Art and politics mix
in cross-border show
by Kerry Sheridan
NICOSIA, May 20, 2005 (AFP) - On the outside of a grey-walled theatre in the Turkish occupied north of Nicosia, someone used chalk to scrawl two stick figures of men extending arms to shake hands, but they can't reach because their feet are drawn as separate deeply entangled tree roots.
In the Greek Cypriot south of the city -- the world's last divided capital -- street signs are plastered with stickers reading "Cyprus: One Island Under Self-Control, " credited to a Cyprus unionist party which does not exist.
And near the desolate UN buffer zone that has separated north from south for three decades, a deserted football goalpost rests in an empty field. The netting has been removed and replaced with large coils of barbed wire, spearing several deflated soccer balls and suspending them in the air.
"The idea is a game that turns into a barrier, " said Katerina Gregos, explaining that these odd sights are not the work of vandals but part of an unprecedented cross-border art show she is curating in Nicosia this month.
"Leaps of Faith" aims to address the division of Nicosia, partitioned along with the rest of Cyprus since 1974 when Turkish forces invaded the north in response to a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.
But Gregos acknowledged that trying to bring together two cities that share only a sewage system and that don't have direct telephone contact is a feat that cannot be achieved with a simple art show.
"People will stumble into it accidentally, " said Greek-born Gregos, who is organising the project with a Turkish counterpart Erden Kosova.
"We're not counting audience numbers."
The curators worked with close to 30 artists from Greek and Turkish Cyprus, Mexico, South Africa, Britain, Lebanon and beyond.
"I wanted to bring into the Cyprus context a different language, something visual and provocative that provokes self-reflection, " said Rana Zincir, the project initiator, who was born in the United States to a Turkish father and Turkish Cypriot mother.
The May 13-29 show cost 200,000 euros (about 250,000 dollars) to put together and was funded by a number of organizations including the UN Bicommunal Development Programme.
Installations from the "Leaps of Faith" show are not found in art galleries, but in empty storefronts, deserted hotels and parking garages on both sides of Nicosia.
And in a first for Nicosia, the exhibits are also set up inside the UN-patrolled buffer zone, the jagged Green Line which stretches for 180 kilometres (110 miles) and in parts is only a few metres (yards) wide.
In a work of performance art, a local art professor arranged for 37 of her students to wrap themselves in straitjackets and try to pass from north to south through Turkish and Greek Cypriot checkpoints.
"I don't think of the straitjacket as a symbol of anything or as a metaphor, but they are a very strong image, " said Anber Onar, 40, a lecturer in visual arts at the Eastern Mediterranean University in northern Cyprus.
"They have lots of force, keeping people's hands tied so someone else can take care of your mental being, how they exclude and include people, how we decide what is normal."
Her students marched in single file to the checkpoint, but many who carried Turkish ID cards but not passports were not allowed to cross into Greek Cypriot controlled Nicosia, so the students returned in two separate lines, Onar said.
In a major development in the conflict, the border between the internationally-recognized south and the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was opened in 2003 and guards are supposed to allow passage to anyone with a passport.
"The Turkish Cypriots who were not allowed to pass were very offended, " said Onar. "They saw it as a judgement of their identity. It made them say, 'Yes! I am a Cypriot!'"
However, while most artists in "Leaps of Faith" travelled from north to south to complete their research, no Greek Cypriot work is on display in the Turkish Cypriot sector, and similarly, no Turkish Cypriot art is on display in the Greek Cypriot south.
Even Onar was skeptical about the outcome, saying "I don't think it is solving anything at all."
Inside a once-empty shop in southern Nicosia, Greek Cypriot artist Katerina Attalidou, 31, used one wall for her photographs of immigrants in Nicosia, and one corner to place a creation of her own: a large heart made of pink plastic garbage bags taped together. Beneath the plastic, a fan on a timer inflated the heart so that it filled with air, and its top nearly reached an iron-barred window. Then, the heart deflated, only to be filled again, over and over.
"For me, it's the heart of Nicosia that needs to be repaired, " Attalidou said. "And it's putting people in the mindset that things can change."
Poet-turned-politician
breaks mold in Cyprus
by Kerry Sheridan
NICOSIA, May 4, 2006 (AFP) - From the time she was four years old, Neshe Yashin was taught that Greek Cypriots were her enemies.
But Yashin, who is now the first Turkish Cypriot to run for the Cyprus parliament in more than four decades, says that growing up as a child of war also taught her to rebel against long-held feelings of nationalism that have contributed to the Mediterranean island's 32-year divide.
