Chapter One

 

I Introduction

II Historical background

III Overview of literature on Cyprus

IV The ethnographic context:

          Pafos - a small town on the west coast of Cyprus

V Methodology

VI Limits of this study

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I  Introduction

 

Cyprus is a divided country. Due to its strategic location at the crossroads of three continents, it has constantly fallen prey to the craving for power of foreign inva­ders the last of which were the Ottoman and the British Empire.

 

Except for small minorities of Armenians and Maronites (2% in total), the popu­lation of the island is made up of people of Greek and people of Turkish origin, i.e. of Greek-Cypriots (80 %) and Turkish-Cypriots (18%)^[1]. Until 1974, Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots used to live together, in mixed villages and towns. A sequence of tragic events led to the invasion of the Turkish army in July 1974 and as a consequence, to the present situation of the Greek-Cypriots living in the South of the island and the Turkis!h-Cypriots living in the North with virtually no contact between the two parts divided by an UN-controlled buffer zone.

Cyprus is a small island (approx. 9000 km²) with a Cypriot population of only 750'000 persons including both Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots (Hadjpavlou­Trigeorgis 1993: 343). However, there is now a substantial number of Turkish sett­lers (estimated at 60'000 - 80'000 by Greek-Cypriots sources) living in the occupied North (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) who were brought in after 1974.

 

In spring 1992, I went to Cyprus for the first time and I have been back once or twice a year ever since (three months in total prior to research between Novem­ber 1995 and April 1996). This is due to my part-time job as a hiking-tour guide for a Swiss company which has brought me to Cyprus every six months for a period of two weeks at a time. Even though !I was of course not free to explore the island on my own during these weeks, I already had a fairly clear idea of what ex­pected me living in Cyprus which was one reason contributing to my decision to do research there. The other, more important reason was the fact that I already had made contact to some local people, namely to three bus drivers I had been working with in connection with my job. I had spent a couple of weeks with each one of them and already knew them fairly well. These first contacts proved to be crucial both personally and in regard to my research. My knowlegde of modern Greek was yet another reason for conducting research in Cyprus.

 

Between 1989 and 1991, I spent a total of eighteen months in Greece. This was my very first contact with the Greek language. I learnt how to talk, read and write. Officially, Cypriot is not recognized as an independent language!, but is considered a dialect of modern Greek. Some people in Cyprus agree with this, others argue that it should be seen as a separate language. However, modern Standard Greek is the language of formal education, of the media and of politics, in short: the offi­cial language in the Republic of Cyprus (or to be more precise: one of three official languages, see footnote 2). As a consequence, Greek-Cypriots can understand Greeks without any problem, whereas Greeks may find it hard or even impossi­ble to understand Greek-Cypriots at first. Cypriot is closer to ancient Greek than modern Standard Greek which is why some Cypriots claim to be even more Greek than the Greeks themselves. There are substantial differences in vocabu­lary, pronunciation and even grammar between Greek and Cypriot.

Because I had learnt Greek in Greece and thus cleary spoke it the Athenian way, I could not understand Cypriot very well when I first came to Cyprus in 1992. By the time I started! research in autumn 1995, I had learnt to understand Cypriot, or at least most of  it. But I still basically speak Greek myself, though towards the end of my stay in Cyprus a couple of people told me - with a rather pleased smile on their face - that I have partially taken on the Cypriot way of talking. Obviously, both my active and passive language competence of Cypriot is much better now than it was at the beginning of my research. But even then I was able to under­stand most of what people said to me and I could say most of what I wanted to say, if in a somewhat clumsy way sometimes. I believe that my fairly good know­ledge of the local language not least helped me getting accepted as a foreigner in a society which sharply distinguished between insiders (diki mas) and outsiders (xeni). There are many foreigners living in Cyprus today and especially in the area where I lived, but very few only bother learning the local language. My Greek is good enough to enable me to communicate with ease in everyday situations, but it is insufficient for me to read academic literature.

 

In preparation for research, I had consulted the available literature on Cyprus and was appalled at how little one learns about the Greek-Cypriots' perception of the Turkish-Cypriots and vice versa. There are numerous studies about 'The Cyprus Problem' by political scientists and historians, but there is hardly anything writ­ten from an anthropological point of view. Therefore, I decided to study just that, i.e. the relationship between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots from a grassroots perspective. I knew from my previous visits to Cyprus that I was not going to keep on at something that people did not want to talk about, because it had often taken only half a question - or simply showing a general interest in the matter - to make people speak! about their experiences with and feelings for the Turkish-Cypriots. This was confirmed to me by one of the busdrivers I mentioned above on our way back to the airport after we had just spent two weeks together showing Cyprus to a group of Swiss tourists about one year before I started research. We were talking about this and that. I basically wanted to help him to stay awake since it was only five o'clock in the morning. Somehow we ended up talking about the political situation in Cyprus, about the forcible division of the land and the people. When I told him about my idea of conducting research amongst the Greek-Cypriots about their perception of the Turkish-Cypriots, he was very pleased and supportive. I remember his words clearly: "People abroad seem to think that we do not want the Turkish-Cypriots, that we want to 'clean' (he indicated the inverted commas with his facial expression) Cyprus and make it all Greek. But this is not true. After all, do the Turkish-C!ypriots not have red blood as well? Everyone will be more than pleased to talk to you about this." This proved to be true in the course of my research. It was during this drive to the air­port that I made up my mind to study intercommunal relations and perceptions, because I felt that it was a meaningful research topic and, I must admit, because I liked what my friend said due to my own political commitment. To be honest, I doubt as to whether I would have carried out this research had he said the oppo­site.

 

On the grounds of the available literature and of brief talks with different Cypriot people I had met in hotels, restaurants and other places, I had gained the im­pression that the official state-ideology and rhetoric does not reflect what 'the people on the street' think about the Turkish-Cypriots. I thought that the former was nationalist-antiturkish while the latter w!as not. As it turned out though, my assumption that there was a dichotomy between the official and the grassroots level was completely wrong. There is on the contrary an astonishing congruence between the two. Both are in fact very clearly anti-turkish, but just as clearly not anti-Turkish-Cypriot^[2]. Having realized my mistake after a couple of weeks of re­search, my focus changed. My initial research topic had been the attitude of the common Greek-Cypriot folk towards the Turkish-Cypriots which could then have been contrasted to the official Greek-Cypriot rhetoric. Instead, I became in­terested in the processes  leading to the construction of groups of insiders and groups of outsiders amongst Greek-Cypriots. To jump ahead of my argument, these processes are based on the same cultural knowledge both on the official and the grassroots level.

