from spaces of identity to mental spaces: lessons from turkish-cypriot cultural experience in...

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From spaces of identity tomental spaces: Lessons fromTurkish-Cypriot culturalexperience in BritainKevin Robins & Asu AksoyPublished online: 04 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Kevin Robins & Asu Aksoy (2001) From spaces ofidentity to mental spaces: Lessons from Turkish-Cypriot cultural experiencein Britain, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27:4, 685-711, DOI:10.1080/13691830120090458

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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 27, No. 4: 685± 711 October 2001

From spaces of identity to mental spaces: lessons from

Turkish-Cypriot cultural experience in Britain

Kevin Robins and Asu Aksoy

Abstract This article is concerned with the culture of Turkish Cypriots in Britain, andat the same time with the problems of ® nding an adequate theoretical language totheorise those experiences. First, it seeks to bring out the particularity of Turkish-Cypriotculture, located as it is between British, Cypriot and Turkish reference points. We arguethat this is a culture that is distinctively, and often uncomfortably, placed betweennational and transnational conditions of existence. The article looks particularly at theexperiences of Turkish-Cypriot women, seeking to explore their sense of culturalpositioning as they live their lives in London. In its more theoretical sections, the articleseeks to work against the national discursive frame of community and identity that isgenerally used to describe Turkish-Cypriot culture, suggesting instead an alternativeapproach that shifts from identity to experience and thinking about experiences.

KEYWORDS: TURKISH CYPRIOTS; WOMEN; LONDON; CULTURE; IDENTITY; EXPERIENCE

In recent research we have begun to address the cultural transnationalisation of`Turkish-speaking communities’ in Europe (see Aksoy and Robins 2000; Robinsand Aksoy 2001). In this article, we focus on one particular transnational group,the Turkish Cypriots in Britain, and especially on the experiences of Turkish-Cypriot women. Turkish Cypriots migrated from Cyprus largely as a conse-quence of the bitter inter-communal’ con¯ icts of the 1950s and 1960s, and thenthe political and economic problems of the 1970s and 1980s, following thepartition of the island. Britain was their favoured destination because, as formercolonial subjects, they had, or felt that they had, a `special’ historical relationshipwith the colonial heartland. In Britain, however, it turned out that they quicklybecame an invisible population’. Very little has ever been written about them.In the little research that has been undertaken (and this applies to both Turkishand Greek Cypriots), the conditions for their experience [are] left absent and thehistorical circumstances of their arrival in Britain are left unaccounted for’(Solomos and Woodhams 1995: 233). A basic objective of this article, then, is torender Turkish Cypriots visible in their British context ± to acknowledge theirpresence and their signi® cance as a transnational group in the cultural space ofBritain.

But our aim is not just to compensate for previous oversight or neglect. Wethink that there is actually something distinctive ± and also very instructive ±about the Turkish-Cypriot experience. That distinctiveness concerns the peculiarnature of the Turkish Cypriots’ relationship to culture and identity. What we aregoing to suggest is that this population exists in a kind of suspension betweennational and transnational cultural conditions, with neither possibility beingproperly realised. With respect to the national possibility, what has been

ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/01/040685-27 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/1369183012009045 8Carfax Publishing

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686 K. Robins and A. Aksoy

unusual about the Turkish Cypriots is that, whilst they clearly have a sense ofa culture in common, they have never had an achieved sense of national identity.If there were early attempts to promote the cause of nationalism and nationalculture in Cyprus (Papageorgiou 1997), there were always real problems inbinding Turkish Cypriots as a whole into this imagined community’ ± acommunity, that is to say, with an identity apart from that of the `mainland’Turks. And later, for those who were involved in the large-scale migration fromthe island, another set of factors came to inhibit the development of a nationalidentity. Preferring to adapt and accommodate to their `host’ country, theTurkish Cypriots did not think it appropriate to assert or to make an issue oftheir cultural presence and difference. In the British context, theirs has alwaysseemed to be a peculiarly unobtrusive and unassuming cultural community.

In other words, the elaboration of an òf® cial’ national-style Turkish-Cypriotidentity has been constantly inhibited. What is distinctive about the Turkish-Cypriot population is that it is characterised by what appears to be a particularly`weak’ or ùndeveloped’ culture and identity. Turkish Cypriots themselves seemvery aware of this condition. When we began to work on this research we werestruck by the cultural unassertiveness of the people we talked to ± it seemed tous to be related to some kind of incompleteness or insuf® ciency at the heart oftheir culture. As researchers, we initially experienced a strange sense of disap-pointment as we re¯ ected on what Turkish-Cypriot culture had to offer. Wecould not escape the feeling that something fundamental was `missing’ from it± that Turkish-Cypriot culture was the culture of a hollow community. It tookus some time to think our way beyond these feelings of disappointment in ourresearch subjects. What became only gradually clear to us was that we had been(unthinkingly) expecting Turkish-Cypriot culture to conform to some kind ofstandard’ model of a national community (and expecting this even though ourresearch was, in fact, concerned with the signi® cance of cultural transnationalisa-tion).

What we had to recognise, in order to be able to think more productivelyabout this particular culture, was that something else was also going on in it,something besides the national aspiration. Turkish Cypriots (and especiallymigrants) have had to position themselves according to a more complex set ofcultural reference points. First, there is the culture of the island from which theyoriginate (and which they have shared historically with a variety of other ethnicgroups, particularly the majority Greek Cypriots). Second, there is the culture of`mainland’ Turkey, which now exerts a powerful, and growing, in¯ uence bothin Cyprus and in the migrant settlements. And then there is the culture of Britain± a country that was once the colonial master in Cyprus; that was shamefullyimplicated in the ethnic con¯ icts that led to the island’s partition; and thatbecame the country of migrant settlement and acculturation. In the followingdiscussion we refer to this relational ® eld as the frame of Turkish-Cypriotculture. Turkish-Cypriots (have to) position themselves culturally with referenceto the co-ordinates of this overall frame.

What is signi® cant is that this frame is a transnational frame. What we had at® rst failed to take account of when we initially regarded it as simply a `weak’or ùndeveloped’ imagined community, is that Turkish-Cypriot culture is aculture that has, until very recent times, been characterised more by its transna-tional ± or, better, transcultural ± connections. As a consequence of a long, andstill resonant, historical experience ± the early con¯ uence of Mediterranean

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From spaces of identity to mental spaces 687

cultures, imperial subordination ® rst to the Ottomans and then to Great Britain,the modern political and economic migrations ± the Turkish-Cypriot peoplehave been used to cultural encounter and interaction, and have always had astrong elsewhere-orientation. Today, that historical transnationalism or transcul-turalism is considerably damaged and undermined ± but it is not entirelyeradicated. If it is not able to ® nd any accommodation within the `of® cial’cultural ideology, it still exists as part of the ordinary experience of Turkish-Cypriot people. We think that the transnational dimension continues to besigni® cant for their experience within the Turkish-Cypriot cultural frame. Whatthe frame entails, for all those individuals who have to operate across it, is aconstant, and often dif® cult, negotiation between the different cultural referencepoints. We have to recognise that the experience of operating across such atransnational frame is quite different from that of being located in the singularand homogeneous space of an imagined community.

The Turkish-Cypriot case began to have a very contemporary relevance for usonce we were able to see it as a culture caught between national and transna-tional logics. What was signi® cant was not just the fact of being in-between’ :that the culture was struggling to express itself through the national imaginary,whilst, at the same time, Turkish Cypriots, in Britain especially, were locatingthemselves within a transnational cultural space. It was actually the frustratingnature of the sense of in-betweenness in this particular case. The problem is thatimagined community’ is an unproductive experience for Turkish Cypriots; and,at the same time, that their culture is not properly able to realise the potentialof its transnational connections. Neither possibility seems to really `work’ forTurkish-Cypriot culture. Is there a way out of this cultural impasse? Wheremight the sources of potential transformation be found? These are key questionsthat will concern us in the discussion that follows.

The dif® culties that we initially experienced in connecting with the peculiari-ties of Turkish-Cypriot culture ± the dif® culties we have had with pointing totheir identity ± have made us re¯ ect on the way that we think about cultures.And so, as well as being about the particular experience of Turkish Cypriots inBritain, this article will also be concerned more generally with the categoriesthrough which we think about ± and might come to think differently about ±cultural experience. What has become increasingly apparent to us is the extentto which contemporary discussions of transnationalisation are suffused by thenational imaginary. By the national imaginary, we mean the disposition thatspontaneously organises, or seeks to organise, collectivities in terms of imaginedcommunities’ , and individuals according to their identities’ . We use thesecategories all too readily. And whenever we make ready use of them we ® ndourselves implicated in a particular imagination of cultural organisation. AsKatherine Verdery (1993: 39± 40) observes, `we tend to write about nationalidentity as if the second term were not at all problematic ¼ ’ Should we not bere¯ ecting, she encourages us to ask, on what the `peculiar concatenation of ideas’associated with national identity has been about? What has been the socio-his-torical ef® cacy of the notion of identity? What has been the particular job that ithas been allocated in the context of the national cultural order? Identity’ hasfunctioned as an ordering device, but at the same time, and more importantly,we can see it historically as a device of cultural engineering: put simply, a personwho became the bearer of an identity’ became a particular kind of person.Identity’ was about making people who have a sense of `belonging’, about

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® xing cultures in place ± in the words of Pontalis (1993: 131), àdherence of nameto thing’. And, by the same token, we may say that the èf® cacy’ of the notionof identity has been to do with a project of immobilisation ± with the sup-pression of cultural mobility and consequently of what mobility would makepossible.

