Constructing ‘the Turk’ as an Enemy: The Complexity of Stereotypes in Children's Everyday Worlds

Abstract The information presented in this chapter is drawn from ethnographic fieldwork with Greek Cypriot elementary school children and illustrates the process by which national identity is constructed as primordial by teachers and children at school. In this process, the Turks become the primary Other, against whom a sense of Self is constructed. However, in-depth interviews with children outside the school show that their constructions of the Turks can be more complex and nuanced, and thus less stereotypical, especially when the children are encouraged to reflect on who the Turks really are. Keywords: ChildhoodNationalismIdentityEducationCyprusGreeksTurks Acknowledgements The fieldwork for this study was generously funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Grant No. 6062) and the Maxwell Corporation (USA), which provided significant material support, which is highly appreciated. I also wish to thank Dimitris Theodossopoulos for his very productive comments on earlier drafts of this article. For their helpful feedback, thanks and appreciation are also due to the participants in the conference 'Friends and Foes' (St Peter's College, University of Oxford, 11 May 2002), where I presented this work. Notes 1 See also Bryant (1998 Bryant, R. 1998. An aesthetics of Self: moral remaking and Cypriot education. Comparative Study of Society and History, 43(3): 583–614. Google Scholar; 2001 Bryant, R. 2001. "An education in honor: patriotism and the schools of Cyprus". In Cyprus and Its People: Nation, Identity and Experience in an Unimaginable Community 1955–1997, Edited by: Calotychos, V. 53–68. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Google Scholar) for a critical discussion of nationalism and education in Cyprus from a historical perspective. 2 In the summer of 1996, violence broke out in the Dherinia buffer zone, following a demonstration by Greek Cypriot and foreign motorcyclists on the right of free movement on the island; two Greek Cypriot demonstrators were killed by Turkish and Turkish Cypriot counter-demonstrators. 3 One interesting exception to this pattern is the case of the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, who was clearly disliked and hated by many children. In this case, the children re-categorized the Turkish Cypriot Denktash as a Turk. This strategy enabled them to explain Denktash's behaviour and personality, but still retain their overall positive attitudes towards Turkish Cypriots. 4 Of course, this reinterpretation of the term 'Cypriot' is suggestive of a form of discursive exclusion based on assumptions about national purity (i.e. 'Cyprus is Greek and hence only Greek Cypriots are Cypriots', however paradoxical such a statement may be). The Enlightenment conception of nations as homogeneous, sovereign, and reified entities makes it particularly difficult, given the role of nationalistic education, to allow for the existence of ethnic minorities within the nation. 5 Children's accounts of events may, as Davies (1982 Davies, B. 1982. Life in the Classroom and Playground: The Accounts of Primary School Children, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Google Scholar, p. 58) has argued, 'form a mosaic of explanations and reasons rather than mutually exclusive accounts'. In other words, children may present different accounts of events to the researcher based on their perception of what might be acceptable to the researcher.