 

In this first chapter, I will now proceed to give a brief historical overview of the development of Greek-Turkish-Cypriot relations. This section will be followed by an overview of the available literature about Cyprus. Then I will briefly describe the place where I lived during research an!d continue to discuss the methods applied during and after research. This section is fairly extensive, because I consi­der methodology an important part of any scientific study. Finally, I will draw attention to the limits of this study.

The second chapter will provide an overview, not a detailed discussion, of the development of the study of ethnicity and a brief summary of some selected theo­retical approaches.

Chapter three, the bulk of this study, consists of a detailed discussion of five notions which I consider crucial to any understanding of Greek-Cypriot culture and of the processes that lead to the construction of groups of in- and outsiders within it.

In the fourth chapter, I will draw conclusions from the empirical part as well as comparing these to the theoretical approaches presented in chapter two. I will end this concluding chapter with some thoughts about anthropological methods. Finally, I will summarize my findings in English, German an!d Greek.

 

 

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II  Historical background

 

  

There is an abundance of detailed studies about the history of Cyprus (cf. Kitro­milides 1995)^[3]. Therefore I will be very brief and only look at historical events in regard to Greek-Turkish relations.

Cyprus has been at the crossroads of peoples' migrations and movements for a very long time indeed. After its hellenization in the first millenium B.C., a great number of foreign powers have invaded it over the centuries. Its geopolitical po­sition determines its destiny up to the present time. After having been ruled by different Westeuropean powers (Lusignans, Venetians) for four hundred years, Cyprus was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1570. The Ottomans were wel­comed by many Cypriots because they liberated them from the Westeuropean feudal system and reinstalled the rights of the Orthodox church to a very large ex­tent (Tzermias 1991: 14, Maratheftis 1989: 32). There was much more autonomy under Ottoman than under Westeuropean rule, but the taxes to be paid to the Ottoman rulers were high and extra high for Christians which is why many of them converted to Islam, at least officially (Kitromilides 1977: 37-40). In a number of instances, Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots jointly revolted against the oppressive tax system; solidarity was based on class rather than on ethnic origin. "On the grassroots level there existed solidarity and cooperation" (Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis 1990: 125). From the end of the 16th century onwards, Turkish people settled in Cyprus and intermingled with the then indigenous population of basi­cally Greek origin. In the course of the 300 years of Ottoman rule, Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots established extensive networks of social and economic interac­tion (Attalides 1977a: 75). Since they either lived in Greek-Turkish mixed villages or else cooperated with people of the 'other' community living in neighbouring villages, the level of mutual influence and syncretism between them was very high (Attalides 1979: 80-81; Kitromilides 1977: 37-8). Except for differences in reli­gion and language, one could not distinguish Greek- from Turkish-Cypriots. Mosques and churches were the only indicators as to whether a village was Greek or Turkish or mixed (Beckingam 1957a: 169-70). Since the Turkish-Cypriots were bilingual and Greek-Cypriot the lingua franca all over Cyprus, communication between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots did not pose any problem. Their cultures merged with each other to a Cypriot version which is a mixture of Greek and Turkish elements.

In 1878 Cyprus came under British rule^[4]. As elsewhere, but particularly strongly in Cyprus (Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis 1990: 112), the British employed their infa­mous 'Divide and Rule' policy especially from the 1920s onwards (Kitromilides 1977: 46; Pollis 1973). In spite of this, Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots organized in joint unions and revolts against colonial oppression on several occasions. At the same time though, nationalism spread on both sides (Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis 1993: 72). Turkish nationalism was spured on and supported by the colonial power. The Turkish-Cypriots constituted only 18% of the whole population whereas the Greek-Cypriots made up 80% (the remaining two percent were Armenians and Maronites). Therefore, Greek nationalism was much more dangerous for the British than Turkish nationalism. Apart form that, Turkish nationalism was still in its infancy - the secular nation-state Turkey had only just come into being in 1923 - whereas Greek nationalism, led by the Orthodox church, had been going on for a whole century since the successful Greek war of liberation in the 1820s. In 1955 Greek-Cypriots organized in an armed struggle against the colonial regime (EOKA). They fought for union with Greece (Enosis^[5]). The response of the Turkish-Cypriot leadership was their demand for the parti­tion of Cyprus (Taksim). Neither became reality, instead Cyprus was granted in­dependence which nobody really wanted. Both leaderships saw it as an interim solution for lack of something better. The extremely charismatic and popular lea­der of the Greek-Cypriot population, the legendary Archbishop Makarios III, be­came the first president of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960. However, the constitu­tion was a product of Britain's 'Divide and Rule' policy and therefore full of cor­responding arrangements institutionalizing ethnic separatism (Kitromilides 1977: 49-50, Hadjipavlou & Trigeorgis 1993: 343). Only three years after indepen­dence, intercommunal violence between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots broke out. It continued for almost a year until 1964 and flared up again in 1967. It would be a mistake though to assume that the majority of either the Greek- or the Turkish-Cypriot population was involved in the armed conflict between the two communities. As elsewhere a few fanatical nationalists triggered a lot of harm for a lot of people on either side (Loizos 1988). A total of 395 Turkish-Cypriots and 215 Greek-Cypriots were killed in the course of the violent events in the 1960s (Attalides 1977a: 83). However, there are as many examples of continued coopera­tion and mutual help between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots (see Kyrris 1977) as there are examples of violent confrontation. However, there was enough violence to cause fear and mistrust, not of neighbours one knew and was good friends with, but of mostly very young militant nationalists on either side. After the events in the early 1960s, the Turkish-Cypriot leadership started to actively em­ploy a policy of ethnic segregation, moving about half of the Turkish-Cypriot population to enclaves which Greek-Cypriots had no access to (Tzermias 1991: 306). In general, the Turkish-Cypriots were economically weaker than the Greek-Cypriots and the gap widened after 1963 when the Turkish-Cypriots became excluded from the otherwise booming Cypriot economy (Attalides 1977a: 90). It is a matter of dispute whether the Turkish-Cypriots had been marginalized and discriminated against by the Greek-Cypriots and thus been driven into segrega­tion or whether their separatist policy was due to Turkish nationalism. It is a fact though that many Turkish-Cypriots were forced to leave their homes and to move to enclaves. These were the first Cypriot refugees. The partial separation of Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots has been a de facto reality since the mid 1960s. The UN Peace-Keeing Force (UNFICYP) has been present in Cyprus ever since 1964. In 1967 Greece was taken over by a military regime. This changed the situation in Cyprus dramatically. Union with Greece (Enosis) was now not such an attractive option anymore. As a consequence, the possibility of a political agreement bet­ween the Greek- and the Turkish-Cypriot leadership became to look not unlikely (Kitromilides 1977: 55). A small number of Greek-Cypriots collaborated with the military regime in Greece though and again organized in an armed struggle (EOKA B) fighting for union with Greece. The political leadership of the Greek-Cypriots was split. On the 15^th July 1974 the Greek military regime initiated a coup d'état against President Makarios who had changed from being a vehement advocate of Enosis to supporting independence. Even though it failed, Turkey took the Greek coup as an excuse to invade Cyprus only five days later, on the 20^th July 1974. The first Greek-Cypriot refugees from the Kerynia area arrived in more southern provinces. Three weeks later, on the 14^th/15^th August 1974, the Turkish army proceeded its invasion in a second wave and caused a mass exodus of the Greek-Cypriot population from north to south and of the Turkish-Cypriot population from south to north. The Greek-Cypriots fled away from the Turkish military forces and the Turkish-Cypriots were forced to leave for the north by both Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot militant nationalist groups (Loizos 1981: 116) which had  been active in both communities since the mid-1960s (Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis & Trigeorgis 1993: 344). Nobody realized that it was for good.

 

"Mostly, they made the spur-of-the-moment decision to leave virtually empty-handed, which later, in their penury, they bitterly regretted." (Loizos 1981: 103)

 

Within two days, the Turkish army conquered more than one third (38%) of Cyprus which it occupies up to the present day. The political situation has long since reached a stalemate. In 1983, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was proclaimed but has failed to be recognized by any state except for Turkey itself.

Many thousand people died in 1974 or are still missing^[6]. 200'000 Greek-Cypriots - 40% of the Greek-Cypriot population - and 40'000 Turkish-Cypriots - 30% of the Turkish-Cypriot population at the time (Herz 1988: 215) - became refugees.

The human tragedy behind these events and numbers is immeasurable (cf. Loizos 1981). Looking back onto this century, it is impossible to know for sure to what extent Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots cooperated and helped each other as neighbours and friends even in times of political conflict. As with historical accounts in general, it is a matter of believing one author more than another. I think it is fair to say though, that the majority of Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots continued their peaceful and friendly co-existence and cooperation during and after British colonial rule (Attalides 1977a, Kitromilides 1977, Kyrris 1977) until they were forcibly driven apart first in the 1960s and finally in 1974. 

 

At present contacts across the Un-controlled buffer zone are virtually impossible despite certain improvements in recent years^[7]. Except for one UN telephone line which has only recently been opened to public access and which most people do not know about yet, there is no direct way of communication between the two sides. People - for example the few Turkish-Cypriots in the South with relatives in the North or persons involved in bicommunal work - can now call each other using this line, though it is cut off after three minutes of talking. There is no direct postal service either. Bicommunal work has been ini­tiated in the late 1980s. There are a number of bicommunal groups now which regularly meet at the former Grand Hotel of Cyprus (the Ledra Palace), now the accomodation of the UN soldiers in the buffer zone, though the Turkish-Cypriots do not always get permission to attend bicommunal meetings (cf. Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis 1993 for a detailed account of the formation and development of bi­communal work in Cyprus). However, there has been a mushrooming of bi­communal activities on both sides in the last two years^[8].

 

"... the Greeks and the Turks of Cyprus live in two separate geographical regions for the first time in Cyprus history. There is no free movement and no communication between the people of the two communities, except for official inter­communal talks." (Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis 1990: 99)

 

People in Southern Cyprus have given up hope that they will ever return to their homes. Their hearts have grown bitter indeed (Loizos 1981). And on both sides "a new generation is growing up ... with little knowledge about the other" (Hadjipavlou & Trigeorgis 1993: 344).

 

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III  Overview of literature on Cyprus^[9]

 

The available literature on Cyprus is rich and poor at the same time. It is very rich in quantity but poor in diversity. On the one hand, there is an abundance of studies about 'The Cyprus Problem', about historical facts and events, about in­ternational interests and involvement in Cyprus, about British colonial policy, about contracts signed between different leaders at different times, about the deci­sions and moves of the politically dominant. In short, what is given attention to are events and elites. Most authors are political scientists (for example Ierodiakonou [1971], Joseph [1985], Gürbey [1988], Bahcheli [1990], Ioannides [1991]) or historians (for example Koumoulides [1974], Hunt [1982], Choisi [1993]), some of them even former diplomats or advisers to political leaders of one of the coun­tries involved in Cypriot politics (for example Bitsios [1975], Ertekün [1984], Averoff-Tossizza [1986], Hart [1990], Stearns [1992], Necatigil [1993]).

Most of these studies say very little indeed about the relationship between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots. Often not more than three of four sentences are de­dicated to this topic. The different authors' assessments can be roughly grouped into three categories. The transition from one group to the next is of course gra­dual, but for the sake of clarity one can distinguish the following groups of authors:

 

a) The first group of authors (Volkan 1979, Tatli 1986, Papalekas 1987, Stearns 1992) claims that there is an intrinsic conflict  between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots due to ethnic differences such as religion, language and origin. Even though these (few) authors cannot deny the undisputed fact that there has been an absence of ethnic conflict in Cyprus for a very long time, they stress the basic incompatibility of the two cultures working against each other.

 

"Two ethnic groups different in language, culture, religion, view of life, history and origin have lived in Cyprus for cen­turies. These differences ... have from the very beginning prevented the two groups from growing together."

(Tatli 1986: 27; my translation)

 

b) The second group of authors (Salih 1978, Joseph 1985, Gürbey 1988, Bahcheli 1990, Berner 1992, Hillenbrand 1994)  maintains that there is a latent potential for conflict due to ethnic differences such as religion, language and origin, but that these differences did not prevent Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots from living peace­fully next to each other. Greekness and Turkishness is stressed more than Cyp­riotness, separateness more than unity. 

 

"In spite of the considerable interaction and record of peace­ful relations between Greeks and Turks of Cyprus, their sense of separateness remained and sometimes became even more pronounced." (Bahcheli 1990: 23)

 

c) The third group (Beckingham 1957a, Kadritzke & Wagner 1976, Kitromilides & Couloumbis 1976, Kitromilides 1977, Kyrris 1977, Attalides 1977a/1979, Corsten et.al. 1980, Heide 1980, Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis 1990, Choisi 1993) emphasizes the opposite: the 'with each other'. Although differences in religion and language are acknowledged, they are not seen as carrying a latent potential for conflict, let alone an intrinsic incompatibility between Greek and Turkish culture. Rather, the intercommunal conflict is considered to have been created and used in the interest of power. These authors stress cultural similarities and syncretism bet­ween Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots, in short, (potential) Cypriotness rather than Greek- and Turkishness. They often not only point to co-existence and coopera­tion in peaceful times, but also to the continuation of these during and after times of intercommunal violence in the 1960s.

