow in and out of the island, and that was through
Turkey. Moreover, Turkey had varying degrees of political, economic and military
control in the north. As time passed and the parties in power failed to gain
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recognition for the state in the north, the nationalist rhetoric of the right began to
appear emptier. For all of these reasons, new generations increasingly felt ever
more alienated from this monolithic discourse that they viewed as self-isolationist,
chauvinistic, and banal. At this time leftist poets of “the generation of 1974”, as they
called themselves, began to ask questions that evoked the anger of the nationalists.
For example, Nefle Yafl›n questioned in her poem:
“People must love their country.
So my father always says
My country has been divided through the middle into two
Which half must people love?”28
From the nationalist side, this kind of questioning and challenge to the official
discourse was immediately presented as a betrayal to the nation. Most of the
opposition leaders, poets and writers were attacked publicly and branded as
“traitors”. Nevertheless, every time nationalists attacked the “traitors”, those
“traitors” became more and more Cypriot, because leftists saw these attacks of the
right in Cyprus as either initiated or supported by Turkey and especially by the army.
With time, this became a monolithic attitude as well, so that eventually anything that
appeared to praise Turkey or almost anything Turkish became an object of hostility.
According to Killoran, “The ‘Turks’; and that usually meant the poor, uneducated
settlers, or the uncivilised-soldiers, and more importantly, the Cypriot Turk ruling
party of ‘chauvinists’ and ‘Nationalists’; … were clearly the ‘oppressors’, the enemy,
‘all bad’ for the Opposition”.29 She also noted that in this discourse, Greek Cypriots
were “European” and “all good”. In the 1990s leftist opposition, she claimed, “was
united in difference – a sense of difference from the Turkish settlers”.30
In this discourse of Cypriotness, the “settlers” and immigrants were also
categorised as the hostile “other”. As a result, the “other” Turks of Cyprus (settlers)
were then presented in this discourse as the “agents” of Turkey, which presumably
tried to control them. Leftists believed that the majority of settlers and naturalised
immigrants voted for the National Unity Party (UBP) and Rauf Denktafl, who
collaborated to consolidate the absolute control of Turkey. Conversely, as
demonstrated in a previous study, the voting pattern of the settlers (to the extent
that the settler villages represent a general tendency among the settlers in general)
is not uniform.31 The settlers, although predominantly conservative, tend to
distribute their votes among many parties, just like the rest of the electorate.
In addition to their embracement of Cypriotness, another possible reason for
the left-wing parties’ reluctance to accept the settlers is a presumed lack of
information concerning their numbers, especially those who are citizens. In
particular, a former leader of CTP, the late Özker Özgür, was very outspoken in his
views on this issue. He made numerous statements heavily criticising the on-going
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immigration at the time. For example, in an interview recorded in 1986, he
claimed:32
“In the place of our people who flee abroad to earn their living, people come
from Turkey under the name of ‘labour force’. This labour force is turned into
a vote force for conservative, chauvinistically oriented politicians … We are
faced with the danger of becoming a minority in northern Cyprus … foreigners
in our own homeland”.
It may be noted that this discourse of demographic “danger”, insistently repeated in
the leftist press, has also been politically effective as it has drawn votes to the
parties that seem to protect Cypriots from this “danger”. The left claims not to know
the numbers of citizens and immigrants, but at the same time it must be noted that
in a small polity like north Cyprus, with a total of 550 ballot boxes and 140,000
voters, the failure of the leftist parties to determine the exact number of settlers in
the total electorate appears suspect.
The leftist parties and newspapers have been outspoken in their negative
attitudes towards the “other Turks”, who soon became simply the “Turks”, or
Türkiyeliler, in opposition to the Cypriots, or K›br›sl›lar. However, it should be noted
that such attitudes have not been limited solely to the left; they also exist on the
right. In daily life, as well as in the mainstream press, critical reactions toward the
settler or immigrant population are often voiced by people coming from the right or
from the Kemalist tradition. Orientalising commentary such as that of Dr. Kücük that
saw the arrival of “other Turks” on the island as the establishment of an “Eastern
sultanate”, became even more common in public discourse at the start of the 1990s,
largely because of the liberalising consequences of the economy in that decade.
Killoran claims that in the early 1990s:
“Very rarely Nationalist and very often the oppositional Turkish Cypriots would
suggest that they were much more ‘European’ and educated than these …
‘workers’. For example, a government official once told me that ‘they sent the
wrong kind of Turks’ …”.33
Economic Transformation of North Cyprus and ‘Neoliberal Cypriots’
Following the 1980 military coup d’etat in Turkey that was intended to quell the then
daily conflicts between the leftist and rightist youth, Turgut Özal came to power with
the aspiration of liberalising the economy and depoliticising the public sphere.34 The
public sector was gradually privatised, and a neoliberal economy took root in the
country, including an influx of imported products that had until that time been limited.
A mass consumer culture emerged, complete with large shopping malls and various
forms of credit. The media became a vital dominant tool in the public sphere, and
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