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POST-OTTOMAN COEXISTENCE


Space and Place
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Post-Ottoman Coexistence: Sharing Space
in the Shadow of Conflict
Edited by Rebecca Bryant


POST-OTTOMAN
COEXISTENCE
Sharing Space in the Shadow of Conflict
Edited by
Rebecca Bryant
berghahn
NEW YORK- OXFORD


First published in 2016 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
@2016 Rebecca Bryant
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bryant, Rebecca (Professor of anthropology) editor.
Title: Post-Ottoman coexistence : sharing space in the shadow of conflict / edited
by Rebecca Bryant.
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2016. I Series: Space and place ; 16
Identifiers: LCCN 2015036431 ISBN 9781785331244 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN 9781785331251 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Turkey-Social conditions-20th century. I Turkey-Social
conditions-21st century. Middle East-Social conditions-20th century.
Middle East-Social conditions-21st century.
Classification: LCC HN656.5.A8 P67 2016 1 DDC 306.09561-dc23
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For permission to publish commercial versions please contact Berghahn Books.
ISBN: 978-1-78533-124-4 (hardback)
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ISBN: 978-1-78533-375-0 (open access ebook)


Contents
List of Illustrations                                            vii
Acknowledgments                                                   ix
Introduction. Everyday Coexistence in the Post-Ottoman Space      1
Rebecca Bryant
Part L Landscapes of Coexistence and Conflict
Chapter 1. Sharing Traditions of Land Use and Ownership:
Considering the "Ground" for Coexistence and Conflict in
Pre-modern Cyprus                                                41
Irene Dietzel
Chapter 2. Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces:
Trajectories of Change, Competition, and Sharing of Religious
Spaces                                                           59
Robert M. Hayden
Chapter 3. Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence?
The Creation of "Turkish" Iraklio                                86
Aris Anagnostopoulos
Chapter 4. Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm:
Ermou Street in the 1940s and 1950s                             107
Anita Bakshi
Part I. Performing Coexistence and Difference
Chapter 5. In Bed Together: Coexistence in Togo Mizrahi's
Alexandria Films                                                129
Deborah A. Starr
Chapter 6. Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence: Negotiating
Class Differences in Burgazadasi, Istanbul                      157
Deniz Neriman Duru
Chapter 7. "If You Write This Tacno, It Will Be Tocno!":
Language Ideologies and Linguistic Practices in Postwar Bosnia
and Herzegovina                                                180
Azra Hromadzic
*This chapter is not available in the open access edition due to rights restrictions. It is
accessible in the print and retail e-book editions, spanning pages 180-204.


vi Contents
Part III. Negotiating Everyday Coexistence in the Shadow of Conflict
Chapter 8. The Istanbul Armenians: Negotiating Coexistence  207
Sossie Kasbarian
Chapter 9. A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? Co-presence
in Divided Jerusalem                                       238
Sylvaine Bulle
Chapter 10. Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict:
An Inquiry into the Social Foundations of Cohabitation and
Antagonism                                                 258
Glenn Bowman
Index                                                      276


Illustrations
Figure 2.1. Minaret on the fourteenth century St. Nicholas Church
in Famagusta, Cyprus, converted into a mosque after the Ottoman
conquest in the sixteenth century. Aya Sofya mosque until 1954,
then renamed Lala Mustafa Papa Mosque (photo by Robert M.
Hayden, October 2011).                                    64
Figure 2.2. St. Nicholas Church, Chania, Crete. Venetian
fourteenth century Catholic church, converted into a mosque by
Ottomans in 1645, then into a Greek Orthodox church in 1918.
Note truncated minaret (photo by Robert M. Hayden, May 2015).  65
Figure 4.1. "View Near St. Sophia - Late 1950s." The main
municipal market Pantapolio/Bandabulya appears in the
background. Photograph from The Press and Information Office
Archive, 20C.151 (27), Ministry of the Interior, Republic of Cyprus. 117
Figure 4.2. A portion of the map created through discussions and
mapping sessions with the shopkeepers. K6prG Bagi / Stavro Pazaro
was a major landmark in the city and many shopkeepers were able
to recall shops that once were located in this part of the city. 117
Figure 5.1. Chalom and cAbdu wake up together in bed.
Screenshot, Mistreated by Affluence (1937).               130
Figure 5.2. Hilmy disguised as "Dr. Hilmy." Screenshot, Doctor
Farahat (1935).                                           137
Figure 5.3. Hilmy disguised as "Mustafa" with Nona. Screenshot,
Doctor Farahat (1935).                                    137
Figure 5.4. cAli climbs over Farahat to answer the telephone.
Screenshot, Doctor Farahat (1935).                        139
Figure 5.5. Farahat and Umm Ahmad in bed. Screenshot,
Doctor Farahat (1935).                                    139
Figure 5.6. Nona and Tahiya in bed. Screenshot, Doctor Farahat
(1935).                                                  140


viii List of Illustrations
Figure 5.7. Tahiya watches Nona undress. Screenshot, Doctor
Farahat (1935).                                             142
Figure 5.8. Chalom and cAbdu kiss. Screenshot, Mistreated by
Affluence (1937).                                           148
Figure 5.9. Driver watches Chalom and cAbdu kiss. Screenshot,
Mistreated by Affluence (1937).                             149
Figure 7.1. Mostar Gymnasium (photo by Azra Hromadzic, June
2012).                                                      187
Figure 9.1. Confrontation in Jerusalem: Mt. of Olives and East
Jerusalem (photo by Sylvaine Bulle).                        239
Figure 9.2. East Jerusalem (photo by Sylvaine Bulle).       253


Acknowledgments
Several of the papers gathered here were originally presented at the
conference "Shared Spaces and their Dissolution: Practices of Coexis-
tence in the Post-Ottoman Sphere" organized by the Peace Research
Institute Oslo's Cyprus Centre, the Association for Historical Dialogue
and Research, and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, with funding from
the Chrest Foundation, the National Bank of Greece, and the London
School of Economics Research on Southeast Europe Programme. We
are grateful to these funders, as well as to the PRIO Cyprus Centre for
its generous support of the book project.
Some portions of Azra HromadziCs chapter appeared in her mono-
graph, Citizens of an Empty Nation: Youth and State-Making in Postwar
Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are thankful to the University of Pennsyl-
vania Press for permission to publish a revised version of this chapter.



Introduction
Everyday Coexistence in the Post-Ottoman Space
REBECCA BRYANT
In 1974 they started tormenting us, for instance we'd pick our
apples and they'd come and take them right out of our hands.
Because we had property we held on as long as we could, we
didn't want to leave, but finally we were afraid of being killed
and had to flee.... We weren't able to live there, all night we
would stand by the windows waiting to see if they were going
to kill us.... When we went to visit [in 2003, after the check-
points dividing the island opened], they met us with drums as
though nothing had happened. In any case the older elderly
people were good, we used to get along with them. We would
eat and drink together.
-Turkish Cypriot, aged 89, twice displaced from
a mixed village in Limassol district, Cyprus
In a sophisticated portrayal of the conflict in Cyprus in the 1960s,
Turkish Cypriot director Dervi§ Zaim's feature film Shadows and Faces
(Zaim 2010) shows the degeneration of relations in one mixed village
into intercommunal violence. Zaim is himself a displaced person, and
he based his film on his extended family's experiences of the conflict and
on information gathered from oral sources. Like anthropologist Tone
Bringa's documentary We Are All Neighbours (Bringa 1993), filmed at
the beginning of the Yugoslav War and showing in real time the division
of a village into warring factions, Zaim's film emphasizes the anticipa-
tion of violence and attempts to show that many people, under the right
circumstances, could become killers. The film also shows, however, an
aspect of that cycle of violence that I often recorded in interviews with
Turkish Cypriots displaced during the period: namely, an emphasis on
fear but also very often the mention of "old people" who tried to hold
things together.


2 Rebecca Bryant

The epigraph above highlights this, as the speaker, displaced twice
over the period of a decade, emphasizes that "the older elderly people
were good, we used to get along with them" He uses the phrase eski yaph
insanlar, the "older elderly people" to indicate not relative age today, but
rather that these were people who were already mature, perhaps in late
middle age, by the time of the occurrences he describes. In Zaim's film
as well, the degeneration into violence is provoked by the actions of a
few hotheaded youths, even as the older men and women of the village
try to maintain calm and where possible to use relations or connections
with police and paramilitaries to prevent the violence from spreading to
their own streets. Zaim shows how the more mature members of each
community engaged in everyday forms of diplomacy that wove the fra-
gile quotidian fabric of village life. Similarly, in Bringa's documentary
Croatian and Muslim women continue to visit and drink coffee together
even as their region is on the brink of war. While Bringa's documentary
shows how encroaching violence forces neighbors to take sides, Zaim's
historical feature film demonstrates how the devolution into violence
may be triggered by a few rash actions that create mistrust and hostility
and rend the fabric of village life.
Moreover, both the epigraph above and the two films make reference
to commensality, a theme often invoked by those who lived in mixed
villages. In my own interviews with both Greek Cypriots and Turkish
Cypriots who lived in mixed villages, I often heard that "we would eat
and drink together" or "we attended each other's weddings" (see Bryant
2010, 2012; also Argyrou 1996). Since commensality is not mentioned
in reference to intra-group contact, its invocation already marks this
as inter-group contact, implying the unexpected or exceptional. In
this circumstance, the invocation of commensality implies a difference
overcome through the ritual practice of breaking bread. Women visited
each other for coffee, though such rituals were circumscribed by prox-
imity and therefore tended to be limited by the composition of neigh-
borhoods. Meals were shared at weddings, and men drank together in
the coffeehouses, although very few accounts speak of sharing food at
home, and even more rarely eating together during religious holidays or
funerals. Indeed, these instances of commensality appear in many cases
to bear resemblance to the "gastronomic diplomacy" discussed by Cos-
tas Constantinou (1996) as an important method and ritual for keeping
the peace that has been employed throughout the world and throughout
human history.
The "shared spaces" of the volume's title are those places where per-
sons of different faiths and ethnic groups lived and worked side by side,
where they felt under some moral obligation to attend each other's wed-


Introduction 3

dings and festivals. "Shared spaces" may be religious sites with meaning
for more than one confessional group; the market, mine, or other site of
economic activity; or the common space of the mixed village or urban
neighborhood.
Shared spaces may be characterized by political, economic, or social
cooperation or antagonism. The everyday cooperative practices that
enable the sharing of space may entail friendship or simple pragmatic
accommodation. While these were obviously "places" endowed with
specific historical and social meanings to the persons who lived in them,
we refer to them here as "spaces" to indicate simple geographical close-
ness, where it was precisely the meanings of those spaces as places that
so often became a source of antagonism and conflict (see Hayden and
Bowman this volume). Beginning in the nineteenth century, the spread
of nationalisms throughout the Ottoman Empire led to everyday ways of
(re)claiming spaces, through renaming sites and streets, destroying and
building monuments, and other territorial practices. Throughout South-
east Europe and the Middle East, many former spaces of interaction are
now sites of past violence and are marked by the absence of groups who
had once lived there. Post-Ottoman spaces are today palimpsests of the
social memory of violence, where persons attempt to live together under
the shadow of past coexistence and the conflict that rended it.
We know that coexistence in pre-nationalist Southeast Europe in-
volved more than simply living side by side, and that there were rituals
of accommodation that simultaneously defined and crossed boundaries.
But we piece together this past from fragments of information, and ones
that today are heavily laden with the ideological baggage of ongoing
conflicts-as in cases such as Cyprus-or unresolved histories, such as
in Bosnia, Turkey, and other case examples included in this volume. In
such instances, "living together" has significant historical and political
implications. Ideology, in turn, gives shape to memory, either nostalgi-
cally tinting the past with a rosy glow or painting it as an era of constant
conflict.
"Coexistence" is a term that acquires special relevance and meaning
when it is no longer possible. The search for an "Ottoman model" for co-
existence, for instance, begins retrospectively, after the disintegration of
the empire in the wake of Balkan and Arab nationalisms and the ethnic
cleansing of Anatolia.1 Similarly for South Asia, where a literature has
emerged in recent decades that explores the events leading to Partition
and Hindu-Muslim tensions today that have resulted in periodic riots.
While these and other similar literatures are in some ways case-specific-
for instance, "the riot" as a concept does not exist for the Ottoman and
post-Ottoman literature2-what they share is an attempt to understand


4 Rebecca Bryant

the forces that drive us apart by looking at those forces that in the past
have held us together. Much as nostalgia emerges from irretrievable loss,
so "peaceful coexistence" emerges from violence that appears irrepa-
rable. This is, no doubt, why discussions of coexistence often struggle
against the rosy tinge that often envelops nostalgic images of the past.3
If many people in Southeast Europe and the Middle East today mourn
past pluralism, it is in the wake and under the influence of that plural-
ism's destruction. The post-Ottoman space is one where the Ottoman
millet system that defined difference along religious lines became the
basis for the peculiar binding of nationalism and religion in the post-
Ottoman period (see, e.g., Grigoriadis 2012; Leustean 2014; Yosmaoglu
2014). It is also a space that experienced the twentieth century's first
massive displacement, movement, and exchanges of peoples, as nation-
states attempted to homogenize populations within newly drawn bor-
ders. That homogenization was never complete, leaving minority "re-
mainders"-Muslims in Greek Thrace, Orthodox and Armenians in
Turkey-who also served as reminders of the violence that had destroyed
previous ways of living together and reduced substantial populations
to non-threatening numbers. The post-Ottoman space, then, is defined
both by the legacy of pluralism and by the enduring puzzle of its violent
dissolution.
As I discuss in more detail below, the multi-religious, multi-ethnic
Ottoman Empire was a state organized around the management and
appreciation of difference. As a result of these arrangements and their
violent splintering into nation-states, coexistence has acquired a special
meaning in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman context to refer to every-
day, horizontal relations among persons belonging to different ethnic or
confessional groups. One common assumption in the historical litera-
ture is that something that might be called coexistence existed and was
operative before the divisions produced by nationalist ideologies and na-
tion-state projects. As a result, "coexistence" has become the conceptual
and historical background against which violence unfolds.
Indeed, much of the literature to date conceptually exploring coexis-
tence within the anthropology of the region has primarily addressed the
extent to which some form of conflict was or was not latent in the in-
tercommunal quiet of the pre-nationalist everyday.4 The spectrum from
antagonism to amity has been especially well represented by two con-
tributors to this volume, Robert Hayden and Glenn Bowman. Hayden
refers to the "robustness of boundaries" between religious groups, seen
in "differences such as in naming, kinship terminology, marital endog-
amy, places and methods of burial, diet, dress, education, and perhaps
preferred methods of gaining a livelihood" (Hayden and Walker 2013:


Introduction 5

401). Moreover, in the model of "antagonistic tolerance" that Hayden
has developed with numerous co-authors, he argues that "there is 'tol-
erance' in the Lockean sense, of enduring the presence of the other but
not embracing it, so long as one group is clearly dominant over others"
(Ibid.: 402). Hayden claims that such tolerance perdures as long as one
group has clear dominance over another, and he argues for a longue
duree perspective that will allow us to situate moments of peaceful in-
teraction within the long-term relations of dominance between groups
(especially Hayden and Walker 2013; Tanyeri-Erdemir, Hayden, and Er-
demir 2014; Hayden this volume).
Bowman, on the other hand, taking issue with "Hayden's concept
of the incommensurability of cultures," instead stresses "moments of
apparent amity" (Bowman 2013: 2) and the variety of ways in which
"boundaries are variously reinforced, opened, and transgressed" (Ibid.:
13). Bowman emphasizes the porosity of popular religious practice that
allows it to be suffused with non-orthodox elements, including those
of other faiths, when they appear to be efficacious. While Hayden ar-
gues that Bowman's work is commensurate with his own thesis in that
it shows a recognition of religious difference and is synchronic but may
change over time (see Hayden this volume), Bowman views their posi-
tions as fundamentally incompatible. Indeed, in this debate, those who
take the stronger "difference" position and see quotidian antagonism
have been equated with identitarian, nationalist ideologues, or the "clash
of civilizations" perspective,5 while those who make arguments for the
importance of commonalities are often accused of wishful thinking, of
projecting their own desires onto the pasts of others.6 This debate is rep-
resentative of a continuing conceptual deadlock within the literature re-
garding what difference has meant in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman
contexts.
Moreover, at least three methodological problems await the researcher
attempting to examine coexistence, especially past coexistence affected
by conflict. The first is the simple dearth of sources, since coexistence
represents the practices of everyday life that rarely find their way into
the records, as opposed to the "events" that construct archives and de-
fine historical study.7 As Nicholas Doumanis in his own examination
of pre-nationalist intercommunality remarks, "Intercommunality was
designed to produce the kind of history that Hegel likened to a blank
page. It militated against the possibility of 'events' which are the grist of
conventional history writing" (Doumanis 2012: 2). This does not mean
that we are without records: for instance, the literature on the Ottoman
neighborhood uses court documents of formal and informal conflict
resolution to assess living together as a way of maintaining communal


6 Rebecca Bryant

peace (sulh). While such history has only minimal means for under-
standing perceptions of difference or the texture of relationships, it does
help us to understand the mechanisms by which sulh was maintained.
Through its "uneventfulness;' then, coexistence is by nature self-effacing,
though I argue below that there is much to learn from the practices that
accomplish its historical disappearance.
The second is the danger of projecting present categories and con-
cerns onto the past, or attempting to define coexistence through the
lens of concepts used today such as multiculturalism. Doumanis, for
instance, claims that the problem of different groups living together, or
the problem of difference per se, is one created in Western Europe and
spread to other parts of the world during the era of Western colonial-
ism.8 Aron Rodrigue has argued that the problem of difference emerged
with post-Enlightenment ideas of majority/minority, and their inflection
in a public sphere, where otherness must be "accommodated" (Rodrigue
1996). Indeed, our own contemporary inability to conceptualize differ-
ence beyond "identity" and its presumed boundaries continually returns
us to the problem of "reconciling" such cultural identities-a problem
represented most clearly in the "clash of civilizations" literature, which
presumes the irreconcilability of cultural identities.9 Indeed, "identity"
has perhaps been the most troublesome concept for understanding co-
existence, as it demands reification where there may be none,10 and in
popular literature "peace" is often equated with having the same "iden-
tity"-even where the presumption of such an identity is clearly a result
of power relations that occlude minority claims.11
In a similar vein, current popular nostalgia for a multicultural past may
mask denial of the ways in which that multiculturalism was destroyed.
Focusing on one neighborhood in Istanbul, Amy Mills shows that the
"disguising power of nostalgia," viewed in a landscape dotted with the
remnants of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, occludes how those com-
munities ceased to exist in the present (Mills 2011: 190). In his contri-
bution to this volume, Aris Anagnostopoulos shows how it was actually
the disappearance of Muslims from Iraklio in Crete that made it possible
to become nostalgic about a multicultural past (see also Kasbarian this
volume). In this sense, as Mills comments, the moral values of tolerance
and cosmopolitanism work to disguise power, presenting "elite ... visions
of history that paradoxically refer to minorities even while they obscure
minority perspectives of history" (Ibid.). In her study of plurality in con-
temporary Poland, Agnieszka Pasieka (2014) refers to this highly ideal-
ized and nostalgic view of a "lost paradise" and past "harmony" as the
"multiculturalization" of the past, which she believes disguises the ten-
sions of actual living together. Concomitantly, such nostalgia may draw


Introduction 7

attention away from current discriminatory practices against minorities,
many of whom are immigrants. As Nora Lafi observes,
Mediterranean cities do not seem to be sponsoring the invention of a
new cosmopolitan ideal. The present situation, in which uses of cos-
mopolitanism are more often ideological decoys than genuine innova-
tions in terms of governance of diversity, draws on a limited vision of
the cosmopolitan past of some cities of the region. (Lafi 2013: 331-32)
Rather than engaging fully with a cosmopolitan ideal, in which many
residents of especially port cities in the past saw themselves as "citizens
of the world" (Driessen 2005), this popular nostalgia instead is used to
valorize one's own tolerance and in Turkey has been part and parcel of a
neo-Ottoman revival (see Onar 2009).
A third problem, which follows from the first two, is recognizing "co-
existence" when one sees it. For instance, is coexistence simply noninter-
ference, or is it a way of actively managing difference? Does coexistence
require common goods or aims? Does it include or exclude violence?
What we can say with some certainty is that coexistence is a form of so-
ciality, a way of living together and defining belonging and the meaning
of its boundaries. Clearly, for the process of living together, and for any-
one wishing to study this process, what is important is both the porosity
or impassibility of those boundaries, as well as how we understand the
implications of what they contain.
Various authors in this collection tackle this latter problem through
terms that speak to other affective or experiential facets of living with
difference and negotiating boundaries. Deniz Duru uses "conviviality"
to describe the ways in which place may be created for those who live
in it through the norms and patterns of a shared lifestyle that actively
values pluralism and that they consider to be different from the norms
of the larger society. This analysis emphasizes the self-conscious making
of pluralism, using the Spanish convivencia, or "a shared life," which has
been recently taken up as policy by local governments in Spain (see Heil
2014) and has been described as "an exercise of negotiation that assumes
difference as a basic fact of life and the need to make room for dialog
among all members of society, respect for one another, and sharing the
public social sphere" (Suirez-Navaz 2004: 191f).
Contrary to the term "coexistence" which appears to imply passively
"existing" together, terms such as conviviality emphasize the performative
nature of boundary-crossing and the conscious or self-conscious value at-
tached to living with difference. While Duru describes the role of conviv-
iality in making Burgaz Island in Istanbul a place defined by its plurality,


8 Rebecca Bryant

Deborah Starr shows how what she calls a "Levantine idiom" defined by
identity fluidity may be performatively produced. Both these chapters call
attention to the relationship between plurality and place-making, "an ur-
ban localism characterized by diversity" (Starr this volume). Being a Bur-
gazli or a Levantine was also a matter of self-consciously making one's own
neighborhood or local identity through the performance of pluralism.
Other authors think with ideas of cohabitation or co-presence, con-
cepts that describe sharing space especially in urban environments, as
something that may require not the sort of active social interaction de-
scribed by Duru and Starr but rather inattention or giving way. Sylvaine
Bulle describes this as "a mode of living together based on an indiffer-
ence toward communitarianism and respect for private life" (Bulle this
volume). This is the form of coexistence in which we "live and let live," or
when in urban spaces we share trains and sidewalks with persons who
may be identifiably Other. As Bowman points out, this form of sharing
puts emphasis on space rather than place: while the former may be de-
fined by simple "civil inattention" (Goffman 1971), the latter is defined
by "giving ground" (Bowman this volume). As Bulle suggests, however,
such encounters may also create a foundation for mutual engagement
and civic action. Describing these as "communities of confidence" Bulle
employs Simmel's idea of "the stranger," someone who has general but
not specific similarities to us, as a way to understand this ability to
share space. Anita Bakshi's chapter similarly gives us insight into such
"communities of confidence" in the marketplace of central Nicosia, a
place defined by intercommunal interaction distinct from the primar-
ily monocommunal interaction of the neighborhood. However, Bakshi
employs Simmel's stranger also to warn that such everyday interactions
usually are not capable on their own of surviving incidents of intercom-
munal violence.
"Coexistence" then, implies recognition of boundaries but also ac-
knowledges that such boundaries are negotiable and that they allow us
in some sense still to live together. While recognizing the limitations
of coexistence as a term, we use it here as an umbrella for understand-
ing ways of living with acknowledged difference. We qualify this here,
however, as "everyday coexistence" the form of coexistence produced
through proximity, to distinguish it from the legal, political, and discur-
sive forms of coexistence that imply the "living together" of millets or
ethnic groups within the empire or nation. As I discuss below, geogra-
phy plays an important role in the ways that modes of living together
are negotiated and enacted, especially in the form of what I refer to as
multi-scalar sovereignty, experienced as territoriality or territorializa-
tion in the enactment of local relations.


Introduction 9

In what follows, then, I draw upon chapters in this volume and the
literature on Ottoman and post-Ottoman coexistence to think about
the negotiations of everyday life in the post-Ottoman space. Building
on this discussion, I then argue that the anthropology and history of the
region would benefit from greater conceptual engagement with theories
of sovereignty and everyday diplomacy in its studies of everyday interac-
tions involving the proximity of persons understood to be different. As
I discuss below, the norms of hospitality and neighborliness that guide
interactions in the settings under discussion in this volume are both for-
malized and embedded within multiple scales of sovereign domain. And
while anthropology has long examined the rituals and exchanges of war
and peace, there has been little attempt to incorporate recent literature
on what Costas Constantinou calls "homo-diplomacy" into the study
of quotidian relations (Constantinou 2006). Below I discuss studies of
coexistence in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman space in order to make
a case for more attention to the role of territoriality, sovereignty, and
everyday diplomacy in local socialities.
I then turn to a discussion of the volume's chapters in order to argue
for a particular way of understanding everyday coexistence that I believe
helps clear some of the conceptual muddle that currently befuddles the
field. Bracketing discussions of antagonism or amity, I instead describe
everyday coexistence as the labor of peace, including the sorts of conflict
resolution mechanisms that maintained sulh, as well as the constant,
everyday practices of accommodating each other that maintained huzur.
While sulh tends to be used to refer to peace as that which contrasts with
conflict, huzur refers to peace as tranquility and calm, the sort of peace
that is broken not by violence but by the daily disruptions and tensions
of the neighborhood-making too much noise, or disrespecting one's
neighbors. "Sulh might occur in any mahalle or village" notes historian
Ronald Jennings, "and the negotiation of sulh was a neighborly process,
not a formal legal procedure" (Jennings 1978: 148). While sulh might be
seen as a type of informal conflict resolution, the maintenance of huzur
in the neighborhood is achieved both through the rituals of sociality
and through the management of tension in everyday interaction and ex-
change (see also Ring 2006).
The Historiography of Ottoman Coexistence
In the wake of war and social upheaval, certain symbols have acquired
the cache of representing "peaceful coexistence." One of the most fa-
mous of these is the Mostar Bridge. During the Yugoslav war it became


10 Rebecca Bryant

symbolic of the savageness that rends peoples, and after the war was
reconstructed with the express purpose of demonstrating "that the con-
nections between Bosnia's people were being rebuilt, too" (Hayden 2007:
108; see also Hromadzic this volume). As Hayden emphasizes, the bridge
was celebrated as a symbol of reunification even as Muslims and Croats
in the city were keeping to their own sides of the river. Similarly in Cy-
prus, images of minaret and church bell tower side-by-side were used by
the government of the Republic of Cyprus after 1974 to represent a new
discourse of peaceful coexistence that had supposedly been shattered by
Turkey's invasion and division of the island.
However, Mete Hatay (2011) has shown that minarets and bell towers
in the island proliferated in the age of nationalisms, as a competitive way
of imprinting one's ethnic presence on the landscape. Moreover, this dis-
course of peaceful coexistence intentionally occludes the conflict period
between 1963-74 (Constantinou and Papadakis 2001) when Turkish
Cypriots were disproportionately the victims. In a similar way, nostalgia
for multiculturalism in Turkey occludes the way that multiculturalism
was destroyed, although Doumanis (2012: 2) urges us not entirely to dis-
miss the content of nostalgia for this reason.
What is clear, however, is that in the post-Ottoman context, discourses
of peaceful coexistence imply a selective archeology of cultural ruins.
This region, stamped by pogroms, large-scale population movements,
erasures, and reinscriptions, is one in which past coexistence is hidden
under conceptual accretions and in which present coexistence is trou-
bled by conflict histories. Moreover, "coexistence" as discourse has often
become a tool for denial. In Cyprus and Bosnia, for instance, past coexis-
tence is often invoked as a way to avoid apportioning blame for violence in
the (recent) conflicts. This may involve denying the suffering of particular
victims, or it may be a way of deflecting blame from oneself-for instance,
by scapegoating nationalist "agitators" or "extremists" and deflecting
blame from the general population who have, it is claimed, "always gotten
along together." In order to avoid these conceptual problems, I find it
useful to return to the origins of the concept of peaceful coexistence and
its entry into the study of Ottoman and post-Ottoman societies.
The term "peaceful coexistence" first emerged in the context of the
Cold War to refer to Soviet policy toward non-communist states and was
a central part of Soviet propaganda that set up a contrast with the con-
flictual foreign policy of the capitalist West. Indeed, it is in the post-1920
period that coexistence acquires academic relevance as a term to explain
how nations or groups may live side by side without conflict. "Peaceful
coexistence" then, originally emerges as a diplomatic term that assumes
hard boundaries around collective entities and calls for noninterference


Introduction 11

between those entities. It was effectively an international term, not one
applied to domestic issues, and in that sense is about horizontal, rather
than vertical, relations between different social orders. However, as one
early discussion notes, what distinguishes "peaceful coexistence" from
"peace" per se is not only that it is the coexistence of different social or-
ders but also that an active and strong implementation of peaceful coex-
istence would imply "the strengthening of contacts in the interest of aims
which can be mutually formulated and settled" (Kende 1968: 362-63).
In the twentieth-century literature on the Ottoman Empire and its
successor states, a state-based literature that focuses on an Ottoman
"model of tolerance" that allowed religious practice relatively unim-
peded has opened up to encompass social histories of how groups in the
empire "coexisted" or lived together in relatively non-conflictual ways
for centuries.12 The main focus of this literature is the operation of the
millet system, which divided Ottoman society by faith and gave con-
siderable, although hierarchical, freedoms to Christians and Jews that
allowed them to practice their religions, be judged in civil cases under
their own laws, and be represented by their own religious leaders. A sig-
nificant part of the literature on tolerance examines the ways and the
extent the Ottomans tolerated other religious groups under their rule.
While in the nationalist literatures of many former Ottoman sub-
jects-especially in Southeast Europe-the Ottoman period was one of
oppression, it is clear that during the Ottomans' long reign there were
various periods when non-Muslims enjoyed greater freedoms than re-
ligious minorities in Europe. Indeed, one Ottoman historian makes the
claim that the generosity of freedoms granted to non-Muslims under the
millet system eventually led to that system's downfall:
If the Ottomans had done what other occupiers elsewhere did and
forced those living under their occupation to change their religion,
they would never have experienced the minority problem that weak-
ened them in the last century of the Ottoman Empire. Instead the Ot-
tomans protected the rights of Greek Orthodox, Armenians, and Jews
to live their own lives with little interaction with the Ottoman ruling
class, under the guidance of their own religious leaders, with their own
languages and customs, their own schools, courts, orphanages, hos-
pitals, etc., as long as they paid the required taxes and maintained the
security and order of the empire. (Shaw 1985: 1003)'1
The vast literature in English, Turkish, and various languages of the for-
mer empire that addresses the question of non-Muslims under Otto-
man rule has been concerned with understanding what freedoms were


12 Rebecca Bryant

realized in practice (e.g., Greene 2002; Jennings 1993); how the Otto-
mans perceived non-Muslims (e.g., Barkey 2005; Masters 2004); what
tolerance meant for the operation and longevity of the empire (e.g., Bar-
key 2007); and how those freedoms may have expanded or contracted
in different periods (e.g., Greene 2002; Baer 2011). Because of its focus
on state practice, "coexistence" as a question emerges when one begins
to ask how Ottoman doctrines and practices of tolerance affected the
ways that individuals interacted in daily life, perhaps especially in re-
mote parts of the empire and at times when the state was not palpably
present. Moreover, in discussions of the dissolution of that coexistence,
a not insignificant part of the literature has focused on the ways that the
millet system laid the ground for the strong merging of ethnic and reli-
gious identity that we find in many of the Ottoman successor states (e.g.,
Grigoriadis 2012; Hirschon 2010; Masters 2004).
For the Ottoman context, then, studies of toleration have primarily
focused on the structure of the empire and the operation of the mil-
let system. Studies of coexistence, on the other hand, examine the
person-to-person interactions enabled, shaped, and impeded by such
understandings of difference and their legal and political implementa-
tion. Moreover, while "toleration" implies living with or tolerating beliefs
or practices that one finds wrong or disagreeable for social, economic, or
political reasons, historiographically "coexistence" implies a nonhierar-
chical form of everyday interaction that is adopted as a manner of living.
Historiographically, the primary distinction between these emphases
appears to be that while "toleration" assumes that difference is perceived
negatively, "coexistence" attempts to interrogate understandings of dif-
ference and boundaries, including indifference to difference.
It is perhaps to be expected that while studies by anthropologists have
focused primarily on coexistence and shared spaces, especially shared
religious sites,14 historians until recently have turned much of their at-
tention to the question of toleration. While tolerance, in this literature, is
primarily a strategy of empire, coexistence, as Ussama Makdisi recently
commented, is "more difficult to gage, to describe, and to get at through
the available sources than is the practice and politics of toleration, es-
pecially when the sources present history from the imperial center and
from those at the pinnacle of power in this center" (Baer, Makdisi, and
Shryock 2009: 929). While Marc Baer takes issue with "coexistence" as
an appropriate term to describe what was, during the Ottoman period,
a set of relationships determined by hierarchy, we may turn to Karen
Barkey's important work on the longue duree of Ottoman toleration for
observations on the connection between the vertical relationship of tol-
eration and the horizontal relationship of coexistence:


Introduction 13

In the Ottoman Empire, because religious identity determined a per-
son's legal and political status, boundaries and belonging were essen-
tial; ethnic and religious peace could be maintained by both respecting
boundaries and allowing movement across them. (Barkey 2008: 118)
Although her focus is the contribution of toleration to the durability of
the empire, and therefore concentrates on state-society relations, she
notes that Ottoman understandings of difference had a systemic quality:
The Ottoman understanding-similar to the Roman conception-was
that difference was tolerated because it had something to contribute.
That is, difference added to the empire; it did not detract from it, and
therefore, it was commended. Toleration had a systemic quality; main-
taining peace and order was good for imperial life, and diversity con-
tributed to imperial welfare. (Barkey 2008: 110-11)
Such an imperial understanding of difference, she argues, trickled down
into the relationships of everyday life.
Similarly, Aron Rodrigue argues that "the static 'mosaic' view, which
posits building blocks for Middle Eastern society, in which each group is
defined and fixed permanently by its religion or ethnicity, is not particu-
larly useful analytically" Rather,
one can reinterpret the mosaic notion more dynamically, not stressing
"minority/majority" or "ruler/ruled" but instead emphasizing the rec-
ognition of "difference" and, in fact, the near lack of any political will
to transform the "difference" into "sameness." This is not the same as
pluralism. The "difference" each group was ascribed, or ascribed to it-
self in its self-representation, was not articulated on the basis of rights.
Rather, nothing in the political system of the Ottoman Empire called
for different groups to merge into one. The difference was a given and
accepted as such. (Rodrigue 1996)
By most historical accounts, then, the Ottoman Empire was a politi-
cal space in which difference was recognized and salient in daily life. The
hardness of boundaries and the extent to which they mattered clearly
differed between village and town, between center and periphery, and
between different periods of Ottoman rule. Periods when the rules
governing the dress and comportment of religious minorities were lax
were often followed by periods when they were more strictly enforced
(Barkey 2008: 110-11). Historians have shown that during certain pe-
riods zealous sultans instituted campaigns of conversion (Baer 2011),


14 Rebecca Bryant

while in other periods some of their subjects may have infringed the
boundaries of their religious community in order to provoke their own
martyrdom (Mazower 2005: 159-70). While we can understand prac-
tices and infringements of the rules governing religious difference from
court records, eyewitness reports, and the records of travelers, we still
lack sufficient means to understand how those who lived at the time
perceived these differences. This presents a challenge for those wishing
to comprehend coexistence as an everyday practice, as well as for those
who wish to think about the necessary social conditions for long-term
coexistence.
The "Neighbor's Right"
One of the few lenses we have for understanding the texture of intercom-
munal relations is provided by an indigenous term for sociality-in-prox-
imity. Throughout much of the former Ottoman space, coexistence is
encapsulated under the name of "neighborliness;' what in Turkey and
the Balkans is known as kom uluk, a conventional form of everyday in-
teraction that acknowledges the need to accommodate and negotiate
difference in the interests of local solidarity (Bringa 1995; Baskar 2012;
Valtchinova 2012).15 In reference to the concept as it is understood in
Bulgaria, Galia Valtchinova comments that kom uluk
has become a cultural category embracing the complex of rules and
implicit knowledge about how to live together, side by side, without
losing one's religious identity.... If this ensemble of conventional atti-
tudes and forms of sociability was supposed to ensure peaceful cohab-
itation in everyday life, it also allowed a safe distance between them.
Often regarded as a "traditional" guarantee of religious peace, the kom-
uluk works through informal codes that are not well adapted to the
modern categories of identity, belonging, or citizenship. (2012: 77)
Certain chapters in this volume (especially Dietzel on Cypriot rural land
ownership) demonstrate the circumstances under which such concep-
tions of neighborhood may be shaken or destroyed, although "neigh-
borliness" remains a reference point for ideas of the moral community.
Komiuluk describes a form of everyday life that implies interaction
and interdependency while bracketing the affective. One may not love
one's neighbors, but one normally needs to get along with them. Even
more than this, however, in the Ottoman period the mahalle or neigh-
borhood was an administrative unit in which persons were made legally


Introduction 15

responsible for each other and for maintaining the peace. As Barkey
notes above, maintaining peace and order, what the Ottomans called
sulh (Tamdogan 2008), was an imperial priority. Moreover, the extensive
literature on the Ottoman mahalle shows us the legal means by which
persons were made responsible for each other. Neighborhoods were
jointly assessed for taxes, but they were also made jointly responsible for
crimes. Harboring a criminal often resulted in collective punishment.
But similarly, one relied on one's neighbors for statements of one's char-
acter, as in cases found in local courts where persons wrongly accused of
crimes such as theft and prostitution were found innocent on the basis
of statements of their good character made by their neighbors.
Indeed, from the early Ottoman period until its end, we find accounts
of how neighbors acted as "guarantors" (kefil) of each other's character.16
This was only possible, however, through close attention to the behavior
of others and care in one's own actions and comportment. Some histo-
rians have called this an "auto-control mechanism" (Ozcan 2001; Ozsoy
1998; Yilmaz 2013), and all conclude that records show the neighbor-
hood as an important social and legal unit. "It would not be wrong;' says
one historian, "to define the neighborhood community as one that has
become a unity sharing a common fate, and with common rights and
responsibilities" (Ozcan 2001). Fikret Yilmaz, for instance, uses court
records from Edremit to argue that the neighborhood was one in which
apart from the civil neighbor relationship it was in fact a control mech-
anism and a chain of persons who were guarantors for each other and
therefore responsible to a degree for each other's behavior, in other
words even more than a civil neighborhood, it had become a relation-
ship of official duty, or at least we see that this is how the state had set
it up. (Yilmaz, Gurkan, and Gratien 2013; also Yilmaz 1999/2000)
In other words, there seems to be agreement that "peace [huzur] in the
neighborhood was the principle thing. There was no discrimination be-
tween Muslims and non-Muslims in that regard" (Ozsoy 1998).
Moreover, persons tended to be identified based on their neighbor-
hoods, as in "Fatma from Bagtepe Mahallesi," or "Ali from Be~pinar Ma-
hallesi." In the period before surnames and identity documents, identity
was determined through oral information and witness statements given
by those who knew the person best, i.e., neighbors. When necessary,
"People who know the person would be asked questions such as, 'Who
knows Rabia, and how do they know her? Does she have her wits about
her?' in other words, 'Is she someone honorable who won't bring harm to
anyone, or isn't she?"' (Tamdogan-Abel 2002: 68). Such statements had