What will hopefully be clear in the discussion that follows is our own struggleto distance ourselves from the national imaginary and the instituted discoursesof imagined community. We have not wanted to ® x Turkish-Cypriot culture ina national identity mould. In our research, it has not seemed at all productive tothink about the experiences of Turkish Cypriots in Britain simply through thereducing category of identity’. What will also be clear in the following dis-cussion is our interest in thinking about cultures in ways that have nothing todo with attachment and belonging. Of far greater signi® cance, for us, are thetransnational aspects of Turkish-Cypriot culture, and what we regard as thecultural possibilities of transnationalisation. We shall argue that what is re-quired, if we are to explore alternative possibilities, is a shift of both theoreticaland methodological focus. We have to move beyond what Jacques RancieÁ re callsthe ® ctive unity’ of a culture, the imaginary unity to which identities adhere,and to engage with the èmpirical people’, and their cultural experiences andreasoning. As RancieÁ re cogently puts it, individuals are real beings, and societya ® ction ¼ One must choose to attribute reason to real individuals or to their® ctive unity’ (1991: 133).

In our research we have found it necessary to move beyond the discursiveframe of culture, identity and community (recognising that the ® ctive unity isònly a creation of the imagination’ ± to borrow RancieÁ re’s apt and lucid phrase),and to take into account the signi® cance of individual consciousnesses andexperiences. We have become aware of the need, following Anthony Cohen(1994: 4), to elicit and describe the thoughts and sentiments of individuals whichwe otherwise gloss over in the generalisations we derive from collective socialcategories’. For, as he rightly observes, `countries are not self-aware, people are’(Cohen 1994: 130). We believe that it is in that self-awareness that we are likelyto learn more about the possibilities of transnational cultures (by which we meanthe possibilities that may exist for freeing us from our adherence to ® ctiveunities).

Of course, we recognise the impossibility at the present time of doing awaywith the notion of collective identity ± after all, it is a notion that has becomeingrained in the cultural commonsense of our times, and people continue toorganise their lives around that concatenation of ideas. Our real point is that wehave to begin the process of de-operationalisation. We have to start trying tothink about cultural con® gurations in other ways ± ways that are more experien-tially productive. We have to develop a different kind of imagination, in whichculture is no longer simply about attachments, allegiances, loyalties, bonds, roots± in short, subjection (which is what that concatenation of ideas has been allabout). What has to be envisaged is an imagination that could both renew andenlarge the idea we make of contemporary cultural realities. We ® nd the idea of`mental space’ ± which is the place in and from which individuals symbolise,and thereby participate, cultures ± productive in this respect. FollowingRobert Young, we may regard mental space as a space that is both within us andin the external world; it is àn intermediate area of experiencing, to which innerreality and external life both contribute’ (Young 1994: 146). In his own account,

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Young deals primarily with the inner world. He is concerned with the ways inwhich we picture the mind, and is interested particularly in renderings ofmental geography which encourage journeys of discovery, where one can learnfrom experience’ (Young 1994: 34). In our own re¯ ections, we shall be concernedalso with the external geographies ± with how we picture the world out there.What we shall suggest is that the capacity to experience, and to digest and learnfrom experience, is also related to the way in which we conceive of, andsymbolise, real-world geographies. We shall come to this in due course, but herelet us just note that the idea of mental spaces shifts the agenda away fromcultural identities, and towards questions of cultural experience and thinkingabout experiences ± and this we regard as a highly productive shift.

After this long and self-re¯ exive introduction, let us now spell out thestructure of the rest of our article, which is in three parts. In the ® rst part, weelaborate the cultural frame of Turkish-Cypriot culture. We will suggest thatidentity remains an issue of concern, albeit an unresolved one, in contemporaryTurkish-Cypriot cultural politics. If we are concerned to ® nd ways of thinkingourselves beyond cultural identity, we are also well aware that `of® cial’ andideological politics are still very much concerned with the identity problem’ ofTurkish Cyprus and Turkish Cypriots. We must have regard to what is happen-ing with the ® ctive unity of `Turkish-Cypriotness’. It remains very much a partof the cultural equation.

From there, we move on in the second section of the article to consider thethoughts and ideas of some of the people whom we have been interviewing inLondon. We shall be particularly concerned with Turkish-Cypriot women. Thisis partly for the pragmatic reason that we had greater access to them than tomen; but also because we feel that they are less attached to ideological cultureand politics, and therefore perhaps more open to the possibilities of culturalchange. We are interested, then, in the ways in which Turkish-Cypriot womenare relating to, struggling with, and re¯ ecting on, their culture. Our sense is thatat this particular historical moment, in 2001, there may actually be particularcultural and experiential possibilities that were not available, say, a decadebefore.

In the third section of the article, and in the conclusion, we return totheoretical issues and to our own interpretative struggle against the discoursesof imagined community and identity. Here we will re¯ ect more fully on theconceptual shift that we are trying to make from spaces of identity to mentalspaces.

Turkish Cypriots in Britain: problems of the ® ctive unity’

Turkish Cypriots began to come to Britain in a signi® cant way in the 1950s. Theygrew steadily as a migrant population through the 1960s, and then quickly in theearly 1970s, as a consequence of the ethnic con¯ ict in Cyprus. Some 40,000±50,000 persons are estimated to have left the island since the Turkish invasion in1974. It is dif® cult to calculate the number of Turkish Cypriots in Britain, ascensus information does not clearly distinguish them as an ethnic group(KuÈ cË uÈ kcan 1999), but the estimate is that there are around 100,000. The estimatefor the number of Turkish Cypriots remaining in Cyprus is around 80,000. It isfurther estimated that there are close to 80,000 Turkish `settlers’ also on theisland, making the Turkish-Cypriot population there pretty much a minority in

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two contexts (Brey and Heinritz 1993; Kadritzke 1998). The above ® gures are tobe regarded as approximate, but they point ± and Turkish Cypriots are veryconscious of this ± to a highly unusual demographic pro® le in this particulartransnational group.

The population in Britain now constitutes the greatest concentration of Turk-ish Cypriots, but it remains none the less a small cultural grouping. Actually, wemight refer to them as the Turkish Cypriots in London, as they are mostlyconcentrated in the capital, and, indeed, largely in boroughs in the north andeast (with a smaller population in South London). Back in the 1950s, TurkishCypriots settled in the Euston and Camden areas of the city, but over the years,as they have been able to afford better housing conditions, they have moved out,from Camden to Holloway to Seven Sisters to Haringey, to Palmers Green andnow as far out as En® eld ± along the 29 bus route, as somebody said to us.Coming in the ® rst generations from what were predominantly rural and villagebackgrounds, Turkish-Cypriot migrants have managed to establish themselvessuccessfully in their new urban location (Sonyel 1988). It has been commonlyobserved ± of both Turkish and Greek Cypriots ± that their kinship networksand family loyalties have been crucial in sustaining stable and self-containedcommunity structures (e.g. Oakley 1979: 16± 17). As a consequence, no doubt, oftheir village origins, they have always been imaginatively situated in the frameof community. In a brief survey published in 1981, F.M. Bhatti felt able tocharacterise them as àn already well-adjusted community’, and was con® dent inconcluding that òn the whole, theirs is a success story’ (Bhatti 1981: 1, 19).

If they have sometimes seemed to embody a model of community, we shouldgo on to note that Turkish Cypriots have also existed as an invisible community(and perhaps there is some relation between their ideal’ status and theircondition of invisibility?). There are various reasons for this relative invisibility,we suggest. First, in the overall context of a multicultural Britain, TurkishCypriots have been overshadowed by the larger, and far more high-pro® le,Black and Asian communities. Second, and more particularly, their presence hasbeen somewhat eclipsed by the later and more prominent and demonstrativemigrations of Turks and Kurds from `mainland’ Turkey. Third, in the context ofthese latter migrations from Anatolia, Turkish Cypriots have tended to empha-sise what they regard as their own qualities of being both more `progressive’(that is, more Èuropean’) and also more integrated’ into the British way of life.Cyprus was a British colony for over 80 years, and there has been a sense ofaf® nity with British culture among many Turkish Cypriots as a consequence ofthis historical subjection ± and a strong desire to be accepted by the British. So,for a variety of reasons, Turkish-Cypriot culture has been hidden from the light.An index of its low pro® le is the virtual absence of research on Turkish Cypriotsin Britain. Turkish Cypriots have been simply inconspicuous.

They have existed both as a `silent minority’ and, as Aydõ n Mehmet Ali (1985)observes, as a `silenced minority’. In the new migrant context, Turkish-Cypriotculture and identity did not ® nd a voice. In the early days of migration, theexpression of their own particular culture and identity was not a major concernor issue for them. Turkish Cypriots just got on with things. To some extent, thiswas surely because thinking about who they were would necessarily confrontthem with the question of why they had left Cyprus, and with all the painassociated with the memories of ethnic con¯ ict and the consequent experience ofpolitical± cultural partition. Aydõ n Mehmet Ali, a community activist in London,

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expresses it in terms of the theme of denial’ in Turkish-Cypriot culture, `denialthat you were part of a whole of Cyprus, denial that it caused you pain to leaveall those places’ (Interview, London, 21 June 2000). Thinking about identitywould have required Turkish Cypriots to consider their relation to the Greek-Cypriot migrants and refugees, alongside whom they lived and worked, andwith whom, in the translated context of London, they actually got on quitecordially (Constantinides 1977: 276± 7; Ladbury 1977: 312± 5). The majority ofTurkish Cypriots seem, then, to have opted for a pragmatic accommodation tothe demands of their new British circumstances. They never aspired to stand out,never wanted to rock the boat. They displayed what one author regarded as a`psychological self-suf® ciency’ (Bhatti 1981: 13). `Turkish Cypriots have devel-oped a high degree of adaptability,’ Bhatti approvingly observed, `and theirchief priority is success in this country’ (Bhatti 1981: 8). His positive tone is inaf® rmation of what he regards as the success story of the Turkish-Cypriotcommunity in integrating into British society and culture. What, in their differ-ent ways, the accounts of both Mehmet Ali and Bhatti evoke is a combined logicof denial and adaptation in Turkish-Cypriot culture.