 

"The point is that far from there being an intrinsic cultural incompatibility between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, even after events such as those of 1963-7, there was a trend toward reintegration ... At grass roots, the patterns of traditional coexistence have never been totally disrupted. Even at the most critical times there have been surprising indications of this." (Attalides 1977: 84/93)

 

In short, ethnic differences a) are a problem b)  can be a problem c) can be turned into a problem.

I sympathize with the last position, I can accept the second one, but I completely reject the first group's assumptions about cultural incompatibility. I agree with Loizos that:

 

"The present situation in Cyprus ... is not an inevitable sociological result of ethnic pluralism; it is a historically spe-cific result of a long and complex process in which nationa­list leaders on both sides, major world powers and their in­terests, international trade, and shifting class relations with­in the island, all play a part." (Loizos: 1976: 361)

 

There is great agreement across all of these groups of authors that outside interfe­rence (by Greece, Turkey, Britain, the United States and the former Soviet Union) is ultimately to be held responsible for the tragic events that led to the division of Cyprus in 1974. There is little agreement about which outside force carries the greatest share of responsibility. Similarly, while most authors agree that the con­flict was helped by a mixture of endogenous and exogenous mechanisms, by the mutual influence of local, national and international factors, their respective weight is assessed differently.

Some authors take up a clearly biased view in favour of either the Greek side (Averoff-Tossizza 1986, Papalekas 1987, Ioannides 1991) or the Turkish side (Tatli 1986, Hart 1990, Necatigil 1993).

 

From a social anthropological point of view, the literature about Cyprus is fairly poor^[10]. Except for two articles by Peristiany (1965, 1968), the anthropology of Cyp­rus has only started in the mid 1970s (Loizos 1976). As far as I am aware, there is only a handful of social anthropologists who have studied Cypriot culture, no­tably Peristiany and Loizos^[11] and only some of the available studies touch on the relationship between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots. I will now briefly review the available anthropological literature on intercommunal relationships in Cyprus.

Thanks to the work of Peter Loizos the situation is not completely desperate. Even though it is clear that Loizos does not focus on the relationship between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots, but deals with it only on the side^[12], let me briefly state here what he has to say about it. His attitude on the subject is not easy to grasp because he first of all stresses the diversity of relationships. For example, in the village he studied, there was a great deal of solidarity between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots during the interethnic conflicts of 1963-7, but there were also a few people who worked against this (1975a: 145-7). Basically there was both: in­stances of friendship and trust as well as instances of animosity and mistrust.

Beckingham (1957a) stresses the traditional pattern of cultural (religous, linguistic and so on) syncretism between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots and their basic simi­larity. Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis (1994) shows the human side and tragedy of the Cyprus conflict. King & Ladbury (1982) show how the same cultural symbols (such as names of places and streets, monuments and slogans) are used in order to (re)produce the two opposing offical ideologies in the North and South of Cyprus. Kyrris (1977) lists a great number of examples of peaceful co-existence between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots in many different areas of social contact. Stamatakis (1994, unpublished) maintains that the principal antagonism in Cyprus is not the one between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots but the one between hellenocentric and cypriocentric Greek-Cypriots.

The other social anthropological studies I found (cf. footnote 11) discuss topics not related to the relationship between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots.

The anthropological literature on both Greece and Cyprus has primarily been occupied with kinship and gender roles, with the concept of 'honour and shame', with religious rituals, patron-client-relationships, rural life and changes due to modernization.

 

 

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IV  The ethnographic context:

Pafos - a small town on the west coast of Cyprus

 

I lived in Pafos for six months between November 1995 and April 1996. Pafos is a small town on the westcoast of Cyprus with approximately 13'000 inhabitants (Klawe 1988: 223). It is one of four district capitals in Southern Cyprus. The Pafos district is the largest one in size, but the least populated one. At the same time, it is the most agricultural district, even though only few families in Pafos itself still live on agriculture. As I was told by many people, Pafos was a small fishing village until 1974. Since the war, it has grown enormously primarily due to the thousands of refugees arriving from now Turkish occupied places and to the rapid growth of tourism on which Pafos very clearly lives these days. Although tourism causes a number of serious problems for the area - such as a shortage of the anyway sparse water - it is the major source of income today. It is hard to find a family not involved in tourism in some way. People work in hotels and restau­rants, they work for one of the many touristic bus companies or as guides or in a tourist shop. Furthermore, a weekend in a Pafos hotel has become very popular and fashionable amongst the wealthier strata of Greek-Cypriots escaping from business life in the capital (Lefkosia/Nicosia).

Even though it has grown a few hundred percent over the last twenty years, I feel Pafos to be a small, easily comprehensible place. For example, there is one cinema and one small library only and there are no institutions for higher education. Students have to go either to Lefkosia or abroad (most of them go to Greece, while a substantial number also goes to the United States and to England). Life in Pafos is, one would traditionally say, traditional. For example, it is quite un­thinkable for a woman - to a lesser extent, this applies to men as well - to move out of her parents' house unless she gets married, regardless of her age. In fact, I have not heard of any such case and most people do not consider living away from their parents and family an advantage anyway.

 

Before the division of Cyprus in 1974, the population of Pafos was made up of both Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots. Unlike in many mixed villages though, they had their own respective areas of residence. Only few lived door to door. The Turkish-Cypriots mainly lived in the so-called Mutallos around the local market. The streets in this areas still have their Turkish names^[13]. Also, the Mosque still stands in the centre of town, if in bad repair. Although geographically the Turkish-and the Greek-Cypriots of Pafos were separated to a certain degree, socially there was a lot of contact and intermingling going on between the two communities. As elsewhere in Cyprus, a lot of the villages around Pafos were mixed, while others were either Turkish-Cypriot or Greek-Cypriot only with close contacts between them^[14].

 

 

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V  Methodology

 

Anthropology and anthropological methods are based on the assumpion that human beings are cultural beings. This of course does not mean that anthropo­logy denies the individuality of each person, but cultural knowledge and values are seen as being intersubjectively shared amongst the members of a particular culture. Therefore, one can learn about culture from a small number of indivi­duals.