16 Rebecca Bryant

the effect not only of making neighbors morally accountable but also
morally responsible for each other. The neighborhood, in other words,
appears to have been understood as a moral community from which one
also derived one's identity.
In this sense, then, neighborliness becomes a moral imperative, and
one that continued to be written about in the ethics manuals (ahlak ki-
taplart) of the nineteenth century that were part of late Ottoman public
culture and education.17 Indeed, these manuals often discuss what was
known as the "neighbor's right" (kom u hakki), a right to aid and respect.
In the various hadiths concerning the neighbor, neighbors are usually
seen as having a combination of basic "rights": the "neighbor's right"
which includes non-Muslims; the "Muslim's right"; and the "kinship
right" Some neighbors may have only the first of these, while others may
have two or more. "What is interesting in the ethics manuals of the Ot-
toman period;' notes one historian, "is their advice to tolerate the faults
of neighbors" (Tamdogan Abel 2002: 68). Advice includes cultivating
the virtues of patience and speaking in public about the virtues of one's
neighbors, not about their shortcomings. Moreover, "another facet of
the discourse of neighborly relations in Ottoman ethics manuals is that
they do not establish a religious separation: the neighbor 'even if he is an
infidel is still a neighbor and has the neighbor's right"' (Ibid.).
While the language of the "neighbor's right" may have disappeared
today, there are many indications that the moral imperative of neigh-
borhood remains important in the post-Ottoman space. As one young
Turkish Cypriot who had a dispute with his English neighbor over access
to his property commented to me, "He made me go to court, and now
he won't speak to me. But we're neighbors! If something happens, your
neighbor's there for you. Neighbors may be more important than fam-
ily." Anthropologist Cornelia Sorabji noted a similar sense of duty among
Muslims in Sarajevo in the 1980s and remarks, "The call of komsiluk is
not heard through a cost/benefit filter but as a duty with religious over-
tones, a duty that is sometimes pleasurable and profitable, sometimes
painful and testing, but never a neutrally moral choice" (Sorabji 2008:
104). The sense of duty rather than affection comes to the fore in these
interactions: "In komsiluk painful feelings are put aside in the interests
of the religiously sanctioned residential community" (Ibid.: 106; see also
Henig 2012).
What emerges clearly from these descriptions is a mutual constitution
of person and place, where the social person emerges through the milieu
of the neighborhood, while the character of the neighborhood appears
through the constitution of its community. The capacity of neighbor-
hoods collectively to ban individuals who would sully their reputation


Introduction 17

( etin 2014) or the care to counsel one's neighbors are instances of the
ways in which neighborhood and personhood are mutually constituting.
At the same time, this mutual constitution of person and place occurs
within the context of mahalles that often were monoreligious. While this
was not uniformly the case, and in large cities there were many mixed
neighborhoods, it was the tendency for a mahalle to emerge around a
central religious structure-a mosque, church, or synagogue-and for
the neighborhood to take its name from that structure (A9ik 2014; Tam-
dogan 2008). Moreover, religious leaders often played important roles
in these neighborhoods apart from conducting religious services, such
as representing their neighborhood communities before the state. This
might include making complaints about insufficient water supply and
roads on behalf of their parishioners or acting as agents for registering
births, deaths, marriages, and divorces (A9ik 2014; Hizli N.D.; Kazici
1982). Imams also acted as tax collectors, assessing the ability of their
constituents to pay (Behar 2003: 6). On the other hand, neighborhoods
tended not to be divided by occupation or social class, and "in intramu-
ral Istanbul, large mansions of pashas and beys neighboring the shanty
lodgings of beggars (se'ele) or of street-porters ... were quite a common
occurrence" (Ibid.: 5). The mahalle, then, may be taken as a social unit
that for the most part was not divided by class; was often, though not
always, divided by religion; and where protection of the mahalle, its
honor, and its reputation were of central importance.
Given the political importance ascribed to the sociality of kom uluk,
it should not be surprising that it occupies a significant role in post-
Ottoman nostalgia for lost pluralism. In that nostalgia, there is a ten-
dency to blur scale, equating the existence of certain neighborhoods
where persons of different religions lived side by side, sharing the re-
sponsibilities of the mahalle, with the "peaceful" existence of religious
and ethnic minorities within the Empire. In other words, the "fact" that
religious minorities existed in the Empire for the most part without per-
secution-in other words, under a regime of tolerance-seems to blend
with narratives of mixed neighborhoods, making the claim that "we are
all neighbors" applicable even to larger political entities.
In contrast to this blurring of scale, the relatively self-contained nature
of the mahalle and the intertwining of personhood and place point us
to another feature of living together that I wish to emphasize here: what
I have earlier called "the labor of peace." To speak of labor is to empha-
size agonism rather than antagonism, and accommodation rather than
amity. It is to recognize that neighborliness is not only about living with
the Other but is equally importantly about the ways that one becomes
a person in the other's eyes. It is also to recognize that the intertwining


18 Rebecca Bryant

of Other and Self entails a ritualized sociality and forms of exchange
that simultaneously bind persons and families together and create their
difference. In coming to that point, I will first discuss two other features
of Ottoman social structure that are important for our considerations:
what I will call here "multi-scalar sovereignty;' and the performativity of
neighborliness. While the former concerns the type of territoriality pro-
duced through the neighborhood, the latter concerns the production of
self within the context of the neighborhood. As we will see, both facets
are important for thinking about the dissolution of neighborhood rela-
tions and the possibilities for living together after violence.
"To Be Master of One's Own Home"
The common Turkish saying, kendi evinin efendisi olmak (to be master
of one's own home) has resonances with the English saying, "a man's
home is his castle." Both phrases imply the sovereignty of the home,
because while kom uluk requires interdependence, it also requires re-
specting the "sovereignty" of the other by not making too much noise,
not blocking their passage, not picking the fruit from their trees. In the
English saying, the image of a castle invokes sovereignty in the form of a
king, but the phrase is more commonly used to signal the separation of
public and private, or the noninterference of the state in private life. This
noninterference is invoked by the walls of the castle, within which each
man is his own king.
Rather than stressing the castle with its implications of walls and
boundaries, the Turkish saying emphasizes the sovereign as "master" or
"lord." In Turkish, to be an efendi or master is not only to be in control but
equally to be someone deserving of respect, a realized person. Indeed,
the word efendi comes originally from the ancient Greek authentes,
which has connotations of self-realization or agency. This is a self-
realization, though, that happens within the context of place-making,
the context in which one is known and acquires the respect that makes
one "master."
Moreover, in both cases the idea of "home" may be used metaphor-
ically, to refer not only to a house, but also to a larger unit, especially
the nation-state. Indeed, we often find that international relations com-
pares relationships between countries to those of neighbors. States have
"neighborhood policies," while the doctrine of noninterference resem-
bles the advice above that neighbors avoid too much curiosity about the
other's home. In writings on plural societies, "the neighbor" often comes
to stand for the Other, the non-ruling ethnic or religious group sharing a


Introduction 19

political space (Zizek, Santner and Reinhard 2013). The tendency to use
the neighbor as a scale-free abstraction (compare Candea 2012) reflects
similar tendencies in the study of hospitality, where Candea argues that
the analogization of hospitality in the home to that in the nation is "tying
together into causal chains entities of radically different sizes (individu-
als, nations, doors, villages, etc.)" (Candea 2012: S35; see also Herzfeld
1987).18 By using "the neighbor" to stand for a country, an ethnic group,
and at the same time the person next door, the focus is on ethics (espe-
cially Levinas and Derrida's response) while sidelining the problems of
scalar sovereignty.
Indeed, hospitality is the practice in which the scales of sovereignty
embedded in discourses of neighborliness both emerge and are blurred.
Put simply, although one owes hospitality to one's neighbors, in actual
practice the neighbor emerges as the one who does not need hospitality.
This becomes clear in ethnographic examples where various scales of
"neighborliness" are employed. For instance, when I conducted research
in Cyprus between 2003 and 2005 on the opening of the border that di-
vides the island, I spent about nine months living in a town in northern
Cyprus that had a mixed Turkish-Greek population before 1963. After
the division of the island in 1974 and the flight of Greek Cypriots to
the island's south, Turkish Cypriots originally from the town who had
fled in 1963 returned, later to be joined by displaced Turkish Cypriots
from the island's southern region and a small number of persons reset-
tled from rural Turkey. A decade or so after the division, foreigners of
various stripes, though mostly from the U.K. and Germany, also began
to settle in the town. I rented a small apartment in a larger house in
a neighborhood of Turkish Cypriots who had been displaced from the
island's south. Many of my neighbors were also relatives or came from
neighboring villages in the south.
The neighbor who lived opposite our house was a woman around fifty
years of age whose husband ran the neighborhood coffee shop. While
Sengil sometimes helped him, she mostly baked at home and sold her
pastries to local shops. As a result, she was one of two or three female
neighbors who were always home. Moreover, during the times that they
were at home, their doors were always open, as is common in villages
throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Europe, where
the open door implies both that neighbors are welcome and also that
one has nothing to hide (see Henig 2012). Neighbors would step in and
out, call to each other, occasionally stop by for coffee. While technically
the rules of hospitality remained in place, as for instance the practice
of always offering something to drink or eat, in practice hospitality be-
came a referential discourse, something to which one could gesture and


20 Rebecca Bryant

at the same time flout. In other words, neighbors do not occupy the
category of "guests;' and they may joke together about the formalities of
hospitality. Similarly, Catherine Allerton (2012) notes how in Mangarrai
relatives and neighbors may jokingly "become guests" at formal events,
taking their places as guests because the formalities of the occasion de-
mand it but at the same time recognizing that their intimacy with the
hosts makes "becoming guests" a performance. Conversely, in the Turk-
ish context, the moment when one ceases to be a guest and becomes
an intimate treated with a more relaxed hospitality may be marked by
the comment, yabanci degilsin artik (you are not a stranger/foreigner
anymore).
Guests, then, come in many shapes and sizes, some more intimate than
others. Neighbors, however, are hardly ever seen as guests, and certainly
not as "strangers" Moreover, the open door puts the norms and rules of
hospitality in abeyance. The neighbor's home is porous, although it is not
"one's own.' This indiscernability of the open door is both a form of com-
munity and a way of shaping oneself in the neighbor's eyes: one has noth-
ing to hide, and one displays this honorable openness. To close the door
is to hide, to retreat into private life. Given the traditional significance of
the neighbor's testimony in the Ottoman neighborhood, it should not be
surprising that neighbors are the primary persons in whose eyes reputa-
tion is formed. We will return to this consideration in a moment.
In contrast to the intimate hospitality of the neighborhood stands the
formal hospitality of the host-guest relationship.19 It is the host-guest
relationship that appears to be what A.M. Hocart had in mind when
he observed that the original form of sovereignty is a hospitality event
(Hocart 1957; also Candea and Da Col 2012: S7). While all hospitality
depends upon the home and its sovereignty, the host-guest relationship
also harbors another element: the guest is expected eventually to leave.
In the town where I conducted research after the border opening in Cy-
prus this element of sovereignty became especially contested in that dis-
placed Turkish Cypriots were living in formerly Greek Cypriot houses.
With the opening, the owners of those houses returned to visit them, al-
though in the absence of a political solution to the island's division were
not able to reclaim them. As a result, those persons with original title
deeds to the houses were put in the role of guests being served coffee
and lemonade in houses that they claimed as their own. The ambiguity
of ownership and the pain of past conflict, then, were mediated through
the rituals of hospitality: as good hosts, my neighbors said, "Of course
we served them coffee! I wouldn't behave badly to someone who's a guest
in my home." And as good guests, the Greek Cypriot visitors eventually
would leave.


Introduction 21

In these encounters, the threshold materializes sovereignty, the point
at which a stranger knocks or calls out even when the door is open. The
open door is for the neighborhood, allowing the sovereignty of home
to blend with the sovereignty of the community and signaling the mu-
tual interpenetration of person and place. The open door symbolically
blurs the space between inside and outside, between the house and the
street, enabling everyday forms of negotiated interaction. Not only does
one have nothing to hide from one's neighbors, but those neighbors also
cannot pass without greeting. Unlike hospitality, then, it is a practice of
moral exchange and interdependency that entails the everyday diplo-
macy of pleasantries, greetings, and often the exchange of important
information in the form of gossip. I saw this in the ways that displaced
Greek Cypriots mourned for their lost homes, not as structures but as
parts of networks and neighborhoods.20 In their descriptions of home,
what stands out are the paths between houses, the closeness of relatives,
and the openness to fields and to others.
Both neighborliness and hospitality, then, are defined by closeness
and distance, by boundary-making that depends upon the threshold of
the home. But whereas hospitality depends upon the strict definition of
the threshold as boundary between "ours" and "theirs," neighborliness in
practice has depended on a blurring of that boundary and on forms of
everyday diplomacy. When I refer to "everyday diplomacy" I mean not
simply the negotiation of common terms or interests. Rather, I refer to
the diplomat as emissary, someone who enters the space of the Other
and addresses that Other in a common language. Thinking of diplomacy
in this way opens up the possibility also to understand what Constan-
tinou calls the "transformative potential of diplomacy," in other words,
"the experience of new or expanding space, opening up possibilities and
promising alternative ways of relating to others" (Constantinou 2006:
352; see also Constantinou 1996). Diplomacy, then, involves according
respect to the Other but also the potential for self-transformation.
Taking a term from the language of diplomacy, I propose to think of
everyday coexistence in post-Ottoman spaces as a labor of peace that
relies upon a constructive ambiguity of the boundaries of belonging. By
"labor of peace" I have in mind the everyday management of both so-
ciality and tension that is most clearly seen in the neighborhood as a
social unit. Sociality is managed through forms of symbolic and material
exchange, from exchanging labor in fields to attendance at weddings and
funerals. In remembering their lives together, both Turkish and Greek
Cypriots from the same time independently recalled the neighborhood
system in which families would take turns making halloumi, a local
cheese and staple of the Cypriot diet.


22 Rebecca Bryant

The labor of peace, however, also depends on both managing con-
flict and maintaining tensions. The local management of conflict is well
known as a subject from the anthropological literature on dispute res-
olution (e.g., Nader 1991; Roberts 1979/2013; Starr 1978) and should
be understood as what the Ottomans referred to as maintaining sulh.
In places such as Cyprus, traditions of local dispute management cre-
ated conflicts with British colonial rulers, who wished to replace them
with formal judiciary practices.21 As one such administrator observed,
under the Ottoman system "it was enough that a man was known as an
evil-doer to the people generally, and that there was reasonable cause to
believe him guilty of certain offences."22 At the time of the British arrival,
then, the sociolegal practices of the mahalle appear to have been in full
force, and the multitude of complaints by British police regarding infor-
mal dispute resolution practices indicates that they continued until well
into the twentieth century.
Apart from the resolution of disputes, however, the labor of peace
also entailed what I have referred to as maintaining tensions. In her
discussion of everyday coexistence in Karachi, Laura Ring observes that
it is in women's bearing of tension, rather than men's discharging of it,
that peace is maintained. In Ring's rendering, this "ethic of suspense"
linked
generalized reciprocity with the ability to bear in tension, or hold in
suspense, contradictory principles of social organization (nation and
ethnic group, hierarchy and equality).... [T]reating stranger-neighbors
as kin depended not on sentiments of love and attachment but on the
willingness and ability to bear the tension of contradictory categories
of belonging.... Social, cultural, and intergroup tension is thus man-
aged via the bodies and subjectivities of women. (Ring 2006: 179)
Ring's sensitive study focuses specifically on the ways that women's bod-
ies bear tension because men's bodies are presumed to be violent, inca-
pable of tension and subject to exploding under it.
I cannot engage here with Ring's analysis of the gendered nature of
this practice, which is certainly not specific to her field location but may
nevertheless not be universally applicable. My own research indicates
that while women may disproportionately "bear tension" in this way, the
management of contradiction and ambiguity is an intrinsic part of living
together. I choose to refer to this process as "constructive ambiguity," a
term taken from diplomacy, where it means the use of ambiguous lan-
guage to deal with sensitive issues about which parties would otherwise
remain irreconcilable.


Introduction 23

In diplomacy, constructive ambiguity is the practice of setting aside
those issues that cause conflict and moving to those issues about which
agreement can be reached. In doing so, the hope is that eventually a new
state of affairs will allow the parties to overcome previously irreconcil-
able differences. This in effect allows each side to claim that it has not
conceded the point while allowing negotiations to proceed beyond it.
One summary of the strategy notes, "Ambiguities make sure that, on the
one hand, the parties retain their own individual perceptions as to 'how
things should proceed' and that, on the other, one common language is
adopted, which both parties may later equally use" (Pehar 2001: 170).
Language, in this case, acts as a type of boundary defining the possibility
or impossibility of negotiation.
I use the term for what it brings to understanding the everyday ne-
gotiation of what Ring calls "tension." "Constructive ambiguity" is a pro-
cess by which we agree to see differently on a particular issue while not
letting that disagreement stand in the way of peace. It is a process of
allowing certain boundaries to remain in place while finding common
ground where it is possible. It does not deny difference; in fact, it recog-
nizes difference in its refusal to confront it. It does not efface difference
but rather denies that difference must be an insurmountable obstacle to
sociality and peace. Constructive ambiguity brackets difference, allow-
ing us to retain it while continuing with the everyday process of living.
Just as neighborliness makes the threshold porous, so in everyday life
we may recognize, but at the same time bracket, the everyday differences
that define boundaries in order to make those boundaries permeable.
This is usually done in the interest of some larger cause perceived to
be more important-what Kende, in his definition of strong peaceful
coexistence, described as "the strengthening of contacts in the interest
of aims which can be mutually formulated and settled" That cause may
be the need to work together in the fields or marketplace, or simply the
belief that the Other, despite Otherness, still subscribes to the moral
code of neighborliness that protects the peace of a village. My Turkish
Cypriot neighbor commented that "neighbors may be more important
than family." And while in a struggle over land access the young Turk-
ish Cypriot was willing to suspend difference in the interest of a higher
moral code, his English neighbor saw the fence between them as a legal
boundary defining his rights rather than a moral threshold defining his
responsibilities.
I have suggested that we may usefully see the coexistence expressed
in kom uluk as a constructive ambiguity of the boundaries of belonging,
and I have also suggested that seeing it in this way may allow us insight
into the everyday diplomacy of coexistence without necessitating insight


24 Rebecca Bryant

into the affective realm, which is difficult to document in retrospect.
Where that coexistence begins to break down, or where it may be diffi-
cult to repair, is where such ambiguity is no longer encouraged or feasi-
ble. Moreover, it should not be surprising that this occurs with the rise
of demands for nation-state sovereignty, as we see that it was precisely
in the demands for freedom of ethnic and religious minorities within the
Ottoman Empire, as well as the Ottoman attempts to claw back against
the empire's disintegration, that the scale of nation-state sovereignty
penetrates the sovereignty of the neighborhood. Village and street-names
are "nationalized" while national and religious symbols come to domi-
nate local landscapes. In his contribution to this volume, Robert Hayden
describes the changes in what he calls "religioscapes" with the advent of
nationalist demands. Such changes included the building or destruction
of minarets, as well as the size of mosques and churches.
I suggest that the tendency to blend scale in discussions of home
or neighborhood is also an indication of multi-scalar sovereignty-the
sovereignty of the home, of the mahalle, of the church, all of which
have their own sovereign thresholds. In the past, crossing into another
neighborhood was not very different from crossing the threshold of a
home and entailed scrutiny, as well as rituals of hospitality (see (etin
2014; Tamdogan-Abel 2002). Crossing the threshold of a church or
mosque was to step into the sovereign realm of faith, something one
usually would not do if one did not "belong." These embedded sover-
eignties were made possible when the state and realm were perceived to
belong to a dynasty but not to a "people." Although the Ottoman Empire
was a Muslim Sunni state, the state was not equivalent to territory but
rather imposed upon it and thereby encompassing all that lived within
it. As a result, multi-scalar sovereignties present us with ambiguities
and incompleteness in a way that is materialized in the threshold but
that disappears with the homogenization of space in the nation-state
era. Commenting on the ambiguities inherent in what I have called here
multi-scalar sovereignties, Shryock remarks,
the underlying problem is one of sovereignty over a space whose in-
completeness, both as a physical and a sovereign space, must be per-
petually managed in ways that encourage interaction with outsiders.
Bad guests and hosts come in many dramatic forms, but even before
they drop the millstone or sever the hand that greets them, they are
first of all people who refuse to accept the proper role of host or guest.
This refusal is most likely to occur when guest and host cannot agree
on who controls the space of interaction, who is sovereign, who be-


Introduction 25

longs, and who owes or should offer respect.... Shifts in scale com-
pound these disagreements and create new ones. (Shryock 2012: S30)
One such scalar shift is when the space of the neighborhood, with its
own intimate sovereignty, is overlaid by the exclusive territorial claims
of the nation-state-claims that are often also in conflict with others.
Using the contributions to this volume, I would like to think about
what the labor of peace and the constructive ambiguity that it entails
would mean in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman context. What is helpful
about the term "constructive ambiguity" is that it makes reference to a
form of everyday diplomacy, to a way of acknowledging both difference
and a common set of moral concerns that have priority over that differ-
ence. It also allows us to think with more specificity about the conditions
under which such ambiguity is no longer possible, and about what hap-
pens when it is lost. In addition, it may enable us to identify why it is so
difficult to recover such forms of everyday diplomacy in post-conflict
interaction.
Everyday Diplomacy in the Post-Ottoman Space
My attempt to clear away some conceptual brush by referring to coex-
istence as a labor of peace, and more specifically one supported by the
constructive ambiguity of the boundaries of belonging, is also in conso-
nance with other works that have similarly struggled with how to con-
ceptualize the meaning and perception of boundaries in the Ottoman
and post-Ottoman space. Exploring the porosity of boundaries at the
local level, Doumanis argues that intercommunality, as he calls it, was
produced in the quotidian negotiations of daily life:
Ottoman mixed communities did not meld into one organic unit.
However ... where such distinct units lived cheek by jowl it was also
essential that boundaries shifted whenever dictated by necessity and
social norms, and in order to promote an atmosphere of civility and
cordiality. (Doumanis 2012: 65)
The everyday creation of community in this way is confirmed for other
cases, such as Anja Peleikis's study of Lebanon, where she argues,
shared local identity was not a given simply because of the fact that
Christians and Muslims used to live in the same place. On the con-


26 Rebecca Bryant

trary, social relations across confessional borders had to be confirmed,
created and reproduced again and again through the diverse everyday
practice of neighborhood relations, mutual assistance in agriculture,
and attendance at religious rituals of the confessional "Other." (Peleikis
2006: 134)
Community, then, may not be assumed but must be constantly reaffirmed
and reproduced, emphasizing the conscious effort or labor involved.
Laura Ring, in her discussion of everyday coexistence in contemporary
Karachi, described a similar process of insisting on difference while at
the same time complicating it: "[t]he repeated insertion of the particu-
lar-the insistent invocation of the complexity and ambiguity of social
identity-was critical to the very possibility of 'sharing the shade' or ham
sayagi, the Urdu term for 'neighborhood"' (2006: 4).
The performance of coexistence also often entailed ritualized and
even exaggerated expressions of community solidarity, expressed retro-
spectively in nostalgia for having attended each other's weddings. Dou-
manis notes,
[b] ehaving 'as if' they were one community was fundamental to in-
tercommunality. Being like a community without being a community
promoted solidarity for the purposes of social order and security, while
at the same time ensuring that the distinctions remained intact. The
purpose of loving one's neighbour was to keep that neighbour firmly
at bay. (2012: 78)
Here Doumanis appears to fall into the identitarian trap he has tried
to avoid, by effectively saying that such everyday constructions of com-
munity are simulacra rather than essence. In Deniz Duru's chapter in
this volume, we see how such self-conscious valuing of plurality may
construct the sense of community as community and of place as place.
Moreover, if we return to my earlier invocations of neighborliness and
thresholds, we can see how "social order and security" may constitute a
higher moral order that calls for constructive ambiguity of boundaries.
Leaving one's door open signals both that the home is one's own and also
that its threshold is porous. It is also, as certain authors in this volume
make clear, a site of performativity. Opening one's door is also a way of
constructing oneself in the neighbor's eyes, of displaying that one has
nothing to hide. Moreover, one of the most important aspects of hospi-
tality is the rehashing of it afterwards-what one served, how the guest
behaved, what this indicates. Hospitality, then, is not only an event but
is simultaneously a discourse on an event. In this sense, the moral dis-


Introduction 27

course of hospitality also shapes the moral practice of its performance:
to be a good host is to be one not primarily in the eyes of one's guest but
in the eyes of one's own community. Similarly with neighborliness: while
people such as my own Turkish Cypriot neighbor often perceive the in-
terdependence of neighborliness as something born of necessity, not to
help one's neighbor is also to risk the talk of other neighbors.
The argument that everyday coexistence may be as much about the
rules of social life as it is about individual relationships-as much about
morality as affection and as much about performance as essence-is also
in consonance with Ashutosh Varshney's empirical study (2003) of cities
in India where ethnic conflict has occurred, and his well-argued claim
that intercommunal civil associations are more effective in controlling
violence than are individual relationships. "If vibrant organizations serv-
ing the economic, cultural and social needs of the two communities ex-
ist," Varshney claims, "the support for communal peace not only tends
to be strong but it can also be more solidly expressed" (Ibid.: 10). In cit-
ies, his study shows, formal networks are important for facilitating what
informal networks and relationships may be able to achieve in villages:
namely, spaces for negotiating common goods that in turn make what
might otherwise be exclusive demands into inclusive ones.
The chapters in this volume suggest that living together is a labor
of peace that entails an everyday diplomacy, requires the blurring but
not the dissolution of boundaries, and includes the potential for self-
transformation. Chapters discuss the simultaneous exclusiveness and
inclusiveness of boundaries symbolized by the threshold; the performa-
tive aspect of everyday coexistence; and the forms of common civility
necessary to enable diversity within the same space. Together, the chap-
ters help us to understand the "constructive ambiguity" that pervades
everyday interactions, as well as the moments when such ambiguity or
"civil inattention" (Goffman 1971) may no longer be possible.
In her discussion of the Ermou marketplace of Nicosia in this volume,
Anita Bakshi, referring to Georg Simmel's now classic observations re-
garding the stranger, remarks that persons from the other group were
both near and remote, defined by difference. However, within the space
of the marketplace it was possible also to complicate and blur such bor-
ders through the recognition of individuals in face-to-face interactions:
The shared realm provided by the Ermou streets allowed for the rec-
ognition of specific differences-the elements that begin to form the
outlines of individuals, distinguishing them from the group as a whole.
These outlines may remain hazy. They need not be deep friendships,
and indeed they probably often were not, but they do help to create


28 Rebecca Bryant

a public life in which the individual can operate comfortably.... This
allowed for a particular habitus to emerge, one constituted by the re-
petitive nature of interactions and facilitated by the stable pattern of
streets and intersections. (this volume, p. 120)
The city, with its separate Greek and Turkish neighborhoods, included
sites of exclusion as well as nodes of integration. Indeed, it was the draw-
ing of boundaries that made neighborliness across those boundaries
possible.
Similarly, Irene Dietzel shows how the complex land use and land
ownership patterns of Ottoman Cyprus encouraged the interdependence
and solidarity of village life. As may be seen elsewhere in the Mediterra-
nean, multiple ownership in land, including rights to water and trees, as
well as the complexities of farming in a parched climate, lent themselves
to forms of cooperation and solidarity that began to disappear with the
"rationalization" of land rights under the British administration and the
"modernization" of land use in the mid-twentieth century. However, Aris
Anagnostopoulos also reminds us in his own chapter that our concep-
tualization of such coexistence is also predetermined by its end, empha-
sizing ethno-religious cooperation before later conflict while covering
over other forms of exclusion (class, gender, age, etc.) that were present
during such periods of "peaceful coexistence." Bakshi gives the example
of women excluded from certain marketplace spaces, while Deniz Du-
ru's chapter describing interreligious interaction in Burgazadasi, Istan-
bul, reminds us that such cross-ethnic or cross-faith interactions may be
based on their own class, ideological, or gendered exclusions.
Sossie Kasbarian's discussion of the Armenian community in Turkey
today is one where individuals think "in terms of clearly defined spheres
and the need to transgress and move from one to the other." (this vol-
ume, p. 223). However, Kasbarian emphasizes that these spheres are
defined not only by religious, ethnic or other identities but also by
different historical narratives that must be accommodated. "When
contemplating coexistence" Kasbarian remarks, "the coexistence of dif-
ferent narratives is at least as essential as physical coexistence" (this
volume, p. 222).
Robert Hayden argues in this volume and elsewhere that examples
such as Kasbarian's show that "'peaceful coexistence' is not so much a
condition that can be disrupted, as a manifestation of relations at times
when the dominance of one group over another is so firmly established
that it need not be imposed, and cannot be much countered" (this vol-
ume, p. 62). In other words, any "peaceful coexistence" with a dominated
minority is only temporary and is bound to change when power rela-


Introduction 29

tions do. He shows this through the physical domination of the land-
scape during the Ottoman period and attempts to erase signs of that
domination in Ottoman successor states.
Other chapters, however, suggest that what may be important is not
the "reality" of coexistence but rather its performance, in other words,
the ways in which a constructive ambiguity of the boundaries of be-
longing is (self-)consciously constructed. While Duru's chapter shows
the way that residents of the Istanbul island of Burgaz self-consciously
value and construct plurality as part of the island's identity, Deborah
Starr highlights the performativity of coexistence through discussion
of what she calls the "Levantine idiom" in Togo Mizrahi's Alexandria
films. Produced at a moment when Egypt was experiencing a rise of a
new Arab/Islamic nationalism that excluded, for instance, the large Jew-
ish community of which Mizrahi was a member, Mizrahi's farces use
cross-dressing, class-hopping, and hints of homosexuality to emphasize
the performative and fluid nature of (Levantine) identity. The "Levan-
tine aesthetics" of the films is one in which "the performance of iden-
tity is fluid and mutable, embracing vagueness and porousness of the
boundaries of identity" (this volume, p. 136). However, Starr emphasizes
that the inclusiveness of this Levantine aesthetic is not "natural" but is
explicitly depicted as something performed, an inclusivity that is both
self-consciously and repetitively created.
Azra Hromadzic, in her study of a mixed Mostar gymnasium, returns
to performativity when she shows how language "purism" in a mixed
space is performed by youth often confused by what counts as "their"
national language. "Youth;' notes Hromadzic,
are ... called to accept, appreciate, welcome and act out this "authen-
tic" difference-the essence of cultural hermaneutics-in exchange for
acceptance into the larger transborder nation and domovina's (home-
land's) recognition. As a result, language performance acts as a social
ethics and cultural technology for successes and failures of national
and individual dreams. (this volume, p. 193)
As she demonstrates, however, this ideology of cultural purity is also
mapped onto territory, thus creating the presumption of "incommen-
surability of mutually hostile, spatially segregated ethnicities which are
treated as rooted, bounded, homogeneous, and mutually hostile" (this
volume, p. 193).
Both Sylvaine Bulle and Glenn Bowman's chapters use Erving Goff-
man to think about contiguity-what Bulle calls "co-presence"-in con-
texts that are potentially conflictual. In the context of a divided Jerusa-


30 Rebecca Bryant

lem, Bulle describes the ephemeral "temporary communities of confi-
dence" that emerge even in and around a security wall. Pizza deliveries,
marketplaces, and tramways all provide spaces for interactions that are
characterized by what Goffman called "civil inattention," a form of public
civility that allows heterogeneous public spaces to function. Temporary
communities of confidence "are created within situations where people
simply come together, and are not affirmations of belonging," Bulle notes
(this volume, pp. 248-9).
Bowman discusses this as "giving ground;' what Bulle refers to as a
basic civility in urban space:
Viewed not from the perspective of an ideal model of coexistence but
rather from its actual practice, we see that small acts of respect for the
Other-the exercise or not of domination, of courtesy, of civility-
may be able to construct a livable space, creating a place for people,
while at the same time helping to build a shared life. (Bulle this vol-
ume, p. 252)
However, as Bowman notes, such forms of ordinary civility are enabled
by "spaces" but impeded by "places." In other words, civility is possible
only when one community does not make an exclusive claim to a site.
Taken together, the papers in this volume provide new insight into
the everyday practices of living together in contexts fraught with con-
flict histories that include discrimination, displacement, and division.
Authors here stress the importance of boundaries that define forms of
neighborliness and cooperation, and the everyday diplomacy that allows
those boundaries to remain constructively ambiguous. They describe,
as well, the quotidian performances of coexistence, which comply with
standardized notions of the civil and the cosmopolitan. And they ex-
plore the political potential of contiguity and civility for creating spaces
defined by robust forms of living together.
Notes
1. On the way that a discourse of coexistence occludes the manner that coex-
istence was destroyed in Turkey, see Mills (2011) and Onar (2009).
2. On "the riot" and the post-conflict everyday, see Das (2007); Jeganathan
(1997); Mehta (2002); and Mehta and Chatterji (2001).
3. See, for instance, the discussion of such nostalgic visions in Doumanis
2012: 2-19.
4. For a debate that outlines many of the stakes, see Robert Hayden's 2002
Current Anthropology article, including responses (Hayden 2002), as well
as articles in Bowman (2012) that respond to Hayden's thesis.


Introduction 31

5. See Glenn Bowman and Dionigi Albera on Robert Hayden's antagonistic
tolerance thesis (Bowman 2012; Albera 2012).
6. See Robert Hayden on Stef Jansen and others, as well as replies (Hayden
2007).
7. On the "eventful-ness" of history, see Pandey (2006) and Lubkemann
(2008).
8. Doumanis remarks, for instance, "Whereas Ottomans presupposed that
cultural difference within society was a given, Westerners tended to pro-
ceed from a diametrically opposite position, seeing societal homogeneity as
normative and the Babel-like conditions in the Near East as symptomatic of
societal degeneration" (Doumanis 2012: 18).
9. On the problem of the "clash of civilization" literature as it relates to the
study of multiculturalism, see Mills (2011); Barkey (2005); and Baer, Mak-
disi, and Shryock (2009).
10. On the problems of identity as a concept in the social sciences, see the im-
portant article by Brubaker and Cooper (2000).
11. In Cyprus, for instance, Greek Cypriot nationalists beginning in the 1950s
advanced the thesis that Turkish Cypriots were really converted Orthodox
and therefore Greek "by blood." Since 1974, the Republic of Cyprus has of-
ficially claimed that Cypriots lived "like brothers" before the 1974 Turkish
invasion and division of the island. The Left, in turn, has supported "Cypri-
otism" the claim that Cypriots are "really all the same" and that they were
divided by nationalist elements. While this thesis has gained support from
left-wing Turkish Cypriots when it is future-oriented and refers to an inclu-
sive, civic patriotism, Turkish Cypriots have tended to give it considerably
less support when it is used to refer to "identity."
12. Classic texts that discuss Ottoman tolerance include those by Inalcik
(1973), Lewis (1961), and Shaw (1976), as well as one more recently by Or-
tayli (2003). For a collection that draws together works on both tolerance
and coexistence in the Ottoman domains, see Karpat (2010).
13. This and all other translations from Turkish in the text are my own.
14. There is, indeed, a significant body of anthropological work on shared
shrines that constitutes a large part of the ethnographic work on the shar-
ing of space in Southeast Europe and the Middle East. For more on the sub-
ject, see recent works by Albera and Couroucli (2012); Barkan and Barkey
(2015); Bigelow (2010); Bowman (2012a); and Hayden and Walker (2013).
15. In the Balkan context, the discussion of komsilik has centered primarily on
the question of whether or not those relations were antagonistic in the con-
text of the Balkan wars. The term, which comes from the Turkish kom uluk,
not only means "neighborhood" rather than "neighborliness" but it also
appears specifically to have acquired the meaning of living with plurality.
Nevertheless, as I discuss below, the term appears to have retained in the
Balkans some of the normative and affective dimensions of the more gen-
eral "neighborliness" which applies to all forms of living in proximity.
16. For a discussion of the contested way in which this system was destroyed by
British colonial rule in Cyprus, see chapter two in Bryant (2004).


