From spaces of identity to mental spaces: lessons

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

ISSN: 1369-183X (Print) 1469-9451 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjms20

From spaces of identity to mental spaces: Lessons from Turkish-Cypriot cultural experience in Britain Kevin Robins & Asu Aksoy To cite this article: Kevin Robins & Asu Aksoy (2001) From spaces of identity to mental spaces: Lessons from Turkish-Cypriot cultural experience in Britain, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27:4, 685-711, DOI: 10.1080/13691830120090458 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691830120090458

Published online: 04 Aug 2010.

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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

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Kevin Robins and Asu Aksoy Abstract This article is concerned with the culture of Turkish Cypriots in Britain, and at the same time with the problems of ® nding an adequate theoretical language to theorise those experiences. First, it seeks to bring out the particularity of Turkish-Cypriot culture, located as it is between British, Cypriot and Turkish reference points. We argue that this is a culture that is distinctively, and often uncomfortably, placed between national and transnational conditions of existence. The article looks particularly at the experiences of Turkish-Cypriot women, seeking to explore their sense of cultural positioning as they live their lives in London. In its more theoretical sections, the article seeks to work against the national discursive frame of community and identity that is generally used to describe Turkish-Cypriot culture, suggesting instead an alternative approach 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; Robins and Aksoy 2001). In this article, we focus on one particular transnational group, the Turkish Cypriots in Britain, and especially on the experiences of TurkishCypriot women. Turkish Cypriots migrated from Cyprus largely as a consequence of the bitter ìnter-communal’ con¯ icts of the 1950s and 1960s, and then the political and economic problems of the 1970s and 1980s, following the partition of the island. Britain was their favoured destination because, as former colonial subjects, they had, or felt that they had, a `special’ historical relationship with the colonial heartland. In Britain, however, it turned out that they quickly became an ìnvisible population’. Very little has ever been written about them. In the little research that has been undertaken (and this applies to both Turkish and Greek Cypriots), `the conditions for their experience [are] left absent and the historical circumstances of their arrival in Britain are left unaccounted for’ (Solomos and Woodhams 1995: 233). A basic objective of this article, then, is to render Turkish Cypriots visible in their British context ± to acknowledge their presence and their signi® cance as a transnational group in the cultural space of Britain. But our aim is not just to compensate for previous oversight or neglect. We think that there is actually something distinctive ± and also very instructive ± about the Turkish-Cypriot experience. That distinctiveness concerns the peculiar nature of the Turkish Cypriots’ relationship to culture and identity. What we are going to suggest is that this population exists in a kind of suspension between national and transnational cultural conditions, with neither possibility being properly realised. With respect to the national possibility, what has been ISSN 1369-183 X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/01/040685-2 7 Ó DOI: 10.1080/1369183012009045 8 Carfax Publishing

2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd


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unusual about the Turkish Cypriots is that, whilst they clearly have a sense of a 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 national culture in Cyprus (Papageorgiou 1997), there were always real problems in binding Turkish Cypriots as a whole into this ìmagined community’ ± a community, 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 from the island, another set of factors came to inhibit the development of a national identity. Preferring to adapt and accommodate to their `host’ country, the Turkish Cypriots did not think it appropriate to assert or to make an issue of their cultural presence and difference. In the British context, theirs has always seemed to be a peculiarly unobtrusive and unassuming cultural community. In other words, the elaboration of an òf® cial’ national-style Turkish-Cypriot identity has been constantly inhibited. What is distinctive about the TurkishCypriot population is that it is characterised by what appears to be a particularly `weak’ or ùndeveloped’ culture and identity. Turkish Cypriots themselves seem very aware of this condition. When we began to work on this research we were struck by the cultural unassertiveness of the people we talked to ± it seemed to us to be related to some kind of incompleteness or insuf® ciency at the heart of their culture. As researchers, we initially experienced a strange sense of disappointment as we re¯ ected on what Turkish-Cypriot culture had to offer. We could not escape the feeling that something fundamental was `missing’ from it ± that Turkish-Cypriot culture was the culture of a hollow community. It took us some time to think our way beyond these feelings of disappointment in our research subjects. What became only gradually clear to us was that we had been (unthinkingly) expecting Turkish-Cypriot culture to conform to some kind of `standard’ model of a national community (and expecting this even though our research was, in fact, concerned with the signi® cance of cultural transnationalisation). What we had to recognise, in order to be able to think more productively about this particular culture, was that something else was also going on in it, something besides the national aspiration. Turkish Cypriots (and especially migrants) have had to position themselves according to a more complex set of cultural reference points. First, there is the culture of the island from which they originate (and which they have shared historically with a variety of other ethnic groups, particularly the majority Greek Cypriots). Second, there is the culture of `mainland’ Turkey, which now exerts a powerful, and growing, in¯ uence both in 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 shamefully implicated in the ethnic con¯ icts that led to the island’s partition; and that became the country of migrant settlement and acculturation. In the following discussion we refer to this relational ® eld as the frame of Turkish-Cypriot culture. Turkish-Cypriots (have to) position themselves culturally with reference to 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 a culture that has, until very recent times, been characterised more by its transnational ± or, better, transcultural ± connections. As a consequence of a long, and still resonant, historical experience ± the early con¯ uence of Mediterranean


