Those on the Other Side: Ethnic Identity and Imagination in Greek Cypriot Children's Lives

INTRODUCTION

Traditional studies of childhood socialization coming from the social sciences have, more often than not, presented children as passively involved in the cultural reproduction process (e.g., Mead, 1928, 1930; Whiting, 1963). These studies assumed that children become indoctrinated by adults in a more or less straightforward fashion; or put another way, cultures and societies persist through time because the socialization process is unproblematic. In these studies, children as active social agents with reflective capacities and the ability to impact their worlds are virtually absent.

In recent years, these assumptions have been challenged by studies which seek to rethink socialization as a process in which children are actively involved. The last three decades have seen a movement within anthropology and sociology away from structuralist explanations of human behavior and towards theoretical models that seek to account for human agency (e.g., Bourdieu, 1977; de Certeau, 1984; Giddens, 1979, 1984; Sahlins, 1981). This general trend is also reflected in the new theoretical approaches to the study of childhood. In an influential edited volume on childhood published in 1990, James and Prout referred to an 'emergent paradigm' that "will consolidate and continue the change in direction initiated by the research of the 1970s" (James and Prout, 1990, 3). According to the authors, this emergent paradigm views childhood as a social construction rather than a natural category, and seeks to analyze it in relation to other social variables such as class, gender, and ethnicity rather than in isolation. Children are viewed as reflective human agents who actively construct their own lives and social worlds, as well as the lives and worlds of those around them. Moreover, the researchers who follow this paradigm argue that children's social worlds and cultures are worthy of study in their own right and from children's own points of view and not just in relation to adults (James and Prout, 1990, 3-5, 8-9).

This perspective seeks to foreground children's subjectivity by studying them as social actors who are involved in both the reproduction and transformation of culture. Children's activities, experiences, values, and opinions are not peripheral concerns for the study of childhood but its very focus. The implications of such a theoretical paradigm are important. By allowing children to emerge as competent social agents who are active in, and reflective of, their worlds, a whole new set of areas, neglected by traditional studies of socialization (e.g., resistance, confusion, ambiguity, imagination, and reinterpretation) opens up for investigation. Furthermore, by acknowledging children as fully social human beings who are capable of interpreting their worlds meaningfully and constructing their identities based on their interpretations, we begin to see how knowledge is acquired, and meaning is constructed, in childhood. We also begin to see how children engage with information--both factual and ideological--from their social worlds, and how they ultimately construct their understandings of who they are and who others are.

In this chapter I am concerned with how children rework, or reinterpret, ideologies in an attempt to make sense of their own identities as well as the identities of others. More specifically, I am concerned with ethnic identity construction among Greek-Cypriot children attending elementary school in Cyprus and especially their constructions of Turkish-Cypriots.

The data analyzed here come from ethnographic fieldwork in two Greek Cypriot communities, one urban and one rural, in the south of Cyprus. Fieldwork extended from July 1996 to July 1997 and covered a variety of social contexts in which children participate, such as the school, the playground, the coffee shop, and the home. The main objective of the study was to examine how children construct and negotiate their identities in the social domains of everyday life.

Data collection involved a variety of qualitative techniques (e.g., participant observation, interviewing, sorting and ranking, essay writing, and drawing). A significant portion of the data collected focused on children’s narrative constructions of “self” and a variety of “others” such as Greeks, Turks, Turkish Cypriots, Americans, Russians, Arabs, and Europeans that are relevant to their identity constructions. Here I use data which mainly come from classroom observations, interviews with children, as well as essay and letter writing. Interviews with children were mostly informal and semi-formal. The drawings, essays, and letters I collected from the children focused mainly on their understandings and representations of “self” and “other” and the division in Cyprus (e.g., My Homeland; The Border; Letter to a Turkish Cypriot Child).

Following the 1974 Turkish invasion and occupation of 37% of Cyprus's territory, questions of identity in Cyprus have been at the forefront of public discussion. Who "we" are, who "they" are, and what that entails for "our" relations with "them" are highly politicized questions with many and contradictory answers. Greek-Cypriots are confronted with a situation where they have to define themselves in relation to those "others" on the other side of the border with whom they have to negotiate a solution to the problem. Thus, whether they see the problem as one between Greeks and Turks, or between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots, or whether they choose other categories to understand the situation in Cyprus, has important implications for identity construction and the future of the island.

From the very beginning of my fieldwork I found that children possessed various degrees of knowledge about "others," and engaged, to various degrees, in interpretation and reinterpretation of that knowledge. My aim here is to examine how Greek-Cypriot children come to imagine a particular kind of "other," Turkish-Cypriots, a category that is highly relevant to their country's history and future, yet one they know little about. Though Turkish-Cypriots are the people who live on the other side of the border, who are also constitutionally citizens of Cyprus and have a right to live on the island (as opposed to Turks who are invaders and hence unwelcome), and who are, finally, the ones with whom Greek-Cypriots would like to work out a solution of the Cyprus problem, most of the children I worked with were quite confused and offered imaginative interpretations as to who Turkish-Cypriots are.