This logic has been a powerful force shaping Turkish-Cypriot culture inBritain ± and, as we shall argue below, it still continues to be a very signi® cantfactor. Over the last decade, however, the question of culture and identity hasbegun to emerge as a more salient issue. Already in 1987, a group of writers andintellectuals met in London to discuss Turkish-Cypriot culture ± to move thedebate beyond the rigid ideological positions that had come to characterise theof® cial politics centred around the `Cyprus problem’. In the foreword to theconference proceedings, it is noted that `despite their differing approacheseveryone agrees on one point: IDENTITY’ (Mehmet Ali 1990: 7). In seeking toopen up this new discussion, these writers were clearly responding to the muchbroader cultural transformations of the time (associated with globalisation andthe end of the Cold War), which were putting identity on the agenda every-where. Since the time of that (quite in¯ uential) conference, the question ofculture and identity has moved beyond the domain of the intellectuals, and hasbecome an issue for a great many Turkish Cypriots, particularly among thesecond and third generations, who are now far removed from the politics ofCyprus in the 1970s. As IÊ lker Kõ lõ cË , who is the Chair (in London) of theCumhuriyetcË i TuÈ rk Partisi (Republican Turkish Party) observes, young TurkishCypriots are now searching for their identities. `Because they are settling in thecommunity, they are faced with this question, ª who are you?º ¼ They are insearch of an identity; they want an identity’ (Interview, London, 12 May 2000).These young people are now more aware of the debates around multicultural-ism and new identities among other ethnic communities in London, notablyBlack and Asian cultures. It seems, therefore, that Turkish Cypriots have becomemore self-re¯ exive with respect to questions of cultural identity. The contextdoes now exist for discussion about what Turkish-Cypriot identity is, and, moreimportantly perhaps, where it might go.

In relation to the collective culture and identity of Turkish Cypriots them-selves, we may say that there is a certain sense of crisis or impasse ± apparentin both the cultural condition of Cyprus and the cultural situation of Turkish-Cypriot migrants in Britain. In our interactions with people in the Turkish-Cypriot community in Britain, what came across very strongly was an anxietyabout losing their culture, and sometimes the sense of it already having been

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lost. This is, of course, a familiar trope in all cultures ± but what is perhapsdistinctive in the Turkish-Cypriot case is the sense that it may be more than justa collective fantasy. Sometimes this foreboding assumes a melodramatic form,but generally it persists in the form of background anxiety. As IÊ lker Kõ lõ cË put itto us, `We are being faced with the total extinction of our community as a whole,the Turkish-Cypriot community, of losing that identity’ (Interview, London, 12May 2000). In the 1987 conference on Turkish Cypriot Identity in Literature towhich we referred earlier, we ® nd one of the speakers maintaining that `TurkishCypriot culture is faced with the danger of total extinction’; the conferenceorganisers themselves suggested that Turkish Cypriots in Britain have reachedthe state of being a lost community, with a lost identity’ (Mehmet Ali 1990: 8,17). This same sense of an ending was apparent in many of the focus groups thatwe conducted. In one for example, the conversation kept coming back to thisquestion of loss. `They [in Cyprus] are losing their culture’, one participantremarks. `Children nowadays [in Britain], they have forgotten their culture,haven’t they?’, says another. `What happens’, observes another, is that theydon’t pass it [their culture] on to their children, and what happens is that theculture comes to an end’ (Focus Group, En® eld, 21 April 2000). What has beenreally striking is how prevalent and persistent this imagination of loss, dilution,forgetting, lack, and so on, seems to be in Turkish-Cypriot discourses. Theconstant circulation of this motif of identity crisis’ seems to be telling us of thedif® culty the ® ctive unity’ is having in maintaining its own coherence andcredibility.

And what of the signi® cant others in the cultural frame? How has Turkish-Cypriot culture positioned itself in relation to its key reference points? First, letus consider the relation of Turkish-Cypriot culture to the `host’ culture in theirplace of migration. As we have already suggested, Turkish Cypriots haveworked extremely hard to become integrated, and in many cases assimilated,into the British culture and way of life. They have generally submitted to themonocultural and monolingual style of hegemonic Britishness (actually, in thiscase, Englishness). Frequently, they have felt inclined to regard themselves as afavoured minority, sometimes because of their British colonial legacy, andsometimes because of their look’. Bhatti (1981: 9) describes the Turkish Cypriotself-image quite tellingly. `First of all,’ he says, [they] do not regard themselvesas ª immigrantsº ; this term has developed the connotation of ª blackº . Theyconsider themselves white.’ So, they have been able to feel integrated. In somerespects, one might say that this has been a positive experience, sustaining apositive self-image. But, when we consider what it means to experience culturalintegration and acculturation, we ® nd that it can also feel quite alienating (wemay think of this as a consequence of the paradoxical logic of integrationism).As Turkish-Cypriotness is pushed into the background of identity, this may giverise to the sense of invisibility that we referred to above. A recent report (writtenby Aydõ n Mehmet Ali) argues that it is precisely this invisibility that is respon-sible for the poor achievement of Turkish-Cypriot children in London schools:these young people remain largely invisible to the British education system, andtheir continuing lack of educational achievement remains largely un-noticed andun-addressed’ (Institute of Education 1999: 12; cf. Sonyel 1988: 31). We may saythat integration produces invisibility. But let us note that this invisibility isactually a marked invisibility, which in turn gives rise to another form ofcultural alienation. A senior member of the Turkish-Cypriot community ± a man

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who has been in Britain for over 50 years, and who is most certainly `wellintegrated’ ± put it to us in this way:

[I]t doesn’t matter how much your ways are close to the English ways, at a certain stage,by someone, you are reminded that you are not English. There are quite a lot of people who

try to become more British than the British. But they are always reminded that they willnever be English or British in the true sense. (Interview, London, 26 May 2000)

It is only possible to be integrated to the degree that the integrationist `host’culture permits. Turkish-Cypriots, who pride themselves on being able to beaccepted in British society, are always aware (made aware, that is to say) thatthere is actually something that is essentially different about them.

That `different thing’ pertains, of course, to their cultural origins, to thedimension of their identity that is other than British. This brings us to a secondkey reference point for Turkish-Cypriot culture. The Turkish Cypriots have arather complex relation to the place that is generally designated by the word`home’ or `homeland’. Whilst they come from the island of Cyprus (an islandthey have shared with Greek Cypriots and a number of other ethnic and culturalgroups), Turkish Cypriots also relate to the wider Turkish language and culturalsphere (many of them considering `mainland’ Turkey to be their anavatan or`motherland’. Perhaps the key point to bear in mind here is that the relationshipof Turkish Cypriots to Cyprus is affected by the fact that, during its brief periodof independent existence (1960± 1974), the Cypriot state never succeeded indeveloping a Cypriot national ideology (Kliot and Mans® eld 1997: 497; Pollis1996: 79). There has never been a Cypriot imagined community (by which wemean a `bi-communal’ community) with which Cypriots could identify. Instead,Turkish Cypriots have been encouraged ± by the various exploiters of ethnicity± to attach themselves to an ethno-national identity characterised as `Turkish’.And since the Turkish invasion in 1974, and the subsequent second invasion of`mainland’ settlers into what is now effectively the `Turkish colony’ of NorthCyprus, Turkish culture has come to exert an ever more powerful in¯ uence there(Hitchens 1997: xi). Beyond the island, too, the in¯ uence of Turkey has alsobecome more powerful, as a result of the new dynamism and transnationalisa-tion of Turkish culture, and particularly the commercial expansion of popularculture (television, music, ® lms and so on).

The `Turkey question’ has consequently become a fundamental issue forTurkish-Cypriot culture. Among those who are politically, intellectually orexperientially involved in what is going on in Cyprus now, there is somethingof an identity struggle occurring, and the relationship between Turkishness andTurkish-Cypriotness is central to this struggle (Blanc 1998). On the one side arethose who consider Turkish Cypriots to be direct descendants of the Ottomans,and who regard Northern Cyprus as a part of the Turkish world. They aregenerally on the political Right, or they are pragmatists who believe that it isnecessary to work now with the reality of what Turkish-Cypriot culture haseffectively become. On the other, more idealistic, side are those, generally on thepolitical Left, who resist the Turki® cation of Turkish Cypriotness, and assert analternative identity of (multicultural) Cypriotness (see, for example, the contrib-utors to Mehmet Ali 1990 and Yashõ n 2000). In the context of the presentdiscussion, the merits and demerits of these two basic identity strategies do notmatter. The point we are making here is simply that, whatever their political andcultural differences, both sides in the argument are agreed that Turkish culture

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is an overwhelming force. Both are working with the same basic assumption ±one with equanimity, the other with outrage and dismay ± that Turkish-Cypriotculture is being assimilated into `mainland’ Turkish culture.