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cultures, imperial subordination ® rst to the Ottomans and then to Great Britain, the modern political and economic migrations ± the Turkish-Cypriot people have been used to cultural encounter and interaction, and have always had a strong elsewhere-orientation. Today, that historical transnationalism or transculturalism is considerably damaged and undermined ± but it is not entirely eradicated. If it is not able to ® nd any accommodation within the òf® cial’ cultural ideology, it still exists as part of the ordinary experience of TurkishCypriot people. We think that the transnational dimension continues to be signi® cant for their experience within the Turkish-Cypriot cultural frame. What the frame entails, for all those individuals who have to operate across it, is a constant, and often dif® cult, negotiation between the different cultural reference points. We have to recognise that the experience of operating across such a transnational frame is quite different from that of being located in the singular and homogeneous space of an imagined community. The Turkish-Cypriot case began to have a very contemporary relevance for us once we were able to see it as a culture caught between national and transnational logics. What was signi® cant was not just the fact of being ìn-between’ : that the culture was struggling to express itself through the national imaginary, whilst, at the same time, Turkish Cypriots, in Britain especially, were locating themselves within a transnational cultural space. It was actually the frustrating nature of the sense of in-betweenness in this particular case. The problem is that ìmagined community’ is an unproductive experience for Turkish Cypriots; and, at the same time, that their culture is not properly able to realise the potential of its transnational connections. Neither possibility seems to really `work’ for Turkish-Cypriot culture. Is there a way out of this cultural impasse? Where might the sources of potential transformation be found? These are key questions that will concern us in the discussion that follows. The dif® culties that we initially experienced in connecting with the peculiarities of Turkish-Cypriot culture ± the dif® culties we have had with pointing to their 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 in Britain, this article will also be concerned more generally with the categories through which we think about ± and might come to think differently about ± cultural experience. What has become increasingly apparent to us is the extent to which contemporary discussions of transnationalisation are suffused by the national imaginary. By the national imaginary, we mean the disposition that spontaneously organises, or seeks to organise, collectivities in terms of ìmagined communities’, and individuals according to their ìdentities’. We use these categories all too readily. And whenever we make ready use of them we ® nd ourselves implicated in a particular imagination of cultural organisation. As Katherine Verdery (1993: 39± 40) observes, `we tend to write about national identity as if the second term were not at all problematic ¼ ’ Should we not be re¯ 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-historical ef® cacy of the notion of identity? What has been the particular job that it has been allocated in the context of the national cultural order? Ìdentity’ has functioned 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 person who became the bearer of an ìdentity’ became a particular kind of person. Ìdentity’ 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 name to thing’. And, by the same token, we may say that the èf® cacy’ of the notion of identity has been to do with a project of immobilisation ± with the suppression of cultural mobility and consequently of what mobility would make possible. What will hopefully be clear in the discussion that follows is our own struggle to distance ourselves from the national imaginary and the instituted discourses of imagined community. We have not wanted to ® x Turkish-Cypriot culture in a national identity mould. In our research, it has not seemed at all productive to think about the experiences of Turkish Cypriots in Britain simply through the reducing category of ìdentity’. What will also be clear in the following discussion is our interest in thinking about cultures in ways that have nothing to do with attachment and belonging. Of far greater signi® cance, for us, are the transnational aspects of Turkish-Cypriot culture, and what we regard as the cultural possibilities of transnationalisation. We shall argue that what is required, if we are to explore alternative possibilities, is a shift of both theoretical and methodological focus. We have to move beyond what Jacques RancieÁre calls the `® ctive unity’ of a culture, the imaginary unity to which identities adhere, and to engage with the èmpirical people’, and their cultural experiences and reasoning. As RancieÁre cogently puts it, ìndividuals are real beings, and society a ® 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 discursive frame of culture, identity and community (recognising that the ® ctive unity is ònly a creation of the imagination’ ± to borrow RancieÁre’s apt and lucid phrase), and to take into account the signi® cance of individual consciousnesses and experiences. We have become aware of the need, following Anthony Cohen (1994: 4), `to elicit and describe the thoughts and sentiments of individuals which we otherwise gloss over in the generalisations we derive from collective social categories’. 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 likely to learn more about the possibilities of transnational cultures (by which we mean the possibilities that may exist for freeing us from our adherence to ® ctive unities). Of course, we recognise the impossibility at the present time of doing away with the notion of collective identity ± after all, it is a notion that has become ingrained in the cultural commonsense of our times, and people continue to organise their lives around that concatenation of ideas. Our real point is that we have to begin the process of de-operationalisation. We have to start trying to think about cultural con® gurations in other ways ± ways that are more experientially productive. We have to develop a different kind of imagination, in which culture is no longer simply about attachments, allegiances, loyalties, bonds, roots ± in short, subjection (which is what that concatenation of ideas has been all about). What has to be envisaged is an imagination that could both renew and enlarge 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. Following Robert Young, we may regard mental space as a space that is both within us and in the external world; it is àn intermediate area of experiencing, to which inner reality 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 in which we picture the mind, and is interested particularly in `renderings of mental geography which encourage journeys of discovery, where one can learn from experience’ (Young 1994: 34). In our own re¯ ections, we shall be concerned also 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 learn from experience, is also related to the way in which we conceive of, and symbolise, real-world geographies. We shall come to this in due course, but here let us just note that the idea of mental spaces shifts the agenda away from cultural identities, and towards questions of cultural experience and thinking about experiences ± and this we regard as a highly productive shift. After this long and self-re¯ exive introduction, let us now spell out the structure of the rest of our article, which is in three parts. In the ® rst part, we elaborate the cultural frame of Turkish-Cypriot culture. We will suggest that identity remains an issue of concern, albeit an unresolved one, in contemporary Turkish-Cypriot cultural politics. If we are concerned to ® nd ways of thinking ourselves beyond cultural identity, we are also well aware that òf® cial’ and ideological politics are still very much concerned with the ìdentity problem’ of Turkish Cyprus and Turkish Cypriots. We must have regard to what is happening with the ® ctive unity of `Turkish-Cypriotness’. It remains very much a part of the cultural equation. From there, we move on in the second section of the article to consider the thoughts and ideas of some of the people whom we have been interviewing in London. We shall be particularly concerned with Turkish-Cypriot women. This is partly for the pragmatic reason that we had greater access to them than to men; but also because we feel that they are less attached to ideological culture and politics, and therefore perhaps more open to the possibilities of cultural change. We are interested, then, in the ways in which Turkish-Cypriot women are relating to, struggling with, and re¯ ecting on, their culture. Our sense is that at this particular historical moment, in 2001, there may actually be particular cultural and experiential possibilities that were not available, say, a decade before. In the third section of the article, and in the conclusion, we return to theoretical issues and to our own interpretative struggle against the discourses of imagined community and identity. Here we will re¯ ect more fully on the conceptual shift that we are trying to make from spaces of identity to mental spaces.

