Walls in cities: A conceptual approach to the walls of Nicosia

Geopolitics

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 108-134

  Alpar Atun, Resmiye ^a   Doratli, Naciye ^a  

^a EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN UNIVERSITY   (Turkey)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK; CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS; ETHNIC GROUP;

ASIA; CYPRUS; EURASIA; MIDDLE EAST; NICOSIA [CYPRUS]; NICOSIA [NICOSIA (DST)];

EID: 61449258366     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650040802578682     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. According to N. Kliot and Y. Mansfield, 'Divided Cities - Case Studies of Conflict and Territorial Organization', Progress in Planning 52 (1999) pp. 167-226, division is artificial in the sense that it has been artificially imposed from external sources, usually by great powers at the end of a war, or as a result of the involvement in a war, whereas partition is a result of internal schism that tears societies apart.
2. M. Klein, 'Old and New Walls in Jerusalem', Political Geography 24 (2005) pp. 53-76
3. N. Kliot and Y. Mansfield (note 1); N. Kliot and Y. Mansfield, 'The Political Landscape of Partition. The Case of Cyprus', Political Geography 16/6 (1997) pp. 495-521
4. Y. Papadakis, 'Walking in the Hora: 'Place' and 'Non-Place' in Divided Nicosia', Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 8/2 (1998) pp. 302-327
5. Y. Papadakis, 'Nicosia After 1960: A River, a Bridge and a Dead Zone', Global Media Journal: Mediterranean Edition, 1(2006), pp. 1-16
6. H. Van Houtum, Henk, and Thomas van Naerssen, 'Bordering, Ordering and Othering' Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 93/2 (2002), pp. 125-136
7. H. Van Houtum and A. Strüver. 'Borders, Strangers, Bridges and Doors', Space and Polity 6/2 (2002) pp. 141-146
8. P. Marcuse, 'The Partitioned City in History', in P. Marcuse & R. van Kempen (Eds.), Of States and Cities: The Partitioning of Urban Space (2002) pp. 11-34. Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. D. Newman, 'The Lines that Continue to Separate Us: Borders in Our 'Borderless' World', Progress in Human Geography Lecture, Department of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheba, Israel 30/2 (2006) pp. 1-19
10. D. Newman, 'Boundaries' in A Companion to Political Geography, John Agnew, Katherine Mitchell, and Gerard Toal., eds. pp. 123-137, (2002). Oxford: Blackwell
11. D. Newman, 'From the International to the Local in the Study and Representation of Boundaries: Some Theoretical and Methodological Comments', in Holding the Lines: Borders in a Global World, Heather Nicol and Ian Townsend-Gault., eds. (2004). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press
12. D. Newman, 'Conflict at the Interface: The Impact of Boundaries on Contemporary Ethno-national Conflict', in Geographies of War and Peace, Colin Flint., ed. (2004). Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. A. Paasi, 'Generations and the 'Development' of Border Studies', Geopolitics 10/4 (2005), pp. 663-671.
14. Kliot et al. (note 2), Papadakis (note 2), Marcuse (note 2).
15. R. Sennett, 'The City as an Open System', Leverhulme International Symposium 2004, The Resurgent City, London School of Economics, Themed Session: The Habitable City, available at , accessed 25 Aug. 2007.
16. Ibid.
17. P. Marcuse and R. Van Kempen (eds.), Of States and Cities: The Partitioning of Urban Space (Oxford: Oxford Press 2000) p. 11.
18. Rybczynski quoted in Marcuse and Van Kempen (note 6) p. 11.
19. Ibid.
20. P. Marcuse, 'Not Chaos, but Walls, Postmodernism and Partitioned City', in S. Watson and K. Gibson (eds.), Post Modernist Cities and Spaces (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell 1989) pp. 248-249
21. M. Klein, 'Old and New Walls in Jerusalem', Political Geography 24 (New York: Routledge 2005) pp. 53-76.
22. Sennett (note 4).
23. A. Paasi, 'Boundaries as Social Processes: Territoriality in the World of Flows', in D. Newman (ed.), Boundaries, Territoriality and Post-modernity (London: Frank Cass 1999) pp. 69-88.
24. D. Newman, 'On Borders and Power: A Theoretical Framework', Journal of Borderland Studies 18/1 (2003) pp. 2-4.
25. D. Newman, 'The Lines that Continue to Separate Us: Borders in Our 'Borderless' World', Progress in Human Geography Lecture, Department of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheba, Israel 30/2 (2006) pp. 1-19.