"I saw my candidacy as a kind of challenge against rising nationalism because I am inviting Greek Cypriots to vote for a Turkish Cypriot, " she told AFP. "What I want is for Cyprus to be reunited."
The 47-year-old poet knows that her own political attempts may prove futile given the island's polarized climate.
She has been unable to engage in campaign debates for the May 21 election because although she is fluent in Turkish and English, she speaks very little Greek.
And she is running on an island where the majority Greek Cypriot population voted an overwhelming "no" two years ago to a controversial UN reunification plan.
Yashin's candidacy aims "to send a strong message, " said Mikis Shanis, secretary general of the small pro-reunification United Democrats party on whose list she is running.
"Neshe Yashin is a symbol of weary people who dream and who try and who have a vision for reunification, " Shanis said, admitting that her election would "be a revolution for today's status quo."
Yashin, who once wrote in a popular poem: "One should love one's homeland/So says my father/But my homeland is divided into two/Which part should I love?" admits she hasn't really "thought of being elected."
Still, she believes her own personal journey could help stir what she believes has become a stagnant political pot.
Her childhood was shaped by a violent tale, told to her by her elders, of how her pregnant mother was snatched by armed Greek Cypriots during 1963 clashes in Nicosia and forced to give birth at gunpoint to a baby boy she later named Savash, or "War" in Turkish.
"Afterward we became unhappy because my mother could not recover from this trauma ... I had this feeling that we were the victims and they were the perpetrators, " recalled Yashin.
But her ideas began to change after Turkish troops invaded in 1974, seizing the northern swath of the island in response to an Athens-inspired coup attempt to join Cyprus with Greece, causing several hundred thousand refugees from both sides to flee their homes.
Yashin's family was moved into what had been the house of a Greek Cypriot family.
Neshe could tell by the clothes and the toys left behind that her new room had been lived in by a younger boy.
"I was thinking of these people, " she said. "Where are they are living and why are we are in their house?
"I felt a little bit like we were thieves taking their belongings, so I started questioning the official narration of history in Cyprus and this helped me to transform."
Yashin obtained her university education in Turkey and returned to live in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the mid-1980s.
She moved to the government-controlled south in 1997 after being harassed by secret police and briefly imprisoned in the north for her views.
"They wanted me to have fear and give up my ideas but it worked the other way, " she said.
Her candidacy was made possible after the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2004 that EU-member Cyprus had violated the right to free elections by preventing a Turkish Cypriot resident of the government-controlled areas from casting a ballot for Greek Cypriot candidates.
Under the quota system established by Cyprus's 1960 post-independence constitution, Turkish Cypriots could vote only for Turkish Cypriot candidates, who were allocated around 30 percent of parliament seats. Their seats, and the post of vice president, have remained vacant since 1963.
The 56-member Cypriot parliament passed a law earlier this year that allowed Turkish Cypriots residing in the south to vote and run in elections for the first time, which government spokesman George Lillikas described as "a very positive sign."
"The constitution was enforcing differences. This is why I give a lot of support to Turkish Cypriot candidates who will be voted on by Greek Cypriot voters, " Lillikas said.
Dozens of Turkish Cypriots in the north also petitioned for their right to run and to vote, but have been denied because they do not live in the south.
Yashin may be able to count on the support of 270 newly registered Turkish Cypriot voters in the south, but her bid to reunite the island hardly resonates with most of the younger Greek Cypriot population.
According to a poll published last month, 63 percent of Cypriots aged 18-24 said they were against living together with Turkish Cypriots. In contrast, two-thirds of those over 55 said they hoped to end the division.
"These young people don't even know the other side, " said Nicos Peristianis, a sociologist and dean of Cyprus's Intercollege.
"They hear their parents talk about it but it was never their own life so how can you feel strongly about a part of Cyprus that you don't know?"
Yashin's candidacy makes "a symbolic point, but nobody is going to change their votes for a symbolic reason, " Peristianis said.
Aware of her "symbol" status, Yashin has avoided specifics in her campaign, other than to advocate "demilitarization" of the island and fresh talks toward a federal solution of the Cyprus problem.
"What I see now is that nobody is talking about the future. We are stuck in a stalemate so anything I say now is kind of not really very realistic, " she said.
"If people really elect me it will be a new thing in Cyprus."
AFP Photo by Jihan Ammar
I was based in on the Greek Cypriot side of the divided capital of Nicosia for two years, while working as an editor on AFP’s Middle East desk.
photo by Laura Boushnak