Ultimately, qualitative argumentation in social sciences is based on what Weber called the 'Idealtypus' (1904:190- 214) and Schütz (1971 [1953]: 3-54), following Weber and developping his ideas, the 'Homunculus'. The 'Idealtypus' or the 'Homunculus' is not a real person chosen as an infor­mant because she or he is considered particularly typical of a culture, nor does it represent a statistical ave­rage of the members of that culture. The 'Homunculus' is a fictive person, it has no biography, it was never born, it neither has grown up nor will it die (Schütz 1971: 47). The 'Homunculus' is a construct in the researcher's mind which does not as such exist in reality. Its construction is a methodological means enabling a researcher to understand typical aspects of a culture. It is the outcome of a conscious emphasis of particular cultural features regarded as essential for an understanding of the social reality of the members of that culture. It is an ab­stracted combination of ubiquitous characteristics of a particular culture. Even though the 'Homunculus' is not a real person, it embodies what the mem­bers of a culture typically share, in a condensed form so to speak. A 'Homunculus' is an unreal but highly typical 'person', a 'person' which has been stripped of its indi­vidual side. It is a simplification, an ideal of social reality, neglecting contradic­tions and shades. But it is a necessary simplification, because social scientists can never describe the full realities of all individuals constituting the social reality as a whole. The construction of 'Homunculi' is a necessary methodological means in order to come to terms with and to clarify the chaotic empirical reality.

Through participant observation, i.e. immersion into a culture, a researcher learns and internalizes relevant and crucial aspects of the culture she or he studies. During and after this process one can then, through introspection, build up a 'Homunculus' joining up those aspects which one has come to recognize as essential for a particular culture. When I talk of 'the Greek-Cypriots' for example, then this is the product of me having mentally constructed a 'Homunculus' of  a human being influenced by typically Greek-Cypriot values. What I have learnt from many real Greek-Cypriots about their culture, I have mentally joined up and constructed an idealyzed 'person' out of it. 

Methodologically, qualitative research procedes idealtypically. This is one aspect to keep in mind when using qualitative methods.

 

I agree with Mayring (1990: 17) that in qualitative research there is generally not enough attention given to the methodological procedure. There is often no more explanation or documentation of the methodological process than a short note stating that data was collected by means of participant observation - that one "has been there" (Geertz 1988) - and sometimes interviews. Mostly there is no report given at all as to how the aquired data has been handled and analysed (Mayring 1995: 10). Of course this is partly due to the fact that most knowledge in anthropo­logy is gained through participant observation, i.e. through a process of under­standing which is difficult if not impossible to document in words. Nevertheless,  I think there ought to be more clarity about the acquisition of the data used. Therefore I will go into some detail as to how I actually proceeded.

While doing research in Cyprus, I applied two methods: participant observation and semistructured  interviews.

 

Participant Observation

Although hardly anybody needs to be convinced of the value of participant ob­servation in anthropology, I would like to mention the following. Since I was fo­cusing on the Greek-Cypriots' perception of the Turkish-Cypriots, participant ob­servation did not seem to be the right method to apply at first. It did not promise to provide me with the information I wanted. Since 1974 Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots - with very few exceptions - have not had any social contact whatsoever. They have been forcibly separated. The Turkish-Cypriots now live in the North of Cyprus, the Greek-Cypriots in the South and there is next to no con­tact between the two zones. So, how could participant observation possibly be of any help, since what I was interested in was simply not there to be observed or participated in? This was why I had decided to work with interviews mainly in order to find out what and how people think and feel about the Turkish-Cypriots they have not been in touch with for more than twenty years now. As it turned out though, I learnt a lot about just that topic through participant observation. What I mean by this will hopefully become clear in the course of this study. One thing I learnt about the methodological tools of anthropology is that participant observation is the basis of all understanding of cultural phenomena even if one deals with a topic that cannot be observed as such because it only exists in people's minds and memories.

 

I did not actually live with a Cypriot family. During my last visit to Cyprus before I went there for research, I found, with the help of a friend, a small flat in Pafos which I rented during the whole time I was there. It was about a ten-minute walk from the centre of town to my flat. Having a flat to myself proved to be very helpful because it gave me enough space to work, to take notes and to transcribe inter­views. However, I spent a great deal of time with other people, both during the day and in the evening, practicing the art of socializing. Generally, I expe­rienced a very pleasent mixture of being amongst people, participating in and observing their lives, and being on my own with time and space to think about what I had seen and heard. With at least three families my contact and friendship was such that I could turn up at their house any time I wanted. All three of them are rela­ted to the bus company I already mentioned. They also took me along to various social events such as engagements, family visits, picknicks, visits to church and so on, or just for an evening out in a local tavern. With these people especially, I developed a kind of relationship that makes one feel at ease. I learnt a great deal about Greek-Cypriot culture from them. I also spent time at other people's places, but with them I always waited to be invited. Others again I just met somewhere in town or I paid them a visit in their place of work now and again.

 

It might be questionable whether it is such a good idea to do research in a place where one already has assumed another role than that of a researcher which I clearly had due to my part-time job in Cyprus as a travel guide. One might argue that this leaves undesired marks on the acquired information. In the course of my preparation for research in Pafos, I became a little worried that it might have been a mistake to choose a place where I could not just turn up as a 'blank sheet', if that is at all possible . I was very wary not to mix my role as a tourist guide with that of a student of culture. However, my worries proved to be quite unnecessary. First of all, it would have been completely stupid and contraproductive not to take my already existing contacts with local people as a basis from where I could proceed, because these first contacts helped me a great deal. Second, I am sure the fact that I was in a working relationship with a number of people was helpful rather than harmful. In Cypurs, work is embedded in and related to all sorts of other social values. Working together means having social bonds. So, if any­thing, my role as a tourist guide helped me to be accepted as a researcher. I had anticipated a problem that turned out to be an advantage.

Apart from that, it would have been quite offending not to ask people I knew through my job - or other people related to them - for an interview or other in­formation about the topic everyone knew I was studying. The message would have been understood as: 'I am not an interesting enough person to talk to, she is after more educated people.' This was of course the last thing I wanted to happen.

 

I feel that I became well integrated into Greek-Cypriot society and that I gained access to people, to their lives and thoughts. At the same time though I was diffe­rent, mainly because I lived in a flat by myself and because I am neither married nor do I have children at the age of thirty which to most Greek-Cypriots is rather strange. Living on one's own is not considered attractive at all by Greek-Cypriots in general for psychological and social as well as financial and practical reasons. At least in Pafos it is an extremely rare kind of lifestyle, especially for a woman. In fact I have not heard of such a case.

