For Whom do the Jasmins Smell?

For Whom do the Jasmins Smell?An Analysis of Alev Alatlı’s Yaseminler tüter mi, hala?

I.

Alev Alatlı’s Yaseminler tüter mi, hala?[1] has received the widespread attention of the Turkish intelligentsia during the last decades. At a basic level the text narrates the story of a Greek Cypriot woman, who faces tremendous difficulties in her life, and who is pushed around different communities and countries. At another level, however, the text can be interpreted in a different way, which can reveal clues about the state and attitudes of the Turkish society. The theories of Slavoj Zizek, an interpreter of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, opens up new possibilities for the critical reader in explaining the appeal of the text to Turkish readers. While the appeal of the Mediterranean in Western literature has been widely discussed, up until now little analysis has been done on the attraction of this area for the Turkish intellectuals. A critical reading of Alatlı’s text reveals that the Turkish intellectual elites seem to be imitating the dynamics of construction of Mediterranean fantasies in the West, and using them to generate their own fantasies. This paper will attempt to interpret Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? in the context of Zizek’s theory in order to shed a light to the complex system that underlies the attitudes of the Turkish intelligentsia towards the Mediterranean in general, and Cyprus in particular.

Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? is set in Cyprus and narrates the story of Eleni Klo Morias, a girl born to a poor family in a village far from the major towns of Cyprus. The narration is set in the background of armed struggle, initially between the Greek Cypriots and the British, and later between the former and the Turkish Cypriots. Eleni, at a very young age, is given to an upper class Greek-Cypriot family by her father, with the hope of a more secure future for her. She never manages to adapt to her new family, and her presence with them ends in a turbulent way, after being raped by the husband of the couple who had adopted her. Realising what happened, the wife ensures that Eleni is sent back. However, Eleni’s family blames her for the incident, and rather than having a disgraceful child back, they send her to her aunt Ksenya, who lives in Lefkoşa. While living with her unwelcoming and unloving aunt, Eleni gets to know Arif Tahsin, a Turkish Cypriot mechanic, and eventually marries him, changing her religion and community, and coming to be known as Naciye Arif. Naciye becomes a good wife for Arif, a good mother for the four children she gives birth to, and a good daughter-in-law for Arif’s mother. On the fifth year of her marriage, an event changes her life: in order to help solve a problem between a neighbour and her fiance, she goes to a hotel where Turkish soldiers were having a party, and this gives rise to the gossip that she is having affairs with them. The conservative Turkish Cypriot community immediately condemns her, and despite all his love and the efforts of close relatives to reconcile Naciye and himself, Arif throws her out of their home. Not knowing where to turn to, Naciye decides to seek refuge in her original community. She goes to the Greek Cypriot man who raped her, and he, under the influence of a feeling of guilt, finds her a job with an English family. Eventually, after this English family leaves Cyprus, she settles in Athens. After an initial period of hardship and loneliness, she comes to make friends and her new social circle arranges for her to get married to a Greek man. In the beginning their togetherness is a period of bliss, but it is finally destroyed by a man who recognises Eleni / Naciye, and tells her husband about her concealed past of having married a Turk. The text ends with the dramatic scene of her murder, where her husband kills all the personalities harboured in her body: the Christian, the Muslim, the Greek, the Turk, the woman, the mother.

The narration in Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? is complex, and allows an interpretation at many different levels in the context of personal and social psychology.[2] Slavoj Zizek, in The Sublime Object of Ideology[3] outlines the theory of Lacan, who illustrates through his graph of desire (SOI, 111) that personal or social systems are always incomplete. Regardless of all claims of consistency and efficiency, in any system there is “a certain leftover” and “there always remains a certain gap” (SOI, 111). Lacan argues that this gap in the symbolic order (which he calls ‘the big Other’) gives rise to the question of “Che vuoi?”: ‘What does he want from me?’ The individuals cannot understand what the symbolic order wants from them, and as a result societies resort to creation of fantasies to deal with this discomfort. In other words, individuals or societies try to complete the gap in the symbolic order through the creation of fantasy, which “is an answer to this ‘Che vuoi?’; it is an attempt to fill out the gap of the question with an answer” (114).

The incompleteness of the symbolic order confuses the individual about the desire of the other, about what the symbolic order wants form him / her. Fantasy appears to be the solution:

The crucial point that must be made here on a theoretical level is that fantasy functions as a construction, as an imaginary scenario filling out the void, the opening of the desire of the Other: by giving us a definite answer to the question ‘What does the Other want?’, it enables us to evade the unbearable deadlock in which the Other wants something from us, but we are at the same time incapable of translating this desire of the Other into a positive interpellation, into a mandate with which to identify. (SOI, 114 – 115)

Zizek’s theory provides a useful context for the interpretation of Yaseminler. In the text, Cypriots appear as odd characters that are hard to understand. The question of the desire of Cypriots poses a threat to Turkish society, which creates a fantasy in order to deal with the troubling confusion. Zizek explains how on the one hand the fantasy provides a solution to Che vuoi?, and on the other it sets the frame for our desires.
Fantasy appears, then, as an answer to ‘Che vuoi?’, to the unbearable enigma of the desire of the Other, of the lack in the Other; but it is at the same time fantasy itself which, so to speak, provides the coordinates of our desire -- which constructs the frame enabling us to desire something. (SOI, 118)

Zizek gives the example of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window where the window, through which the disabled main character of the film views the world, becomes his “fantasy-space” (SOI, 119). In the context of Yaseminler , and also of Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons, the island of Cyprus can be seen as a fantasy frame for Turkish and Western intellectuals. An island, with its clearly defined geographic limits, becomes an ideal space for fantasy. In her text, Alatlı constructs within this space a fantasy about Cyprus and Cypriots.

While Cyprus and Cypriots are made fantasy-objects, the approach is not necessarily sympathetic. One can detect a condescending attitude towards the Cypriots in the text. Zizek argues in Tarrying With the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology[4] that such attitudes can be rooted in an anger towards the other for stealing one’s “enjoyment.”

What is . . . at stake in ethnic tensions is always the possession of the national Thing. We always impute to the ‘other’ an excessive enjoyment: he wants to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our way of life) and / or he has access to some secret, perverse enjoyment. In short, what really bothers us about the ‘other’ is the peculiar way he organizes his enjoyment, precisely the surplus, the ‘excess’ that pertains to this way: the smell of ‘their’ food, ‘their’ noisy songs and dances, ‘their’ strange manners, ‘their’ attitude to work. (TN, 202 – 203, italics added)

Zizek uses Lacan’s thesis that “enjoyment is ultimately always enjoyment of the Other, i.e., enjoyment supposed, imputed to the Other,” and that, conversely “the hatred of the Other’s enjoyment is always the hatred of one’s own enjoyment” (TN, 206) and develops the concept of “theft of enjoyment” (TN, 206) as a factor that underlies fantasies. It will be argued below that such an attitude is sensed in Yaseminler, where the oddities of Cypriots are emphasised.

The theory of Zizek can also be used to interpret the Turkish social context that needs and produces Mediterranean fantasies. Lacanian theory recognises that the big other, the symbolic order, is impossible, that it cannot be consistent, that it has a lack. According to Lacan “there is always a leftover which opens the space for desire and makes the Other (the symbolic order) inconsistent, with fantasy as an attempt to overcome, to conceal this inconsistency, this gap in the other” (SOI, 124). Fantasy, then, functions to conceal the inconsistency of the symbolic order:

Fantasy conceals the fact that the Other, the symbolic order, is structured around some traumatic impossibility, around something which cannot be symbolized – i.e. the real of jouissance. [. . .] ‘beyond fantasy’ there is no yearning or some kindred sublime phenomenon, ‘beyond fantasy’ we find only drive[.](SOI, 123 – 124)

In this context, it can be argued that the reason that underlies the creation of Mediterranean fantasies in Turkey is the recognition of a certain lack in the symbolic order. The recent appeal of Mediterranean fantasies in Turkey can be attributed to a realisation that the system set by the Republic of Turkey, which aims at westernising the Turkish citizens, is not working; i.e. that it has a lack. One of the main principles of Kemalists who established the Republic of Turkey was ‘westernisation’. Through the founding of modern Turkey, the existing sympathies of the Turkish elites towards the West became institutionalised within the state structure, and the new Turkish state gave rise to an intellectual climate where the norms and values of the West were seen as the desirable ones. So strong was this attitude that repeated humiliations of Turkey in the Western-dominated international political arena and the inhumane treatment of Turks in Europe did not lead the Turkish intellectuals to alter their position vis-à-vis the West. The frequent and clear pronouncements by leading European politicians and institutions in recent years, that Turkey is not and cannot be a part of Europe, seem to have been a blow to the Turkish intelligentsia, which has been experiencing a one-sided love affair with the West for over 150 years.[5] It was in this context that the notion of Akdenizlilik, “Mediterraneanness”, was created. Claiming to be a part of the Mediterranean geography, and constructing a ‘Mediterranean Identity’ appeared to the Turkish intellectuals as the second best alternative to being Europeans. In other words, the western-oriented Turkish intelligentsia, which has been struggling with an identity crisis, found a solution in the Mediterranean: ‘if we cannot be Europeans, perhaps we can be ‘Mediterraneans’’ seems to be one of the most popular intellectual positions in the last decade. ‘The Mediterranean’, however, is politically and culturally more ill-defined a concept than, for example, ‘Europe.’ The shores of the Mediterranean Sea harbour several distinct cultures, languages, religions, and ethnicities, and this area has not been culturally and politically unified since the times of the Roman Empire. It appears that the intellectual weakness of an identity constructed around the Mediterranean Sea did not discourage the Turkish intellectuals. The fact that the desired West did not desire the Turks back revealed to the latter a lack in their symbolic order. At another level, the hostile attitude of Europe towards Turkey created a perception of a lack in the European symbolic order, and confronted them with a Che vuoi?: we love Europe and we want to become a part of it, yet it does not want us; What does Europe want from us?

It follows from Zizek’s arguments that the gap had to be filled with a fantasy. While Turks who come from a more conservative background chose to create fantasies of ‘Islamic state’, or ‘unification of all Turkic peoples’, many of those who were educated in a Western or Western-oriented context, chose to hold on to Akdenizlilik as a last resort. After this ‘indirect route’ to becoming a Westerner was discovered in the beginning of 1990s, it was wholeheartedly embraced by many Turkish intellectuals. Poets from the heart of Anatolia, who never wrote about the sea before, started soul searching in the Mediterranean.[6] In this context, Belge Yayınları, a publishing company, started a series called ‘Marenostrum’, which focused on translating western books about the Mediterranean. The publishers were clear about their intentions: the Mediterranean belonged to the Turks as well as others, and the Turks belonged there; the Turks could also proudly say that the Mediterranean was ‘mare nostrum’ – our sea. Such ideas that are attached to the translations of books on the Mediterranean in this series, clearly indicate the political motive of the publishing company.