Turkish Cypriots in Britain: problems of the `® ctive unity’ Turkish Cypriots began to come to Britain in a signi® cant way in the 1950s. They grew steadily as a migrant population through the 1960s, and then quickly in the early 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 in 1974. It is dif® cult to calculate the number of Turkish Cypriots in Britain, as census information does not clearly distinguish them as an ethnic group (KuÈcËuÈkcan 1999), but the estimate is that there are around 100,000. The estimate for the number of Turkish Cypriots remaining in Cyprus is around 80,000. It is further estimated that there are close to 80,000 Turkish `settlers’ also on the island, 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 to be regarded as approximate, but they point ± and Turkish Cypriots are very conscious of this ± to a highly unusual demographic pro® le in this particular transnational group. The population in Britain now constitutes the greatest concentration of Turkish Cypriots, but it remains none the less a small cultural grouping. Actually, we might refer to them as the Turkish Cypriots in London, as they are mostly concentrated in the capital, and, indeed, largely in boroughs in the north and east (with a smaller population in South London). Back in the 1950s, Turkish Cypriots 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 and now 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 village backgrounds, Turkish-Cypriot migrants have managed to establish themselves successfully in their new urban location (Sonyel 1988). It has been commonly observed ± of both Turkish and Greek Cypriots ± that their kinship networks and family loyalties have been crucial in sustaining stable and self-contained community structures (e.g. Oakley 1979: 16± 17). As a consequence, no doubt, of their village origins, they have always been imaginatively situated in the frame of community. In a brief survey published in 1981, F.M. Bhatti felt able to characterise them as àn already well-adjusted community’, and was con® dent in concluding 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 should go on to note that Turkish Cypriots have also existed as an invisible community (and perhaps there is some relation between their ìdeal’ status and their condition of invisibility?). There are various reasons for this relative invisibility, we suggest. First, in the overall context of a multicultural Britain, Turkish Cypriots have been overshadowed by the larger, and far more high-pro® le, Black and Asian communities. Second, and more particularly, their presence has been somewhat eclipsed by the later and more prominent and demonstrative migrations of Turks and Kurds from `mainland’ Turkey. Third, in the context of these latter migrations from Anatolia, Turkish Cypriots have tended to emphasise what they regard as their own qualities of being both more `progressive’ (that is, more Èuropean’) and also more ìntegrated’ into the British way of life. Cyprus was a British colony for over 80 years, and there has been a sense of af® nity with British culture among many Turkish Cypriots as a consequence of this 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 Cypriots in 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-Cypriot culture and identity did not ® nd a voice. In the early days of migration, the expression of their own particular culture and identity was not a major concern or issue for them. Turkish Cypriots just got on with things. To some extent, this was surely because thinking about who they were would necessarily confront them with the question of why they had left Cyprus, and with all the pain associated with the memories of ethnic con¯ ict and the consequent experience of political± 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, `denial that you were part of a whole of Cyprus, denial that it caused you pain to leave all those places’ (Interview, London, 21 June 2000). Thinking about identity would have required Turkish Cypriots to consider their relation to the GreekCypriot migrants and refugees, alongside whom they lived and worked, and with whom, in the translated context of London, they actually got on quite cordially (Constantinides 1977: 276± 7; Ladbury 1977: 312± 5). The majority of Turkish Cypriots seem, then, to have opted for a pragmatic accommodation to the 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 developed a high degree of adaptability,’ Bhatti approvingly observed, ànd their chief priority is success in this country’ (Bhatti 1981: 8). His positive tone is in af® rmation of what he regards as the success story of the Turkish-Cypriot community in integrating into British society and culture. What, in their different ways, the accounts of both Mehmet Ali and Bhatti evoke is a combined logic of denial and adaptation in Turkish-Cypriot culture. This logic has been a powerful force shaping Turkish-Cypriot culture in Britain ± and, as we shall argue below, it still continues to be a very signi® cant factor. Over the last decade, however, the question of culture and identity has begun to emerge as a more salient issue. Already in 1987, a group of writers and intellectuals met in London to discuss Turkish-Cypriot culture ± to move the debate beyond the rigid ideological positions that had come to characterise the of® cial politics centred around the `Cyprus problem’. In the foreword to the conference proceedings, it is noted that `despite their differing approaches everyone agrees on one point: IDENTITY’ (Mehmet Ali 1990: 7). In seeking to open up this new discussion, these writers were clearly responding to the much broader cultural transformations of the time (associated with globalisation and the end of the Cold War), which were putting identity on the agenda everywhere. Since the time of that (quite in¯ uential) conference, the question of culture and identity has moved beyond the domain of the intellectuals, and has become an issue for a great many Turkish Cypriots, particularly among the second and third generations, who are now far removed from the politics of Cyprus in the 1970s. As IÊlker Kõ lõ cË, who is the Chair (in London) of the CumhuriyetcËi TuÈrk Partisi (Republican Turkish Party) observes, young Turkish Cypriots are now searching for their identities. `Because they are settling in the community, they are faced with this question, ª who are you?º ¼ They are in search of an identity; they want an identity’ (Interview, London, 12 May 2000). These young people are now more aware of the debates around multiculturalism and new identities among other ethnic communities in London, notably Black and Asian cultures. It seems, therefore, that Turkish Cypriots have become more self-re¯ exive with respect to questions of cultural identity. The context does now exist for discussion about what Turkish-Cypriot identity is, and, more importantly perhaps, where it might go. In relation to the collective culture and identity of Turkish Cypriots themselves, we may say that there is a certain sense of crisis or impasse ± apparent in both the cultural condition of Cyprus and the cultural situation of TurkishCypriot migrants in Britain. In our interactions with people in the TurkishCypriot community in Britain, what came across very strongly was an anxiety about 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 perhaps distinctive in the Turkish-Cypriot case is the sense that it may be more than just a collective fantasy. Sometimes this foreboding assumes a melodramatic form, but generally it persists in the form of background anxiety. As ÊIlker Kõ lõ cË put it to 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, 12 May 2000). In the 1987 conference on Turkish Cypriot Identity in Literature to which we referred earlier, we ® nd one of the speakers maintaining that `Turkish Cypriot culture is faced with the danger of total extinction’; the conference organisers themselves suggested that Turkish Cypriots in Britain have `reached the 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 that we conducted. In one for example, the conversation kept coming back to this question of loss. `They [in Cyprus] are losing their culture’, one participant remarks. `Children nowadays [in Britain], they have forgotten their culture, haven’t they?’, says another. `What happens’, observes another, ìs that they don’t pass it [their culture] on to their children, and what happens is that the culture comes to an end’ (Focus Group, En® eld, 21 April 2000). What has been really striking is how prevalent and persistent this imagination of loss, dilution, forgetting, lack, and so on, seems to be in Turkish-Cypriot discourses. The constant circulation of this motif of ìdentity crisis’ seems to be telling us of the dif® culty the `® ctive unity’ is having in maintaining its own coherence and credibility. And what of the signi® cant others in the cultural frame? How has TurkishCypriot culture positioned itself in relation to its key reference points? First, let us consider the relation of Turkish-Cypriot culture to the `host’ culture in their place of migration. As we have already suggested, Turkish Cypriots have worked extremely hard to become integrated, and in many cases assimilated, into the British culture and way of life. They have generally submitted to the monocultural and monolingual style of hegemonic Britishness (actually, in this case, Englishness). Frequently, they have felt inclined to regard themselves as a favoured minority, sometimes because of their British colonial legacy, and sometimes because of their `look’. Bhatti (1981: 9) describes the Turkish Cypriot self-image quite tellingly. `First of all,’ he says, `[they] do not regard themselves as ª immigrantsº ; this term has developed the connotation of ª blackº . They consider themselves white.’ So, they have been able to feel integrated. In some respects, one might say that this has been a positive experience, sustaining a positive self-image. But, when we consider what it means to experience cultural integration and acculturation, we ® nd that it can also feel quite alienating (we may think of this as a consequence of the paradoxical logic of integrationism). As Turkish-Cypriotness is pushed into the background of identity, this may give rise to the sense of invisibility that we referred to above. A recent report (written by Aydõ n Mehmet Ali) argues that it is precisely this invisibility that is responsible for the poor achievement of Turkish-Cypriot children in London schools: these young people `remain largely invisible to the British education system, and their continuing lack of educational achievement remains largely un-noticed and un-addressed’ (Institute of Education 1999: 12; cf. Sonyel 1988: 31). We may say that integration produces invisibility. But let us note that this invisibility is actually a marked invisibility, which in turn gives rise to another form of cultural 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 `well integrated’ ± 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 will never 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 be accepted in British society, are always aware (made aware, that is to say) that there is actually something that is essentially different about them. That `different thing’ pertains, of course, to their cultural origins, to the dimension of their identity that is other than British. This brings us to a second key reference point for Turkish-Cypriot culture. The Turkish Cypriots have a rather complex relation to the place that is generally designated by the word `home’ or `homeland’. Whilst they come from the island of Cyprus (an island they have shared with Greek Cypriots and a number of other ethnic and cultural groups), Turkish Cypriots also relate to the wider Turkish language and cultural sphere (many of them considering `mainland’ Turkey to be their anavatan or `motherland’. Perhaps the key point to bear in mind here is that the relationship of Turkish Cypriots to Cyprus is affected by the fact that, during its brief period of independent existence (1960± 1974), the Cypriot state never succeeded in developing a Cypriot national ideology (Kliot and Mans® eld 1997: 497; Pollis 1996: 79). There has never been a Cypriot imagined community (by which we mean 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 North Cyprus, 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 also become more powerful, as a result of the new dynamism and transnationalisation of Turkish culture, and particularly the commercial expansion of popular culture (television, music, ® lms and so on). The `Turkey question’ has consequently become a fundamental issue for Turkish-Cypriot culture. Among those who are politically, intellectually or experientially involved in what is going on in Cyprus now, there is something of an identity struggle occurring, and the relationship between Turkishness and Turkish-Cypriotness is central to this struggle (Blanc 1998). On the one side are those who consider Turkish Cypriots to be direct descendants of the Ottomans, and who regard Northern Cyprus as a part of the Turkish world. They are generally on the political Right, or they are pragmatists who believe that it is necessary to work now with the reality of what Turkish-Cypriot culture has effectively become. On the other, more idealistic, side are those, generally on the political Left, who resist the Turki® cation of Turkish Cypriotness, and assert an alternative identity of (multicultural) Cypriotness (see, for example, the contributors to Mehmet Ali 1990 and Yashõ n 2000). In the context of the present discussion, the merits and demerits of these two basic identity strategies do not matter. The point we are making here is simply that, whatever their political and cultural 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-Cypriot culture is being assimilated into `mainland’ Turkish culture. In this part of our discussion, then, we have been considering Turkish-Cypriot culture from the point of view of its ® ctive unity. We have tried to sketch out the distinctive imaginary frame within which Turkish-Cypriot culture has been operating, and then what we might call the basic cultural propositions and dispositions that have emerged through the working of that frame over time. These have been historically elaborated out of the multiple experiences of Turkish-Cypriot people, both in Cyprus and in the migrant context. They constitute the cultural `given’ out of which ± but also against which ± new cultural experiences (of the kind that we shall be looking at in the following section) are subsequently elaborated and worked through by new generations. In principle, there is potentially something very productive about this imaginary frame created on the basis of transnational connections (and which is not, therefore, the same kind of ordering device as an imagined community). In reality, however, we ® nd that the cultural narratives and concerns that have emerged through the workings of this frame have become increasingly problematical. What we have been arguing is that, at the collective level of the ® ctive unity, Turkish-Cypriot culture has reached a kind of impasse. We suggest that this impasse is, to a large extent, a consequence of how Turkish-Cypriot culture has come to relate to its signi® cant others ± to Britain and Turkey. With respect to the former, what is at issue is Turkish Cypriots’ `success’ with respect to cultural integration ± the identity they have acquired as a `well-adjusted community’. In relation to the latter, it is a question of how they have been progressively overshadowed and overpowered by the force ® eld of the `mainland’ culture (the culture of the anavatan). There is a problem, in our view, with the strategy of compromise, adjustment and assimilation that has been adopted in both of these cases. The problem is that the strategy has `succeeded’, it seems, to the point that there is now a sense of emptiness at the heart of Turkish Cypriot culture. The cultural frame appears to be increasingly incapable of functioning as an effective resource, particularly in the new cultural contexts in which Turkish Cypriots now ® nd themselves. Bogdan BogdanovicÂ (1994: 64) has made the argument that a geographical space can function as a `cognitive model’ (in his case the argument is made with particular reference to urban space). It can serve as a kind of mechanism for provoking thought and re¯ ection. The problem with the Turkish-Cypriot cultural frame, as we see it, is precisely that it does not work as such a `tool for thought’ (BogdanovicÂ 1994: 46). How, then, are Turkish-Cypriot people responding to this problem? How are they dealing with the identity dilemma that seems to exist in their community? We turn now to consider how Turkish Cypriots in London are actually negotiating their identities at the present time. We have said that the cultural frame of Turkish-Cypriot culture has been produced out of the practices of earlier generations of Turkish Cypriots. Now we must be concerned with the actual practices of contemporary Turkish Cypriots ± with how they are struggling with or against that frame, consolidating it or working to change it. Hence, the focus of 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 individuals in 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 discussion will be con® ned to Turkish-Cypriot women’s perspectives on identity. We were interested in how these women set about composing their own particular identities. How were they thinking about what it is to be a Turkish-Cypriot in London today?