32 Rebecca Bryant

17. On ethics manuals in the late Ottoman period, particularly their use in ed-
ucation, see Fortna (2002).
18. Also, Andrew Shryock remarks, "Hospitality, as Bedouin describe it, is a
quality of persons and households, of tribal and ethnic groups, and even
of nation-states. At any of these levels of significance, failure to provide
karam [hospitality] suggests low character and weakness, qualities that at-
tract moral criticism" (Shryock 2012: S20).
19. Herzfeld has referred to the often aggressive hospitality of the region, as
well as the suspension of hostility that contains the ever-present possibil-
ity of its degeneration, as "courtesy-as-menace." He remarks that these en-
counters have a "fragile, nervous force" that he suggests derives from their
formality. "It is formality, not the simple act of giving, that creates the am-
bivalence and tension that is so prominent in the literature about Southern
Europe, my own contributions included" (Herzfeld 2012: S214).
20. For more detail, see Bryant (2010).
21. I document this in a previous work (Bryant 2004), in which I devote a chap-
ter to the transition from the Ottoman to the British legal systems. Com-
plaints of the loss of authority by village elders are multitude, and British
administrators received numerous letters vociferating against the central-
ized nature of the new system and the refusal to accept the word of village
elders as binding to convict. In 1895, the Bishop of Kition, for instance,
reported that "the people wish restrictions to be put on persons of bad
character, on persons whom the Mukhtar [headman] and Ayas [Turkish
aga = elder] of a village may say are of bad character. Such persons might
be restricted by being confined to certain localities" (Parliamentary Papers,
1887-1895, quoted in Bryant 2004).
22. Parliamentary Papers, 1887-1895: 51.
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Introduction 33

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Part I

Landscapes of Coexistence
and Conflict



+ Chapter 1 *

Sharing Traditions of
Land Use and Ownership
Considering the "Ground"for Coexistence and Conflict
in Pre-modern Cyprus
IRENE DIETZEL
Cyprus is a paradigmatic post-conflict society in which "coexistence
studies" abound, especially since the island's division in 1974 into a
Turkish North and a Greek South, an event that formed a tragic clo-
sure to two decades of unrest and quarrels between the communities.
Peaceful coexistence of Muslims and Christians in Cyprus has been
largely attributed to the dynamics of "neighborhood" (Jennings 1993,
1999; Asmussen 2001; Bryant 2004). Mixed neighborhoods, urban as
well as rural, emerged during the Ottoman period (1571-1878) as a re-
sult of heterogeneous residence patterns, which at first did not follow
any systematic pattern of spatial segregation.1 By the end of the Ottoman
period the majority of villages (346 according to the first official census)
were ethnically mixed. Although the number of mixed villages dropped
drastically during the course of the twentieth century, the experience
of life in mixed settlements has come to form a central part of the col-
lective consciousness of Cypriots. The research on these shared spaces
describes the texture and quality of coexistence as determined by the
face-to-face-society and the rhythm of agricultural seasons. Despite a
low rate of intermarriage, Cypriots forged a variety of inter-communal
relations: they entertained neighborhood relations, formed friendships
and cooperated in agricultural production.
This chapter contributes to this panoptic of neighborhood through
an examination of the particular relationships that emerged from local
forms of land use and shared concepts of property. Property relations-
whether forged through inheritance practices among kin or maintained


42 Irene Dietzel

through agricultural cooperation among neighbors-were deeply wo-
ven into the fabric of neighborhood. Yet, unlike the clear-cut model of
individual ownership common to contemporary Western societies, lo-
cal property concepts in Ottoman Cyprus involved various degrees of
ownership, rights of use, as well as an obligation for maintenance-an
Ottoman distinction that in itself generated particular and highly so-
phisticated forms of neighborhood.
Coexistence was certainly not free of conflict. Consider the following
example from the mid-twentieth century, describing a state of affairs
that seemed to alienate the Cypriot modernizers of the time. The geog-
rapher and later state-appointed consolidation officer Demetrios Christ-
odoulou writes in 1959:
Land in Cyprus is unenclosed and unfenced. This permits not only
easy subdivision, but also leads to endless friction between farmer
and shepherd since the latter can roam with his flocks over anybody's
property; friction, constant and costly, often exists between owners of
neighboring land. (Christodoulou 1959: 84)
It is thus important to keep conflict and societal unrest between groups
well within the scope of analysis. Indeed, practices of land use gave ample
reason for dispute: The "constant and costly friction" described above may
well be an example of what Bryant describes as "everyday diplomacy;' a
constant negotiation of boundaries that distinguishes neighborliness from
plain hospitality (this volume, p. 21). Yet it is worth asking why conflicts
over land and resources did not tend to coincide with ethnic distinc-
tions, mobilize on the grounds of religious identities, or reiterate reli-
gious differences. What were the underlying structures that allowed for
the management of communally accessed resources as well as the distri-
bution of property in the absence of clear-cut boundaries? Did ethno-
religious differences play a part in the distribution process?
This chapter casts neighborhood in socio-ecological terms and focuses
on particular strategies of Cypriot ruralists pertaining to the island's key
resources of land, forests, and water. Whether a cause for conflict or
cooperation, the particular strategies are "sociogenic" (compare Lansing
1991: 128). They generate specific forms of sociality that in turn maintain
the social relations necessary for the strategy to succeed. These social
relations can extend far beyond the bounds of the immediate neighbor-
hood, yet property remains a key factor. The Ottoman system of land
tenure provided the island's peasantry, both Christian and Muslim alike,
with a context in which they could acquire, share, and maintain their
access to land and resources. Furthermore, property was also defined


Sharing Traditions of Land Use and Ownership 43

by the particulars of the Mediterranean landscape. The socio-ecological
perspective on Cypriot neighborhoods therefore also reflects the wider
picture of the Mediterranean equation of landscape and people.
Local forms of daily coexistence did not cease with the end of Ot-
toman rule but survived well into the twentieth century. Nonetheless,
the first half of the twentieth century witnessed a gradual dissolution of
rural communities and traditional agricultural networks.2 These devel-
opments unfold prior to and along with the rise and consolidation of op-
posing Greek and Turkish national ideologies, the anti-colonial struggles
of Greek nationalists (1955-59), as well as the violent clashes between
the communities during the early years of the Republic (1963-64). The
time of British colonial rule (1878-1960) therefore represents a tran-
sitional period during which the foundations for Ottoman coexistence
gradually eroded. The study of coexistence in Cyprus thus inadvertently
formulates a critique of colonial hegemonic practices. While the British
"divide and rule" strategy has been the focus of numerous valuable stud-
ies (Constantinou 2007; Dietzel and Makrides 2009), this chapter also
addresses less overt, and possibly less intentional disruptions of Otto-
man coexistence, namely the British involvement in the modernization
of the agricultural sector and the consequences this bore for societal
dynamics between the island's communities.
Reflections on the Ottoman System of Land Tenure
Despite the official status of most arable land as property of the state,
the Ottoman Mediterranean has been described as a "sea of land pro-
prietors" where state land had de jure, rather than de facto character
(Hadjikyriacou 2011: 49). However, the Ottoman ways of administering
land and property were inherently different from those of Europe. An
obvious difference lies in the absence of feudal structures in the Otto-
man realm and the concomitant lack of a propertied hereditary noble
class that could impose servile obligations on the peasantry. Rather, it
was the "signature" of the Ottoman Empire that state control drew its
legitimacy of rule from its paternalist protection of the autonomy of the
peasant population. It was the priority and ideal of the central state to
act as guarantor for the independence of the peasantry and the peasants'
means of subsistence, to ensure the provision of the regional markets
with agricultural goods, and to prohibit the excessive accumulation of
land and resources by private individuals (Islamoglu-Inan 1991: 58).
The empire administered land and resources in a "distributive-ac-
commodative state environment" that was inclusive of local forms of


44 Irene Dietzel

land management and that ensured the loyalty of local authorities in
the provinces through the distribution of state land and tax revenues
(Islamoglu 2004: 292). The Ottoman timar state economy depended on
a particular system of land distribution, whereby the state leased land
to tenants for cultivation, who in turn were expected to pay a portion of
their revenue as taxes. The beneficiaries of these taxes were various local
rulers or pre-Ottoman ruling groups, such as the Orthodox Church, yet
they exercised no jurisdiction over the peasant producers. Jurisdiction
over the peasantry lay with the kadz,3 who represented Sultanic law (6rf)
and Shari'a. The central state thus remained the sole source of legitima-
tion for revenue collection (Islamoglu-Inan 1991: 59).
The Ottoman agrarian landscape was thus fashioned by the cultiva-
tion patterns of small producers. Even under increased pressures of com-
mercial expansion following the integration of the Ottoman realm into
the world market during the seventeenth century, this pattern did not
change in any significant way. While market pressures would encour-
age the formation of large-scale commercial agriculture and single-crop
plantations elsewhere in Europe, small-scale production patterns re-
mained predominant throughout the Ottoman realm (Keyder 1990).
In Cyprus, the Ottoman conquest of 1571 brought a change to the liv-
ing conditions of the local peasantry that was akin to a socio-economic
revolution. By granting the peasants-hitherto serfs on the plantations
of Latin feudal lords-the right to resettle and bequeath their leases on
state land to their children, Ottoman rulers encouraged the emergence
of subsistence agriculture as the predominant form of land use. Another
important shift affected the social stratification on the island. The com-
plex social stratification that had characterized the Latin period was re-
placed by a basic division of society into two major classes: a ruling class
(askeri) consisting of imperial administrators, nobility, military officials,
and religious clergy, and a large, tax-paying peasant class (reayah).
The emergence of a large and religiously heterogeneous peasant class,
as well as the autonomy of small-scale cultivators were important factors
in the development of local forms of coexistence. Until the mid-nineteenth
century, taxes and tithes were exacted from the villages as a whole-this,
one might argue, necessitated a certain degree of internal village solidar-
ity and thereby discouraged social or interethnic strife that could com-
promise the ability to meet tax requirements.4
The legal context of Ottoman land administration offered another
flexible system that could accommodate a multitude of claims. Questions
pertaining to the way in which the formal category of state property
(miri) blended with existing patterns of land ownership have been lit-
tle explored. The legal context that emerged, however, represents the


Sharing Traditions of Land Use and Ownership 45

ability of the empire to respond to the cultural diversity throughout its
provinces. The Ottoman Land Code reflects the complexity of the sys-
tem: promulgated by Sultan Abdul Mecid in 1858 during the Ottoman
reform period, the Land Code aimed at modernizing the system of land
tenure, but accommodated much of the old system within it. It set down
no less than five types of categorization of land:5 the large part of arable
land was state property (miri) that could be rented to individuals for
cultivation. The tenant would have to hold a title deed to prove his, or
her,6 rights to cultivate a particular plot. The tenant could also bequeath
the lease to his, or her, children. The land could revert back into exclu-
sive state ownership if the tenant left it uncultivated over a period longer
than three years. In the case of reversion, the tenant could still buy the
rights back by payment of an equivalent sum. This provision, however,
was rarely enforced.
A second category comprised all immovables that were full property,
or freehold (malk). Next to land and houses, also planted trees, such as
orchards and vineyards, as well as water holdings would fall under this
category. In the latter cases, the law envisioned a system of "multiple
ownership." A piece of land, for example, could be owned by the state
and leased to a peasant, while the trees growing on this land, or the wa-
ter that irrigated it could be owned by another.
The full property of religious organizations, however, was not sub-
ject to the Ottoman Land Code, but rather to Shari'i law. While reli-
gious institutions were exempt from taxes, the revenue of these lands
and properties, subsumed under the term evkaf; would be dedicated to
religious and charitable purposes. The category of evkaf also included
state-owned land, on which the tenant paid taxes and tithes to a reli-
gious organization and not to the state.
This communal purpose further defined all land that was dedicated
to the public (metruk), such as those tracts in the vicinity of settlements,
which were assigned to the inhabitants of villages or towns as a whole.
These lands could not be individually possessed, bought, sold, inherited,
or used for any other purpose other than that for which they were dis-
tinctly assigned ab antiquo. The category comprised communal forests,
village pasture lands, public roads, and places of worship.
Finally, the remaining waste or rough-land (hali) could function as
state land, while permission had to be granted for its use. All rights to
utilization were revoked after three years of non-cultivation.
All of the above categories were important factors in the administra-
tion of Ottoman provinces. For the fabric of neighborhood, however, the
particular stipulation for forms of multiple ownership may have been
especially significant, since it legally bound together several individu-


46 Irene Dietzel

als as shareholders of one agricultural unit (such as irrigated orchards
and multi-use fields). This kind of shareholding not only necessitated a
certain level of cooperation, it also fused together the interests of share-
holders in the functionality of the agricultural unit, thereby furthering a
"sense of the commons"7 within the villages. To the quality of Ottoman
neighborhoods, the system of land tenure added another realm of nego-
tiation and diplomacy-perhaps analogously to the "constructive ambi-
guity of belonging" in Ottoman neighborhoods (this volume, p. 21ff),
the Ottoman Land Code and its multiple forms of property reflect an
equally constructive ambiguity of ownership.
Reflections on the Mediterranean Landscape of Production
While anthropologists have questioned the idea that an area with as
much linguistic and religious diversity as the Mediterranean may repre-
sent a cultural unit (especially Herzfeld 1984; Pina-Cabral 1989), there
seems to be more agreement on the Braudelian view of the Mediter-
ranean as an ecological unit. Central works have identified the Med-
iterranean landscape as the fundament for a cultural distinction that
nonetheless characterizes local traditions across the region (Braudel
1972; Horden and Purcell 2000; Tabak 2008). While all of these works
acknowledge the landscape as a Mediterranean characteristic of longue
duree, they vary in their estimation of the geo-deterministic element
in Mediterranean history. Still, the history of Mediterranean localities,
and with it Cypriot neighborhood, proceeds from the environmental
strategies of local agriculturalists and pastoralists who have altered the
Mediterranean landscape in a lasting fashion, rendering it essentially
anthropogenic. Such reciprocity of environmental and human history is
reflected in Horden and Purcell's concept of "micro-region." It includes
"obvious microtopographical identifiers" such as the location of valleys,
plains, or the sides of islands, characterized by their particular hydrol-
ogy, soil conditions, vegetation cover, and annual weather cycle. But it
also encompasses the various human effects on the landscape, such as
the intensity of labor, the number of animals, and the specific choices
of productive strategies. Micro-regions are further determined by the
locations they are functionally connected to, such as harbors or de-
tached pastures (Horden and Purcell 2000: 302). Traditional agriculture
in Cyprus revolved around these micro-regions and the multitude of
micro-economic opportunities they afforded. It is therefore important
to imagine Cypriot rural neighborhoods and the "labor of peace" they


Sharing Traditions of Land Use and Ownership 47

entailed as taking place within these micro-regions, rather than as con-
fined to the residential settlements of the village.
The landscapes of production in Ottoman Cyprus resembled the
"agro-sylvo-pastoral system" typical for the Mediterranean region
(Blondel 2010; Schnabel 2004; Delipetrou et al. 2008; Tabak 2008). The
combination of cereals, tree-crops, and small livestock that made up the
core of Cypriot small-scale production bore significant socio-ecological
advantages, as it helped to optimize the use of microclimatic and edaphic
variations on the island. Interestingly, this polycultural strategy was shared
by all peasants, irrespective of their ethno-communal affiliations. In con-
trast to other cases of similar mosaic co-residence of ethnic communi-
ties, the Cypriot peasantry did not develop "niche-specific" agricultural
practices (compare Barth 1956). Rather, both Muslim and Christian
peasants used the environment in a similar fashion, while there was very
little agricultural specialization in terms of ethno-typical preferences for
either pastoralism or sedentary cultivation. Most households tended to
exploit the full array of possibilities that polyculture could offer. In the
semi-arid environment of the island these polycultural strategies as well
as the agricultural mobility of Cypriots offered efficient ways to maxi-
mize the material basis for life even during periods of scarcity (Given
2000; Harris 2004). In terms of land use and ownership, polycultural
strategies, and with it the experience of neighborhood, were fashioned
by the basic features of land fragmentation, shifting cultivation, and a
complex system of irrigation.
The phenomenon of land fragmentation has been a characteristic pat-
tern of land use throughout Europe, especially in the Mediterranean. It
is a result of local patterns of property distribution through inheritance
systems, which in turn are subject to change according to demographic
developments. While in many parts of Europe land fragmentation has
been minimized through consolidation measures, it continues to be the
central feature of the rural landscape in Cyprus. Typically, land fragmen-
tation is seen as a problematic historic relic that is incompatible with
modern means of agriculture and efficient production. While agrarian
reformers of the mid-twentieth century lament the slow and insufficient
implementation of consolidation measures (Shaw 1963; Lanitis 1992
[1944]; Christodoulou 1959), they misread or disregard the social and
ecological dimensions of land fragmentation. More recent work sug-
gests that under Mediterranean island conditions, land fragmentation
holds significant advantages for the local population, by managing the
risk of harvest loss, water shortages or pests (Bentley 1987). In socio-
genic terms, the dispersal of land holdings is conducive to a very partic-


48 Irene Dietzel

ular form of agricultural cooperation that establishes a property relation
beyond the level of the village neighborhood. Land fragmentation also
engenders what Horden and Purcell call "structural absenteeism;' a sys-
tem that allows the cultivation of scattered fields with the help of other
labor-providers who live closer to the particular piece of land (2000: 280).
Sharecropping thus alleviates the problems arising from the geographical
separation of holdings, forges micro-economic relations across remote
villages and maintains the connection between dispersed micro-regions.
Fragmented holdings are thus more suited to a system of "shifting
cultivation" which is also known as "swidden" or "slash-and-burn-agri-
culture" (Horden and Purcell 2000: 264; Dove and Carpenter 2008: 26).8
Until the nineteenth century, the method of clearing vegetation within
a cycle of cultivation was an integral part of local practices in Cyprus,
especially for vine plantations. It also incorporated the grazing of goats
as part of the land-use cycle and thus occasioned the cooperation of
shepherds and farmers of one region. The strategy requires a profound
knowledge of soil types and the ability to predict soil quality from veg-
etation cover. As Christodoulou notes for the Cypriot peasant, it was a
highly empirical knowledge that was "inherited together with the land"
(1959: 41); one might add that developing such expertise must have been
a central subject of daily communication among neighbors.
Finally, strategies of irrigation require the highest amount of coor-
dination and negotiation. In Ottoman Cyprus, the use of surface water
for irrigation was predominant and depended on a complex system of
regulation. In mountainous regions, especially on the southern slopes of
the Troodos Mountains, water had to be used effectively to avoid water
run-off to the sea. This was envisaged through an intricate distribution
of rights to irrigation, i.e., shares or holdings, which could be subdivided
according to the needs of the local population.9 Land and water sources
were held separately and were subject to the stipulations of multiple
ownership. Interestingly, rather than providing top-down regulations
through a central irrigation scheme, the Ottoman government accom-
modated traditional systems of distribution that had proved successful
over time, and formalized them as part of the legal system. This was set
down in Article 6 of Ottoman Civil Law: "Ab antiquo is left in its ab an-
tiquo state" (Christodoulou 1959: 90). Consequently, local ways of water
management depended on constant negotiations among the many par-
ticipants of local agricultural networks. The provision of the Ottoman
government to give priority to long-established arrangements required
the participants to give testimony based on memory, which resulted
in frequent disputes (Ibid.). However, the use of water resources also
formed a very practical focus of alliances across ethno-religious borders.


Sharing Traditions of Land Use and Ownership 49

Frequently, the inhabitants of villages or entire regions took joint ac-
tion to ensure the water routing in their favor. One example comes from
the mixed village of Kolossi, whose inhabitants in 1900 took joint action
against a Greek Cypriot outsider who attempted to own all water rights
in the region, in order to lease them back to the peasants. Local farmers
forged such ad hoc alliances not only within villages, but also regionally.
Such was the case in the villages of Styllos, Limnia, and Gaidhouras, all
of which competed over water with the village of Prastio, leading the
Muslim and Christian villagers to sign a joint petition against the water
routing (Asmussen 2001: 138). These are just two out of numerous ex-
amples of water negotiations in which the ethno-religious identities of
the quarrelling parties were rarely of any significance.
Colonial Land Reforms and the Commodification of Property
(1946-1974)
So far, the modernization of land use has received only cursory attention
in the study of the Cyprus conflict (Scott 1998; Heinritz 1975). Rarely is
the abandonment of traditional land use patterns understood as a loss.
On the contrary, the modernization of the agricultural sector is over-
whelmingly seen as an advantage for society, as it guarantees the food
security of a growing population and ensures the competitiveness of the
agricultural sector through rationalization and an increase in profitabil-
ity. However, the social and cultural consequences that accompany these
transformations are often underestimated in their complexity.
The Ottoman Land Code continued to be in effect until it was finally
abolished during the Land Reform of 1946. Depending on national per-
spective, the persistence of the Ottoman system under British rule has
received different evaluation. The Turkish Cypriot perspective empha-
sizes the idea of its efficacy and sophistication as reasons for its contin-
uation. To the modernizing minds of urban Greek Cypriots, however,
both the Ottoman Land Code and the prevalent system of inheritance
were considered backward, inappropriate, and in dire need of reform.
As Christodoulou puts it: "Ownership in Cyprus is diffuse, fragmented
and complicated. It militates against smooth transactions and rational
economic land use" (1959: 85).
It was this "rational economic land use" that formed the main pur-
pose of the land reforms of 1946. The Immovable Property Law of 1946
reformed tenure, registration, and valuation of land. It simplified the
complex Ottoman Land Code by subsuming the diverse types of land
under the two categories of "state land" and "private property" It also


50 Irene Dietzel

made provisions that targeted the abolition of the system of multiple
ownership. Buildings and trees on a piece of land, as well as the land itself
represented one agricultural unit, and as such were now to be the prop-
erty of one and the same owner. The bill also aimed at limiting further
fragmentation of land holdings, prescribing one ddnam10 for arable land
and one ddnam for vineyard, orchard, or irrigated land as the smallest
acceptable size (Lanitis 1992: 4). In addition, the land reform foresaw the
consolidation of land holdings, in part as a necessary measure for the
construction of water dams.
The consolidation law, which went into planning in 1956, met with
repeated and fierce opposition from landowners, and only passed in
1969 (Heinritz 1975: 33). From the reformers' perspective, the peasants'
opposition to agricultural reforms was nothing more than tedious paro-
chialism. "Government has failed to realize that the peasant-farmer is
by nature, as suspicious, obstinate and unprogressive as any human be-
ing can be. The whole world to him is his land, his home and the village
coffee-shop. He would never go to the nearest town or even write to ob-
tain advice. In fact, he would often treat any friendly suggestion as to the
crops he grows or the way he cultivates his land as one made against his
proper interests" (Lanitis 1992 [1944]: 70). Yet, acts of opposition against
land reforms also contained an ethno-political dimension. According to
the Turkish Cypriot Minister of Defense, the land consolidation mea-
sures of the early 1960s constituted a kind of Greek "land-grabbing exer-
cise" that violated the constitution (Orek 1971).
The agricultural reforms mark an important shift from traditional
land use patterns to modern ones. Certainly, local patterns of land use
were slow to change. The reforms not only met with repeated opposi-
tion of farmers but were also compromised by the inevitable inertia of
a well-established system. However, legal foundations were laid down
with the new law, while former practices of land use were marginal-
ized as backward impediments to progress and prosperity. In ecological
terms, the land reform entailed the discontinuation and eventual loss of
environmental practices that were well-adapted to the Mediterranean
environment of the island. The commodification of land and the institu-
tionalization of individual property as the sole form of ownership, which
was to change property relations and social dynamics within Cypriot so-
ciety, permitted the rise of a dynamic real estate market. Clothed in the
guise of modernization, the land reform of 1946 thus literally removed
the "ground" for trans-societal environmental cooperation, and should
be included as a key date in the chronology of the Cyprus conflict.
The first part of the twentieth century sees a gradual transforma-
tion of the traditional rural economy of Cyprus, furthered along by the


Sharing Traditions of Land Use and Ownership 51

processes of urbanization and emigration. By the mid-century, most
landowners no longer depended on agriculture as their sole source of
income. According to the census of 1960, only about 50 percent of the
privately owned arable land was being cultivated by the owner, while
about 40 percent of agricultural land belonged to "non-farmers" (Hein-
ritz 1975: 34). As a result, the system of management farming estab-
lished itself as the dominant form of agricultural work, replacing other
models of communal work, such as shareholding or cooperative farming
(Heinritz 1975: 63).
In addition to this decoupling of land ownership from agricultural la-
bor, the value of land was now determined within the context of a thriv-
ing real estate market. The prices for the different types of land were
subject to high regional variability and reflected the priorities of urban-
ization and of newly emergent industries, above all the tourism sector."
Most lucrative were those pieces of land that were suitable for construc-
tion, such as the dry land in the plains of the urban outskirts of Nicosia,
but also the coastal areas, which due to their sandy soil and salty ground
water had not been useful for cultivation.
Despite the decline of the actively farming population, agricultural
productivity increased steadily. This was mainly achieved on perennially
irrigated fields (such as citrus plantations), which yielded more produce
in comparison to dry farming in areas that depended on seasonal rain-
fall. The proliferation of this form of intensive agriculture was furthered
by government-subsidized construction of the water infrastructure nec-
essary for the transformation of dry land into irrigated land. The increas-
ingly invasive ways of tapping ground water created an unsustainable
industry that further contributed to the severe water shortages on the
island (Heinritz 1975: 200). This problem was also exacerbated through
market speculations. In many cases, the owner who had installed the
infrastructure for irrigation on a piece of land did not intend to use it for
agricultural purposes, but rather planned to resell it for a higher price.
This form of "upgrading" dry land was conducted without regard for
groundwater limitations, putting the entire form of irrigated farming at
risk (Ibid.: 78).
The advances in agriculture and the profits of the real estate market
did not benefit the farming population, but rather those who did not de-
pend on agricultural income. "Non-farmers"-urban Cypriots (doctors,
lawyers or government officials), British customers, or Cypriots living in
Britain-were thus at ease to buy land solely to use it as asset for market
speculation (Heinritz 1975: 92).12
The real estate market not only catalyzed the emergence of a new
land-holding class; it also provided another setting in which the Cyprus


52 Irene Dietzel

conflict unfolded, not least because it provided the possibility to accumu-
late the financial resources necessary for political campaigns. Between
1950 and 1970, the Orthodox Church sold large portions of its real estate,
in part to further the activities of EOKA, the Greek national paramilitary
organization that fought against British colonial rule and for the union of
Cyprus with Greece (Enosis). The Orthodox Church also retained sub-
stantial assets, especially those in the non-agrarian sector (Heinritz 1975:
86). Moreover, it was within the context of the land market in which the
inequalities between the ethnic groups were first manifest and where dis-
crimination against the Turkish Cypriot minority took material form.
This is exemplified in the land transactions following the first violent
clashes between the communities. In the course of the intercommunal
fighting of 1963-64, a large part of the Turkish Cypriot population emi-
grated to enclaves under Turkish Cypriot administration. The relocation
mainly affected Turkish Cypriots from mixed villages, as well as from
smaller Turkish villages that were surrounded by predominantly Greek
settlements. According to Turkish Cypriot sources, approximately 20,000
people (about 20 percent of the entire community) left their homes in
order to move to the enclaves.13 Only a quarter of the total number of
refugees returned to their homes in the following years. By 1970 about
15,000 members of the Turkish Cypriot community remained displaced
(Heinritz 1975: 89).14
Maintaining a normal life and economy within the various enclaves
that lay scattered over the island constituted a very complicated logis-
tical act (Brey and Heinritz 1988). Given the mixed settlement patterns
and the extension of traditional agricultural networks, Turkish Cypriots'
land holdings, too, were dispersed and fragmented. Enclave conditions
now made it difficult to cultivate or even access those Turkish Cypriot
properties that were located too far from the enclave. Some of these
holdings remained deserted, while others were used by Greek Cypriots
who could be persuaded to pay a lease on them. The threat of planned
and systematic acquisitions of Turkish Cypriot land by Greek Cypriots
prompted the Turkish Cypriot leadership to issue a ruling that restricted
all sales to intra-communal deeds or, if inter-communal, to exchanges
with Greek Cypriot property of equal value. However, this ruling was
often circumvented by exchanging the land in question with Greek Cy-
priot property of lesser value, while the difference was paid out covertly
(Heinritz 1975: 90).
In retrospect, the shared spaces of Ottoman Cyprus appear a far-re-
moved reality. Certainly, ethnic boundaries did not dissolve within the
peasant context, yet they often remained secondary in the face of a com-
mon peasant lifestyle that was based on shared agricultural practices


Sharing Traditions of Land Use and Ownership 53

and environmental strategies. The relative lack of social stratification in
Ottoman society, the mosaic co-residence of Christians and Muslims
as well the predominance of cooperative strategies of polyculture facil-
itated the dissemination of what might be called a "common concept of
nature" across ethnic divides. In other words, neighbors shared similar
sets of botanical, zoological, and edaphic knowledge of their region, ex-
changed in day-to-day communication and encoded in many local reli-
gious customs and folklore practices.15
From Land Dispute to Property Issue:
Reconsidering the "Ground" of Coexistence and Conflict
Under Ottoman conditions of coexistence, land disputes appear as com-
mon forms of conflict between the particular interests of local resource
user groups. These conflicts rarely produced ethnic discord; rather they
provided reasons for inter-ethnic solidarity. In that way, property dis-
putes of the Ottoman and early British period differ substantially from
those conflicts that make up the current "property issue" or the dispute
over properties that has emerged since the island's division in 1974. The
latter arises from the discrepancies between Turkish and Greek Cypriot
estimations of the actual land holdings of their communities, the treat-
ment of the property left behind by the displaced population, as well
as the conflicting claims for restitution versus remission of property.
Its history is a recent one. To the Turkish Cypriot community, it also
echoes the losses of land through colonial intervention, such as the dis-
tribution of Evkaf (plural of vakif, or religious foundation) properties to
Orthodox peasants during the early part of British rule; Turkish Cypriot
accusations of "land grabbing" during the agricultural reform period; or
the sales of Turkish Cypriot properties to Greek Cypriots following the
first wave of displacement after 1963. While these modern land disputes
seem to have lost the particularity of local neighborhood interests, they
convey the impression of uniform ethnic communities with essentially
opposing interests in the matter. Since the 1990s, the issue has gained
an international dimension through several legal cases against Turkey
brought to the European Court of Human Rights by Greek Cypriot in-
dividuals, who decided to take measures against their expropriation
following their displacement in 1974 (for a discussion of the "property
issue" see Scott 1998; Gurel and Ozersay 2006; Kyriacou 2009; Trim-
ikliniotis and Sojka 2012).
Still, it is helpful to conceive of the current "property issue" as just
a recent facet of the long history of inter-ethnic property relations in


54 Irene Dietzel

Cyprus. The issue has lost nothing of its historical complexity and rep-
resents the one aspect of the conflict that proves the hardest to solve.
There is one feature common to all attempts at restitution, remission,
and compensation of property: in order to allow for a smooth transac-
tion, the value of land has to be redefined in terms of its monetary, or
market, value. While the commodification of land and houses may seem
a practical step toward a solution of individual disputes, the historical,
biographical, and deeply emotional baggage associated with these con-
tested properties is not easily eradicated. On both sides of the border,
Cypriots continue to "assert a model of property as embodying partic-
ular places, social relationships and personal histories in which ... the
'other side' and the idea of the island 'as a whole' play a part" (Scott 1998:
158). The current "property issue" thus reverberates a long history of
deep involvement of people with their physical environment, a history
that is enmeshed in the fabric of mixed settlements and agricultural net-
works. Its Mediterranean characteristics as well as the complexity of the
Ottoman system of land tenure were central parameters for local config-
urations of coexistence. The history of Cypriot property relations should
therefore be explored for its potential for future solutions rather than
seen as an old-fashioned relic of the past.
Irene Dietzel completed her Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University
of Erfurt, where she also participated in the research project "Mobili-
sation of Religion in Europe." Her latest work focuses on religion and
ecology in the Mediterranean. The arguments of the present chapter are
further developed in Irene Dietzel (2014), The Ecology of Coexistence
and Conflict in Cyprus: Exploring the Religion, Nature and Culture of a
Mediterranean Island (Berlin: de Gruyter).
Notes
1. This applied primarily to the properties that were subject to agricultural
use, like fields, gardens, or grazing grounds. Residential patterns, however,
displayed a number of ethnic differences in terms of spatial organization.
Muslim villages, as well as Muslim family homesteads in mixed villages,
were characterized by a larger inner domestic sphere, given the religious
reasons for the spatial segregation of women. In contrast, neighborhood
relations in Greek villages tended to be maintained in the open (Charalam-
bous 1998). The rural context also differed from the urban settings of the
island's towns and villages. Here, spatial segregation of ethnic communities
was more prevalent, probably due to the occupational specialization of eth-
nic communities in distinct crafts and trades (Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou
2009: 234).


Sharing Traditions of Land Use and Ownership 55

2. In 1960, the proportion of urban to rural population was 38.1 percent to
61.9 percent (of a total population of 573,500). In 1973, 42.2 percent of Cy-
priots lived in urban areas, while the rural population amounted to 57.8
percent (of a population of 631,800) (Brey and Heinritz 1988: 12).
3. A state-appointed judge who rules according to Islamic Law.
4. The fact that internal solidarity of local communities and the tax-paying
ability of their villages were closely linked is also emphasized by Hadjikyr-
iacou. The levy of a "lump sum" (maktu) from entire villages thus necessi-
tated a certain level of cooperation, which was in peril when the economic
situation was dire (2011: 277).
5. The summary of the Ottoman Land Code is adapted from the works of
Harris (2007: 176ff) and Christodoulou (1959: 72ff).
6. See Jennings (1999) on the established property rights of women in the
Ottoman legal system.
7. The "commons" are defined here as those natural resources that are accessi-
ble to all members of a local community. It has been the subject of a lengthy
debate whether all human societies are bound to deplete the commons
through actions of unconstrained individual self-interest (Hardin 1968), or
whether traditional or indigenous societies have developed mechanisms to
protect and maintain them.
8. Colonialists have usually portrayed the phenomenon of shifting cultivation
with negative connotations-a fact that reflects a limited understanding of
this form of agriculture. French colonialists termed this method "nomad-
isme agricole;" Dutch colonialists called it "roofbouw" (robber agriculture)
(Dove and Carpenter 2008: 26). In Cyprus, the British colonialists called
this method "fitful cultivation" (Harris 2007: 138).
9. Christodoulou gives the following example: "A holding [of water] here re-
fers to each owner's aggregate holding that is made up of a number of reg-
istered rights to irrigation on various occasions in a number of localities
within the village area with water from the various divisions of the Kythrea
Spring. Such rights are more often held in undivided shares, the co-owners
being at times numerous. The largest aggregate holding, amounting to 183
hours every fortnight, is that of a parish church; the least does not exceed
12 seconds in the fortnight. About one-quarter of the owners of water pos-
sess neither land nor trees" (Christodoulou 1959: 90).
10. The danam is an aerial measurement used widely throughout the Ottoman
Empire. In Cyprus it came to denote an area of approximately one thousand
square meters. The danam was introduced in the mid-nineteenth century
in an effort to standardize, replacing the lift as measuring unit for arable
land, which defined an area that could be ploughed by a pair of oxen in a
day. The gft varied throughout the empire according to the climatic and
topographical conditions of the locality (Islamoglu 2004: 297).
11. The tourism industry grew substantially in the years 1966-67, once the
upheavals of the conflict of 1963-64 had ebbed. At that time the number
of foreign arrivals to Cyprus increased yearly by 25 percent. The northern
coast of the island experienced the fastest growth rates of touristic devel-


56 Irene Dietzel

opment. By 1974, the district of Kyrenia had recorded the most land sales
(Heinritz 1975: 80).
12. In most cases, the construction of hotels followed after the plot of land had
changed its proprietor. The first sales of dry land affected the group of "full-
time farmers"-Cypriot peasants who depended entirely on agricultural
work for income. While the land was purchased for its agricultural value, it
was resold following a re-estimation of its value for the building and tourist
sectors, often at several times the original price (Heinritz 1975: 81-85).
13. The number of Turkish villages left deserted was 112, while Turkish Cypri-
ots left 59 of the 146 mixed villages (Heinritz 1975: 89).
14. Alternative sources cite an even higher number of displaced Turkish Cypri-
ots, estimating a total of 25,000 displaced persons, while only about 2,000
were able to return by 1970 (www.prio-cyprus-displacement.net).
15. In Ottoman Cyprus, local religious practices tended to blur, rather than
accentuate differences of ethno-religious belonging. As in other Mediter-
ranean settings, the peasant context of Cyprus holds numerous examples
of shared practices of devotion, common places of worship and even entire
syncretic communities. For an involved discussion, see Dietzel (2014).
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+ Chapter 2 +

Intersecting Religioscapes
in Post-Ottoman Spaces
Trajectories of Change, Competition,
and Sharing of Religious Spaces
ROBERT M. HAYDEN
Introduction
The term "post-Ottoman space" seems to be unproblematic: places
that had been part of the Ottoman Empire, but then ceased to be so. Yet
the matter is hardly simple. The Ottoman Empire, like many other pol-
ities, expanded and then contracted. Thus Pecs, Hungary, and for that
matter, Budapest, which were within the Ottoman Empire at its farthest
reaches in central Europe in the late seventeenth century, should be
considered as much post-Ottoman space as the Balkan territories that
were the last to be "liberated;' in 1912, even though Ottoman rule in
Hungary and Croatia ended more than two centuries earlier than it did
in Macedonia and Albania. At the other extreme, we cannot speak of
"Ottoman space" before there was at least an Ottoman state, if not yet
empire. This means that we must look at the varieties of transformations
of the first Ottoman capital, Bursa, over a very long period-from 1326
until the end of Ottoman rule there, first by the Greek occupation in
1920-22, then by the achievement of control there by the forces of the
new Turkish state, as well as the abolition of the Sultanate in 1922 and
the founding of the Republic in 1923. There was not simply an Ottoman
Empire and then post-Ottoman period, even in that one city. The varia-
tions in historical periods, national groups, and other elements of Otto-
man history are at least as complex as those of any other major empire,
so looking for commonalities in the making and unmaking of space as
"Ottoman" from Budapest to Basra, and from Sarajevo to Kars, would


60 Robert M. Hayden

seem an impossible task, even were we not to consider the historical
trajectory of a single place, like Bursa from 1326 through 1923.
Yet there was a common way of marking a territory as Ottoman, from
the very start of the Empire. From the founder of the dynasty, Osman,
through the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, the Ottoman ruler was a
Muslim and the Ottoman state was grounded on Islam. This was noth-
ing unusual, of course. From the very beginning of Islam, Muslims con-
fronted Byzantium, and Muslim leaders who became rulers did so by
conquering territories ruled until then by Christians (Evans and Ratliff
2012). The Christian populations did not disappear, but they were sub-
ordinated to Muslims, and this subordination took the form of, among
other things, imposing physical signs of the superiority of Islam on land-
scapes that had until then been marked by signs of the superiority of
Christianity. With the weakening or collapse of Ottoman authority in
various regions of the Balkans, as shown below, these markers of Muslim
dominance were supplanted by markers of Christian dominance. This
means that there were common ways of marking territory that became
Ottoman, on the one hand, and post-Ottoman, on the other, reflect-
ing the fact that the Christian and Muslim populations were engaged
in what a Bulgarian historian, analyzing four hundred years of interac-
tion between Muslims and Christians at key religious sites in the former
Bulgarian capital of Veliko Tarnovo, calls "mutual provocation" (Parveva
2002: 52), a pattern of interaction that my colleagues and I have defined
more generally as "antagonistic tolerance" (Hayden 2002), explained
below.
Other chapters in this volume examine forms of difference such as
gender and class, rather than religion, and Rebecca Bryant in her in-
troduction reminds us of Karen Barkey's argument that the Ottoman
Empire valued differences. Bryant also notes that the extent to which
religious distinctions mattered in daily life "differed between village and
town, between center and periphery, and between different periods of
Ottoman rule" (this volume, p. 13). Yet it is necessary to recall that there
was a hierarchy of statuses, using the model of hierarchy proposed by
Louis Dumont and recently reinvigorated by Joel Robbins, in which the
superior value encompasses the inferior one (Dumont 1980; Robbins
and Siikala 2014). In the Ottoman Empire and in post-Ottoman spaces,
the religious identity was superior to the others, in that each of these
others was encompassed within it. For example, a woman would rarely
be seen as only that, but would of necessity be regarded by others, and
regard herself, as a Muslim woman, or a Christian one, or a Jewish one,
to give major classifications; there are other possibilities within these
larger categories (Baumgarten 2008; Green 2008). Similarly, peasants


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 61

were not just a single category of tax-paying common people; they were
also grouped as Muslims or alternatively, as various specified others,
who were subject to taxes not imposed on Muslims. While patterns of
interaction varied between city and countryside, this seems also to have
involved individuals dealing with each other as members of religious
communities. Minority communities sometimes had greater autonomy
in the countryside than in cities, but their autonomy was tenuous since
there could still be overriding involvement from the metropolitan center
(Catlos 2014).
Differences between members of different religious communities in
formerly Ottoman spaces were and are marked by names, some food
prohibitions, following different ritual calendars, and overwhelmingly,
endogamous marriages. In this last category, while Muslim men could
take non-Muslim women as wives, the reverse was not true. Further-
more, conversion could only be into Islam, conversion from Islam being
strongly negatively sanctioned. Focusing on the changing formations
of religious dominance is thus not only a way to identify Ottoman and
post-Ottoman spaces, but also to identify a primary social category that
encompassed other elements of identity, which were subordinated to re-
ligious identity.
Of course, recognizing the importance of the categories of religious
identities reinforced in multiple ways is not to assert that there is some
essential quality to any of them, but rather only to recognize the impor-
tance of social phenomena: people themselves used these categories, ap-
parently believing in their validity even as they may often have adopted
cultural practices from each other. In this regard, I must question the
position asserted in some other chapters in this volume, that the bor-
ders between the religious communities were "blurred" when members
identifying themselves as belonging to different religions interacted. A
leading researcher in the field summed up the findings of a volume on
sharing religious sites in the Mediterranean by saying that "while the hy-
brid practices are striking, mixing with individuals of a different religion
does not result, so to speak, in any evident damage to existing religious
identities. Indeed, these 'transgressions' usually appear to be associated
with the original religious polarization" (Albera 2012: 243). Such contin-
ued "polarizations" are a common finding of researchers on sites shared
by members of different religious communities.
Sharing of sites does not mean sharing of identity. I am reminded
of the Ottoman-era tombstones exhibited inside a Bulgarian museum
that in situ had shown Muslim names in the Arabic script above ground,
but also carried crosses with Christian names, in Cyrillic, below ground,
both names referring to the same person. Even obvious syncretism does


62 Robert M. Hayden

not lead to shared identities. Observational studies of Christians and
Muslims at shrines frequently attended by members of both groups have
been very clear: from Hasluck in 1913 through very recent studies in
Bulgaria nearly a century later, members of these communities main-
tain their separate religious identities, and avoid engaging in some of the
characteristic forms of worship of the other religion. As one recent study
put it, at sites in which members of two or more religious communities
interact, "[c]ooperation between believers from different religious tradi-
tions should not be mistaken for religious syncretism. Deep down, this
... is a cultural strategy developed by members of both groups for an-
ti-syncretic purposes, that is to preserve the religious autonomy of each
group" (Lubanska 2013: 107). We have no reason to believe that such
strategies were different in the Ottoman period.
If we pay attention to the processes of marking and unmarking Otto-
man space through manifestations of dominance of Islam or Christian-
ity, we are forced to consider the circumstances under which they take
place, and thus also the trajectories of relations between the religious
communities. Seen in this light, "peaceful coexistence" is not so much a
condition that can be disrupted, as a manifestation of relations at times
when the dominance of one group over another is so firmly established
that it need not be imposed, and cannot be much countered. By focusing
on the physical forms used to mark dominance, we can also trace the tra-
jectories of domination and its decline, and thus of periods of peaceful
interaction with those of contestation.
Marking and Unmarking Space as Ottoman
Let us begin with the very start of Ottoman rule in Bursa. Osman died
two years before Bursa was captured, but his son and successor Orhan
had him buried in the most prominent building of the formerly Chris-
tian town, the "silver dome" of a monastery complex ( agaptay 2011:
52-53). Upon his own death, Orhan was buried in the main church
of the same complex (Ibid.). Cagaptay argues that the early Ottomans
thereby "transferred the confessional loci" in the city by adapting these
Byzantine religious structures into their developing Ottoman design. In
so doing, she argues, the Ottomans were demonstrating conquest and
power, but also incorporation of Christian elements into their empire
( agaptay 2011: 64-65). Thus we have apparent syncretism, but in an
effort to persuade Christians to accept the legitimacy of Muslim rule
and even, possibly, emphasize the continuity of Islam with Christianity.