In this part of our discussion, then, we have been considering Turkish-Cypriotculture from the point of view of its ® ctive unity. We have tried to sketch outthe distinctive imaginary frame within which Turkish-Cypriot culture has beenoperating, and then what we might call the basic cultural propositions anddispositions that have emerged through the working of that frame over time.These have been historically elaborated out of the multiple experiences ofTurkish-Cypriot people, both in Cyprus and in the migrant context. Theyconstitute the cultural `given’ out of which ± but also against which ± newcultural experiences (of the kind that we shall be looking at in the followingsection) are subsequently elaborated and worked through by new generations.In principle, there is potentially something very productive about this imaginaryframe created on the basis of transnational connections (and which is not,therefore, the same kind of ordering device as an imagined community). Inreality, however, we ® nd that the cultural narratives and concerns that haveemerged through the workings of this frame have become increasingly problem-atical. What we have been arguing is that, at the collective level of the ® ctiveunity, Turkish-Cypriot culture has reached a kind of impasse. We suggest thatthis impasse is, to a large extent, a consequence of how Turkish-Cypriot culturehas come to relate to its signi® cant others ± to Britain and Turkey. With respectto the former, what is at issue is Turkish Cypriots’ success’ with respect tocultural integration ± the identity they have acquired as a `well-adjusted com-munity’. In relation to the latter, it is a question of how they have beenprogressively overshadowed and overpowered by the force ® eld of the `main-land’ culture (the culture of the anavatan). There is a problem, in our view, withthe strategy of compromise, adjustment and assimilation that has been adoptedin both of these cases.

The problem is that the strategy has `succeeded’, it seems, to the point thatthere is now a sense of emptiness at the heart of Turkish Cypriot culture. Thecultural frame appears to be increasingly incapable of functioning as an effectiveresource, particularly in the new cultural contexts in which Turkish Cypriotsnow ® nd themselves. Bogdan BogdanovicÂ (1994: 64) has made the argument thata geographical space can function as a `cognitive model’ (in his case theargument is made with particular reference to urban space). It can serve as akind of mechanism for provoking thought and re¯ ection. The problem with theTurkish-Cypriot cultural frame, as we see it, is precisely that it does not work assuch a tool for thought’ (BogdanovicÂ 1994: 46).

How, then, are Turkish-Cypriot people responding to this problem? How arethey dealing with the identity dilemma that seems to exist in their community?We turn now to consider how Turkish Cypriots in London are actually negotiat-ing their identities at the present time. We have said that the cultural frame ofTurkish-Cypriot culture has been produced out of the practices of earliergenerations of Turkish Cypriots. Now we must be concerned with the actualpractices of contemporary Turkish Cypriots ± with how they are struggling withor against that frame, consolidating it or working to change it. Hence, the focusof our discussion shifts from the general cultural frame to individual people.

In the following section, we re¯ ect on the thoughts of a range of individualsin three focus groups, in which we talked about questions of culture and

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identity. The participants in these groups were all female, and our discussionwill be con® ned to Turkish-Cypriot women’s perspectives on identity. We wereinterested in how these women set about composing their own particularidentities. How were they thinking about what it is to be a Turkish-Cypriot inLondon today?

Biz I.ngiliz degÏ iliz: thinking across cultures

Anthony Cohen (1994: 6) has argued that traditionally social science has tendedto proceed from the top downwards, from society to the individual, derivingindividuals from the social structures to which they belong’. Thus, in the contextof national cultures, the basic assumption has been that the individual is thenation writ small’ (Cohen 1994: 157). Cohen is concerned to elaborate a morenuanced and subtle alternative to this structural or institutional determinism.The truth, he argues, is that

individuals are more than their membership of and participation in collectivities , and,

second, that collectivitie s are themselves the products of their individual members, so thatethnographic attention to individuals ’ consciousness of their membership is an appropriate

way to understand the collectivity, rather than seeing it as constituted by an abstracted, ifcompelling logic. (Cohen 1994: 133)

Research should be concerned, Cohen (1994: 4) maintains, to elicit and describethe thoughts and sentiments of individuals’. It should be attentive to theconsciousness of individuals ± to how individuals experience cultures and makesense of their cultural experiences. For us, Cohen’s key argument is that `cultureis more a matter of thinking than of doing’, and that the point of research shouldconsequently be to think about how other people think about themselves’(Cohen 1994: 135).

It is in this spirit that we turn to our three groups of Turkish-Cypriot women.The ® rst group was composed of seven women, all in their 30s and 40s. Theyhad either been born in Britain (with the exception of one person) or had comeat an early age ± so we count them as second generation. The second and thirdgroups both comprised younger women. In the second, involving four people(including a young man who turned up), the participants were all around 30years old, and all of them had been born in Britain ± so they too are secondgeneration (though a different age cohort of second-generation women fromthose in the ® rst group). The third group consisted of six young women in theirteens and early 20s, mostly second and third generation, as well as a woman of40. This group included two `mainland’ Turks (the signi® cance of which we shallcome to later).

Before we move on to consider what they say, let us brie¯ y introduce anothervoice as a kind of initial reference point. This is the voice of an old woman, aged69, who told us of her experiences in coming to London 40 years ago. She doesnot speak English. I never liked the English language’, she says. I have beenhere for many years, but that’s how it is ¼ I didn’t like English, I didn’t follow[the British media]. Then Turkish radio came, and we used to listen to it day andnight, and now there is [Turkish] television.’ When she came to Britain, she felta longing’ for Cyprus ± I longed desperately’, she said. Her solution ± thesolution for a woman of her age and generation ± was her family, which lives

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on the same street, and immersion in Turkish media. She simply held on to herTurkish-Cypriotness.

For the women in our three groups, by contrast, things were very different.They were educated in Britain and they spoke English (in the second and thirdgenerations, English is commonly the ® rst and preferred language of TurkishCypriots). The second generation was the ® rst of the generations that had tofully come to terms with the logic of integration. At the same time, women inthis generation were forced to think about their relation to the culture of theirparents. For them, there was nowhere to retreat to: they had to negotiate aposition for themselves within British society.

The starting point for our discussions was the development of transnationalsatellite broadcasting services from Turkey, and the ways in which theseTurkish-Cypriot women engaged (or not) with them.

Group 1 (30 April 1999)

This group prefers to speak in English. At one point someone says of the Englishlanguage that It is our mother-tongue really, now.’ We introduce the topic ofTurkish satellite television, and they begin by telling us of their dislike for it, acommon ® rst response among people of this generation. They and their familiesalways watched British television, they say. One of them remarks that òurparents have been here for such a long time, [and now they] have got thisTurkish television, and they do not watch anything else ¼ They switched soquickly, and that’s all they want to watch.’ Another talks about how TurkishCypriots `come over, they get the Turkish television, they go and shop inHaringey, where all the shops are Turkish. This really frightens me.’ Themembers of this group regard themselves as well integrated into British culturallife.

But as the conversation proceeds, more positive aspects of Turkish televisionare allowed to emerge. I am glad that there is Turkish TV’, says one woman.`From the point of view of language development, I think it is good.’ The`Turkish-rich input’ of satellite television is seen as having positive potential.There is a consideration of language on Turkish television, and of how Englishwords are incorporated into the Turkish lexicon. There is a discussion of theprogrammes they do actually watch from time to time: CË arkõ felek, which theycould follow (because it is the Turkish version of Wheel of Fortune); a mini-seriesproduced by the well-known director UgÏ ur DuÈ ndar (`no wonder it was such ahigh standard’); a ® lm, KurtulusË (Ì thought it was brilliant’). One participantsaid that she watched the news on Turkish television to keep me informed, toget a different perspective’. The problem for them all, though, is language.Because they cannot function effectively within the Turkish language space, itproves dif® cult for these women to understand the culture in depth’, andimpossible to draw fully on the resources it offers.

But then we come to a point in the discussion where someone says, Àt theend of the day, although we all speak English here, we are very Turkish here.’There is general agreement. `We cook Turkish.’ ¼ [W]e still keep our parents’attitudes over here.’ `You become your mother.’ `We all want our children tomarry Turkish.’ One of the participants had once rebelled against her Turkish-ness, but now, she says, `My Turkishness has grown on me. As I grew andmatured that has grown as well.’ I’ve always been very Turkish’, replies another

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woman. They talk about their youth and about how, in their English schools,they always felt different’. I think that we are London Turks’, says one of theparticipants. `When I was brought up,’ says another, `we were constantly toldª biz I

.ngiliz degÏ ilizº [we aren’t English]’ ± it is signi® cant that she speaks these few

words in Turkish.The conversation moves on to what is `Turkish’ about them. But what,

precisely, is the nature of this identi® cation? We need to consider more carefullyjust what they mean when they describe themselves as Turkish. There are twoaspects to it, we suggest. The ® rst involves a relation to a rather abstract idea ofTurkishness, to something that they are aware of, but of which they do not havedirect experience. I want to experience Turkishness’, says one of the women. Ican’t say I like everything about Turkish,’ says another, I’m really trying tocomprehend it myself. I need that injection.’ By this is meant the Turkish cultureof Turkey, which is only known from the television. But this unexperiencedTurkishness can also be the culture of Cyprus, with which they are also notfamiliar. They talk about it in terms of their roots’, but these roots are ratherabstract. I don’t feel that closeness to the people over there, because of thedistance, and not having lived there.’ One woman actually feels `a foreigner asfar as they are concerned’.

