Sovereignty Suspended by Rebecca Bryant

Author:Rebecca Bryant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Declaring and Naming

Every December, various institutions in north Cyprus print agendas for the upcoming year, which they distribute to members, clients, and supporters. Even in an age when many people rely on their mobile phones for keeping track of appointments, agendas remain a popular New Year’s gift. One institution that has made a tradition of printing agendas is the Cyprus Turkish Teachers’ Union (Kıbrıs Türk Öğretmenler Sendikası, or KTÖS), which has a membership of several thousand and a list of many more supporters, meaning that their calendars make it into a significant number of homes in the island’s north.

As 2016 was drawing to a close, KTÖS made headlines when it took the opportunity of the calendar to write what they considered an alternative history. That history was in the agenda’s margins, where the union commemorated dates not on official calendars, such as the murders of leftists mentioned in the previous chapter, or gave alternative interpretations to official holidays. One such official holiday is the anniversary of the founding of the TRNC. The state that we have discussed in previous chapters was the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus (TFSC), an entity that existed for a bit more than eight years, from its declaration in early 1975 to its transformation in 1983 into the TRNC (in Turkish, Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti). The declaration of the latter was intended as an act of self-determination, but it was a truncated self-determination to the extent that the state was immediately condemned by the United Nations and remains unrecognized by any state besides Turkey.

The text of the agenda read, “15 November 1983: In agreement with the generals of the 12 September [1980] Military Coup in Turkey, Rauf Denktaş made a move that put our communal existence in jeopardy and destroyed all our international relations. The TRNC was declared. National holiday.” The public reaction to the calendar was swift, with some demanding that teachers who were members of the union declare where their loyalties lay, either to distance themselves or support the union’s statement.

One of those who immediately demanded an explanation from the union was Kudret Özersay, an international law professor who at the time of writing is the minister of foreign affairs. On his Facebook page, Özersay inquired, “In the education that you will give to new generations, are we going to ask them to stand up for our communal existence (toplumsal varlığımıza sahip çıkmalarını isteyeceğiz) by ensuring that they see their own state as an institution that endangers that existence?”8 He asked, in other words, how the union of teachers paid by the state might nevertheless see that state as a liability.

The calendar and reaction to it point to a debate that has existed since the TRNC’s declaration around naming, the central illocutionary act of the state in which statehood is declared. Until that time, the name “Turkish Federated State of Cyprus” indicated that they were establishing what should be the constituent state of a federation. What is peculiar is that even from the moment

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