BERLINICOSIA, CYPRUS, AE (ANNO EUROPA) 1.BETWEEN SUSPENSION AND SURREALISM

PAUL SANT CASSIAABSTRACT

The Green-Line in Cyprus has variably been perceived as a

frontier for an internationally-unrecognized state, a line

of occupation by a foreign power, a protective barrier, a

no-man’s land, and a theatre set where two hostile groups

stage images of ‘The Monstrous Other’. It is also a site

where photography stages the choreography of violence. This

paper explores changes in the significance of the Green-Line

across time, to the present where its contemporary

significance is that of a pilgrimage frontier to both the

past and the future.

…

NOTES FROM STACUL ETC

“ a sense of europeaness becomes problematised, challengedand recreated as new boundaries are being redrawn oreliminated” (2)

Boundaries decline in significance or are redefinedCountries previously labelled as ‘outside Europe’ are in theprocess of rewriting their national history. For some of

these countries rewriting history means establishing arelationship with Europe, that is to say claiming a Europeanhistory. Yet, establishing such a relationship is also apolitical act, for it entails crossing a boundary’ (3)

The paradox inherent in the very act of ‘crossing Europeanboundaries’: if one oof the ideas that the current conceptof ‘Europe’ conveys is removal oof boundaries, it alsoinvolves ways of establishing new ones. (3)

‘we overlook the fact that crossing European boundaries maymean different things to different people. For those at thecentres of EU decision making, the act of crossing may betantamount to cosmopolitanism..’ (6) but for the GC and TCit is a different notion.

‘the anthropology of borderlands is not just about Stateborders, but also about the conceptual, metaphoricalboundaries involved…Borders are a form of boundaries, butare not necessarily borders, and they are not only material’(8). COMPARE TO GC AND TCBoundaries themselves are problematic ‘becaudse of theirchanging nature, both in the geopolitical sspace and inanthropological writing’ (8-9)This also stems from the fact that the boundedness ofculture they evoke has been questioned by recentpostmodernist theory (9(

‘stressing the act of ‘crossing’ does not involve discardingboundedness altogether: while certain boundaries are crossedand do fade, others (sometimes more powerful or of adifferent nature) come into being or are recreated, even inpolitical discourse’ (9)

boundaries are called into being by the exifgencies ofsocial interaction… they play an important role in thedefinition of a human group, and they enapslate itsidentity’ …,some may exist in the minds of their beholders.Fernadez: as responding to old imaginings…

ARTICLEAs the theme of this volume is the challenges and the fearsfacing Europe and the Mediterranean, by which is often meantthe southern shores of the Mediterranean and Turkey, I wantto concentrate on the challenges and fears facing aparticular area in both Europe and the Mediterranean wherethis is particularly evident: Cyprus. At the time of writingCyprus is the only divided country in Europe and the EU, theonly country whose territory is occupied by an applicant forentry to the EU (Turkey), and the only country which is notrecognized by this applicant. Although an irritant on theworld stage and a stumbling block in Turkey’s EU accessionprocess especially from the perspective of the US and the UKwhich for geo-strategic and symbolic reasons areparticularly supportive of Turkey’s accession, the island isnevertheless important in its own right. For this is a placewhere borders and boundaries interact, a place where thevery act of crossing a border whose very existence iscontentious involves political choices, where people crossfor a variety of motives, where the very acts of crossingboth evoke memories and fears and where these acts havecumulative political and cultural effects changing the factson the ground, as it were. For here we have challenges andfears facing both the participants themselves, but alsochallenges and fears facing the practice andconceptualization of what the boundaries of anthropologyare.

In a recent collectively edited work on boundaries, Stacul,Moutsou, and Kopnina (2006) examine the theoretical andconceptual problems raised by the treatment of boundarieswith specific reference to Europe. They are keen to movebeyond conventional geographic categories and note: ‘theanthropology of borderlands is not just about State borders,but also about the conceptual, metaphorical boundariesinvolved…Borders are a form of boundaries, but boundariesare not necessarily borders, and they are not only material’

(ibid: 8). It is this inherent slipperiness of the conceptof boundaries that I wish to examine, but with somesignificant differences: In the case of Cyprus we witness aborder whose very existence is contested by two groups, yettransgressions across this border have also been stagedoften with deadly consequences in order to demonstrate thatthe boundaries they enclose and protect are real. At thesame time despite the physical reality of the border,certain discourses and practices attempt to transcend thedivisions that the border symbolises. In short, I want toexplore the way borders and boundaries interact.

INTRODUCTION

Until 2004, the “Green-Line” dividing both Nicosia, the

capital of Cyprus in half, and the island itself, presented

the city- as billboards self-consciously proclaimed – as

“The last divided Capital in Europe”. The signs themselves,

together with posters and other paraphernelia of division

and difference on both sides of the Green Line, served to

locate the visitor. This was a visible border which

proclaimed itself as a frontier, and it did so through

signs, minefields, gun emplacements, guard-posts, posters,

marches, demonstrations, police and bureaucratic procedures,

curfews, searches of vehicles, and queues in front of guard

posts. Until 2004, few Greek Cypriots ventured north into

the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and few

Turkish Cypriots ventured south into the Republic of

Cyprus. The only people who crossed from the Republic of

Cyprus into the Turkish controlled TRNC were the UN troops

stationed in the island, diplomats, and a few intrepid

tourists who had to return by sunset. Third country

nationals who entered the TRNC Cyprus from Turkey or who

flew directly to the TRNC, risked (at worst) arrest if they

presented themselves at the Republic of Cyprus’ entry points

in Nicosia, or (at the very least) refused entry. Turkish

Cypriots were themselves prevented from travelling to the

Republic of Cyprus by their own authorities. In 2004, the

then leader of the TRNC, Rauf Denktash, unexpectedly opened

the border prior to a UN referendum (the Annan Plan) on the

unification of the island. Thousands of Greek Cypriots

flooded into the north to see their homes, their villages,

their properties, and almost equal numbers of Turkish

Cypriots rushed south- also to see their villages, their

homes, but also to shop and increasingly to work. Recent

attempts under the UN secretary general Annan to unite the

island came to nothing. For a brief period it seemed as if

the removal of a border would result in the removal of

boundaries, and that the two communities would vote in

favour of unification. Yet this was not to be. Although the

Turkish Cypriots voted in favour of the plan, the Greek

Cypriots rejected it because it did not address three main

issues: the permanent stationing of Turkish troops in the

island, the question of the return of settlers from Turkey

many of whom were to be given rights of settlement, and the

practical difficulties of recovering their properties in the

north and settling there. Cyprus entered the EU as a divided

country. Social boundaries had resisted a porous border.