 

Semistructured interviews

Contact to informants

The first step towards an interview is of course finding people willing to talk to you. Those people I already knew when I arrived in Pafos proved to be of enor­mous help to this task. Knowing them opened many doors to me and made my search for informants a lot easier. I ended up conducting interviews with five people - four busdrivers and one office employee - who actually work for the bus company mentioned above. Another eight are indirectly related to this bus com­pany. To most of them I was introduced by one of the three busdrivers I know best. Being introduced as their friend gave me an initial bonus of trust and good­will; they accepted me easily. To three informants I made contact through areas related to my job other than the bus company. Eleven people I interviewed have no connection at all either with the bus company or my part-time job in general. Within this group of people, there is one mother-daughter and one father-daughter pair. The remaining seven have no relationship to any other of my in­formants whatsoever. When analyzing the interviews I did not de­tect any differences in content between those informants I know through my job and the others. Therefore, I do not believe that my kind of contact to people biased what they said.

Except for two people I intentionally contacted ( a school teacher and an elderly Turkish-Cypriot woman who is unable to leave her house), I got to know all in­formants in everyday situations such as shopping or just being around in town. With one exception, I never asked anyone for an interview at the first occasion we met. I always waited until I felt there was enough trust and familiarity on both sides in order to ask for an interview. This took longer with people I had not been introduced to by someone else but had made contact with on my own.

 

Choice of informants (for more detailed information see Appendix A)

Firstly, I had to decide whether or not I should trace those few Turkish-Cypriots who, due to various circumstances, still or again live in the South amongst and together with the Greek-Cypriots. I decided not to, but I did not exclude them as potential informants either.  In fact I got in touch with two elderly born Turkish-Cypriot women who became Christians - and therefore Greek-Cypriots, as they say themselves - when they married Greek-Cypriot men in their twenties. With one of them and the husband of the other, I conducted interviews. I also got to know a third Turkish-Cypriot woman who is the wife of the late Turkish-Cypriot personal adviser of the legendary President Makarios III.

Secondly, I made sure that I interviewed people of different age groups (see in­troduction to empirical part). In the Cypriot context, I find it useful to distinguish three age groups: a) those  people who can personally remember the time before intercommunal violence broke out in the 1960s; b) those people whose first me­mories stem from exactly that time; and c) those people who are too young to remember the time before the division of Cyprus in 1974^[15].

 

Furthermore, I made sure to interview both refugees and non-refugees, both women and men, people with different educational background, people belong­ing to different social classes, and people holding diverse political positions.

 

The interview

The kind of interviews I conducted would be given different labels by different authors.  Some would call them unstructured (Bernard1994: 209) or narrative (Girtler 1992: 155), others semistructured or focussed (Hopf 1995: 177-179; Mayring 1990: 46-50) or simply ethnographic (Spradley 1979). What hides behind this ter­minology can be summarized as an interview focusing on a particular topic while at the same time allowing for openness and flexibility. Guidance through an semistructured interview is thus shared between the researcher and the in­formant. The interview is understood as the product of their joint effort to communicate. In my case, this type of interview was the most suitable one be­cause I wanted to focus on a particular topic - the Greek-Cypriots' perception of the Turkish-Cypriots - while at the same time I wanted to leave room for what­ever might come up on the part of my informants.

I started all interviews with what Spradley calls a "grand tour question" (1979: 86-88). With people old enough to remember the time before the separation of Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots in 1974, I started by asking them to tell me what they remembered, to talk about their personel experiences with Turkish-Cypriots and their feelings about them. With people too young to remember bicommunal daily life, I phrased my introductory question even more openly asking them to talk about their feelings and thoughts about the Turkish-Cypriots in general. From there I basically let them decide what they wanted to talk about which was exactly what I was interested in. What is it they emphasize? What examples do they choose? What do they not mention? What do they consider important to say about the Turkish-Cypriots and bicommunal relations in Cyprus? Although principally, I kept the interviews open, I always touched on some particular issues if my informants did not do so by themselves which was normally the case, these issues being: differences and similarities respectively between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots; differences and similarities respectively between Turkish-Cypriots and mainland Turks; a person's own identity (Greek or Cypriot or a mix­ture of both?^[16] ); the role of religion, of language and of origin; and on the issue of formal education (i.e. what is taught in elementary schools about bicommunal relations). These points I considered relevant to raise on the grounds of theoreti­cal considerations and of brief talks with people during my different visits to Cyprus.

I only conducted one interview with each person. I had originally planned to conduct two or three interviews with each informant, but I soon realized that this did not make sense. Most people talked about the Turkish-Cypriots and their relationship to them in a somewhat concluding and summarizing way, so that what they wished to say was said after the first interview. However, with many informants, I spoke about basically the same or a related topic more informally on other occasions before or after the interview as well.

With many more people than I conducted interviews with I talked about their feelings and thoughts about the Turkish-Cypriots and related subjects in all kinds of situations such as riding on a bus, shopping, sitting in a cafe or attending a wedding party. Those one-to-ten-minute-conversations confirmed the state­ments people made in interviews.

All interviews except three - with married couples - were conducted with one person only. Also, there was mostly nobody else present in the same room. Except for one case, I do not believe that the other people's presence - mostly children or other members of the family -  interferred with or influenced what was being said.

All interviews were conducted at a place where my informants felt at ease, mostly in their homes. Some of my informants own a little shop in town which also was an appropriate place for conducting an interview.

All interviews were conducted in Greek/Cypriot. On the one hand, speaking Greek fairly fluently gave me an emotional bonus with people, on the other hand, it would have been completely impossible to conduct research without good knowledge of Greek. Only very few people speak English well enough to express their feelings and thoughts properly in it. Most of my informants do not speak English at all and quite a few older people in Cyprus, especially women - including three of my informants -, have never learnt how to read and write. 

The length of each interview varied between 20 minutes and one hour (with the exception of one interview which went on for an hour and a half). Most of them lasted between thirty and forty-five minutes. Some interviews were part of a much longer get-together or visit at someone's place, others were detatched from a wider social contact. With some people, the interview was at the beginning of our relationship, with others somewhere in the middle and with some of them at the 'end' shortly before I left Cyprus.

 

Technique

Of twenty-seven interviews I conducted, I recorded twenty-one on tape. In six cases it either did not seem appropriate to tape the interview or it happened too spontaneously in order for me to have my tape recorder ready. In these cases I took extensive and detailed notes immediatelyafterwards. During those inter­views I recorded on tape I did not take any notes as sometimes suggested (e.g. Bernard 1994: 224), because I felt that doing so would have distracted both myself and my informant constantly reminding us both that we did not simply chat with each other, but that we were having an interview. I am fairly sure that in nearly all cases people 'forgot' the tape recorder after a short while because I did not constantly stress the somewhat formal situation by taking notes. What I did, however, was writing down my personel impressions about the interview itself and its context - the atmosphere, the course of the interview, the impact of the tape recorder, my own role and so on - as soon as I got a chance to do so.