The second aspect of their Turkishness involves a relation to something moreconcrete. What they do experience directly and immediately is the Turkish-Cypriot culture of their family and of the local community, and they seem toidentify quite strongly with this. These women feel and take up the responsi-bility of handing on Turkish-Cypriot values to their children. In a discussion oftelevision viewing by children, one participant refers to a friend whose childrenwatch both English and Turkish television. `They speak Turkish at home, andwhen they go to school their English is good as well. But it comes entirely fromthe mother.’ The mother is imagined as the custodian of Turkish values. `Youbecome your mother’ is a very signi® cant sentiment here.

But in reality, of course, the responsibility for cultural transmission is muchmore dif® cult for mothers of this migrant generation than it was for their ownmothers. How can they hand on a Turkish culture that they are not fully inpossession of themselves? And do they not have, at the same time, the responsi-bility of ensuring that their children are also competent in the skills they needto succeed in British society? For women of this generation, it is a question ofholding the two cultures together. Festivals provide a good example of theirdilemma. One woman notes that `kurban bayramõ [a Muslim holiday] just goesnow. I don’t know which [holiday] is when ¼ But we seem to give moreimportance to Christmas.’ Another jokingly comments on how her familycelebrates Christmas: `We will celebrate Christmas, with presents, sit there andhave a turkey, with cacõ k and humus ¼ ZeytinyagÏ lõ fasulye next to turkey.’ Theyare light-hearted, ® nding this mix-and-match way of coping quite amusing.

These women have indeed `adapted’ to English society; they can function init with relative ease, whilst still feeling that they are holding on to somethingelse. They think of themselves as being more fortunate than those they call thelost generation’, ones who lost their Turkishness ¼ [who] lost contact withtheir community’. They `ha[ve] been lost; they don’t know who they are’.Compared to that `generation’ (in fact it can be people of the same age as them),these women do know who they are ± `we are more Turkish than they are’. Theyhave adapted, but they also put a signi® cant value on their `Turkish’ culture.

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They feel a pride in the engagement with that culture that they do have; theyenjoy being able to draw on elements of a Turkish or Turkish-Cypriot culturalreservoir. They are aware that it gives them a `different perspective’, that is tosay a larger and more complex perspective on the world. But their dilemma isthat they do not know that culture in depth’. They enjoy their Turkish side, butthey can also be frustrated by it. They do not have the language skills or thedirect experience that would really allow them to travel imaginatively in thismental space. Their lack of linguistic and cultural ¯ uency inhibits their imagin-ative and intellectual mobility. They cannot make full use of their Turkishness.

Group 2 (20 May 2000)

In the case of Group 2, our preliminary impression was of an even greaterimaginative and intellectual inhibition. This group comprised three youngerwomen, and also a young man who had come along. All were around 30 yearsin age, and, having been schooled at the high point of educational integrationismin Britain, they spoke barely any Turkish at all. This was a far more dif® cultconversation to keep moving.

They begin by observing that the older generation is now always watchingTurkish television, and their comments are highly critical. `They are addicted’,says one. Another says [M]y mum and dad take over the living room with theTurkish TV, so we disappear into our rooms when we want to see anything else.’There is a real concern here that, because of television, her mother has stoppedtrying to integrate into British society:

[S]he hasn’t adapted to being in England at all. It’s strange in that way. Whereas she wasadapting, as soon as satellite TV came, she’s gone back to ¼ gone back to, you know, just

keeping a Turkish thing, not really adapting to anything else around her.

I think it [Turkish television] does in¯ uence the people in a bad way’, saysanother.

These young people seem to have no interest in Turkish television. For themit is only experienced as sounds and images in the background of their dailylives. It doesn’t appeal to me’, says one, I don’t watch it, but it’s there. I mightcome into the room, and I might see a glimpse’ says another. They think ofTurkish television as subjective’, whilst British television is `objective’. In thereporting of the Leeds United/Galatasaray affair (in which two Leeds support-ers were stabbed to death in Istanbul), Turkish television was saying, accordingto them, that `Turks were angels’, while British television was `more objective,I thought’. There is the same disinterest for radio (London Turkish Radio): `whenme and my dad are in the car going somewhere, I am forced to listen to it’ . Andwhen it comes to the (free) Turkish newspapers distributed in London, particu-larly Londra Toplum Postasõ (at that time, the most popular): It’s not importantto me, it’s just something I do when I’m bored.’ And when they do look at it,it is only at the English-language section. Generally, there is an antipathytowards Turkish-language culture. One participant tells of how, when she wasyounger, her mother made her to go to the Saturday school (where Turkishlanguage and culture are taught). `My mum forced us to go to those,’ she says,I mean, we might have been the ® rst lot who had been dragged to thoseSaturday schools.’ Dragged ± but to no avail, it seems. And, as for Cyprus itself,

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there is no real interest in going, or in maintaining family networks there; theydo not really identify at all with the life there.

So, who do they feel they are? How do they think about their culturalposition? Well, they are quite familiar with the hybridity trope, and can play thatcard if necessary: `We’ve sort of taken a bit from each, a bit from our Cypriotculture, a bit from British culture ¼ A bit of a mix and match thing.’ But,generally, we found, they are happy just to regard themselves simply as TurkishCypriots: `you’ve got some customs and you stick with those, you are a Cypriot’.And they are quite comfortable with this:

You’ve been that Turkish person living in London for so long, you get used to it, it’s not

really a problem. I don’t feel like it’s an issue for me anymore. It really isn’t ¼ I think it’sthe way I’ve been brought up, it’s my parents. If I disagreed with it, I would probably have

changed, and go around and say I am English. But obviously there is something I feel rightwith, so ¼

Signi® cantly, being Cypriot means that they do not think of themselves asbeing English or British. I always try to distinguish myself from the English,though’, says one. [W]e de® nitely are not English’, says another. I was bornhere, I lived here, but I wouldn’t, if someone asks me, I wouldn’t say I amBritish.’ `We don’t frown upon the British,’ she continues later, `but we still areTurkish. It’s a family thing. Your parents are Turkish, so you are.’ As with themembers of Group 1, then, they are Cypriot and not British. And that issigni® cant ± particularly in a group that seems so integrated into British society.But the real point we want to make here is that these various observations aboutbeing Cypriot and not being British are not at all identity assertions. The identityissue is not a big deal for these young people. In fact they were talking to usabout something quite other than identity.

When it comes to what these young people feel right with’, it is family andsmall customs’ that ® gure largely (as again was the case in Group 1): `Theway ¼ the cooking, some of the music ± not that I listen to Cypriot musicanymore. But the way you get together with your family, you sit down and talkabout things’, says one. And a little later, she elaborates further:

I think also the ethical and moral side as well. The way I’d like to bring up my child, interms of respect, the way how we were brought up ¼ I like the way, the whole family, the

respect for the elders; that’s something that should stay.

I think it’s a parent thing really, your family really’, adds another. They likedthe way in which families visited each other (misa® rlik) ± `you go to misa® rlik, it’swho you kept in touch with, that’s how we were like years ago’. The oneamongst them who does like to visit Cyprus says, I like the relative aspect ofit. Just seeing the family, just sort of being around everyone.’ There is a certainidealisation, then, of the family and the customs of the community, as there wasin Group 1. In Group 2, also, the traditions are what the participants hold on toin order to distinguish themselves from the British, in order to feel different.

But with this group, it is clear that their hold on these customs and traditionsis much more tenuous. There is a sense that whatever they are holding on to is`disintegrating, vanishing’. When we spoke with them about satellite television,it was clear that, in their view, it was undermining the sense of community:

It’s almost segregated everybody really. Because it’s just ¼ you don’t really talk anymorewith your parents, or anything like that. We all go into our own thing really. Before the

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Turkish telly, we all used to be in the same room watching telly and talking, and everythingelse. Whereas now, it’s nothing like that, no communication.

Or, as another puts it, It’s not just that they are not talking to one another,they are not being sociable anymore.’ Misa® rlik is actually in decline and thereis a sense of loss:

Before, people had good things to talk about ¼ When I go to misa® rlik ¼ Sometimes, when

the family gets together, I ® nd it boring, unless I am talking about somethinggood ¼ [Question: Did they once talk about Limassol?] At that time they had nothing to

talk about apart from Limassol. But now they’ve talked all about that. They’ve done that.And there’s nothing else.

We are made to feel at this moment that the cultural resources of the communityare actually becoming exhausted.

These are all well-adjusted people (the term has a spin that we at ® rst did notintend, but now want keep in play). Their lives are perfectly comfortable, andthey have identities’ that they can perfectly well live with. What is actuallyengaging about them is that they are not at all preoccupied with identity ± theymight be seen as models for post-national culture. But, at the same time, wecannot get away from the lurking feeling that something is missing. Somehow,we feel, they do not have the resources to think about their cultural situation.They distance themselves from a British or English identity, and think ofthemselves as, in some way, Turkish or Turkish Cypriots, but they are notcurious about those cultures. And they do not seem to use their Turkishperspective to re¯ ect on British society and culture. There is no real sense eitherof the possibilities of being implicated in two cultural spaces. The participants inthis group seem to have no cultural mobility ± no possibility, and perhaps nodesire, to think across cultures. If the members of Group 1 struggled (in bothsenses of this term) to hold on to a double cultural identi® cation, Group 2 seemsto have lost the struggle. It does not seem to see the point of struggle.