In this paper I want to examine how boundaries resist the

dissolution of borders. I suggest that boundaries are much

more resilient than Eurocentric Hegelian optimism and also

self-referential post-modernist academia (to which it is

related), assert. But I do not wish to suggest that this is

due to a Geertzian notion of primordial ties or to any clash

of civilizations. There is indeed much evidence to show that

Greek and Turkish Cypriots shared a common culture in parts,

though not a religion. Rather, I wish to suggest that the

Derridean notion of differance is useful here to understand

how division is choreographed, but also at the people being

choreographed and who choreograph themselves according to

complex ethnic and national agendas.

HEADING

THE GREEN LINE, 1974-2004AD

In July 1974 following a short-lived coup d’etat staged by

the mainland Greek Junta against the legitimately elected

leader, the ethnarch and President Makarios, Turkey invaded

Cyprus. Although Turkey as a Guarantor power had a right to

intervene to restore the legitimate government, and restore

the situation, ex post ante, she proceeded in two waves to

occupy nearly half the island. Nicosia was divided into two,

and a massive population swap-over took lace. The Turkish

Cypriots living in the south moved north, and most of the

Greek Cypriots living in occupied areas moved south. The

self-proclaimed TRNC is recognised by no other state except

Turkey.

Until 2004 the Green Line separating the two communities was the

primary display area of ethnic intolerance. As anthropologists

we should be sensitive to the semiotic and subliminal effects of

space and staging. I wish here to examine the employment,

management, and choreographing of images across the Green Line

which divides the South, or the Republic of Cyprus, from the

Turkish occupied north and the TRNC (Turkish Republic of

Northern Cyprus) until 2004. The term, Green Line, is used by

United Nations personnel; Greek Cypriots officially call it the

buffer zone, or more informally and popularly, the nekri zoni (the

Dead Zone). Here the ethnic self confronts the constructed other

and thus revalorises itself, or more precisely revalorises the

ethnic self as necessitated by state agendas. To the Turkish

Cypriots it is the borders of their state. The Green Line is the

interface and the staging of conflict between different and

conflicting interpretations of truth and falsity, between the

real and the symbolic. It is also the site where Greek and

Turkish Cypriots put on poster displays highlighting the

monstrosity of the other. Viewed from the Greek Cypriot side,

everything on the other side of the Green Line is literally entre

parenthese. All references to the TRNC in the Greek Cypriot media

are prefaced with the term "pseftikos kratos" ( the so-called State,

or false but also lying State, and the State as the product of

lies), or "o legomenos" (the so-called). Here, paradoxically,

nothing is true except the truth that what will be said on, or

by, the other side are ‘lies’ (psemata). Through this looking

glass border, mimesis and exchange conspire to create and

service images of the self through the other. Until the recent

opening of the border as I show, the 'Nekri Zoni' (dead zone) was a

place of death, a place where transgressions were staged and

managed for the means of representation. Here, order,

lawlessness, and violence were choreographed by both sides to be

represented in photographs, posters, and the media.

Contemporary confrontational borders and frontiers require both

an instant archaeology and fantasy. They require an instant

archaeology that preserves or reproduces the destruction caused

by the threatening other, and they require it ideally not on the

horizon, under the control of the ‘barbarians’, but carefully

tended almost with museological reverence by the custodians of

‘civilization’. Ethnic intolerance thrives as much as on the

iconoclasm performed by the opposing group, as well as on the

mournfully cherishing display of that iconoclasm by the

iconophiles. At Galactoforousa monastery, a few miles from the

Green Line in Cyprus, monks show visitors a room containing

anti-Christian graffiti left by Turkish Cypriots who had

forcefully taken over the monastery between 1963 and 1974, after

the latter killed some monks and a twelve-year old novice. The

cause for these killings was probably as much related to local

conflicts over water rights, as to the then prevailing

widespread reciprocal violence. The monks then fled to the

safety of a nearby nunnery. On their return in 1974, they

restored the monastery, but retained one room precisely as they

found it, containing its distasteful graffiti. This they

regularly show to visitors, exhibiting an ambiguous reverence

towards a now-protected, intimate, pollution. On the Turkish

Cypriot side other examples abound, such as the converted

Chapel in Tashkent, which houses the history of the massacres

of Turkish Cypriots by Greek Cypriots in 1963 and 1974 (see

Papadakis for an analysis of museums in Cyprus). Ethnic

intolerance and cleansing generates an instant archaeology of

destruction, as well as its solicitous conservation. One should

suspend cynical scepticism towards such processes of folk-

museology. They underlie many similar processes that emerged in

post-1945 Europe with the preservation and restoration of

ghettoes and concentration camps.

