The Make-Believe Space

Abstract

Preface MY FIRST CONNECTION WITH CYPRUS was not through research but through kinship. It may also have had something to do with kısmet (luck, destiny). Soon after I met Mehmet Yashin in Istanbul in 1995, he took me to Cyprus, his homeland, and to the childhood home left to him by his deceased mother. Little did I know then, on this first trip, that this, one day, would also be one of my homes. The Cyprus we were visiting in 1995 was carved in half, with a border of barbed wire running right through its middle. We were on the ''Turkish side,'' but the ''Greek side'' was visible in the distance. As evening fell over the Mesarya (Mesaoria in Greek) plain, one could distinguish the electric lights on the other side from those on ours, as they glittered in a different color. Crossing to the other side was forbidden. The border was heavily guarded. On my first visit, I was struck by the bullet holes in the side of a hotel building in Magusa (Ammochostos in Greek; Famagusta in English) and discovered that it had previously belonged to a Greek-Cypriot and was now empty. Southward along the Magusa seashore was an entire city of high-rise apartment blocks and hotel buildings that looked like a ghost town: broken windows, dangling gates, decrepit stairs, decaying walls. I was to learn that this city, to which no access was allowed, was Maraş; for the Greek-Cypriots, Varosha. It was a thriving tourist destination in the 1970s, until the war of 1974 and Turkey's invasion of the north of the island, including the town. The Greek-Cypriots of Varosha had escaped from the invading Turkish army, and the town was blocked off from habitation after the war. This is where the seashore of Magusa stopped. Running across the end of a beach facing Varosha was a barbed-wire fence and military signs forbidding access and photography. After Magusa, we were to visit Lefkoşa (Lefkosia in Greek; Nicosia in English), which is Mehmet's home town, both his parents being original

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

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Affective atmospheres, urban geopolitics and conflict (de)escalation in Beirut

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“…Building on 'affective atmospheres' (Anderson, 2009), I chart the lived experiences of urban escalation to and de-escalation in Beirut during violent clashes in May 2008 and the role of the urban environment in shaping those experiences. Geographers and anthropologists have only recently established a long overdue connection between urban conflict and affect (Laketa, 2016;Navaro-Yashin, 2012). I argue that developing such a connection benefits both urban geopolitics -by engaging with the "intensive space-times" (Anderson, 2009, p. 80) of atmospheres -and geographies of affective atmosphere -by adding to their repertoire the study of (geo)political tension and violence, a field where there is a paucity of both atmospheric and, more generally, affective research.…”

Party System and Evolution of the Political Cleavages in Northern Cyprus (1974-2014)

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