. Biz Ingiliz degÏiliz: thinking across cultures Anthony Cohen (1994: 6) has argued that traditionally social science has tended to proceed `from the top downwards, from society to the individual, deriving individuals from the social structures to which they belong’. Thus, in the context of national cultures, the basic assumption has been that the individual is `the nation writ small’ (Cohen 1994: 157). Cohen is concerned to elaborate a more nuanced and subtle alternative to this structural or institutional determinism. The truth, he argues, is that individuals are more than their membership of and participatio n in collectivities , and, second, that collectivitie s are themselves the products of their individual members, so that ethnographic attention to individuals ’ consciousness of their membership is an appropriate way to understand the collectivity , rather than seeing it as constituted by an abstracted, if compelling logic. (Cohen 1994: 133)

Research should be concerned, Cohen (1994: 4) maintains, `to elicit and describe the thoughts and sentiments of individuals’. It should be attentive to the consciousness of individuals ± to how individuals experience cultures and make sense of their cultural experiences. For us, Cohen’s key argument is that `culture is more a matter of thinking than of doing’, and that the point of research should consequently 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. They had either been born in Britain (with the exception of one person) or had come at an early age ± so we count them as second generation. The second and third groups both comprised younger women. In the second, involving four people (including a young man who turned up), the participants were all around 30 years old, and all of them had been born in Britain ± so they too are second generation (though a different age cohort of second-generation women from those in the ® rst group). The third group consisted of six young women in their teens and early 20s, mostly second and third generation, as well as a woman of 40. This group included two `mainland’ Turks (the signi® cance of which we shall come to later). Before we move on to consider what they say, let us brie¯ y introduce another voice as a kind of initial reference point. This is the voice of an old woman, aged 69, who told us of her experiences in coming to London 40 years ago. She does not speak English. Ì never liked the English language’, she says. Ì have been here 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 and night, and now there is [Turkish] television.’ When she came to Britain, she `felt a longing’ for Cyprus ± Ì longed desperately’, she said. Her solution ± the solution 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 her Turkish-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 third generations, English is commonly the ® rst and preferred language of Turkish Cypriots). The second generation was the ® rst of the generations that had to fully come to terms with the logic of integration. At the same time, women in this generation were forced to think about their relation to the culture of their parents. For them, there was nowhere to retreat to: they had to negotiate a position for themselves within British society. The starting point for our discussions was the development of transnational satellite broadcasting services from Turkey, and the ways in which these Turkish-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 English language that Ìt is our mother-tongue really, now.’ We introduce the topic of Turkish satellite television, and they begin by telling us of their dislike for it, a common ® rst response among people of this generation. They and their families always watched British television, they say. One of them remarks that òur parents have been here for such a long time, [and now they] have got this Turkish television, and they do not watch anything else ¼ They switched so quickly, and that’s all they want to watch.’ Another talks about how Turkish Cypriots `come over, they get the Turkish television, they go and shop in Haringey, where all the shops are Turkish. This really frightens me.’ The members of this group regard themselves as well integrated into British cultural life. But as the conversation proceeds, more positive aspects of Turkish television are allowed to emerge. Ì 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 English words are incorporated into the Turkish lexicon. There is a discussion of the programmes they do actually watch from time to time: C Ë arkõ felek, which they could follow (because it is the Turkish version of Wheel of Fortune); a mini-series produced by the well-known director UgÏur DuÈndar (`no wonder it was such a high standard’); a ® lm, KurtulusË (Ì thought it was brilliant’). One participant said that she watched the news on Turkish television `to keep me informed, to get a different perspective’. The problem for them all, though, is language. Because they cannot function effectively within the Turkish language space, it proves dif® cult for these women to understand the culture ìn depth’, and impossible to draw fully on the resources it offers. But then we come to a point in the discussion where someone says, Àt the end 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 to marry Turkish.’ One of the participants had once rebelled against her Turkishness, but now, she says, `My Turkishness has grown on me. As I grew and matured that has grown as well.’ Ì’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’. Ì think that we are London Turks’, says one of the participants. `When I was brought up,’ says another, `we were constantly told . ª biz Ingiliz degÏilizº [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 carefully just what they mean when they describe themselves as Turkish. There are two aspects to it, we suggest. The ® rst involves a relation to a rather abstract idea of Turkishness, to something that they are aware of, but of which they do not have direct experience. Ì want to experience Turkishness’, says one of the women. Ì can’t say I like everything about Turkish,’ says another, Ì’m really trying to comprehend it myself. I need that injection.’ By this is meant the Turkish culture of Turkey, which is only known from the television. But this unexperienced Turkishness can also be the culture of Cyprus, with which they are also not familiar. They talk about it in terms of their `roots’, but these roots are rather abstract. Ì don’t feel that closeness to the people over there, because of the distance, and not having lived there.’ One woman actually feels à foreigner as far as they are concerned’. The second aspect of their Turkishness involves a relation to something more concrete. What they do experience directly and immediately is the TurkishCypriot culture of their family and of the local community, and they seem to identify quite strongly with this. These women feel and take up the responsibility of handing on Turkish-Cypriot values to their children. In a discussion of television viewing by children, one participant refers to a friend whose children watch both English and Turkish television. `They speak Turkish at home, and when they go to school their English is good as well. But it comes entirely from the mother.’ The mother is imagined as the custodian of Turkish values. `You become your mother’ is a very signi® cant sentiment here. But in reality, of course, the responsibility for cultural transmission is much more dif® cult for mothers of this migrant generation than it was for their own mothers. How can they hand on a Turkish culture that they are not fully in possession of themselves? And do they not have, at the same time, the responsibility of ensuring that their children are also competent in the skills they need to succeed in British society? For women of this generation, it is a question of holding the two cultures together. Festivals provide a good example of their dilemma. One woman notes that `kurban bayramõ [a Muslim holiday] just goes now. I don’t know which [holiday] is when ¼ But we seem to give more importance to Christmas.’ Another jokingly comments on how her family celebrates Christmas: `We will celebrate Christmas, with presents, sit there and have a turkey, with cacõ k and humus ¼ ZeytinyagÏlõ fasulye next to turkey.’ They are light-hearted, ® nding this mix-and-match way of coping quite amusing. These women have indeed àdapted’ to English society; they can function in it with relative ease, whilst still feeling that they are holding on to something else. They think of themselves as being more fortunate than those they call the `lost generation’, ones who `lost their Turkishness ¼ [who] lost contact with their 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’. They have 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; they enjoy being able to draw on elements of a Turkish or Turkish-Cypriot cultural reservoir. They are aware that it gives them a `different perspective’, that is to say a larger and more complex perspective on the world. But their dilemma is that they do not know that culture ìn depth’. They enjoy their Turkish side, but they can also be frustrated by it. They do not have the language skills or the direct experience that would really allow them to travel imaginatively in this mental space. Their lack of linguistic and cultural ¯ uency inhibits their imaginative 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 greater imaginative and intellectual inhibition. This group comprised three younger women, and also a young man who had come along. All were around 30 years in age, and, having been schooled at the high point of educational integrationism in Britain, they spoke barely any Turkish at all. This was a far more dif® cult conversation to keep moving. They begin by observing that the older generation is now always watching Turkish 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 the Turkish 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 stopped trying to integrate into British society: [S]he hasn’t adapted to being in England at all. It’s strange in that way. Whereas she was adapting, 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.

Ì think it [Turkish television] does in¯ uence the people in a bad way’, says another. These young people seem to have no interest in Turkish television. For them it is only experienced as sounds and images in the background of their daily lives. Ìt doesn’t appeal to me’, says one, Ì don’t watch it, but it’s there. I might come into the room, and I might see a glimpse’ says another. They think of Turkish television as `subjective’, whilst British television is òbjective’. In the reporting of the Leeds United/Galatasaray affair (in which two Leeds supporters were stabbed to death in Istanbul), Turkish television was saying, according to them, that `Turks were angels’, while British television was `more objective, I thought’. There is the same disinterest for radio (London Turkish Radio): `when me and my dad are in the car going somewhere, I am forced to listen to it’. And when it comes to the (free) Turkish newspapers distributed in London, particularly Londra Toplum Postasõ (at that time, the most popular): Ìt’s not important to 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 antipathy towards Turkish-language culture. One participant tells of how, when she was younger, her mother made her to go to the Saturday school (where Turkish language and culture are taught). `My mum forced us to go to those,’ she says, Ì mean, we might have been the ® rst lot who had been dragged to those Saturday 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; they do not really identify at all with the life there. So, who do they feel they are? How do they think about their cultural position? Well, they are quite familiar with the hybridity trope, and can play that card if necessary: `We’ve sort of taken a bit from each, a bit from our Cypriot culture, 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 Turkish Cypriots: `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’s the 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 right with, so ¼

Signi® cantly, being Cypriot means that they do not think of themselves as being English or British. Ì always try to distinguish myself from the English, though’, says one. `[W]e de® nitely are not English’, says another. Ì was born here, I lived here, but I wouldn’t, if someone asks me, I wouldn’t say I am British.’ `We don’t frown upon the British,’ she continues later, `but we still are Turkish. It’s a family thing. Your parents are Turkish, so you are.’ As with the members of Group 1, then, they are Cypriot and not British. And that is signi® 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 about being Cypriot and not being British are not at all identity assertions. The identity issue is not a big deal for these young people. In fact they were talking to us about something quite other than identity. When it comes to what these young people `feel right with’, it is family and `small customs’ that ® gure largely (as again was the case in Group 1): `The way ¼ the cooking, some of the music ± not that I listen to Cypriot music anymore. But the way you get together with your family, you sit down and talk about 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, in terms 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.

Ì think it’s a parent thing really, your family really’, adds another. They liked the way in which families visited each other (misa® rlik) ± `you go to misa® rlik, it’s who you kept in touch with, that’s how we were like years ago’. The one amongst them who does like to visit Cyprus says, Ì like the relative aspect of it. Just seeing the family, just sort of being around everyone.’ There is a certain idealisation, then, of the family and the customs of the community, as there was in Group 1. In Group 2, also, the traditions are what the participants hold on to in 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 traditions is 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 anymore with your parents, or anything like that. We all go into our own thing really. Before the

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K. Robins and A. Aksoy Turkish telly, we all used to be in the same room watching telly and talking, and everything else. Whereas now, it’s nothing like that, no communication.