The ‘Marenostrum’ series appears as an example of the creation of a Mediterranean fantasy by the Turkish intelligentsia. There is, however, very little that is original in this effort: while there are a couple of insignificant works in Turkish, most books published are translations of Western works. What seems to be happening is the appropriation of the Mediterranean fantasy of Western literature, by the Turks. In this process, the publishers appear to be interested only in the construction of a fantasy, and not even in the quality of the translations. One example is the translation of Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons[7] into Turkish as Acı Limonlar.[8] It seems that the translator did not care to do any research on Cyprus and blindly translated Durrell’s text word-by-word, thereby leading to many and serious mistakes. The village in which Durrell lives, Bellapaix, which the Turkish Cypriots calls ‘Bellapayıs’ or ‘Balabayıs’, is translated as “Güzelyurt” (AL, 55), which is another town in North Cyprus. Thus, the publisher and the translator turned Durrell’s work into one that is set in a completely different area. The names of locations appear in the translation as they are found in Durrell’s work and the translator seems not to have bothered to find out what Turkish Cypriots call these places, where they live. “Kyrenia” (AL, 24) is used instead of Girne, “Lapithos” (AL, 4) instead of Lapta, “Paphos” (AL, 28) instead of Baf, “Famagusta” (AL, 103) instead of Mağusa. Nicosia, the capital of the island, is translated as “Lefkoşe” (AL, 137), the way mainland Turks call the city and not as ‘Lefkoşa’ used by Turkish Cypriots. The Cape of Andreas, which lies at the tip of the ‘pan-handle’ of Cyprus is translated as “Koruçam Burnu” (AL, 53), which is the Turkish name of ‘Cape of Kormakiti’, which is on the northern coast of the island. The Turkish-Cypriot village of ‘Gazafana’ (present-day Ozanköy) appears in Durrell’s text in its Greek form ‘Kasaphani’, but the translator of Acı Limonlar refers to it as “Kasaphane” (‘the Butcher’s place!’, AL, 53), presumably because that seemed like a plausible translation to him.[9] In addition to not bothering to look at a map of Cyprus, the publishers and the translator also seem to be indifferent about Turkish Cypriot culture. The Turkish Cypriot sayings that appear in Durrell’s original work have been translated into Turkish from English, leading to absurd results. One example is the Turkish Cypriot song in Bitter Lemons (BL, 28), which is translated word-by-word:

Kyrenia’ya gelirseniz
Surlardan içeri girmeyin.
Surlardan içeri girerseniz
Uzun süre kalmayın,
Uzun süre kalırsanız
Evlenmeyin
Evlenirseniz
Çocuk yapmayın. (AL, 24)

There are various versions of this Turkish Cypriot folk song, but the one closest to Durrell’s version runs:

Girne
İçine girme
Girersen eylenme
Eylenirsen evlenme
Evlenirsen döllenme
Döllenirsen çocuk etme
Çocuk edersen evlendirme.

This carelessness and indifference indicate a lack of interest towards the community the translated work attempts to describe. However, at another level, there is no need for any particular attention, for the translation functions to contribute to the construction of a fantasy. It is enough that Bitter Lemons, a prime example a Mediterranean fantasy written by a westerner, is translated into Turkish. The goal of the translation is not to find out the ‘reality’ about the Mediterranean, but to construct a fantasy that will make the Turkish readers more comfortable.

The appropriation of concepts from the West, however, does not remain a passive act. As it will be discussed below, Yaseminler adopts the attitude of Durrell towards the Greek Cypriot community, on which he focuses, and uses it in relation to the Turkish Cypriots. In this context, we have a double-fantasy that is functioning. At one level the fantastic image of the West and the desire to become a part of that fantasy leads the Turkish intellectuals to embrace Western culture, with all its prejudices and biases. At another level, the Western tradition of creating fantasies about the Mediterranean is used to create a fantasy for the Turks. Cyprus proves to be a convenient place for the setting of such a fantasy, as it is the only Mediterranean island that has a sizeable Turkish community, to which, at a basic level, Turkish readers could relate. It is interesting to note that this work was initially published in 1984, when the concept of Akdenizlilik was not as strong among the Turkish intelligentsia. It was ‘rediscovered’ in the early 1990s, and the book was reprinted three times between 1992 and 1995. This sudden interest in a long-forgotten work seems to be the result of the general cultural and political context in Turkey, and the need of Turkish intellectuals for a fantasy. The next section of the paper will try to illustrate the articulation of a Mediterranean fantasy in the Turkish context, through a reading of Alev Alatlı’s Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? in connection with Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons and the theory of Slavoj Zizek.

II.
Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? can be read in different ways to illustrate the construction of a fantasy within the frame of Cyprus and Cypriot communities. One of the primary features of the text is its attempt to make the Cypriots ‘different’ and ‘exotic’ through making the characters speak either in Greek or in the ‘broken’ Turkish of Turkish Cypriots. The use of Greek, which presumably most Turkish readers do not understand, and of Cypriot Turkish, which mainland Turks generally view to be ‘strange’, appears to have the effect of distancing Cyprus and Cypriots from the everyday reality of the Turks. This distance is important in the theory of Lacan, who gives the example of a man falling in love with a woman, whose some feature reminds him of his mother. Lacan argues that
in fantasy, mother is reduced to a limited set of (symbolic) features; as soon as an object too-close to the Mother-Thing – an object which is not linked with the maternal Thing only through certain reduced features but is immediately attached to it – appears in the fantasy frame, the desire is suffocated in incestuous claustrophobia. (119)

The fantasy Yaseminler tries to create is one that is born out of a feeling of lack and desire in the Turkish readership. Therefore, it is necessary, that the fantasy be distanced from everyday Turkish reality. The text attempts to do this through several means, such as the odd characters in the text and the emphasis on items unique to Cyprus.[10] However, the most obvious feature of the text which constantly reminds the reader that ‘the text is not about Turkey’, is the language used by the characters. The conversations of Greek Cypriots appear partly in Greek, and partly in the broken Turkish used by Turkish Cypriots. The text quickly defamiliarises the Greek Cypriots: The narration starts with “Peder Andrias” (7), announcing to the reader through a foreign name and the institution of priesthood, which is not a part of the Turkish culture, that the text is about ‘different’ people. The initial passage of the text narrates a dialogue between Afroditi, Eleni’s mother, and Christ. The Christian imagery, like the icons (7), the cross (8), and the bell of the monastery (8), are foreign to the Turkish reader. After a couple of geographic [“Klides feneri” (8)] and historical [“Lusinyanlar” (9)] references, the text narrates a dialogue, which immediately switches to Greek after the first line (9). In this way, the text, at the outset, distances the reader from the context of the narration. The dialogues between Greek Cypriots in the text constantly switch between Turkish and Greek, reminding the reader that the narration is not about people s/he meets in daily life -- that they are part of a fantasy.[11]

The Turkish Cypriots in the text are also defamiliarised, through the ‘improper’ Turkish they use. The Turkish Cypriot dialect, as it appears in Yaseminler, seems to give the impression of being ‘funny’, or ‘cute’ at one level, and ‘strange’ or ‘uneducated’ at another. The first Turkish Cypriot who appears in the text, Sabri, is immediately distanced from ‘regular Turks’ through his different Turkish (11). The ‘strange’ and ‘different’ Turkish of the Turkish Cypriots is emphasised in the text, in order to distance the reader from this community with which s/he would find it easier to identify. Throughout the text, the narrator uses proper Istanbul Turkish, giving the impression that s/he speaks above the characters in the text. Thus, Yaseminler adopts the patronising attitude of the westerners towards the people living in the Mediterranean lands, and articulates it in the creation of a fantasy through the language used by the characters in the text.

The language used by Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, however, is a construction. A native speaker of the Turkish Cypriot dialect immediately recognises that the lines of Turkish Cypriot characters in the text are not right. For example, in a conversation among Turkish Cypriots, a woman asks another if she wants coffee: “Gahvecik yapam, içeng?” (72, italics added). While a Turkish Cypriot would soften the ‘k’ in ‘kahve’, and add the diminutive suffix ‘cik’, and say ‘gahvecik’, s/he would never use “yapam”.[12] This is a figure of speech used in Anatolian villages, which are also chosen as contexts of fantasy in Turkish literature. There appears to be an elitist attitude in the way in which intellectuals of Istanbul approach Turks who are from other areas and those who speak different kinds of Turkish. The process one witnesses here is the lumping together of all characteristics that are non-Istanbul, and thereby the creation of a fantasy.

Sounds peculiar to the Turkish Cypriot dialect are also wrongly represented in the text. The sound ‘ng’, which is used as a suffix in verbs and nouns that relate to the second person, is sometimes used and sometimes it is not. The text is so inconsistent about this matter that in the same line certain words would appear with and others without this suffix: “Okurum be ana, görmen mi? Niçun Sabahat’a söylemeng?” (73, italics added). While the second underlined word is correct, the first one is wrong: a Turkish Cypriot would ask “görmeng?”, and not use the question suffix “mi”. It is clear that the author does not have a proper understanding of where this sound is used. This is further demonstrated by her using the word “anga” (74) for mother. The ‘ng’ sound is used after verbs and nouns that relate to the second person, and it is never used in the root of a word. Thus “ana” cannot be pronounced as “anga”.[13] This lack of understanding is perhaps due to an indifference to the reality of the other, the Turkish Cypriots, which is a notion that connects with the careless translation of Bitter Lemons discussed above. For the author, the ‘reality’ of Turkish Cypriots is not of importance. The primary motive is the creation of a fantasy by putting down in the text all that is peculiar to Cyprus, and consistency in their usage in the text and how much they represent reality is not a concern.

The defamiliarization of the Turkish Cypriots is further articulated in the text through making them utter words that are strange or not understandable to mainland Turks. The Turkish Cypriot characters of the text use words borrowed from English, like “prefect”, “konstıbl” (constable) (74), and “inspektör” (inspector) (140). They ‘over-use’ the diminutive suffix of ‘cik’, which is used by mainland Turks only in specific contexts: “yesin bir kebapcık” (90, italics added). The Turkish Cypriots in the narration use strange exclamations when they are confused, like “uh?” (98, 102).[14] The peculiar words uttered by Turkish Cypriots help create an image of a strange people, that can perhaps only exist in a fantasy.[15]

In addition to language, a fantasy is constructed in Yaseminler through images peculiar to Cyprus. The process of creating a fantasy seems to be: first, determining the fantasy-frame, and later, filling it with images. After Alatlı defines the frame in the text as Cyprus and Cypriots, she frequently uses images peculiar to Cyprus to strengthen the fantasy. When Eleni is being sent to Girne, her parents send “ceviz macunu” and “hellim” (16) to the adopting family as presents. These are loaded into the car, while the driver finishes his “anglia.” (16) “Ceviz macunu” is a dessert made of walnut that is unique to Cyprus and “hellim” is a cheese only made in this island. “Anglia” is a kind of brandy produced in Cyprus and, like the other two items, it is not found in Turkey.

Throughout the text Alatlı often lists exotic-sounding food names, which are normally unknown to Turkish readers. The usage of such imagery seems to function to strengthen the fantasy-image the text tries to construct. When Mikalis Menas is dining, on his table there are “komandariya” wine, “şeftali kebabı”, and “kolokas” (40). The “komandariya” wine is produced in Cyprus and not known in Turkey. The “şeftali kebabı” is a strange-sounding meat dish (“şeftali” means peach in Turkish) only made in Cyprus, and “kolokas” is a vegetable dish also unique to Cyprus. Menas’ table appears to be specifically arranged to have all Cyprus specialities. Obviously, it is a rare occurrence that in one meal all these dishes would be present, and the purpose here seems to be the creation of an exotic image of Cyprus. Whenever the characters in the text are dining, they eat something unique to Cyprus. In a restaurant, Halo Dayı, an eccentric old man, eats “şeftali kebabı” (95), while a young boy drinks “anglia”. (94) The text describes how the restaurant owner tries to cook, not any other dish also known in Turkey, but “şeftali kebabı”. (96) When Eleni is brought to her aunt’s place, she sets the price for accepting Eleni into her house: two boxes of “hellim”, and every Christmas “çakıstes” and olive oil, two boxes each (67). The food unique to Cyprus is again listed, with the addition of “çakıstes”, a kind of olive not found in Turkey. When people are eating in Arif’s home, for dinner there is “mulihiya” (75), a vegetable dish, again, unknown in Turkey. In another occasion Naciye cooks “lalangı” (139), a dish that is made of rabbit meat, and that mainland Turks do not cook. The usage of strange-sounding food names serves to distance the Cypriots from mainstream Turkish culture. Through such imagery the text constructs a fantasy-image of a people that are ‘odd’.
This peculiarity can also be seen in the personalities of the individuals in the text. The Cypriots always appear to have something that is strange, not normal, about them. Father Andrias is a fanatic priest who shows no sympathy towards Maria Menas, who is suffering because of her son’s sickness. He is obsessed with the unification of the island with Greece, and glorifies the death of Maria’s son as a step for that ultimate goal. Spiro is an unemotional father, who gives away her daughter, despite the objections of his wife, Afroditi, who appears as an unstable character who talks to herself. The Menas’ are also a strange couple: Mikalis is an ignorant and money-hungry man, who eventually rapes Eleni. Maria is a disturbed character, who is depressed about her unhappy marriage. Ksenya, Eleni’s aunt, is an antisocial and unloving woman, who does not talk much, and who prefers to deal with her cats rather than human beings. Arif is a character whose life revolves around cars, and who is initially interested in nothing else. Halo Dayı, is a strange old man who talks about politics and history all the time, boring those around him to death.[16] Şekibe, Arif’s sister-in-law, is obsessed with bothering her neighbours and Naciye. Havva and her daughters, a “halayık” (meaning black, again a word not commonly used in Turkey, 139) family, are evil characters who, through their insistence that Naciye goes to the hotel with them, and later on by not standing up for her, ruin her life. Havva is evil, ugly and selfish enough to be upset about the possibility that Naciye, who is thrown out of her home, may need to stay at her place.[17] The strange illnesses of the characters also serve to strengthen their image of being different. The children of Menas family suffer from “Akdeniz Anemisi” (48), or thalassemia. This is a kind of anemia widespread in Cyprus, but unknown in Turkey. Alatlı’s description of this illness (55) has no relevance to the plot, and it only seems to serve to create an image of ‘strange people with strange sicknesses’.

The fantastic image of Cyprus that the narration creates through the linguistic and personal peculiarities of Cypriots is further supported by reference to historical texts and buildings. Yaseminler is occasionally interrupted by a historical document. The documents are not in a chronological order, and the logic that underlies their selection and their relation to the main body of the text are not clear. There are various texts, not all of which are directly related to Cyprus, written by Christian religious personalities, a Muslim poet, various English officials, Archbishop Makarios, and some Greek journalists. These texts-within-text appear to strengthen the fantasy-image of Cyprus through reference to the island’s rich and multicultural history. The nostalgia of the multicultural past of the Mediterranean appears to be a strong feature of the Akdenizlilik fantasy created by the Turkish intelligentsia. In this text Alatlı seems to play on this notion, both through these texts and other references to the history of the island.[18]

Frequent references in the text to specific areas and buildings in Cyprus, which the Turkish reader would not know, appear to function also to strengthen the fantasy image of Cyprus. When describing Girne, the narrator mentions its magnificent walls and fine Venetian cathedrals (21), which in fact do not exist. When talking about Gothic architecture, Lawrence Hughes, an Englishman, refers to all the castles that lie on the Beşparmak mountains: Kantara, St. Hilarion, Buffavento (29). When describing Nicosia, the narrator mentions the Mevlevi Tekke, the Melkonian Armenian School, the Bedesten, the church of Ayios Loukos and more specifically the “Union Jack” and the school children who sing “God Save the King” (71). In one conversation, Maria Menas and Lawrence Hughes summarise the island’s French, Venetian, Ottoman and British past and give a background to the reader on the Greek Cypriot struggle for Enosis, unification with Greece. (28 – 36) The section set in Magosa opens with Halo Dayı describing Turgut the conquest of the city by the Turks, as they walk by the tomb of Canbulat, a Turkish commander who died fighting against the Venetians (89). In one breath, Halo Dayı refers to the Muslim holy site where the aunt of the Prophet is burried, to Othello’s Tower, to Desdemona’s grave, and to St. Nicholas Cathedral, which was later converted into the mosque of Lala Mustafa Paşa (91). When a woman tells Naciye to visit Magosa in the future, she says that they can go to, no other place, but the ancient city of Salamis (99), which, in fact, has no cultural or historical significance for Turkish Cypriots. Alatlı manages to overwhelm the reader with peculiar images and historical information she spreads all over the text whenever she gets a chance.
In creating this fantasy image of Cyprus and Cypriots through confusing the Turkish reader with unfamiliar images, Alatlı does not seem to care about the accuracy of the information she provides or her scenarios’ probability in real life of happening. While bringing Eleni to Girne, Hristos, the driver, recites a version of the song mentioned earlier:

Girne, içine girme,
Girersen, eğlenme,
Eğlenirsen, evlenme,
Evlenirsen çocuk yapma.[19] (21)

This is a Turkish Cypriot song, with no Greek Cypriot equivalent. It is not clear from the text how Hristos recites these lines. It is not likely that he would say them in Turkish; there is no indication that he speaks the language and he is a Greek nationalist-extremist, who would not use Turkish sayings. In this section, the text mentions Girne as the only port of the island in the fifties, when it is common knowledge that Famagusta was the biggest and most active port of Cyprus at that time, and that even the port of Limasol was more lively than that of Girne. The text also contains a number of references to the Bible and history of Christianity, which are questionable. Father Andrias, when he visits Maria Menas who is worried about the health of her son, reads out a passage from Ecclesiastes 3 to her (57). Letting aside the fact that only selected parts of this section from the Bible is recited here (and that presumably a priest would not pick and choose when it comes to the Bible), it is doubtful that this passage is as important in the Greek Orthodox religion as it is in Catholicism and Protestantism. Similarly ‘Ave Maria’ would not have the significance in Greek Orthodoxy it does in Catholic and Protestant traditions, and it is not convincing that a priest should start singing it (60). The most obvious problem, however, is the recitation of a crusader chant by the people in the funeral of Menas’ son (60). This is very improbable, because of the general and deeply rooted animosity between the Greek Orthodox and the Catholics. The crusaders had sacked Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium, and the papacy exerted constant pressure on the Greek Orthodox church for centuries to give up their traditions and embrace Catholicism. So much was the resentment felt by the Greek Orthodox Church towards the Catholics, that when Turks sieged Constantinople, it is widely believed that a Greek Orthodox priest commented “I would rather see the fez of the Turk than the cap of the cardinal.”[20] In the context of the widespread anti-Catholic feeling in contemporary Greek society, it is very unlikely that Greek nationalists would sing crusader chants.[21] It seems that on one level Alatlı wants to draw a parallel between the crusaders and the Greek Cypriot nationalists who seek to unify Cyprus with Greece, and at another she wants to demonstrate her knowledge of Christianity. The author does not have as much command of Greek and Christian cultures as she would like to appear to be, but this factor does not seem to be important in her context. Historical validity and consistency is not absolutely necessary in the realm of fantasy, which need not operate with any form of logic, and Alatlı tries to construct the fantasy-image of Cyprus through bombarding the reader with all sorts of information regarding the peculiarities and history of Cyprus.[22]

At another level, the several factual mistakes in the text indicate indifference about knowing the other. The western approach adopted here by Alatlı is only interested in the other in so far as creating a fantasy, and not in learning the reality about it. In fact, the narrator of the text does not seem to have a high opinion about Cypriots. S/he points out to the modern buildings of Girne and comments that they prove that the contemporary inhabitants of the island are not of the same family as the old ones who built the “magnificent walls” and “fine Venetian Cathedrals” of the town (21). At a different point in the text, the narrator comments that the Turkish Cypriots were not influenced by the rich cuisine of the Ottomans, and that even raw artichoke and lettuce would be considered ‘food’ (114). This condescending attitude could be due to the internalization of the Western attitude the author seems to imitate. In the context of the theory of Zizek, however, it can be explained by the notion of ‘theft of enjoyment’: at some level the author is angry with the Cypriots for enjoying themselves. The question bothering the author seems to be: ‘If they are not proper heirs to the Ottoman past, and they do not even have good food, and they are such strange characters, why are they enjoying themselves more than us? Why are they stealing our enjoyment?’ It is paradoxical that the text tries to construct a fantasy using dishes that are peculiar to Cyprus, and that later it mocks the Turkish Cypriots for the simplicity of the food they eat. It seems that it is a hidden sense of resentment felt towards the Cypriots for enjoying themselves that underlies this condescending attitude.

The general attitude in Yaseminler can be seen in Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons, where the author, much like Alatlı, portrays Cypriots as odd and unsophisticated characters. Durrell gives the image that he can manipulate the Cypriots in whichever way he wants. Faced with a neighbour who does not welcome his presence in the village, Durrell comments:

I thought that here I saw an opening for my talent. Long residence in remote Greek islands had made me not unskilful in dealing with ruffled feelings -- and, after all, Morais was only behaving like a Scotsman or a Welshman when faced with the foul invader. (BL, 83)

This arrogant attitude, not only against Cypriots but other non-English peoples of the Empire, is a façade for a hidden insecurity which can be explained by a feeling of lack, and an anger towards the other which enjoys itself. Throughout his text, Durrell always talks about how great and impressive a person he is and views the Cypriots with a detached amusement. Following a conversation he has in a coffee shop, he remarks

[The Cypriots] were all still entranced by the novelty of my Greek -- a fact which never ceased to puzzle me. Indeed, throughout my stay in Cyprus, wherever I went, the fact that I spoke Greek was regarded as a phenomenon. It thrilled people. Why, I don’t know. There were a number of Government officials who knew the language better than I. But always a conversation in Greek created a stir, until I felt like a Talking Mongoose. (BL, 81)

At one level Durrell sees himself as a great person, admired by the Cypriots, perhaps not unlike in the story of European explorers who are worshipped as Gods by African tribesmen. At another level, the above passage indicates that, in fact, Durrell does not really understand what is going on. He is “puzzled” by the Greek Cypriot attitude, and he does not know why they think he is great. This notion connects with the Lacanian concept of Che Vuoi?: Durrell cannot comprehend the Cypriots, he does not understand what they really want. This uncertainty reminds him of his own lack, and leads him to construct a fantasy around Cypriots, which he skilfully does through his work.