I begin this chapter by situating the study of identity construction in its proper historical context. Then I move on to discuss the treatment of the category "Turkish-Cypriots" by a variety of socializing agents focusing on teachers in particular. Finally, I describe and analyze children's interpretations and reinterpretations of Turkish-Cypriots in light of the overall social context in which they live. My analysis draws on the theoretical insights of Mikhail Bakhtin and Paul Willis as they relate to the interpretive process of identity construction.

TURKISH CYPRIOTS AND THE CYPRUS PROBLEM IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Cyprus has a long history of invasion and occupation. The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Romans, and the Lusignans are but a few of its conquerors. In its more recent and, for our purposes here, more relevant history, Cyprus has been under Ottoman rule from the 16th to the 19th century. Ottoman rule gave rise to the Turkish-Cypriot community of the island which grew out of the first Ottoman soldiers who were stationed in Cyprus, augmented later by conversions of Greek-Cypriots to Islam. After Ottoman rule, from 1878 to 1960, Cyprus came under British rule. It was under the British that the two communities developed their respective nationalisms which symbolically anchored their identities to Greece and Turkey, respectively. The anti-colonial war of 1955-59, which was carried out by Greek-Cypriots, aimed to unite the island with Greece; it ended instead in independence. But though Cyprus had in 1960 gained its freedom, the intercommunal problems that followed soon afterwards--in 1963-64 and again in 1967--left it with a crippled kind of independence. Indeed, the island’s independence soon proved to be more fictitious than real, for both of the motherlands--Greece and Turkey--directly implicated themselves in Cyprus's internal affairs in a manner that would ultimately prove to be destructive for the Cypriot people.

The rise in 1967 of a dictatorship in Greece and the disagreements which followed between the dictators and the then president of the island, Makarios, led in 1974 to a coup organized by the Greek dictatorship against the Cypriot government. Though the coup failed, Turkey invaded the island a week later and occupied close to 37% of its territory. Turkey’s excuse for invading Cyprus was a presumed need for protecting Turkish-Cypriots from the aggression of Greek and Greek Cypriot nationalists. The Turkish invasion led to the de facto partition of Cyprus. The two major communities living in Cyprus--the Greek-Cypriot majority and the Turkish-Cypriot minority--have lived apart since 1974. The Turkish-Cypriot community, which according to the 1960 population census accounted for 18% of the total population, now resides in the north; the Greek-Cypriot community (80% of the total population) resides in the south. Today, a physical border separates the two communities, with their respective armies and the United Nations peacekeeping force guarding the long dividing line which stretches from east to west (see Figure 1). In 1983, the Turkish-Cypriot side proceeded with the unilateral declaration of independence of the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus." This event was condemned internationally and, to this day, Turkey is the only country that recognizes it as a state. Since 1974, with the encouragement of the Turkish-Cypriot authorities, mainland Turks have gradually settled on the island in increasing numbers while many Turkish-Cypriots left the island due to the bad economic conditions which prevail in the north. In addition, about 35,000 Turkish soldiers are stationed in the occupied territories. Since 1974 negotiations between the two communities have been ongoing, but the two sides have been unsuccessful in reaching an agreement. What is referred to as "the Cyprus problem"--the problem of finding a solution that will accommodate both Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots--is the most important challenge for the island's future.

(Figure 1 can be inserted here or at the end of the chapter)

IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF TURKISH CYPRIOTS

The official position of the Cypriot state is that a solution to the Cyprus problem would have to accommodate both the Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot communities and safeguard their respective rights. However, in public discourse this particular understanding is played out in diverse ways as groups and individuals try to construct their own understandings of identity, of who "we" are and who "they" are.

More than two and one-half decades after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, questions of identity among Greek-Cypriots are as controversial as they have ever been. One may not talk about "Greek-Cypriot identity" in the singular if by that one means that there is a single, shared identity among all Greek-Cypriots. Broadly speaking, there are two major ideological poles with regard to identity, the Hellenocentric pole and the Cypriocentric pole. Those who lean towards the Hellenocentric camp emphasize "our Greekness" while those who lean towards the Cypriocentric camp emphasize "our identity as Cypriots." In practice, there are multiple constructions of identity claimed by different groups who situate themselves variously in the ideological space between these two poles. Though the boundaries between such groups are blurred and ambiguous and constantly reconfigured, each claims its own version of ethnic identity to be the true and only possible ethnic identity to which all Greek-Cypriots naturally belong. Culture or identity, in this particular sense, is more akin to what Verdery (1994, 42) calls a "zone of disagreement and contest" rather than "a zone of shared meanings."

These multiple versions of ethnic identity which currently exist in Greek-Cypriot society are to some extent explained by class and political affiliation. A significant segment of the population belonging to the lower classes--mostly the political left-wing represented by the communist party AKEL--claims a Cypriot identity and downplays a Greek one. This group supports the independence of Cyprus as a state and has, traditionally, been opposed to Greek nationalism. A more narrowly-defined group, the Neocypriots, presents Cypriotism as the true identity of Greek-Cypriots in opposition to Greekness. Neocypriots emphasize the historical autonomy of Cyprus as a country and the common historical experiences of Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots which give rise to a Cypriot consciousness as distinct from a Greek or Turkish consciousness.