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 63

Such appropriation of the most prominent Christian structures was
a common feature of Ottoman conquest, as seen at Constantinople in
1453, Belgrade in 1521, and Pecs in 1545. In all of these cases, literally
the first action of the conquering Ottoman (Mehmet II in Constantino-
ple, Suleyman in Belgrade and Pecs) was to convert the largest church
into a mosque. Thereafter, in all of these cases, the city soon came to be
dominated by mosques and other structures associated with Islam, and
in ways that quite literally imposed Muslim dominance on the cities.
The early Ottoman development of Bursa has recently been studied
using advanced geo-spatial technologies. Employing GIS data and vari-
ous mapping techniques, a Turkish-Japanese research team found that
the first Ottoman mosques were placed so as to maximize their visibility
throughout the city. These researchers suggest that the Ottoman emper-
ors controlled the city through the strategic placement of mosques in
what had been a Christian city (Dostoglu et al. 2004). A later publication
by members of the same team argued that not only was one of the largest
mosques built on a site of high visibility, but that after the mosque was
built the road network was altered to increase the mosque's visibility
even further (Kensuke et al. 2004).
Cagaptay sees the transformation of Bursa as a model for later Ot-
toman adaptations of conquered Christian towns, in the region and
beyond. Another tendency was to build outward from the old town in
ways that were more clearly Muslim in origin and did not connect to the
Byzantine past. In fact, Bursa's contested history continued: the Greek
army conquered it in the invasion of 1920 and held it as their headquar-
ters until their defeat and withdrawal in 1922. We know that they re-
converted Byzantine churches that had been converted into mosques in
nearby towns such as Trilye/Triglia and Iznik/Nicea, but we do not have
details of those conversions, which were in any event reversed after not
only the Greek army but the Christian civilian population was driven
out in 1922-23 (Hayden et al. 2011). Remarkably, however, in October
2012, renovations in the Muradiye Mosque (1426) in Bursa revealed
blue stencils of Greek flags under the whitewash, obviously from the
time of Greek rule in 1920-22, but unknown until now (personal com-
munication from Dr. Tugba Tanyeri-Erdemir, 13 October 2012). These
Greek national icons indicate that the Greeks converted the mosque to
their own use at that time.
Since marking a space as Ottoman involved imposing a Muslim iden-
tity on major Christian structures within it, and then expanding the vis-
ibility of Islamic structures in a town, the reverse process also held true:
de-Ottomanization (at least outside the territory of today's Turkey) was


64 Robert M. Hayden

Figure 2.1. Minaret on the fourteenth century St. Nicholas Church in
Famagusta, Cyprus, converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest
in the sixteenth century. Aya Sofya mosque until 1954, then renamed Lala
Mustafa Pala Mosque (photo by Robert M. Hayden, October 2011).
marked by replacing the dominance of Muslim structures by dominant
Christian ones.
The case of Pecs is interesting. The Mosque of Kasim Pasha was built
between 1543 and 1545 on the site of what had been St. Bartholomew's
Church and using the stones of that church, but was (re)converted into
a Catholic church when the Ottomans were forced from Pecs, and re-
mains such today (Bachmann and Bachman 2010). This was hardly an
unusual case. In Belgrade, following the 1521 Ottoman conquest, ev-
ery church was destroyed or converted until the Hungarians took the
place in 1688 and then all mosques were converted or destroyed. After
the Ottomans took it again in 1690 they repaired the damaged mosques
and built a new one; but when the Austrians took the city in 1717 they
promptly destroyed the mosques or converted them. The Ottomans re-
turned in 1739 and again tore down churches while setting up mosques;
the third Austrian occupation from 1789 to 1791, again saw the destruc-
tion or conversion of mosques, until the final Ottoman conquest of Bel-
grade in 1791 led, again, to the repair of mosques and the destruction of
churches. Among the very first actions taken by Karadorde, the leader
of the First Serbian Uprising, when his troops took control of Belgrade
in 1806, was to convert the largest mosque into an Orthodox church.


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 65

Figure 2.2. St. Nicholas Church, Chania, Crete. Venetian fourteenth cen-
tury Catholic church, converted into a mosque by Ottomans in 1645, then
into a Greek Orthodox church in 1918. Note truncated minaret (photo by
Robert M. Hayden, May 2015).
While that uprising was suppressed in 1813, with Belgrade retaken and
the church reconverted into a mosque, with the establishment of the
Serbian principality in 1830 the power of the Ottomans was in decline,
so that when they were finally forced to abandon Belgrade in 1867, only


66 Robert M. Hayden

one small mosque remained in operation, and remains so today (on all
of this history, see Hayden 2005).
Sofia, Bulgaria, saw a history similar to that of Belgrade, with the Ot-
tomans destroying churches or converting them into mosques, and the
newly liberated Bulgarian state destroying mosques or converting them
into Bulgarian Orthodox churches (Hayden et al. 2011). Such cycles of
destruction/conversion/reconversion were not limited to capitals. One
of my favorite examples is the present-day Church of the Resurrected
Christ in Cacak, Serbia. The church still has visible signs of its last in-
carnation as a mosque between 1738 and 1805; but between 1560, when
the first mosque was built on the site by destroying a church there, until
1738, the town changed hands numerous times and the building went
through several cycles of transformation from mosque to church and
back again (Rajiv and Timotijevif 2011).
What marked a space as Ottoman, then, was the imposition of Mus-
lim religious structures in primary locations in the town or city con-
cerned, while marking it as no longer Ottoman involved displacing these
Muslim structures with Christian ones. This does not mean that, in ei-
ther case, all of the religious structures of the group that was suddenly
subordinated would be transformed or destroyed. On the contrary, we
know that very soon after taking Constantinople, Mehmet II issued or-
ders giving rights to the remaining Greek population and protecting
many of their churches (Inalcik 1969/70), and even though the Hagia
Sophia was immediately converted into a mosque, some of the Christian
iconography on the walls remained for decades afterwards (Necipoglu
1992). One small Byzantine church in Istanbul, St. Mary of the Mon-
gols, was never converted and remains functioning as a Greek Ortho-
dox church. Similarly, in Belgrade and Sofia, there are still functioning
Ottoman-era mosques, albeit small ones. In Triglea/Trilye, already men-
tioned, the Ottomans did indeed convert the largest of the Byzantine
churches there into a mosque in the sixteenth century, but five other
large churches remained functioning in a town that was overwhelmingly
majority Christian until the "population exchange" of 1923 forced the
Christian population to leave for Greece (Hayden et al. 2011).
Being marked by the Ottoman conquest in all of these places was
Muslim dominance over Christianity; this was the primary indicator
that a space was indeed Ottoman. And when a territory was brought out
of Ottoman rule, the physical markers of Muslim dominance-mosques,
minarets, tUrbes, and other structures-were destroyed or displaced by
more prominent Christian structures: churches, bell towers, and the
like (see, e.g., Miskovic 2011 on the transformations of urban space in


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 67

Belgrade during the transition from Ottoman to Serbian national rule).
This form of marking was constant, from the beginning of the empire
until past its end, and this consistency through time provides a means to
analyze the coexistence of the religious communities in the Ottoman pe-
riod, by considering the physical structures associated with each: their
distribution through time, and their features as indicators of dominance.
These are brought together in the concept of religioscape, the distribu-
tion in spaces through time of the physical manifestations of specific
religious traditions and of the populations that build them, as explained
below. First, however, it is necessary to consider what we mean by saying
that space is "shared" peacefully and less so.
Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing,
Dominance and Intertemporal Violence
My analysis differs from that of others in this volume because it draws
on concepts developed in the course of a five-year, multi-disciplinary,
and comparative research project on competitive sharing of religious
sites, which my colleagues and I have carried out via field research in
Bulgaria, India, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, and Turkey, with substantial ref-
erence to library resources on other places (see Hayden 2002; Hayden et
al. 2011; Hayden and Walker 2013; Hayden et al. 2016; and the website of
the project, http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/antagonistictolerance/AT_Main_
Page.html). We have developed a model of "antagonistic tolerance"
(hereafter, AT) to explain long-term patterns of relationship between
members of groups who identify themselves and each other as Self and
Other communities, differentiated primarily on the basis of religion, liv-
ing intermingled but rarely intermarrying (Hayden 2002). The religious
distinction is often accompanied by other differences, such as in nam-
ing, kinship, diet, and perhaps preferred methods of gaining a livelihood.
In this model, which was inspired by the work of F.W. Hasluck (1973
[1929]), contestation develops in a region in which one religious tradi-
tion is dominant when a community identified with a differing religion
arrives via trade or indigenous development.
The AT model holds that in such situations, there is "tolerance" in the
sense of enduring the presence of the other but not embracing it, so long
as one group is clearly dominant over others. Such dominance is indi-
cated in part by control of the primary identity of major religious sites.
However, when existing dominance is threatened, violence results, and
violence often accompanies the transformation of sites, which may hap-


68 Robert M. Hayden

pen when one group replaces the dominant position previously held by
another. The processes involved are long-term, though transformations
may take place in short periods.
A key feature of this model is consideration of the dominance of one
religious community over another, or over others, and of contestations
for dominance; we do not regard religion as likely to be irrelevant polit-
ically in any situation in which large groups self- and Other-identify as
different communities. Religious dominance is marked by control over
key religious sites, and the attainment of dominance leads to the trans-
formation of such places. The transformation of Hagia Sophia in Istan-
bul from a church into a mosque, or the conversion of the great mosque
of Cordoba into a church, are obvious examples; but the mosque in Cor-
doba stood in the place of the Gothic Christian church, which had re-
placed the Roman Christian one, which had replaced the Roman temple.
It is important to note that, often, members of a subordinated commu-
nity may visit religious sites claimed by the dominant one, and even per-
form some observances there. Syncretism may arise from such sharing,
even though dominance of one group over the other is clear.
The AT pattern is also one of intertemporal violence, either at times
when an existing structure of dominance of one group over others is
threatened or when existing dominance has been overturned. We adapt
the term intertemporal in part from economics, where it refers to dy-
namic decision making in regard to investment and consumption over
the course of a period of time, so that the present state of, for exam-
ple, an investment account is the result of a series of forward-looking
decisions made at earlier times. In international and comparative law,
intertemporality refers to the differences between the legal rules applied
to a factual situation at an earlier time and those applied at the time of
analysis, so that, for example, a decision granting ownership of property
to a party at an earlier time is not ordinarily challengeable later on the
grounds that the law changed ex post facto.
In the AT model, we envision relatively stable manifestations of dom-
inance that are both adjusted and reinforced by changes attempted by
the parties with greater or lesser success (drawing on the economic
meaning of intertemporal) but also liable to sudden transformations
when a change in dominance is effected (drawing on the legal meaning
of intertemporal). Thus the model is akin to what biologists describe
as punctuated equilibrium, as that term has been adopted for religious
studies by Mark C. Taylor (2007: 27): "periods of relative stability and
gradual change are interrupted by phase shifts that lead to structural
and morphological transformations" Even then, in many cases, violence
is likely to be only that which is necessary either to re-establish the ear-


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 69

lier dominance or to put in place the dominance of another group. After
that, relations between the communities involved may continue rela-
tively peaceably for centuries (see, e.g., Hayden et al. 2011).
Critics of the AT model generally disregard the intertemporality of
social relations between members of religious communities, preferring
instead to isolate specific brief periods in historical trajectories for anal-
ysis and largely ignoring what has occurred before and after. They also
analyze individual shrines as if they were isolated from other such sites,
focusing on what they see as primarily local actors. Such analyses reflect
the traditional anthropological framing of imagining an ethnographic
present and a locally delimited community. Yet they also manifest the
conceptual weaknesses of structural-functionalism, presuming stasis
in social relations among local communities and unable to deal with
change except as disruption of this static condition by the intervention
of outsiders.
Glenn Bowman's critique of the AT model through analysis of rela-
tions between members of different Christian churches at the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (Bowman 2011b) exemplifies this tacit
revival of structural functionalism. He posits an "existential consanguin-
ity ... when people live in relatively close proximity, engaging with each
other in quotidian activities" except when this is disrupted by external
religious leaders. He also says that "[e]ven manifestations of apparent
hostility between local Christians of different denominations, such as
the ritualised 'fights' which take place between Armenians and Greeks
... are traditional charades played out between men who, on the street,
are friends." Since Radcliffe-Brown (1965: 179) defined the function of
any recurring practice (here, the "ritual fights") as the role it plays in
maintaining the social structure (the "set of relations amongst unit en-
tities;' here the "existential consanguinity" of local Christians), Bowman
seems to have re-invented structural-functionalism. I understand the
normative appeal of seeing interaction within shrines as being deter-
mined primarily by the traditions of sanctity that mark them as sacred
to a local community that supposedly operates in harmony unless it is
disrupted from the outside. However, to do so is to make the same mis-
take as the structural-functionalists did when they analyzed the inher-
ently stabilizing effects in local communities of "tribal" institutions (e.g.,
kinship, law) without making reference to the institutions of the larger
colonial states that set the parameters on what the natives could do.
At the same time, ignoring the intertemporality of social relations be-
tween members of different religious communities also permits critics
of the AT model to ignore the reality of these communities as corporate
groups. Rogers Brubaker's dismissal of putative "groupism" has been


70 Robert M. Hayden

used to criticize the AT model (Henig 2014), but it is difficult to deny
that religious communities existed as corporate groups in the Ottoman
and post-Ottoman period. That individuals act in the name of corpo-
rate groups hardly negates the importance of considering the group as
a social actor, without assuming that the corporate group is internally
homogenous or is composed of "unitary collective actors with com-
mon purposes" (Brubaker 2004), though further discussion of Brubak-
er's model lies outside the scope of this chapter. Corporate groups, of
course, are in principle immortal, so an intertemporal frame of refer-
ence is needed to accommodate their relevance before, and after, any
particular ethnographic present, period of conflict, or post-conflict con-
figuration. By the same token, saying that the AT model sees periods of
peaceful interaction as "only temporary" misses the point that we always
anticipate change-neither peaceful interaction nor conflict are perma-
nent conditions, and in fact, we see the longer periods as being those of
peaceful interaction.
I should also make clear our view of the connection between religion
and violence. It has become popular in policy and political science cir-
cles to emphasize the differing worldviews of various religions, which
by definition are at variance, to say that violence is inevitable between
members of different religions, and that conflict at "contested" religious
sites is inevitable, intractable, and impervious to a rational solution (At-
ran et al. 2007; Ginges et al. 2007; Hassner 2009; Atran and Ginges 2012).
In part this position rests on a confusion between the necessarily totaliz-
ing worldviews of religions, which tend to explain the world in toto, (i.e.,
without remainder), with the political reality of a modern totalitarian
state (Bakic-Hayden 2002: 65-67). In fact, among the latter, only a few
attempts have been made to completely eradicate religion (in the name
of socialism, with the possible exceptions of the early years of the USSR
and of Albania among European socialist states) or even particular mi-
nority religions. Even the Islamic Republic of Iran tolerates Judaism and
Christianity, albeit antagonistically, since demographically and other-
wise the members of these communities do not pose any threat to it.
We see violence as likely only when dominance is under contention
and must be either acquired or (re)inforced. We also do not see religion
per se as inherently linked to violence, despite the fact that violence is
present in many a holy book. Rather, religion may be the key identifying
factor associated with a community and thus accepted as defining that
group as opposed to others. The importance of such distinctions, while
potentially strategic, are not static but may be subject to change with
new circumstances, reflecting their intertemporality. For example, Bow-
man (1993) has shown how Christian and Muslim Palestinians unite at


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 71

a shrine shared by members of both groups in the face of oppression of
both communities by the Israeli state, but that when Israeli occupation
was briefly lifted following the Oslo accords, the Muslims and Chris-
tians became much more opposed under the Muslim-dominated, and
Muslim-favoring, governance of the PLO (Bowman 2001).
Shared Space: Overlapping Religioscapes
and Indicators of Dominance
This brings us back to the nature of the "space" that we can call Ottoman
or post-Ottoman, and how it was shared. In the AT model, we refer to
groups that live intermingled, and our own initial conceptualization was
of individual sites in localities (neighborhoods, towns) where members
of different groups may live in the same neighborhoods, or in adjacent
neighborhoods. As our research progressed, however, we saw that it is
better to view shared religious sites as nodes in structures of social inte-
ractions between populations that distinguish themselves and each ot-
her as different, on religious grounds, through time. As a node, a single
site is not isolable from the social networks that interact at it. Thus a
Muslim site should be seen as linked to other Muslim sites, a Christian
site to other Christian sites, and all at varying scales. Scale here may
range from local communities to regional networks to those on a state
or imperial scale, and even between states/empires.
In our usage, "religioscape" refers to the distribution in spaces through
time of the physical manifestations of specific religious traditions and of
the populations that build them (Hayden and Walker 2013). Both the
population and the physical manifestations of the religion are compo-
nents of a religioscape; a physical artifact associated with a religion that
is no longer practiced may be evidence of a previous religioscape but
does not itself constitute a religioscape. Religioscapes as we define them
are inherently fluid: people move, taking their religious practices with
them, and potentially change the built environment, too, in ways that
reflect their beliefs. Yet the religioscape also reflects the connections
between people who regard themselves as holding the same beliefs, or
are regarded by others as doing so. The religioscape, then, is a social
space marked by physical icons, from small shrines to large complexes
of them, or even sacred cities. Indeed, complexes of places, or even ter-
ritories, may be imbued with religious meaning.
The situations we are interested in are those in which two populations
distinguished by differing religions inhabit the same territory. In such
cases, their religioscapes intersect, and the power relations of the two


72 Robert M. Hayden

groups will be displayed by features of the sites relative to each other. In
our work, we have identified two indexes of empirical indicators of dom-
inance, centrality and perceptibility. Centrality refers to location within
a settlement, or perhaps proximity to locations of important economic
or political activities.1 Perceptibility refers to features of a structure that
make it more perceptible: height, mass, color, projection of sound are
examples. In all cases, the greater the indicator, the higher the assertion
of dominance. Thus a building that is more centrally located is likely
to belong to the dominant community, as is a building that is taller, or
broadcasts sound better, or is more colorful than a nearby building of
another religious community. Centrality and perceptibility are co-rele-
vant factors, meaning that a shrine may exhibit a combination of these
attributes. A massive building with a high tower and amplified sound
in the center of a settlement would be dominant, but as these factors
vary, dominance may be challenged. A primary finding of our compar-
ative research, however, is that centrality is the key factor in indicating
dominance. That is, a religious structure that is at a central location is
presumed to reflect dominance over shrines at less central positions.
We can give some concrete examples from spaces that were soon
to be, or had just become, post-Ottoman. Let us start with one of the
most important indicators of perceptibility, height. Building churches
was generally prohibited in the Ottoman Empire, but it was possible to
"repair" older ones. Even so, churches could not be as tall as mosques
and were generally on the periphery of settlements that also contained
mosques (Gradeva 1994), and could not have bell towers; indeed, even
clock towers were resisted by many Muslims in the late Ottoman period
because they were said to resemble church bell towers (Uluengin 2010).
When the Ottoman Empire was losing its ability to govern in Bosnia and
tried to appease the Serbian population in Sarajevo by permitting the
construction of a large Orthodox church, the dedication of the church
(1872) was protected by 1,200 Ottoman troops, with cannon positioned
to bombard the city should trouble break out from among the local
Muslims, who were protesting not only against the construction of the
church, but especially against its having a bell tower (Donia 2006: 33-35).
Among the first actions taken after the end of Ottoman rule in 1878 in
both Bosnia and Bulgaria was that bell towers were added to churches, as
can be seen in the old Serbian church in Sarajevo (sv. Arhandela Mihaila
i Gavrila) and the 1859 cathedral in Plovdiv (sv. Bogoroditsa), both of
which received bell towers in 1880. Another example from northeastern
Bulgaria: near the center of the town of Suvorovo in northern Bulgaria,
a mid-nineteenth century church faces a sixteenth-century mosque. The
town now has a Christian majority, though it had a Muslim majority


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 73

under Ottoman rule. The minaret of the mosque is taller than the bell
tower of the church-but the minaret is topped by a cross, an unusual
feature (to say the least!) that both Christians and Muslims will point
out to visitors. Close-up pictures reveal that what looks like a cross from
the ground is actually a fleur de lis, quite an ambiguous symbol, and
while doubtless most townspeople know this, the general acceptance of
the icon as a cross acknowledges the local supremacy of the Christian
population of the town.
The interplay between centrality and perceptibility can be seen in Plo-
vdiv (Turkish: Filibe), Bulgaria, a former capital city and one of the first
parts of Bulgaria conquered by the Ottomans. The main Friday mosque,
the Muradiye, built apparently in the 1420s (Boykov 2009),2 is in the cen-
ter of the Ottoman town and actually the center of the place since the
Roman period: the mosque perches literally on the edge of a Roman am-
phitheater. Almost due east, up a hill via ulitsa Saborna (Cathedral St.),
is the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God (sv. Bogoroditsa), an 1850s
church with a bell tower added in 1880, two years after Ottoman rule
ended. The church is large, and taller than the mosque, but it is removed
from the center of the town. Even then, looking back at the mosque,
one sees that the minaret is at the same level as the church, and until
an earthquake in 1928, the minaret was actually higher than the roof of
the church-which makes the erection of the bell tower, even taller than
that, very understandable.
Other evidence on the importance of centrality can be seen in
Razgrad, also in northeastern Bulgaria, and still the center of one of the
few remaining concentrations of Turks in Bulgaria (S6zer 2012). The six-
teenth-century Ibrahim Pasha Mosque, one of the largest mosques in
the Balkans, is in the center of town. As of 2008, the mosque had been
closed for decades, which means that even though it is in the center of
the town, that center is denied to the Muslims, as sacred space; they are
limited to using a much smaller mosque outside the city center (Hande
S6zer, personal communication, 14 November 2012; see also Keil 1991).
Meanwhile, the 1860 St. Nicholas Church, on the outskirts of the town
when it was built (presumably without a bell tower), was massively re-
constructed (and a bell tower added) after the official independence of
Bulgaria, and again immediately after the fall of communism. Since the
town center is denied to the dominant Christian community (the Ibra-
him Pasha Mosque being too large and well-known to permit its de-
struction), the Muslims are denied use of it as well.
Dominance, though, is local, as can be seen in the one region of Bul-
garia in which ethnic Turks form a majority, around Kardjali/Karcali
(see S6zer 2012). The town itself is under the political control of the


74 Robert M. Hayden

main Turkish political party in Bulgaria, the Movement for Rights and
Freedoms [Hak ve Ozgarlakler Hareketi], and is one of the very few
towns in Bulgaria in which an Orthodox church is not located in the
center, but there is a mosque there. In the nearby town of Benkovski,
which has an almost exclusively Muslim population, is not only one of
the oldest mosques in the region (recently renovated as of 2008) but
also one of very few, if not the only, churches from the Tanzimat period
that is abandoned. When we saw it in July 2008, not only was the church
empty (though it did bear a sign saying it would be renovated), but the
church yard was being used to dry tobacco, the local cash crop. This
empty church would not be so surprising were it not for the fact that
so much effort and money has been put into renovating other churches
from the period, which are often referred to as "liberation churches" and
are seen as having been central to the Bulgarian national movement in
the nineteenth century. Indeed, a mural from the 1950s in the Plovdiv
Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God depicts a Turk whipping a crying
woman, a city dweller, and a priest, all in chains and at the head of a
column of other Bulgarians, with the title of "the church and the nation
in the struggle for liberation." Thus the local dominance of the Turks in
Kardjali lets them maintain mosques in the center of towns there, but
they are on the south-eastern periphery (the Greek border) of a post-
socialist Bulgaria defined very much in terms of its Orthodox Christian
heritage-with St. Ivan Rilski, carrying a cross, appearing on the one-lev
coin in use in the post-communist period.
By evaluating the nodes of religioscapes in accordance with the indi-
cators of centrality and perceptibility, we can get a very good picture of
which group is dominant at any given moment in time for which we can
obtain the relevant data; and by looking at the changing nodes of reli-
gioscapes through time, we can assess the development of dominance
by religiously-defined groups as well. To give the simplest of examples, a
map of religious sites in Sofia shortly before 1878 would have indicated
two small Orthodox churches near the Market Mosque and the Banya
Bai Mosque, much smaller and lower than either of them; an 1867 stone
church without a bell tower (St. Nedelya) nearby; slightly farther way
and on a hill was the sixth-century St. Sophia Church for which the city
was named but had been converted into a mosque; and there was also
a large mosque on another nearby hill, the Kara Camii (Black Mosque).
In terms of our indicators, the Muslim religioscape shows dominance:
the mosques were all larger than the churches, and on higher ground.
However, a map today would show the reverse: the two small Christian
churches remain, but the former Market Mosque is now the Museum
of the Archeological Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 75

the former Black Mosque has been transformed into the Church of the
Forty Martyrs, the St. Sophia church is once again a church, and there
is a larger St. Nedelya, erected in 1933 to replace the earlier one (which
had gotten a bell tower in 1879), plus the second-largest cathedral in the
Balkans, the Aleksander Nevsky Cathedral, planned in 1888 and built in
the first decade of the twentieth century, on a point even higher than St.
Sophia and the Forty Martyrs Church. The Muslim religoscape still ex-
ists, but is much reduced in size, and the remaining nodes on it are dom-
inated by the nodes of the Orthodox Christian religioscape, in terms of
height, elevation, size and amplification of sound. On this last point, the
churches have bell towers, but the mosque is not permitted to amplify
the call to prayer.
Intersecting Religioscapes
Most intriguing, perhaps, are those situations in which two religioscapes
intersect, in that a single site is claimed as a node on each of them. Saints'
shrines are common places of such overlap, from India (where a saint
may have both a Hindu identity and a Muslim one, and be venerated as
such by members of each group [Hayden 2002]) through the Balkans
and indeed, the wider Mediterranean world (see Albera and Courou-
cli 2012; Bowman 2012). The AT model anticipates such intersections,
drawing on Hasluck's analysis that "ambiguous shrines" those shared by
members of more than one religion, represented a "period of equipoise"
in the relations of power between them. To us, what is most interesting
is to analyze the trajectories of the development of the differing reli-
gioscapes that can turn a site from belonging to one group, through the
period of equipoise when it is also claimed by another, to perhaps a stage
in which the first group has been largely displaced.
Such a site can be seen in Obrochishte, in northeastern Bulgaria, in
what was clearly built as the tUrbe of a Muslim saint and has long been
identified as the tomb of the saint Ak-yazul Baba. The site has been a
museum since at least the communist period, and a booklet from the
time (Margos n.d.) presents a straightforward archaeological and his-
torical analysis of the site, as having been built in the sixteenth century
and being similar in design to other tUrbes in the region. There was also
a dervish connection: the site has not only the tomb (tirbe) but also
an additional building which Margos (n.d.) identifies as an imaret (soup
kitchen) or a tekke. The latter seems more likely, since Margos reports
that in 1884 (thus six years after Bulgarian independence) a Czech histo-
rian visited the site and found one remaining dervish. It is also possible


76 Robert M. Hayden

that the site was Alevi or Bektashi, and the second building a cem hall,
though, as Hande Sozer (2012) has shown, the Alevi presence among
Bulgarian Turks often passes unnoticed.
In any event, there seems little reason to doubt that the site was built
for the use of Muslims, during the Ottoman period. By the time of our
visit in 2008, however, while the site was still officially a museum, the
usual internal trappings of the tUrbe of a sufi saint were accompanied by
Christian icons, as well as by crosses,3 and the site was identified by the
museum employee on duty as actually being that of a Christian saint,
Atanas, the "good friend" of Ak-yazul Baba, rather than of the Baba
himself. In fact, the identities of the saint(s) were merged in the telling,
with the ultimate climax of the story being that Atanas had been so un-
fortunate as to fall in love with a Muslim woman, something that was
prohibited and thus led to his execution. Ak-yazul Baba, heartbroken,
knew that to build a tomb for his friend would not be permitted by the
Ottoman rulers, so in one night he built the tUrbe, saying it was a tomb
for himself, but actually burying Atanas there and then leaving the place.
The website of the museum, now called the "Monastery of Akyazala
Baba-St. Atanas'4 does not tell this story but refers to the place as "The
bi-ritual prayer house of the Muslim saint Akyazala Baba and of his
Christian counterpart St. Athanasius," in contrast to the booklet from
the communist period, which referred only to the Baba. The website
identifies the site as having been built as a Bektashi tomb in the six-
teenth century but that in the late nineteenth century it became a "bi-
ritual sanctuary" visited by Muslims and Christians, presumably follow-
ing Bulgarian liberation from Ottoman rule in 1878. The website notes
that Christians believe that there had been a monastery at the site before
the Muslims came and turned the monastery into a Dervish lodge/tekke,
a claim made of many other tekkes in the Balkans and Anatolia. The web-
site, which is in English as well as Bulgarian, is thus more reserved than
the Bulgarian-speaking museum employee whom we met in 2008, who
presented the site as the tomb of the Christian, St. Atanas, telling the
story related above.
In terms of the balance between the religious communities, in this
part of Bulgaria Muslims have almost vanished, and the site is increas-
ingly visited by Orthodox Christians, not only Bulgarian but also Russian
and Romanian (whose border is only about forty kilometers distant). In
May 2009, a "folklore fair-St. Anasthasius" was held at the site for the
first time.5 The site thus seems to be at a stage of transformation that
is likely to turn it into a predominantly Christian shrine, just as Has-
luck's model, and ours, would predict. We note that this transformation
is taking place in the context of a democratic Bulgaria, a member of the


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 77

European Union and, thus, presumably dedicated to minority rights,
comprehensive religious freedoms, and cultural preservation. The mu-
seum is facilitating this change.
Other cases of intersecting religoscapes have been presented by per-
haps the most persistent critic of the AT model, Glenn Bowman. He and
other scholars have done an excellent job of providing detailed ethnog-
raphy, including a short book with a separate analysis of certain shrines
along with professional photographs (Koneska and Jankuloski 2009)
and accompanying film (Koneska 2009). Those correspond to and doc-
ument further sites in Macedonia that Bowman has presented in several
publications (Bowman 2010, 2012b) and as the cover photograph of an
edited book (Bowman 2012). We focus on the Sveti Nikola church in
Makedonski Brod, Macedonia, which "contains the turbe (tomb) of a
Bektashi saint, Hadir Baba;" and which is visited by members of other
Sufi orders as well as by Sunni Muslims. The Christians also hold rituals
there. The place shows very interesting forms of syncretism: various pic-
tures show Muslims praying and, in the background, there are icons of
Orthodox Christian saints, and another icon of an Orthodox saint is on
the very grave of the Bektashi saint to which they are praying. The flat
stone marking the grave, covered by a green cloth, is used by the Chris-
tians as a table for their icon and offerings during their rituals. Several
striking photographs in the Koneska and Jankuloski volume show Bek-
tashi and Helveti Muslims praying (separately) toward the grave, which
has on top of it an Orthodox icon of St. George. Bowman also notes that
a Sufi prayed towards the iconostasis that the Orthodox added to the
building, thus towards the Christian altar, rather than toward the grave
of the saint.
Bowman interprets all of this as a form of "mixing" that is actually
a symbiotic "sharing" (Bowman's quotes) of the shrine (Bowman 2010:
202), and reflects "an institutional and personal openness on the part
of Orthodox caretakers towards the presence of Muslim 'others"' (Bow-
man 2010: 203). However, this ignores the main factor of the AT model:
dominance. We have argued that when one group is clearly dominant
over another, the subordinated group may be permitted to attend the
shrines of the dominant group. This fits perfectly the site of the St. Nich-
olas church in Makedonski Brod: the population of the town is now al-
most completely Orthodox Christian, so dominance of that group is not
threatened, and the building is clearly controlled by the Christians. They
determine when the Muslims can utilize the place, and the appropria-
tion of the stone covering the grave of the Bektashi saint to serve as a
table for Christian services, even when the Muslims are conducting their
own rituals, is a striking manifestation of dominance. Furthermore, de-


78 Robert M. Hayden

spite the presence of elements of each others' iconography in the build-
ing, there is no evidence that the Muslims regard themselves as anything
other than, severally, Bektashi, Halveti, and Sunni Muslims, nor are the
Christians in doubt as to their identity as Macedonian Orthodox Chris-
tians; none of these identities is in question, and neither are they in any
way mixed, shared, or mingled. Koneska's essay (2009) and film make
these separations literally visible, especially in the original, Macedonian,
version of the bilingual text, and in the spoken Macedonian heard in the
film.
The importance of both the trajectory of events and the scale of rel-
evant religioscapes can be seen by revisiting Bowman's citation of Has-
luck for the proposition that Orthodox Christians rarely if indeed ever
convert mosques into churches unless the site had previously been a
church (Bowman 2010: 217n13). Hasluck did his fieldwork before World
War I, while the Ottoman Empire was still in existence. After final Bul-
garian independence in 1908, and the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire
from Macedonia in 1912, Orthodox Christians did indeed convert some
mosques into churches, including those in Sofia and Uzundzhovo Bul-
garia (Hayden et al. 2011). Heath Lowry (2009: 61-93) describes sev-
eral more such transformations in northern Greece, and notes that this
process is understudied. The trajectory of events following the demise
of the Ottoman Empire changed the possibilities for contesting domi-
nance between Christians and Muslims, and this change in possibility
had local effects but on a large scale. Hasluck's early twentieth-century
ethnography thus reflected the structure of dominance of Muslims over
Christians in the late Ottoman period but not those in post-Ottoman
space, and cannot be taken as evidence of an Orthodox Christian aver-
sion to converting Muslim shrines.
What we find most lacking in ethnographic accounts of interaction
that seems non-conflictual is serious consideration of the trajectories
of events that set up the systems of dominance that, in our model, allow
for such peaceful situations. We believe that the more fully developed
approach to competitive sharing put forth in this article should serve
to clarify that both long periods of peaceful interaction as well as brief
ones of violence can be explained by the AT model, which identifies the
conditions that promote both.
Contiguous Religioscapes as Demarcating Borders
Historical processes may lead to the physical separation of religious com-
munities that had been living intermingled, peacefully through voluntary


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 79

processes of migration, or violently and suddenly through the processes
formerly called "population exchanges" and now called "ethnic cleans-
ing." In such cases, what had been nodes in religioscapes may be aban-
doned, destroyed, or transformed into nodes in the religioscape of the
other group. This last form of transformation may be exemplified by the
sixteenth-century mosque in Uzhundzhovo, Bulgaria, that since 1908
has been an Orthodox Church (Hayden et al. 2011), or the mid-nine-
teenth-century Orthodox church in Derinkuyu, Turkey, that since 1949
has been the Republican Mosque (Tanyeri-Erdemir et al. 2014). As for
sites abandoned or destroyed, we may recall many Orthodox churches
in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, or many Islamic ones in
the Republic of Cyprus; or mosques in the Republika Srpska in Bosnia
after 1992, and Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo after 1999. In
such cases, the religioscapes no longer overlap, and they are unlikely to
intersect. They are instead contiguous, marking the frontiers of territo-
ries that have been partitioned. The territorial spaces marked by such
borders need not be coterminous with state or political borders, though
they may become so through time.
We would argue that careful examination of the sites that actually
remain in use by members of a minority religious community may re-
veal aspects of inter-communal interactions that may otherwise go un-
noticed. For example, while most people in Belgrade know that there
are two tUrbes in the oldest part of the city, I have observed that these
are used as saint shrines by local Muslims, who seek blessings and fa-
vor at them. This use is unknown to my colleagues at Belgrade Univer-
sity, even though one tUrbe is directly across the park from the building
that houses the Departments of Anthropology and Archaeology, but it
means that the Muslim archaeoscape of Belgrade still has more nodes
than might be expected.
Sometimes such a more or less covert use of part of a site that has
otherwise been lost to a religious group may indicate that there are more
intergroup activities going on than may be recognized at the level of
public politics. Two such sites may be seen in northern Cyprus, in places
that were major Orthodox Christian sites but from which the Christians
were driven away in 1974: the Monastery of St. Barnabus (Famagusta)
and the Church of St. Mamas (Morphou). In both cases, the churches
were turned into museums. Yet visits to them in October 2011 revealed
the renewed presence of Orthodox Christians.6 At St. Barnabus, the
monastery remains a museum, but the tomb of the saint is lit by vo-
tive candles, and has icons and symbolic offerings (dolls representing
hoped-for babies, eye symbols for the return of sight) that indicate that
the Orthodox faithful, and probably others, are coming there. As for St.