The same arrogant attitude is present in the voice of the narrator of Alatlı’s text. The narrator speaks with Istanbul Turkish, while the characters speak improper forms of languages, giving the impression that the latter are weird creatures that do not know what they are doing. With his / her “higher” voice, the narrator explains the historical and social context with a condescending attitude towards Cypriots, and frequently intervenes in their dialogues in order to enlighten the reader about the meaning of the senseless words the characters utter.

In this context, Alatlı seems to see herself in the same category as the British and not the Cypriots. The English characters in the text, Lawrence Hughes and the English family of Eleni, act in rational, understandable ways, they are “good people” (162) in the opinion of Naciye, they are ‘normal’. Another personality with whom the Turkish reader can identify, is Turgut, a teacher from Turkey (89). He is also confused about the strange ways in which Cypriots think and act, and at times he gets angry with them (91). The text introduces Halo Dayı, the senile old man, and Turgut in the same passage (89 - 97). The dialogue between the two, at one level, acts as a metaphor for the relation between the reader and the Cypriots in the text. Halo Dayı talks nonsense most of the time, while he eats strange dishes in a restaurant beside the Venetian walls. Turgut, surrounded by images alien to himself and the Turkish reader, tries to make sense of what he says, he is tempted to correct him, but refrains himself in order not to be impolite. He is a representative of the Turkish Republic, while Halo Dayı openly declares that he is an “İttihatçı” (96): a supporter of the Ottoman political party that led the Empire into the First World War and brought about its destruction, and the supporters of which were removed from the state by the Kemalists in the early years of the Turkish Republic. Like Turgut, who cannot fully understand how Cypriots think, the English family of Eleni fails to comprehend the “local people” (161). They try to question Eleni about the political situation in Cyprus, and failing to get a satisfactory result, they conclude that she is “a poor Greek villager” who is “a little retarded”(161) In this context, Alatlı puts the English and the mainland Turkish teacher in the same position of confusion in face of Cypriots. This attitude is also present in the work of Lawrence Durrell, who cannot bring an explanation to the terror of Greek nationalists (180 – 208).
Yaseminler is not only influenced by Bitter Lemons in spirit: Alatlı lifts certain passages directly from Durrell’s text![23] The story of a young Greek Cypriot who throws a bomb into a churchyard is one of the many examples of Alatlı’s plagiarising from Durrell. At one level the passages Alatlı shamelessly steals from Durrell without reference indicates a mechanism through which western outlook to the ‘other’ is adopted. At another level, the parts Alatlı chooses to take indicate a common discomfort related to the question of Che vuoi? in both European and Turkish intellectuals. Lawrence Hughes in Yaseminler, a fictional character who seems to be inspired by Lawrence Durrell himself, visits a camp in Kokkino to look for Menas’ son, who is locked up there for having engaged in terrorist activities. (46 – 49) In Bitter Lemons, Lawrence Durrell visits a camp in the same place to see the Greek Cypriot boys involved in terrorism. The two characters of the two texts end up finding boys with the same story and having identical conversations with them. The conversation between Lawrence Durrell and the Greek Cypriot youth takes place in the chapter entitled ‘The Feast of Unreason’, which illustrates Durrell’s approach to Cypriots, and it runs:

‘Are you EOKA?’ I asked.
‘We are all EOKA. All Cyprus,’ he said in a low controlled voice. ‘If he [the director of the camp] wants to know why I threw it in the churchyard tell him because I was a coward. I am unworthy. But the others are not like me. They are not afraid.’ [ . . .] ‘Why are you a coward?’ He moved a whole step nearer to tears and swallowed quickly. ‘I was supposed to throw it in a house but there were small children playing in the garden. I could not. I threw it in the churchyard.’ [ . . .] ‘So you are sorry because you didn’t kill two children?’ I said. ‘What a twisted brain, what a twisted stick you must be as well as a fool!’ He winced and his eyes flashed. ‘War is war,’ he said. (BL, 200-201)

Lawrence Hughes in Yaseminler, has the following conversation with Yohannides Menas:

“Neden Yohannides, neden? Senin yaşında bir çocuğun bomboyla [sic] ne işi var? EOKA mı kandırdı seni?”
“EOKA beni kandırmadı! Biz hepimiz EOKA’yız. Bütün Kıbrıs EOKA! [. . .] Bombayı kiliseye attım, çünkü, çünkü [ . . .] Çünkü ben bir korkağım!” [ . . .]
“Niye korkak mışsın?”
“Bombayı bir eve atacaktım. Ama bahçede çocuklar vardı. [ . . .] Atamadım. [ . . .] Söyle ona, söyle ona [. . .] Ben bir korkak olabilirim, ama EOKA korkak değildir. EOKA palikaryaları korkak değildir.”
“Sen sadece küçük bir çocuk değil, aynı zamanda da büyük bir budalasın, Yohannides Mikalis! [ . . .] İki kız çocuğunu öldürmek istememenden daha doğal ne olabilir? Öldürmek istemek için akıl hastası, bir katil olman gerekirdi.”
“Ama savaştayız! Savaş savaştır! [. . .]” ( 46-47)

Both Lawrence Durrell and Lawrence Hughes do not fully understand the way the Greek Cypriot boy thinks. It is totally incomprehensible for them why the Greek Cypriots are in an armed struggle for unification with Greece, when their life under British rule is much better than what it would be if their political objective were achieved. This situation leads to the terrifying question of Che vuoi?: What do these people really want? It also leads to the construction of the fantasy-image of the Cypriot as an irrational being.
This image of the Cypriot as an odd character must have appealed to Alatlı, for she extensively plagiarizes the passages related to this issue from Bitter Lemons. Durrell writes that
No Greek can sit still without fidgeting, tapping a foot or a pencil, jerking a knee, or making popping noises with his tongue. The Turk has a monolithic poise, an air of reptilian concentration and silence. (BL, 48)
Alatlı, in Yaseminler, engages Maria Menas in the following conversation with Lawrence Hughes:

“Şöyle bir etrafınıza bakın, Larry! Hangi Yunanlı kıpırdanmadan durabilir?”
“Nasıl?”
“Hangi Yunanlı kıpırdanmadan durabilir, dedim. Ya ayağımızı sallarız, ya elimizle tempo tutarız, hiçbir şey yapmazsak dilimizi şaklatırız [ . . .] Ama Türk!” diye sürdürdü, Maria, “Ama Türk, bir kaya parçası gibi oturur. Sessiz ve durgun. Azametle ve saatlerce[”] (32)

Alatlı goes a step further than Durrell and suggests that the Greek Cypriots agree with the fantasy image; that their life is the fantasy. Lawrence Durrell reveals in Bitter Lemons his tactic for manipulating his fellow Greek Cypriot neighbours: “To disarm a Greek you have only to embrace him” (BL, 83). Alatlı makes Lawrence Hughes utter the same saying to Maria Menas (34), who does not react negatively, suggesting that she agrees with Hughes’ ‘universal’ statement. Alatlı also uses the sections of Bitter Lemons where Durrell looks down on the Scots and the Welsh. Lawrence Hughes looks with ‘disgust’ (“tiksinerek”, 46) to the director of the prison, whose Irish origins are emphasised in the text.

In addition to directly copying sections from Bitter Lemons, Alatlı uses the ideas in this text to construct a fantasy around the Turkish Cypriots. In Bitter Lemons the Greek Cypriots frequently express their love to the British, and in Yaseminler Alatlı makes the Turkish Cypriots express their admiration of and love to the British. (74 – 75) Durrell emphasises the importance of the Greek Cypriot high-schools as centres for the struggle against the British Administration, and the nationalist Turkish Cypriots in Yaseminler are young high-school students. Alatlı takes the names of her Greek Cypriot characters almost entirely from Bitter Lemons: Menas, Sabri, Kollis and Dmitri are all characters in Durrell’s work. Her craze of taking from Durrell’s text reaches to such proportions that she creates the fiction of a population movement from Balkans to Cyprus (93), in order to reproduce the Bulgarian tale that appears in it (BL, 47). In other words, she does not hesitate to distort the facts of Turkish history for the sake of embracing a Western attitude towards the ‘other’.

The identity crisis being suffered by the Turkish intellectuals appears to have led them to construct fantasies through a heavy reliance on Western culture, with which they seem to be in a love-hate relationship. In order to cure the trauma of being rejected by the idealised image of ‘Europe’, the Turkish intellectuals seem to adopt Western ways of thinking and to create their own fantasy around their own ‘other’. This paper tried to illustrate the dynamics of this process through a Zizekian reading of Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? It is clear that the absurd situation in which the Turkish intelligentsia falls as a result is no cure for their discomfort. Perhaps the solution lies, as Zizek suggests, in “going through the fantasy” of the West:

Fantasy is basically a scenario filling out the empty space of a fundamental impossibility, a screen masking a void. [ . . .] all we have to do is experience how there is nothing ‘behind’ it, and how fantasy masks precisely this ‘nothing’. (SOI, 126)

By realising that there is nothing beyond the fantasy of the West, perhaps the Turkish intellectuals can take steps towards becoming more in peace with themselves. If that point is ever reached, texts that promote a prejudiced representation of the other, such as Yaseminler tüter mi, hala?, may have less popular appeal.

This paper attempted to interpret Alev Alatlı’s Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? in the context of the theory of Zizek and in connection with Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons. While Alatlı’s choice of focusing on the Mediterranean stems from different reasons than those of the Western writers who do the same, the dynamics of creation of fantasies appear to be similar. As Zizek argues, it is a feeling of lack that underlies fantasies, and as this paper illustrates, the nature of the lack may be different but fantasies may be similar. While a fantasy in itself may not be a problem, it can lead to ethical problems, as does Alatlı’s Yaseminler tüter mi, hala?, with its negative attitudes towards Cypriots, and with the way in which it constructs the relationship between what is right ( the mainland Turks and what the state approves of in Turkey; the English and Western culture) and what is wrong (the Turkish and Greek Cypriots, the other). One possible avenue to solve such problems and to adopt a healthier approach is, perhaps, ‘going through’ such fantasies.


