The Broken Olive Branch Nationalism Ethnic Conflict And The Quest For Peace In Cyprus

At the forefront of its field, The Broken Olive Branch examines the dynamics of ethnonationalism in Cyprus, a country torn in two by decades-long struggles fueled by ethnic rivalry. Harry Anastasiou’s analysis of Cyprus’s historic conflict through the lens of conflict analysis and resolution traces the division of Greek and Turkish Cypriots since the country’s independence from British rule and mediation in 1960. In the first of two volumes, Anastasiou offers a detailed portrait of Cyprus’s dual nationalisms, identifying the ways in which the ideologies undermined the relations between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The author demonstrates how the ethnic rivalry was largely engineered by the leaders of each community. Taking a multilevel approach, he maps out the changes in ethnonationalism over time, tracing the impact of political leadership and international relations.

In the second volume, Anastasiou focuses on emergent post-nationalist trends, their implications for peace, and recent attempts to reach mutually acceptable agreements between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. He documents the transformation of Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey within the context of Europeanization and globalization. While leaders of both communities have failed to resolve the conflict, Anastasiou argues that the accession of Cyprus into the European Union has created a structure and process that promises a multiethnic, democratic Cyprus. With great depth and balance, The Broken Olive Branch presents a fresh analysis of the Cyprus conflict and new insights on the influence of nationalism.

In the second volume, Anastasiou focuses on emergent post-nationalist trends, their implications for peace, and recent attempts to reach mutually acceptable agreements between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. He documents the transformation of Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey within the context of Europeanization and globalization. While leaders of both communities have failed to resolve the conflict, Anastasiou argues that the accession of Cyprus into the European Union has created a structure and process that promises a multiethnic, democratic Cyprus. With great depth and balance, The Broken Olive Branch presents a fresh analysis of the Cyprus conflict and new insights on the influence of nationalism.

This book studies journalism in Cyprus to understand how journalists negotiate their roles and responsibilities in conflict-affected societies. In Cyprus, journalism has navigated through the pressures and challenges of intercommunal and political tensions. The book outlines a historical context of the conflict, also known as the Cyprus problem and discusses the news media's involvement in it. However, the primary concern is journalists' perceptions of their professional roles and external forces affecting their work. It examines the impact of political, economic and organisational influences, media ownership and technological developments on their work through interviews conducted with journalists. It studies professional and ethical challenges journalists experience, especially when reporting intercommunal relations. Finally, it explores the impact of digital media on journalism and the public debate on the Cyprus problem.

As Oliver Richmond explains, there is a level to peacemaking that operates in the realm of dialogue, declarations, symbols and rituals. But after all this pomp and circumstance is where the reality of security, development, politics, economics, identity, and culture figure in; conflict, cooperation, and reconciliation are at their most vivid at the local scale. Thus local peace operations are crucial to maintaining order on the ground even in the most violent contexts. However, as Richmond argues, such local capacity to build peace from the inside is generally left unrecognized, and it has been largely ignored in the policy and scholarly literature on peacebuilding. In Peace and Political Order, Richmond looks at peace processes as they scale up from local to transnational efforts to consider how to build a lasting and productive peace. He takes a comparative and expansive look at peace efforts in conflict situations in countries around the world to consider what local voices might suggest about the inadequacy of peace processes engineered at the international level. As well, he explores how local workers act to modify or resist peace processes headed by international NGOs, and to what degree local actors have enjoyed success in the peace process (and how they have affected the international peace process).

Violent conflict created a divide in Cyprus (1950–1974) that still exists to this day between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. This study explores specifically an effect of violent conflict—Missing Persons and the bi-communal process of their humanitarian return. This process is important for peacebuilding because it empowers individuals, families, communities, and nation-states to satisfy basic human psycho-social needs in order to deal with the trauma of past violence, to recognize loss and grieve, and to seek closure of uncertainty to prevent the transgenerational transmission of trauma and escalation of violence between and within ethnic societies.

Although group conflict is hardly new, the last decade has seen a proliferation of conflicts engaging intrastate ethnic groups. It is estimated that two-thirds of violent conflicts being fought each year in every part of the globe including North America are ethnic conflicts. Unlike traditional warfare, civilians comprise more than 80 percent of the casualties, and the economic and psychological impact on survivors is often so devastating that some experts believe that ethnic conflict is the most destabilizing force in the post-Cold War world. Although these conflicts also have political, economic, and other causes, the purpose of this volume is to develop a psychological understanding of ethnic warfare. More specifically, Handbook of Ethnopolitical Conflict explores the function of ethnic, religious, and national identities in intergroup conflict. In addition, it features recommendations for policy makers with the intention to reduce or ameliorate the occurrences and consequences of these conflicts worldwide.