Narrative, memory and history education in divided Cyprus: a comparison of schoolbooks on the "History of Cyprus".

Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot history schoolbooks adopted a similar model of ethnic nationalism focusing on the suffering of the Self and presenting an essentialist, unchanging view of national identity. However, the new books that recently appeared on the Turkish Cypriot side follow a social-constructivist model of history, which presents nationalism and national identity as emerging under specific historical conditions rather than as given. They avoid homogenizing assumptions by presenting internal differentiations, and indicate instances of internal violence and suffering of others. These changes have significant implications regarding notions of blame and trauma, and allow for identity to emerge as a political choice.

INTRODUCTION

Depending on the sociohistorical context, the goals of history education may range from the inculcation of national identity to the propagation of moral and political positions, the creation of empathy and presentation of diverse viewpoints, or historical analysis and the promotion of critical thinking, among others. (1) However, in many societies, especially those divided through ethnonational conflicts, history is often used to propagate a narrative focusing on the suffering of the nation and to legitimate its political goals. The suffering of others is silenced, their historical existence is questioned, and sociocultural interactions are ignored. This is how the "History of Cyprus" has been presented in history schoolbooks in the two parts of divided Cyprus. However, following the election to power, in the Turkish Cypriot side, of the leftist Republican Turkish Party (CTP) in 2003, it adopted a new approach to history teaching, with the declared aim of developing a culture of peace while highlighting cultural interactions, internal divisions, and discontinuities. This is an interesting development for both theoretical and political reasons. How can a history that includes internal divisions be written, especially a history presenting internal violence within each side, in contrast to standard approaches that depict monolithic constructions of Self and Other, where the Other is always the aggressor? What events, periods, principles and perspectives ignored in the previous approaches are highlighted now? Can a meaningful story be constructed from the perspective of more than one protagonist?

This article moves beyond issues of selective memory, incorporating a discussion of narrative aspects of history. The standard nationalist narrative posits the nation as a homogeneous primordial entity, while this new approach significantly traces the emergence of national identity in Cyprus during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries according to a social-constructivist paradigm. (2) The latter model has interesting implications for the notions of memory and trauma, blame and retribution, as well as for the possibility of making choices regarding political allegiance in the present. In contrast, the standard model of history education employed in both parts of Cyprus has been obsessively pursuing what has been called an "identification stance," that is, "stories of national origins and historic turning points [that] can create a sense of group membership and allegiance, and historic societal achievements [that] can be used to justify contemporary social arrangements or political actions." (3) This entails the use of a narrative form whereby a single actor, the nation, is present from beginning to end as the story's protagonist with which students are called upon to identify in all its glory or suffering. As will be more fully argued in the conclusion, this approach denies the possibility of choosing which political community one can belong to in the present. (4)

The recent history of Cyprus has been marked by multiple conflicts which provide the sociopolitical context within which the books under discussion were produced. A basic outline of the political history of the recent period, highly contested though it is, is necessary as background. A word of caution regarding the limitations and methodology of this study is equally necessary. Discussing the history of Cyprus is akin to stepping into a political and academic minefield, given that most works were written by Greek Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot, Greek, Turkish or British authors in periods of intense violence. Most authors, implicitly or explicitly, used history for the legitimation of their side's political objectives and the rejection of others'. (5) That I am not a historian but a Greek Cypriot social anthropologist poses additional challenges. In this article, I employ a comparative approach as a critical device of defamiliarization, and a theoretical discussion in order to indicate the structural problems and limitations of the historical narratives presented in history books by focusing on the underlying ideological principles guiding their representations of history. For the analysis of the history books, I employ UNESCO's handbook setting out guidelines for textbook research, which stress the importance of qualitative analysis in order to "reveal underlying assumptions." (6) For this reason, this study focuses more on books that present the whole of history from "beginning" to "end," since this enables examination of (the whole) narrative, the key analytical tool employed here. (7) The key principles of analysis adopted from the UNESCO handbook involve the examination of terms, context and boundaries; the representation of group identity; continuity, legitimacy and exclusion; and history's characters/ protagonists. (8)

Three centuries of Ottoman Rule in Cyprus were succeeded by British colonialism in 1878. The twentieth century witnessed the gradual rise first of Greek nationalism and later of Turkish nationalism, with Greek Cypriots supporting enosis, the union of Cyprus with Greece, and Turkish Cypriots demanding taksim, the partition of Cyprus. From 1955 the Greek Cypriot struggle was led by an armed organization called EOKA (Ethniki Organosi Kyprion Agoniston [National Organization of Cypriot Fighters]), and in 1958 Turkish Cypriots set up their own armed group called TMT (Turk Mukavemet Teskilati [Turkish Resistance Organization]). In 1960, Cyprus became an independent state, the Republic of Cyprus, with a population of 80 percent Greek Cypriots and 18 percent Turkish Cypriots, an outcome that frustrated both communities' political goals. Both ethnic groups continued to pursue their separate objectives, and in 1963 interethnic fighting broke out in Cyprus. This continued intermittently until 1967, with Turkish Cypriots bearing the heavier cost in terms of casualties and around a fifth of their population being displaced. With the rise to power in Greece of a military junta, the Greek Cypriot leadership gradually edged away from union with Greece and sought instead to preserve the independence of Cyprus, in the face of attempts by Athens to dictate politics, and to solve the intercommunal dispute. While armed confrontations between Turkish and Greek Cypriots ceased after 1967, a new conflict developed, this time among Greek Cypriots. With the support of the Greek junta, a small group of right-wing extremists calling itself EOKA B staged a coup in 1974 against the island's president, Archbishop Makarios, in order to bring about union. This led to a military intervention by Turkey, resulting in the division of the island, followed by population displacements of most Greek Cypriots to the south and Turkish Cypriots northwards. Greek Cypriots suffered most in terms

of people killed, missing and all other social costs of dislocation, with around one-third of a total of 600,000 Greek Cypriots displaced to the southern side. Around 45,000 Turkish Cypriots were also displaced to the northern side. In 1983, the Turkish Cypriot authorities unilaterally declared the establishment of their own ...