80 Robert M. Hayden

Mamas, the church looks as though it is ready for a liturgy at any time:
the iconostasis is in place, as is the altar behind it, and the altar has all of
the necessary equipment. And it turns out that the Bishop of Morphou
has been able to hold occasional services in the church, beginning in
2004, thirty years after he and his flock were driven out of the town. It
seems that these sites, though officially secularized and thus no longer
part of any religioscape, may be serving to make the Orthodox Christian
religioscape in Cyprus overlap again with that Muslim one, and possibly
even to make them intersect, since Muslims also leave offerings at the
shrines to the saints. Mete Hatay has also noted cases of what we would
regard as re-overlapping of the Christian and Muslim religioscapes in
northern Cyprus, in places where Greek Christian visitors to places from
which they or their families had been driven in 1974 are reclaiming parts
of abandoned churches by lighting candles in them (Constantinou et al.
2012: 180-82). If we pay careful attention to such low-profile manifes-
tations of religious behavior in places where a group has officially been
excluded, we may well be able to see indicators of the low-key sharing of
space, even after such sharing has been dissolved at official levels.
Conclusion
I have utilized the concept of religioscape and the indicators of domi-
nance to analyze the ways that spaces and places were marked as Ot-
toman and post-Ottoman as manifestations of interaction between
Orthodox Christians and Muslims. This analysis demonstrates the im-
portance of linkages between local sites and wider networks of religious
structures, at specific moments in time and through time as well. We
can thus see the commonalities of the political and social processes that
led to the transformation of spaces from Byzantine, thus Christian, to
Ottoman, thus Muslim, and in southeastern Europe, from Ottoman to
the several Christian nationalist spaces (Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarian,
Serbian), on varying scales, and from the seventeenth century in Hun-
gary to the present in Bulgaria. These commonalities indicate that the
term "peaceful coexistence" is misleading, as even during periods when
there is little or no violence, relations of dominance are manifested in
the physical structures associated with religious communities, measured
against each other rather than analyzed as isolates, with the divisions re-
produced through these structures as well other markers of difference.
From this perspective, looking at local patterns of interaction to ex-
plain coexistence is to reverse causality, because it is the placement of
a local site on a religioscape, and that site's relationship to the nodes of


Intersecting Religioscapes in Post-Ottoman Spaces 81

the religioscape of a competing religious community (i.e., contiguous,
overlapping, or intersecting), that determines whether local relations are
likely to be peaceful or conflictual. Space may be shared as the nodes
of competing religioscapes overlap; local shrines may be shared if they
form nodes on two or more competing religioscapes; and both larger
spaces and local shrines may no longer be shared when the religioscapes
no longer intersect. In all cases, however, coexistence must be analyzed
through the patterns of competition of the larger religious communi-
ties whose religioscapes are represented locally, if we are to understand
when it is likely to be peaceful, when conflicted, and when disrupted
completely.
Robert Hayden is Professor of Anthropology, Law and Public & Inter-
national Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. While most of his work
for the past thirty years has focused on the former Yugoslavia and the
Balkans, he has also done substantial research and writing in and on In-
dia. Since the 1990s much of his work has focused on the cultural logic
of ethno-national violence. His current major project is an international,
interdisciplinary, and comparative study on competitive sharing of reli-
gious sites that examines the thesis of "Antagonistic Tolerance." He is the
author of Social Courts in Theory and Practice: Yugoslav Workers' Courts
in Comparative Perspective (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1990); Disputes and Arguments in a Nomad Caste Council (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1999); and Blueprints for a House Divided: The
Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1999), among other works.
Notes
Research reported here was supported in part by the National Science Founda-
tion, which is not responsible for the views expressed in this paper. I am grateful
to Professors Simeon Evstatiev and Galina Stefanova-Evstatieva for their orga-
nization of fieldwork in Bulgaria in 2008 and help during it, to Dr. Hande Sdzer
for her assistance as well during part of that fieldwork and for her comments on
this paper, and to Dr. Rabia Harmangah for her assistance in site visits in Cy-
prus in 2011. As with all other work stemming from the Antagonistic Tolerance
project, this paper has benefitted from the discussions of my team members:
Tugba Tanyeri-Erdemir, Aykan Erdemir, Tim Walker, Devika Rangacahri, Man-
uel Aguilar, Enrique Lopez-Hurado, and Milica Bakic-Hayden.
1. Our use of centrality is different from that of Ron Hassner (2009), who in-
stead defines centrality of a site in terms of its "space in the spiritual land-
scape" of the religious community concerned. He sees conflict as increasing
insofar as a site central to a religious community becomes vulnerable to


82 Robert M. Hayden

being controlled by another community. However, he then confounds the
importance of this supposedly primary consideration by noting the impor-
tance of vulnerability, saying that conflict should be "expected to arise" at
the places a religious group are "most central and most vulnerable;' without
distinguishing which condition is more important, except to say that he is
offering a "rough heuristic at best," and furthermore, that even a minor site
can be the focus of conflict "if a local community places high value on it for
political reasons" (Hassner 2009: 33). That last admission actually vitiates
Hassner's attempt to define centrality in terms of the wider symbolic geog-
raphy of a religious community and brings it precisely to those local levels
where conflict does, in fact, take place. We are confident that our definition
of centrality, in terms of the local importance of a site, is thus superior to
Hassner's, even in his own terms.
2. By far the best scholarly source on this mosque that I have found is the web
blog of Grigor Boykov (2009), which draws on Turkish, Bulgarian, and En-
glish-language sources.
3. See the Museum's "gallery" website, http://www.museumbalchik.com/eg/
t-gallery.php?id=&page= 1.
4. http://www.museumbalchik.com/eg/mteketo.php.
5. http://www.museumbalchik.com/eg/t-fsabor.php.
6. I am grateful to Rabia Harmangah for taking me to both sites, discussing
their meaning with me and sharing some of her own fieldwork data on
them; her dissertation (Harmangah 2014) contains other details.
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+ Chapter 3 +

Cosmopolitanism or
Constitutive Violence?
The Creation of "Turkish" Iraklio
ARIS ANAGNOSTOPOULOS
When thinking and speaking of past coexistence, we necessarily
speak from the historically specific ideological conditions of contem-
porary discourses, since those discourses have been shaped by events of
fissure and strife. This has become by now almost a truism in the social
sciences, but it is far less accepted in public discourses on historical di-
vision. When studying peaceful coexistence before a period of intereth-
nic strife, we need to wonder, for example, whether the subjects of this
coexistence are social entities created after the fact of violent rupture.
This is a point amply made by Rebecca Bryant in the introduction to this
volume and need not be reiterated here. What I want to consider, how-
ever, is that this condition of reflexivity is not an epistemological adept-
ness-or lack thereof-on our part, but a historical "real": the very same
processes and events that were recorded as transformative in the time-
line of communities are often those that create the analytical categories
we assume as natural. Historians and social scientists, as evidenced in
this volume, speak and intervene as political subjects firmly embedded
in an ex post facto arrangement of concepts, people, and things. In this
respect, it may be more pertinent to instill a radical strangeness in these
taken-for-granted agglomerates, rather than establish a final truth about
communities and individuals in the past, which, as Bryant points out,
may oftentimes be impossible. By studying these liminal positions of
strangeness, we may hope to understand more clearly the construction
of either/or binaries through which historical reason functions in in-
tercommunal conflict (see Bakshi this volume), but also establish our
position as engaged subjects, without recourse to essential identities and
states (Bryant this volume).


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 87

The particular examples I discuss below show how historical cate-
gories such as "Turkocretans" widely accepted today as an accurate
sociological denomination for Cretan Muslims and a political tool for
reframing interreligious coexistence, when examined more closely pre-
sent testimonies for a violence of definition that is the corollary of a so-
cial rupture they leave unexplained. The profound antagonism between
Christian and Muslim Cretans produced a descriptive term for the latter,
which bore the marks of the predominance of the former in all aspects of
social life during the last half of the nineteenth century (Andriotis 2004).
The creation of sociological entities such as "communities" is often in-
tertwined with larger projects of power, which reshape the material en-
vironment and therefore alter the memoryscape in which groupings of
people are imaginatively created and remembered. The way scholars and
laypeople approach and recreate images of peaceful coexistence in the
Ottoman Empire is oftentimes markedly aestheticized by the heritage
industry of today, especially in the context of cosmopolitan Mediterra-
nean ports, and often prevents them from understanding the context of
coexistence in the past (e.g., Ilbert and Yannakakis, 1997; see also Dries-
sen 2005; Waley 2009). Furthermore, a picture of coexistence painted
after conflict has occurred may avoid the portrayal of power relations
of exploitation or oppression on a multiplicity of levels-gender, class
or otherwise-in favor of a major, usually ethnic, antagonism (see Starr
this volume; compare Humphrey 2012: 45; Theodossopoulos 2006).
The turn of the twentieth century constituted a threshold in the his-
tory of Crete. Following a Christian insurrection that began in 1896, in
1898 the nearly two hundred-year-long Ottoman rule was succeeded by
an autonomous regime that lasted for fifteen years, up to 1913, when
Crete was officially annexed to Greece. The year 1898 marked, for the
inhabitants of the city of Iraklio, the beginning of the destruction of
the material traces of Ottoman presence. This was part of a class ini-
tiative to reshape the city into a western metropolis (Anagnostopoulos
2007)-a process that began after Iraklio was annexed; gathered pace
in the decades following the 1923 exchange of populations, when the
last Muslims left the island; was deepened by wartime destruction; and
eventually reached its apex in the construction boom of the early 1970s.
Throughout the destruction of the Ottoman past of the city runs a unit-
ing thread that connects the annihilation of material artifacts with the
effacement of the living memory of its Muslim inhabitants. The latter
either abandoned the island in subsequent waves of immigration to Asia
Minor and the Middle East, or they were forcibly relocated in the 1923
exchange of populations. The very process that guaranteed the destruc-
tion of the marks of their presence was the same process that created the


88 Aris Anagnostopoulos

grounds for the nostalgia for the "others" that cohabited the cosmopol-
itan city. In a very apposite irony, this process began effacing the marks
of those others by first naming them.
One City, One History, Two Cities, Two Histories,
or Perhaps More?
In 2004, in view of the portion of the Olympic Games being held in the
city, the municipality of Iraklio issued a DVD guide to the city in collabo-
ration with the University of Crete. The guide, a celebration of the mate-
rial and cultural heritage of the city, is called "Heraklion, A City Through
the Ages."' The Greek subtitle of the guide is much more revealing of its
scope: "One City, One History" (mia poli, mia istoria). The unification
of the history of the city into one continuous narration, held together
by the material fabric of the city and the traditions, real or invented,
of the people inhabiting it today, is further pursued in the spoken text,
especially in the section "Monuments" (or "Space" in the Greek version):
Through [sic] a dynamic city, modern Iraklion is steeped in the history
of its awe-inspiring defenses. A stronghold built by the sea, its walls
stand in silent witness to the moments of glory and terror. Many races
have found a home in its streets, and many gods have been invoked
in its houses of prayer. Along its winding streets, humble dwellings
are cramped cheek-by-jowl with neoclassical mansions and modern,
multi-story apartment blocks. (Municipality of Heraklion 2004)
To identify Iraklio with its Venetian ramparts is here a convenient way of
conceiving the city as a single, compact body, transformed though his-
tory. Many of the "races" implied in the voiceover lived in the city long
before the "awe-inspiring defenses" were constructed in the fifteenth
century CE. The idea of the enclosed city-organism is the converging
point for the rationales of modern heritage industry and nationalist his-
tory: past antagonisms and historical transformations are subsumed into
a major antagonism, which in this case is understood as the liberation
of Cretans-Greeks-from subsequent waves of invasion and occupa-
tion, which is inscribed in the unified material infrastructure of the city
and sold as a packaged commodity to the thousands of tourist visitors
each year. In view of this subsumation, material markers of communal or
other identity that were prominent in the past are naturalized as marks
of the "pluralism" of the cultural heritage of the city. The different "races"
that walked the streets of the city, the different religions that prayed


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 89

in its confines, and the different classes and gendered individuals that
lived in the city, are all transformed into positive forces that "secreted"
the multifarious built record of the city, which proves a selling point in
the context of the heritage industry today. Ironically, the effort to show
the city as a unique transhistorical organism is a distinctively modern
concept. The Cretan Autonomy period (1898-1913) was marked by the
effort of the prevailing Christian Cretans to modernize the city accord-
ing to Western precepts (Anagnostopoulos 2007). City authorities and
entrepreneurs cut into the fabric of the city, excising most signs of het-
erodox presence-especially Muslim.2 For example, there is not a single
standing minaret in Iraklio, whereas the minarets of the other main cit-
ies of Crete (Chania and Rethimno) constitute iconic selling points for
these cities. Much later, during the commercial and tourist boom of the
1960s and 1970s, important Venetian landmarks-such as the church
of St. Salvador-were demolished by the city authorities following deci-
sions to encourage progress aimed at creating a cityscape more akin to
a western metropolis. The idea was to open up spaces and roads in the
urban fabric that to many progress-minded commentators looked like a
"tourkopolis" (Turkish city) (Dermitzakis 1963: 89). Now this dedication
to progress has put Iraklio in the difficult situation of having to shape a
past by pulling together what remains of the destructive effects of mod-
ernization (Anagnostopoulos 2007, 2011).
In the DVD, the Muslims of Crete are rarely encountered. In fact,
they are only mentioned as the mob that perpetuated the uprising of 25
August 1898 and the slaughter of some two hundred Christian Irakliots
and eighteen British soldiers (Karelis 2001). However, many of the old
houses that are presented as the built heritage of the city are Muslim Cre-
tan houses. In fact, throughout the nineteenth century at least, Cretan
cities were predominately Muslim. Iraklio itself had a very pronounced
Muslim element, which declined after the transition to the autonomous
regime in 1898 and the massive immigration of Cretan Muslims.3 Irak-
liot Muslims were notorious for their propensity to mass violence; how-
ever, there is little known about the social reasons for the reactions of
the most destitute of Iraklio Muslims (see Anagnostopoulos 2007: 88;
Andriotis 2004: 71). This "barbarous mob" featuring in most histories
of Crete and the city is responsible however for most of the remaining
buildings that constitute the "old Iraklio" today.
The periodization of Cretan history presented in the DVD is based
on the tacit understanding that the history of Crete is the history of its
conquest by foreign armies, and that the time between the Byzantine era
and 1898 was merely a break in the continuation of Greek history on the
island. To give only one example, the nineteenth century, a century of


90 Aris Anagnostopoulos

profound changes in the administration and character of the Ottoman
Empire (Ortayli 1999), which had equally deep and long-lasting effects
on the social formations in Crete, is described in the work of historians
of Crete as "the era of Cretan revolutions" (e.g., Detorakis 2005: 26). In-
ternational events feature in this kind of history only as a backdrop, as
echoes from distant shores, but Cretan history is conceived as a product
of the voluntarism of its people and their desire for union with Greece.
The dramatic and epic scale such events are described in this history
contrasts starkly with the parochial character historians attribute to it,
since they consistently refuse to examine Crete as part of a wider net-
work of economic exchanges and political power. Consequently, all in-
terpersonal, familial, or clan instances of violence recorded throughout
the nineteenth century are inscribed into this narrative of the struggle of
all (Christian) Cretans for unification with Greece.
While this picture is currently being rectified in economic history
(e.g., Perakis 2008), social history remains trapped in a strange conun-
drum. Contemporary historians attempt to counter strictly nationalist
narratives by emphasizing the cosmopolitan past of the city. Giannis Zai-
makis, for example, in a chapter titled "The Cosmopolitan City, 1900-
19237 after stating that "historical events and political changes trans-
formed the social body of the 'oriental' city" (Zaimakis 1999: 69), gives
the following description:
Cultural elements of the spatial organization, like religious monu-
ments (Orthodox, Sinai and Armenian temples, mosques, minarets
and tekkes), Venetian buildings (the Koule,4 the Loggia, the tall ram-
parts etc), the Arabian wall, poor neighbourhoods with stone paved
alleys and low-ceilinged houses, mondain ['kosmikos'] squares with
theatre halls and nightclubs and, finally, scattered cafe aman and cafe
chantants shaped a landscape that testified to the cosmopolitan char-
acter of the city and the mix, in its environment, of various cultural
traditions. (Zaimakis 1999: 70)
The question here, of course, is how in the two years that followed the
end of Ottoman rule the city was transformed from "oriental" to "cos-
mopolitan" On further examination, the question remains: what exactly
is the difference between the two cities, since the picture Zaimakis gives
us can apply to the city at the end of the nineteenth century as well as at
the beginning of the twentieth (see Zei 2005: 82). The answer, according
to the same author, is that the violent antagonism of the two main reli-
gious elements brought about profound demographic changes, with the
emigration of some 40,000 to 50,000 "Turkocretans" to Asia Minor and


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 91

North Africa. It thus transformed a predominantly Muslim city into a
city where the two elements were almost equally represented, with the
Muslim element constantly declining until their final departure during
the population exchange following the Asia Minor defeat of the Greek
army in 1923. At the same time, the British occupation of the city, the
development of trans-local communication networks and the mingling
of different ethnicities within the city "created conditions of cosmopoli-
tanism" (Zaimakis 1999: 70).
One could counter that trans-local communication networks were al-
ready in place by at least the beginning of the eighteenth century (Trian-
tafillidou-Balladie 1988), while contact with foreign ideas and mores was
a mainstay for the wealthier classes of the city at least since the middle of
the nineteenth century (Svolopoulos 2005: 147). Besides that, the main
import of this description is to contrast cosmopolitanism to the "orien-
tal" city. In a few words, cosmopolitanism is secured only after the eth-
nic (religious) balance is shifted, when the Turkocretans leave the island,
and only when the legitimate use of force (to use a Weberian category)
changes hands and comes to employ distinctively Western techniques of
liberal governance (Svolopoulos 2005: 122-23; compare Foucault 1997:
73-74). Up to then the Ottoman Empire was the guarantor of the health
and prosperity of the Muslim element. Now, the Great Powers were the
guarantors of the growing economic and social power of the Christian
element, and the legitimacy of the new autonomous state. The predom-
inance of the Muslim element was prohibitive of cosmopolitanism, but
contributed greatly to it through its minority existence after its grad-
ual uprooting from Crete. Its non-presence, and the marks that it leaves
behind, become cultural markers that secure the character of the new,
cosmopolitan city. In fact, the cosmopolitan city becomes cosmopolitan
only when contrasted to the older, "oriental" city, and incorporates the
material fabric of this city as an indicator of this passage to modernity
(compare Said 1978: 6-7).
Cosmopolitan versions of the city's past are strikingly similar to what
Renato Rosaldo has termed "imperialist nostalgia": the agents of ruin-
ation feel nostalgic toward the state of things they have destroyed. The
very force of destruction is the one that produces its memory, but oc-
cludes the process of destruction itself (Rosaldo 1989). Central to the
"crypto colonialism" (Herzfeld 2002) of the West in this case is the ac-
tivity of merchant elites, especially Christian ones, in the forging of a
cosmopolitan identity for the city. In fact, as recent work on "actually
existing cosmopolitanism" (Robbins 1998: 2) shows, cosmopolitanism is
an explicitly class-bound "ethos" that is intrinsic to the activity of mer-
cantile elites who integrated the eastern Mediterranean into the world


92 Aris Anagnostopoulos

economy (Driessen 2005; Sifneos 2005). The ways in which this class
ethos and its related ethnic politics translated into an aesthetic outlook of
nostalgic cosmopolitanism is well documented for other port cities, as for
example for Habsburg Trieste (e.g., Ballinger 2003a, 2003b; Waley 2009).
The paradoxical nature of nostalgic claims to Irakliot cosmopolitanism is
that it runs counter to wider political understandings of cosmopolitan-
ism. Recent revisions of the notion have stressed that cosmopolitanism-
as a political program envisioned in the early nineteenth century-is
inimical to the territorial demands of the nation-state, although it can
be a compliment to nationalism and irredentism (Cheah 1998: 25; see
also Fine 2003, 2006). In the case of Crete, cosmopolitanism in its port
cities was enhanced, rather than inhibited, by the protection of the mil-
let system (compare Driessen 2005: 138), and flourished in tandem with
the irredentism and nationalism of its Christian inhabitants. As Ballinger
shows in the case of Trieste (Ballinger 2003b: 93), the apparent paradox
of Cretan irredentism coinciding with cosmopolitanism is no paradox at
all, in fact it is part of the political action that created a network of con-
tacts and power that caused political and social change. What is really
paradoxical is that this cosmopolitanism is attributed to its effect, rather
than its cause: that it was really produced by the coming of the territorial
state-which was the end result of its political mobilization-rather than
the social relationships of empire that produced and nourished it.
The construction of the historical entity of the "old Iraklio" (to palio
Iraklio), which represents the city at an indeterminate point in time
amounts to a project of "aesthetic cosmopolitanism" (Kofman 2005; Cal-
houn 2008), stripped of its social or political corollaries and presented as a
characteristic of the city-organism rather than a trait of a specific class. It
selectively connects a Eurocentric vision of modernity to a fetishization of
ruins in the promotion of the European character of the city: the unifying
characteristic is not the haphazard, maze-like urban fabric of "oriental"
times, but the sturdy, imposing ramparts of Venetian, i.e., European, tradi-
tion. The erasure of poor, disenfranchised, oriental subjectivities from the
shaping of history, through a variety of means, described below, is there-
fore the other central characteristic of this aesthetic. The remains of this
underrepresented element constitute an addendum to aesthetic cosmo-
politanism: without these remains, a cosmopolitan image is impossible.
Marks of Coexistence and Invisible Minorities
Invisible and unrepresented, the Muslim element is usually identified
with the anonymous mass that produced the indiscriminate maze of


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 93

low-rise houses in the poorest neighborhoods of the city. This maze in
its nostalgic content becomes in other narratives a symbol of something
else entirely: the peaceful coexistence of the "common people" who in
fact had nothing to divide them and were living in a continuous peace
that was wracked by the forces of politics (compare Millas 2006). Inter-
estingly, accounts of this sort were descriptions of the Muslim element
after the predominance of the Christian, in the two decades or so be-
tween the regime change of 1898 and the forced repatriation of Cretan
Muslims in 1923.
Elli Alexiou, a female, left-wing writer, disciple and friend of Kazant-
zakis, wrote an autobiographical short story (published in 1938), in which
this association of built monuments in space is precisely tallied with the
forced excision of Muslim Cretans from the past of the city and the is-
land, leaving only their material traces behind. The short story begins
with the communal spring donated by one "Brahim Baba;" which was
the mainstay of the neighborhood and a common source for water. It
was built by Ibrahim Baba, still alive at the time of Alexiou's writing, as
a donation for his son's well-being. Alexiou describes it as a communal
monument, a place for socialization, and also a marker for very personal
coming-of-age rituals. The story then recounts the forced expatriation
of Muslims and how their Christian friends reacted with sadness and a
true sense of loss. Exhorted by her friend Hayriye Hanim, Ibrahim Baba's
wife, Alexiou's mother sends the then teenage writer to tend the grave
of Hayriye's unfortunate son, to whose health the spring was donated.
The story ends with Alexiou and her brother encountering two civil en-
gineers taking measurements of the Muslim cemetery for the refugee
encampment subsequently built on the grounds: "The foundations of
the houses were built on skulls and all sorts of human remains" (Alexiou
1978: 73). To Hayriye Hanim's constant questions in letters of whether
the hyacinths on her son's grave were in bloom, Alexiou's mother falsely
replies "yes, indeed they are again this year" (Alexiou 1978: 73).
While, in a sense, accounts such as these aim to subvert the nationalist
narrative of predating Turks by showing the plight of Cretan Muslims,
they nevertheless accept the major antagonism central in these accounts
as valid. They accept, in other words, that the cultural differences be-
tween Christians and Muslims were the only real differences worth con-
sidering. Other, less politically discerning writers, offer a much more
nuanced picture. For example Marika Freri, born in 1907, describes the
neighborhood where she grew up in the only Christian house, not as an
"ethnic," undifferentiated social space, marked by the idiosyncrasies of
Cretan Muslims, but as a space where other differences, and particularly
class differences, were also active. She explicitly contrasts the wealth of


94 Aris Anagnostopoulos

Fatima, wife of the rich landowner Sami Bey, with the destitution of her
fellow Muslims who lived in miserable abodes at the edge of the neigh-
borhood (Freri 1979: 36-40).
The extent, however, to which the prevailing narrative about Cretan
Muslims blinded social commentators and memoirists to the difference
and variety crisscrossing Irakliot society at the time, is equally evident
in discerning accounts of urban life. Manolis Dermitzakis, for example,
a local barber, poet, and memoirist tends to lump all together as "Turks"
Turkish officers; wealthy Muslims, educated in the ways of Islam; and
the lower Muslim strata (Dermitzakis 1962). Furthermore, while women
writers, such as Freri or Alexiou, stress cultural differences as elements
of difference but not antagonism, their male counterparts reminisce
somewhat differently, by coupling stories of coexistence with more po-
lemic accounts; a good example of the latter is Kazantzakis's account of
the city in Kapetan Michalis (Bien 2001). Both men and women writ-
ers, however, represent women as guarantors of peaceful coexistence
in the city, due to their mild character and female charms (see Anag-
nostopoulos 2014). Kondylakis, for example, in a series of articles that I
will analyze below, notes with evident nostalgia: "Poor Hanims! If it was
up to most of them, there would be such concord between Turks and
Christians! They are especially conciliatory, and their beauty is often so
great that it softens the cruelest heart" (Kondylakis 1896b). This is an
oblique recognition of the communal ethos that emerged from practical
considerations of everyday coexistence, of communal organization on
the ground. Christians and Muslims shared common ground and habits,
especially in the markets of the city, but also a deep-seated antagonism,
which translated much larger stories of national strife into everyday
terms (Dermitzakis 1962; Vardavas 1971a). It is therefore significant
that stories of coexistence are woven into narratives that involve women
as active agents and take place in essentially "effeminized" urban public
spaces, such as communal springs (Anagnostopoulos 2011).
The Muslim element was doubly erased from the memory of the city.
In nationalist versions, all Muslims are presented as the demonic "other;"
the instrument of the oppressing "Turkish" regime, against whom Chris-
tians (Greeks) rose in revolt, rightly ousting them from the island. On
the other hand, the contribution of this element to the built fabric of the
city is cleansed of any reference to ethnic or religious denominations as
active agents, and presented as the result of a regime of "coexistence."
These twin versions present us with the same conundrum: either the
Muslims of Crete were violent barbarians or they were peaceful nonen-
tities. Their violence is either vile or nonexistent, but in any case it has
no social roots at all.


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 95

The Muslims of Crete as a historical entity are a mute subject as well
as a construction of historical thinking. Others speak about them; their
speech is mediated by the reminiscences of their Christian compatriots
or the appreciation of the authorities for their humble abodes. There
are rare occasions where a distinctively Muslim "voice" can be heard
(e.g., Planakis 2011; Anagnostopoulos 2011). Appropriately, a recent in-
vestigation into the Muslims of Crete by a social historian was called
"Turcocretes: In Search of Identity" (Tzedaki-Apostolaki 2001). Yet, the
search for identity that is more evident right now is that conducted by
the historians themselves. The existence of Cretan Muslims constitutes
a major historiographic problem, that of writing about a group of people
that has left sparse representations of itself as a community of any kind
(see, e.g., Andriotis 2004; Peponakis 1997). However, in their attempt
to resolve the question of political violence, social historians reverted
to a notion that is totally created by the Christians of Crete, namely the
Turkocretan.
The problem, then, is not whether the Muslims of Crete were violent
or not. The problem is the question itself, which presupposes that the
Muslims of Crete were one thing that must be examined in its totality
as a political entity; that their violence, collective or individual, must be
explained accordingly, based on social, cultural, or, even worse, "racial"
traits. That violence, especially ethnic violence, is central in the politi-
cal constitution of this entity is evident. However, this violence is much
different than the one supposed by the historians. Historians attempt
a sum totaling of acts of violence under the common denominator of
ethnicity-religion. For example, Margaritis states that the massacres
perpetuated by the Muslims in Iraklio were of lesser impact and scale to
the massacres perpetuated by Christians in Sitia (Margaritis 2001: 104).
It is unclear whether the Muslims of Iraklio had anything in common
with the Muslims in Sitia, and the same goes for the Christians of the
same regions. In fact, fractionalism was much more pronounced in the
two purported camps than is commonly accepted (e.g., Aggelakis 2004).
Losses on two "sides" presuppose that there are two sides that under-
stand themselves as such. Not only as enemies of one another, but also
as friends, as culturally common within their confines. The notion of
the millet may have been an official way of thinking, but it is unclear to
what extent it unified the religious element on the ground, beyond a
merely strategic identification with a religious creed that regulated
access to state services. As has been noted, the imagination of the an-
tagonistic other is paramount in the transgression of these fractional
differences within the community and sometimes the constitution of a
nation-in-waiting from people who would not think of themselves as


96 Aris Anagnostopoulos

members of a community (Bowman 2003, 2007). In this case, it also
constitutes the Other as a distinct community, through a process that
misrepresents this Other, effaces the social grounds of its existence and
leaves traces that become ex post facto histories of this imagined Other.
Naming the Other
The category "Turkocretes" (Turkish Cretans) used by modern-day
historians to denote and analyze Cretan Muslims as a community, as a
consistent ethnicity, has a revealing genealogy. As a descriptive term, it
collapses regional and class variations, and proposes a common iden-
tity, which probably only gained some significance after the last of the
Muslims had left the island for the Asia Minor and North African coasts
in 1923. Then it came to signify Greek-speaking, Muslim refugees from
Crete. The first public appearance of the term in writing that I have lo-
cated is in an article by the popular fiction writer and journalist Ioan-
nis Kondylakis in the Athens daily Estia, on 15 June 1896. While it is
certain that Kondylakis did not himself invent the term, he is probably
responsible for turning it into a sociological category of invented ethnic-
ity. Kondylakis aimed to show that Cretan Muslims were in their major-
ity Cretans who were converted to Islam after the Ottoman occupation
of Crete in 1669 (see also Peponakis 1997). The new converts, albeit
forced to change their religion, were so eager to show their allegiance
that they were gradually transformed into "the fiercest and most repro-
bate of Turks" (Kondylakis 1896a). He recognizes that this accusation
is not valid for the entire Muslim population of Crete, stating that the
Muslims of the Iraklio rural provinces are more tame and industrious
(Kondylakis 1896b), or that the differences in customs and appearance
between Christians and Muslims are minor and attributable to religion:
"Their life in general differs from the mores of Christians only where it
is connected with their religion or soiled [sic] by Turkish wickedness"
(Kondylakis 1896b). He nevertheless attempts to give an account of dif-
ferences that constitute the Muslims of Crete as a distinct ethnic group,
and furthermore, one responsible for the perpetuation of the violence of
the Ottoman state against its subjects.
But why did Kondylakis seek to introduce this new term at the time
for the Athenian reading public? He could simply refer to Cretan Mus-
lims, as foreign diplomats, politicians, and the international press called
them, and at least some of the Cretan Muslims called themselves this at
the time (e.g., Deputation des Musulmans de Crete 1896). Kondylakis
was writing amid an uprising by the Christian element of Crete that was


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 97

meant to be the last under Ottoman rule. The nationalist atmosphere
in Greece, which would lead to the unfortunate Greek-Turkish war of
1897, brought the "Cretan Question" to center stage once more, as a
pivot to the populist nationalism of different political factions in Athens
(Gianoulopoulos 2001: 132). Simultaneously, the time seemed ripe for
the annexation of Crete, either through diplomatic means or through
direct intervention of the Greek army (see Holland and Markides 2006:
87).
While the violent transition from Ottoman rule to autonomous state
took place, other political questions emerged, regarding the status of
Cretan Muslims in a new territorial state, whether autonomous or an-
nexed to Greece. This debate took place in view of massive Muslim out-
migration from Crete. Muslim smallholders sold off their property,
pressed by the Christian insurgents in the countryside, and left the is-
land permanently (Andriotis 2004: 88; Margaritis 2001). The emerg-
ing regime was forced to guarantee equal treatment to prevent further
out-migration and depletion of the island's productive workforce (Svol-
opoulos 2005: 111). The equality of the two creeds was guaranteed in the
new constitution of the autonomous regime by the notion of ithagenia
(autochthony), which employed the ideological notion of the Cretan soil
as a basis for an ad hoc Cretan ethnicity, which transversed "older" re-
ligious differences and securely tied ethnic identity to the territory of
the new state (Anagnostopoulos 2007: 177). Simultaneously, however,
an official discourse was necessary that would account for interethnic
violence, an analysis that would simultaneously advance the irredentist
cause of Cretan Christians to its final consummation at enosis (union)
with Greece, and pave the way to peaceful coexistence afterwards. The
attention of social commentators turned to the "Turkocretans' as a slip-
pery category denoting every Cretan Muslim by referring to the most
fanatic among them. By naming this social group, it created it. At the
same time, however, it concealed the social sources of events of religious
fanaticism, and especially the ever-increasing numbers of Muslim Cre-
tans who were violently pushed into poverty in contrast to the rising
fortunes of their Christian compatriots (Andriotis 2004: 87-90).
Kondylakis's first use of the term is already loaded: the apparent con-
fusion that ensued from a term that aimed to denote ethnicity in the
context of religious affiliation in the millet system shows how the polit-
ical position of Kondylakis determined its content, but also allowed for
other meanings to slip in. This is evident for example in the brochure
"Turkokrites" written by the translator and specialist in Ottoman law
Konstantinos Fournarakis in 1929 (Fournarakis 1929). Fournarakis man-
ages to use the term Turkocretes only a handful of times, preferring the


98 Aris Anagnostopoulos

more descriptive Cretan Muslim instead, pointing to the fact that ethnic
identity and religious conviction were situation-bound and contingent,
rather than ascriptive, especially in view of the devolution of the millet
system and the empire as a political formation. He seems to reserve the
characterization for those Cretan Muslims who were better off and had
closer ties with the Ottoman administration, the urban and rural aghas
and beys, wealthy enough to afford harems and konaks (Fournarakis
1929: 9). The marked class differences within the Muslim population,
and its class relations with the Christian element, are already discernible
in Kondylakis's account several decades earlier, as well as other contem-
porary accounts as we have seen above.
Fournarakis was writing six years after the last of the Muslim Cretans
were forcefully transferred to the Asia Minor coast, as a result of the
"population exchange" agreed to in the Lausanne Treaty. Therefore the
author was referring to a social category that was already in the past,
and its manipulation into nostalgia could be safely completed. To this
day, the term has been so profoundly consolidated to signify Muslim
Cretans in general, that scholarly debate can talk about "Turkocretans"
as if they were a "really existing" ethnicity even before the events of
their violent excision from the island (e.g., Tzedaki-Apostolaki 2001).
As Slavoj Zizek argues, the identity of an object is "the retroactive effect
of naming itself: it is the name itself, the signifier, which supports the
identity of an object" (1989: 95, emphasis in the original). Indeed, the
creation of a name marked the precise moment of the beginning of the
excision of this population from the life of the island, and in particular
the economic and social life of the city. To look for the missing identity
of "Turkocretans" without looking at the genealogy of the term itself, is
an incomplete undertaking, and furthermore one that embodies a pro-
found symbolic violence. The very category that is aimed at bringing
to light a supposedly forgotten "ethnicity" forgets the conditions of the
creation of this category.
Spatial Politics: The "Oriental" City
Versus the "Modern Western" Metropolis
As Thomas Hansen points out, "[t]he question of naming revolves;'
among questions of history and language, "around the question of which
space, and whose, should the name fix and territorialize as its object"
(Hansen 2001: 3). A bundle of interconnected processes were at work in
this erasure, all of which had to do with novel techniques and ideologies
of managing space in the city. In Crete, and especially in the cities, the


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 99

creation of "Turkocretans" went hand in hand with the political project
of restructuring urban space. The Christian bourgeoisie, who had con-
solidated their control over the political fortunes of the cities, developed
a discourse of progress from the filthy and disorganized Ottoman city to
the controllable, clean and ordered Western, cosmopolitan metropolis,
that put the blame for the destitute condition of the city in the after-
math of the 1896 uprising on the cultural shortcomings of the Muslim
element.
The image of the city when a British garrison was stationed there in
1897 was nearly apocalyptic. Almost 50,000 destitute, impoverished and
hungry Muslim refugees were lumped within the city walls, when in
times of peace the city had a mere 20,000 inhabitants (Detorakis 2001:
112). The sanitation officials of the British occupying army described
the situation with alarm in their reports to the Foreign Office. In those
papers, written by Lieutenant Clarke (sanitation officer for the British
garrison in Iraklio, and later advisor for public health with the Cretan
government), was a report copied verbatim from his correspondence
with Amabile Ittar, a doctor of Italian descent, member of the "good so-
ciety" of Christian Irakliots. Ittar accounts for the sorry state of the city
by giving a description of the island's Muslims, saying that while for "Or-
thodox" Muslims in general bodily hygiene is of major importance, for
the rural Muslims, because they are of the Bektashi order and therefore
more secular, ablutions are not the norm, so they are "still less apt to feel
horror of filth and dirt" (Turkey No. 1 (1899): Further Correspondence:
130). The medical gaze of the two correspondents was informed by the
already established practices of the European urban sanitation move-
ment. But their ideological proximity was not based on a community
of interest: Clarke's concerns were practical, as he wanted to sanitize
the eastern neighborhoods of the city, packed to capacity by impover-
ished Muslim refugees. These neighborhoods were a potential source
of contagion, and were close to the ramparts where the British garrison
was stationed (Anagnostopoulos 2007: 114-16). For Ittar, cleaning these
neighborhoods was part of a much larger scheme. On the one hand, his
alarm was not only of a sanitary nature, but of a moral one as well. These
neighborhoods were locally known as berbat mahalle-and sanctioned
most of the city's unsolicited brothels and makeshift taverns.5 These
neighborhoods were thus seen as sources of pollution on two fronts.
Ittar was a vocal spokesman for the developing scheme of urban re-
form that was brought forward by the most enterprising of the city's
bourgeoisie. Sanitary ideologies effectively justified the Christian bour-
geois class offensive that reshaped the built form of the city and altered
its conceptual geography. It prompted a view of the modern city that


100 Aris Anagnostopoulos

contrasted its present with the abject past of disorganized, ad hoc Ot-
toman administration. It partly did so by creating an abject subject of
Muslim Cretans, and organizing it in specific geographic locations. It is
only seemingly paradoxical that these very same abject spaces are today
rendered in a nostalgic manner as the creation of the peaceful coexis-
tence of "common people" in their meandering alleys; seemingly, be-
cause from the moment of their inception in official schemes of city
building, they were already "older" spaces, representing the Ottoman
past of the city, which ended with the triumph of Christian Cretans over
their Muslim compatriots.
Interethnic Violence, Nationalism, Religion
and Urban Space: From Stories to History
The wholesale reshuffling of urban space in ethnic terms accompanied
the process of solidifying local, contingent, person-specific stories into
grand narratives of nationalist history. Both these processes-shaping
space and consolidating the history of this space-share the same logic
of transforming smaller, seemingly unconnected events of local signifi-
cance into an organized, interconnected whole. At the same time, how-
ever, they create meaning for these smaller parts that they may not have
had in advance. For example, the street known locally as karteria was at
the beginning of the century a badly lit alley that led from a gambling
house for the wealthier urban professionals to the center of the city. Lo-
cal (Christian) lore exploited the similarity of the name karteria derived
from the Italian quartiere, for the Venetian military quarters that stood
in the street, with the Greek karteri, meaning ambush, urged possibly
by the frequency of muggings in the area. Although Christian thieves
were possibly equally involved in such exploits, the local lore has it that
the name derived from the ambushes set up by Christian vigilantes that
caught Muslim thieves in their getaway from robbing Christian gam-
blers, and then returned the money to the victims (Vardavas 1971b).
As unlikely and convoluted as this story sounds, the way it is narrated
is meaningful. It seeks to connect stories of male prowess with struggles
for the organization of space and the creation of ethnic subjects in the
same process (compare Herzfeld 1988). The exploits of Christian and
Muslim hoodlums in the city are a mainstay in accounts of the times
(e.g., Vardavas 1971a, 1973; see also Zaimakis 1999). These accounts
make it clear that their behavior transgressed religious or ethnic bound-
aries and sought to establish "turfs" as networks of personal status and
prestige. The example of one Ali Obashi, a fierce former lieutenant in