NOTES
[1] Alev Alatlı, Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? All quotations in this paper are from this text, unless otherwise indicated.
[2] At one level, a feminist interpretation of Yaseminler tüter mi, hala? is possible: the text narrates the suffering of a woman, many women appear in the text as victims, and the work contains historical documents that illustrate the negative attitude of patriarchal societies towards women.
[3] Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology. All quotations from this text are indicated by SOI, followed by a page number.
[4] Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying With the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology. All quotations from this text are indicated by TN, followed by a page number.
[5] For an analysis of the relation of Turks with the West, see Erdem Erginel, Reconsidering Turkish Nationalism.
[6] One example to this notion is the Turkish poet Ahmet Erhan, who came to be known in early 1980s with his socialist-populist poetry. In early 1990s, however, he seems to have started looking for new areas, and has come up with Akdenizlilik. The following poem from his Deniz, Unutma Adını (Sea, Do Not Forget Your Name) illustrates how this poet, who is originally from central Anatolia, looks for his soul in the Mediterranean:
Bedenim su alıyor, denizim hırçın
Beni artık buraya göm adamım
Seyir defterimde sarhoş imzalar
Tayfalar teyakkuz halinde, bense yorgunum

Alnımda acıya teğellenmiş kırışıklıklar
Yenilmiş devrimlerden artakalan bir bayrak yedeğimde

For a discussion of Ahmet Erhan’s poetry, see Mehmet Yaşın, “Gelenek mi? Kimin Geleneği?” in Poeturka, pp. 65 – 82. This trend can also be seen in Turkish pop music, as in hits like Haluk Levent’s Akdeniz Akşamları, and Ayna’s Akdeniz.
[7] Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons. All quotations from this text are indicated by BL, followed by a page number.
[8] Lawrence Durrell, Acı Limonlar: Kıbrıs 1956. All quotations from this text are indicated by AL, followed by a page number.
[9] In this context where the translator has butchered the original text, the choice of this word appears as an unintended irony.
[10] The defamiliarization seems to start with the title of the book. In Istanbul Turkish the sentence that is the title of the book would be ‘yaseminler hala tütüyor mu?’ Using the general-tense of verbs is a characteristic of Cypriot Turkish, and Alatlı seems to have tried to make the reader aware that the book is not about the life they are used to, by using a strange sounding sentence and the verb ‘tüter’ instead of ‘tütüyor’. However, ultimately she fails to represent the Turkish Cypriot dialect, where the question suffix ‘mi’ is not used. A Turkish Cypriot would normally ask “yaseminler hala tüter?” It should also be noted that the accepted word used in Turkey Turkish to describe the smelling of a flower is ‘kokmak, and ‘tütmek’, while commonly used by Turkish Cypriots, sounds strange in mainland Turkish when used in connection with a flower. Hence in Istanbul Turkish, the title of Alatlı’s book would be ‘yaseminler hala kokuyor mu?’
[11] It is hard to understand the logic Alatlı employs to represent the conversations of the Greek and Greek Cypriot characters in the text. Those in Rizokarpasso speak with a ‘broken’ Turkish that sounds like Cypriot Turkish. However, Menas’ family speaks perfect Istanbul Turkish (53), as do Lawrence Hughes and other English characters in the text, while the Turkish Cypriots speak the most incorrect Turkish in the narration (71). The Greek characters in the final chapter speak in Istanbul Turkish, but Eleni’s Cypriot Greek is represented with Cypriot Turkish (180). It seems that we have the Menas family, the English, mainland Greeks and mainland Turks in one category (Istanbul Turkish), and Turkish Cypriots and Rizokarpasso Greeks on the other (broken Turkish). The reasons for this distinction are not clear, but one suggestion is that Alatlı wishes to focus on the characters that belong to the latter groups in constructing a fantasy.
[12] The Turkish Cypriot characters of the text also use words that are common in Turkey but unknown in Cyprus. For example one character says “ne deng, lan sen”. (141) “Lan” is an exclamation used in Turkey but not in Cyprus. Similarly the swear word “godoş” (148) is not used in Cypriot Turkish.
[13] The text contains several such examples of ‘ng’-containing-words, which are not used by Turkish Cypriots. For example: “sengi” (154), “beng” (155).
[14] There are several examples to words that are used by the Turkish Cypriots in the text, that do not mean anything in Istanbul Turkish. e.g. “ısparklar” (80), “şiro” (83)
[15] Although Alatlı tries to use Greek in her text, she makes several mistakes in doing so; her understanding of Greek does not seem to be much better than that of the Turkish Cypriot dialect. The son of the Menas family is called Yohannides (23), which Alatlı takes from Bitter Lemons (BL, 132). What she does not realise is that Durrell refers to the last name of one of his students with this word, and in fact the ‘ides’ (idhV) suffix is used in last names in Greek. The resulting ‘Yohannides Menas’ is two last names in a row and it sounds strange. Maria Menas has a baby called “Aletradis” (28), and normally one would show affection with the words ‘Aletradi mou’ (Aletradh mou). The phrase “Aletradisemi” (28) Maria Menas uses to address her kid does not mean anything. The more striking mistake in the text is Maria Menas’ asking her baby how he is. She says “Ti kanete?” (28), using the formal ‘you, which a grown-up would not normally use to address a child; the correct phrase would be ‘ti kaneis?’ (ti kaneiV;). Like many Turks, Alatlı has not fully grasped the gender structure in Greek languages, and uses the term “Megalo Idea” (57) to refer to the ‘Great Ideal’ in Greek political culture. In fact, ‘Idea’ (idea) is feminine, and the correct version is ‘Megali Idea’ (Megalh Idea).
Alatlı’s text contains several inconsistencies, which suggest that she does not have a full command over the Greek language. The colleague of Arif Tahsin is called “İstefan” (79), which is the way İstanbul Turks call Greeks with the name ‘Stephanos’ (StefanoV). Alatlı uses “Stephanos” (27) before, referring to one of Menas’ children. It is not clear why a different form is used later. The reason is probably Alatlı’s incompetence in Greek, and her persistence, despite this factor, to use this language to impress the reader. She uses Greek for simple sentences, where she still makes several mistakes, but when she does not know enough, she immediately resorts to Turkish: “Dikkat et, bre” diye bağırdı Rumca” (79). Since Alatlı is so much interested in writing in Greek, she could have done the same for this line, instead of writing in Turkish that the line was spoken in Greek. Moreover the exclamation ‘bre’ is used in the Balkans, but not in Cyprus. Normally Greek Cypriots would say ‘re’ to address someone informally, and Turkish Cypriots would say ‘be.’
[16] Halo is a strange name not known in Cyprus. It is probably supposed to be a nick-name for Halil, but the practice adding an ‘o’ to the first few letters of a name and thereby creating a nick-name only exists in Anatolia and not Cyprus. (There can be several examples like İbo, Hüso, Sülo, and so on.) Alatlı only seems to have cared about creating a non-Istanbul character, and not to have bothered about checking whether Turkish Cypriots use this name.
[17] It is interesting that Alatlı chose to construct this selfish and problem-creating family as blacks. She is probably trying to add to the text another odd image from Cyprus by referring to the blacks who are a part of the Turkish Cypriot community, but one senses a racist bias. In the text, Naciye’s existence in the Turkish Cypriot community is brought to an end by the demands and persistence of Havva and her daughter (145 – 8). It is emphasised that Havva’s face has the ‘black colour of the Sudanese negroes’ (“Sudan zencisi siyahı yüzü”, 140) and that she is a bald and ugly woman (142). Havva and her daughters drag Naciye into trouble and later they do not stand up for her (155). They are portrayed as selfish people who do not want to help a poor woman who is thrown out of her home and has nowhere to go. The text seems to portray them as ‘improper Turks’. When Naciye proposes that Havva and her daughters should go and talk with the fiance, the latter asks ‘who will look at the face of three negroes?’ (“Kim bakar üç halayığın yüzüne?”, 145). On the one hand, they seem to suffer from an inferiority complex, and on the other they have a contempt towards the Turks. When Naciye seeks refuge at their home, instead of comforting her, they engage in a ‘disgusting’ conversation (“konuşma [ . . .] adileşti”, 156), insinuating that the gossips about Naciye are true, when it is obvious that they are not. Havva then starts talking highly about the Greek Cypriots, and encourages Naciye to forget about the Turkish Cypriots and return to her original community. (“Hıristiyan milleti Müslüman milletinden eyidir be guzum”,155) It seems that through such passages the text constructs this black family as the ‘other’ of the Turkish Cypriot community.
[18] It should be pointed out that references to historical events in the text are problematic. When Arif takes Naciye to Famagusta to marry her, in a conversation reference is made to eight Turkish Cypriots killed by the British the previous year (105). In actuality, this event took place in 1958, and thus the text suggests that the marriage is taking place in 1959. Later, however the narrator says that in 1958 Naciye was expecting her first son (115), which suggests that the marriage took place in 1957. Another mathematical problem arises with respect to Glafkos, Eleni’s Greek husband. The section of the narration in Greece is set in 1966, and it is mentioned that Glafkos is 36 years old, which means that he was born around 1930. Glafkos is a refugee from Anatolia, and at one point tells Eleni that his grandfather was killed by the Turks before his eyes (200). The war between Turks and Greeks took place in 1922, after which the Greeks of Asia Minor left Anatolia in the context of a treaty for population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Alatlı’s text does not explain how Glafkos actually saw the events that took place eight years before he was born.
[19] One common version of this song has the additional line “Evlenirsen arlanma.”
[20] For an account of Modern Greek history, see Richard Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece.
[21] Another curious point about the funeral is people shouting out “Viva Enosis” (60). The exclamation ‘viva’ does not exist in Greek; in such a context the Greeks would shout ‘Zito Enosis’ (Zhtw EnwsiV). It seems that the author does not know the proper Greek form for ‘long live’, and she chooses a word from another foreign (and Mediterranean!) language (Italian / Spanish) in order to support the exotic image she creates for Yohannides Menas’ funeral.
[22] There also appears to be an unaddressed logical problem in Yohannides’ being buried in Rizokarpasso (58). Presumably, a family would want to have their child’s grave close to where they live and not on the other side of the island. It is not clear why they would want to have their child buried in a village so far away and so hard to reach.
[23] The extent of the ‘borrowing’ by Alatlı from Durell, as shown in this paper, indicates that the relationship between the texts of the two writers cannot be described as ‘intertextuality,’ but as ‘theft’. In the context of the complex relationship between Turks and Europe, this ‘theft’ can be interpreted as an attempt to ‘steal back’ the enjoyment Europeans have taken from Turks.

Traditionalists vs. Reformists

Traditionalists vs. Reformists: The Struggle for Leadership Within the Turkish Community of Cyprus Between the World Wars


Introduction

Up until now, Turkish Cypriot political life during the interwar years has not been a popular area of research. Historians have generally tended to focus on the post-World War II developments, particularly on the inter-ethnic strife that continues today. Despite this lack of interest, this issue is of great importance in explaining the development of the Turkish Cypriot leadership that has played one of the leading roles in the present day Cyprus problem. This paper will attempt to highlight some of the historical developments that were instrumental in shaping the Turkish Cypriot political life.

It will be argued in this paper that the internal splits within the Turkish Cypriot community were extensions of the splits that had dominated Ottoman political life in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The disputes and cleavages in the Turkish Cypriot community in the interwar years were the continuation of the ongoing conflict between the reformist and traditionalist elements within the Ottoman Empire. The establishment of the Republic of Turkey as a western-oriented and secular nation-state had put a definitive end to the political power of the traditionalists in Turkey. Existence of British rule in Cyprus put the Turkish Cypriots on to a different course of developments. The British had no intentions of secularizing or westernizing the Moslem communities they came to rule over. So, in Cyprus, as elsewhere, they enforced the existing power structure and supported the traditionalists. The Turkish War of Independence (1919 – 1922) and the establishment of the Turkish nation-state had the effect of spreading reformists ideas among the Turkish Cypriots and this led to the clash of the two groups in a bid for the leadership of the community. This work attempts to examine this clash and to explain the – delayed – disappearance of the traditionalists as a political body in the Turkish Cypriot community.