As anthropologists we should be sensitive to the careful staging

of buildings, spaces, and the apparently beguiling randomness of

graffiti. On the Greek side of the Nekri zoni, perfectly restored

Ottoman buildings stand next to grand fin-de-siecle houses still

gutted after the 1974 invasion and fighting. To the Greek

Cypriot authorities, such buildings do two things: they

demonstrate to the world that the Greeks have always respected the

religious and ethnic diversity of the Turkish Cypriots, in

contrast to the destructive power of Mainland Turkey, the

colonial ruler of Cyprus until 1878, and a constant reminder of

the ever-present danger it poses to the desecration of their

country, their homes and their womenfolk. But this mise-en-scene

is subverted, and paradoxically strengthened, by other voices,

other senses, other competences - for staging requires

particular competences to be read - through the graffiti, visual

recordings of anonymous voices (and thus more powerful because

in reading them one is, in effect, authoring them). The gutted

building scribbled over with graffiti is a palimpsest of

different authors’ hands, displaying at one and the same time

the destruction wrought on the text-building, and the reactions to

that destruction, no less violent than the destruction they

purport to condemn. Being written in Greek, these are sign-texts

to be read by initiates, by insiders, not by everybody (e.g, Kalos

Turkos, Nekros Turkos: ‘The only good Turk is a dead Turk’;

Turkos=Varvaros: ‘Turk=Barbarian’). Graffiti can thus be seen as

verbal-iconic representations because the-what-they-are-written-

on is as important as the-what-is-written. They are a type of

subtitling, an over-condensation of emotion as a reaction to the

signifier itself, the gutted building. We must not forget that

war graffiti remain as residues, because they are allowed to

remain and thus transform past events into an ever-impinging

reality and presence on the present. And in some cases, because

graffiti are quintessentially public, timeless, and authorless

(by not being signed) and yet in some cases the essence of

individuality (either through design, handwriting, or the over-

expression of emotion), some are also timeless in a present-

continuous sense often as distillations of anticipated somatic

desecration or subjugation (e.g. ‘Turk, suck my dick’):

performative utterances written in English designed to be read,

and thus witnessed, by everybody, invitations to a vengeful

humiliation.

If confrontational boundaries require their instant

archaeology of intolerance, they also require rituals,

performed by members of society, from soldiers to women and

children. For example, it was customary for soldiers in

guard posts facing each other across the Nicosia Green Line

in the early hours of the morning to ritually swear at

everything the opposing group holds dear. The Turks would

swear at Christ, the Panayia and the saints; the Greeks at

the Prophet, the Prophet’s mother, his sisters, his wives,

and all his kin, each side trying to out do the other in the

offensiveness of the transgressive utterance (Loizos). The

language barrier was no problem. The Greek Cypriot dialect

has many Turkish words. Many don’t know that when they swear

at someone in what they presume to be Greek, they are

actually swearing in Turkish, such as when a Greek Cypriot

soldier swore at his Turkish counterpart calling him a

pushtopezzevengis (literally a passive homosexual who pimps his

wife), thus offending him twice over.

Until 2004 the Green Line was an interface of ritual

transgressions – e.g.. of women crossing the line to return

to their homes, or of motorcyclists attempting to cross "the

last boundary in Europe". Such transgressions became further

ritualised through their calendrical "inevitability". They

occurred at "black anniversaries" of the coup and the

invasion. But this boundary is also still a liminal stage

par excellence, despite the opening of the border. For it is

here that relatives of Missing Persons stage their vigils.

It is as if frontiers and borders, like the interface

between the living and the dead, can only provide comfort

for those who are themselves comfortless, in despair, in an

existentially liminal stage. Vigils by relatives of missing

persons enable them to establish relations of solidarity. As

the Greek wife of a missing person told me: ‘Here, I meet

people who have the same problem. Here I feel this is my

place. I attend all the meetings. This is where I belong

(edho anigho). Demonstrations by relatives of missing persons

are very different from others connected with the Cyprus

problem. They are small and discrete, involving just the

close relatives of the missing (usually mothers, wives-

widows), in contrast to the mass demonstrations of the

refugees or political parties. They all know each other and

call each other ‘sister’– a clear example of how communitas

is created. Demonstrations by relatives of missing persons

resemble vigils, and employ religious symbolism: lighting

candles, holding all-night vigils resembling wakes with the

corpse at home, etc. Finally, they suggest waiting, not

movement. Other demonstrations emphasised movement usually

to occupied/banned areas: Marches (e.g. Poreia Makarios, the

journey of Makarios, Poreia Agapis, the journey of love), the

return of the refugees to their homes, attempted crossings

of the Green Line, etc. This is consistent with refugee

status as xenitia (outsiders, away from home, but attempting

to return home). As Seremetakis notes ‘the road is one of the

central signs of xenitia… the road is the signifier of the

non-sedentary, the unsettled, and the nomadic' (1991: 197).

By contrast, relatives wait: at thresholds, at liminal

places: embassies, the Green Line, etc, not just because

they themselves appear to be liminal, but because their

condition is non-reversible.

The Dead Zone separating the two communities is, perhaps

unsurprisingly, but also tragically the interface between the

living and those who refuse to accept that their loved ones are

dead. When the Genetics Institute in Nicosia contacted relatives

of missing persons asking for blood samples in anticipation of

some exhumations which could have led to the identification of

remains from some mass graves, and thus the possibility of

reaching a painful closure, some twenty families refused,

saying: ‘Our relative is alive; we know he is held by the Turks.

We shouted our greetings across the Green Line. So leave us

alone’.

The philosopher Gillian Rose has suggested that in

literature the state’s power is most clearly questioned in the

boundary of the city, an observation that can apply equally to

frontiers: ‘just outside the boundary we find mourning women:

Antigone, burying the body of her fratricidal brother in defiance

of Creon's decree, witnessed by her reluctant sister Ismene, who

urges her to desist; and the wife of Phocion, gathering the ashes

of her disgraced husband, with her trusted woman companion...'

(1996: 35)

The boundaries of the city (or the political unit) are thus

where there is the greatest need for the rhetorical definition of

the self and the other, where identities have to be the most

rigidly expressed. This is the area where Polynices’ body is

displayed as carrion, and thus dehumanised. This is the area

where Greek and Turkish Cypriots put on poster displays

highlighting the monstrosity of the other. Beyond, lies the

monstrous double. In the next section I examine a particular

incident.