 

Transcription

I transcribed all interviews shortly after (a few days to a couple of weeks) they were conducted. Except for the last three of them, I transcribed them all while being in Cyprus which I am very glad about partly because of the workload, partly because it enabled me to go back to my informants on a later occasion and ask them to clarify sequences that I did not understand accustically or as regards con­tent. Apart from this I could still remember nonverbal expressions such as some­one pointing to a picture on the wall or tracing the shape of a map on the table or someone's tears.

I did not transcribe any interviews in Greek. I transcribed them all in German be­cause I felt that I would be best able to grasp the subtleties in my mother tongue (this was probably a mistake on my part leading to double translation from Greek into German into English [see below]). I listened to the tape and transcribed my own ad hoc German translation of the text. This I did word-for-word with a few exceptions where I summarized a particular sequence because I did not consider it important. I transcribed neither all "mh"s and "you know"s, nor paraverbal cha­racteristics ( i.e. the way someone says something, for example very loudly) un­less they were particularly remarkable (e.g. someone having tears in their eyes). I believe it is justifiable to transcribe interviews in this way, if one focuses on the overall meaning of what is being said rather than aiming at a linguistic analysis.

 

Analysis of interviews

Studies based on interviews often remain silent as to how these have been ana­lyzed^[17]. I believe it is important though to make transparent how conclusions have been reached. It is much harder to do this in regard to participant observa­tion than in regard to verbal information. The said is easier to grasp than the
seen. How exactly one understands and learns during participant observation one does not really know, but how one has drawn conclusions from interviews one does know. I analyzed the interviews using Mayring's qualitative content ana­lysis (1995) whose main purpose is to provide a systematic method of analyzing text. Even though I stuck to the basic principles of his method, I adjusted the pro­cedure to my own data. Summary, structuration and explication are the three principal means of text analysis, whereby explication is an ad hoc measure to support summary and structuration rather than a method in its own right. One can summarize a text, one can structure it from a certain perspective and one can explicate a particular sequence consulting other information from within or outside the text itself. The purpose of these procedures is to make a text easily comprehensible and comparable to other texts. Paraphrasing, i.e. translating the original wording into one's own's words, is an important means when handling a text. The quality of the results depends on the quality of the paraphrases to a large extent.

I basically processed the interviews through two stages of analysis. First, I ana­lyzed each interview separately summarizing and structuring it at the same time. I clustered all sequences concerning the same topic and summarized them as one category of meaning using the actual words of my informants and paraphrasing only little. Hence, the product of this first stage of analysis was still on roughly the same level of abstraction as the original texts. During the second stage of ana­lysis I crosscut through the interviews clustering all information about a particu­lar topic from all interviews and summarizing it on a higher level of abstraction. The product of this second stage of analysis were different clusters of meaning de­rived from all interviews together. At this second stage of analysis I switched from German to English.

 

Quoting informants

I have decided to quote informants anonymously, first of all because this is what I promised when asking for an interview - although people always said they would not mind me writing their names - and secondly, because I quote all in­formants (27) at some stage, some more often than others. So, stating who says what would only be confusing. Also, I have not worked with the method of oral history. I quote informants in order to illustrate a general point I wish to make and not in order to analyze their statements within their personal biography. Therefore, it seems unnecessary to me to give their names.

 

Cultural themes

As mentioned above, anthropology places the individual within a shared cul­tural framework of values. In my interviews certain themes, certain ways of ar­gumentation and reasoning occured over and over again without me addressing them. They run throughout many or most interviews which is why I call them cultural themes. Not every person of course mentions them all (because these are real people, not 'Homunculi'), but all of them are emphasized by many people. The importance of these themes was also brought home to me through partici­pant observation and in brief chats of all kinds. Cultural themes are discernible as such precisely because they pop up again and again, because they are highly shared. It is those recurring themes which I will concentrate on in this study.

I had not planned to do a certain number of interviews, I just did as many as I had the chance to, but with time I realized that I was not going to get anything fundamentally new from another twenty interviews of basically the same kind, because I got the same kind of statements -  often with the very same wording - over and over again. (cf. Bernard 1994: 376). This is one reason why I believe that my informants speak for many more people than themselves. They express, I be­lieve, culturally shared knowledge. My argumentation here is similar to that of  Glaser & Strauss (1968). Their 'Grounded Theory' suggests that one has enough information about a particular topic if one does not get anything new any longer, the prerequisite being that the information gathered stems from very diverse in­formants (in my context this means people of all age groups, refugees and non-re­fugees and so on). What they all share in spite of their diversity can be seen as culturally shared knowledge.

 

A note on informant accuracy

In 1984 a group of researchers  - Bernard, Killworth, Sailer, Kronenfeld - pub­lished an article about informant accuracy summarizing some of their previous studies. Their basic conclusion was that about half of what people recall of the past is inaccurate (1984: 503). This is of course quite a disturbing finding which is why it has largely been ignored by other social scientists working with verbal data such as interviews (1984: 504). Bernard et. al. conclude with a plea for more re­search about informant accuracy. This task was taken on by another group of social scientists, Freeman, Romney and Freeman (1987), whose study is based on evidence from cognitive psychology about memory organization. I do not want to go into details about recent cognitive theories here, I simply want to note that their findings are consistent with schema theory (for an overview of the deve­lopment of cognitive anthropology, cf. d'Andrade 1995). Freeman, Romney and Freeman start from the first group's conclusion that there is as much informant inaccuracy as there is accuracy. They agree with them that what people recall is not always what actually happened. From there they proceed concluding that there is in fact distortion of the memory, but that this distortion is systematic: people bias their memories towards a long-term pattern they recognize, in other words: towards the typical. But not everyone knows the typical equally well (Freeman et.al. distinguish between high- and low-knowledge informants, 1987: 314). Recognition of the long-term pattern of a particular social reality depends on experience through which people build up an elaborate mental structure and thus knowledge about this reality (Freeman et. al. 1987: 313-314). Using this knowledge, their mind finds regularities, finds a pattern. But this also means that a knowledgeable person tends to forget or exclude the specific which does not fit in with the long-term pattern (the mental schema). In short, experience leads to a mental structure which stresses the typical and ignores the atypical. So even though there is a distortion of the human memory, it is not coincidental but systematic. Our memory is biased towards a long-term pattern, towards what we have learnt to be typical.

