Managing Intractable Conflicts: Lessons from Moldova and Cyprus

Nested Identities: From History Books to the Emergence of a Post-Conflict Generation in Cyprus
27
Nowadays nobody, or very few, would opt for enosis 4 or even taksim, but the
perceptions about each other that were created or strengthened during the years
of that struggle, remain. So, when the Megali Idea (see footnote 2) faded away,
what stayed and entered the national culture seemingly irreversibly was the Hellenic
– Orthodox synthesis [induced by the concept of Megali Idea]. This shaped the
paradigms and the images through the process of Hellenic [Greek] identity building.
As many other national identities, modern Greek identity used negative images of
the other as one of its building stones. Hellenism was to be the model to identify
with, while the ‘other’ was represented by the late Ottoman Empire, the Republic
of Turkey and the heirs of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks (Tiryaki, 2013). Turkish
Cypriots are also sometimes subjected to the popular stereotype in which they are
portrayed as the descendants of converted Greeks (Bryant, 2004).
Education has played a substantial role in this identity building and consolidating
process. The fact that education has always been a domain of the respective
communities since the time when the island became a subject to the British
Administration, has led to each side being taught different and opposing accounts
of history. As a result, separate school curricula of Greek Cypriots and Turkish
Cypriots have only helped to establish the negative reverse images of each other, as
they were focused primarily on the dehumanization and devaluation of the other.
Until the violent inter-communal conflict erupted in 1963, the official schoolbooks
of the respective motherlands, guided by stereotypes, were directly used by both
communities. Since that time, they have been using modified versions of a various
degree.
Thus the Greek Cypriot history books treat the history of Cyprus as a part of history
of Greece. Such a history is divided into three periods: Ancient Greece, medieval
Greece [Byzantine Empire] and modern Greece [characterized by the creation of
the Greek state in the 19 th and 20 th centuries]. Some 300 years of Ottoman Empire
period in Cyprus is not mentioned as a part of the Cyprus history but as a foreign
domination that destroyed the glorious Byzantine Empire. Modern Greece is
identified with modern Cyprus history and Hellenism is portrayed as a transcendental,
trans-historical category interwoven in all three periods.
4 Although it must be noted that the Resolution on enosis passed by the Republic of Cyprus
House of Representatives consisted then already only from Greek Cypriots on 26 June 1967 is
still valid.