1. The British Administration and the Traditionalists’ Hegemony

The political splits in the Ottoman Empire reflected to the Turkish community of Cyprus during the British period. Although the dispute between the reformist movement -- dating back to the reformism of Sultan Selim III at the end of the eighteenth century and the tanzimat reforms of the early nineteenth century -- and the traditionalists were similar to those in Cyprus, the developments on the island took on a different form because of the British rule. The British and the traditionalists developed close contacts out of mutual interest. In the face of spreading reformist ideas in the 1920s, the British enforced the power of the conservatives, whom they thought would be more willing to cooperate with them. Open British support of the traditionalists exacerbated the dispute of the latter with the reformists and set the stage for the bitter political rivalry between the two groups in the 1930s.

Under the Cyprus Convention of 1878, whereby Cyprus was transferred to Britain, major Turkish Cypriot social institutions continued to exist, while both the British and the Porte had a right to say in their administration.[1] For example, the Sheri Courts continued functioning, with a Başkadı heading their operations. According to the setup in 1878, the Başkadı continued to be appointed by the Ottoman Government and the British recognized his right to perform his duties. Similarly, the Ottoman State controlled the administration of the Evkaf, which administered the various pious foundations in Cyprus and generated income that was used for public works that benefited the citizenry at large. Under the Cyprus Convention the pious foundations were put under the dual control of a Muslim resident appointed by the Ottoman Ministry of Evkaf and one Briton selected by the British administration. The British did not interfere in the office of the mufti, who was a jurist educated in Islamic laws and who monitored the religious life of the community.[2] The muftis were elected through a formal election in which the whole community participated, and they functioned without British interference up until the legal changes instituted in the 1920s.

The British introduced certain political bodies to the Cypriot life after they assumed the island’s administration. A Legislative Council and an Executive Council were established by an Order in Council in 1878. The Executive Council was established as a confidential advisory body for the High Commissioner, who was empowered to name three Cypriots to be summoned when he wished for their advice on policy questions. The Legislative Council advised the High Commissioner on laws and ordinances. Each community elected its own deputies and the Turkish Cypriots were represented in the Council with three members, along with nine Greeks, and six British officials. This setup was modified in 1925 and the Legislative Council came to be composed of twelve Greeks, nine Britons and three Turkish members. Membership of the Legislative Council, for which the individuals received no remuneration, came to acquire considerable social significance in the Turkish Cypriot community and the candidates spent large sums in their campaigns to secure a seat.[3] Owing to their material wealth and prestige in the community, these seats were invariably occupied by Turkish Cypriots who belonged to the traditionally privileged and long established political, social, and economic elites.

After the transfer of Cyprus to the British in 1878, relations between the Turkish Cypriots and the Ottoman State remained strong, owing to the fact that the island remained de jure an Ottoman territory until its annexation by the British in 1914. In such a context political movements in the Empire found an echo within the Turkish Cypriot community. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries an increasingly large number of Turks was being exposed to the writings of western intellectuals and particularly the ideas of the enlightenment. As a result of these ideas a reformist Turkish movement called Tanzimat was initiated by the Ottoman State in 1839. In the second half of the century, concurrently with the state-sponsored Tanzimat reformism, a dissident and rival oppositional movement, called the Young Turk took its place in the Ottoman life. Both movements started acting as a strong challenge to the traditional Ottoman establishment, especially the Islamic component. Although the general consequences of this movement are beyond the scope of this paper, it is necessary to draw attention to its crucial role in laying the foundations of a secular and western-oriented Turkish nation-state in the twentieth century.

The Ottoman Empire's entry into the First World War on the side of the Central Powers and in opposition to Britain marks a turning point in Turkish Cypriot history. In response, on 5 November 1914, Britain announced its annexation of the island, and the ties of Turkish Cypriots with the Ottoman state were forcibly severed. The Turkish establishment in Cyprus did not object to the annexation. It declared, rather, that the Turkish Cypriot community would continue its loyal stance to Britain.[4] This was the best stance it could adopt if its members were to preserve their privileged status on the island, considering that the Ottoman state was in no position to rescue Cyprus. The British responded favorably to this stance. Hamilton Goold-Adams, the High Commissioner in 1914, wrote that in Cyprus, just like in Turkey, there were two Turkish parties: the Young Turks and the traditionalists.[5] The High Commissioner stated that the traditionalists constituted the larger group and that he was trying to secure their support. As a result a close cooperation developed between the British and the conservative Turkish Cypriots, through whom the former started directly to govern the Turkish Cypriot community and to gain its acquiescence to direct British rule. The latter, on the other hand, must have seen direct British rule as an opportunity to maintain, even enhance, their leadership in the Turkish Cypriot community. The British authorities did not remove the Başkadı or the mufti, both of whom preserved their positions until 1927. They enacted an Order in Council on 30 November 1915 whereby the High Commissioner was given the right to appoint both delegates of the Evkaf.[6]

As a result of the British policies after 1914, the Turkish Delegate of Evkaf began to emerge as the dominant political figure in the Turkish Cypriot community, along with key religious figures, like the Başkadı and the mufti, and the members of the Legislative Council. The beginning of this development was the appointment of Musa Irfan Bey as the Turkish Delegate of Evkaf on 21 December 1903.[7] Irfan Bey was very popular with the British and he preserved his position after the island's annexation. With the encouragement of the British he broadened his sphere of influence and became a member of the Legislative Council. By this time the traditional Turkish Cypriot establishment had adopted a position of strict loyalty to the British in order to preserve its position. The British administration was content with this development, as they ignored criticisms of the power of the conservatives, criticisms they deemed to emanate from the belief by some Turkish Cypriots "that Irfan Bey is too pro-British." The British continued to support Irfan Bey, who "had never swerved in his loyalty to the Government" and kept "the Muslim population of the Island quiet at times of acute national feeling [during the First World War]."[8]

The close cooperation between the conservative Turkish Cypriots and the British continued after the death of Irfan Bey in 1925. That same year the Governor named as the Turkish Delegate of Evkaf Mehmet Münir, a traditionalist known for his being "100 per cent pro-British" and having "the mentality of the old Turkish pasha."[9] As they had done with Irfan Bey, the British encouraged Münir to amass great powers. After his appointment as the delegate of Evkaf in 1926, he was elected to the Legislative Council in 1926 and was appointed as an additional member to the Executive Council. The position of conservative elements was further enforced by the constitutional changes enacted by the British after proclaiming the island a Crown Colony on 1 May 1925.

With an Order in Council in 1928 the Evkaf was converted into a department of the government and the Governor kept the right of appointing both delegates. In the new setup the delegates were given more power in appointing the staff and in selecting and administering the trustees.[10] This further enhanced the power of the Turkish Delegate by the fact that the British appointee, who was always British, had little knowledge of or interest in the Islamic laws that governed the Evkaf. In the same year the Governor abolished the office of the mufti, and created in its place the office of fetva emini (Superintendent of Religious Rulings), whose functions were much more narrowly defined than the traditional ones of the mufti.[11] The fetva emini's authority was limited to issuing fetvas and he no longer had influence in the administration of mosques or of imams. The British transferred such duties to the Turkish Delegate of Evkaf, thereby boosting his status. The British also took some measures of judicial reorganization in this period. A new law abolished the position of the Başkadı and established Sheria religious tribunals that would be under the control of the Supreme Court of Cyprus, and not the Başkadı.[12] In a further move in 1930, the British Administration declared that the Sheria Court judges would draw their salaries from the Evkaf budget, thereby becoming the agents is this institution that was under the tight control of the Governor.

It appears that one of the main motives of these changes was to put a check on the reformist movement that had started to gain momentum, especially since the Turkish War of Independence. They wanted to do so primarily by having a firm grip on Turkish Cypriot social institutions and to have them administered by conservative elements, whose loyalty to the British was certain. However, the British policies served to exacerbate the conflict between the two groups, as an increasing number of people became disaffected by the hegemonic rule of the traditional establishment.

The power given to the Evkaf Department had the effect of turning the Turkish Delegate of Evkaf, who was to be appointed by the Governor, into the leader of the Turkish Cypriots. Mehmet Münir took full advantage of this situation and "absorbed into himself every office he could."[13] Although the position of Münir aroused protests from some Turkish Cypriots, the British took no notice of them in terms of modifying their policies or seriously considering any modification. The open and strong support given to Münir by the British served to spread dissatisfaction among the Turkish Cypriots with both the traditional establishment and the British administration. Because of its identification with the conservative elements governing Evkaf, the traditionalist and establishmentarian camp came to be called evkafçılar (those of the Evkaf). The section of the Turkish Cypriot community that was affected by reformist ideas and opposed the evkafçılar were initially known as the muarızlar (the opponents) and later adopted the name halkçılar (the populists), an appellation for those who supported Mustafa Kemal's Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People's Party) in the new state of Turkey.

Although one can trace the roots of the progression in Cyprus that eventually led to the formation of a political body named halkçılar back to the pre-annexation period of the Young Turks, the foundation of this group was most definitely laid during and after the Turkish War of Independence. The struggle of the Turkish armies to rid Anatolia of occupying armies caused excitement among some Turkish Cypriots and hence alarm among the British authorities. Attempts to send financial assistance to the Turkish army, attempts that might have been just the tip of the iceberg, resulted in the imprisonment of several Turkish Cypriots, among whom were known Young Turks. Despite British repressive and preemptive measures some Turkish Cypriots continued to show an interest in the War. Extensive reports were given by Mehmet Remzi, the editor of the newspaper Doğru Yol, which appeared on 9 September 1919.[14] This paper was closed by the British because of its reports on the War, upon which Mehmet Remzi started publishing Söz. After a while, Ahmet Raşit, a lawyer from Nicosia resumed the publication of Doğru Yol, and the two newspapers initiated campaigns to raise money for Turkish refugees and relief projects.[15] Such activities were appreciated by the Kemalist government, as demonstrated by a letter written to Remzi. It thanked him for his “patriotic publications” and called them a valuable factor that evoked and maintained “the support of the world of Turkdom and Islam” for the Turkish War of Independence.[16] The letter was published in the issue of Söz dated 16 September 1922, followed by an article in which Remzi thanked the Ankara government for acknowledging the efforts of the newspaper and in which he promised to continue his support.[17] The views of Söz was shared by many people, as demonstrated by the fact that this newspaper was the second largest selling newspaper in Cyprus, with 1200 copies being published per issue, after the Greek Cypriot Eleftheria which had a publication of 1700 to 1800.[18]

The section of the Turkish Cypriot community whose views were represented by Söz developed a strong identification with the Republic of Turkey. The reforms instituted in Turkey found a strong echo in Cyprus. After open request by the Cyprus Turkish Teachers Association which was voiced in Söz, the British authorities were compelled to introduce the Latin script in Turkish schools, following the change from the Arabic script implemented by the Ankara Government.[19] Similarly, the ‘clothing reform’ was voluntarily embraced by many young men who started wearing hats instead of fez, and some Turkish Cypriot women began appearing in public without the veil.

By 1930 the halkçılar had gathered considerable popular support owing to the existence of a Turkish nation-state based on the principles they advocated, in addition to the recognition of the hegemonic rule of Münir Bey. Turkey acted as an emblem of national pride by its success in creating a nation-state by Turks, through primarily their own efforts and in defiance of the Western victor power. The Turkish nation-state acted as an inspiration, as well as a point of identification for the reformists, in its success in creating and maintaining Turkish independence by virtue of modernizing principles and goals defined by the Kemalists.


2. The Reformists Challenge

The halkçılar started emerging as a political force in this period, with an agenda that bitterly criticized the evkafçılar and the changes in the setup of the communal institutions, whereby the latter could preserve or even enhance their status with the support of the government. The Legislative Council elections of 1930 signify the emergence of the halkçılar as a strong political group in the Turkish Cypriot history. The biggest political excitement regarding these elections took place in the Nicosia- Kyrenia district, where Mehmet Münir and Mehmet Necati, the candidate of the halkçılar, competed. Mehmet Necati, who was a tradesman, had been elected to the municipal council of Nicosia in 1925 and had been enjoying increasing popular support within the Turkish Cypriot community ever since. Mehmet Remzi gave full support to Necati and Söz actively urged the Turkish Cypriots to vote for him. In the first half of 1930, Birlik, the newspaper of the evkafçılar, had stopped publication. For this reason they brough the press of Hakikat from Larnaca to Nicosia and started publishing the newspaper there, giving full support to Münir in the elections.[20] However, in spite of the traditionalists’ mobilization, Mehmet Necati won a political victory over their candidate.

The defeat of Mehmet Münir was celebrated by the halkçılar who announced in Söz the “demolition of Evkaf, which ha[d] given the biggest blow to the [Turkish Cypriot] existence for the past twenty five years” and he assured the readers that the happiness of Turkish Cypriots will emerge from among the ruins of Evkaf.[21] Indeed, the halkçılar were not slow to voice their demands, and on 20 October 1930 they presented a declaration to the Acting Governor that criticized the changes instituted by the British with respect to the office of the mufti, the Sheria Courts and the Evkaf. However, the forceful communication of the concerns of the halkçılar materialized in the Milli Kongre (The National Congress), which assembled on 1 May 1931.

Mehmet Necati made a call to the Turkish Cypriots to assemble for a national congress in Söz of 23 April 1931, and this call found an echo in the community. Turkish Cypriot representatives from all over the island and from 150 villages assembled in Mehmet Necati’s house. In the meeting, common concerns of the halkçılar were voiced. Generally the strict control of the evkafçılar and the British over the Turkish lycee, the office of the mufti, the Sheria Courts and the Evkaf were criticized. The Milli Kongre came to a number of decisions, each geared towards breaking the monopoly of power the evkafçılar had over the Turkish Cypriot religious and social life. The reformists also challenged the new office of the fetva emini, created by the British, and elected Ahmet Sait as the mufti. Through challenging the government’s policies and establishing a political body under the Milli Kongre, the halkçılar were making a bid for an unprecedented shift in the balance of power and social influence between the privileged old guard (the evkafçılar) and the socially rising reformists (the halkçılar).

Neither the evkafçılar nor the British failed to take notice of the Milli Kongre. The newspaper of the former, Hakikat, published an article that was strongly critical of the Congress.[22] The article claimed that the Congress was not representative of the Turkish Cypriot people, and it defended the policies of the government. It was also claimed in the article that the Turkish Cypriots were “completely happy” with the way in which the British administered the Turkish Cypriot institutions. The article claimed that the duty of the Turkish Cypriots was “to protect and improve [their] situation through cooperation with the government.”

In Söz, the halkçılar responded to the criticisms in Hakikat, stating that the Congress was actually representative of the Turkish Cypriots, and that the Evkafçılar were cowards because they did not participate in the Congress.[23] In another article, Söz attacked the evkafçılar as kaimeci: those who are after money.[24] The reformists accused the evkafçılar of being bought off by the British, with the added connotation that they already had money. Thus defining the evkafçılar as being monied and money-seeking, Remzi stated that by objecting to the election of a mufti by the people, the kaimecis were in fact saying “don’t disturb our peace with your words and actions and be patient with our tyranny and oppression!” According to Remzi, the kaimecis were giving false information about the Milli Kongre, “in order to deceive the government and to present the Congress as an imitation of Greek activities.”

It is interesting to note that the halkçılar were criticizing the evkafçılar by being too close to the British, while the latter accused the former of trying to imitate the Greek Cypriots and thus creating trouble. In this period it was mainly the Greek Cypriots who were expressing their dissatisfaction with the government and making demands for reform. The assembly of the Milli Kongre was the first organized and popular reaction to the British policies from the Turkish Cypriot community. Hence, although there were no signs of any joint movement against the British by the reformist Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriot groups, the evkafçılar attacked the halkçılar for serving the Greek Cypriot political goals by raising their voice against the government.

The British soon reacted to the developments in the Turkish Cypriot community. A declaration by Henniker Heaton, the Acting Governor, appeared in Hakikat, stating that “it ha[d] come to the attention of the government that some people belonging to the Islamic community ha[d] gathered in the form of an assembly, which they call the National Congress, and that they elected a person among themselves as mufti.”[25] The governor believed that the mufti election was totally against “the law, the traditions and the precedents, and thus it [would] on no condition be recognized by the government.” Heaton stated that the government had the right to press charges against anyone who declared himself to be the mufti and added that the government recognized the fetva emini as the only office that has the right to issue fetvas. In conclusion, he alleged that the Milli Kongre was against the real interest of the Turkish Cypriots and that it could have dangerous results for them.

The government was alarmed by the Milli Kongre and wanted to discourage Turkish Cypriots from joining the halkçılar. It is significant that the declaration was published in Hakikat, the newspaper of the evkafçılar. The British did not want to recognize the opposition and thereby acknowledge their power. They were aware of the halkçılar’s intention of using the office of the mufti to stir up Turkish Cypriot opposition to the government and they wanted to prevent such a possibility. The declaration stated that:

Because the government pays attention to the welfare and happiness of the
Islamic Community, it will happily consider and understandingly discuss the
suggestions that are presented in an appropriate manner and that seek to
improve the present conditions and the future of the Islamic Community.

This passage indicates the intention of the British not to lose the grip they have established over the Turkish Cypriot community through the evkafçılar. The “appropriate manner” probably meant ‘through the Evkaf department’. The British were nervous about the activities of the halkçılar and they wanted to preserve the loyalty of the Turkish Cypriot masses to the Evkaf establishment and thus to the British.

The opposition of the halkçılar to British policies acted as a background element of the 1931 riots, which marked an important change in Cypriot political and social life. In October 1931 the governor attempted to pass a tariff bill in the Legislative Council. The British hoped that the Turks would vote with the British, as they had traditionally done, and lead to a deadlock, in which case the governor could use his casting vote in favor of the bill. However, Mehmet Necati, along with the Greek members, voted against the bill and upset their plan. Following this, the governor issued an order-in-council and put the bill in effect. In protest against this act, the Greek Cypriot members of the Legislative Council resigned on 18th October 1931 and the attendant political tension resulted in widespread rioting by the Greek Cypriots that swept the island.

After they crushed the riots, where six people were killed, thirty were wounded, and over two thousand were imprisoned in addition to extensive property damage, the British engaged in administrative realignment. The Legislative Council was abolished and laws were enacted regulating the ringing of church bells and the display of Greek and Turkish flags. Existing political parties were banned and no new ones were permitted to form. Strict press laws were enacted, and the teaching of either Greek or Turkish History was forbidden in the schools. That the British were extending their strict measures to the Turkish Cypriots for a crime they played no part in increased the bitterness of the latter against the government.

These strict British measures acted as a blow to the reformist movement. In a series of articles entitled “The Flag of Surrender,” Mehmet Remzi claimed that, given the current political conditions of the island, there was no meaning in or possibility of continuing the struggle against the British and the evkafçılar.[26] He believed that the demands of the Turkish Cypriots had been made and now it was the duty of the government to actualize them. Despite articles by Mehmet Necati and others that intended to continue the momentum set by the Congress, the excitement died down. The central committee of the Congress never had another meeting. Hence, the era of the Milli Kongre ended without any concrete progress towards the actualization of either of the goals set by the reformists, namely breaking the monopoly of power of the evkafçılar and achieving more communal autonomy for Turkish Cypriot community.

Although the measures of 1931 put an end to the heated arguments in the Turkish Cypriot political life, it could not put a halt on the changing sentiments of the Turkish Cypriots. The dual factor of continued evkafçı hegemony and the existence of a Turkish nation-state based on reformist principles put the Turkish Cypriot community into a phase of gradual strengthening of the halkçılar and weakening of the evkafçılar.


3. The End of the Clash and the British Reorientation

After the establishment of the Republic of Turkey many Turkish Cypriots, particularly the younger generation, became increasingly attached to the Turkish nation-state and the modernist principles on which it was based. The traditionalists tried to prevent this development, which was inevitably, even predictably, going to lead to their loss of popular support. However, their attempts were fruitless and by the end of the 1930s the traditionalist view had greatly lost its appeal and popular support had shifted greatly in favor of the reformists.

During the 1930s the students of the Turkish lycee in Nicosia started more noticeably to identify with Turkey. This process led to a conflict between the students, to whom the halkçılar gave support, and the government, which tried to control or circumscribe the Turkish Cypriot reformists. The Turkish Board of Education had a heavy traditionalist presence. Until 1929 the governing body was composed of the mufti, the delegates of Evkaf, the elected Muslim member of the Legislative Council, three Muslim members to be elected by the Board and one government appointee.[27] In this year the British enacted a law that made a change in the structure of the Board, whereby it was to have three members appointed by the governor. The Board appointed a Briton as the headmaster of the Turkish lycee, in addition to the several British teachers employed there. The government’s policy of controlling the Turkish lycee gave rise to heated debates.

During the 1930s the lycee increasingly became a focus of the reformists and an issue of dispute between them and the Evkafçılar. At the meeting of the Committee of Secondary Education on 19th December 1930, F. D. Newham, the director of education, reappointed Münir to the presidency. Söz criticized this development and accused Münir of extending his hegemony over the Evkaf to the lycee. Hakikat published an article defending Münir’s reappointment and argued that the Evkaf was the only point of support for the Turkish community and it was essential that all social institutions and activities be governed by the Evkaf. Hence it was necessary for this institution to have an influence over the Turkish schools and it was a right move for Münir to accept this position.

In the meeting of the Commission of Secondary Education, the halkçılar and the evkafçılar also engaged in a heated debate regarding the headmaster of the Turkish lycee. The evkafçılar wanted Mr. Grant, the English headmaster of the lycee, to remain, while the halkçılar wanted to appoint a headmaster from Turkey. Eyüp Musa, an evkafçı politician, stated in the meeting that an Englishman should remain the headmaster of the lycee “until the Republic of Turkey is able to produce headmasters that have sufficient abilities and moral qualities to administer” the Turkish lycee.[28] Although Eyüp Musa was attacked bitterly by the halkçılar, the British did not give way, and the hiring of a Turkish headmaster did not materialize. In a further attempt to curb the students’ identification with Turkey, the Turkish Board of Education, composed of Münir and two Britons changed the name of the school from Kıbrıs Türk Lisesi (Cyprus Turkish Lycee) to Kıbrıs Islam Lisesi (Cyprus Islam Lycee) prior to the 1936 – 1937 academic year.
The issue of the lycee was paid utmost attention both by the evkafçılar and the halkçılar because of the influence of education in the mindset of the students. In this period there was no longer an Ottoman Empire for the younger generations to identify with, and hence it is no surprise that they directed their attention to secular and western-oriented Turkey, which was viewed as a strong regional power by the Turkish Cypriots at the time. The evkafçılar, aware that such a trend would mean the eventual loss of their political power, thus tried to diver the students’ attention from Turkey and direct them towards Britain.