Another significant segment of the population belonging to the middle and upper classes--mostly the political right-wing represented by DISI--has traditionally adopted a Greek identity and excluded a regional, Cypriot identity; for them a Cypriot identity is something to be subsumed under a larger and more important Greek identity. The political center represented by DIKO and the socialists represented by EDEK are yet two other political forces that present their own versions of ethnic identity which fall somewhere in between those of the left-wing and the right-wing.

One may identify other relevant social and political groups that present their own versions of ethnic identity and which cross-cut class and political affiliation. Most notable among them is the Church of Cyprus. The Church leadership and those who adhere to the Church's political ideology are likely to adopt an ethnic identity that emphasizes Greekness since the Church has always supported Greek nationalism and emphasized the historical, linguistic, and religious links between Cyprus and Greece.

What is significant for the discussion here, is that each group which presents a version of ethnic identity also positions itself with regard to Turkish-Cypriots and mainland Turks. For example, the left-wing tends to emphasize the traditional coexistence and cooperation between the two communities of Cyprus and the common historical experiences that allow both to claim a single, unified, Cypriot identity. On the other hand, the right-wing together with the Church, tend to emphasize differences between the two communities by opposing the Greek identity of Greek-Cypriots with the Turkish identity of Turkish-Cypriots.

In short, how one views "those on the other side"--be they mainland Turkish settlers or Turkish-Cypriots--depends on one's ideological framework. Children are, no less than adults, influenced in their own understanding of “self” and “other” by such ideological constructions.

LEARNING ABOUT TURKISH-CYPRIOTS

In their day-to-day lives, children come in contact with a variety of sources which inform their understandings of "self" and "other." They watch television, listen to the radio, and read books, magazines, and newspapers; they go to church, sit in the coffee shop, and visit the borderline; they participate in national celebrations and demonstrations; and they discuss with their parents, their grandparents, their teachers and each other. If all these different contexts and agents of socialization can potentially inform children's identities and understandings of "others" why do, then, most children know little about Turkish-Cypriots? If the official state position with regard to Turkish-Cypriots is that they, too, are Cypriot citizens and, unlike the Turks, they have a right to live permanently on the island, why and how is this message being lost in the transmission process making it difficult for children to conceptualize the category "Turkish-Cypriots?"

Below, I focus specifically on one agent of socialization, the teacher, and one social context, the classroom, to show their impact on children's understandings of Turkish-Cypriots. I focus on teachers in the classroom since the classroom is a context where children are expected to learn, in a systematic fashion, about the history of Cyprus, the Cyprus problem and, more generally, their identities.

How teachers think about Turkish-Cypriots in relation to other Turks and Greek-Cypriots and what they say about them in the classroom is likely to influence children's identity constructions. Teachers are, after all, authority figures who have considerable power in defining "truth."

When I asked the teachers if they distinguished between Turkish-Cypriots and mainland Turks, most of them explained that they did, presenting the former much more positively than the latter. As they explained, Turkish-Cypriots lived peacefully side-by-side with Greek-Cypriots before Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974; the members of the two communities worked together and attended each other's weddings and coffee shops; and since Turkish-Cypriots were born in Cyprus, have roots on the island, they are entitled to live there. The Turks, on the other hand, are foreigners and have no right to be in Cyprus.

Yet, despite the fact that teachers clearly distinguished mainland Turks from Turkish- Cypriots when probed, in their interactions with children they rarely made the distinction. From my observations, few of the teachers made the distinction in the classroom, though when asked, most of them thought they actually did make it. When I asked a third grade teacher, whether he distinguished in class between Turkish-Cypriots and mainland Turks, he said that he did. He added that though he was uncertain, he thought that other teachers also distinguished between the two groups.

It was obvious, however, from my observations, that when children referred to those who live on the other side of the border as "Turks," teachers refrained from pointing out that in addition to mainland Turks there are also Turkish-Cypriots who live there. On one occasion, when a student referred to the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, as "the leader of the Turks" the teacher made no comment, thus indirectly affirming the statement's validity. When I mentioned my observation to Konstantina, one of the teachers at the rural school, she explained:

"You are right here. Here we might not do it in class. I have not thought about it. When the children talk, they say 'Turks.' They have never said Turkish-Cypriots and don't make the distinction. ( . . . ) Maybe we should have made this differentiation. I don't [make it]."

That the internal diversity in the "other" (i.e., the fact that there are not simply Turks but also Turkish-Cypriots living on the other side) is unreflectively eliminated by teachers, should not be surprising given that ethnic socialization at school focuses primarily on the long history of animosity between "us" and "them"--"us" being Greeks, "them" being Turks. The current political situation in Cyprus is seen as one more instance of conflict between the two nations, one more piece of evidence explaining why "they" are "our" eternal enemy.