STAGING, SIMULATION AND TRANSGRESSION.In this section I examine a specific set of events in August

1996 the anniversary of the second round of the 1974 Turkishinvasion and their representation in the media, when a number ofGreek Cypriots attempted to cross the Green Line. To the GreekCypriots the events were peaceful demonstrations against theTurkish occupation. Turkish Cypriots claim that "thousands ofGreeks and Greek Cypriots armed with iron bars, knives, sticksand stones supported by the Greek soldiers ready for action intheir dug outs attacked the Turkish Cypriot border". 6 To theTurkish Cypriots they were illegal transgressions into theirsovereign territory. During the events two Greek Cypriots werekilled: Tasos Isaak, a refugee, on 10 August beaten to death inthe buffer zone; the second his cousin Solomos Solomou on 14August, when he casually shinned up a flagpole, cigarette inmouth, attempting to pull down the Turkish flag, and was shotsome four times.8 Let us begin with the representation of thefirst killing. Tasos Isaak was caught by the Turkish Cypriotpolice and non-uniformed men (the majority) attempting to crossthe Green Line. Turkish Cypriots consider that beyond the GreenLine lies their state, the TRNC. They thus consider the GreenLine or the Buffer Zone the outer perimeters of their borders.9

6 Turkish Cypriot Network, Voice of Turkish Cypriots. Barnet. December 1996. Issue 10:1. The Grey Wolves have strong informal connections with right wing politicians and the military . They are based in Turkey but maintain cells in Cyprus. 8 According to Greek Cypriots by a Mainland Turk national long settled in Cyprus and a Minister in the TRNC cabinet. This occurred close to a Turkish Cypriot observation post.9 I am using terms such as borders, the TRNC, the Republic of Cyprus, without any parenthesis. I am interested here in demistifying these terms, which can be

Whilst entangled and caught in barbed wire Isaak was repeatedlybeaten with sticks and killed in the space of fifteen seconds.The attack was brutal, disproportionate to the alleged offence,and attracted deserved international condemnation. 10

The events were caught by the media and the film wasrepeatedly shown on Cypriot TV in slow motion. A second set ofimages concentrated on the camera as the substitute for, andstimulus to, the violent act. The then Turkish Cypriot leaderRauf Denktash (a known keen photographer) was also shownphotographing events from a vantage point. 12 The juxtapositionof the repeated raising of sticks on the sequestered body, likethe Rodney King beating, and the seemingly inscrutable image ofDenktash behind a camera had the effect of suggesting not onlythat he was impassive to the events taking place, but alsotransformed its agency. It appeared that the beatings and theshow of force was being staged for him to photograph and record.As Denktash's hobby is photography this was further evidence toGreek Cypriots of his "monstrousness". The structuration wastriangular linking the beatings, the "photographer-orchestrator",and the viewer. To the Greek Cypriots, this was not just amurder, it was a staged murder, and it was staged to furtherfabricate the "falsity" of the Turkish Cypriot state. As Feldmanhas observed for a different context (that of interrogation andtorture), to which it bears some similarity especially in itsapproximation to sacrifice: "the entire action oscillates at theboundaries of spontaneous violence and fabricated performance"(1991: 121). To the Greek Cypriots the transgression was(unfortunate) spontaneous violence and the killing a fabricated

better pursued through the lack of such qualifications. It does not constitute either recognition or denial of the claims of the TRNC, and I hope this paper will contribute towards the demistification of the pernicious rationalisation of violence.10 Including the European Parliament on 19/9/96.12 "The Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Denktash himself was present at the developments watching and photographing the last few moments of the first victim's life". PIO leaflet 139/1996.

performance. To the Turkish Cypriots by contrast thetransgression was fabricated performance, and the killing anunfortunate example of spontaneous violence.

The killing of Isaak (and Solomou) can be seen aslegitimation rituals of the state. Through the sacrifices ofIsaak and Solomou, political authority constituted itself aslegitimate through its generation of a supremely"illegitimate/immoral" act. For the Turkish Cypriots the GreenLine is the border of their state, the TRNC. In the vocabularyof justification provided by the discourses of the state ittherefore had to be "protected" from transgressions, physical,symbolic and somatic. The Greek Cypriots interpreted that sameviolence as the lack of order, even anti-order, and hencedelegitimized the TRNC whilst legitimating the Republic. For theTurkish Cypriot political leadership, transgression quatransgression generated both value of the state (and of the orderthat the state as the TRNC claimed to protect in its territorialjurisdictions), and the state of values (peace, and freedom fromattacks from Greek Cypriots) through which the state as TRNClegitimated its existence. As Girard has observed "the more atragic conflict is prolonged, the more likely it is to culminatein a violent mimesis; the resemblance between the combatantsgrows ever stronger until each represents a mirror image of theother" (1988: 47).

We can now see the killings of Isaak and Solomou as a doublesacrifice. From the perspective of the Greek Cypriots it was anunambiguous sacrifice of two young men and the "animality" ofthe Turkish Cypriot forces of law and order that were indicted.Isaak and Solomou were buried with state honours as iromartyres-hero martyrs. Killing created a victim; victimage createdmartyrdom. Yet the media cascade of images of the crowd ashunting pack and Denktash as photographer-orchestrator made itappear to Greek Cypriots as a staged killing and thus pre-figuredIsaak as a selected (not post-facto) sacrificial victim. Itshored up and reenforced the lines of separation between the two

communities, and was thus a rite of separation through a singlecataclysmic aggregation.

