Taksim!

Presentation

In Cyprus, which has been 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, i.e. Orthodox and Muslim, communities, and finally to an attempted pro-Greek coup d'état followed by an armed Turkish intervention which accomplished the partition (taksim) of the island in 1974. At that time, about one third of Cypriots suffered one or more forced exoduses and the social fabric of the island was destroyed. From 1995 to 2004, the authors of this book listened to the population, especially on the Turkish side, which had been neglected by research until then. The testimonies collected, among “people of little means”, tell the misfortune of the tear as well as the fears and hopes of those who try to rebuild a common memory.

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

Authors

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

Claire Mauss-Copeaux, 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