But Group 3 does see the point. Group 3 now leads us to reorientate anarrative that thus far could be seen to be channelled along the lines ofprogressive cultural decline, that is to say integration, over migrant generations.In fact, we are not interested in any such negative judgements that might bemade in the case of the two groups we have looked at so far. What we are moreconcerned with is the fact that, to differing degrees, both groups continue toresist the idea that they are English, and assert that they are `Turkish’ or`Cypriot’ . We are concerned with why this remains important to them, andGroup 3 helps us to further our re¯ ections on this matter.

Group 3 (17 May 1999)

This group, which had the youngest age range, was a very different affair. Theconversation (which was in English) was extremely lively, with strong energiesrunning through it. Two of the members were from `mainland’ Turkish families,and one had a Cypriot father and a Turkish mother. These three women werebilingual. This strong Turkish presence in the group had a very productiveeffect, we think. Unlike the second group, which had a rather lacklustre feel toit, this third group was very dynamic and opened up some interesting lines ofthought. In our consideration of this group, we will adopt a somewhat differentapproach, focusing on the experiences and the thinking of two particular

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participants. Both of them emphasise the importance to them of their `Turkish-ness’, and each, in her own way, has the resolve to make their engagement withthat culture intellectually and imaginatively productive. In their different ways,both of them are thinking against the grain of integrationism.

CË is a young Cypriot woman, 19 years old. I’m not really brilliant in Turkish,’she says, `but I can understand most of it.’ We begin, as usual, by discussingsatellite television from Turkey, and CË tells us that it has `a negative effect’,cutting people off from British society. I totally accept’, she says to anothermember of the group, that you want to see what’s going on in your homeland,but you need to be aware of the country you are living in as well.’ She, too,thinks that the older generation are in a dream world’. At home she mainlywatches British television, though she does listen to Turkish music shows andtries to watch ® lms. I am Kõ brõ oslõ (Cypriot) and I don’t understand a lot of theTuÈ rkiyeli (Turkish) words. They speak too fast. I don’t understand it.’ Again,then, we come across the problem of being denied full access to Turkish cultureas a consequence of linguistic inadequacy.

CË tells us of how, at the age of 14, she had actually rebelled against herTurkishness, going through this ª I am not a Turk, I am Englishº thing’, as sheputs it. But, in her case, she had the good fortune, the resourcefulness, orwhatever, to save herself from becoming English:

What brought me my culture, to my spiritualism, was going to Cyprus when I was thirteen.

I was old enough to realise. Then I knew that was my spiritual homeland. Sometimes whenI watch television I can feel it, but I don’t feel it until I am there, starting to listen to music,

and hanging around with Turks, their parents, watching Turkish satellite ¼ So I never gotmy realisation, my culture, through the television. But I can understand how, for a lot of

people, it has brought them closer to who they are ¼ And it’s, like, there’s a lot of Cypriots,they are numb, their parents have suffered such hardship, they are numb to what life is

about ¼ I think this is a lot to do with being torn from the spiritual homeland.

Although her ¯ uency in Turkish is `not really brilliant’ , CË has found a way to`understand’ it. She has found a way to engage with `Turkish’ culture. And,consequently, she has been able to reconcile both her Turkish and Englishcultural experiences:

I’ve kind of accepted this dual nationality that I’ve got, and I’m glad. Because on one side

I’ve got Turkish culture, and it’s got really beautiful things about it, the way people arewarm to one another, the family gatherings. On the other side I’ve got this British culture,

which I’m also proud of, because it taught me to think, to be my own person, and not tofollow society, and not to just do what everyone else says.

CË is clear in her own mind what is positive about each of the cultures sheengages with. She recognises that there are things to be gained by movingbetween the two different cultural spaces.

CË ’s strategy was possible because she was able to have a direct encounter withthis other culture. It is signi® cant that, unlike the (older) women in Group 1, herTurkishness is not about her relationship to her mother, nor about transmittingfamilial values within the local community in London. CË ’s connection to Turk-ishness was as a consequence of her direct and personal encounters in Cyprus,which she was then able to turn into a transformative experience. It was aspiritual’ experience, involving the imaginative cathexis of the Turkish world ofCyprus. And in CË ’s case, it is not a case of trying to combine or synthesiseEnglishness and Turkishness (again the contrast with Group 1 is important): the

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images that she uses are about mobility, about the passage between one spaceto another ± and beyond:

There are many nationalities and cultures in the world that I want to see and witness

® rst-hand, and feel part of all of them. And being part Turkish, and being brought up inEngland, away from where I am naturally, has made me more perceptive and more

understanding towards other cultures. Which is why I want to travel the world and seeeverything else.

CË thinks of herself as a person who travels between cultural zones, and shethinks that a travelling mind is capable of being a more aware and morecomprehending mind.

The second participant whom we want to discuss here, Z, is 22 years old andwas born in London. Importantly, as we shall see, she is `completely bilingual’ .Z’s father is a Turkish Cypriot and her mother a Turk from Istanbul, and it isvery much the Turkish side that Z relates to. Her Turkishness was a verypositive irruption, we feel, into the group discussion. In the early part of theconversation, when we were talking about Turkish satellite television, Z made itclear that, unlike CË , she had no qualms about it. She watched Turkish televisionalmost exclusively ± the main TV that everyone sits down and watches in theliving room is the Turkish one’. When asked why she did not watch Britishtelevision, she said, very straightforwardly,

I follow what is going around me anyway, in London, in Britain. I read the newspapers. Iam out and about, I am sociable, I do a lot of activities . I do not have to watch English

programmes or news to know what is going on around me ¼

And she positively likes Turkish television. ¼ I enjoy Turkey, Turkish speaking.It brings me back to TuÈ rkiye. Its people are my people. I don’t think we shouldlose our identity.’

Z had not always felt like this. `When I was at school’, she says,

there were no Turkish students. It was pure English. I used to watch pure English TV, pure

English music. I never used to mix with anyone who was Turkish. It was like that to theextreme. And what was happening was that I was having cultural dif® culties with my

family. They were telling me `We are Turkish, we do it like this’ ¼ Then I went to a Turkishschool [a Saturday school]. And everyone was the same as me, everyone thought `We are

English, we don’t want to be Turkish’.

The other side of this sense of alienation was her equally dif® cult experience ofalienation from Turkish culture and identity. `Before this Turkish TV came,’ shesays,

no one knew any music that the Turkish people listened to, no one knew what the culturewas, no one knew any news from Turkey ¼ I didn’t know what our music was like. I didn’t

know my identity. I couldn’t identify myself as Turkish because I didn’t know what Turkishmeant.

It was when television started to come from Turkey that things changed. ForZ, Turkish television made a real difference. `Turkish television brought somuch,’ she says, `even youth identity’ ± she is thinking of the impact of popsingers like Tarkan. `TV teaches a lot; it teaches us our culture, our people, thenegative and positive sides.’ With Z, too, there is the sense of a transformativeexperience:

As I said, I didn’t know who I was before this TV thing came along. And I realised, Uh!,

my music is alright! My people are like this! Not bad after all! It’s been a revelation. It hasbrought so much with it.

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Her passage into the sphere of Turkish culture is experienced as a voyage ofdiscovery. New horizons and new possibilities have been opened up. How doesshe think of herself now, this young woman who used to try to think of herselfas English? `Turkish. I would say that I am Turkish, but I was born here. BecauseI am Turkish; because I am proud. I don’t say I am Turkish British.’ And as aconsequence of this new-found Turkishness, she can be more comfortable inBritish society. She is able to operate across cultures, and she enjoys the passagebetween them.

In the particular case of Z, then, the new television culture has been extremelyimportant. It has revealed to her a new cultural order ± she recognises it as anew and more cosmopolitan Turkishness ± with which she makes anidenti® cation, in which she can feel competent, and from which she is able todraw a great deal of pleasure.

In fact, it is not television alone that has changed her life. She also goes to thenew Turkish clubs and bars to be found in the Turkish districts of London, andshe travels frequently to Turkey (`I go on holiday to Turkey four or ® ve timesa year, man, because I love it’). And, of course, the crucial point is that shespeaks the Turkish language ¯ uently. Again, as with CË , her Turkishness derivesfrom her own direct experience. The Turkish culture that she identi® es with isnot the same as that of her parents. Indeed, when she ® ghts with her parents, theissue is to do with her sense of how a young Turkish woman should be allowedto behave in London, as against theirs ± and not to do with problems ofintegration into British society and values. `No matter what your parents tell youabout who you are,’ she says, `without seeing something, without getting to thatpoint, you don’t know who you are.’ The important thing for Z was that she hadthe cultural resources out of which she could elaborate a version of Turkishnessthat was meaningful to her, a Turkishness that has vivacity. I know who Iam ¼ ’ she says. `Kendini biliyorsan basË õ na bir sË ey gelmez [if you know yourself,you won’t have problems]’.

In the case of both of the young women, though in somewhat different ways,we ® nd that it has been possible to expand their psychic space. They have beenable to take themselves beyond the mentality of integration and develop theirown distinctive and more complex cultural idioms. They have been able toconstruct new imaginative and experiential geographies, at the same timereleasing themselves from old ones that no longer work. In the case of CË , it isa matter of visiting Cyprus and of investing the place with certain `spiritual’qualities. Cyprus for her is not the Cyprus her parents know (no longer theCyprus of the `Cyprus problem’). For Z, we may say that her Turkey, too, is nolonger that of the older generation. What she experiences and enjoys is a newglobalised Turkish culture, one that is both very urban and urbane ± her culturalorientation is akin to the new metropolitan and cosmopolitan perspective thatAyse CË agÏ lar (1998: 51± 2) has identi® ed among many young German-Turks inBerlin. CË and Z have both created for themselves a new cultural mobility, onethat allows them to experience new forms of encounter, and provokes them tothink across cultures.