For the Turkish Cypriots the meanings were different. Thisappeared as an attack by the most unruly elements of GreekCypriot society dedicated to their destruction. Transgressionwas perceived as a polluting presence, and directed against theTurkish flag. Defilement of, and by, the body becomes thelanguage of transgression and response. Tansu Ciller, theTurkish Prime Minister, threatened to cut off the hand of anyonewho desecrated the Turkish flag. As Loizos (1988) has pointedout, defilement of the ethnic other through the selectivedebasement of valued symbols and the body (such as exposinggenitals) is common practice. The seeming casualness with whichSolomou shinned up the flagpole, cigarette in mouth, travestiedthe Turkish flag even more than the actual attempt to pull itdown. Yet whilst the Turkish Cypriot leadership was keen todemonstrate that the TRNC was a state and had all theparaphernalia of a state (borders), it was the Turkish, not theTurkish Cypriot TRNC flag Solomou attempted to pull down. ToGreek Cypriots that very nonchalance turned him into a hero, amodern kamikaze. But by shooting a man with a cigarette in hismouth, hardly a physically hostile stance, the Turkishauthorities turned Solomou into a victim, and thus encouraged aslippage into the interpretation of the event as murder - aposition adopted by the Greek Cypriot authorities.

Official Turkish Cypriot material presented the events as an"attack on our borders", that such individuals were "hooligans",and that the transgressions were the initial steps towardshoisting the Greek flag in northern Cyprus.13 The latter wasclearly unrealisable given the heavy presence of Turkish troops.

The events of August 1996 could not have been other thanhighly "symbolic". It was thus almost "necessary" for the TRNC

13 Turkish Cypriot Network News, September 1996, Issue 7.

to demonstrate to the Greek Cypriots, and to the wider world,that it was a genuine state, not just a psevdo-kratos . It was notthe transgressions as such that led to the killings. It was the killings that made(demiurged) the transgressions. It was, in short, violence as a mutuallyreinforcing system of signs that conjured up the legitimation of theTRNC. Violence (the manufacture of a victim) became a sign oftransgression-response, generating its own discourse. It wasthrough the sign of violence that statehood conjured itself.Rather than seeing the causation as:

Transgression-------Violence---------Sovereigntywe should see it as:Victim Selection through Violence = Transgression-------Sovereignty

Such cases enable us to appreciate how the classicRadcliffe-Brownian and Weberian definition of the state as theupholder of the social order through its monopoly of violence areprofoundly dissatisfactory and should be reversed. Rather, thepower system that claimed statehood conjured itself as theupholder of violence orchestrating social disorder to claim itsmonopoly of the social order. The state was conjured not so muchthrough imposing order, but rather through a killing thatscripted a transgression, signifying a sovereignty to be"protected" against those very transgressions.

Some ironies further suggested fabrication and we can nowappreciate how the gaze has been directed and structured in thisdivided island. Although the Turkish Cypriot political leadershipclaimed that the demonstrations took place at the borders of theTRNC, their delineation is extremely vague for two reasons.First, they are not recognized by the Greek Cypriots the mostimportant party, and second they have been also vague in theirgeographical delineation. The border, in short, has been more amental social construct realised through doing and simulation,and a function of relations between the two communities, than astrictly defined geographic one. The paradox is that not only is

the general strip across the island that constitutes the GreenLine highly mapped out and dangerous (because of mines and armedsoldiers), it has also been subject to intense scrutiny by themilitary gazing through high magnitude devices, a veritablepanopticon. The Green Line has been structured in terms of whatcan and what should not be seen, and by seen one meansphotographed. Indeed all the Green Line has been intended to beseen, and seen as not intended to be seen. Along it at specific points aresigns forbidding photography. As this is of the most highlyphotographed, surveilled, and militarised borders in the worldwith specially constructed photographic vantage points,photographic displays and poster campaigns, it would be bizarreto accept this as simply a case of some areas being viewable andothers concealed from view for "practical", "military" purposes.Given the intense, twenty-four hour surveillance, secrecy isunlikely to be sustainable for long. Rather, some sites havebeen constructed as the touristic equivalent of "back regions" tobe apparently hidden from view, and others as "front regions"(MacCannell 1992). Except that some sites are fabricated to bedemanding a concealment from the seemingly aggressiveintrusiveness of photography. Such signs create a site, markingit out as significant territory to be "defended", even if theymay contain no military secrets, but attracting militaryattention towards them away from other (perhaps moreunadvertised militarised) areas.

Confrontational borders, then, require a whole infrastructure offraming, a mise-en-scene, a choreographing of participants, and adissimulation of agency. Flags along the Green Line are not somuch nationalist markers of identity, important though thisindubitably is. Rather, they become the focus of the photographicgaze, struggling to mark out borders of territories in a highlycontentious situation, where even the participants are uncertainabout the exact contours of such borders or boundaries, or evenhow they should respond to transgressions. Flags as photographedsites become metonyms for territory, and thus loci for deadly

rituals conjured by power articulations seeking legitimationthrough the simulacrum of the state ratified through responsesto transgressions against "sovereignty". We can therefore betterunderstand the complex nature of the fabrication involved. Thedemonstrations took place contiguous to the TRNC's claimedborder. This border is vague given that it has never beennegotiated and has been refused negotiation or recognition by themost significant party, the Republic of Cyprus. It is not so much thatthe border is not recognised, it is that by being not recognised the borders have to bevague in practice. To escape from that vagueness which is inimical tostatehood, territory and sovereignty have to be either (i)conjured through actions like killings that invest space with theassociation sacrifice-transgression and re-choreograph thealignment of forces facing each other, and/or (ii) semanticallyshifted to other markers such as the flag as metonym ofterritorial jurisdiction. This is much more specific. Yet theflag was not the TRNC flag but the Turkish flag. The tearing-downof the Turkish flag was indeed aim of the demonstrators. Bothsides correctly read each others' intentions yet dissimulatedtheir ex-post ante actions. Ironically, an offence against theTurkish flag became an attack on the sovereignty of the TRNCwhich claims recognition as a separate sovereign state. Finallyif the transgressions took place, this still involved the takingof two lives. Yet there were no judicial investigations or legalprocedures followed by the organs of the TRNC after the deaths,such as an inquest. It is worthwhile noting that the police ofthe TRNC has operated under the control of, and is subject to,the Turkish military.