When I asked another teacher, Yiangos, who primarily teaches history in the urban school, whether he distinguishes between Turkish-Cypriots and other Turks in the classroom, he explained that there is not much opportunity for the teacher to make such distinctions in the classroom:

"Look. In the history lesson there is not anything that would make you deal with this subject. If somebody asks you, you will answer . . . "

For Yiangos, the issue is not an important one to start with. Given his very nationalistic dispositions, he sees no point in drawing a distinction between Turkish-Cypriots and mainland Turks. The history he teaches is a history which refers to the wars between Greeks and Turks, whether they take place in Greece or Cyprus. In his classes, the responsibility for learning about Turkish-Cypriots is shifted to the students.

Indeed, in many of the classrooms I observed, teachers often referred to Turks but rarely to Turkish-Cypriots. The Turks are the primary "other" and the enemy par excellence, against whom Greek-Cypriot identity is constructed. The Turks were portrayed as uncivilized warmongers with expansionist tendencies and lack of respect for human rights. The Greeks, on the other hand, were constructed as the exact opposite of the Turks: as civilized, peaceful, and loving people. The conflict in Cyprus was framed in terms of the more pervasive national categories (Greeks vs. Turks) rather than the more particular categories (Greek-Cypriots vs. Turkish-Cypriots), that focus on the two communities of the island. To develop a desire in children for liberating the occupied territories, teachers often talked about the Turks who are responsible for what happened in Cyprus and who must leave if a solution to the problem is found. In these constructions, what applies to mainland Greece also applies to Cyprus; the local, more particular history of the latter dissolves into the larger history of the Greek nation.

Yet, even when teachers did mention Turkish-Cypriots, they rarely explained how they differ from mainland Turks. Students were, as a result, left with a category that presumably differed from another one they knew quite well--the Turks--but with no sense of how it differed.

Of course, failing to explain how the two communities of the island differ from their respective motherlands creates problems for nationalist historiography: After all, we are not simply Greeks but also Cypriots, and unlike other Greeks such as the Cretans who are part of the Greek state, we, as Cypriots, are an independent country--we are Greek-Cypriots. On the other side of the border, there are not simply Turks, but people who are both Turks and Cypriots or Turkish-Cypriots.

However, the symbolic power of nationalism resolves such problematics by downplaying categories which complicate the idea of pure, homogeneous, and undoubted classifications for both "us" and "them." Nationalism looks into the history of the nation which is seen as one and unified to construct boundaries between "us" and "them." In nationalist thought, Turkish-Cypriots are a pathological category that does not fit this more prominent dichotomy between "us" as Greeks and "them" as Turks. When they are referred to, Turkish-Cypriots are, like Greek-Cypriots, also presented as victims of Turkish aggression.

Such constructions are in line with the official position of the state on the Cyprus problem, i.e., that a solution to the Cyprus problem will have to guarantee the rights of both communities. The state encourages rapprochement between the two communities whose members it considers all Cypriots.

But although both Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots are officially Cypriots, the term "Cypriots" takes a semantically narrower meaning when used by Greek-Cypriots. Instead of being used to refer to members of both communities, the term is used only in reference to Greek-Cypriots. For example, in an interview I had with Dafni, a sixth grade girl, she commented on the good relations that existed before the 1974 war between Turks and Cypriots, clearly referring to the Turkish-Cypriot community, on the one hand, and the Greek-Cypriot community on the other. Thus, an identity that could potentially be attributed to both Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots is ethnicized in favor of only one group--Greek-Cypriots in this case; the category "Cypriot" is purified and homogenized to, symbolically at least, eliminate the ambiguity of its reference and to signal its ownership by a single group. In some sense, this constitutes an unconscious exclusion of Turkish-Cypriots from a claim to Cypriot identity.

TURKISH-CYPRIOTS AS A PARADOXICAL OTHER

Pure or non-hyphenated identities, like Greeks and Turks, pose little cognitive problem for children's understanding. Being Greek or Turk is easy to comprehend since these are categories that entail little ambiguity; they constitute different and clearly demarcated groups with a sharp boundary drawn between them by nationalist historiography. Indeed, the very idea of the nation depends on the purity of those who constitute it: we are a nation because in some fundamental way we are the same; at the same time we are a nation because we are unlike those others over there. Nationalism draws its strength from its ability to homogenize the internal variability in the collective “us” and the collective “other.”

Though it was obvious that the children had a clear understanding of who "we" are and who "they" are in terms of such pure national categories, when it came to hyphenated identities like "Turkish-Cypriots" many of them engaged in imaginative and imaginary reinterpretations. This is not to say that all children lacked an understanding of the category "Turkish-Cypriots" for there were a few who did have a good sense of who Turkish-Cypriots are and how they differ from mainland Turks. Elena, a sixth grader, for example, was quite clear in her understanding:

"The Turkish-Cypriots are those who were born in Cyprus but their descent is from Turkey . . . " ( . . . ) "The Turkish-Cypriots used to live in these regions [i.e., the south] in the past. Here and there [i.e., in the free and the occupied territories]."

