What makes Cyprus European? Curricular responses of Greek‐Cypriot civic education to ‘Europe’

Increasing European integration and European education policies are fuelling political and academic debates over the meaning of a 'European identity' and a 'European citizenship' and their potential relationship(s) to national and/or state identities. These debates are especially fraught in a case such as Cyprus, a case characterized by an intractable socio‐political problem of ethnic conflict and war that stems from identity, citizenship, and the politics of recognition. Cyprus must respond to demands of revisiting citizenship and identity as a condition of EU membership and as a response to increasing international and internal pressure for resolving the existing division. This paper explores how European citizenship is constructed in Greek‐Cypriot policy, curricula, and textbooks for civic education, and how citizenship is positioned in relation to national and state identities. Although 'Europe' provides a framework from which policy documents increasingly draw to introduce curricular innovation, European citizenship is not substantially addressed in the syllabi and textbooks analysed. Nationalistic discourses of citizenship 'appropriate' 'Europe' in ways which legitimize both ethno‐ and Euro‐centrism and which fail to alleviate existing tensions between ethno‐national and state identities in Cyprus. Keywords: civic and citizenship educationEuropean citizenshipstate and national citizenshipEuropeanizationCyprus Acknowledgements I would like to thank Charis Psaltis of the University of Cyprus and Kyriakos Pachoulides of Panteion University, Athens, for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This study was supported by the Faculty Research Grant granted by European University Cyprus for the year 2008–2009. Notes 1. Given (Citation1998) and others have argued that in the second period of British rule (during the 1930s onwards) and in anxiety over the course of nationalisms in Cyprus, the British turned to the construction of a Cypriot identity (shared by Greek‐Cypriots and Turkish‐Cypriots), and abandoned earlier policies of recognizing Greek‐Cypriots as Greeks. Greek‐Cypriots had mobilized this argument to negate the necessity of a 'European' (and by implication more civilized) ruler: since they were Europeans themselves, the British were inconsequential. 2. Circulars are official documents sent to schools by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC). The circulars analysed for the purposes of the study were those that fulfilled two criteria: (1) they were disseminated between January 2006 and June 2008; and (2) the text included some combination of the terms 'civic', 'citizenship', 'European', 'Europe', 'European dimension', 'citizen(s)', 'political', 'Greek', 'Greek‐Cypriot', and 'Cypriot'. 3. The syllabi are documents that are sent to schools by the MoEC; in the case of the civic education syllabi, it is noted that most of the documents (with the exception of an introduction with the aims of the subject) were identical with the textbooks pages in a table indicating the number of periods that should be devoted to each chapter or sub‐chapter and the pages of the (Greek or Greek‐Cypriot) textbook to be taught at the prescribed time. These syllabi allocate certain teaching periods to the teaching of various chapters from the Greek textbooks; however, the textbook data analysed for this essay comprised chapters from the Greek‐Cypriot textbooks. 4. The presentation of the two historical narratives also works towards the direction of challenging monological constructions of the past in general and of civic education in particular by Greek‐Cypriot academics (cf. Gregoriou Citation2004a, for a critique of this trend) and to alert the reader to the fact that the Cypriot case is not fully represented in this paper, since no analysis of Turkish‐Cypriot civic curricula was undertaken. 5. Greek nationalism in Cyprus developed during the late 19th century, its primary objective being to forge a union (Enosis) of Cyprus with Greece—a movement which culminated in armed struggle against the British from 1955–1959. This goal also held strong anti‐colonial elements against the British and was equated by Greek‐Cypriots with freedom; the 1960 Zurich–London Accords that granted independence (and not Enosis) therefore fell short of this goal (Bryant Citation2001). In fear of Greek domination, the Turkish‐Cypriot community developed a respective policy of partition (Taksim) of the island between the two communities. 6. The term acquis communautaire refers to the total body of EU law. 7. New initiatives by the leadership of each community have been underway since March 2008; the negotiations aim at finding a solution as a bi‐zonal, bi‐communal federation with political equity, as agreed by both sides since 1977. 8. All direct quotes are my own translations from Greek and references to the two textbooks are denoted with initials C9 (MoEC Citation2004a) and C12 (MoEC Citation2004b) (for the 9th and 12th grades, respectively). 9. The sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus is stressed through quotes from the 2003 EU Protocol on Cyprus attached to the Treaty of Accession and other documents. 10. The many applications by Turkish‐Cypriots for passports and identity cards from the Republic of Cyprus after an easing of the travel restrictions between the two sides in April 2003 is usually portrayed in the media as an effort by Turkish‐Cypriots to enjoy the benefits of both sides as well as a process which legitimizes the Republic of Cyprus. 11. This reform has been officially introduced through the publication of a Report entitled Democratic and Humanistic Education in the Euro‐Cypriot State: Potential for Reform and Modernization prepared for the MoEC (Citation2004c) by a Reform Committee comprised of seven academics. This Report makes extensive reference to civic education and proposes its cross‐curricular introduction to all levels of primary and secondary education and to the democratization of educational structures and contents, centring on the formation of the human being–citizen according to the neo‐humanistic rather than neo‐liberal education. It also highlights the European context as one of the most important reasons why reform is necessary. Unlike other official documentation, this Report castigates the 'Greek‐ethnocentric', Hellenocypriocentric, and culturally monolithic character of Greek‐Cypriot education. It has caused heated public debates and has been heavily criticized on a number of points, including its ideological positions (e.g. Open University Group of Academics Citation2004), and has since remained at the margins of the education reform process, which was not initiated until the summer of 2008 (after a change of government in March 2008). At the moment this reform process involves the development of new curricula for all subject‐areas in both primary and secondary education, to be completed in 2 years. As the writing of this essay came to a close, the MoEC announced its aims for the school year 2008–2009, the first of which refers to the development of a culture of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect and collaboration between Greek‐Cypriots and Turkish‐Cypriots. This aim has caused heated debate amongst politicians, academics, educators and society at large. Future research needs to explore whether or how this policy will be translated into curriculum practice.