While the traditionalists were worried about their lack of support from the younger generation, they were further losing popularity because of the hegemonic rule of Münir, who was given the Order of the British Empire in 1931. In his minute in 1935 Arthur Dawe, a counselor in the Colonial Office, wrote that “a good deal of Kemalism among the Cypriot Turks is due to the personal unpopularity of Münir Bey.”[29] He added that it was “beginning to look doubtful whether the support which past Governments have given to that rather unsound person ha[d] been politically worthwhile.” Dawe mentioned Münir in another in minute in 1937, where he stated that Münir represented the old regime and everything that was opposed in modern Turkey.[30] Dawe added that Münir was “personally not popular with his fellow Turks because of his excessive power as Director of Evcaf and as the Government’s chief adviser on Turkish matters.” Hence, by the second half of the 1930s, the traditionalists were rapidly losing popular support and it was becoming less viable for the British to support them in holding on to the privileged status they enjoyed.

In the meantime the halkçılar were gaining more sympathy in the community, as the Turkish Cypriots’ dissatisfaction with the evkafçılar and their own identification with Turkey grew. By the mid-1930s Turkey had come to be seen as a paradise by many Turkish Cypriots. Writing in 1935 Sir Herbert Richmond Palmer, the Governor, had expressed his worries about “a further application for an entire village to migrate to Asia Minor.”[31] Following strong signs of desire to emigrate to Turkey among the Turkish Cypriot community, Palmer instituted a passport fee of 10 Pounds in order to discourage the Turkish Cypriots from emigrating.[32] The British were concerned about the emigration of Turkish Cypriots, for if this movement assumed large proportions it could have meant the weakening of the traditionally loyal community of Cyprus, in which case it would have been harder to counter the demands by Greek Cypriots for enosis and hence have an effective and stable administration on the island. However, as the British continued to support the traditional establishment, it got harder for the government to maintain this source of support. Palmer, writing to British Ambassador to Turkey in 1934 stated that:

They [The Turkish Cypriots] have, as you are aware, been traditionally loyal to
the British administration for over half a century, but the young generation has
been impressed by what they regard as the advance in civilization in Turkey and
they have evinced growing impatience at the retention in Cyprus of the shackles
imposed by their religion and the control exercised by the Ulema.[33]

By the end of the 1930s the British were getting increasingly worried about the changes in the sentiments of the Turkish Cypriots. The halkçı newspapers were loudly supporting the reforms in Turkey, and the British administration had to censor them several times, for referring to Turkey as “the Fatherland”, and using expressions like “our Atatürk.”

During the 1930s the traditionalists started disappearing from Turkish Cypriot political life. In 1943 local elections, first to be allowed by the British Administration since 1931, all the candidates in the Nicosia region were reformists; the traditionalists were not able to produce any candidates. That the traditionalists had lost so much support that they could not even enter the elections as a group made it harder for the British to continue their existing policy of using their power and authority to govern the Turkish Cypriot community through the evkafçılar. The British had been noticing the gradual loss of popular support of the traditionalists but it was not until the elections of 1943 that they felt the urge to make a change. Writing as early as in 1934, Governor Palmer argued that “the older generation of Turks is gradually disappearing and dwindling , and as the younger generations tend to become Kemalists, we cannot in any case return to the old method of controlling Cyprus for long.”[34] A report from Downing Street in 1937 stated the following:

It is important to make the Moslems of Cyprus feel that the Government is taking
adequate care of their interests and that they have a definite part to play in
the colony under British administration. The collapse of the old order in Turkey
and the rise of the Kemalist republic had created a new problem to which the
British administration in Cyprus must seek to adapt itself. It seems desirable
that Government should endeavour to make an appeal to the younger and
progressive Cypriot Turks.[35]

The changing circumstances indicated to the British administration that they had to make an appeal to the halkçılar. This attempt came in the immediate aftermath of the elections. In early April, Münir – who was still the Turkish delegate of Evkaf ! – started visiting the prominent reformists and having discussions about the establishment of a political organization.[36] In his meetings with the reformist leaders he promised them that he would mediate the relations between this organization and the government. He also stated that the hall of the Evkaf building could be used for the gathering when the organization will be officially founded. After his attempts, the four Turkish members of the Nicosia Municipal Council invited the prominent members of the Turkish community of Nicosia to a meeting in the hall of the Evkaf building. At the meeting an association named Kıbrıs Adası Türk Azınlığı Kurumu (KATAK – Asssociation of the Turkish Minority of the Island of Cyprus) was formed. The association was dominated by politicians known for their reformist stances. It rapidly opened branches in major towns of the island, thereby becoming the largest Turkish Cypriot political organization.

Establishment of this organization should be seen in the light of the British intentions to make an appeal to the halkçılar. Münir was completely dependent on the government for high office and the course of action he took was clearly dictated by the British. After the elections it was clear to the British that the evkafçılar were a non-entity in the Turkish Cypriot political life and that the continuation of their policy of blind support for the traditionalists would jeopardize the loyalty they enjoyed from the Turkish Cypriot community. Hence it was necessary to somehow close the gap between the halkçılar and the evkafçılar and to win the sympathies of the halkçılar. It was this understanding that probably led them to push Münir into a dialogue with the halkçılar, who had criticized him bitterly throughout the past fifteen years. The halkçılar had been disorganized in the post-1931 era, due to the law that banned political parties, and this is probably why they responded favorably to the suggestion of Münir, who, by going to them, was acknowledging the political supremacy of the halkçılar in the Turkish Cypriot community. The establishment of KATAK meant the absorption of traditionalist elements of the Turkish Cypriot community into an organization in which the reformists had the upper hand. The establishment of KATAK marks the definitive end of the evkafçılar as a political body.

In the post World War II era the British administration recognized the reformist leaders as the true representatives of the Turkish Cypriot community. Considering the continued reformist demands with respect to Turkish Cypriot social institutions, the government founded a Committee of Turkish Affairs in 1948

to examine and make recommendations on matters affecting the Turkish community in Cyprus, that is to say: - (i) Evcaf; (ii) Muftiship; (iii) Family Law; (iv)
Educational matters; (v) Sheri Courts.[37]

The governor appointed the Committee members, all of whom were reformists. The Committee worked for a year, after which its proposals were published in the Interim Report of the Committee of Turkish Affairs in 1949. All the proposals were along the halkçı demands of the past two decades and were geared towards introducing the practices in Turkey into the Turkish Cypriot community. These proposals were taken seriously by the government and the demands were to be realized one after the other in the 1950s.

Through the establishment of this Committee the British had capped their change of policy and withdrawn their historical support to the traditionalists. The Turkish Cypriot community had gone through a significant change between the world wars and the reformists had assumed the leadership of the community while the traditional ruling class had rapidly lost its prestige. The British had to come to terms with this fact if they wanted to maintain peaceful relations with the Turkish Cypriot community. The reapproachment with the halkçılar came as a result of this realization. This official recognition of the Turkey-oriented reformists as a the leaders of the Turkish Cypriot community was to have significant impact on the political developments in Cyprus and on the policies of Britain, Greece, Turkey and the Greek Cypriot leadership in the following decades.

Notes

[1] For more information on the developments that led to the signing of this convention see Hill.
[2] Interim Report, p. 23
[3] Gürkan (1982), p. 146
[4] Hill, p. 413
[5] Hamilton Goold Adams (High Commissioner) to Harcourt (unidentified), 4 September 1914, FO 371/2143/35985. Quoted in Gürel, p. 162
[6] McHenry, p. 124
[7] An, 22 March 1993
[8] Stevenson (High Commissioner) to the Duke of Devoshire, 24 December 1922, FO 371/9131/E748/44. Quoted in Choisi, pp. 165 - 166
[9] Colonial Office file on Mehmet Münir, July 1932, CO 67/247/13-143643. Quoted in Choisi, p. 170
[10] McHenry, p. 127
[11] R. Nicholson (Colonial Secretary) to Khuremzadeh Mehmed Hakki Efendi (mufti of Cyprus), 19th November 1928. Reproduced in the Interim Report, p. 59
[12] McHenry, p. 122
[13] Colonial Office file on Mehmet Münir, Ibid.
[14] See Ünlü, pp. 50 - 54
[15] Ismail, pp. 107 - 109
[16] Letter from Ahmet Agaoglu (General Director of Press and Intelligence of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey) to Mehmet Remzi, 21 August 1922. Reproduced in Manizade, pp. 16 - 17. All translations from Turkish in this work are mine.
[17] Reproduced in ibid.
[18] Cyprus Blue Book of 1922
[19] "Yeni Harfleri Benimsemek Vazifemizdir", Söz, 13 September 1928. Quoted in Birinci and Ismail, p.214
[20] An, 9 August 1993
[21] Ahmet Rasit, “Gazanız Mübarek Olsun”, in Söz, no. 460. Quoted in An
[22] Reproduced in An, 14 February 1994
[23] Mehmet Remzi, “Milli Kongranın Mahiyeti” in Söz, 14 May 1931. Reproduced in Birinci and Ismail, pp. 170 - 174
[24] Mehmet Remzi, “Kaimeciler Hokkabazlik Ediyor” in Söz, 14 May 1931. Reproduced in Birinci and Ismail, 174 - 175
[25] Reproduced in Fedai, pp. 87 - 89
[26] Mehmet Remzi, “Teslim Bayrağı", Söz, 17, 24 and 31 March 1931. Reproduced in Birinci and Ismail, pp. 149 - 150
[27] Interim Report, p. 38
[28] Söz, 5 March 1931. Reproduced in An,
[29] Minute by Arthur J. Dawe, 1 May 1935, CO 67/262/2-90571. Quoted in Choisi.
[30] Minute by Arthur J. Dawe, 15 November 1937, CO 67/281/14. Quoted in Gürel, p. 176 and McHenry, p. 143
[31] Palmer to Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister (Colonial Secretary), 10 April 1935. Quoted in Kızılyürek (1988), pp. 111- 113
[32] McHenry, p. 195
[33] Palmer to Loraine (British Ambassador to Turkey), 11 April 1934, FO 371/17963 – XC146076. Quoted in Choisi, p. 174
[34] Palmer to Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, 4 April 1934, CO 67/254/39720/3. Quoted in McHenry, p. 139
[35] CO 67/281/14-f-144143, Downing Street, 19 November 1937. Quoted in Kızılyürek (1993), p. 74
[36] Gürkan (1986), p. 145
[37] Interim Report, p. 3

(c) 2000. This work is based on the unpublished undergraduate history honors thesis presented and defended at Amherst College in 1994. It was presented at the Third International Congress on Cyprus Studies in November 2000 in Cyprus.