Thomas, a fifth grader, was also quite informed about the meaning of the category "Turkish-Cypriots." He pointed out that Turkish-Cypriots "are Turks who were born and lived in Cyprus." He proceeded to explain that many Turkish-Cypriots left the occupied territories because of the poor economy and went to other countries. He also drew a distinction between Turkish-Cypriots and mainland Turks who have settled the occupied territories at the encouragement of the Turkish-Cypriot authorities. Finally, reflecting larger social perceptions and stereotypes, he pointed out that Turkish-Cypriots are friendly towards Greek Cypriots, while "when they [i.e., mainland Turks] see a Cypriot [by which he meant Greek-Cypriot] they will usually kill him, if he is close to them."

Some children were also aware of popular beliefs and attitudes about mainland Turks and Turkish-Cypriots:

" . . . the Turkish-Cypriots think reasonably, not like the Turks who listen to Denktash [the Turkish-Cypriot leader] and execute orders. ( . . . ) there are some Turkish-Cypriots who want to live peacefully with Cypriots [i.e., Greek Cypriots] but they are afraid of the Turks because if they live with the Cypriots the Turks will kill them." [Yiotis, sixth grade]

"They are people with sensitivity, the Turkish-Cypriots. I do not call Turkish- Cypriots bad because as I told you they [i.e., Turkish-Cypriots and Greek- Cypriots] were very good friends. They are not happy now that they are there and we are here, nor are they happy that the Turkish state came and took from us Cyprus in 1974." [Dafni, sixth grade]

"They are not the same as the Turks. Turkish-Cypriots want to live freely. They do not want Cyprus to be divided in two parts." [Stelios, fifth grade]

Similarly, in an essay entitled "A Letter to a Turkish-Cypriot Child," Ivi, a fourth grader, expressed her desire that Turkish-Cypriot children will fight for the same ideals that Greek-Cypriots are fighting for, rather than support Turkey:

"You, Turkish-Cypriot child, must not take this road. With the Turks. You were born in Cyprus. You are a Cypriot child. Do not fight your very homeland, Cyprus."

The category "Turkish-Cypriots" is not a neutral category but one imbued with ideological assumptions and understandings. Reflecting both popular attitudes and mainstream ideological positions, the children above constructed Turkish-Cypriots as fundamentally different from mainland Turks: Turkish-Cypriots are friendly and good people; they too are the victims of Turkish aggression, and they too desire a solution to the Cyprus problem. Their constructions of Turkish-Cypriots closely approximate the official position of the state on the matter and are, in that sense, instances of successful ideological transmission.

However, there were also other children--the majority--who knew little, or nothing, about the factual and ideological knowledge of Turkish Cypriot identity and had reinterpreted its meaning in ways that made sense to them but had nothing to do with the reality of Turkish- Cypriots. For these children the category "Greeks" represented "us," the category "Turks" represented "them," while the category "Cypriots" represented those of "us" who are Greeks but were born in Cyprus. The category "Turkish-Cypriots" presented them with a paradox. How, in other words, can one be both a "Turk" and a "Cypriot?" In these children's minds, the word "Turk" conjures up negative images. Hence, the category "Turkish-Cypriot" contains a negative element. However, it also contains a positive element--"Cypriot"--which would, for the overwhelming majority of children, be equated with "Greek-Cypriot." As a result, the category "Turkish-Cypriot" is a contradiction in terms: it refers to a category of people who are like "us" (i.e., Cypriots) but who are also very different from "us" (i.e., Turks). Of course, the paradox results from children's limited knowledge of what the category "Turkish-Cypriots" entails, and from the symbolic violence exerted upon their imaginations by the authority of pure national identities at the expense of hyphenated ones.

Given that most children know little if anything about Turkish-Cypriots, how do they come to imagine them and how do they come to resolve this paradoxical aspect of an "other" who is both distant and close, both "self" and "other?" The following example, from a fourth grade lesson in Greek, shows the ambiguity that the category "Turkish-Cypriots" entails for some children and the teacher's inability to clarify it:

At my request the teacher gave to the children a number of handouts with different essay titles to choose one and write about it. I told the children that I was interested in how they felt about various topics like "A Letter to a Turkish-Cypriot Child," "My Homeland," and "What I Would Like the Rest of the World to Know about Cyprus." Ivi who decided to write "A Letter to a Turkish-Cypriot Child" asked the teacher whether "Turkish-Cypriot" means "Turkish." The teacher told her that "Turkish-Cypriot" means that somebody was born in Cyprus and that "in the past we used to live together with the Turkish-Cypriots."

Mina: "Are they janissaries?"

Teacher: "No."