The loss of two lives can therefore be seen as a sacrificeupholding an ideology of a unitary nation state as the onlyconceivable, practicable and realizable form of politicalorganization in Cyprus. Statehood qua nation-statehood waslegitimated through its refraction into a manicheanalterity/splitting. In Cyprus the state emerged as the demiurgeof order through disorder. Violence was therefore not anaccidental by-product of the state to establish civil order, its

goal. Rather, violence was the supremely constitutive act throughwhich the state legitimated itself as the only imaginablepolitical fantasy as national state. The state constituted itselfthrough nationalism, and nationalism imagined and fanstasiseditself through the state.

THE ‘EUROPEANISATION’ OF THE GREEN LINE

The fading posters showing the killing of Tassok Isaak under thecaption: ”Recent Murders of Civilians, Committed by Turkey inCyprus”, still greet visitors to the TRNC from the Republic ofCyprus. But since the opening up of the border in 2004 people onboth sides have been faced with a new set of questions and newdilemmas. To begin with, they had to decide whether to cross ornot. It would appear that this dilemma was experienced to a muchgreater extent by the Greek Cypriots. Some refused to do so,saying that it would either be too painful to see their housesoccupied by others; others claimed that crossing would betantamount to an acceptance of the occupation. But by far themajority of refugees as well as non-refugees have done so. Forthe Greek Cypriot refugees the crossing was akin to a pilgrimage.Lisa Dikomitis has evocatively described the initial excitement.Relations between the ex-owners and the new occupier owners ofrefugee housing was initially cordial and often very emotional.Returning refugees also visited their village chapels, re-sacralising them and holding impromptu rituals. It was clear thatvarious numerous acts, such as collecting water from springs,fruit from their gardens, repainting and restoring even occupiedhousing were expressions of solicitous care. But it is importantto recognize that the motivations and hopes of the Greek andTurkish Cypriots in visiting “the other side” were oftenradically different in some cases, similar in others. For boththe Greek and Turkish Cypriots the opening of the borderinitially appeared as an exciting replay of Berlin 1989, anassociation which various posters and publicity materialdepicting Nicosia as “The Last Divided Capital of Europe” had

primed them to anticipate its resolution along the same lines.But such priming and the pent-up emotions on both sides concealedthe underlying differences from many participants. For the GreekCypriots, the opening of the border represented an attempt torecapture a lost past, to revisit their lost homes, and villages–for it must remembered that their departure in 1974 was sudden,brutal, and unanticipated (including in its consequences) - anddesire for recovery constitutes itself differently when someoneloses something as fundamentally and existentially intimate ashome, village, and world through its being taken away than whenit is voluntarily given up such as with migration which alwayscontains the possibility of return. For some Greek Cypriots thehidden question they dared not articulate too openly was whetherthey would get their own house back. For some, perhaps, returntrips also contained a subconscious and unexpressed desire atrecovery, betrayed by numerous slips to demonstrate to themselves(and to others) that the Turkish occupation and the resettlementof Anatolian Turks, was a catastrophe for the north, that theirex-homes had deteriorated and therefore undeserving of thecurrent occupants.

For the Turkish Cypriots, crossing the border represented adesire and an opportunity to break out of the isolation whichultra-right nationalists and Turkey had imposed, as well asperhaps to test Greek Cypriot rhetoric that both communities had“got on like brothers in the past” - and which theirauthoritarian and politically corrupt regime had consistentlynegated. The overwhelming Turkish Cypriot vote in favour of theAnnan Plan was also fuelled by their desire to enter the EuropeanUnion, which many commentators (such as Bryant) have not takenfully into account. The motives on both sides were thus equallycomplex and not just responses to the specific provisions of theAnnan Plan. Nor can the voting results be seen merely as acorrect reflection of the desire (and preparedness) of the twocommunities for convivienza. The situation is much more complex.

The opening of the border has been a mixed blessing in theabsence of a comprehensive settlement, and the public display ofsocial sentiments precipitated by the referendum. Because theeconomy in the north was, and is, much less developed than in theRepublic, the border opening encouraged Greek Cypriots to seekout labour services cheaper in the north, to visit the casinos,and dine in Kyrenia; Turkish Cypriots shop for consumer goods inthe south’s well-stocked supermarkets, as well as to seekemployment in construction sites. According to reports by myresearch student, Lisa Dikomitis, relations between visitingGreek Cypriots and their Turkish Cypriot occupiers of their homeshave been influenced by this uncertainty. Not unnaturally,Turkish Cypriots began to feel uncertain in interpreting thevisits of Greek Cypriot owners of their property. They can neverbe sure whether such visits are manifestations of a puresentimental disinterested attachment, or a covert pressure forthem to leave, or even an eying of a property’s potential in theevent of a settlement. The situation has been compounded by theopening of lawsuits for the recovery of property. Greek Cypriotscould visit their properties in the north, and inform themselvesof their current occupiers. Some of these are expatriates,primarily British and to a much lesser extent northern Europeans,who took advantage of depressed property prices in the north andthe prevailing political uncertainty between 1974 and 2004, topurchase properties at rock bottom prices. A British couple, theOrams, were taken to court in the Republic by a Greek Cypriot forhaving illegally purchased, occupied, and knocked down part ofhis property. They somewhat disingenuously claimed ignorance inspite of the well-publicized dangers and advice available fromthe British Foreign Office not to purchase Greek Cypriot propertyin the north. The High Court in the Republic found for the GreekCypriot owner and the Orams were ordered to return their propertyto the former. As Cyprus is now part of the EU, a Cypriot courtorder is enforceable against their property in the UK. It is hardnot to sympathise with Greek Cypriot rancour that wealthynorthern Europeans mercenarily speculated with dispossessed

property and took advantage of other peoples’ misfortunes, thenationals of the country they live in. Although Turkish Cypriotsclaim that the embargo had a massive isolating impact on theireconomy, which is correct, it would be disingenuous to take thisat face value in legitimising the wholesale expropriation ofGreek Cypriot properties for sale as holiday homes to foreigners,as some observers seem to suggest. These sales were organizedwith the connivance of highly placed officials in the TRNC andtheir cronies, and benefited developers not the mass of TurkishCypriots.

