‘What Was My War Like?’

Abstract

This paper aims to uncover Turkish Cypriot women's war experiences and integrate that knowledge into the public discourse. We argue that the omission of women's war experiences thus far has served to sustain the mutually reinforcing alliance between patriarchy and nationalism, which we call patriarchal nationalism. Building on feminist standpoint theory, deconstruction of the official and hegemonic ‘his'tory of war poses challenges to the stronghold of patriarchy and ethnic nationalism in society by engaging women in the re-construction of history. Narratives of twenty women from different regions and backgrounds revealed common experiences that have been systematically silenced, memories that have been socially forgotten but could not be erased despite the dominant discourse that has denied their existence for decades. These experiences defy images of the ethno-national Glorious Self, protected by heroic and righteous men, and the Villainous Other. They also identify types of insecurity and victimization that have been excluded from traditional, gendered definitions of security. As these narratives contest fundamental tenets of patriarchy and nationalism, their contributions to the reconstruction of ‘reality’ and history carry prospects for the transformation of both gender and ethnic relations.

Keywords:

• gender, memory
• war history
• Cyprus
• women's narratives
• security

Acknowledgments

The first product of this research was presented at the Gendered Memories of War & Political Violence Conference held by Central European University-Sabanci University Joint Initiative in Istanbul in May 2012. We thank Aysegul Altinay and Andrea Peto for the opportunity to present our work at this venue. We thank Cynthia Enloe for her encouragement to further pursue this research when we shared our initial findings with her in Istanbul. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and editors of IFJP for their very constructive and helpful comments.

Notes on contributors

Umut Özkaleli received her PhD from the Social Science Department at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. She is an Assistant Professor at Zirve University, Political Science Department in Turkey.

Ömür Yılmaz earned her PhD from the Political Science Department at the University of Kansas. She is currently working as a human rights activist and researcher at the Gender and Minorities Institute in Cyprus.

Notes

1 Rum is the Turkish word that refers to Greek Cypriots as an ethnic group.

2 In this paper we are focusing on the Turkish Cypriot community and avoid generalizing Greek Cypriot experience without comparable research.

3 See Enloe (1989), Yuval-Davis (1997), Nagel (1998), Altınay (2004) and Kaufman and Williams (2004).

4 See Enloe (1989), Connel and Messerschmidt (2005), Elshtain (1987) and Sjoberg (2010).

5 See Hartsock (1983), Collins (1990), Enloe (2000), Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis (2002), Haraway (2004), Harding (2004), Jaggar (2004) and Cockburn (2010).

6 For extensive analysis of Cyprus case and identity issues see Ozveren (2002/2003), Lacher and Kaymak (2005) and Diez (2002).

7 CMP stands for the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus.

8 http://cyprus-conflict.org/materials/echr/page12.html

9 For a detailed account on women's political engagement for peace and standpoints of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot women involved in bi-communal peace initiatives, see Cockburn (2004).

10 Violence and economic restrictions against Turkish Cypriot enclaves had intensified in 1967.

11 Cockburn (2004) also mentions fear of rape among Turkish Cypriot women.

12 The suffix -cuk/-cik is widely used as a sign of endearment and empathy in the Turkish Cypriot dialect. For example, bebek means baby and as an endearment people use bebecik.

13 In a book published in 2012, a Turkish-Cypriot retired military officer suggests the two high-ranked military officers mentioned in the two stories above to be the same person, dismisses one of the incidents as ‘untrue’ and cites a different incident (one that involves an argument between this commander and Turkish Cypriot men, who were furious with this ‘outsider's’ treatment of a local, drunk man) as leading up to the killing (Sadrazam 2012: 477).