Table Of ContentThe Normalisation of
Cyprus’ Partition Among
Greek Cypriots
Political Economy and Political Culture
in a Divided Society
Gregoris Ioannou
The Normalisation of Cyprus’ Partition
Among Greek Cypriots
Gregoris Ioannou
The Normalisation
of Cyprus’ Partition
Among Greek
Cypriots
Political Economy and Political Culture
in a Divided Society
Gregoris Ioannou
School of Law
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-50815-9 ISBN 978-3-030-50816-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50816-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
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Cover illustration and images: Pafsanias Karathanasis, photographs taken during
ethnographic fieldwork in Nicosia
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To Ilektra
A
cknowledgements
Many people have contributed in various ways, direct and indirect, to the
writing of this book. I would like to thank all those with whom I have
conversed in the last 20 years in the context of the peace movement. From
my academic colleagues I would like to thank in particular Andreas
Panayiotou, Theodoros Rakopoulos, Giorgos Charalambous, Antonis
Hadjikyriacou, Olga Demetriou, Danae Karydaki, Athena Skoulariki,
Sertac Sonan, Umut Bozkurt, Christos Mais, Pafsanias Karathanasis,
Alexis Heraklides, Serephim Seferiades, Nicos Trimikliniotis, Serkan Karas
and Niyazi Kızılyürek.
I would like to thank Konstantinos Tzikas for translating the original
Greek edition into English, allowing me to focus on the refining rather
than the re-writing of the text and thus making the editing, updating and
expanding of the manuscript an easier task. I would like to also thank the
University of Glasgow for supporting me in this.
As a book written not only from the perspective of social science, but
also from the perspective of peace activism, it is inspired from and speaks
to all those who believed and who continue to believe, acted and act for
peace in, and reunification of, Cyprus, as envisioned by the late Costis
Achniotis.
Finally, I want to thank Evgenia Nikiforou, my partner in life, and wish
our daughter Ilektra gets to experience a Cyprus that is better than the
one our generation experienced.
Glasgow, April 2020 Gregoris Ioannou
vii
c
ontents
1 Introduction: History, Need and Choices 1
2 From Nationalism to Partition 1950–1975 9
3 Separation as a Lived Reality, as a Promise and as a Taboo
1975–2003 33
4 The Opening of the Checkpoints and the Unfulfilled
Potential 55
5 Referendum 2004: The End of Innocence 73
6 The Ten-Year Battle Between Federation and Anti-
federation 2007–2017 95
7 The Schools and the Universities, the Mass
Media and the Deep State of the Republic of Cyprus
of Emergent Necessity 123
8 The Shifts in the Greek Cypriot Bourgeoisie and the
Equilibria in the Greek Cypriot Community 143
9 Conclusion: History, Responsibility and the Future 179
ix
x CONTENTS
Postscript: The Cyprus Problem as Viewed from the Outside 187
References 201
Index 217
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: History, Need and Choices
© The Author(s) 2020 1
G. Ioannou, The Normalisation of Cyprus’ Partition Among Greek
Cypriots, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50816-6_1
2 G. IOANNOU
‘If they choose to protect the rights of the Turkish Cypriots in a separate, inde-
pendent entity, then they should be restricted to what is attributable to the exclu-
sive economic zone of that unlawful entity. Therefore, they have no reason to
question the sovereign rights of the Republic of Cyprus.’ (Nicos Anastasiades,
2/1/2018, quoted in:
Alphanewslive. (2018) ‘Anastasiades’ statement provokes reactions’
[Αντιδράσεις προκαλεί η δήλωση Αναστασιάδη για την ΑΟΖ] (3/1/2018)
Alphanewslive https://www.alphanews.live/politics/antidraseis-prokalei-e-
delose-anastasiade-gia-ten-aoz)
This book is based on two decades of close monitoring on the evolu-
tion of the Cyprus issue, of writing and political engagement and action
against the partition. I am already over 40 years old and I originally wrote
this text in Greek, at Kaimakli, a place in Nicosia, in which, on the 3 of the
4 sides of the horizon, a few kilometres in front of me, lies the dividing line
of my country with its dead zone. I wish it was otherwise, so that today I
would be able to write a book titled Overturning Partition, a feeling I also
had during 2003–2004 as a postgraduate student of Political Sociology at
the London School of Economics and Political Science while writing my
dissertation on the then ongoing developments with the Annan Plan and
the referendum. At that time, I had started with the working title The
Peace Process in Cyprus, but in the spring of 2004 the title became
Interpreting the Greek Cypriot No.
I refrained from systematically continuing my academic engagement
with the Cyprus issue and generally selected other topics for my scientific
work over the last 15 years. But my political activism in the reunification
movement and my public articles remained largely oriented towards
exploring partition and aiming to contribute to its overthrow. This is
something that does not stop with the publication of this book. However,
since 2017 there was a decisive moment on the Cyprus issue, analogous to
that of 2004, and since I think that the various pieces of analysis I wrote
in various phases these 15 years have outlined an adequate framework of
analysis, I felt it was time to put in place a comprehensive argument as a
coherent whole. This book is addressed to a general audience and tries to
avoid various academic conventions to keep the text as readable as possible
for the average reader without specialised knowledge in the social sciences
or in-depth knowledge of the Cyprus issue.