26. Newman (note 13) pp. 2-4.
27. Newman (note 14) pp. 1-19.
28. Ibid.
29. The pragmatic model for division or partition follows six stages: 1) Pre-partition and division stage: Cities function as one entity. 2) The actual division or partitioning: Cities are faced with intercommunal conflicts and/or total war. Superpowers or other states are involved. 3) Initial division or partition mutual non-recognition and intense ideological or national-ethnic-antagonism between the two partitioned/ divided sides of the city. 4) Middle Term Division is characterised by declining hostility between units, and by implicit or explicit mutual acceptance of co-existence. 5) Rapprochement: Close economic cooperation with respect to tourism, trade, and limited joint administrative apparatus being established. 6) Unification is marked by physical eradication of the divide or partition and the unification of not only the divided -partitioned cities, but also of the divided nations and the partitioned states. N. Kliot and Y. Mansfield (note 1) pp. 167-226.
30. Newman (note 14) pp. 1-19.
31. H. M. Gürkan, A Glance at History Nicosia (Nicosia: Lefkosha Belediye Yayinlari, 1987).
32. The only entry points into the city during this period and the subsequent three centuries of the Ottoman rule were the Giuliana Gate, the San Domenico Gate and the Del Proveditore Gate (today known as the Famagusta Gate, Paphos Gate and Kyrenia Gate, respectively); these gates were opened at dawn and closed at sunset. K. Keshishian, Nicosia: Capital of Cyprus Then and Now (Nicosia: Mouflon 1990).
33. The civil war evolved under the Greek anti-colonial struggle against British rule of the island and later turned into Turkish and Greek Cypriot inter-communal war (C. Foley and W. Scobie, The Struggle for Cyprus (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press 1975)
34. M. Harbottle, The Impartial Soldier (London and New York: Oxford University Press 1970). Greek Cypriots preferred Enosis or unification of the island with Greece, whereas the Turkish Cypriots preferred to maintain the status quo (continuation of British Rule) or the concept of 'Taksim' - the division of the island into two.
35. Sennett (note 4).
36. In 1974, after the coup against President Makarios - of the Greek administration - Turkey, as one of the three guarantor countries of the Republic in 1960, intervened by establishing a peacekeeping operation to the island. Many people from both sides fled during the fighting of July and August 1974; hundreds were killed and hundreds of others are still listed as missing by both sides. Guarded by the blue-helmeted troops of the UN, a 180 km 'buffer zone', the forbidden zone, which makes up four percent of the island, has separated and still separates the Turkish Cypriots in the North from the Greek Cypriots in the South. N. Doratli, 'Nicosia: The Last Divided City of Europe', Open House International 27 (2002) pp. 57-70.
37. Y. Papadakis, 'Nicosia after 1960: A River, A Bridge and a Dead Zone', Global Media Journal: Mediterranean Edition 1 (2006) pp. 1-16.
38. Ibid.
39. L. Salvador, Levkosia (Nicosia: Triagraphy Press 1983) p. 9.
40. The old river bed thus came to be known as Kotsirkas (Turd) in Greek and Chirkefli Dere (Filthy Torrent) in Turkish. Keshishian (note 21) p. 15; Gürkan (note 20) pp. 150, 175.
41. M. Attalides, Social Change and Urbanization in Cyprus: A Study of Nicosia (Nicosia: Publications of the Social Research Centre 2. 1981) p. 99.
42. S. Diaz Berio, 'Urban Conservation', Nicosia Master Plan, unpublished report, UNDP, UNCHS (1982).
43. This stage evolved under the Greek anti-colonial struggle against British rule of the island and Turkish and Greek Cypriot inter-communal war (Foley and Scobie (note 22); Harbottle (note 22)). Greek Cypriots preferred Enosis or unification of the island with Greece, whereas the Turkish Cypriots preferred to maintain the status quo (continuation of British Rule) or the concept of 'Taksim' - the division of the island into two.
44. M. Drousiotis, EOKA: I Skotini Opsi EOKA: The Dark Side (Athens: Stachi 1998) in Papadakis, 'Nicosia after 1960' (note 25).
45. N. Kliot and Y. Mansfield, 'The Political Landscape of Partition: The Case of Cyprus', Political Geography 16/6 (1997) pp. 495-521.
46. O. Burch, The Infidel Sea (Bodmin, Cornwall, UK: Hartnolls Ltd 1990) p. 169.
47. E. Solsten, Cyprus a Country Study (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office 1993) p. 85.
48. H. D. Purcell, Cyprus (New York: Frederick A. Praeger 1969) pp. 323-387
49. V. Volkan, Cyprus- War and Adaptation: A Psychoanalytic History of Two Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia 1979) p. 82.
50. The inter-ethnic dimension of the Cyprus conflict does not deny that the turning points in the recent history of the island need to be situated within the context of the strategic ambition of Turkey, Greece and the US (V. Fouskas, Zones of Conflict: US Foreign Policy in the Balkans and the Greater Middle East (London: Pluto Press 2003), pp. 71-80). Turkey had long been looking for a way to establish a foothold in Cyprus, and various US plans during the 1960s envisaged a significant Turkish military base on the island, while the island as a whole was to be united with Greece. This was also the strategic perspective of the CIA-backed military junta in Greece after 1968. The US was concerned about the non-aligned policies of president Makarios of Cyprus, and his refusal (backed by Britain) in 1973 to make the British bases on the island available to the US as it sought to support Israel in the Yom Kippur war which made him (and Cyprus' neutrality) an obstacle to America's Middle Eastern ambitions and Cold War strategy.
51. Turkey's intervention realigned Turkey with the US (despite an arms embargo imposed by Congress) and ended Makarios's independent-minded policy (Lacher and Kaymak, 'Transforming Identities: Beyond the Politics of Non-settlement in North Cyprus', Mediterranean Politics 10/2 (1 July 2005) pp. 147-166 (online version). 38. Burch (note 34) p. 169.
52. G. Gumpert and S. J. Drucker, 'Communications across the Land Divided', in C. Vangelis (ed.), Cyprus and Its People (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1998) p. 206.
53. N. Doratli, 'Nicosia the Last Divided City of Europe', Open House International 27 (2002) pp. 57-69.
54. H. Abu-Orf, 'Collaborative Planning in Practice: The Nicosia Master Plan', Planning Practice and Research 20/1 (Feb. 2005) pp. 41-58.
55. Ibid.
56. In April 2003, the Turkish Cypriot leadership opened the first checkpoints to allow reciprocal traffic between the north and south of the island. It should be noted that the reciprocal opening of borders is not only due to a 'top-down' political decision, but also due to bottom up dynamics.
57. Y. Papadakis, 'Nicosia after 1960' (note 25).
58. The opening of borders is not simply a political decision, it's rather a process of bottom-up where peoples' own will also supports these decisions. The UN Peace Plan, popularly known as the Annan Plan (Annan, 2002, available at , accessed December 2002), was named after the Secretary-General. After several revisions following complex rounds of negotiations, the final version of the Plan (Annan, 2004, available at , accessed March 2004) was submitted for separate referenda on both sides of Cyprus on 24 April 2004. It was approved by the Turkish Cypriots who voted 65% in favour, while it was resoundingly rejected by 76% of the Greek Cypriots. The Plan proposed to establish a new bi-zonal and bi-communal state, called the United Republic of Cyprus (URC), with two constituent states, a single Cypriot citizenship, single flag and national anthem, single currency which ultimately would be the euro, a common federal macroeconomic policy and common foreign affairs. This could be evaluated as a step leading towards the process of rapprochement between parts.
59. Christofias was elected in February on a platform of finding a solution to the island's division, paving the way for the international community to refocus its attention on Cyprus after several years of inactivity during the leadership of the ex-president Papadopoulos, where thirty years later the UN drew up a reunification blueprint, but it failed when it was overwhelmingly rejected by Greek Cypriots in a 2004 referendum even though it was backed by Turkish Cypriots.
60. Lokmaci Gate/Ledra Gate is the oldest barricade, which was opened to pedestrian traffic between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot sides in May 2008, and is seen as a symbol of conflict and division as the street had remained blocked since the conflict years.
61. C. Flint, Geographies of War and Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004) pp. 321-345.
62. Newman, 'On Borders and Power' (note 13) p. 19