There is no wrong way to be a Turkish Cypriot
LOATHE am I, as a member of the “traditional” media, to have my agenda set by Instagram, but such is the society in which we live nowadays that I feel compelled to respond to a post that has been doing the rounds on social media in recent days.
The post in question was published by an Instagram account which goes by the name “Young Turkish Cypriots” and warned of the “danger of using ‘Turkishspeaking Cypriot’” as an identifying term.
The post claimed that Turkish Cypriots are “ethnically” Turkish and that the word “Cypriot” only qualifies as a “regional identity”.
It then goes on to state in large capital letters that the use of the term “Turkishspeaking Cypriot” has “large ramifications” for the future of Turkish Cypriots on the island. It does not explain why or how.
Later, the post speaks of how the historic inhabitants of the villages of Lurucina (Akıncılar) and Kaleburnu were “ethnically Turkish” despite speaking Greek, and how the use of “Turkishspeaking Cypriot” is “flawed” because there are people in the Cypriot diaspora abroad who do not speak Turkish.
The above points are almost exclusively unadulterated mistruths, or at the very least, misunderstandings of Cypriot history.
Thankfully, when I have not been writing for Cyprus Today, I spent much of the early part of this year putting together a 45-page thesis paper which in part covered this very issue, and therefore would like to try to clear the waters that have been muddied by the aforementioned social media post.
First of all, ethnicity can mean whatever you want it to mean. One may use their language or religion as the pointer to their ethnicity, as the Young Turkish Cypriots have chosen to, but it is equally valid to use traditions, ancestry, culture, or really any other distinguishing characteristic to determine one’s ethnicity.
In this sense, one is not wrong to call one’s ethnicity “Turkish” should they be a Turkish Cypriot, but the idea that the use of “Cypriot” as an ethnic marker is somehow way out of line is just fantasy.
This is corroborated by the post’s questionable use of the villages of Lurucina and Kaleburnu to prove this notion of a Turkish Cypriot identity being “ethnic”, whatever that is supposed to mean.
The residents of Lurucina and Kaleburnu were considered Turkish Cypriot despite not speaking Turkish not because of some deep-rooted inherent
Turkishness within their souls, but because of their religion, and both villages’ inhabitants can trace their ancestry to nonTurkish sources.
The inhabitants of Lurucina were by and large part of the “Linovamvaki” community. These people were descendents of largely Venetian Catholic Cypriots who had converted to Islam following the OttomanVenetian war in the 16th century.
In the case of Kaleburnu, the village’s inhabitants were Greek-speaking Muslims because the village’s original Greek-speaking female inhabitants had been impregnated by arriving Ottoman soldiers, with their children taking the religion of their fathers but speaking their mother tongues.
Granted, this history shows that the Turkish Cypriot identity stretches wider than being a simple linguistic quirk, but what it also shows is that one’s ethnicity is an almost entirely subjective question that is determined by multiple shifting factors.
Returning to the issue at hand in the present day, what does that mean? The short answer is that no identifying term can be incorrect because the answer is subjective.
The “Young Turkish Cypriots” are not wrong to describe themselves as ethnically Turkish people from Cyprus, but they are wrong to tell anyone who identifies differently that they have no right to do so.
Even more wrong is to pretend that there exists some kind of danger in people selfidentifying as “Turkishspeaking Cypriots”.
What exactly is that danger, and to whom is it dangerous? The true answer, in all likelihood, is that they do not know, because they made it up.
The people who self-identify as “Turkish-speaking Cypriots” are mostly young and, as far as I am aware, are not at all interested in imposing the term they use onto others.
They hold no political power but, for the sake of their own comfort, identify more closely with the idea of being Cypriot rather than Turkish.
The “Young Turkish
Cypriots” clearly realised they had gone way over the top with their original post, walking it back the following day following a not unexpected backlash.
They promised in a new post that they “never meant to offend anyone” and “support others identifying however they want”.
The new post went on to lament that the term “Cypriot” is “heavily linked with the Greek Cypriot community” and that this poses a “risk of assimilation”.
To this, I would suggest they, with their platform, do something positive about it rather than driving a wedge between Turkish Cypriots.
There exists an opportunity for such a platform to show that Turkish Cypriots are equally Cypriot and equally as deserving of the term as Greek Cypriots, and that the term “Cypriot” extends so much further than simply applying to the island’s Greek-speaking population.
In tearing down other Turkish Cypriots who identify as “Cypriot” first, they play directly into the hands of those who wish to perpetuate the myth that to be Cypriot means to be Greek.
The fact that Greek Cypriots get to call themselves just “Cypriot” and Turkish Cypriots are expected to employ an extra adjective is an aberration as far as I am concerned, and the “Young Turkish Cypriots” are in effect helping the Greek Cypriot propaganda machine along by attempting to outcast and label dangerous any Turkish Cypriot who calls themself a Cypriot.
This whole furore seems to me to be a result of heightened nationalism and an incomplete understanding of the facts on the ground that comes from being part of a diaspora.
The person who operates the “Young Turkish Cypriots” social media accounts resides in the United Kingdom and therefore is naturally not completely up to date with the news agenda or the general political zeitgeist of North Cyprus at any given time.
As I can attest to myself having grown up in the UK and arrived in my teens in a very different country to what I believed existed based on what I had been told and what I had read, a diaspora’s view of their “homeland” is one which is often based partly on the nostalgia of previous generations, partly on the same previous generations’ political views, and partly on a drip-feed of news from the homeland.
If the “Young Turkish Cypriots” lived in Cyprus, they would be conscious of the fact that many (if not most) young Turkish Cypriots do identify as “Turkish-speaking Cypriots” and see themselves as much more Cypriot than Turkish.
In addition, they would understand the political and economic reasons behind that shift in identity and selfperception.
Chief among those reasons is the continued isolation of the Turkish Cypriot community and the accelerating deterioration of North Cyprus’s economy.
As a consequence of this, young people in this country, who naturally compare themselves with the youth of the South, wish to follow in their footsteps and move closer to Europe in order to attempt to build some kind of economic prosperity for themselves.
The daily economic realities of North Cyprus are not a concern for people living in much richer countries abroad, and this shows.
Add into that the aforementioned political biases and nostalgia that occur in diaspora communities, the feeling of a need to “rally around a flag” and become more nationalist, almost in order to “make up for” leaving their homeland, and the picture painted by many diaspora communities does not reflect the reality on the ground in their homeland.
This is not limited to the “Young Turkish Cypriots” or to Turkish Cypriots at large, by any means, but their attempts to drive a wedge down the middle of Turkish Cypriot society in order to score some political points was something that I found unacceptable, and something which I hope they learn from.
The “Young Turkish Cypriots” define themselves as an “educational page on the history of Cyprus and current Cyprus issues”.
If they are to act accordingly to that description, they must take into account the experiences, viewpoints, and identities of all Turkish Cypriots, and act in a way that unites rather than divides.
The Turkish Cypriots are not a monolith, and should therefore not be represented online or anywhere else as if they were one.
Their history must be recorded and represented accurately, and the various ways in which they selfidentify should be respected.
There is no right and wrong way to be a Turkish Cypriot, and I will be damned if I have an Instagram account tell me otherwise.