Or, as another puts it, Ìt’s not just that they are not talking to one another, they are not being sociable anymore.’ Misa® rlik is actually in decline and there is 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 something good 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 community are actually becoming exhausted. These are all well-adjusted people (the term has a spin that we at ® rst did not intend, but now want keep in play). Their lives are perfectly comfortable, and they have ìdentities’ that they can perfectly well live with. What is actually engaging about them is that they are not at all preoccupied with identity ± they might be seen as models for post-national culture. But, at the same time, we cannot 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 of themselves as, in some way, Turkish or Turkish Cypriots, but they are not curious about those cultures. And they do not seem to use their Turkish perspective to re¯ ect on British society and culture. There is no real sense either of the possibilities of being implicated in two cultural spaces. The participants in this group seem to have no cultural mobility ± no possibility, and perhaps no desire, to think across cultures. If the members of Group 1 struggled (in both senses of this term) to hold on to a double cultural identi® cation, Group 2 seems to 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 a narrative that thus far could be seen to be channelled along the lines of progressive cultural decline, that is to say integration, over migrant generations. In fact, we are not interested in any such negative judgements that might be made in the case of the two groups we have looked at so far. What we are more concerned with is the fact that, to differing degrees, both groups continue to resist the idea that they are English, and assert that they are `Turkish’ or `Cypriot’. We are concerned with why this remains important to them, and Group 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. The conversation (which was in English) was extremely lively, with strong energies running through it. Two of the members were from `mainland’ Turkish families, and one had a Cypriot father and a Turkish mother. These three women were bilingual. This strong Turkish presence in the group had a very productive effect, we think. Unlike the second group, which had a rather lacklustre feel to it, this third group was very dynamic and opened up some interesting lines of thought. In our consideration of this group, we will adopt a somewhat different approach, 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 `Turkishness’, and each, in her own way, has the resolve to make their engagement with that culture intellectually and imaginatively productive. In their different ways, both of them are thinking against the grain of integrationism. C Ë is a young Cypriot woman, 19 years old. Ì’m not really brilliant in Turkish,’ she says, `but I can understand most of it.’ We begin, as usual, by discussing satellite television from Turkey, and C Ë tells us that it has à negative effect’, cutting people off from British society. Ì totally accept’, she says to another member 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 mainly watches British television, though she does listen to Turkish music shows and tries to watch ® lms. Ì am Kõ brõ oslõ (Cypriot) and I don’t understand a lot of the TuÈrkiyeli (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 culture as a consequence of linguistic inadequacy. C Ë tells us of how, at the age of 14, she had actually rebelled against her Turkishness, going `through this ª I am not a Turk, I am Englishº thing’, as she puts it. But, in her case, she had the good fortune, the resourcefulness, or whatever, 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 when I 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 got my 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’, C Ë has found a way to ùnderstand’ it. She has found a way to engage with `Turkish’ culture. And, consequently, she has been able to reconcile both her Turkish and English cultural 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 are warm 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 to follow society, and not to just do what everyone else says.

C Ë is clear in her own mind what is positive about each of the cultures she engages with. She recognises that there are things to be gained by moving between the two different cultural spaces. C Ë ’s strategy was possible because she was able to have a direct encounter with this other culture. It is signi® cant that, unlike the (older) women in Group 1, her Turkishness is not about her relationship to her mother, nor about transmitting familial values within the local community in London. C Ë ’s connection to Turkishness 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 a `spiritual’ experience, involving the imaginative cathexis of the Turkish world of Cyprus. And in C Ë ’s case, it is not a case of trying to combine or synthesise Englishness 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 space to 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 in England, 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 see everything else.

C Ë thinks of herself as a person who travels between cultural zones, and she thinks that a travelling mind is capable of being a more aware and more comprehending mind. The second participant whom we want to discuss here, Z, is 22 years old and was 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 is very much the Turkish side that Z relates to. Her Turkishness was a very positive irruption, we feel, into the group discussion. In the early part of the conversation, when we were talking about Turkish satellite television, Z made it clear that, unlike C Ë , she had no qualms about it. She watched Turkish television almost exclusively ± `the main TV that everyone sits down and watches in the living room is the Turkish one’. When asked why she did not watch British television, she said, very straightforwardly, I follow what is going around me anyway, in London, in Britain. I read the newspapers. I am 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 TuÈrkiye. Its people are my people. I don’t think we should lose 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 the extreme. 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 Turkish school [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 of alienation from Turkish culture and identity. `Before this Turkish TV came,’ she says, no one knew any music that the Turkish people listened to, no one knew what the culture was, 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 Turkish meant.

It was when television started to come from Turkey that things changed. For Z, Turkish television made a real difference. `Turkish television brought so much,’ she says, èven youth identity’ ± she is thinking of the impact of pop singers like Tarkan. `TV teaches a lot; it teaches us our culture, our people, the negative and positive sides.’ With Z, too, there is the sense of a transformative experience: 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 has brought so much with it.



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Her passage into the sphere of Turkish culture is experienced as a voyage of discovery. New horizons and new possibilities have been opened up. How does she think of herself now, this young woman who used to try to think of herself as English? `Turkish. I would say that I am Turkish, but I was born here. Because I am Turkish; because I am proud. I don’t say I am Turkish British.’ And as a consequence of this new-found Turkishness, she can be more comfortable in British society. She is able to operate across cultures, and she enjoys the passage between them. In the particular case of Z, then, the new television culture has been extremely important. It has revealed to her a new cultural order ± she recognises it as a new and more cosmopolitan Turkishness ± with which she makes an identi® cation, in which she can feel competent, and from which she is able to draw a great deal of pleasure. In fact, it is not television alone that has changed her life. She also goes to the new Turkish clubs and bars to be found in the Turkish districts of London, and she travels frequently to Turkey (Ì go on holiday to Turkey four or ® ve times a year, man, because I love it’). And, of course, the crucial point is that she speaks the Turkish language ¯ uently. Again, as with C Ë , her Turkishness derives from her own direct experience. The Turkish culture that she identi® es with is not the same as that of her parents. Indeed, when she ® ghts with her parents, the issue is to do with her sense of how a young Turkish woman should be allowed to behave in London, as against theirs ± and not to do with problems of integration into British society and values. `No matter what your parents tell you about who you are,’ she says, `without seeing something, without getting to that point, you don’t know who you are.’ The important thing for Z was that she had the cultural resources out of which she could elaborate a version of Turkishness that was meaningful to her, a Turkishness that has vivacity. Ì know who I am ¼ ’ she says. `Kendini biliyorsan basËõ na bir sËey 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 been able to take themselves beyond the mentality of integration and develop their own distinctive and more complex cultural idioms. They have been able to construct new imaginative and experiential geographies, at the same time releasing themselves from old ones that no longer work. In the case of C Ë , it is a 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 the Cyprus of the `Cyprus problem’). For Z, we may say that her Turkey, too, is no longer that of the older generation. What she experiences and enjoys is a new globalised Turkish culture, one that is both very urban and urbane ± her cultural orientation is akin to the new metropolitan and cosmopolitan perspective that Ayse C Ë agÏlar (1998: 51± 2) has identi® ed among many young German-Turks in Berlin. C Ë and Z have both created for themselves a new cultural mobility, one that allows them to experience new forms of encounter, and provokes them to think across cultures.

