By Glafkos Constantinides
The Cyprus problem remains unsolved for a good 50 years. In this political ‘production function’, to use a term borrowed from economics, the only constant is change. Little in Cyprus is the same now as it was before 1974 not only on the ground that everybody can see but most importantly in the minds of people, a change with hidden consequences.
The UN-led negotiations framework is dominated by those high-level constitutional and legal challenges leaving by the wayside the ‘people side’ challenges that have to do with the model of society that people have in mind for a federal Cyprus. The ‘people side’ challenge is to understand the social realities that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots live and, in that light, to focus on how to close the gap which widens with time.
There is a difference between a federal Cyprus defined as a set of mechanistic arrangement of legal and constitutional provisions and future Cyprus as a society of people. Federal Cyprus as a construct will need to become socially meaningful in the everyday life of people. Ostensibly thorny issues like ‘rotating presidency’, ‘effective representation’, ‘equality’, to mention just a few, have aroused considerable confusion because they mean different things to different people reflecting the social structures in which Greek and Turkish Cypriots live. Turkey is a driving force in the north of Cyprus, this means one thing to the Greeks Cypriots and yet another to the Turkish Cypriots. This is understandable in terms of the social structure in which people live.
The social structure is an important parameter in the effort to achieve progress in Cyprus. The passage of time, as a matter of fact, weakens the international dimension and the gravity of the pile of resolutions on Cyprus and strengthens the local dimension of social reality and ‘those things on the ground’.
Both trends accelerate widening the gap in the expectations of people in both communities of what the ‘Cyprus settlement’ will deliver. Generally, Greek Cypriots expect reversal of the illegality of the occupation of the northern part of the Republic of Cyprus and what stems from it, while Turkish Cypriots expect to retain the benefits created over the past 50 years through the use of land and other resources, made possible by the support of Turkey. There are always important exceptions, but this is what is ‘typically true’ as the great German Sociologist Max Weber said, among other things, in his “Economy and Society” (1968). The vast changes on the ground with extensive building development and new infrastructure, combined with the rise of new professions, economic interests, decision making bodies, income sources and wealth, more so in the north, are not without consequences for how people perceive life to be now and in the future.
Formal negotiations may be stagnant for several years, but society gathers its own momentum crystallising the daily life that people take for granted. Urban expansion, emerging economic interests and lifestyles in the Turkish Cypriot society are dominant components of daily life. Equally robust components in the Greek Cypriot society are salient fragments of past and recent history associated with deeply felt sense of moral, human and material losses.
Progress towards settlement will require sociological analysis for a better understanding of contradictions underlying the images of Cyprus society that people have in mind. Sociology is a particularly effective problem-solving tool in many policy areas including rebalancing diversity into a positive factor for progress.
Sociology is not just about people, it’s about people in social structures, it’s about people in relationships shaping, and shaped by, ‘how things are done’, as social anthropologist Lucy Mair put it in very simple language in her ‘Introduction to Social Anthropology’ (1965). Social structure is the building block of social life as the influential sociologists Talcott Parsons explains in his ‘Social System’ (1951). It is naive to assume that the social structure in Cyprus will fall into place when the mechanisms of power and authority of a federal Cyprus are set out and agreed.
The constitutional and legal framework defining the political personality and security of a federal Cyprus are important, equally important is how people will relate to them and how to regenerate a society based on common knowledge of that society, ‘collective consciousness’ as the founding father of sociology Emile Durkheim called in his ‘Division of Labour in Society’ (1933). The former is what Emile Durkheim called ‘mechanistic solidarity’, where people are understood as categories of citizens, position holders and formal role players. Regenerating a Cypriot society is primarily a challenge of creating ‘organic solidarity’, again according to Emile Durkheim, where people engage in meaningful relationships, pursue shared interests, empathy and common understanding of how things are done.
How would sociology help here in practical terms? Solidarity is a social quality, it’s about how people relate, is not out there to catch, it is achieved not ascribed, it is an outcome developed by people not just meeting but working together, sharing ways of doing things and building a common understanding of the work they do. There is no blueprint other than recognising that problems and solutions have no life of their own, how people interpret them, according to Max Weber, is what matters.
Some approaches are more effective than others. Some flagship examples stand out. The Nicosia Master Plan project initiated in the early 1980s by the visionary Nicosia city leaders Lellos Demetriades and Mustafa Akinci is the prime example of joint work of Greek and Turkish Cypriots city planners for the future growth and conservation of Nicosia based on common knowledge of opportunities and constraints and agreed principles, objectives and solutions.
The technical work proved the vehicle for the development of relationships, mutual understanding and trust transcending city planning issues. The Nicosia Buffer Zone Study, an offspring of the Nicosia Master Plan, developed and applied common principles and techniques for the conservation and emergency structural support of traditional houses of architectural and historical value in the buffer zone in the Walled City of Nicosia, an area where in the past families and businesses were intermixed.
The Bicommunal Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, ongoing since 2008 with increased activity every year and support from the EU and UNDP, continues to deliver remarkable results not only on the heritage monuments of Cyprus as buildings but also loud messages and unique lessons of cooperation and common understanding of the context of their work in, and for, Cyprus. Yet again, in the field of entrepreneurship useful examples of common understanding and practices are promoted through voluntary efforts of young entrepreneurs supported by Stelios Foundation.
There are several other people-driven initiatives on education, innovation, technology, etc., which, while making significant contributions to respective fields of work, like all the above outstanding examples of solidarity building activities, fall short of influencing and enriching the content and depth of the formalistic negotiations process.
What is urgently needed is a broadening of the focus of the effort on Cyprus and, enriched with ‘sociological imagination’, as C Wright Mills would encourage us to do in his ‘Sociological Imagination’ (1959), to open up avenues for putting in placed piece by piece a common knowledge of Cyprus as a bicommunal society.
A fundamental canon in sociology is that you cannot tell people in society what to think, belief, value, desire or support, what is right and wrong, what is fair and unfair, but, as William Isaac Thomas in his ‘The Polish Peasant in Europe and America’, (1920) would remind us, consequences follow shaping people’s actions and expectations. How people think of Cyprus is one of the problems of the Cyprus problem.
Glafkos Constantinides is a sociologist, economist and urban planner and a former coordinator of the Nicosia Master Plan and member of the Bicommunal Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage