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 101

the Ottoman gendarmerie, who physically attacked a fellow Muslim for
abusing a Christian passer-by in religious terms, is instructive. It is clear
that Ali was at this particular time more interested in keeping order over
his "turf" and preserving good relations with neighboring Christians,
than playing on religious or ethnic difference. This behavior becomes
even more relevant to discussions about violence and coexistence when
we learn that this same Ali Obashi was arrested for massacring Chris-
tians during the August 25 riots in 1898 (Dermitzakis 1962: 31). Rela-
tions with other male hoodlums, based on a violent male code of honor
became more important than religious difference in the context of ev-
eryday diplomacy even in peaceful times (see Bryant this volume). These
exploits were made iconic of the widespread occurrence of violence in
interpersonal relations. The stories of manly feats that accompany the
exploits of such men point to a narrative organization of customary,
quotidian violence that transforms it into a commonsensical occurrence
in the community (Ferrandiz and Feixa 2007: 57; Scheper-Hughes 1997).
Violence in interpersonal relationships was constitutive in many aspects
of social life in the city at the end of the nineteenth century. From estab-
lishing the boundaries of a social group such as a neighborhood to re-
solving interpersonal disputes, to opposing challenges to one's integrity
and honor (see Anagnostopoulos 2007 for extensive discussion). Histor-
ical circumstance, however, selectively transformed the stories about lo-
cal hoodlums of both religious faiths into a series of symbolic statements
of Christian retributive violence.
The nineteenth-century irredentist "state of emergency" legitimized a
number of common criminals as bulwarks of the struggle for liberation
(e.g., Bien 2001: 373), while the military and political organization of
Cretan insurgents was based on a network of status and manly violence
developed in rural areas (Anagnostopoulos 2007: 90-94). As the "mod-
ern" Autonomous Cretan polity was instituted, it had to perform a dou-
ble feat: delegitimize personal violence by arresting and marginalizing
its perpetrators as insults to the civilization and propriety of the "new"
city, and at the same time make it heroic by ousting it into the past, in-
corporating it into the national narrative, and forgetting the mundane
character of personal violence by referring to exceptional acts of collec-
tive violence. We have already seen how the "Turkocretan" subject was
constituted as a violent subject symbolic of the institutional violence of
the Ottoman regime. In spatial terms, the activity of hoodlums of both
religions was morally colored by the abject urban spaces that it demar-
cated as its turf. That these spaces were the habitation of the majority of
impoverished Muslims was, of course, no coincidence. Finally, the de-
fining violence of Christian discourses had to be invested with historical


102 Aris Anagnostopoulos

legitimacy, which would simultaneously justify the widespread social
violence of the time, especially when coming from Christian subjects.
Thus, the violence of "Turkocretans" was an inherent trait, caused by
their religious affiliation and their corruption by the "Turkish" malad-
ministration (Kondylakis 1896a), whereas the violence of the Christians
was a legitimate strategy, in view of their irredentist struggle.
What does this mean for the researcher who tries to establish the
climate of peaceful coexistence between the two creeds? First, that co-
existence is not necessarily peaceful. Reconstructions of it, especially
in fiction, had a specific, progressive program that sought to present
the city as a cosmopolitan haven, broken down by nationalist excesses.
However, historical research makes it clear that violence was a common
occurrence, moving both vertically (people oppressed by their more
powerful compatriots) and horizontally (across religious groups). Espe-
cially in the case of Iraklio, to employ notions of cosmopolitanism is
to ignore the plurality of antagonisms at the heart of this urban soci-
ety. Second, it means that the creeds themselves were social subjects
that were created by violence not on the everyday level, but rather when
this violence became transvaluated (Tambiah 1996: 191) by nationalist
or religious retelling. The process of transvaluation takes everyday dis-
putes over "turf"-either personal or group territory-and invests them
with imagined meaning that presupposes something "beyond" the di-
rect community of interest, a utopian space opened by the dream-nation
(Gourgouris 1996). What changes in periods of widespread interethnic
violence is that precisely this common occurrence of violence is orches-
trated around a common cause, which in turn justifies the proliferation
of such violent incidents. Whereas the national dream proposes the ab-
olition of all violence, its political program is to justify the violence that
engenders it, and in the course of this, it allows for personal strategies of
identification that justify all instances of interpersonal violence through
reference to a common cause.
This process of justification is inextricably linked with the recreation
of the built fabric of the city. In fact, as I have proposed in this paper,
it is the very same process that produces modern ruins and furnishes
them with nostalgic histories. This is a process resulting in social fe-
tishism in the classic sense of the term, in that it creates material "testi-
monies" of the cosmopolitan city that occlude the social processes that
have enabled them to exist at all; it seeks to present luxurious mansions,
official buildings, and humble abodes as one thing, created by the lin-
ear advancement of one people through history. However, the hidden
genealogy of antagonism inherent in struggles over space comes out in
the stories told about the space itself. Historical and anthropological re-


Cosmopolitanism or Constitutive Violence? 103

search needs to read it, instead of opting for the romantically inflected
nostalgia for ruins that is inherent in notions of past cosmopolitanism.
Aris Anagnostopoulos holds a PhD in social anthropology and an MA
in urban history. His research focuses on the ways in which the material
remains of the past are conceptualized and acted upon by contempo-
rary societies, and the ways in which the past influences the shaping of
social space. His recent work brings together the concerns and methods
of archaeology and social anthropology, in the emergent sphere of ar-
chaeological ethnography. He is an honorary lecturer at the School of
European Culture and Languages and a post-doctoral researcher with
the Initiative for Heritage Conservancy in Greece; he currently serves
as assistant director of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens.
Notes
1. The municipality uses the transliteration Heraklion, whereas in this article
I use the much simpler and demotic Iraklio.
2. While in other areas of the Greek state this process was a conscious ef-
fort of state authorities in order to "Hellenize" local populations, in Crete
the Autonomous State at least acted as a buffer to interethnic violence and
attempted to safeguard the rights of Muslims, in an effort to dampen emi-
gration and prevent economic stagnation. Local initiative was paramount
in reshaping the urban environment and excising Muslim landmarks from
the city, which accounts for the differences in built heritage between Cretan
cities, as well as their differential management (see, e.g., Herzfeld 1991).
3. In 1881, there were 6,421 Christians in total in the city and 14,597 Muslims
(Stavrakis 1890: 68). In 1900, there were 10,753 Christians and 11,659 Mus-
lims (Kritiki Politeia 1904). In 1911, there were 15,877 Christians and 9,248
Muslims (Efimeris tis Kyberniseos 1911).
4. The local name for the Venetian castle at the Iraklio port.
5. This is another phonetic allusion, as the one described in the following para-
graphs: the word berbantis in Greek means the dissolute philanderer. While
the etymology of the word probably derives from the Italian birbante, which
in turn derives from birba (crook, bum), it is phonetically close to the Turk-
ish berbat (terrible, disgusting). Later commentators, e.g., Vardavas (see ref-
erences), use the phrase berbat mahalle to refer to the neighborhood as a
place of ill-repute that berbantis males would frequently visit, unaware of
its original Turkish meaning (terrible neighborhood). I am indebted to the
editor of this volume for alerting me to this particular detail.
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+ Chapter 4 +

Trade and Exchange
in Nicosia's Shared Realm
Ermou Street in the 1940s and 1950s
ANITA BAKSHI
A river once ran through the center of Nicosia's walled city. It was
diverted by the city's Venetian rulers, and the "riverbed streets" later
formed the backbone of the east-west route through the city-a ma-
jor commercial corridor that ran along Ermou Street.1 It is along these
streets that Cypriots from all communities came together-streets that
contained a mixture of Greek, Turkish, and Armenian businesses (Ma-
rangou 1995). This historic urban topography has endured, with most of
these riverbed streets falling within the United Nations-controlled Buf-
fer Zone, radically transformed from spaces of cooperation into lines of
division. This division, first termed the Mason-Dixon Line, a wire fence
following Paphos and Ermou Streets in the late 1950s, gelled in 1963,
and became permanent with the arrival of Turkish troops on the island
in 1974 (Hocknell 2001). What is commonly known about this part of
the city is that it was an important commercial area, well used by both
Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, as well as other ethnic minorities,
prior to partition. The importance of this part of the city is recognized
in that it was one of the few ethnically mixed areas of a city otherwise
defined by the Ottoman mahalle structure of generally segregated neigh-
borhoods. The significance of this area is often mentioned in other texts
that outline the history of the city, and it is also referenced in idealized
reconstructions of a past of brotherhood and unity when Greek and
Turkish Cypriots were sharing this area. Yet, the scholarship dealing
with this site is thin, and little detailed information about it is available,
thus enabling reductive depictions that serve these reconstructions.2
This is a history that had remained unwritten, and had not found its way


108 Anita Bakshi

into public discourse so that we might interrogate it as a more substan-
tive resource.
This chapter will attempt to rebuild the lost topographies of the Buf-
fer Zone-spatial, social, and commercial-using the few resources
available and relying most heavily on the memories of those who knew
this area in the 1950s, before intercommunal conflict changed the na-
ture of the city. It examines what these memories can reveal about the
slow process of change from a city of coexistence to the spatial segrega-
tion of the two communities. I use Simmel's discussion of "the stranger"
to explore how the spatial framework of the marketplace street sup-
ported both the phenomena of "nearness" and "remoteness" as the
street changed from a space of coexistence to a site of conflict. These
memories aid in the reconstruction of a clearer picture of the idealized
description of the "mixed city" of Nicosia, using memories associated
with the spatial framework of the Ermou marketplace to broaden un-
derstandings of social relations between the city's diverse communities
prior to division.
These streets contained many shops, almost all of which were long
and narrow, lit only by the entrance and an arsera, or small high window.
Therefore the tall wide doors were often left open, creating a rich and vi-
brant streetscape. Prior to division, residents from all over the city came
to shop in these streets, where merchants and farmers from surrounding
villages traded their goods. Today, however, this part of the city is nearly
a reverse image of this past incarnation, its activity and density replaced
by emptiness and silence. To use Dylan Trigg's words regarding his ex-
perience of the temporality of ruins: "There is a sense of being displaced
here, of having come to a scene too late, as though the presence is de-
fined by what fails to materialize in the present" (Trigg 2009: 98).
While the nature of the Cyprus problem has changed over the years,
being further complicated by developments since 1974, such as the de-
mographic impact of large numbers of migrants from mainland Turkey
and the accession of the Republic of Cyprus to the EU in 2004, in many
ways the area within this set of lines has remained the same since 1974.
The layout of its streets and shops remains unchanged, and on some
buildings signs still hang that advertise businesses once located there. A
journalist allowed to tour the Buffer Zone inside the walled city in 2010
writes: "We come across signs bearing the names of famous entrepre-
neurs who range from brewers of beer to importers of cars and elec-
trical goods: Fotos Fotiades, Kozakis Galatariotis Bros, Philippou Bros,
Hadzikyriakos and others" (Christofi 2010). Because many buildings in
this area were constructed from mud-brick, they have been slowly erod-
ing, and there have been many roof and facade collapses. The Nicosia


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm 109

Master Plan (NMP) team has worked to reinforce several buildings, but
they are only allowed to do as much as is necessary to prevent their col-
lapse, supporting crumbling facades with wooden scaffolding.3 Thus a
peculiar situation exists in this swath of land in the center of the city:
buildings cannot be altered or demolished, and the effects of time can
clearly be witnessed on their scarred figures.
The rationale for studying Nicosia through an investigation of place-
based memories is connected to the problematic nature of official his-
torical narratives related to contested histories, where certain events,
chronologies, and perspectives are remembered while others remain
unregistered, officially relegated to the realm of the forgotten. In regions
of conflict, histories are contested and competing, often resulting in na-
tional narratives that are heavily imposed through official channels of
history and memory. I will argue in this chapter that in Cyprus, where
official repositories of history like archives and textbooks can be heavily
manipulated, an investigation of place can prove a valuable resource for
understanding and challenging these competing histories.
The "Cyprus Problem" today remains unresolved, and the fate of the
Buffer Zone, which stretches for 180 kilometers through the island, re-
mains suspended; but perhaps the most contested terrain of all in Cyprus
today is that of history. Official Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot his-
torical narratives represent the contested past in starkly different ways
(Papadakis 2008). These divergent narratives present different chronol-
ogies, where different periods and events are remembered and forgotten
by each side. Additionally, Nicosia in the past is represented in different
ways: either as a city of brotherhood, where different communities lived
together in complete harmony, or as a city segregated along communal
lines (Bakshi 2012a). These factors have made it difficult to understand
the nature of everyday coexistence and conflict between communities in
Cyprus, necessitating the development of new theoretical and method-
ological tools arrived at through a close investigation of peoples' indi-
vidual and collective engagements that can enrich our understandings of
this space. Such tools can allow us to describe how diverse populations
negotiate, through actual relations, the daily practices of sharing space
and living together, and also to understand how enmity is created in the
transition to conflict. In this chapter, I attempt to do this through a de-
tailed spatial investigation from my perspective as an architect, looking
closely at the spatial configuration and materiality of the Ermou market-
place and how it functioned in structuring social relations.
Often the Buffer Zone is rendered simply as a line on the map. But
it does have thickness-a thickness that extends beyond its edges as
the de facto Buffer Zone, neglected and sparsely populated contiguous


110 Anita Bakshi

areas, which radiate out from these edges deeper into the walled city.
This chapter will argue that this part of the city has always "extended
beyond" its apparent borders. The Ermou marketplace streets, while of a
different nature than the rest of the city, introduced cohesion and struc-
tural integrity to the city as a whole. Market areas generally encourage
the appearance of other urban activities and programs at their edges.
These are areas of the city that have their own associations and symbolic
meanings: areas that operate on a different clock from the rest of the
city, known for trade, exchange, and a multitude of possibilities (Calabi
2004). This chapter, in rebuilding these topographies, aims to highlight
the importance of these shared streets to the functioning of Nicosia as a
mixed city of diverse populations.
A more comprehensive rendering of the Ermou marketplace will as-
sist in broadening understandings of the nature of coexistence of diverse
populations in mixed cities.4 This is especially important in contested
or divided cities where, as in Nicosia, much of the rhetoric about the
past centers on the city as either intermixed or segregated. Scholars have
challenged this reductive understanding of place, proposing instead a
more dynamic and flexible understanding of cities. Doreen Massey de-
scribes space as a composition of multiple trajectories, reading it as a
medium that involves time and allows for the simultaneity of multiple
stories within its framework. This allows for an understanding of the
city as an entity that is neither "diverse" nor "homogenous." She views
space as "the sphere of the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in
the sense of contemporaneous plurality; as the sphere in which distinct
trajectories coexist; as the sphere therefore of coexisting heterogeneity"
(Massey 2005: 8). This research attempts to examine Nicosia along these
lines, as a city where, prior to the 1950s, different communities were
dependent upon each other, while at the same time maintaining varying
degrees of separation. The picture of life that emerges from this research
falls outside of the overly strict definitions of the city as either inter-
mixed or segregated. Rather, the city's mixed nature was in some ways
facilitated by its segregation.
The Buffer Zone is a gap in the city-a physical gap and a gap of the
imagination, separating differing interpretations of the past. There also
exists a gap in knowledge about this place and the way of life it at one
time encapsulated. The limited existing scholarship on this site reveals
that it was once the city's main marketplace, well-used by all Cypriots,
and that there are two divergent official narratives about life in the city
before 1974 (Papadakis 2005). I argue that this makes it important to
now go back to the city as the base, and then rebuild a richer and more
nuanced depiction of life in the most important and ethnically mixed


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm 111

urban space of the city. This investigation of everyday life complements
the histories, and it also narrates, using individuals' stories, how people
can become alienated and separated, even while sharing the same city
center.
The reconstruction of the topographies of the Buffer Zone was accom-
plished through a process of piecing together information from different
sources-including archives, newspaper advertisements, commercial
catalogues,5 land registers, and photographic surveys-and emplacing
them on maps of the walled city.6 These maps and visual prompts were
then used in loosely structured interviews with Greek Cypriot, Turkish
Cypriot, and Armenian Cypriot shopkeepers who once lived or worked
in this part of the city, allowing themes to emerge.7 The spatial frame-
work of this site was used to trigger memories in the people who once
worked there, enabling them to provide narratives describing a lost way
of life and the relatively undocumented dynamics of intercommunal
commercial and social relations. A study and discussion of place allows
access to these types of memories because these places provided the set-
ting or background for the activities of daily life; and they serve now as
a setting for memory. As this chapter will outline, the Buffer Zone was
and is so crucial to the functioning of this city and the relations between
its populations that it certainly merits a closer, more detailed investiga-
tion-one that zooms in, to elucidate how the city functioned as a whole,
and how it broke apart.8
Life of the Ermou Marketplace
By tapping into the resource of these maps and narratives a scenario can
be composed of the rich street life along Ermou in the early 1950s-of
narrow shops with workers sitting outside, and of recognizable street
vendors with their distinct calls for advertising goods. Most of the shop-
keepers did not remember every detail about life in this area, nor were
they able to remember time frames with much specificity. Rather, their
remembrances were of certain images and sounds-memories of mo-
ments and places that have been strong enough to persist. It is these
memories that begin to reveal the outlines of the narrow shops of the
Ermou marketplace.9
These streets would fill with people early in the morning. Ali, whose
father ran a grocery on Ermou, remembers opening the shop at 6:30
AM and selling around three hundred loaves of bread most mornings
within the first two hours of business. His shop was located around the
corner from a Greek merchant who ran one of the city's most recogniz-


112 Anita Bakshi

able businesses, Tsaiousis 1,000,000 Things. Their shops were near the
intersection of Ermou and Goldsmiths' Street, also known in Turkish as
Koprii Bass, the "bridgehead" as it historically was the location of one of
the main bridges that spanned the river. In Greek it was known as Stavro
Pazaro, the "cross-market"10 This intersection could be considered the
center of the marketplace streets, and many important merchants were
located here. Monyatis, Klerides, Agrotis, and Kokinos were popular
glassware shops. Nearby was a large KEO shop, selling the famous beer
of Cyprus since 1951, as well as Platanis Wines and Spirits. Just to the
east were smaller, but equally well-known shops, such as the Galip Gro-
cery, Camberis Clothing, Varnavas Nicolaou the timber merchant, Irfan
Hussein's large retail store, and the Cirakli confectionary.
The shopkeepers' memories describe the crowded nature of the street
with people sitting outside of their shops, and at outdoor cafes during
siesta time, which lasted from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM during the summer.
This was a mandated time of rest, enforced by the British, and people
were required to close their workshops for these three hours. At 1:00 PM
every working day a horn would sound from the nearby power station,
marking the beginning of siesta. While some went home for lunch and
a nap, others would sit at the cafes playing cards or backgammon. They
sat on traditional Cypriot chairs, wooden with woven seats, in the cafes
or outside of their shops. A frequent sight on the streets would be a boy
holding a metal tray, delivering short cups of strong coffee. The streets
were often enlivened by coppersmiths and blacksmiths who would take
their work outside. Tassos recalls that as a child he saw two men sit-
ting on Iphestos Street, where most of the coppersmiths were located,
hitting a piece of metal and singing a song: "Ash gollarna, ash gollarna,
sargolari"-a version of the Turkish song, "ag kollarini, a9 kollarini, saril
bana"-"open your arms and hug me." Photographs from 1957 show
what Tassos may have seen: Coppersmiths sit on the street, hammering
away at large pans held up between their knees, next to stacked pots
and pans of all sizes. These were streets where daily rituals took place
in accordance with a common clock, and where different traditions and
languages came together.
Just as Iphestos was the street of the coppersmiths, other streets in
the marketplace were also known for specific trades. Goldsmiths' was
the street of jewelers. Arabacilar Street, "the coachmens' street" was one
of the main stops for amaxa, horse-drawn carriages, and was lined with
carpenters' workshops. Arasta Street was largely known as a place to
shop for shoes and leather goods, and there were many Armenian mer-
chants selling leather, shoes, and textiles." Among these streets were
several outdoor gathering spots such as Platanos, located at the inter-


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm 113

section of Ermou and Militou, where a large tree provided shade from
the strong Cyprus sun, and many people would gather here throughout
the day. Towards the eastern end of Ermou Street, where it became con-
siderably wider, were several factories processing sesame seed oil. The
leftover from this process, a delicious paste called kouzvos, was given
away to the neighborhood children. Many factories were to be found at
this end of Ermou including the Klitos soda factory, the Kulabis flour
mill, and Kyriakos Anastassiades furniture factory, well known for the
sign above the door that read "VISIT US FOR YOUR OWN BENEFIT."
And finally, at the end of Ermou, was the Olympiakos Football Club. Just
as individual shops were known for certain features, different parts of
Ermou Street were defined by distinct characteristics.
In the center of this activity was the main municipal market called
Pantopolio in Greek, which means a place to buy everything, and pro-
nounced as Bandabulya in Turkish.12 This market, located at the in-
tersection of three of the most important commercial streets in the
city-Ermou, Goldsmiths; and Arasta-could be considered the hinge-
point of the city. Everybody shopped in this market, and it was the main
outlet for produce and meat. Mustafa, a butcher who has been working
at Bandabulya ever since he was a young child in the 1940s, remembers
the many languages spoken there-Greek, Turkish, English, and even
some Arabic. The market was very mixed, although the Greek butchers
were in a separate section selling pork, and it was always crowded. In
one of the rare memoirs written about this period, Taner Baybars de-
scribes his impression of this place as a child in the 1950s:
We went to the closed marketplace on foot, walking along the road
called Arasta which was the hub of haberdashery, lingerie and buttons.
That smell from each shop, cool, starchy. The market was always cool.
... The whole place was a mixture of smells. There were rows. Each row
smelled differently. One of spices, another one of vegetables and fruit,
and another one of fresh blood dripping from newly slaughtered beasts
hanging on sharp, shiny hooks. (Baybars 1970: 47)
Photos of Pantopolio taken in the 1950s show that the activity ex-
tended out from the large entrances of the market onto the surrounding
streets. Just outside the northern entrance, located at the end of Arasta
and in front of the Aya Sofya Mosque,13 a thick border of vendors defines
the edge of the street. Goods for sale are laid out, and vendors push carts
with ready-to-eat food. It was not only the buildings and places that de-
fined Ermou, but these vendors were part of the common vocabulary of
the streets as well, and, more importantly, part of the common language


114 Anita Bakshi

shared by all communities in Nicosia. This language was composed of
the repetitive practices of the daily life of the city-practices that were
known and recognized by all.
Many shopkeepers remembered the vendor who sold chickens from
cages in a street just off of Goldsmiths' and the petrol-seller who trav-
elled the streets with a donkey-cart. But most popular of all were the
sellers of sweets and refreshments. They would push their carts of shi-
amali-made from semolina, yogurt, and syrup-and muhallebi, the
characteristic starch pudding of Cyprus, making their rounds through
the marketplace, especially in the evening hours. A variety of muhallebi
was made from milk, and the most coveted ones were those that came
out blackened, the sugar slightly burnt and caramelized. In the morn-
ings vendors would sell a variety of breakfast rolls, the warm and soft
koullaria as well as bread rolls baked with halloumi or kaskavalli-a
rich cheese with holes that the oil runs through when warm. Perhaps
the most interesting vendor was the Turkish woman who sold Oxinindie
Lemonade, which she carried in a tank on her back. She wore a belt
stocked with glasses, bending over and pouring the lemonade from the
tank into these glasses.
The vendors had their own unique calls for advertising their products.
"Salebi vraaaaazi...."-"hot salep"-the men would call out who sold this
sweet winter drink made from crushed almonds. Some even had their
own lyrical sayings; particularly well-remembered was a Maronite man
who sold pastellaki, a mixture of nuts and honey pressed into flat bars.
He would walk up and down the marketplace streets two or three times
a day calling out:
To pastellaki to kalo,  The pastellaki is good,
Mono ego to poulo,   The only one who sells it is I,
Olo kouna kai athasi,  All nuts and almonds,
Opkios den fai tha hasi  Whoever does not eat it loses.
These vendors and their calls were recognized by all, and in this unas-
suming way different communities shared these aspects of everyday life
in the city.
While this area contained hundreds of small shops, cafes, vendors,
and gathering spots, there were several in particular that came up re-
peatedly in many of the shopkeepers' mappings and remembrances.
Many shopkeepers would gather in the taverns on Ermou in the eve-
nings: "a bachelor's life was there, at the bar," says Christos. While the
rest of Ermou was quiet in these late hours, the bars and taverns, es-
pecially Antonakis, Kikas, and Iraklis, were always crowded. Antonakis


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm 115

was a small, narrow bar where people would stop in for a quick drink
and a light snack. Tassos remembers being intrigued by these places
as a child, wondering about the clear, colorless beverage served there.
Through the open doors he would watch the men sitting at small metal
tables, eating from plates of olives and halloumi cheese; bottles of One
Star Cognac sat on the tables.
Several popular restaurants sold pacha, a hearty soup made by slowly
cooking together sheep head or stomach, vinegar, garlic, salt, and pep-
per. These restaurants were very popular both for breakfast as well as
for a late-night meal, opening around 3:00 AM to prepare the soup for
breakfast for workers who would begin arriving at 5:00 AM. The most
popular was Hadjigeorgios' restaurant, located just north of Ermou.
Some claim that Hadjigeorgios would carry cooked sheep eyes, con-
sidered a real delicacy, in his apron, popping them into the soup of his
special customers. Another popular pacha shop was owned by an Arab
from Beirut, who spoke excellent Turkish and also served hummus and
pastries similar to borek. Vazken, an Armenian leather merchant who
ran a shop on Arasta, remembers that his family would start work very
early, leaving their neighborhood near Victoria Road around dawn, to
return to their club only in the evening. They would open up shop at
7:00 AM, breaking for a 9:00 AM meal at Parsegh's kebab shop, run by
an Armenian who had migrated from Turkey. Some claimed that his
was the most popular shop in all of Nicosia. Ermou also hosted dozens
of small cafes, which were especially crowded during the siesta hours.
Of these, everybody had his or her favorite. Many remember the smell
of coffee from Ozerlat, a coffee roasters operating since the early 1900s
near the southern entrance to Pantopolio. Another roaster, Tahsin Bey,
was known for his unique method of preparing coffee without a grinding
machine, using a hammer instead. Many hans, or inns, were also located
on Ermou, known for specific characteristics and functions (Bakshi
2012b).
Legendary characters were also housed in these streets. Many shop-
keepers told stories about Kutsofannis, who owned a small tobacco shop
on Ermou. Many made of fun of him, recalling that he was a bit slow, a
bit fat, and had a funny way of walking and talking. When Tassos was
a child, his father, a soldier in World War I, collected his ration of ciga-
rettes, taking them to Kutsofannis' shop to resell for cash. Tassos would
stand outside the shop, and wonderingly stare up the steps at the "Cig-
arette Buddha" The common knowledge about this character can best
be illustrated by an anecdote. Andreas recalls a time when an actor, who
of course knew about Kutsofannis, went to his shop to play a joke on
him, speaking in the same manner, and walking with a limp. When the


116 Anita Bakshi

actor left, Kutsofannis saw him straighten up and walk properly from
the door. He became very angry, yelling curses down the street after the
actor; and of course, all the shopkeepers on the street laughed. Places
on Ermou were known not only for their physical characteristics or the
goods they sold, but also for the personalities associated with them. The
Ermou marketplace might almost be imagined as a framework in which
these characters, sounds, and daily practices were located.
The nature of this area changed greatly beginning in 1958. At the end
of two months of arson, destruction, and murder in Nicosia, fifty-six
Greeks and fifty-three Turks had died (Panteli 1990: 180). Even after or-
der was restored and negotiations were underway for the eventual inde-
pendence of a united Cyprus, the city was left divided in crucial ways.
I have described this in more detail elsewhere, but for the purposes of
this discussion, Pantopolio can serve as example of this change. The tone
of an article regarding the municipal market in the Turkish press on 1
July 1958 is telling of the increasing territorial claims being staked in the
once mixed commercial center:
The Lefkoga Municipal Market, which had been closed for the last
three weeks, opened yesterday.... Numerous British soldiers with ma-
chine guns and billy clubs can also be found occupying the market....
The market's Greek Cypriot shop owners appear to be gone.... I met
with the Turkish butchers and green grocers who had the chance to
settle back into their old shops again.... The Turkish owners say that
the market already belonged to the Evkaf, and therefore it has always
been Turkish. They also made the point that there are four municipal
markets in the Greek Cypriot areas, and therefore the Greek Cypriots
should not claim a right to this market.'4
Thus after 1958 the Greek butchers and grocers never again sold their
goods in Pantopolio. At the end of 1958 several major Ermou market-
place institutions including Bandabulya and the hans-both of which had
once encapsulated a particular way of life and the overlapping of spatial,
commercial, and social topographies familiar to both communities-
were irretrievably transformed. The intercommunal violence lasted for
only two months, but the damage to the city was much more permanent.
The topography of the Ermou streets was transformed by the begin-
nings of division-demarcated by fences, barriers, and patrolling military
groups-giving visual expression to the separation of the two commu-
nities. Like a zipper pulling apart, the Ermou streets became divided as
Turkish-Cypriot businesses relocated north and Turkish-Cypriot resi-
dents of these streets left their homes as refugees.


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm  117

Figure 4.1. "View Near St. Sophia
- Late 1950s." The main municipal
market Pantapolio/Bandabulya
appears in the background. Photo-
graph from The Press and Informa-
tion Office Archive, 20C.151 (27),
Ministry of the Interior, Republic
of Cyprus.
/                   _
LL.
r J                        O I r ~ WJ   Ul  I   ] Y I.
4  L  /                 [    ~LYr LI  dV!
Figure 4.2. A portion of the map created through discussions and map-
ping sessions with the shopkeepers. Koprii Bali / Stavro Pazaro was a
major landmark in the city and many shopkeepers were able to recall shops
that once were located in this part of the city.
Exclusion within Inclusiveness
It was important to here describe the Ermou marketplace in such great
detail because the depiction of these streets is critical to understanding
how the city functioned as a whole. It is clear that many aspects of daily
life in Nicosia's marketplace were shared and understood by Cypriots
from all communities. But at the same time, the city was divided in other
ways: structured into distinct mahalles, neighborhoods or quarters that
were most often ethnically segregated."


118 Anita Bakshi

While these quarters were generally divided along ethnic lines, other
public, civic, and commercial areas in the city were quite mixed. The
Ermou marketplace perhaps best exemplifies this, but the commercial
Ledra and Regena Streets were also used by all communities, as well
as Saray6nii Square, considered the clerical center of the city. In this
sense, the city was inclusive in that it provided spaces that were shared
by all communities, allowing for the participation of all residents in a
common urban life. At the same time, this was to some extent limited
to certain areas, and the morphology of the city included spaces and
urban practices that were formed around exclusion; there were differ-
ing degrees of inclusion and exclusion in the city. There were "public"
institutions within certain neighborhoods, but these were mainly for
the use of defined communities. For example, the Armenians, who were
well represented as merchants throughout the city, had their own club,
school, and church clustered around their main residential quarter near
Victoria Road. The lives of the Armenians of Nicosia were "largely sepa-
rate" from those of the Greeks and Turks (Pattie 1997: 56), yet significant
contact occurred through children's play, business matters, and shops.
Their community life was focused around their club:
By 1925 the Armenian club had been functioning in Nicosia for twenty
years.... In the library ... were numerous books and periodicals from
around the diaspora.... There was also a large room used for dances and
meetings, and a small canteen from which coffee and food were served.
Upstairs was a space for backgammon and card playing; above that were
more rooms, where a few poor families lived.... [There was] a cultural
hour at midday on Sundays, after church. These were attended by both
men and women and included poetry, music, dramatic recitations, and
lectures. People from the community played instruments or sang, and
occasionally artists or speakers would come from outside. (Ibid.: 73)
This was a community space and a community life that others did
not have, nor expected to have, access to. The Latin community, located
near Paphos Gate, had their own space near the Maronite Church. Like-
wise, the Greek and Turkish communities had their own institutions and
spaces for gathering. This social structure existed alongside the under-
standing of the city as areas and spaces with varying degrees of inclu-
siveness or exclusion, one that consisted of realms that were shared to
differing degrees. Even some aspects of the commercial life of the city
were segregated: For instance, there was an order of Turkish tanners,
marked by their special sashes and with their own initiation ceremonies
in the Omerye hamam (Bagsgkan 2009: 469). Yet the Turkish and Greek


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm 119

merchants and tradesmen came together in the Ermou bazaar. As Bry-
ant notes in her introductory discussion of "multi-scalar sovereignties,"
there was an understanding of the city as a number of overlapping pub-
lic and private zones, not one monolithic understanding of the city as
"shared space" to which every citizen had the "right" to access.
Additionally, Ermou Street was a very different space for women than
it was for men. Vathoula, an 83-year-old Greek Cypriot woman inter-
viewed for this research, remembers the Ermou of the 1950s as being
crowded with stores that sold jewelry, lace, fabrics, and shoes. Few
women worked in the shops, but many shopped in these streets. While
she remembers noticing restaurants and coffee shops from the street,
she would never stop there. These were places that were only for men,
and if women even glanced inside they would be labeled with a "bad
name." Young girls never went to the market alone; they would always be
accompanied by mothers, grandmothers, or brothers. The structuring
of the Ermou marketplace, then, excluded women from certain parts of
the city. As Vathoula's testimony illustrates, it was not considered proper
to even look into certain places.16 The differential access allowed to men
and women exemplifies what was then an accepted structuring of the
city into zones of inclusion and exclusion for different groups-much in
the same way that it was accepted that the Turks had their own nargile
cafes, the Greeks their own taverns, and the Armenians had their club.
There is much in contemporary writing about cities that praises di-
versity and multiculturalism, and this narrative, as a nostalgic trope, is
especially dominant in official Greek Cypriot understandings of what
the old city was like. But we can see through the example of the limited
access that women had to certain places on Ermou, and the example
of the Armenian Club, that this utopic narrative of urban inclusiveness
does not stand up to close scrutiny. Rather, the city was inherently struc-
tured as different zones, and it was well understood which populations
had access to which places. Nicosia worked as a mixed city because of
a spatial structure and communal understanding of the city as one that
was divided into areas with differing levels of public access and private
exclusivity. This overlapping could roughly, for the purposes of this dis-
cussion, be divided into three categorical realms, although greater sub-
tlety and nuance would assuredly allow for more. Each of these realms
allowed the residents differing levels of participation in the public life of
the city, and thus enabled varying degrees of interaction with members
of other communities.
The most mixed realm of the city consisted of shared commercial
areas, most importantly the Ermou streets. This area structured daily life
into a system that was repetitive: certain daily patterns and timings were


120 Anita Bakshi

followed by all. This allowed for recognition of people that one would
get to know over time, enabling relationships of secondary familiarity.
A reference to Georg Simmel's analysis of "the stranger" and human re-
lationships can shed some light on why this realm was so important. In
his discussion of "nearness" and "remoteness" Simmel claims that the
stranger is someone that we know, and in knowing them we understand
that they are not part of "us":
The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every human rela-
tion is organized, in the phenomenon of the stranger, in a way which
may be most briefly formulated by saying that in the relationship to
him distance means that he, who is close by, is far, and strangeness
means that he, who is also far, is actually near. (Simmel 1950: 402-8)
These strangers are not really "conceived as individuals" in the sense that
we do not think about their individual qualities, but rather generalize
them into a group that is characterized by their being different to us. The
shared realm provided by the Ermou streets allowed for the recognition
of specific differences-the elements that begin to form the outlines of
individuals, distinguishing them from the group as a whole. These out-
lines may remain hazy. They need not be deep friendships, and indeed
they probably often were not, but they do help to create a public life in
which the individual can operate comfortably-what Sylvaine Bulle in
this volume describes as "co-presence"
Unlike the Jerusalem described by Bulle, however, Nicosia of this pe-
riod was one that may have experienced the sorts of everyday tensions
described by Bryant in her introduction, but where there was little overt
hostility. This allowed for a particular habitus to emerge, one constituted
by the repetitive nature of interactions and facilitated by the stable pat-
tern of streets and intersections. As Doreen Massey states:
One of the truly productive characteristics of material spatiality [is] its
potential for the happenstance juxtaposition of previously unrelated
trajectories, that business of walking around a corner and bumping
into alterity, of having ... to get on with neighbors ... what is import-
ant is that contact is involved and some form of social negotiation.
(Massey 2004: 94)
The spatial characteristics of the Ermou marketplace created the pos-
sibilities for such activities and mediation. This part of the city had func-
tioned as the main bazaar area for centuries, and its material and spatial
characteristics developed because of this location and function. It was
once a riverbed, and the narrow and twisting roads that were laid out


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm 121

here were originally unpaved market lanes that followed the course of
the river. It was the main east-west route through the city, linking two
city gates, so hans were established along its course. Plots in this market
area were divided to create narrow lots. The wide doors fronting on Er-
mou provided the main natural light for these narrow shops, and were
often left open to the street making the shopkeepers visible to passersby.
The few squares and wide streets became places where vendors would
establish themselves into recognizable patterns. People could be seen
sitting outside of their shops, walking in the streets selling their goods,
or resting in cafes during siesta. Thus trade considerations created this
particular spatial configuration, and then the material reality of the
spaces served to create a well-functioning shared realm for the city-a
space that allowed for visual recognition, contact and social negotiation.
It was the praxis of the city that allowed for this. In her introduction to
this volume, Bryant proposes using the term "constructive ambiguity"
to think about a process that allows "certain boundaries to remain in
place while finding common ground where it is possible" (p. 23). In this
way, differences are bracketed, allowing it to be retained while everyday
practices continue. The Ermou marketplace provided a spatial field that
could accommodate this kind of negotiation.
The second realm was that of institutions within, or in close proxim-
ity to this mixed area: cafes, taverns, or clubs that were segregated and
were for the exclusive use of one group or another. These allowed for
certain moments when one could withdraw from the shared realm. And
finally, the third realm is that of the mahalle, neighborhoods or quarters
that were most often ethnically segregated. This allowed for a complete
retreat from the mixed, public life of the city into the comfort and fa-
miliarity of the mahalle. It is important to state here that some of these
neighborhoods, such as Tahtakale and Omerye, were ethnically quite
mixed, and here the familiarity with neighbors also became a defining
feature of the mahalle, outside of ethnicity.
Conclusion: Loss of a Structure of Meaning
While the walled city is mythologically depicted either as a space of
comprehensive coexistence or total separation, a closer investigation
reveals a more complex urban structure. Communities came together
for trade and commerce, working together but generally living in sep-
arate quarters. Most of the Turkish neighborhoods were north of the
old riverbed, with the exception of Tahtakale and Omerye to the south.
Most of the Greeks lived in the south, with the exception of Ayios Lucas
in the north. Still, there were many places in the marketplace streets


122 Anita Bakshi

frequented by both communities. These were the tacitly agreed upon
places for public intermingling, while intimate neighborhood spots, cer-
tain cafes, or ethnic institutions like the Armenian Club, were private,
used exclusively by certain communities. An understanding was in place
that the city was composed of a number of realms of varying degrees of
exclusion or integration.
It is important to introduce this distinction and this gradation into
the discussion, as this is lacking in most depictions of the city. For exam-
ple, a Greek-Cypriot text, Peaceful Co-existence in Cyprus under British
Rule, shows a photograph taken in the 1950s at the Women's Market,
of Greeks and Turks shopping side by side. This text, using such photo-
graphs, seeks to render the old city as a site of unity, prior to 1974 (Kyrris
1977). Yet, these kinds of narratives leave out the forces that changed
the city from the 1950s to 1974. Rather than stopping with such photo-
graphic "evidence," it is necessary to continue to examine the resource of
place, to trace the devolution of the city toward complete division. From
the shopkeepers' memories outlined above, it certainly does seem as if
these streets contained a common way of life that was recognized by
many-a world of recognizable faces and images, a rhythm consisting of
the regular flow of known sounds and daily patterns of movement, gov-
erned by a common clock. Halbwachs has argued that "[h]abits related
to a specific physical setting resist the forces tending to change them"
(Halbwachs 1992: 133). This understanding is limited by his assumption
of the given dynamics of a stable society. Different dynamics present in
sites of conflict, and it is obvious that it was not possible to resist the
forces that changed Nicosia from a mixed city to a divided city.
The current material reality of the Buffer Zone represents the loss of a
collective way of life. Here an entire web of streets, buildings, occupants,
and sounds has been destroyed. While these streets are still in place, the
mud-brick buildings that define their edges are eroding away. Signs have
rusted, walls have collapsed, and the life that sustained these market-
place streets is gone. What has been lost is what Peter Loizos, in his
study of the 1974 refugees from the Cypriot village of Argaki, has called
a "structure of meaning." This refers not just to the loss of homes, but
rather the loss of highly unique and particular homes, "in which most
of their most important social experiences had taken place ... identified
with labour, life-history, taste and personality of their owners, and they
are in each case a unique combination of subject (owner) and object
(construction)" Loizos argues that a refugee can be given a new place
to live, a new plot of land, or a new business, "but in the most profound
sense, he cannot be given his home again" (Loizos 1977: 8-9). The same
can be said of those who were forced to leave the Ermou streets-either


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm 123

in 1958, 1963, or 1974-due to political developments and intercommu-
nal conflict. What they cannot find again, what has been lost, is the com-
mon experience of the mixed city. The closure of these streets meant the
disruption of the everyday lives of all Cypriots. It meant the loss of the
smell of warm koullaria breakfast rolls sold on the street, the rhythmic
hammering of metal workers, the cries of the salep seller, the endless
rounds of jokes about Kutsofannis, the crowds flowing into Pantopolio/
Bandabulya from two entrances in the north and the south, the end of
quick drinks of cognac at Antonakis, and the end of long discussions
under the shade of Platanos. What has been lost is not just this collective
memory, but the collective city itself-the way of life that had existed in
the shared realm of the Ermou marketplace.
Again, Simmel's discussion of "the stranger" is useful in thinking about
the change in the nature of social relations between Greeks and Turks
in Cyprus:
With the stranger one has only certain more general qualities in com-
mon, whereas the relation to more organically connected persons is
based on the commonness of specific differences from merely general
features. (Simmel 1950: 407)'1
This statement can be used to analyze the changing nature of relations
between shopkeepers from different communities. In their remem-
brances of these streets, shopkeepers spoke about "organically connected
persons" such as Kutsofannis or Hadjigeorgos, and other well-known
personalities. They spoke of the "commonness of specific differences"
such as "he was fat" "he walked funny;' "he had a quick temper," "he was
good about extending credit." These qualities later changed to "merely
general features" about "the Greeks" or "the Turks" as the shopkeepers
reminisced about later periods with statements such as "the Greeks were
cunning" or "the Turks wanted too much" There was a shift in the dy-
namics of personal relations between Greeks and Turks, moving those
from the other community into the position of "the stranger."
This detailed study of Ermou has attempted to again bring out the
"commonness of specific differences.' Place-based research has much
to offer in bringing to light alternative narratives in contested environ-
ments where alternative histories may be unavailable or obscured by of-
ficial versions. The retrieval of memories from the resource provided by
the Ermou marketplace does not serve simply to enable nostalgia for this
lost past. Rather, if a shared future is to be possible in Cyprus, a recogni-
tion of a shared connection to place, by all Cypriots, can serve as a useful
foundation for dialogue and exchange.


124 Anita Bakshi

Anita Bakshi teaches in the Department of Landscape Architecture
and the Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies (CHAPS) Program
in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University. Following sev-
eral years in architectural practice in Chicago, California, and Istanbul,
she received her Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Architecture from
Cambridge University, where she was a member of the Conflict in Cities
research group. She is interested in the relationship between memory
and materiality and engages in design research that looks for new forms
for monuments, memorials, and other commemorative structures.
Notes
1. The name of this street in English is Hermes Street, and in Greek and Turk-
ish it is Ermou or Ermu, pronounced the same. In this chapter I will refer to
it as Ermou, as this is the name by which it is recognized by all shopkeepers
interviewed for this research.
2. I have described elsewhere the significance of this area in the construc-
tion of the differing Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot "myths" of the city
(Bakshi 2014).
3. The NMP is a bicommunal initiative involving the Greek-Cypriot and Turk-
ish-Cypriot communities. It was established in 1981, largely at the initiative
of the mayors of the two sides of the city. Since that time they have worked
to create an overall master plan for the city.
4. There is significant scholarship that addresses this issue in cities in the
former Ottoman sphere. For instance, Gilson Miller and Bertagnin have
looked beyond the dimensions of segregation in these communities, argu-
ing that apparent fixed boundaries were perhaps more fluid than previously
thought (2010).
5. The Cyprus Industrial, Commercial, and Professional Guide and The Cy-
prus General Directory contain listings and advertisements of businesses
in the old city prior to division. For this research I consulted annual issues
dating from 1946-1951. These catalogues feature advertisements for many
shops along formerly important commercial streets such as Ermou, Arasta,
Yegil Gazino, Kykko, Ledra, and Libertis Streets.
6. As the existing maps gave no indication of street addresses, it was necessary
to use partial Evkaf property registers and photographs of buildings taken
during the Buffer Zone Survey in order to connect the building plots with
door numbers. Issues of the Cyprus Mail newspaper from the 1940s and
1950s provided additional information about shop addresses through ad-
vertisements published by vendors in the back pages.
7. I conducted a series of interviews with these shopkeepers in Nicosia, meet-
ing with them regularly in 2010-11. Eleven Greek Cypriots, twelve Turkish
Cypriots, and two Armenian Cypriots were interviewed. The names of in-
dividuals appearing in the text have been anonymized.


Trade and Exchange in Nicosia's Shared Realm 125

8. As Dennis Cosgrove has stated, urban archeology works by "mapping the
stratigraphy of material deposits stretched across former urban space." These
mappings then can be used to "reconstruct not only a city's physical appear-
ance but also its social, political, commercial and religious life" (1986: 169).
9. Unless otherwise noted, most of the material in this section comes from
interviews conducted with the shopkeepers.
10. Interviews with the shopkeepers revealed that different communities at
times used common names to describe places in Nicosia, and in other cases
described them using linguistically specific referents.
11. At the foot of Arasta was Lokmaci Krikor, an Armenian maker of lokma,
fried sweet dough, who unwittingly gave the name to the barricade that was
to be built in front of his shop in 1964, the Lokmaci Barikat, which is the
name by which the Ledra Street crossing is known today in Turkish.
12. While Pantopolio was the main market, there were smaller weekly markets
as well such as the Gynaikobazaro, the Women's Market, which was also
mixed. This market was south of Ermou, and bordered on one side by the
popular north-south commercial Ledra Street. An open structure, consist-
ing of two sets of slender columns supporting a wooden pediment roof with
arched vault, defined the crowded market.
13. This former Gothic cathedral, which had been commonly known as the
Aya Sofya Mosque, was renamed the Selimiye Mosque in 1958. Tensions
between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities was reflected
in many such name changes, such as the names of street names, in 1958.
14. Turk Belediye  argisi agildi [The Turkish Municipal Bazaar opened], 1958.
15. For example, the census of 1946 shows that Phaneromeni, a neighborhood
in the south, had a population of 10 "Mahomedans" (Turks) and 1,065 "Non
Mahomedans" (mainly Greeks). Tahtakaleh, also south of the riverbed
streets, had 518 "Mahomedans" and 902 "Non Mahomedans." The neigh-
borhood of Emerieh (Omerye) had a population of 249 "Mahomedans" and
917 "Non Mahomedans." In the north, Ayios Lucas had a population of 536
"Mahomedans" and 263 "Non Mahomedans." Unlike Phaneromeni, these
neighborhoods were the most mixed in the city.
16. According to Doreen Massey "not all the 'others' whose existence and dif-
ference were so vital to the establishment of the modern sensibility were
located in distant regions of the planet. There were also 'others' within ..."
including women (Massey 2005: 92-93).
17. See also Rebecca Bryant's description of George Simmel's analysis of "the
stranger" in her 2004 study, Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nation-
alism in Cyprus (Bryant 2004: 186).
References
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Nicosia: Cyprus Turkish Education Foundation.
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. 2012b. "The Legacy of Ottoman Building in Nicosia: Hans as Spaces of
Coexistence in Pre-conflict Cyprus." International Journal of Islamic Archi-
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Baybars, Taner. 1970. Plucked in a Far-Off Land: Images in Self-Biography. Lon-
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Calabi, Donatella. 2004. The Market and the City: Square, Street and Architec-
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Gilson Miller, Susan, and Mauro Bertagnin, eds. 2010. The Architecture and
Memory of the Minority Quarter in the Muslim Mediterranean City. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
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Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage Publications.
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sence of Reason. New York: Peter Lang.


Part II
Performing Coexistence
and Difference



+ Chapter 5 +

In Bed Together
Coexistence in Togo Mizrahi' Alexandria Films
DEBORAH A. STARR
The camera pans across the rooftops in a popular district of Alexan-
dria. The image cuts to chickens feeding on one of the rooftops, then
fades to the interior of the adjacent one-room apartment. An alarm
clock rings, waking Chalom, a Jewish seller of lottery tickets. He quiets
the alarm, leans over, and wakens his bedmate, 'Abdu, a Muslim butch-
er's assistant (figure 1). Thus opens al-cIzz Bahdala [Mistreated By Af-
fluence (1937)], a film written, directed, and produced by Togo Mizrahi
(1901-1986), an Alexandrian Jew with Italian nationality.1
This image of a Jew and a Muslim in bed together functions as a point
of departure for this essay's analysis of the construction of coexistence
in Togo Mizrahi's films produced in his studio in Alexandria. I approach
the phrase "in bed together" as not just a metaphor of coexistence, but as
a key to unlocking Mizrahi's projection of sameness and difference, self
and Other, in 1930s Alexandria.
From the outset I should note that the sight of these two impover-
ished characters sharing a bed need not-and indeed should not-be
understood as signaling sexual desire or a romantic affiliation between
them. They share a bed because they are poor, not because they are gay.
However, in this essay I argue that Togo Mizrahi's Alexandria comedies
queer gender identity in a variety of ways, and that we cannot dismiss
out of hand the gender and sexuality implications of this opening scene.2
In this essay I tease out the interrelationship in Togo Mizrahi's films be-
tween an ethics of coexistence, "Chalom and 'Abdu' and the queering
of gender identity, "in bed together," as they play out against the back-
drop of the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria. I argue that Mizrahi's films,
through their narratives of mistaken identity, queer both ethno-religious
identities and gender.


130 Deborah A. Starr

Figure 5.1. Chalom and cAbdu wake up together in bed. Screenshot,
Mistreated by Affluence (1937).

I begin my analysis by situating Mizrahi's Alexandria films within the
development and critical reception of Egyptian cinema. Mizrahi's com-
edies-and 1930s and 1940s Egyptian films in general-while popular at
the time of release, have been disparaged by latter-day nationalist film
critics and historians. In the first section below, I argue that the coex-
istence narrative in Mizrahi's Alexandria films-as articulated through
what I have termed a "Levantine cinematic idiom"-does not fit into the
parochial nationalist paradigm of the critics, and goes at least part of the
way toward explaining their discomfort with his films. In the second sec-
tion I unpack the twin critical frameworks through which I analyze Miz-
rahi's films: queerness and the Levantine. In the final sections I flesh out
this argument with readings of two of Mizrahi's Alexandria comedies:
al-Duktur Farhat [Doctor Farahat (1935)] and Mistreated by Affluence.3
Levantine Farce Versus National Melodrama
Togo Mizrahi was one of the pioneers of the Egyptian film industry.
Through the 1920s until the mid-1930s, filmmaking was driven by the
creative efforts (and financial investments) of individuals-there was no


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 131

Egyptian equivalent to the Hollywood studio system. In 1929 Mizrahi
established his own film studio in Alexandria and his own production
company Shirkat al-aflam al-misriyya (Egyptian Films Company). Stu-
dio Mizrahi produced more films in the 1930s than any other studio
in Egypt (El-Shammaa 2007). Mizrahi directed and produced his films,
developed the scenarios, and for the most part, throughout his career
wrote (or co-wrote) his scripts. The first three films that Togo Mizrahi
made in his Alexandria studio addressed social issues: al-Hawiya /
al-Kukayin [The Abyss or Cocaine (silent, 1930)];4 5001 (silent, 1932);
and Awlad Misr [Children of Egypt (sound, 1933)].' Between 1934 and
1938 Mizrahi made nine Arabic comedies filmed in Alexandria and its
environs and in his Alexandria studio.6
In 1939 Mizrahi began filming in Cairo, first shooting on the sound
stage at Studio Wahbi, and then opening a second location for his own
studio.7 His decision to begin filming in Cairo was likely due to the cen-
tralization of talent and resources in the capital at that time. In 1934,
Egyptian nationalist financier Muhammad Tal'at Harb had founded Stu-
dio Misr, with the goal of establishing a robust national film industry.
Harb also supported the development of local talent, investing in send-
ing Egyptians for technical training in Europe (al-Hadari 2007; Hasan
1986). Studio Misr's first film, Widad, a musical starring the already
well-known singer, Umm Kulthum, was released in 1936.8
The comedies Mizrahi directed between 1934 and 1938 in Alexandria
share a number of features that distinguish them from his films made af-
ter his 1939 move to Cairo. The Alexandria comedies are all set in Egypt
of the 1930s and involve a plot of mistaken identity. These films also
all feature the same three comic stars who play consistent characters
or types across the films: Chalom; 'Ali al-Kassar; and Fawzi al-Jazayirli.
Leon Angel, the actor credited as Chalom, regularly appears as a charac-
ter named "Chalom."9 Critics have noted that "Chalom," a poor seller of
lottery tickets in a popular district of Alexandria, is modeled on Charlie
Chaplin's tramp (Farid 1996).10 During the period under discussion Cha-
lom appeared in two films directed by Mizrahi. 'Ali al-Kassar regularly
appeared on stage and screen as a character called 'Usman 'Abd al-Ba-
sit, a down-on-his-luck Nubian.11 Fawzi al-Jazayirli frequently played
the shop owner "Bahbah" as well as a variety of other simple characters
of limited means.12 In Mizrahi's films, al-Jazayirli's characters get them-
selves into complicated situations beyond their comprehension.
These films also all play out in the streets, cafes, shops, homes, clinics,
and, of course, beaches of Alexandria. Alexandria has a long-standing
reputation as a cosmopolis. Mizrahi's representation of the city in these
films reflects Alexandria's diversity. Mizrahi's films from this era repre-


132 Deborah A. Starr

sent a culture of coexistence that cuts across class.13 Mizrahi's choice of
stars-Chalom plays a Jewish character; 'Ali al-Kassar portrays a Nu-
bian-reflects an inclusive vision of local subjectivity. Mizrahi's films
from this period regularly feature Greek and shami [Levantine Arab]
characters as well as members of the Francophone Alexandrian elite.
While there is no abrupt rupture between Mizrahi's films before and
after the relocation of his studio in 1939, some differences are notable.
After 1939 Mizrahi continued to write and direct comedies of mistaken
identity; however, he also began to explore other genres. The first film
he made in Cairo, Fi Layla Mumtira [On a Rainy Night (1939)], is a mu-
sical melodrama.14 In the 1940s Mizrahi began to branch out into what
could be called costume comedies, like the films starring 'Ali al-Kas-
sar based loosely on narratives from the Thousand and One Nights: Alf
Layla wa-Layla [1001 Nights (1940)]; and 'Ali Baba wa-l-Arbacin Ha-
rami [Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1942)]. Also, in Mizrahi's films
after 1939 the self-conscious engagement with an ethics of inclusion be-
comes somewhat more muted, whether by virtue of generic conventions
in the case of musicals, or the removal of comedies-which had already
maintained a strained relationship to reality-from the Egypt of the time
and into fictional settings.
Contemporaneous Egyptian critics lauded Mizrahi's efforts to bring
locally produced entertainment to Egyptian viewers. One critic, Ra'uf
Muhammad al-Shaf'i (1935), deemed Doctor Farahat "a brilliant success
... in step with the Egyptian spirit." During these early years, critics also
lavished praise on the performance of Mizrahi's stars. Muhammad Yunis
al-Qadi (1935), a playwright who had written for Fawzi al-Jazayirli, ex-
pressed his appreciation for Mizrahi's adaptation of the actor's physical
comedy for the screen. Another critic (Kutah 1935) lauded the screen
presence of Tahiya Muhammad, later known by the screen name Tahiya
Carioca, in her film debut under Mizrahi's direction in Doctor Farahat.15
Later Egyptian critics do not generally share this enthusiasm about
Mizrahi's films. In an essay published in 1996, 'Ali Abu Shadi (1996: 91-
92), for example, concedes that, "Mizrahi's films were very popular and
successful at the box office, and they made their stars famous." However,
he goes on to dismiss these films for their "contrived and exaggerated"
plot lines and their low-brow humor. Abu Shadi (1996: 91-92) levied the
following critique of Mizrahi's comic fare: "These films are light come-
dies, there is no character development, no motivation for action, and
no subtlety to the words. They seek only to amuse and entertain, and
some are farces using mistaken identity and misunderstanding as their
primary means of arousing laughs."


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 133

Abu Shadi is correct that farces were indeed Mizrahi's stock in trade
in the 1930s. The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theater defines farce
as a "form of popular comedy in which laughter is raised by horseplay
and bodily assault in contrived and highly improbable situations ... It
deals with the inherent stupidity of man at odds with his environment"
(Hartnoll and Found 1996). In its modern usage, according to the en-
try, "the word farce is applied to a full-length play dealing with some
absurd situation, generally based on extra-marital adventures-hence
"bedroom farce" (Hartnoll and Found 1996). However, the entry draws
a clear distinction between farce with "its hold on humanity" and bur-
lesque "depicting the grosser faults of mankind" (Hartnoll and Found
1996). Abu Shadi and other Egyptian critics are not alone in disparaging
the contrivances of farce.16 Eric Bentley (1964: 219-56), in his analysis
of the genre, cites a host of oppositions to the underpinning violence of
farce, and its subversion of the tenets of religion, marriage, and moral
social codes.
Mizrahi's farcical plots of mistaken identity are indeed "contrived" and
"highly improbable." In this article I aim to make a case for the value of
revisiting these farces (which I, apparently unlike Abu Shadi, find quite
entertaining). What interests me is the nature of the contrivances of
Mizrahi's farcical plots. Specifically, I wish to unpack the particular acts
of "mistaken identity and misunderstanding" that Abu Shadi dismisses.
Abu Shadi's assessment also reflects a predominant trend in Egyp-
tian film criticism. Critics sympathetic to Nasserist ideology take a dim
view of interwar and postwar genre films, dismissing them as decadent
and derivative of (dangerous) foreign influences (Flibbert 2005: 461n3).17
Nationalist critics of Egyptian film have tended to view melodrama as
the vehicle best suited to cinema of substance. Melodrama has the ca-
pacity to reveal social ills. It was also the genre of choice for depicting
the anti-colonial struggle.18
To summarize this position, nationalist critics have posited a rela-
tionship between the genre of melodrama and the nation (with emphasis
here on the post-Nasser Arabo-centric nation). In this chapter, I simi-
larly posit a relationship between the genre of farce and the Levantine.
The Levantine idiom in Togo Mizrahi's 1930s farcical films, I am argu-
ing, queers identity.19 It is this dynamic, more than the mere inclusion on
screen of non-Arab minorities that challenges the hegemonic national
narrative of Egyptian film criticism. As articulations of a queer, Levan-
tine urban localism, Mizrahi's farces offer an alternative to the parochial,
homosocial, and heteronormative national imaginary produced by and
reproduced in melodrama.20


134 Deborah A. Starr

Queerness and the Levantine
My construction of the performativity of identities-Levantine, on the
one hand, and gender and sexuality on the other-is indebted to Judith
Butler's influential work, Gender Trouble (Butler 1990). Since her de-
bunking of the myth of compulsory heterosexuality and stable categories
of gender, the epistemological questions about identity that Butler raises
burst open interrogation of other forms of identity formation. Richard
Thompson Ford (2011: 123), for example, models his own critique of
racial identity politics on Butler's critique of gender: "Queer theory's an-
ti-identitarianism is the key to its portability ... The queer critique of
(nominally) gay identity politics would seem to apply to identity politics
in general." In labeling Mizrahi's Levantine film idiom "queer" I am re-
ferring to both the particularities of the performativity of gender and
sexuality, as well as its broader destabilizing potential, as explored by
Ford, for "identity politics in general."'
In the introduction to Out Takes, a volume of essays on queer theory
and film, Ellis Hanson takes a similarly broad view of the term's signifi-
cance. Hanson (1999: 4) defines "queer" as:
a rejection of the compulsory heterosexual code of masculine men de-
siring feminine women, and it declares that the vast range of stigma-
tized sexualities and gender identifications, far from being marginal,
are central to the construction of modern subjectivity; but it is also,
as Michael Warner has pointed out, a resistance to normalization as
conceived more generally as a sort of divide-and-conquer mentality
by which cultural difference-racial, ethnic, sexual, socioeconomic-is
pathologized and atomized as disparate forms of deviance.
Hanson acknowledges the broad significance of the term queer, in de-
stabilizing received categories including but not limited to gender and
sexuality. In the second half of the quote, he asserts the power of queer
theory to expose the dynamics of other forms of social marginalization.
I argue that Mizrahi's Alexandrian bedroom farces destabilize prevail-
ing gender categories in 1930s Egypt. The films, by extension, poke fun
at emerging middle class assumptions about modernity and the nation.
Historian Wilson Jacob (2011) has mapped what he terms "effendi mas-
culinity"-a subject position reflecting middle class aspirations toward
and performance of modernity that began emerging in the last decades
of the nineteenth century. This "effendi masculinity" was commonly
recognizable by the 1930s. Jacob reads as performance these new forms
of gendered, national subjectivity that emerge in British colonial Egypt.


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 135

Mizrahi's 1930s comedies feature lower class characters ill at ease
with middle class expectations. The bumbling characters portrayed by
Chalom, 'Ali al-Kassar, and Fawzi al-Jazayirli simultaneously confront
modernity and emerging gender norms to which they do not conform.
Class mobility is linked in these films with the performance of norma-
tivized gender expectations that look a lot like the "effendi masculin-
ity" Jacob identifies. The lens provided by Jacob permits us to see the
ways, by extension, Mizrahi's films reflect upon and subtly critique (in
a non-ideological way) emerging normativizing discourse and Egyptian
articulations of modernity.22
According to Gershoni and Jankowski (1995), the new efendiyya were
also the driving force behind a shift in the conception of the nation Egypt
underwent in the 1930s that ran counter to Mizrahi's Levantine con-
struction of identity, and threatened the coexistence of Jews and Mus-
lims portrayed in his films. The territorial nationalism identified with
the 1919 revolution, with its pluralist bent, had derived from Western
thought and political philosophy. By the 1930s the economic and politi-
cal environment had shifted, and disillusionment with the failures of the
1919 agenda fed the ascendance of what Gershoni and Jankowski (1995)
call supra-Egyptian nationalism. Although these strains of nationalism
shared an anti-colonial agenda, the supra-nationalists drew inspiration
from Arab-Islamic sources and articulated their political agenda in terms
shared by other Arabs and Muslims in contrast to the Western orien-
tation of territorial nationalism. In practice, the ascendant nationalist
strains increasingly excluded resident non-Muslim minorities like Miz-
rahi. The 1929 Nationality Law, according to Shimon Shamir (1987: 48),
"gave dominance to jus sanguina" in defining those eligible for Egyptian
nationality, and "accorded special position to Arab and/or Muslim affili-
ation." In the interwar period exclusionary nationalist discourses such as
Greek irredentism, Italian fascism, and Zionism also circulated among
some members of Egypt's resident foreign minority communities, divid-
ing them from one another and from the majority culture.
Mizrahi's films resist this deterministic trend by embracing what I
call a Levantine cinematic idiom. I have chosen the term "Levantine" be-
cause it reflects the 1930s Alexandrian society that Mizrahi portrays on
screen, and in which he produced his films. The term "Levantine" also
highlights ambiguity and performativity of identity alongside the pre-
sumption of diversity. I identify three characteristics of Mizrahi's Levan-
tine idiom. First, Levantine films depict an urban localism characterized
by diversity, and feature, to echo Rebecca Bryant's definition of "coex-
istence" in the introduction to this volume, "the horizontal relations
among persons belonging to different ethnic or confessional groups."


136 Deborah A. Starr

These films engage with, although do not necessarily promote, a Le-
vantine ethics of coexistence. Second, these films also employ a visual
language of inclusion, a Levantine aesthetic. Third, in these films the
performance of identity is fluid and mutable, embracing the vagueness
and porousness of the boundaries of identity. This idiom, which grows
out of Egyptian comic theater, is evident in films by other filmmakers in
Egypt in the 1930s as well.24
In what follows, I analyze two Togo Mizrahi films produced and set
in Alexandria in the 1930s that engage the nexus between queerness and
the Levantine: Doctor Farahat and Mistreated by Affluence. Doctor Fara-
hat overtly troubles assumptions about gender and sexuality. Mistreated
by Affluence, as I have already described above, foregrounds coexistence.
By reading these films together, I aim to demonstrate how these two
articulations of the performativity of identity in Mizrahi's work inform
one another.
Suitors in Swimsuits - Doctor Farahat (1935)
Like Mizrahi's other films from this era, Doctor Farahat is fundamen-
tally a comedy of assumed identity. Hilmy, a successful surgeon who has
been living in England for fifteen years, returns to his native Alexandria
to get married. In addition to his wealth, he is considered a minor celeb-
rity for his medical discoveries. A match has been arranged to Nona, a
woman he has not yet met. Concerned that she is a gold-digger, he seeks
an opportunity to court her, without her knowing his identity. So, he
arranges to meet her twice, once in disguise as the stuffy, bearded, and
bespectacled Dr. Hilmy (figure 2), and once looking and acting naturally,
but under the assumed identity of Mustafa, a clerk (figure 3).
To add to the confusion, upon Hilmy's arrival, he dodges reporters by
asking an employee of the hotel, Farahat (Fawzi al-Jazayirli), to assume
his identity. The backward, impoverished, and uneducated Farahat has
been employed as a translator by the hotel under false (and humorous)
pretenses. Nevertheless, the ruse succeeds; the reporters snap Farahat's
picture, convinced they have taken the photo of Dr. Hilmy, setting in
motion this additional plot line of mistaken identity.
Nona's family, eager to meet the young suitor, send for Hilmy, and
instead get his geriatric pretender, Farahat. As the title suggests, it is Far-
ahat's humorous misadventures in the guise of the esteemed Dr. Hilmy
that dominate the plot. Farahat and his sidekick cAli, in the role of the
doctor's secretary, pay a visit to Nona's house.2 Nona and her friend Ta-
hiya privately mock the suitor, and set out to humiliate him in the hopes
of calling off the engagement.


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 137

Figure 5.2. Hilmy disguised as Dr. Hilmy. Screenshot, Doctor Farahat
(1935).

Figure 5.3. Hilmy disguised as Mustafa, with Nona. Screenshot, Doctor
Farahat (1935).


138 Deborah A. Starr

It is within this multilayered charade of mistaken identity that one en-
counters gender play. In what follows, I unpack two articulations of the
queering of gender identity in Doctor Farahat. First, I examine instances
when same sex pairs share the same bed. Then, I discuss moments in
the film that individually and collectively can be read as highlighting a
performative construction of gender identity.
Much of the plot of Doctor Farahat revolves around Nona's efforts
to exhaust Farahat and to drive him away. The women first keep the
men walking along the Corniche until midnight, then Nona calls at five
o'clock the following morning to invite them for a swim. Nona also ar-
ranged for notable doctors to attend a lecture later the same morning to
be given by "Dr. Hilmy" (Farahat), and in the afternoon she entices the
men to join her for a party on a boat that lasts until late in the evening.
On four occasions, during the brief intervals between these engage-
ments, Farahat and 'Ali flop into the plush double bed in their shared
hotel room. These comic scenes are rife with sight gags and tame ver-
bal innuendo. On the first occasion, 'Ali removes his jacket on Farahat's
side of the bed and starts to climb over Farahat. Farahat exclaims, "Hey
brother, why not enter from the door of your house?" 'Ali responds, "But
it's a long way from here. Let me pass through your roof." The root of the
verb kharama, here used in its form that signifies "pass through" or "take
a shortcut," can also signify "pierce"-adding to the suggestive double
entendre to the exchange. Later in the scene, when the phone rings, 'Ali,
in his role as the esteemed doctor's secretary, again climbs over Farahat
to answer the call (figure 4).
Although the men remain fully clothed, physical contact between
them in bed-like the sight ofcAli climbing over Farahat-elicits laughs.26
By contrast with this scene, while the opening sequence of Mistreated by
Affluence leaves no question that we are viewing a comedy, the fact that
the two men share a bed is not played for laughs. Farahat and cAli would,
like their counterparts Chalom and cAbdu, think nothing of sharing a
bed with a male friend in their own cramped domestic quarters. The
luxurious bed in the hotel is large and inviting, and despite the presence
of a couch in the suite, neither character seems to question that they
would share the bed. Farahat objects to the way 'Ali enters the bed, but
not to his presence.
The scenes with Farahat and 'Ali confirm heteronormative sexuality
within homosocial Egyptian norms. Any ambiguity of these bedroom
scenes is resolved in the final iteration of this repeating pattern (figure
5). Throughout the film, Umm Ahmad, Farahat's wife, chases after him.
After failing to follow him to the party on the boat, she lies in wait. After
the party, Farahat falls drunk into bed and starts to brag about kissing
Nona. Umm Ahmad indignantly reveals herself and demands an expla-


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 139

A.
Figure 5.4.  Ali climbs over Farahat to answer the telephone. Screenshot,
Doctor Farahat, (1935).

Figure 5.5. Farahat and Umm Ahmad in bed. Screenshot, Doctor Farahat
(1935).


140 Deborah A. Starr

nation. We are restored to the standard heteronormative extramarital
love triangle of the bedroom farce.
Just prior to the first scene of Farahat and 'Ali in bed together, Nona
and Tahiya are also shown sharing a bed. After the long walk on the
Corniche, Nona sits on the bed in a negligee, stretches, proclaims that
she is tired and then lies down under the covers. Tahiya, sitting on the
edge of the bed undressing, concurs, adding "If you think you're tired,
what about them?" This scene reads as a (male) voyeuristic view into the
women's boudoir.
Later, at the conclusion of the party scene, Nona and Mustafa embrace
in the moonlight. The scene cuts abruptly to Nona's bedroom, the sec-
ond scene showing the women in bed together. In this miniature scene,
lasting nineteen seconds, Nona lies awake, and repeats Mustafa's proc-
lamation of love to her, while Tahiya drifts off to sleep beside her (figure
6). The film then cuts to Umm Ahmad hiding under the covers awaiting
Farahat's return from the party. As with the scene between Farahat and
Umm Ahmad that follows, Nona's wakeful reflection appears to restore
heteronormative desire. But, Nona muses on Mustafa's words-"I love
you, Nona"-rather than giving voice to her own emotions (even in the
privacy of her own bedroom). Unlike the conclusion of the scene be-
tween Farahat and Umm Ahmad, the self-reflexivity of Nona's utterance

4

L
P_- -

Figure 5.6. Nona and Tahiya in bed. Screenshot, Doctor Farahat (1935).


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 141

simultaneously troubles the predominant narrative axis of heterosexual
desire that it appears to assert. The ambivalence of Nona's assertion also
fails to completely displace the titillating queerness of the visual projec-
tion of two scantily clad women in bed together.
As my reading of these bedroom scenes implies, Nona's role as an
object of desire and as a desiring subject bears closer examination. Nona
believes she has three male suitors in the film: Farahat, in the guise of
Doctor Hilmy; Hilmy, in disguise as the stuffy doctor; and Hilmy as
Mustafa. Male desire is focalized through the main character, Farahat.
Viewers recognize that Farahat is a buffoon. His age and his coarse, un-
educated, and lower-class manner make him appear an inappropriate
suitor for the wealthy, modern, westernized Nona. We also know that
Farahat is already married.27 While he inadvertently falls into the role
of suitor, he persists in the charade for the promise of access to Nona's
body. Each time Farahat considers walking away, Nona draws him back
in by feigning affection and then, after the appearance of Mustafa, by
fomenting jealousy.
Nona embraces her performance of femininity to deceive Farahat.
Take, for example, the early morning swim. In the cabana with 'Ali, Far-
ahat decides that it is too cold to swim. He steps outside to inform Nona.
Borrowing a visual idiom already established by Hollywood cinema, the
camera reproduces Farahat's desirous gaze by panning Nona's body
from toe to head. The sight of Nona in her bathing costume changes
Farahat's mind.
But, the bathing scene that follows troubles these very same gendered
assumptions about agency and desire. As she is changing into her bath-
ing suit, an exasperated Nona proclaims that perhaps the women should
"drown [the men] and be done with them" Tahiya, it appears, takes Nona's
suggestion seriously. A lengthy silent montage (accompanied by upbeat
music) intercuts Tahiya wrestling with 'Ali and Nona attempting to coax
Farahat into the water. As the scene progresses, Tahiya's malicious intent
becomes more apparent with each subsequent dunking. What is striking
about this scene is its violence-violence perpetrated by the female char-
acters.28 Tahiya's physical contact with 'Ali in the water is simultaneously
ludic and menacing, playful dunking that verges on attempted drowning.
In the final image of the scene, Nona is shown dragging Farahat scream-
ing into the cold water. This is torture, not play. Thanatos, not eros.
In the swimming scene the male characters are emasculated by an ag-
gressive, predatory, violent femininity. And, over the course of the film,
Nona's cruel tricks become increasingly more emasculating. The final
indignity involves Nona piloting a small plane with Farahat as a pas-
senger. Nona's aerial acrobatics frighten Farahat, causing him to wet his


142 Deborah A. Starr

pants, and then pass out. It is worth recalling that this violence and cru-
elty is in the service of repelling a prospective suitor, deferring marriage.
Tahiya encourages Nona in her sadistic yo-yo of attraction and repul-
sion toward Farahat. Her motives begin to emerge in the cabana as the
two women change into their swim suits. As Nona begins to unbutton
her shirt, Tahiya casts her own desirous gaze at her friend's body. Far-
ahat, it seems, is not the only one to leer at Nona's body. Nona is not
only the object of the male gaze within the film (and for that matter, the
object of the masculine gaze of the audience), she is also the object of
a desirous female gaze.9 Tahiya's desire for Nona poses a complication
(but not a replacement) of the heteronormative reading of the women's
bedroom scenes.
Nona appears oblivious to Tahiya's affections. And, as the plots of
mistaken identity unravel, we encounter a final (but not complete) res-
toration of heteronormativity. After Farahat passes out on the plane, the
real Dr. Hilmy revives him. Hilmy and Farahat reveal their true identi-
ties. Hilmy requests Nona's hand in marriage from her puzzled parents.
Nona's parents agree, although they admit they do not understand what
has happened. When Tahiya bows out, she too, expresses her confusion.
After dodging marriage for the whole film, Nona agrees to wed. Nona

Figure 5.7. Tahiya watches Nona undress. Screenshot, Doctor Farahat
(1935).