From spaces of identity to mental spaces We began this article by considering the cultural frame of Turkish-Cypriot culture. 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 community is instituted; the space in which identity discourses are manufactured. What have interested us are the peculiarities of the Turkish-Cypriot case ± with the dif® culties that are experienced at the level of the ® ctive unity, the problem of existing as an imagined community, and the identity ploys that have consequently been mobilised. From here, we have moved on to consider how Turkish-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 their individual consciousnesses, and to the manner in which they think about their positions within this distinctive migrant culture. We have found the peculiarities of Turkish-Cypriot experience to be very suggestive and thought-provoking, in ways we never anticipated before we undertook this research. The idiosyncrasy of the Turkish-Cypriot example has forced us to re¯ ect more generally, and critically, on questions of collective culture and identity. In this concluding section of our discussion, we want to re¯ ect on some of the lessons, as we see them, of Turkish-Cypriot experience in Britain ± which we think should be regarded as lessons for all of us, and not just for the Turkish Cypriots themselves. Let us begin this process of re¯ ection by returning to the three groups, to brie¯ y survey the key issues that emerged through our discussions, and to note how these gradually forced a shift in our own concerns and agenda. Our preliminary agenda was concerned with the question of cultural identity. What became clear to us as we explored this theme of identity was that there were actually various and different kinds of engagement with the cultures of Cyprus, Britain, and also Turkey. In Group 1, the women had elaborated a kind of synthesis for themselves out of different cultural elements, what we might call an everyday hybrid culture. It was composed from the Turkish-Cypriot culture that they knew directly (primarily the family culture), from elements of the British culture they had been integrated and socialised into, and only to a lesser extent from the wider `Turkish’ culture. In the case of Group 2, we have young women 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 process of cultural àdaptation’ appears to have reached a more advanced form. With Group 3, there are rather different dynamics in play. Here, in the cases of C Ë and Z, whom we have discussed in some detail, it is no longer a question of cultural synthesis or syncretism, but of moving across both the British and Turkish cultural spaces. They seem to have a different kind of experience of culture from the women in the other groups, one that involves them in the passage between cultures. There were important differences, then, in the way in which these women relate to the cultures that they have access to. But there was one common theme in their accounts, and this struck us as being very important. What all of the participants in the three groups insisted on was that they were not, and did not . feel, British ± `biz Ingiliz degÏiliz’. Their Turkish-Cypriot (or wider Turkish) experience was regarded by them as crucial to who they are. Even in Group 2, the most àdapted’ of the groups, there was still a clear sense of being ± and wanting to be ± different from British people. For them, their Turkish-Cypriot-



705

ness stands for a certain way of life and for certain values that they hold to be important. It is about `the way you get together with your family, [the way] you sit down and talk about things’. The same kinds of sentiments were also expressed in the other groups. All of the women we talked to wanted to hang on to their Turkish-Cypriotness (and were concerned that they might lose it). But what we found was that this Turkish-Cypriotness was not at all about national sentiment and attachment. Identity of that belonging-kind was not something they were really preoccupied with at all. Who they were was actually about something else, about certain ethical and moral values, about how families and communities should function, and, in the end, about the way in which human beings should relate to each other. These things were more important to them than what is conventionally designated by the term ìdentity’. And because this is the case, becoming British or English is not something that can mean very much to them. All of the women we spoke to were quite comfortable with who they were. In their different ways, all had found something that works for them. None of them was ill or suffering from some kind of identity malady. Identity simply was not the issue. We came to recognise that. But still we continued to feel that there was an issue to be addressed. For we still could not get over feeling that C Ë and Z were in a `better’ position than the members of Group 2, particularly. Why did we 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. What began to interest us was the question of cultural experience. What seemed to us to be a far more interesting question was how these women were experiencing and thinking about their lives in Britain. What then emerged as an issue for us were the different resources that the members of the three groups appeared to have 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 the different psychic or mental spaces of the groups ± the spaces through which cultural experience is organised and made use of. If it is the case, as Anthony Cohen (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 particular cultural groups may provide differential capacities for cultural thinking. If identity was not a big issue, this question of experience and thinking did seem to raise issues that should be pursued. Here we come to the question of integration, and to the unfortunate consequences that the integrationist (identitarian) logic has for mental space. For what seemed to us to be crucial in our Turkish-Cypriot women were the very different capacities they had to intellectually mobilise and valorise their `Turkish’ cultural elements. In the case of Groups 1 and 2, their mental spaces were shaped through the high point of integrationist ± effectively assimilationist ± policies in the British education system. The problem for them was that they could not easily draw on their Turkish-Cypriot and Turkish aspects in ways that were experientially productive. There is the sense that amongst members of Groups 1 and 2 the Turkish side is now only residual, and they relate to it as something that is likely to be lost. Their dilemma is that they do not have direct access to so much of Turkish-Cypriot or the wider Turkish culture; their experience of the culture is massively attenuated. Absolutely central to this dilemma, we believe, is their lack of Turkish-language skills. They do not speak Turkish, and they consequently ® 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 suffered because of the monolingual ideology of integrationist education in Britain. In Group 1, there was a clear readiness to engage with Turkish culture, but an acknowledgement of the basic incapacity to ùnderstand it in depth’. At one point, one of the members of the group articulated the frustration of this cruel deprivation. Ì wonder’, she said,


if it leads to feelings of ¼ if you don’t understand it, if your language is Turkish, and subconsciously 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-language culture has become far greater, and there is now no longer even a recognition of its signi® cance or value as an experiential space. For the most part, then, we may say that the members of these two groups inhabit a singular cultural space, and do not have the resources to think across cultures. They tell us of the experiential cost of being a minoritised culture in Britain, of what is lost by a culture that accepts to become ìntegrated’ within its `host’ society. In the case of Group 3, things are somewhat different, and we came to feel that it was possible to learn something positive from the experiences of two members in particular. In the case of Z, what was absolutely crucial was her language ability. Z’s language skills allowed for a greater cultural mobility. Because of her knowledge of both English and Turkish, she is able to move through, and to valorise, both British and Turkish cultural spaces. In the case of C Ë , her language skills are not so developed. But, through the Turkish she does have, and through her ability to imaginatively transform Cyprus into something with particular symbolic resonance for her, she is still able to achieve a strong degree of cultural mobility. So she too is able to have the experience of passage between cultural domains. Language has to be taken very seriously, because of the experiential possibilities that it opens up. In a report on bilingual literacy education among Turkish schoolchildren in Berlin, Monika Nehr and Edeltraud Karajoli (1995: 64) point to the greater `cognitive ¯ exibility’ that is associated with being brought up and educated bilingually. Human beings develop intellectually and imaginatively through the experience of moving across different linguistic spaces. We may also add that linguistic complexity is necessary to sustain a vital cultural order. As Amin Maalouf observes, `linguistic diversity is the pivot of all diversity’ (1998: 172). `[I]n the matter of languages,’ he says, `being content with the strict minimum that is necessary, is against the spirit of our times.’ In our particular Turkish-Cypriot (and Turkish) case, we suggest that migrants in Britain can feel more àt home’ when they are bilingual. They can feel more èqual’ to the rest of the population because they have their own sense of cultural empowerment, which they have through their capacity to move across the different cultural spaces to which they have access. Rather this than the condition of monolingual integration (recall our informant who noted that those who integrate in this way àre always reminded that they will never be English or British in the true sense’). Nehr and Karajoli (1995: 64± 5) make the observation that `bilingual children overcome nominal realism quicker than their monolingual peers ¼ [They] become aware earlier of the conventionality of words and the arbitrariness of linguistic signs.’ This we may take as more than just a scienti® c observation concerning 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± political resonance in the context of the wider discourse of national culture, imagined community and cultural identity, which is a discourse that works precisely through the assertion of nominal realism. We would want to extrapolate from the point about conventionality and arbitrariness in words and signs, to encourage a recognition of the conventionality and arbitrariness of cultural phenomena generally, and in the present discussion this concerns speci® cally the cultural phenomena of the national order. Bilingualism can serve as a stimulus for thinking more broadly about how we might overcome the idea of culture as a kind of national observance (like religious observance). In the broader context, we would do well to note Jacques RancieÁre’s (1991: 109) lucid observation: ònly an emancipated person is untroubled by the idea that the social order is entirely conventional’.