What does this mean in regard to this study? It basically is good news, I think, be­cause what I am interested in is exactly the long-term pattern of the social con­tacts between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots. Apart from this, even if people do distort what actually happened when recalling their relations to the Turkish-Cypriots, this does not mean that their statements are of no value. What I am in­terested in is the Greek-Cypriots' subjective interpretation and perception, whe­ther historically true or not. What I focus on are the processes  through which people construct their memory and their perception. Even if they falsify (whether consciously or unconsciously) the truth, they do this in a particular way, and it is this way that I am interested in. So, taking these findings about in­formant accuracy into consideration I am quite happy to use my interviews as a reliable source of information and understanding.

The discussion about informant accuracy also supports my assumption that people's individual experience and the lack of it respectively is crucial to how they perceive the Turkish-Cypriots, that experience defines age groups. The more experience a person has with Turkish-Cypriots - i.e. the older someone is - the more likely that person is to have an idea of the long-term pattern of Turkish-Greek relations in Cyprus. It is older people who recall the typical rather than those with less or no experience of bicommunal reality and daily life.

But young people have a different kind of 'experience' with Turkish-Cypriots. From a very early age on they are exposed to extensive teaching about the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey and the traumatic consequences of it. There is a very clear attempt on behalf of the state to give the young members of society a substitute for real experience, to give those 'experience' who cannot possible have any due to their young age. However, this 'secondary experience' only concerns the conflictive part of the relationship between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots and it is ideologically saturated. But it turns into a kind of quasi-real experience. People who are clearly too young to actually remember anything about the Turkish-Cypriots or the war, the invasion and the flight recall these things in such a lively manner as if they had been present themselves. Even though they actually lack real experience, the young build up an elaborate mental stucture about the 'Turks and Greeks', but their cognitive schema is based on ideology rather than first-hand experience, on history rather than collective memory (Maratheftis 1989: 8-9, referring to Halbwachs 1980 [1950]). Just how much it is the young Greek-Cypriots who are the carriers of the ideology introduced to them by state education was brought home to me in the first week of my stay in Pafos when I went along to the capital of Cyprus with a group of 17-year old pupils tra­velling there to protest against the annually celebrated proclamation of the 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' (TRNC) on the other side of the buffer zone. Their school did not actively send them to this rally, but gave those pupils time off who wished to participate. On the way, they played a tape with songs about the invasion and about the occupied lands and about how they will never forget and keep fighting for their homeland. Particularly the song 'Den xechno '= 'I do not forget' obviously moved the young people very much. During the whole day the atmosphere was saturated with patriotic emotions. 'Den xechno ke agonizumai' = 'I do not forget and I fight' (cf. Maratheftis 1989) is not just a slogan, but an entire campaign of the authorities of education in an apparently very successful effort to give young people the 'memory' they can not possibly have and to make sure that future generations will not accept the status quo of a divided homeland. The message of this campaign is present in every school, and at every school celebration, supported by drawings of children from refugee fami­lies and other visual material documenting the pain of the refugees and of the families of the missing persons.  Before Christmas for example, I went to the lea­ving party of a primary school in a village outside of Pafos. At the end of the party, three children came onto the stage carrying signs reading: Irini, Elpida, Epistrofi = Peace, Hope, Return. The mother I was with cried. She is a refugee. 

 

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VI  Limits of this study

 

Last but not least, I would like to draw attention to the limits of this study.

First, I did not consult the academic literature written in Greek. Due to my in­adequate knowledge of Greek, doing so would have required an amount of time that did not seem appropriate to me.  I consulted all studies about Cyprus written in English and in German that were available to me.

Second, I only selectively consulted the anthropological literature on Greece and other Mediterranean societies. Although a lot of the literature on Greece is valuable for an understanding of Cypriot culture as well, I believe that there are more differences between the cultures of Greece and Cyprus than is often assumed. Cyprus is not just another Greek island. It has its own history and parti­cular cultural characteristics as a result of close contacts with Turkish and Middle Eastern societies. A fifth of the population of Cyprus is of Turkish origin origi­nally. I can stand by my selective approach to the literature on the ethnography of Greece because my main focus lies on the Greek-Cypriots' memories and percep­tion of the Turkish-Cypriots and their relationship to them. There exists no corresponding situation in Greece. 

Third, I would like to draw attention to the geographical limits of this study and to possible future research areas. During the whole time of conducting research, I stayed in the same place, in Pafos. The advantages of long-term participant obser­vation are evident in the anthropological literature, and need not  be discussed here. Nevertheless, this study would immensely gain if it were to be paralleled by other studies in different places in Cyprus. In all of Cyprus - as far as I know also in the North - there is only one village, called Pyla where Turkish-Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots live side by side to this day^[18]. This is due to the village's geogra­phical location next to a British military base which meant that neither side could win it during the war in 1974. Today, Pyla lies in the UN-controlled buffer zone. Before I started research in Pafos, I planned to visit Pyla on a regular basis, hoping to be able to contrast the situation in Pafos with that in Pyla. This proved impossible, however, because Pyla was simply too far away from Pafos for me to go there often. I visited Pyla only once. But I still think that a parallel study con­ducted in Pyla would provide interesting insights into the topic I studied.

The most obvious area for future research is of course the North of Cyprus where practically all Turkish-Cypriots who are still in Cyprus and practically no Greek-Cypriots live today. Since I have no experience with Turkish culture and do not speak any Turkish at all, I do not consider myself suitable to do research in the 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus'. However, the value of my own study would enormously increase if it were to be paralleled by a similar study amongst people living in the North.

Another place for future research is Lefkosia (Nicosia)^[19] which is substantially bigger than any other place in Cyprus.  It is also the only place (this applies to both sides of the so-called Green Line cutting across the capital) where the physical separation of Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots is painfully evident every day. The border between the South and the North goes right across the centre of the old town, so that one is constantly reminded of the losses suffered. Many streets end with a sign announcing the impassable UN-buffer zone.

Another possibility for future research I see in studying the perceptions and atti­tudes of both the few Turkish-Cypriots living in the South and the few Greek-Cypriots living in the North (in the Karpasia-Peninsula) towards 'the other community'.

And finally, studying the relationship between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots abroad (in England^[20]., Australia, the USA and other places where substantial numbers of both communities live) would add yet another point of view to the overall picture of Greek-Turkish-Cypriot relations.

 

If follows from all this that I cannot make any statements about all Greek-Cypriots, let alone all Cypriots. However, I suggest that my findings of the situa­tion in Pafos in 1995/96 are indicative of the processes of constructing group-consciousness more generally.

 

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