Denktas Guneyde: Kibris Rum Tarafinda Bolunmenin Normallesmesi (Denktash in the South: Normalization of Division in the Greek Cypriot Side).

• Author: Karahasan, Hakan

Denktas Guneyde: Kibris Rum Tarafinda Bolunmenin Normallesmesi (Denktash in the South: Normalization of Division in the Greek Cypriot Side)

By Grigoris Ioannu

Lefkosa: Baranga Yayinlari, 2020, 213 pages, 50 TL, ISBN: 9789925753529

Discourses, even though they seem so different and opposing, can be quite similar and serve for the same purpose. Gregoris Ioannou's book is a recent contribution to the field. Denktas Guneyde (Denktas in the South) is the Turkish translation of O [phrase omitted] (O Denktas ston Noto), published in Greek in 2019. Rauf Denktas was a Turkish nationalist, politician and leader of the Turkish Cypriot community for over forty years. He was well-known for his secessionist views, advocating the notion that Turkish and Greek Cypriots cannot live together and hence geographic separation is necessary to prevent the assimilation of the Turkish Cypriot community by the Greek Cypriot majority. Especially after 1974, he constantly followed a policy that there should not be any cooperation between the two communities, but rather a complete separation.

Ioannou reveals how the notion of division became the dominant idea in the minds of the Greek Cypriot community. Aside from looking at it from a political point of view, he argues that the issue is more complicated than it seems. Ioannou outlines the role of political history and economics in relation to the Cyprus issue in the Greek Cypriot community. The first three chapters provide a historical overview of the origins of the Cyprus problem. Until the end of chapter two, the book talks about the emergence of nationalism, intercommunal conflict, war, division, memories, representations, and how the official narrative was created from the 1950s to 2003.

The opening of the checkpoints in 2003 was a milestone in the history of Cyprus because it allowed both communities to see 'the other side' of the island; since 1974 there had been almost no contact between the two communities. Separation had become concrete after the two community leaders of the time signed the Third Vienna Agreement in 1975 and 'encouraged' people to choose sides. As a result, the majority of Turkish Cypriots moved to the northern part of the island and most Greek Cypriots to the southern part. There were exceptions, but these did not change the fact that the island's demography changed significantly; after that, Turkish and Greek Cypriots had their own separate political regimes.

Ioannou's book is an easy read...