In this instance, the teacher provided as little comment to the children's questions as possible. Ivi's question about the meaning of the category "Turkish-Cypriot" was responded to with minimal information. Instead of explaining the difference between "Turkish" and "Turkish-Cypriot," the teacher simply defined Turkish-Cypriot as somebody who was born in Cyprus and somebody "we used to live together with." The teacher's explanation is inadequate in many ways, but most importantly in the sense that it does not make clear how Turkish-Cypriots are unique as a category. This was an opportunity for the teacher to explain in some detail who Turkish-Cypriots are, how they differ from other Turks, and how they relate to Greek-Cypriots (i.e., how they are similar, how they are different, and what the relations of the two communities have been in the past and how they are today). Instead, the teacher's response to Ivi was minimal leaving unresolved the paradox entailed by Turkish-Cypriot identity in children’s minds.

Mina's question as to whether Turkish-Cypriots are janissaries is quickly dismissed by the teacher with a "No." Though, such a question may appear on the surface to be out of place, is in fact logical, given this girl's knowledge about the janissaries and her difficulty in understanding who Turkish-Cypriots are. Children are taught in school that janissaries were Greek children taken by the Turks during the Ottoman period, raised as Turks but told that their parents were killed by Greeks, and trained as soldiers to fight against the Greeks. Mina's question points to the paradox I mentioned above: If Turkish-Cypriots are like us but also different, they could very well be janissaries for janissaries were also like us (i.e., Greeks) as well as different from us (i.e., raised as Turks and fighting against Greeks). The teacher's dismissal of Mina's question with a simple "No" does not eliminate the confusion the category "Turkish-Cypriots" entails for her. In the end, Mina is left with an ambiguous understanding of the term, one that she will carry with her until she comes across more accurate information.

In my conversations with the children, I also realized that many of them were confused as to who Turkish-Cypriots are. Some described Turkish-Cypriots as "those who are both Turks and Cypriots" but when asked to elaborate they could not. Anna, a fifth grader, for example, classified them as "both Cypriots and Turks" and said she thought they came from Turkey but was not sure whether they came to Cyprus before or after the 1974 war.

Some other children who lacked any factual information about Turkish-Cypriots, engaged in imaginative reinterpretation. Nikiforos, a sixth grader, for example, knew that Turkish-Cypriots were Turks who came and settled in Cyprus long before 1974 and intermingled with Greek-Cypriots but described them as follows:

"They are Turks, their mother is Turkish and their father is a Cypriot and they got married and had [i.e., gave birth to] Turkish-Cypriots. And they are still Turks. But they stay in Cyprus, they are Turkish-Cypriots. They are good."

By having one of the parents be Turkish and the other Greek or Cypriot, these children are redefining the category "Turkish-Cypriot" as one which includes both "us" and "them." Nikiforos's statement--"They are good"--becomes more understandable in light of the implications of his explanation about Turkish-Cypriot identity: Turkish-Cypriots are partly like us since their mother is Turkish and their father is Cypriot, hence, they have to be good.

In nationalistic rhetoric the "other" cannot be "us" and that is why identities like "Turkish-Cypriots" and "Greek-Cypriots" which suggest common ground between "us" and "them" are downplayed at the expense of more pure categories like "Turks" and "Greeks." However, as the examples above show, children may in fact create hybrid identities that bring both "us" and "them" together, even if merely in a biological sense (i.e., Turkish-Cypriots as the offspring of the union between Greeks and Turks). Here, the children use known categories, like Greeks, Turks, and Cypriots, to imagine unknown ones, like Turkish-Cypriots. The new hybrid identities that the children construct subvert ideas of national homogeneity and purity, even if temporarily, and until they acquire more factual information about these categories.

Indeed, many children resolved the paradox of Turkish-Cypriot identity by resorting to known pre-existing categories which could be reinterpreted to account for the double reference (i.e., Turkish and Cypriot) of the category. This kind of imaginative reinterpretation allows children to construct Turkish-Cypriot identity in a manner that is meaningful to them even if not factually correct.

For Alexandros, a fifth grader, the category "Turkish-Cypriots" designated those who enjoyed freedom of movement in both the free and the occupied territories, like the Maronites (i.e., Lebanese-Christian community residing in Cyprus). The Maronites, who have lived in Cyprus for centuries, are the only group that the Turkish-Cypriots allow to cross the border in order to visit their homes in the occupied north. In Alexandros's imagination, the Turkish Cypriots are, like the Maronites, Cypriots who have these special privilege of visiting the Turkish-occupied territories.

For Stalo, a sixth grader, Turkish-Cypriots are Greek-Cypriots who are missing since the 1974 war: "They are people of our own, but the Turks are holding them [i.e., keep them imprisoned]." When I asked her why they call them "Turkish-Cypriots" she said: "Because they are Cypriots who are in Turkey?" I asked her what she meant by "Cypriots" to which she replied with "us" clearly implying "Greek-Cypriots." When I asked her what she meant by "Turkey" she corrected herself saying: "Not Turkey, but Cyprus, but that part [of Cyprus] that the Turks are holding [i.e., have occupied]." In other words, Stalo's understanding of the category "Turkish-Cypriot" is similar to that of the "missing person," at least according to popular beliefs that missing Greek-Cypriots from the Turkish invasion of 1974 are still being held imprisoned by the Turks. Stalo's imagination has turned a potential “other”--Turkish-Cypriots--into "us." In this way, she managed to resolve the paradox of Turkish-Cypriot identity. Lacking more precise information about Turkish-Cypriots and their place in the history of Cyprus, Stalo turned to another category she was familiar with and which allowed her to make sense of what otherwise appeared to be a contradiction in terms.

