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Background
For persons displaced by violent conflict, return to one’s home and property in peacetime is a hope and often an expectation. In divided Cyprus that hope has become part of the political problem. This makes the issue of displaced persons’ property-related rights perhaps the biggest challenge to the Cyprus peace process and indeed a major obstacle to inter-communal reconciliation.
Many Cypriots – Turkish Cypriots as well as Greek Cypriots – lost their homes and properties initially as a result of the inter-communal violence in the 1950s and 1960s and later because of the war and subsequent division of the island in 1974. Property-related rights issue arising from these past internal displacements have become intertwined with the competing political and geostrategic aims of the two Cypriot communities, and have thus remained unresolved to this day. Moreover, with the passage of time the issue has turned into legally and technically the most complicated part of the Cyprus dispute; it is also central to economic and social considerations in the event of a peace agreement.
The situation resulting from displacement has a crucial bearing on the whole question of individual rights of both those who lost their homes and properties and those who subsequently took over those properties. Such people constitute a large part of the population on both sides of the island. During the last two decades, a number of cases related to right to enjoyment of property and home have been brought before the European Court of Human Rights, mostly by Greek Cypriots and in recent years increasingly by Turkish Cypriots as well.
Significantly, the issue of displaced persons’ rights also has a complex emotional aspect. This is because it has had, and continues to have, a direct impact on the lives of individuals and local communities, more than any other aspect of the Cyprus problem. Most Cypriots link the issue of displaced persons’ rights with the wrongs done to them and their imagined collectivities by the other community; the loss of homes, property and livelihoods; ancestral lands; original habitats and cultural artefacts; and the social life that surrounded them. Thus, there are highly emotive, normative and personal sentiments surrounding the issue. These sentiments will not fade away quickly and probably continue to frame collective imaginations even after a formal solution of the issue is attained. The link between these imaginations and the nationalisms to which they have historically been tied may, in the absence of alternative frames being cultivated before and after a solution agreement is reached, thwart the implementation of any such agreement.
Yet, as things stand there is a serious lack of grassroots level inter-communal dialogue through which to address the sentiments and concerns of individuals and local communities that have somehow been affected by displacement. Such dialogue is absolutely essential if the divergent perspectives prevailing within the two Cypriot communities are ever to be bridged through a new common vision for the future.
For all these reasons displacement in Cyprus has consistently been a main area of research at the PRIO Cyprus Centre (PCC). Similarly, it constitutes the theme of our project ‘Dialogue for Trust-Building and Reconciliation: Cypriots Seeking New Approaches to the Property Issue’ and this website, ‘Internal Displacement in Cyprus: Mapping the Consequences of Civil and Military Strife’, which forms a crucial part of the project.
This project is funded by a grant from the EU Commission (reference: Europeaid/127215/L/ACT/CY)
The project is aimed at promotion of inter-communal dialogue and debate through which Cypriots may come to understand the conflicting concerns and perspectives of both communities. The need for informed and constructive dialogue directed towards improving mutual understanding on the different facets of the issue of displaced persons’ rights cannot be overemphasized within the context of any effort towards trust and reconciliation in Cyprus. Such mutual understanding has been hindered by a number of longstanding obstacles:
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Insufficient information about routes of displacement and resettlement; that is who was displaced when and from where and eventually resettled where;
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Limited information about each side’s legal arrangements concerning displaced persons and their abandoned properties;
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Lack of empathy towards the other community due to the dominance of one-sided stories about the past and about the plight of displaced persons;
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Little constructive inter-communal dialogue about how the problems of displaced persons can be resolved;
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Lack of a broader perspective involving other comparable post-conflict situations from which instructive lessons might be learned.
With this project, the PCC seeks to contribute toward overcoming these obstacles. The purpose is to address the Cypriots’ need for better information and documentation as well as means of facilitated dialogue in connection with issues arising from conflict-related internal displacement in Cyprus. It is hoped that this will enable them to understand and constructively discuss their conflicting perspectives, anxieties, and expectations, and ultimately to seek possible common solutions to the problems dividing them.
The project activities, which are interlinked, are taking place under the following four headings:
While analysts and negotiators recognize that there are many different types of displaced persons living today in many different situations, there has to date been no systematic attempt to map routes of displacement, current residence, and the relation of these to political/ideological stances and views of a possible settlement. This activity involves basic research to identify who was displaced when; what happened to their original habitats after displacement; and where they now live.
Another part of this activity deals with legal issues and comprises an analytical study and creation of an inventory of the legal arrangements concerning displaced persons and abandoned properties in both northern and southern parts of Cyprus.
This activity seeks to provide frameworks for discussing concerns by analyzing the different situations of displacement /resettlement and by facilitating dialogue between local stakeholders who will be influenced by any potential settlement. It brings together focus groups in different areas throughout the island. The groups discuss the processes by which property was lost, their own resettlement, and their visions for a resolution of the property issue in the island. The next stage of these focus groups is an inter-communal dialogue forum to discuss the two communities’ different experiences of displacement and their visions for resolution of the problem. This forum, meeting around a series of workshops, will culminate in a public conference that will also include relevant researchers, experts and NGO representatives. In addition, an international conference is planned where the participants will look at conflict-related property issues from a comparative perspective.
This part of the project involves collecting and publicising the life stories of displaced persons and others variously affected by displacement. The aim of this is to raise public awareness about the lesser known aspects of these stories and contextualise them within individual life histories as well as regional histories that often tend to be subsumed in official grand narratives. These are stories not only of displacement but also of resettlement, as well as of return today to see original habitats. They all affect the ways in which average Cypriots view potentials for resolution of the thorny issue of displaced persons’ rights.
The documentary film is based on the idea of giving human faces to the conflict. Its making involves use of both interviews and archival footage to demonstrate the ways in which property has violently changed hands, and how for many Cypriots the loss of their property symbolizes their own violation and the loss of a way of life. It aims to show, furthermore, the consequences of a politics of remembering and forgetting. While Greek Cypriots have remained in limbo for thirty years, waiting for the time of their return to their homes, Turkish Cypriots have been told to settle, to go on with their lives, and to forget the past. On both sides, people who have been displaced or lost properties, as well as others who did not, have come to embrace official standpoints, as much as refute them. The yearning for return, as well as the rejection of it as a realistic possibility is expressed on both sides of the divide amidst a multiplicity of discourses. The film will seek to portray the disputes over property and returning home in all their vivid complexity.
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