From spaces of identity to mental spaces

We began this article by considering the cultural frame of Turkish-Cypriotculture. It is through this frame ± which is only a creation of the imagination, but

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appears to be far more ± that Turkish Cypriots enter into a culture in common.This is the space of the ® ctive unity; the space in which the imagined communityis instituted; the space in which identity discourses are manufactured. Whathave interested us are the peculiarities of the Turkish-Cypriot case ± with thedif® culties that are experienced at the level of the ® ctive unity, the problem ofexisting as an imagined community, and the identity ploys that have conse-quently been mobilised. From here, we have moved on to consider howTurkish-Cypriot people have responded to the dilemmas at the heart of their`national’ identity. We have listened to accounts of their cultural experiences,attendant to the ways in which identity issues are refracted through theirindividual consciousnesses, and to the manner in which they think about theirpositions within this distinctive migrant culture. We have found the peculiaritiesof Turkish-Cypriot experience to be very suggestive and thought-provoking, inways we never anticipated before we undertook this research. The idiosyncrasyof the Turkish-Cypriot example has forced us to re¯ ect more generally, andcritically, on questions of collective culture and identity. In this concludingsection of our discussion, we want to re¯ ect on some of the lessons, as we seethem, of Turkish-Cypriot experience in Britain ± which we think should beregarded as lessons for all of us, and not just for the Turkish Cypriots them-selves.

Let us begin this process of re¯ ection by returning to the three groups, tobrie¯ y survey the key issues that emerged through our discussions, and to notehow these gradually forced a shift in our own concerns and agenda. Ourpreliminary agenda was concerned with the question of cultural identity. Whatbecame clear to us as we explored this theme of identity was that there wereactually various and different kinds of engagement with the cultures of Cyprus,Britain, and also Turkey. In Group 1, the women had elaborated a kind ofsynthesis for themselves out of different cultural elements, what we might callan everyday hybrid culture. It was composed from the Turkish-Cypriot culturethat they knew directly (primarily the family culture), from elements of theBritish culture they had been integrated and socialised into, and only to a lesserextent from the wider `Turkish’ culture. In the case of Group 2, we have youngwomen who seem to be even more `well-adjusted’ to living in British society.The Turkish-Cypriot aspects of their daily lives have considerably diminished(atrophied), and the Turkish dimension is practically non-existent. The processof cultural `adaptation’ appears to have reached a more advanced form. WithGroup 3, there are rather different dynamics in play. Here, in the cases of CË andZ, whom we have discussed in some detail, it is no longer a question of culturalsynthesis or syncretism, but of moving across both the British and Turkishcultural spaces. They seem to have a different kind of experience of culture fromthe women in the other groups, one that involves them in the passage betweencultures.

There were important differences, then, in the way in which these womenrelate to the cultures that they have access to. But there was one common themein their accounts, and this struck us as being very important. What all of theparticipants in the three groups insisted on was that they were not, and did notfeel, British ± `biz I

.ngiliz degÏ iliz’ . Their Turkish-Cypriot (or wider Turkish)

experience was regarded by them as crucial to who they are. Even in Group 2,the most `adapted’ of the groups, there was still a clear sense of being ± andwanting to be ± different from British people. For them, their Turkish-Cypriot-

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ness stands for a certain way of life and for certain values that they hold to beimportant. It is about the way you get together with your family, [the way] yousit down and talk about things’. The same kinds of sentiments were alsoexpressed in the other groups. All of the women we talked to wanted to hangon to their Turkish-Cypriotness (and were concerned that they might lose it). Butwhat we found was that this Turkish-Cypriotness was not at all about nationalsentiment and attachment. Identity of that belonging-kind was not somethingthey were really preoccupied with at all. Who they were was actually aboutsomething else, about certain ethical and moral values, about how families andcommunities should function, and, in the end, about the way in which humanbeings should relate to each other. These things were more important to themthan what is conventionally designated by the term identity’. And because thisis the case, becoming British or English is not something that can mean verymuch to them.

All of the women we spoke to were quite comfortable with who they were. Intheir different ways, all had found something that works for them. None of themwas ill or suffering from some kind of identity malady. Identity simply was notthe issue. We came to recognise that. But still we continued to feel that there wasan issue to be addressed. For we still could not get over feeling that CË and Zwere in a `better’ position than the members of Group 2, particularly. Why didwe continue to feel this way? And what did we mean by `better’?At this point,we were compelled to move our thinking away from questions of identity. Whatbegan to interest us was the question of cultural experience. What seemed to usto be a far more interesting question was how these women were experiencingand thinking about their lives in Britain. What then emerged as an issue for uswere the different resources that the members of the three groups appeared tohave available to them; we could somehow feel that some women were `better’resourced than others. We became interested in what seemed to us to be thedifferent psychic or mental spaces of the groups ± the spaces through whichcultural experience is organised and made use of. If it is the case, as AnthonyCohen (1994: 135) argues, that culture is a matter of thinking (rather than doing),then we may venture to say that the different mental spaces of particularcultural groups may provide differential capacities for cultural thinking. Ifidentity was not a big issue, this question of experience and thinking did seemto raise issues that should be pursued.

Here we come to the question of integration, and to the unfortunate conse-quences that the integrationist (identitarian) logic has for mental space. For whatseemed to us to be crucial in our Turkish-Cypriot women were the very differentcapacities they had to intellectually mobilise and valorise their `Turkish’ culturalelements. In the case of Groups 1 and 2, their mental spaces were shapedthrough the high point of integrationist ± effectively assimilationist ± policies inthe British education system. The problem for them was that they could noteasily draw on their Turkish-Cypriot and Turkish aspects in ways that wereexperientially productive. There is the sense that amongst members of Groups 1and 2 the Turkish side is now only residual, and they relate to it as somethingthat is likely to be lost. Their dilemma is that they do not have direct access toso much of Turkish-Cypriot or the wider Turkish culture; their experience of theculture is massively attenuated. Absolutely central to this dilemma, we believe,is their lack of Turkish-language skills. They do not speak Turkish, and theyconsequently ® nd it dif® cult to enter the space of Cypriot or Turkish culture,

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where their experiences and thoughts might be extended. They have sufferedbecause of the monolingual ideology of integrationist education in Britain. InGroup 1, there was a clear readiness to engage with Turkish culture, but anacknowledgement of the basic incapacity to ùnderstand it in depth’. At onepoint, one of the members of the group articulated the frustration of this crueldeprivation. I wonder’, she said,

if it leads to feelings of ¼ if you don’t understand it, if your language is Turkish, andsubconsciously you are supposed to know this language, but you don’t. If you thought it

through, wouldn’t it make you feel inferior, because you don’t know the language?

It is a very poignant re¯ ection. In Group 2, the distance from Turkish-languageculture has become far greater, and there is now no longer even a recognition ofits signi® cance or value as an experiential space. For the most part, then, we maysay that the members of these two groups inhabit a singular cultural space, anddo not have the resources to think across cultures. They tell us of the experientialcost of being a minoritised culture in Britain, of what is lost by a culture thataccepts to become integrated’ within its `host’ society.

In the case of Group 3, things are somewhat different, and we came to feel thatit was possible to learn something positive from the experiences of two membersin particular. In the case of Z, what was absolutely crucial was her languageability. Z’s language skills allowed for a greater cultural mobility. Because of herknowledge of both English and Turkish, she is able to move through, and tovalorise, both British and Turkish cultural spaces. In the case of CË , her languageskills are not so developed. But, through the Turkish she does have, and throughher ability to imaginatively transform Cyprus into something with particularsymbolic resonance for her, she is still able to achieve a strong degree of culturalmobility. So she too is able to have the experience of passage between culturaldomains. Language has to be taken very seriously, because of the experientialpossibilities that it opens up. In a report on bilingual literacy education amongTurkish schoolchildren in Berlin, Monika Nehr and Edeltraud Karajoli (1995: 64)point to the greater `cognitive ¯ exibility’ that is associated with being broughtup and educated bilingually. Human beings develop intellectually and imagina-tively through the experience of moving across different linguistic spaces. Wemay also add that linguistic complexity is necessary to sustain a vital culturalorder. As Amin Maalouf observes, linguistic diversity is the pivot of alldiversity’ (1998: 172). [I]n the matter of languages,’ he says, `being content withthe strict minimum that is necessary, is against the spirit of our times.’ In ourparticular Turkish-Cypriot (and Turkish) case, we suggest that migrants inBritain can feel more àt home’ when they are bilingual. They can feel moreèqual’ to the rest of the population because they have their own sense ofcultural empowerment, which they have through their capacity to move acrossthe different cultural spaces to which they have access. Rather this than thecondition of monolingual integration (recall our informant who noted that thosewho integrate in this way àre always reminded that they will never be Englishor British in the true sense’).