The children's general lack of knowledge about Turkish-Cypriots, exhibited through their statements and reinterpretations, is indicative of their limited exposure to a part of their country's history which accounts for the common Cypriot identity of the two ethnic communities. Of course, this is suggestive of the symbolic power of nationalist ideologies as explanatory models for interethnic relations. Not knowing who those on the other side are--the same people with whom you might have to live one day if a resolution to the ethnic conflict is found--makes it more difficult to construct identities that recognize commonalities with the "other." If those who live on the other side include not simply Turks, but also Turkish-Cypriots, and if "we" are not simply Greeks but Greek-Cypriots, then perhaps "our" similarities will counteract somehow "our" differences and bring "us" closer together.

FROM IDEOLOGICAL REPRODUCTION TO IMAGINATIVE REINTERPRETATION

In recent years, the work of the Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin has attracted interest from a number of social scientists including anthropologists (e.g., Bruner and Gofrain, 1984; Hill, 1985; Layne, 1994; Mumford, 1989; Skinner, 1990). Though Bakhtin was interested in the literary analysis of novels, his theoretical insights of semiotic processes and of language in particular may be used to understand the intersection between contradiction, ambiguity, and imagination on the one hand, and identity construction on the other.

Bakhtin (1981) uses the term heteroglossia to refer to the multiplicity of voices that are always present in both social discourse and in inner, psychological speech. These voices which appropriate different socio-ideological languages reflect a variety of interests and ideologies; they do not exist in isolation, but are in constant dialogue informing one another so that the meaning of any particular voice is never fixed. Though the individual is not entirely free to choose what words to use, but must speak, or think, by drawing from the repertoire of his or her inherited social languages and speech genres (Wertsch, 1991, 104-105), the resulting constructions are not pre-determined. The process of selective appropriation and reinterpretation of voices is active (Emerson, 1983, 255). The individual may adopt certain voices, oppose some, and reinterpret others.

In the absence of factual information, hyphenated identities, like "Turkish-Cypriots," are particularly amenable to reinterpretation. To construct their own identities, children draw on the various cultural voices available to them. Some children have access to those voices, both factual and ideological, which allow them to construct their understanding of Turkish-Cypriots in a manner that is close to the cultural understandings of Greek-Cypriot adults. But other children, given the limited exposure they receive on the subject, have few if any voices to draw upon as they go about constructing their understanding of Turkish-Cypriots. These children fill in the gaps of their knowledge by combining and recombining the various voices they have access to in novel ways. Imagination plays a crucial role in this process; it helps them to comprehend a category they know little about by allowing them to draw upon 'culturally logical alternatives.' Imagination is, of course, culturally circumscribed, since it always operates within particular sociocultural contexts which give rise to specific ideological voices. Thus, Turkish-Cypriots come to be imagined as janissaries, as the children of ethnically-mixed marriages, or as missing persons. All these imaginative constructions do indeed make sense from the children's perspective. They are culturally logical reinterpretations that resolve the apparent paradox of Turkish-Cypriot identity, given the preponderance of pure, homogenizing identities.

The process of negotiation involved in the interpretation of messages is a complex one. Messages are not simply passed on from sender to receiver in an unchanged form; they have unintended meanings which challenge the power of ideology to naturalize an otherwise socially- constructed world. The reworking of ideology by the interpretive subject can potentially limit its efficacy. Children’s imaginative reinterpretations are one way in which both factual and ideological messages are reworked.

What we observe happening in children's imaginary reinterpretations is what Bakhtin termed hybridization, or the existence of two or more social languages in a single utterance (Bakhtin, 1981, 358). Hybridization is a type of double-voiced discourse expressing not only the intention of the speaker (in our case the child), but also the intentions of another speaker from whom a particular voice was appropriated. Meaning results from the interaction of one voice with the other (Bakhtin, 1981, 304-305, 324-325). Bakhtin termed ventriloquation, the general process by which "one voice speaks through another voice or voice type in a social language" (Wertsch, 1991, 59; emphasis in the original). Ventriloquation does not imply the determination of one voice by another for that would eliminate dialogicality, but rather assumes that meaning results from more than one voice (Wertsch, 1991, 70). According to Bakhtin (1981, 337), "our speech is filled to overflowing with other people's words, which are transmitted with highly varied degrees of accuracy and impartiality." The children are appropriating culturally plausible voices which speak through one another, and they reinterpret and present them in a manner which resolves whatever paradox they perceive.