Conclusion: beyond identity In this article we have combined an account of our research into the small and neglected Turkish-Cypriot community with an attempt to re¯ ect on the theoretical framework through which we should try to make sense of Turkish-Cypriot experience. In the process, we have come to recognise that so many of the available theoretical and conceptual tropes are inadequate for what we wanted to do. We have consequently found ourselves trying to de-commission certain concepts, and, at the same time, struggling with the problem of ® nding more productive alternatives. In concluding our discussion, we want to comment brie¯ y on where our engagement with Turkish-Cypriot culture has taken us theoretically. In the process of doing the research we have developed real, and growing, problems with the category of ìdentity’. Collective identity did not turn out to be a very productive starting point. We have considered Turkish-Cypriot culture in contemporary Britain, and have taken Turkish-Cypriot women as the particular basis for our discussion. But even within this small population, we have had to recognise that what is happening is complex and dif® cult to map according to an identity scheme. There seem to be all kinds of different cultural strategies being mobilised ± according to age, migrant generation, and so on. Even within these sub-categories, we still ® nd signi® cant variations. The danger, to borrow Anthony Cohen’s formulation, is that the mapping of Turkish-Cypriot cultural identity amounts to no more than the transformation of Turkish Cypriots into `® ctitious ciphers [of our own] theoretical invention’ (Cohen 1994: 7). When it comes to the varieties of Turkish Cypriotness, we have found that these cannot be captured through an imposed matrix of identity boxes. Whilst it is possible to say something about what we have called the cultural frame of TurkishCypriot culture, it is extremely dif® cult to do justice to the complexity of lived experiences, feelings, thoughts and narratives about being Turkish-Cypriot. What we also found, signi® cantly, was that ìdentity’ was not a key issue for the Turkish-Cypriot women we talked to. It became increasingly clear to us that their experiences and thoughts were generally about things other than cultural identity. And when they did talk about identity, or about their `customs’ ± about what it meant to be Turkish-Cypriot ± they were not thinking about cultural and political attachments to a `national’ community. When they talked about their children watching or not watching Turkish television, it was always from the


708


perspective of ensuring that they would grow up with the right values. When they themselves enter the sphere of Turkish culture, it is generally in terms of extending their experience ± `to get a different perspective’, as one of the women in Group 1 put it. Their concerns were with how people should behave towards each other ± it was in terms of human values and ethics that TurkishCypriotness was regarded as signi® cant. We have not found ìdentity’ to be a productive category in our empirical research. And we have also ± partly because of our dif® culty in operationalising it ± found it to be theoretically problematical. One of the consequences of transnational processes and practices is that they have put issues of cultural identity and cultural community into a new context. According to Ulrich Beck’s (2000) formulation, questions of culture and identity are shifted from the context of the national project to the context of the post-national, or cosmopolitan, project. And what has become clearer, as a consequence, is the historically located and constructed nature of the category of identity ± which we had mistakenly taken as a universal category. Now it has become clear to us that the idea itself of identity is an invention of the national era and mentality. As Katherine Verdery (1994: 36) argues, `The kind of self-consistent person who ª hasº an ª identityº is a product of a speci® c historical process: the process of modern nation-state formation.’ From this recognition a set of questions follows: Where has it [the notion of ìdentity’ ] come from, and why has it become important for human beings to `have’ (possess) ìdentities’? What speci® c notion of `person’ or `human being’ is implied in the concept of ìdentity’ , and what is the historical speci® city of this concept? By what political, economic, social and symbolic contexts is the idea of identity informed? How are ìdentities’ socially constructed, and how are people who `have’ ìdentities’ made? (Verdery 1994: 47)

And, as it becomes possible to pose such questions about the institution of national belonging, it becomes apparent that the contemporary renewal of interest in identity politics cannot be an innocent endeavour. ª Ìdentitiesº are crucial tags’, Verdery (1994: 37) argues, `by which state-makers keep track of their subjects: one cannot keep track of people who are one thing at one point, another thing at another.’ The renewed concern with identities surely represents a belated concern to ® x identities, at a time when transnational ¯ ows are making 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 still remains a national theoretical invention. The imperative, then, is to de-operationalise the discourse of identity and to develop an alternative to it ± in Ulrich Beck’s terms, a cosmopolitan alternative to national cultural identities. Beck confronts us with the core issue: `how do people’s cultural, political and biographical self-awareness change or how does it have to change if they no longer move and locate themselves in a space of exclusive 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 new identities, or new kinds of identities, will, or will have to, emerge out of the processes of cultural transnationalisation? Or is it that cultures will be organised around something other than identity; that we will no longer `have’ ± and be required to `have’ ± ìdentities’? And, if this were to be the case, in what 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



709

questions that have now become central concerns in our research into the Turkish-speaking populations in Britain. They are actually questions concerned with the possibilities for un® xing identities. In terms of how one might begin the task of thinking about cultures differently, we have been drawn to the idea of mental space. In his re¯ ections on mental space, Robert Young is particularly concerned with the quality of mental spaces. 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 and thinking ± with `rendering of mental geography which encourage journeys of discovery, where one can learn from experience’ (Young 1994: 34). It is through its capaciousness that mental space can keep emotions alive and facilitate thinking. Now, what we want to draw out here ± it is only brie¯ y touched on by Young himself ± is the relationship between psychic spaces and real-world spaces, between inner and outer geographies. It is precisely this relationship that Bogdan 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 think BogdanovicÂ is getting at ± is that the way in which the real-world geographies are conceived will have implications for psychic or mental processes. Thus, the city may be regarded as a productive tool for thought, sustaining complexity in experience and thinking. (And, we would argue, the nation provides a contrasting example, one that actually diminishes mental space and inhibits thinking ± in favour of belonging). We are concerned, then, with experience (keeping emotions alive) and with the capacity to think ± a far cry from identity. And we are concerned with geographical imaginations that might have the capacity (the capaciousness) to support these values. What is crucial, we think, in both inner and outer spaces, is mobility. Mental space functions productively when it facilitates imaginative and intellectual passage. From an anthropological perspective, Anthony Cohen puts an emphasis on the experience of boundary crossing ± where boundaries are `zones for re¯ ection: on who one is; on who others are’ (Cohen 1994: 128). The crossing of boundaries 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 operates in and upon differences’. They point to `the fundamental relationship between movement and perception, between movement and energy, between movement and order, and between movement and individuality’ (Rapport and Dawson 1998: 21). Perhaps the most suggestive evocation of the value of mobility comes from J.-B. Pontalis. Ìn order to live and to believe ourselves free,’ Pontalis (1993: 17) maintains, `we need several spaces.’ For him mobility is the precondition for experience to occur; there must be the possibility of passage between one space and another. Movements to-and-fro. The changing of states. Pontalis celebrates a style of thinking (which he ® nds in psychoanalysis, and the psychoanalytical relation) that he characterises in terms of its `migratory capacity’ (capaciteÂ migratrice): ìt involves migration between one language ± and one dialect ± to another, from one culture to another, from one knowledge to another, 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 way beyond the identity agenda?

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Acknowledgements This article is based on research conducted within the ESRC Transnational Communities Programme ± Award L214252040 , Negotiating Spaces: Media and Cultural Practices in the Turkish Diaspora in Britain, France and Germany (see www.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]

From spaces of identity to mental spaces: lessons

From spaces of identity to mental spaces: lessons

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