More ethically and politically problematical has been the widerramifications for property relations between the refugees (bothGreek and Turkish) and the settlers. A Turkish Cypriot took theCyprus government’s assertion that Turkish Cypriots were notdispossessed of their properties in the south to launch a claimfor his property. After the required residency of six months inthe Republic he instituted court proceedings for recovery of hisproperty. Following a long delay the court in the Republic foundfor the plaintiff, and the Greek Cypriot refugee residents of hisproperty had to vacate it- a development which severely alarmedmany Greek Cypriot refugees who feared the prospect of beingdispossessed twice over: in the north in 1974 and now in thesouth. It is the credit of the Republic’s legal system that ittook what many had assumed was government rhetoric at its wordand enforced the law. Similar moves have not yet taken place inthe TRNC, which never formally recognized Greek Cypriot claims totheir property, asserting that the 1976 population swap-over wasalso accompanied by a generic de facto exchange of properties.

There is thus in Cyprus a curious interplay between rhetoric andlaw which sit uneasily with each other. Whilst Greek Cypriotauthorities have erected a scaffolding which enables theindividual pursuit of property claims, and thus possiblycomplicating the achievement of a comprehensive settlement, itcould be argued that it cannot curtail individual rights to

redress in a democracy, whoever makes them – a condition thathas not been effectively realised in the TRNC, where GreekCypriot refugees have no legal redress to recover their propertyas yet. And the pursuit of these rights in the Republic cuts bothways. Whilst internally politically uncomfortable, suchjudgements uphold the Republic’s claim that it follows Europeanlaw in respecting individual property rights irrespective ofethnicity. Whether this is a precedent (as Greek Cypriot refugeesfear) or a particular case (as the Government has suggested inorder to allay refugee fears), remains to be seen.

If the confrontational frontier in Cyprus has largelydisappeared, suspicion and fear still lurk below the surface,ready to re-emerge. The Republic of Cyprus now pursues itsnational interests as a member of the EU, and it is also expectedto fulfil its EU obligations as a nation state. This can createtensions. For example, its national interests insisted that EUaid of 259 million euros (designed to reward the Turkish Cypriotsfor their ‘yes’ vote) should not result in the lifting of theembargo, and all trade with the EU be pursued through GreekCypriot, not Turkish Cypriot, ports. The Republic insisted thatalthough the internationally recognized state, it could notensure compliance to EU regulations in the north. This createdsome conflict with other members of the EU, notably Britain.Clearly its interpretation of its national interests conflictedwith the sentiments of the EU Commission. On the other hand,because Turkey does not recognize the Republic as the legitimategovernment of Cyprus, EU wide problems are created. Illegalimmigrants from third countries enter the Republic into the TRNC,having arrived via Turkey. In 2005, 5,160 illegal entries intothe Republic from the TRNC were recorded, but because of Turkey’snon-recognition of Cyprus, there is no mechanism to return them.Cyprus tops the EU per capita league of asylum seekers, a factthat can only be attributed to its anomalous and porous border.The Government’s strategy is therefore to concentrate onidentifying Turkey as a stumbling block to a settlement, and to

emphasise the legal anomaly of the TRNC and the Turkishoccupation as a European problem, not merely a Cypriot one. The crossings at the Green Line and elsewhere are still placeswhere the legitimacy of the state has to be reinforced throughthe choreography of division and the semiotics of illegality –except that now it has a ‘European dimension’. Not all serviceshave been liberalised across the Green Line, and people crossing(i.e. returning) to the Greek side have been subjected tosearches to ensure that they do not import goods above a certainvalue, smuggle people in, or tank their cars with cheaper petrolfrom the north. The key difference is that these numerousbureaucratically imposed petty actions are directed partlyagainst its own Greek Cypriot citizens, thus highlighting the gapbetween individual self-interest and collective ethnic interest.A strict application of the regulations risks alienating GreekCypriots, quite apart from provoking transgression of Europeanconventions. Other actions (such as to check for illegalimmigrants) are clearly legitimate from an EU perspective, butcan equally be interpreted as victimising Turkish Cypriots whooften bear the brunt of these checks. So these administrativechecks are applied more or less arbitrarily as the semiotics ofdivision. Arbitrary searches of cars and the transgressions theybring to light are conjured to uphold awareness of the norm, giveit currency in peoples’ consciousness, in the stories that peoplerecount, and in the numerous, anticipatory, self-imposedcurtailing acts and decisions affecting normal behaviour when onthe Turkish side, thus imprinting through practice the anomaly ofthe current political situation. The pays legal has to be separatedfrom the pays reel.

The paradoxical outcomes of the referendum over the Annan Plancan perhaps be approached in terms of what Taussig called thepublic secret. Various reasons have been offered to explain thisoutcome (see ), but here I should like to offer acomplementary, additional, explanation. Since 1974, the Greek

Cypriots have deceived themselves not just that they “got on likebrothers with the Turkish Cypriots” (and were therefore blind toTurkish Cypriot real experiences in the period 1963-74), but thatthey could return to the situation ex post ante, as if nothingchanged. Faced with the devastation wrought by the Turkishinvasion, they had to pull themselves up by their socks and builta successful thriving economy and democratic society in theabsence of Turkish Cypriots. This was no mean achievement. TheTurkish Cypriots, by contrast, thought that with protection fromTurkey they would survive and thrive. They discovered that theireconomy has been in freefall, heavily dependent on massiveinjections from Turkey, and that for some thirty years they wererun by crony elites, rife with corruption and intimidation. Thereferendum results highlighted to both groups that they weregrievously mistaken in their official rhetorics and their abilityor willingness to realise them. By voting against the Plan, theGreek Cypriots indicated that, in contrast to their rhetoricalassertions, they were not prepared to make the necessarycompromises required to implement a settlement (or at least, theparticular compromises required by this specific plan). Byvoting for the Plan, the Turkish Cypriots have been obliged toadmit that their bid for independent statehood was flawed, thatturning their backs on the Greek Cypriots was a mistake, thattheir thraldom to Turkey was an economic, social, and politicalliability, and that the political and economic benefits accruingfrom rejoining an economically successful and politicallyaccountable state can only be achieved if they are prepared tomake serious compromises in the re-allocation of resourcesobtained through force of arms and war plunder. The TurkishCypriots have to be honest and admit that changing the facts onthe ground through the massive expropriation and dispossession ofGreek Cypriot properties, quite apart from the thorny issue ofthe settlers, was a cynical exercise which needs to be seriouslyredressed. The Greek Cypriots, by contrast, have to recognizethat the Republic of Cyprus belongs to both Greeks and Turksalike, and that the benefits of nationality and EU membership

cannot be used as both a carrot and a stick to cower the TurkishCypriots into submission. CONCLUSIONThe border in Cyprus is still an area of major zone of tension,not just within the country itself, but also in terms of itsimplications of Europe’s relations with Turkey. Turkey’s progresstowards EU membership is linked to progress on the Cyprus issue.In this chapter I have tried to trace different phases in theconstitution of the border between the Republic of Cyprus and theTRNC/Turkey from one of hostile confrontation to one marked bythe semiotics of division through arbitrary bureaucratic control.The issue of legality is still an important one. Whereaspreviously the primary issue was one where the TRNC attempted todemonstrate to the Republic of Cyprus that it had borders andconstituted a state, this was a simulacrum. Nothing good came outof the attempted crossings in 1996. The Greek Cypriots obtainedtwo martyrs, which merely confirmed to them the “barbarism” ofthe occupying Turkish forces. The Turkish Cypriots obtained apyrrhic victory that highlighted the charade that states are notbuilt through the theatrical defence of borders, but through dueprocesses of law and justice. In the immediately contemporaryperiod, the Turkish Cypriots appear less interested in claimingan internationally recognized state but rather in participatingin the benefits that EU membership can bring through a power-sharing accommodation with the Greek Cypriots.

The Green Line in Cyprus thus derives its significance from twointerrelated facts. First, it constitutes the borders of a nationstate within the EU, part of whose population live beyond it in acontiguous territory over which its EU member state has no de factolegal and practical remit. In terms of the EU, the border is ananomalous irritant. It marks the legal borders of the EU,although the benefits and responsibilities of EU membershipshould extend beyond it, and the EU through both the Commissionand the Council of Ministers has to deal with this problem

through the cooperation of Cyprus as a full EU member. Theborder also represents a major hurdle in the already complex EU-Turkish relationship. It is therefore hardly surprising that theborder is characterised by ambiguity and is subject to complexforces. I have suggested that borders require a mise-en-scene and achoreography. In the contemporary situation, it is sometimesdifficult for the participants to decipher the actions of eachother and their motives, because there are alternative readings.Greek Cypriot officials can act in terms of enforcing EU laws andregulations, but these very actions can be interpreted by theTurkish Cypriots as an attempt at their exclusion. Alternatively,they can act in a narrow nationalist way but risk alienatingtheir own Greek Cypriot subjects. The benefits of EU membershipcan act as both a stick and a carrot, and this can lead to muchambiguity in interpretation, as well as resentment.

The opening of the border was clearly a welcome development butit is now clear that whilst it has brought people closer it hasalso provided new areas of contention. On the positive side, asWebster (2005) has shown, positive attitudes have grown. On thenegative side, it has raised the thorny question as to whetherthe Green Line is (i) the residual de facto border of the GreekCypriot ethnic group, or (ii) the provisional border of theRepublic some of whose citizens reject its current constitutionalset-up to represent them, or (iii) the provisional border of theEU some of whose citizens live beyond it but with equal rights asthe citizens living within its borders. Because it is all ofthese, its variable interpretations are clearly a function ofdifferent political strategies. Events have changed the politico-ontological and social-definitional status of the border, rendered itmuch more fluid, subject to different actions at the grassroots,policy implementation, and popular interpretation. The previouslypredictable Manichean certainties have given way to an uncertainfield, which politicians and the people could do well to grasp.The moral is that we cannot espouse optimistic anthropologicalreadings of a “common or shared culture” in the Mediterranean as

the only means of transcending difference. A commonanthropological mistake is to assume that political (quanational) differences can be conjured away once these sharedcultures are highlighted. Shared cultural elements can co-existwith deep fears, as Cyprus shows, and we could be accused of atype of cosmopolitan arrogance if we do not take these intoaccount. On the other hand, the political massaging of culturalboundaries is indubitable and sustained through, among otherthings, the choreography of borders. There clearly needs to be apari-passu transformation of both borders and boundaries. As Cyprusshows, social life and events rarely present such optimisticpossibilities. Resolving political differences will not conjureaway fears; nor will politically imposed solutions work, unlesswith popular support. Seen from the south-eastern shores ofEurope, the debate on the future direction for European reform isnot merely whether the Anglo-Saxon model of market-drivenintegration should be pursued versus the Continental dirigistewelfare-state model. It is also how to take into account cultures(meaning, histories, experiences and fears). This was theoriginal political problematic that the EU’s founding fathersaddressed themselves to, and which is perhaps not being fullyappreciated nowadays. The world is a very different place to1955. The EU, now being a supra-national entity, is torn betweentop-down imposed political initiatives and solutions (supportedby the mercenary armies of intellectuals, political scientists,etc.), and popular reactions to these proposals which can bemessy and rejectionist. To tackle the relationship between Europeand the Mediterranean (including the Balkans), it is incumbent onboth the politicians and civil society actors both within the EUand along its shores to address boundaries not just as borders,and borders not just as boundaries.