Nehr and Karajoli (1995: 64± 5) make the observation that `bilingual childrenovercome nominal realism quicker than their monolingual peers ¼ [They] be-come aware earlier of the conventionality of words and the arbitrariness oflinguistic signs.’ This we may take as more than just a scienti® c observationconcerning child development. For what is said here in the particular context of

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bilingual pedagogy seems to us to have a much broader cultural± politicalresonance in the context of the wider discourse of national culture, imaginedcommunity and cultural identity, which is a discourse that works preciselythrough the assertion of nominal realism. We would want to extrapolate fromthe point about conventionality and arbitrariness in words and signs, to encour-age a recognition of the conventionality and arbitrariness of cultural phenomenagenerally, and in the present discussion this concerns speci® cally the culturalphenomena of the national order. Bilingualism can serve as a stimulus forthinking more broadly about how we might overcome the idea of culture as akind of national observance (like religious observance). In the broader context,we would do well to note Jacques RancieÁ re’s (1991: 109) lucid observation: `onlyan emancipated person is untroubled by the idea that the social order is entirelyconventional’.

Conclusion: beyond identity

In this article we have combined an account of our research into the small andneglected Turkish-Cypriot community with an attempt to re¯ ect on the theoreti-cal framework through which we should try to make sense of Turkish-Cypriotexperience. In the process, we have come to recognise that so many of theavailable theoretical and conceptual tropes are inadequate for what we wantedto do. We have consequently found ourselves trying to de-commission certainconcepts, and, at the same time, struggling with the problem of ® nding moreproductive alternatives. In concluding our discussion, we want to commentbrie¯ y on where our engagement with Turkish-Cypriot culture has taken ustheoretically.

In the process of doing the research we have developed real, and growing,problems with the category of identity’. Collective identity did not turn out tobe a very productive starting point. We have considered Turkish-Cypriot culturein contemporary Britain, and have taken Turkish-Cypriot women as the particu-lar basis for our discussion. But even within this small population, we have hadto recognise that what is happening is complex and dif® cult to map accordingto an identity scheme. There seem to be all kinds of different cultural strategiesbeing mobilised ± according to age, migrant generation, and so on. Even withinthese sub-categories, we still ® nd signi® cant variations. The danger, to borrowAnthony Cohen’s formulation, is that the mapping of Turkish-Cypriot culturalidentity amounts to no more than the transformation of Turkish Cypriots into® ctitious ciphers [of our own] theoretical invention’ (Cohen 1994: 7). When itcomes to the varieties of Turkish Cypriotness, we have found that these cannotbe captured through an imposed matrix of identity boxes. Whilst it is possibleto say something about what we have called the cultural frame of Turkish-Cypriot culture, it is extremely dif® cult to do justice to the complexity of livedexperiences, feelings, thoughts and narratives about being Turkish-Cypriot.

What we also found, signi® cantly, was that identity’ was not a key issue forthe Turkish-Cypriot women we talked to. It became increasingly clear to us thattheir experiences and thoughts were generally about things other than culturalidentity. And when they did talk about identity, or about their `customs’ ± aboutwhat it meant to be Turkish-Cypriot ± they were not thinking about cultural andpolitical attachments to a `national’ community. When they talked about theirchildren watching or not watching Turkish television, it was always from the

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perspective of ensuring that they would grow up with the right values. Whenthey themselves enter the sphere of Turkish culture, it is generally in terms ofextending their experience ± to get a different perspective’, as one of the womenin Group 1 put it. Their concerns were with how people should behavetowards each other ± it was in terms of human values and ethics that Turkish-Cypriotness was regarded as signi® cant.

We have not found identity’ to be a productive category in our empiricalresearch. And we have also ± partly because of our dif® culty in operationalisingit ± found it to be theoretically problematical. One of the consequences oftransnational processes and practices is that they have put issues of culturalidentity and cultural community into a new context. According to Ulrich Beck’s(2000) formulation, questions of culture and identity are shifted from thecontext of the national project to the context of the post-national, or cosmopoli-tan, project. And what has become clearer, as a consequence, is the historicallylocated and constructed nature of the category of identity ± which we hadmistakenly taken as a universal category. Now it has become clear to us that theidea itself of identity is an invention of the national era and mentality.As Katherine Verdery (1994: 36) argues, `The kind of self-consistent personwho ª hasº an ª identityº is a product of a speci® c historical process: the processof modern nation-state formation.’ From this recognition a set of questionsfollows:

Where has it [the notion of identity’ ] come from, and why has it become important for

human beings to `have’ (possess) identities’? What speci® c notion of `person’ or `humanbeing’ is implied in the concept of identity’ , and what is the historical speci® city of this

concept? By what political , economic, social and symbolic contexts is the idea of identityinformed? How are identities’ socially constructed, and how are people who `have’

identities’ made? (Verdery 1994: 47)

And, as it becomes possible to pose such questions about the institution ofnational belonging, it becomes apparent that the contemporary renewal ofinterest in identity politics cannot be an innocent endeavour. ª Identitiesº arecrucial tags’, Verdery (1994: 37) argues, `by which state-makers keep track oftheir subjects: one cannot keep track of people who are one thing at one point,another thing at another.’ The renewed concern with identities surely representsa belated concern to ® x identities, at a time when transnational ¯ ows aremaking it more and more dif® cult for states to keep track of their peoples. The® ctitious ciphers’ that we risk turning people into are constructs of what stillremains a national theoretical invention.

The imperative, then, is to de-operationalise the discourse of identity and todevelop an alternative to it ± in Ulrich Beck’s terms, a cosmopolitan alternativeto national cultural identities. Beck confronts us with the core issue: `how dopeople’s cultural, political and biographical self-awareness change or how doesit have to change if they no longer move and locate themselves in a space ofexclusive nation-states but in the space of world society instead?’ (Beck 2000:90). More particular questions can also be elaborated. Is it the case that newidentities, or new kinds of identities, will, or will have to, emerge out of theprocesses of cultural transnationalisation? Or is it that cultures will be organisedaround something other than identity; that we will no longer `have’ ± andbe required to `have’ ± identities’? And, if this were to be the case, inwhat alternative ways might we try to think about our involvement in cultures± ways that are not to do with identity and belonging? These are the kinds of

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questions that have now become central concerns in our research into theTurkish-speaking populations in Britain. They are actually questions concernedwith the possibilities for un® xing identities.

In terms of how one might begin the task of thinking about cultures differ-ently, we have been drawn to the idea of mental space. In his re¯ ections onmental space, Robert Young is particularly concerned with the quality of mentalspaces. Thus, he makes a distinction between spaces that work for `containing,ruminating and making use of experience’ , and spaces which involve tipping it[experience] out, reprojecting and mimicking it, batting it away, hoarding it, etc.’(Young 1994: 34). He is concerned with processes of experiencing, feeling andthinking ± with rendering of mental geography which encourage journeys ofdiscovery, where one can learn from experience’ (Young 1994: 34). It is throughits capaciousness that mental space can keep emotions alive and facilitatethinking. Now, what we want to draw out here ± it is only brie¯ y touched onby Young himself ± is the relationship between psychic spaces and real-worldspaces, between inner and outer geographies. It is precisely this relationship thatBogdan BogdanovicÂ is getting at when he refers to the city as a tool for thought’,or as a `cognitive model’ . What we want to suggest ± and what we thinkBogdanovicÂ is getting at ± is that the way in which the real-world geographiesare conceived will have implications for psychic or mental processes. Thus, thecity may be regarded as a productive tool for thought, sustaining complexity inexperience and thinking. (And, we would argue, the nation provides a contrast-ing example, one that actually diminishes mental space and inhibits thinking ± infavour of belonging). We are concerned, then, with experience (keeping emo-tions alive) and with the capacity to think ± a far cry from identity. And we areconcerned with geographical imaginations that might have the capacity (thecapaciousness) to support these values.

What is crucial, we think, in both inner and outer spaces, is mobility. Mentalspace functions productively when it facilitates imaginative and intellectualpassage. From an anthropological perspective, Anthony Cohen puts an emphasison the experience of boundary crossing ± where boundaries are `zones forre¯ ection: on who one is; on who others are’ (Cohen 1994: 128). The crossing ofboundaries offers a provocation to think. Nigel Rapport and Andrew Dawson(1998: 19± 20) make the argument, again from an anthropological perspective,that the human brain thinks in terms of relationships’, that the mind operatesin and upon differences’. They point to the fundamental relationship betweenmovement and perception, between movement and energy, between movementand order, and between movement and individuality’ (Rapport and Dawson1998: 21). Perhaps the most suggestive evocation of the value of mobility comesfrom J.-B. Pontalis. In order to live and to believe ourselves free,’ Pontalis (1993:17) maintains, `we need several spaces.’ For him mobility is the preconditionfor experience to occur; there must be the possibility of passage between onespace and another. Movements to-and-fro. The changing of states. Pontaliscelebrates a style of thinking (which he ® nds in psychoanalysis, and thepsychoanalytical relation) that he characterises in terms of its `migratory ca-pacity’ (capaciteÂ migratrice): it involves migration between one language ± andone dialect ± to another, from one culture to another, from one knowledge toanother, with all the risks that such a transfer entails’ (Pontalis 1990: 88).Movement in the world, movement in the mind. Doesn’t this suggest a waybeyond the identity agenda?

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Acknowledgements

This article is based on research conducted within the ESRC TransnationalCommunities Programme ± Award L214252040 , Negotiating Spaces: Media andCultural Practices in the Turkish Diaspora in Britain, France and Germany (seewww.transcomm.ox.ac.uk).

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Author details

Kevin Robins is Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

E-mail: [email protected]

Asu Aksoy is a Research Associate in the Departments of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths

College, University of London.

E-mail: [email protected]

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from spaces of identity to mental spaces: lessons from turkish-cypriot cultural experience in...

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