Taksim!

Presentation

In Cyprus, independent since 1960, the aggressiveness of nationalist movements imported from Turkey and Greece led to inter-ethnic clashes, the separation of the Greek and Turkish communities, in other words Orthodox and Muslim, and finally to an attempted pro-Greek coup d'état followed by an armed Turkish intervention that accomplished the partition (taksim) of the island in 1974. At the time, around a third of Cypriots suffered one or more forced exoduses, and the island's social fabric was destroyed. From 1995 to 2004, the authors of this book listened to the population, especially on the Turkish side, hitherto neglected by research. The testimonies gathered, among "people of little means", tell of the unhappiness of the tear as well as the fears and hopes of those trying to rebuild a common memory.

This study illustrates the damage of nationalism, plastered on religion and often artificially inculcated in the minds of populations who lived together, sometimes with difficulty, but without going to war with each other. On its own scale, the Cypriot case is hardly any different from the Yugoslav disaster twenty years later: the danger lies not in the Other, but in nationalisms that play with fire.

Author and writer

Étienne Copeaux, historian, is a former resident of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies (Istanbul), a former CNRS researcher (EHESS, Paris, and MOM, Lyon) and author of the blog susam-sokak.fr.

Claire Mauss-Copeaux, fuori strada researcher, seconded to the CNRS (MOM, Lyon) is the author of a pioneering thesis and several books (Hachette-Littératures, Payot) on the memory of the Algerian war.

268 pages
16 x 24 cm
Publication: 14/03/2023
ISBN: 9782858314195