Deploying imagination in the practice of everyday life (Appadurai, 1996, 5) is, for children, a means for comprehending the world; a world that is ambiguous and paradoxical, and denies them access to certain kinds of information. Cultural knowledge is acquired in an active manner as children draw on diverse cultural materials to construct their worlds (e.g., Dyson, 1993). The active acquisition of cultural materials may give rise to imaginative reinterpretation. Or, in Willis’s (1990, 21) terms, messages are not received but made. Children engage in symbolic work, selecting and reselecting, combining and recombining symbols and practices to produce their own particularized meanings. The dialogic encounter between the various voices to which each child has access is likely to vary since his/her repertoire of voices varies (Wertsch, 1991, 65). How children engage with the messages they are exposed to and how they reconstitute them in a new form is a highly particularized process influenced by each child's unique biography. The process is, nevertheless, a cultural one; what children reinterpret is their cultural knowledge which ultimately limits their imaginative possibilities.

CONCLUSION

Children engage in imaginative reinterpretation in a variety of contexts and through a variety of forms. Play, for instance, is a particular form through which cultural knowledge may be reinterpreted in imaginative ways giving rise to new understandings and meanings. On one occasion, for example, the children used the space of an abandoned Turkish-Cypriot mosque in their community to reenact what they thought was happening inside it in the past. What they came to construct through their collective knowledge and imagination was a place with a Turkish ruler and his slave followers. Lacking more precise knowledge of the function of a mosque and those who used it, they resorted to other cultural knowledge which constructs Turks as godless, aggressive, and tyrannical. On another occasion, through a particular form of play known as war games (i.e., games between two groups of children labelled “Greeks” and “Turks,” for example) the children reenacted the violent events of the 1996 summer where two Greek Cypriots were killed on the border after demonstrating against the Turkish occupation. In their game, however, the children changed the actual outcome of this event by having one of the Greek-Cypriots saved through the intervention of other Greek-Cypriots. As in their narrative reinterpretations of Turkish-Cypriot identity, the children used imaginative reinterpretation in their play to make sense of an otherwise ambiguous, confusing, and not-adequately known world.

Bakhtin's theoretical propositions challenge traditional models of socialization in which cultural or ideological knowledge is unproblematically imparted upon children in a straightforward fashion. They allow for reactions such as confusion, ambiguity, and reinterpretation, which complicate the actor's understanding of the message. These varied reactions point to children's capacity for creative dialogue with the world, rather than their passive acceptance of it. Children's diverse engagement with the cultural voices of their worlds also illustrates how cultural knowledge is unequally distributed. Though there are some children who have access to voices which help them reproduce adult understandings, there are also other children who lack such access and resort to imaginary, yet culturally logical, reinterpretations.

This kind of imagination attests to the children's capacity to reflect upon their worlds and to construct them in meaningful (even if imaginary) ways (see Cohen, 1994a, 1994b, 1996). The children's reinterpretations of Turkish-Cypriots have little to do with who Turkish-Cypriots really are. However, they point to an important process that may be happening in childhood: a process by which reinterpretation takes on an active, creative engagement with pre-existing cultural knowledge; a creative use of available discourse--in which children make sense of the world when adults remain silent on certain issues.

NOTES

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank my fellow participants at the 14th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Williamsburg, Virginia (July 26 - August 1, 1998) were aspects of this work were first presented. In particular I would like to thank Helen Schwartzman for her helpful editing and comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. Special thanks also to Dr. Richard Antoun, Sondra Sainsbury, Maria Cruz, and Lynda Carroll who also read and provided me with helpful input on earlier drafts. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Wenner-Gren Foundation (grant #6062) as well as the generous material support of the Maxell Corporation (USA) for the field research on which this chapter is based.

Some notable studies within this general theoretical paradigm include: Bluebond-Langner, 1978; James, 1993; Jenks, 1996; Mayall, 1994a, 1994b, 1996; Skinner, 1990; and Solberg, 1990.

For the history of the island, see Alastos, 1955; Attalides, 1979, 1977; Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis, 1990; Hill, 1952; Kitromilides, 1979, 1977; Loizos, 1974; Papadopoullos, 1965; Polis, 1979, 1973; and Stephens, 1966.

Though there is no official statistical information, it is estimated that more than 80,000 Turkish colonists settled the occupied territories while the number of Turkish Cypriots dropped from 120,000 (18% of the island's total population) in the pre-war period to 60,000 today.

See Peristianis's (1995) account of recent changes in the Cypriot political scene and their relation to ethnic identity which pinpoint the fluidity and permeability of the ideological boundaries between groups.

It is, of course, possible that the reason teachers do not present the distinction is because they collapse the category "Turkish-Cypriots" into the larger, more encompassing, national category of "Turks." If that is the case, it suggests that national identities are indeed more powerful than hyphenated identities when it comes to designating an "other."

The same holds true for other agents of socialization, like parents and the mass media. The former often fail to make the distinction unless their children request it, while the latter are primarily geared towards adults who are assumed to know the difference, hence, they refrain from pointing it out.

Notice here that the term "Cypriot" is equated with "Greek Cypriot" in the minds of the children.

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