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 143

and Hilmy embrace, as do the happily reunited Farahat and Umm Ah-
mad. Tahiya, however, is not paired off at the end of the film, despite the
presence of a suitable male mate-Hilmy's friend. While her designs on
Nona are thwarted, her same-sex desire is not normativized.
While I grant that this film narrates an especially convoluted plot,
even for a farce, it is unusual for the characters in Mizrahi's films to re-
main confused once all has been revealed. The boundaries of identity-
and gender-have been troubled. The characters' confusion at the end
of the film reflects the residual of the disturbances wrought by masquer-
ade. We may end up with two male-female pairs, but the film does not
conclusively or universally restore heteronormativity.
Thus far, I have focused my attention on masquerade as an articula-
tion of gender instability in Doctor Farahat. I would also like to point to
the way this film also marks fluidity of identity as Levantine. Hilmy first
appears on screen in a disguise, insisting on embracing the fluid possi-
bilities afforded by Levantine subjectivity. He counts on names as a sig-
nifier of an ethno-religious affiliation just as he relies upon the physical
(and linguistic) indifferentiability of Levantines.
Dr. Hilmy makes his first appearance as he enters the hotel. In the first
words he utters, Hilmy confirms with his secretary, 'Ali, that a room has
been booked. He continues: "Under what name?"
"Doctor Hilmy" replies 'Ali.
"You idiot," exclaims Hilmy, "Didn't we agree that you shouldn't regis-
ter under the name 'Doctor Hilmy?"'
"What should I have written?" retorts cAli.
"Write any name you want. Write 'Boutros.' Write 'Mikha'iI.'"
In this originary moment, the masquerade that sets into motion the
multiple layers of role play in the film, lies the (nominally) Muslim char-
acter's desire to hide behind a Christian name.
There is yet another layer to passing as a Levantine. The credits
identify the actor playing Hilmy as CAbd al-Aziz al-Mashriqi. This is a
pseudonym. The actor playing Hilmy is none other than Togo Mizrahi.30
Mashriqi is the Arabic translation of the Hebrew Mizrahi (meaning
"eastern" or, not to put too fine a point on it "oriental"). In other words,
a Jewish actor (always already in disguise) plays a Muslim character, who
seeks cover under a Christian name.
A Parting Kiss - Mistreated by Affluence (1937)
In Doctor Farahat the Levantine idiom I am mapping is articulated pri-
marily through gender play as masquerade, with limited, but notable,


144 Deborah A. Starr

articulations of an ethics of coexistence. Mistreated by Affluence inverts
this formula, emphasizing coexistence over masquerade. As noted ear-
lier, at the start of Mistreated by Affluence, the protagonists, Chalom
and 'Abdu live together in a cramped room on the roof of an apartment
building.31 The families of their respective fiancees, Esther and Amina,
reside side by side in modest middle class apartments on the floor be-
low.32 Although the families sleep in their separate quarters, they are
frequently shown socializing in one another's apartments. This con-
struction of domestic space, and the characters' actual or virtual cohabi-
tation, serves as a microcosm for coexistence in the society at large.
Mistreated by Affluence is not about coexistence, though. The film
neither interrogates nor problematizes difference. Nor does Mistreated
by Affluence rely upon ethno-religious stereotypes as a source of com-
edy (Starr 2011). The narrative takes for granted that Jews and Muslims
could be longstanding friends and neighbors in 1930s Egypt. This domi-
ciled, or perhaps domesticated, coexistence serves as the solid founda-
tion against which the film's contrived, farcical plot unfurls. Uncertainty
lies beyond the confines of the domestic space and the quarter.
Buffeted along by chance, Chalom and 'Abdu bumble into (comical)
situations beyond their control. 'Abdu is mistrusted, berated, and beaten
by Hasan, the butcher for whom he works. But, when Hasan dies, he
bequeaths the shop to his assistant. 'Abdu shares his newfound wealth
with Chalom, enabling his friend to open a small shop from which to
sell lottery tickets and exchange currency. The money also enables the
men to get married after lengthy engagements. Following the weddings,
Chalom purchases a bundle of scrap paper on behalf of his friend to use
for wrapping meat. He discovers that the papers are stock certificates
worth over 650,000 Egyptian pounds. Chalom insists on splitting the
newfound wealth evenly with 'Abdu. They decide to purchase a bank,
and settle into neighboring villas with their wives and in-laws. But the
money sows discord, and the friends have an altercation. In the end,
chance again prevails, the bank fails, and Chalom and 'Abdu lose their
wealth. Chalom and 'Abdu reconcile, and they rejoice along with their
families in the return to their homely coexistence.
The sharing of food and a shared food culture underpin the film's con-
struction of coexistence between Jews and Muslims.33 The families are
regularly depicted eating together in a series of scenes that intertwine the
film's Levantine ethics and aesthetics. Near the beginning of Mistreated
by Affluence, the two families prepare a picnic for Shamm al-Nasim-a
spring festival celebrated by Egyptians of all religious affiliations. On the
night before the festival, the women, Vittoria, Esther, Umm Amina, and
Amina are shown packing food, while the men, Solomon and Ibrahim,


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 145

play backgammon. Both families await the return of Chalom and 'Abdu
who are charged with purchasingfisikh, the salted fish traditionally eaten
on Shamm al-Nasim. The day of the festival is heralded by a lively mon-
tage of documentary footage shot in the streets, parks, and beaches of
Alexandria, accompanied by a festive, non-diegetic soundtrack. Follow-
ing shots of celebrants on the beaches of Alexandria, the scene cuts to a
long shot in which we see Jewish and Muslim families crowded around
covered crates, picnicking together in front of a bank of cabanas.
The scene is shot (in a studio) to give the impression of a busy beach
during a popular festival. The wide-angle establishing shot of the group
picnic offers an inclusive vision of cosmopolitan Alexandria. Several fig-
ures from a range of classes cross between the seated picnickers and the
camera: a male bather; a police officer; a woman in bourgeois, Western
attire holding a parasol; a fisherman carrying his gear. Two barefoot chil-
dren sit cross-legged in the foreground eating, and in the background
another man in a bathing suit engages in calisthenics. Even as the cam-
era zooms in to a tighter group shot of the picnic, the scene retains its
inclusiveness as the camera pans to show all eight characters eating and
conversing.
This vision of coexistence is disrupted only by Vittoria's verbal abuse
of her future son-in-law. The continuous take is broken by a cut to a
close-up of Chalom asking about a dish not included in the feast. Vit-
toria berates him, and Chalom, gathering up loaves of bread, excuses
himself and prepares to retreat, inviting Esther to join him. But, even
in this moment of familial discord, a Levantine aesthetic persists. The
camera pans from Chalom to Vittoria and back. Rather than shooting
the argument in a shot-reverse-shot sequence of the two characters, the
interaction is shot panning from one character to another, with other
members of the group in view. This continuous, inclusive camerawork
mirrors the content of this scene in which Jews and Muslims break bread
together in celebration of a shared festival (Shafik 2007: 31).
Vittoria's condemnation of Chalom turns to praise after the families
relocate to posh estates. The Jewish and Muslim families remain neigh-
bors, residing in adjacent villas. The families continue to gather in their
new homes and share meals together. But the pleasures of eating are
denied to them just as they can finally afford expensive delicacies. In a
comic subplot, two nurses, Maurice and Wali, pretending to be doctors,
insinuate themselves on the families. They diagnose imaginary diseases
so they can be paid for providing ongoing care. In the meantime, they
sidle up to the young brides, hoping to woo them away from their hus-
bands. Their "medical advice" consists primarily of manipulating access
to food.


146 Deborah A. Starr

In one scene, when Chalom and 'Abdu are delayed at the bank, the
families begin dining in their absence under the doctors' vigilant eyes.
The older generation is excoriated to abstain from anything but milk and
boiled vegetables. The young women, by contrast, are plied with wine
and rich foods. Like the picnic, the scene opens with a long establish-
ing shot showing the families gathered together around a formal dining
table. A servant enters carrying food to the table. But, the camerawork
then mirrors the rupture between this dining experience and the former
communal preparation and consumption of food; the dining room scene
is constructed with a discontinuous series of two-shots, rather than the
inclusive zoom and pan of the picnic scene.
In Mistreated by Affluence the masquerade is one of passing, involv-
ing Chalom and 'Abdu's (failed) efforts to act like members of the elite
following their chance windfall. Their behavior is a comic exaggeration
of the boorishness and ostentation of the nouveau riche. When they host
a cocktail party for business associates, Chalom and 'Abdu wear lapel
pins identifying themselves as the bank's directors. A bank manager
charged with introducing the guests to the receiving line disdainfully
flicks Chalom's pin and asks in a scornful voice, "What are you wearing?
What is that? Take that thing off!" Chalom, puzzled, responds, "Why?
Shouldn't people know that I am the director of the bank?" Gesturing
toward 'Abdu, he adds, "And him too?" The exasperated manager ex-
claims, "Director of the bank? Take it off! That is something janitors
wear!" This misjudgment reflects the myriad missed codes and social
cues of their adopted titles and assumed identities.
Chalom and 'Abdu take advantage of their newfound wealth and po-
sition of power to chase women. In the dalliance that renders Mistreated
by Affluence a bedroom farce, Chalom and 'Abdu pursue the affections
of a singer, Zuzu, and a dancer, Ruhiya. In contrast to Doctor Farahat,
the heterosexual love triangle itself is the site of gender instability in
Mistreated by Affluence.
Following their introduction at the nightclub where the women per-
form, Chalom and 'Abdu agree to a date at the women's apartment.
Chalom and 'Abdu are cowed by the women's overt sexuality and for-
wardness. The viewer understands that these "artists" [artistat], are to
be understood as loose women, if not downright prostitutes.34 Ruhiya
beckons 'Abdu to enter her dressing room as she disrobes behind a
shoulder-high barrier. While in this state of undress, she beckons 'Abdu
to give her a kiss. Meanwhile, Chalom is instructed to enter the adjoin-
ing room where he finds Zuzu soaking in a tub. Covering his eyes as he
approaches, Chalom hands Zuzu a bouquet of flowers. He crouches next
to the tub and presents her with a bracelet, which he accidentally drops


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 147

in the water. He pushes up his sleeve and reaches into the tub. Realizing
what he has done, he runs out of the room, only to find that 'Abdu has
also retreated. Chalom is rendered speechless, and resorts to gesturing
and whistling to describe his interaction with Zuzu.35 The women's overt
expression of sexual desire and, as in Doctor Farahat, predatory female
sexuality poses an affront to the men's masculinity.
Chalom and 'Abdu regroup and resolve to reassert their masculin-
ity. 'Abdu steels himself to return to Ruhiya saying: "Listen Chalom, we
need to be men. Ruhiya! I must speak to her. I must tell her that I love
her. I must hold her. I must kill her with my kisses. Yes, I must!" [my em-
phasis]. Pushing Chalom out of the way 'Abdu warns, "Watch out!" and
marches back toward Ruhiya's door. Thumping his chest Chalom con-
curs, "Yes! Men!" He attempts to repeat 'Abdu's rousing speech, but gives
up when he is unable remember the exact words. Instead, Chalom tips
his tarbush forward, puffs up his chest, and, as he dramatically prepares
to march himself toward Zuzu's quarters, he says "Men! I will go! Watch
out!"
The men, however, remain passive recipients of the women's affec-
tions. When Chalom enters Zuzu's boudoir, she is toweling her thighs,
wearing only a bathrobe. She invites a nervous Chalom to kiss her, and
he hesitantly responds with a chaste kiss on the top of her head. With
further prompting, he kisses her on the cheek. Zuzu finally takes charge,
throws herself into Chalom's arms and passionately embraces him. Like-
wise, after the encounter, a grinning 'Abdu is shown with lipstick marks
all over his face (but not on his lips). Although the camera does not fol-
low 'Abdu's second encounter with Ruhiyya, the visible evidence also
places him in a passive role.
Zuzu and Ruhiya's emasculating rhetoric sets into motion a sequence
of events that devolve into a fight between Chalom and 'Abdu as they
seek to reassert their masculinity. In the climactic party scene, Chalom
and 'Abdu hide behind a curtain planning to surprise Zuzu and Ruhiya
with bouquets of flowers. Instead, they overhear the women disparaging
them. Ruhiya calls 'Abdu an oaf, but admits she likes the contents of his
wallet. Zuzu casts aspersions on Chalom's virility, calling him a grass-
hopper, and likening his floppy mustache to a shrimp. She concludes
with the kicker, "That half pint, you call that a man?"
From their hiding place, Chalom and 'Abdu also overhear the nurses
Maurice and Wali professing their love to Esther and Amina. Impotent
to respond to these insults on their own, Chalom and 'Abdu call for their
in-laws to intervene. Following a chaotic shouting match, Maurice and
Wali are escorted out of the party, but the protagonists are still smarting
from the insults and spoiling for a fight. When Chalom overhears a guest


148 Deborah A. Starr

claiming that he would be nothing without 'Abdu, it is the last straw.
Chalom pours out his wrath upon cAbdu, and his friend reciprocates. In
the heat of the argument, each claims to have made "a man" out of the
other.
Destabilized gender identity threatens to upset the narrative of co-
existence. Esther's and Amina's families appeal to Chalom and cAbdu to
reconcile, urging the men not to let their fight undermine a thirty-year
friendship between the families.
The emasculation of the bourgeois lifestyle and the threats it poses to
coexistence are reversed only after Chalom and cAbdu lose their wealth
and the characters all return to their old residences. Likewise, at the end
of the film, the equal access to communal food-along with the inclusive
Levantine aesthetic-is restored. In the penultimate scene, the Jewish
and Muslim families once again crowd around a table to share their fa-
vorite food together. As with the picnic, this scene is comprised of a
single shot that includes all of the characters in the frame. The closing
shot of the film also serves to reassert Chalom's virility. Chalom is shown
returning to the street in the old neighborhood hawking lottery tickets-
but this time he is carrying infant twins.
By way of conclusion, I would like return to a brief scene that depicts
the intersection of the two idioms of Levantine fluidity I have traced:

Figure 5.8. Chalom and 'Abdu kiss. Screenshot, Mistreated by Affluence
(1937).


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 149

communal, or ethno-religious identity on one hand; gender and sexu-
ality on the other. On their way to their first encounter with their pro-
spective mistresses, Chalom assuages cAbdu's performance anxiety by
offering him a tutorial on kissing. Holding up a bouquet of flowers, Cha-
lom advises: "Say to her, 'take this present.' Say to her also, 'come here my
love.6 And just like in the movies ..." Chalom then leans over and plants
a kiss on cAbdu's lips.
For Mizrahi, it was not sufficient to draw laughs by depicting the two
men kissing. The camera cuts to a second angle showing the driver ob-
serving the embrace in the rear view mirror (figure 9). The presence of
a witness, an audience, signals the film's self-awareness of the act as a
performance. The narratives of coexistence and the queering of identity
evidenced in Mizrahi's films meet with the touch of Chalom and  Abdu's
lips.
Deborah Starr is Associate Professor of Modern Arabic and Hebrew
Literature and Film in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cor-
nell University. She is the author of Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt:
Literature, Culture, and Empire (Routledge, 2009) and co-editor, with
Sasson Somekh, of Mongrels or Marvels: The Levantine Writings of
Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff (Stanford University Press, 2011). She also
curated an open access digital archive of unpublished writings by An-
glophone Coptic novelist Waguih Ghali. Her articles on various aspects
Figure 5.9. Driver watches Chalom and 'Abdu kiss. Screenshot,
Mistreated by Affluence (1937).


150 Deborah A. Starr

of Egyptian Jewish literature, as well as the cultural production of other
Egyptian minorities have appeared in Prooftexts, Middle Eastern Litera-
tures, and The Journal of Levantine Studies. This essay grows out of her
current book project on the films of Togo Mizrahi.
Notes
I would like to thank the following people for their advice, comments, and sup-
port during the writing and revision of this article: Rebecca Bryant, Ziad Fahmy,
Shai Ginsburg, Nick Salvato, Elliot Shapiro, Yaron Shemer, and Sara Warner. I
am also grateful for the support of the Cornell Diversity Fellowship Seminar in
2013-14, and for the insightful comments of my fellow participants. I would
also like to thank Amy Cheatle who helped capture and format the screenshots
accompanying this chapter.
1. I have adopted Viola Shafik's (2007: 29) translation of the film's title
from Arabic into English. The French title of the film at the time of its
release was Les Deux Banquiers [The Two Bankers]. I am using a simpli-
fied version of the IJMES transliteration system; I use "c" for cayin and an
apostrophe for hamza, but I have omitted diacritical marks. Upon first
mention, I identify films by both their Arabic title and the title trans-
lated into English; on subsequent reference, I refer to films exclusively
by their title in English.
2. My contention here is not unlike that made by Steven Cohan about the
1940s Bob Hope and Bing Crosby "Road to" movies, about which he writes:
"I do not mean to propose that the 'Road to' films openly represent a gay
sexual relation between the two male stars; but I am arguing that the come-
dic framework of the series plays upon intimations of homoeroticism, and
that the queer shading of their buddy relation must be taken into account
when understanding the immense popularity of Hope and Crosby's team-
ing in the 1940s" (Cohan 1999: 25).
3. I refer to the film in English as Doctor Farahat, rather than "Doctor Farhat"
following the lead of Mizrahi's own romanization of the title into French in
the credits as Le Docteur Farahat.
4. The film was released in Alexandria as al-Hawiya [The Abyss] and later
screened in Cairo under the title al-Kukayin [Cocaine].
5. Little is known about 5001, and the film is unavailable. Ahmad al-Hadari
does not include a plot summary in his entry on the film in his encyclope-
dic work on 1930s Egyptian cinema (al-Hadari 2007). The "Alex Cinema"
website hosted by Bibliotheca Alexandrina offers the following synopsis:
"By a stroke of luck Shalom wins lottery ticket number 5001 and becomes
rich. Rather than bring him happiness, this wealth causes him trouble. He
therefore goes back to his old way of life." ("Films Set or Filmed in Alexan-
dria," Bibliotheca Alexandrina, http://www.bibalex.org/alexcinema/films/
FilmedAlexandria.html.) This plot could either be played as comedy (as it
is in Mistreated by Affluence) or as a drama. The editors at "Alex Cinema"


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 151

mistakenly assume that the film is a drama that "tackle[s] social issues."
("Togo Mizrahi;' Bibliotheca Alexandrina, http://www.bibalex.org/alexcin
ema/cinematographers/TogoMizrahi.html.) Publicity around 5001 at the
time of release identifies the film as a sports comedy.
6. During this four-year period Mizrahi also released a musical melodrama
al-Bahhar [The Sailor (1935)]. I emphasize "Arabic films" because between
1937 and 1943 Mizrahi also directed four Greek-speaking films. Two of the
films were Greek versions of his Arabic films Doctor Farahat [1935 Arabic;
1937 Greek], and The Sailor [1935 Arabic; 1943 Greek] ("Greek-Speaking
Films," Bibliotheca Alexandrina, http://www.bibalex.org/alexcinema/films/
Greek.html).
7. Fi Layla Mumtira [On a Rainy Night], released on 9 March 1939, and
Salafini 3ginayh [Lend Me 3 Pounds], released on 28 September 1939, were
shot at Studio Wahbi (al-Hadari 2007: 365-69).
8. For more on Umm Kulthum's career see Danielson (1997).
9. Chalom starred in three films directed by Togo Mizrahi: 5001; The Two
Delegates; and Mistreated by Affluence.
10. Ahmad al-Hadari also cites the Egyptian actor Bishara Wakim as a source
of influence on Chalom's acting style. Wakim had debuted a down-on-his-
luck character on screen in a silent comedy shot in Alexandria, Barsum
Yabhath can al-Wathifa [Barsum Looks for a Job (1925), directed by Mu-
hammad Bayumi] (al-Hadari 2007: 255).
11. Al-Kassar starred in five films directed by Togo Mizrahi in his Alexandria
studio: Mi'at alfginayh [One Hundred Thousand Pounds (1936)], Khafir al-
darak [The Watchman (1936)], al-Saga Sabca [Seven O'Clock (1937)], al-Tili-
graf [The Telegraph (1938)], and cUthman wa- Ali [cUsman and 'Ali (1939)].
12. In the 1930s Fawzi al-Jazayirli starred in two films directed by Mizrahi:
Doctor Farahat and The Sailor. He also appeared in a supporting role in The
Two Delegates.
13. Most of the later nostalgia literature about cosmopolitan Alexandria, by
contrast, largely represents the foreign-minority bourgeoisie; see Starr
(2009). This phenomenon is not limited to Alexandria, as Anagnostopoulos
notes in this volume: "The way scholars and laypeople approach and recre-
ate images of peaceful coexistence in the Ottoman Empire is oftentimes
markedly aestheticized by the heritage industry of today, especially in the
context of cosmopolitan Mediterranean ports, and often prevents them
from understanding the context of coexistence in the past" (p. 87).
14. Mizrahi's 1930s sound comedies tend to include musical numbers. I have,
however, chosen not to designate them as "musicals." Mizrahi's 1940s musi-
cal melodramas feature a singer in a starring role, whereas the stars in the
1930s Alexandria comedies are non-singing comic actors. While musical
performance features in these films, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to
engage in a sustained analysis of its significance.
15. All three 1935 reviews are cited in al-Hadari (2007: 169). Tahiya Carioca's
given name was Badiya Muhammad cAli al-Nidani. In Doctor Farahat she
is credited as Tahiya Muhammad.


152 Deborah A. Starr

16. For example, there is a very small body of academic literature on the Vic-
torian farce Charley's Aunt (1892), by Brandon Thomas, an enormously
popular play with a record-breaking run on stage for its time, and multiple
translations and adaptations-including a short Egyptian silent film in 1920
starring cAli al-Kassar, al-Khala al-Amrikiyya. By contrast, Oscar Wilde's
The Importance ofBeing Earnest (1895), which is widely viewed as a subver-
sion of the genre, has received extensive critical attention.
17. Flibbert lists several notable examples of this commonly accepted claim.
Others, including Flibbert have drawn attention to the value for film crit-
ics and historians of films in these under-studied periods, and of critically
under-appreciated popular genres such as musicals and comedies. This
present study emerges out of engagement with this body of scholarship.
Ahmad Yusuf, for example, debunks assumptions about "the cinema of war
profiteers" of the 1940s, in Yusuf (1996). See also Armbrust (2000).
18. Joel Gordon's Revolutionary Melodrama maps the centrality of melodrama
to the construction of national identity in the 1950s (Gordon 2002).
19. I am not suggesting that the terms I am using (or their equivalents, such as
they might be, in Arabic, French, or Italian, etc.) would have had currency
in 1930s Alexandria-neither among Egyptians nor the resident minori-
ties and foreigners. Rather, the notions of "queerness" and "the Levantine"
in tandem provide a language and critical framework for understanding
and unpacking the significance of Mizrahi's fluid construction of identity in
these films.
20. In the American literary and film vernacular in the same period, Dashiell
Hammett's Joel Cairo offers a notable example of the slipperiness attributed
to both the Levantine and to queerness (Hammett 1984). I am not suggest-
ing that The Maltese Falcon (1929) nor its 1930s film adaptations [The Mal-
tese Falcon, Roy Del Ruth, dir. (1931); Satan Met a Lady, William Dieterle,
dir. (1936)] should be read as direct intertexts for Mizrahi's work. Rather, I
wish to point out the parallel associations between queer and what I have
termed "Levantine" identities in Mizrahi's films.
21. I do not assume in my analysis that queerness need align with progressive
or radical politics. While Mizrahi's queer Levantine disrupts emerging pa-
rochial ethno-religious nationalisms in 1930s Egypt, his liberal, pluralist,
ethics of coexistence could hardly be termed radical.
22. A film Togo Mizrahi produced, al-Riyadi [The Athlete (1937)], garners brief
mention in Jacob's discussion of the place of sport and fitness in the emer-
gence of effendi masculinity (Jacob 2011: 156). The film, starring Chalom,
was directed by L. Nagel and Clement Mizrahi.
23. Bryant, "Introduction" p. 4.
24. For example, elsewhere I have examined Niyazi Mustafa's Salamafi khayr
[Salama is Fine (1937)] as an articulation of this Levantine idiom (Starr
2011). Garay Menicucci (1998: 32) analyzes the homoerotic content of an-
other contemporaneous film, Bint al-Basha al-Mudir [The Pasha Director's
Daughter, Ahmad Galal, dir. (1938)], about a young woman who dresses as


Coexistence in Mizrahis Alexandria Films 153

a man for purposes of employment, precipitating a love triangle where she
becomes the object of both male and female desire. The Pasha Director's
Daughter shares a fluidity of gender identities with Mizrahi's films from the
1930s.
25. The actor Ahmad al-Haddad also plays cAbdu in Mistreated by Affluence.
26. Vito Russo (1987: 37) lists legions of examples from Hollywood cinema in
the 1910s through the 1930s in which homoerotic innuendo between men
was played comically. He also notes that the American press, which took
issue with more directly subversive characters and plots, tended not to
comment on "open signs of homosexuality in a comic context." The screen-
writers of the documentary film based on Russo's book put it more suc-
cinctly: "In a hundred years of movies, homosexuality has only rarely been
depicted on screen. When it did appear, it was there as something to laugh
at, or something to pity, or even something to fear." The Celluloid Closet,
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, dir. (1995).
27. Although polygamy is permitted by Islam and remains legal in Egypt, it was
not commonly practiced in Mizrahi's time (Kholoussy 2010: 83).
28. I am thinking here of Eric Bentley's (1964: 219-56) contention about the
centrality of violence to farce, and the inherent dialectic within the genre
between gentleness and violence. I would like to thank Nick Salvato for
pointing me to this reference.
29. Little has been written about female same-sex desire in the Middle East and
its representation in literature and film. Stephen Murray (1997) provides
a very brief introduction to the topic in "Woman-Woman Love in Islamic
Societies." Samar Habib's (2000) monograph Female Homosexuality in the
Middle East offers the most extensive study of the topic, although her dis-
cussion skips from Medieval texts to late twentieth century, and her analy-
sis of Arab film begins in the 1970s.
30. While writing and directing credits appeared in all of his films as "Togo
Mizrahi" as an actor, he appeared under a pseudonym. Togo Mizrahi acted
in two films under the name Ahmad al-Mashrigi: The Abyss / Cocaine and
AwladMisr [Children of Egypt (1933)]. An actor credited in those same two
films as cAbd al-cAziz al-Mashriqi is believed to be Togo's brother. In Doctor
Farahat, Togo Mizrahi, not his brother, is the actor credited as cAbd al-
cAziz al-Mashriqi (al-Hadari 2007: 168). I would also like to thank Jacques
Mizart, Togo Mizrahi's nephew, for confirming the identity of the actor.
31. In his 2002 novel cImarat Yacqubiyan (The Yacoubian Building), cAla al-
Aswani (2002; 2006) returns to roof-dwellers to reflect anew upon Egypt's
multi-cultural past and its bearing on the present and future of Egyptian
society. For analyses of the signification of the homosexual relationship be-
tween a resident of the building and a roof-dweller in The Yacoubian Build-
ing, see al-Samman (2008) and Hadeed (2013).
32. Mistreated by Affluence is the second of two films Mizrahi made about the
friendship between Chalom and cAbdu, Esther and Amina. The first was
al-Manduban [The Two Delegates (1934).


154 Deborah A. Starr

33. In the introduction to this volume, Rebecca Bryant offered shared meals
as an example of commensality (p. 2). She notes that the invocation of such
shared experiences points to their exceptionality, and to the pre-existence
of notions of difference overcome by the shared practice. The shared meals
in Mistreated by Affluence could be read in this way, too: the emerging
forms of Arab-Islamic nationalism in 1930s Egypt threw into relief the dif-
ferences between Muslims and Jews that Mizrahi's meal scenes seek to
overcome.
34. For more on popular assumptions about this association in the Egyptian
context, see Nieuwkerk (1995).
35. Chalom's expressive whistling in this scene is reminiscent of Harpo Marx.
Mistreated by Affluence appears to borrow from and reference Marx Broth-
ers' movies at other junctures as well.
36. The Arabic "tacali ya ruhi" plays on Ruhiya's name.
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al-Dawli al-cIshrun.


+ Chapter 6 +

Memory, Conviviality,
and Coexistence
Negotiating Class Diferences in Burgazadasi, Istanbul
DENIZ NERIMAN DURU
In much of the literature on peace and conflict resolution in the Bal-
kans, Southern Europe, and the Middle East, scholars attempt to analyze
cultural plurality using the concept of coexistence. This is a coexistence
that is being excavated from the ruins of conflict, with the idea that it
may shed light on how people could live together again. Examples of
such coexistence include that between Israelis and Palestinians; Greek
and Turkish Cypriots; or Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians (e.g., Wallensteen
2007; Abu-Nimer 2001; Dayton and Kriesberg 2009; Phillips 1996; Anas-
tasiou 2002; Gidron, Katz, and Hasenfeld 2002). This is the coexistence
that Bryant, in her introduction, contrasts with "everyday coexistence"
and notes "the legal, political, and discursive forms of coexistence that
imply the 'living together' of millets or ethnic groups within the empire
or nation" (Bryant this volume, p. 8).
This chapter represents a critical engagement with coexistence in
the context of Turkey, where the idea of "living together" has been bur-
dened with concepts of "toleration" inherited from the Ottoman past
and inscribed in Republican law. Coexistence, with its connotations of
different ethnic or religious groups living together, has no equivalent in
Turkish. Rather, the most commonly used term to refer to the interac-
tion of such groups is ho~grii, literally "to see well" and usually trans-
lated as "tolerance." While I cannot engage here in all the connotations
of the word and ways in which it may diverge from the primarily neg-
ative connotations of "toleration;' it is a word that has been applied in
the post-Ottoman Turkish context primarily to non-Muslim minorities
whose status as minorities was secured by the Treaty of Lausanne. As


158 Deniz Neriman Duru

Bryant notes in the introduction, this does not mean that there have not
been concepts of everyday coexistence in operation, especially the idea
of kom uluk and the mahalle. However, these ideas of living together
have been problematically projected onto the scale of relations between
ethnic and/or religious groups, blurring the scale that equates "the ex-
istence of certain neighborhoods where persons of different religions
lived side by side, sharing the responsibilities of the mahalle, with the
'peaceful' existence of religious and ethnic minorities within the Empire"
(Bryant this volume, p. 17).
To complicate matters further, this discourse of coexistence, with
its blurring of scale, furthermore returns to have real impact on actual
everyday coexistence in the present. For instance, in the post-Ottoman
context, scholars tend to view coexistence as something that belongs to
the Ottoman past, a time before conflict based on ethno-religious iden-
tities (especially Couroucli 2010). Problematically, this literature tends to
view the loss of religious minorities as necessarily creating homogenized
nations. Couroucli, for instance, claims that with the departure of the
non-Muslim millets-the Jewish, Armenian, and Greek-Orthodox mi-
norities-Turkey has long ago lost its pluralism. Such assumptions, how-
ever, rebound to reinforce the idea that minorities are those non-Muslim
millets who are the subject of toleration, thus reducing coexistence to a
form of hierarchical indulgence. Moreover, this understanding of coex-
istence, by equating plurality with those differences acknowledged by
the millet system of the Ottoman Empire, makes it seem as though other
forms of difference in Turkey today are not significant and do not require
the sort of "labor of peace" that Bryant discusses in her introduction.
This chapter shifts the emphasis in this study of post-Ottoman plu-
rality from coexistence/toleration to "conviviality"-that is, ways of both
sharing and contesting particular lifestyles in a place through daily in-
teractions and a sense of belonging (Duru 2015). I refer to "coexistence/
toleration" to emphasize the complex ways in which local discourses of
tolerance are fed by and feed into historical and scholarly understandings
of coexistence. And in my analysis of conviviality, "living together" is un-
derstood as sharing the same space and socio-economic resources, and
a process that involves both cohesion and tension. While I emphasize
conviviality and tensions due to differences in lifestyle and class (see also
Navaro-Yashin 2006), I also complement conviviality with an analysis of
coexistence/toleration, which I understand in the context of Turkey to
apply specifically to recognized (former millets) and unrecognized mi-
norities (e.g., Alevis and Kurds) who explicitly articulate their identity
based on ethnic and religious difference in relation to the Sunni Muslim
majority. My study of pluralism in the Turkish context draws attention


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 159

to the intersection of class with ethnicity and religion (see also Smith
2000) through the concepts of coexistence/toleration and conviviality. In
this chapter, I explore three complex effects of class in everyday interac-
tions: (1) the ways in which belonging to the "same" class creates similar
lifestyles and tastes and subsumes ethnic and religious differences; (2)
how differences in lifestyle become exacerbated by class difference; and
(3) how, nonetheless, class difference and economic mutual dependency
may create a sense of belonging to Burgaz, through conviviality. Hard
times, tensions as well as sensorial pleasures, produce a sense of place,
where the islanders enjoy the shared ways of living in this diverse setting.
Throughout the chapter, I distinguish memories and practices of co-
existence/toleration, which we might understand as "living with differ-
ence;" from memories and practices of "conviviality" which I argue here
are shared ways of living. While coexistence/toleration places empha-
sis on the need to share space with persons whom we already presume
to be different, conviviality places emphasis on the production of place
through shared attitudes and experiences. As I will show, conviviality
may be seen as a particular form of everyday coexistence in which plu-
ralism is self-consciously valued for its own sake. In this context, while
memories of coexistence/toleration become a nostalgia for multicultur-
alism or an irreversible loss of pluralism as a result of nationalist homog-
enization (Bryant this volume, p. 17), memories of conviviality are used
to create a sense of belonging to Burgaz. The shared ways of living that
create such a sense of belonging to Burgaz include both sweet memories
of leisure and also bitter memories of adaptation, hardship, class, and
lifestyle differences.
This chapter responds to a particular strain in the analysis of the
post-Ottoman space that takes as its subject the paradoxes of contem-
porary Ottoman nostalgia. In one form, that nostalgia posits that people
got along well before the ravages of nation-state homogenization. Inter-
estingly, this particular form of nostalgia coincides with official Turkish
versions of the past that see life in the Ottoman Empire as harmonious
and assert that it was broken up only by upstart minority nationalists.
As a result, others have suggested in regard to Turkey that nostalgia for
a pluralism that no longer exists is easy, but dealing with pluralism that
actually exists (Kurdish, Alevi, etc.) is much more difficult (e.g., Onar
2009; Tambar 2014). Nicholas Doumanis (2013), in his important Before
the Nation, attempts to take seriously the nostalgia of Greeks displaced
from Anatolia before and during the 1923 population exchange. In that
nostalgia, Greeks tend to assert a good life before they began to feel the
effects of nation-state ideologies. However, while Doumanis sees the in-
teractions of various religious groups in the empire as a form of everyday


160 Deniz Neriman Duru

practice, he is never sufficiently able to solve the puzzle of its nostalgia
today. I argue that this puzzle of nostalgia becomes easier to solve when
one sees it as a nostalgia for a place to which one belonged that was cre-
ated out of shared ways of living that encompassed and enjoyed diver-
sity. This is different from seeing it as nostalgia for diversity itself, which
suggests that we are nostalgic for specific features of other cultures.
Burgaz is an especially interesting site for exploring this question, as
it is known in Turkey primarily as an elite resort of non-Muslim minori-
ties that is dominated by the lifestyle of a secular upper class (compare
Couroucli 2010: 223). Burgaz is one of nine islands in the Marmara Sea
that constitute a separate district within the Istanbul Province and are
today accessible by a short boat ride from central Istanbul. Based on my
ethnographic research, I suggest that, contrary to the dominant percep-
tion of Burgaz as a home of non-Muslim elites, there is a significant class
difference between the permanent and the summer inhabitants of the
island who come from not only different ethno-religious groups but also
different socio-economic backgrounds. The economy of Burgaz depends
on the mutual relationship between the permanent inhabitants (mainly
Zaza, Kurds, and Turks who are Alevi, Sunni, or Shafi'i from eastern and
south-eastern Turkey) who run the shops and the restaurants, and the
summer inhabitants, who are the customers, clients, and occasionally
the employers (for instance hiring cleaners, gardeners, care takers, etc.).
Moreover, despite these class differences there are strong community
relationships and friendships that go beyond economic exchange and
involve forms of recognition, respect, and gift giving.
Conviviality and Cosmopolitanism
Scholars frequently refer to the upper-class sociality of the Ottoman
context as cosmopolitanism, a word with connotations of urban cultural
pluralism (see, e.g., Zubaida 2002; Driessen 2005; Gekas 2009). In con-
tradistinction to this, Ulrike Freitag argues that the political normative
understanding of cultural pluralism implied in cosmopolitanism does
not apply to the daily interactions among non-elite Ottoman subjects,
which she describes as a form of conviviality. She shows that craftsmen
and traders who belonged to different corporate organizations or guilds
(Arabic taifa, Ottoman sinf) engaged with each other in structured
quotidian rituals in order to sort out tax collection (Freitag 2014). Lo-
cals and strangers socialized in coffee houses, taverns, and bathhouses,
while families went on excursions together or visited each other's homes
(Freitag 2014).1 Freitag's (2014) analysis is useful for thinking about how


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 161

belonging to the same or similar classes intersects ethnic and religious
differences. However, her analytical framework neither explains the ne-
gotiations between different classes and socio-economic groups nor the
ways in which people from different classes negotiate ethno-religious
differences.
I chose Burgaz as my fieldwork site because of its diverse popula-
tion and because it was one of the rare places where people collectively
resisted the 1955 riots, one of the most significant events of Republi-
can Turkish history in that it resulted in a mass migration of remaining
Greek Orthodox from Istanbul, primarily to Greece. I aimed to under-
stand the diversity that still exists in Burgaz, and how persons who con-
sider themselves "Burgazli" understand that diversity. Hence I analyzed
both the islanders' narratives of past diversity and their current prac-
tices of conviviality, notably interactions across different classes and
ethno-religious communities. My fourteen months of research in Burgaz
(June 2009-September 2010) included both formal and informal inter-
views regarding past diversity, including life history interviews, as well
as long-term participant observation, including in cafes, restaurants,
embroidery class, and social clubs, as well as churches, mosque, syna-
gogue, and cemevi (Alevi places of worship). I also analyzed novels and
a documentary film that Burgaz islanders have produced. This approach
to current and past diversity and conviviality in the island also allowed
me to assess how the island's population has changed over time and how
long-term residents assess those transformations. As my research pro-
gressed, I began to understand the difference between memories and
practices of conviviality and a sense of belonging to Burgaz, and my in-
formants' narratives of coexistence/toleration, which fragments the
sense of belonging into sharing space with different co-existing groups.
My first introduction to this distinction was when I met Orhan Ozalp,
a Burgazli then in his mid-eighties, who was introduced to me by the
security officer of one of the social clubs. The officer gave him my mobile
number, and Orhan called me to arrange a time to meet. On the phone, I
explained to him that I was doing doctoral research about the memories
of Burgaz islanders currently living on the island. I added that as he was
one of the oldest inhabitants in Burgaz, I would be very grateful for an
interview with him. When he arrived for our morning meeting at the
Blue Club, one of the island's social clubs, he brought along sheets on
which he had listed names of friends, activities, and events. I was sur-
prised that he was so well prepared, and I was happy that he was eager
to talk to me. When I took out my small notebook, he exclaimed, "What,
how can you write all the memories of many years in such a tiny book!
Go get a proper notebook!" So, I went to the security desk and asked for


162 Deniz Neriman Duru

a stack of A4 sheets and came back prepared to write, as he preferred
me to take notes rather than to record the interview. I quote a section
here from the uninterrupted stream in which he narrated his story of
Burgaz to me:
Burgaz was an island of Greek fishermen. The permanent inhabitants
of Burgaz, such as restaurant and coffee shop owners, storekeepers,
fishermen, bakers, and grocers were all Greeks. My father was one of
the first Turks, who came to Burgaz between 1915 and the 1920s. They
were governmental officers, doctors, or lawyers, and the majority of
them used the island as a sayfiye yeri [summer resort place] and were
very few in number. In the 1930s and 1940s, summer inhabitants, such
as Ashkenazi Jews and Germans, were rich and elite. The Jews of Bur-
gaz were upper class in comparison to the Sephardic Jews who were
lower middle class and who lived in Heybeli, another Princes' Island.
The Jews of Heybeli and Istanbul used to come for a day trip to Burgaz
as they could not afford to have houses in Burgaz. These Sephardic
Jews became richer when the Democratic Party was in power between
1945 and 1960. Thus, from the late 1940s onwards, the Jews from Hey-
beli moved to Burgaz and the ones in Istanbul either rented or bought
property in Burgaz.
This island was the island of fish. Greeks were very into fishing.
Istavrit, uskumru, palamut, lifer, torik, lapin, mercan, karagoz, ork-
inos, sinarit, kilig baligi [names of fish varieties] ... there were so many
fish that the fishnets used to break. When there was excess fish, the
fishermen used to throw the excess back to the sea. The fishermen used
to compete with each other in order to catch the biggest fish, espe-
cially orkinos. The fish caught were always displayed and sold in the
market. The fishmonger used to mark the name of the fisherman on
the orkinos caught, thus you would know who caught it and see the
pride in the eyes of the fisherman when he walked in the market. Now,
there are fewer and fewer fish in the sea. People are not as careful as
the fishermen of the old days. The new generation put dynamite in the
fishes' nests and fish when the fish were reproducing. Now the seagulls
are hungry. I used to go fishing with my summer Greek friends. They
had boats. We used to go to Sivriada and Yassiada [the uninhabited
islands]. These islands were a heaven of fish and mussels. We used to
go there in the afternoon, fish and eat the fish there, get drunk and
sleep and come back in the morning. Sivriada geceleri [the nights of
Sivriada] ...
These times were the times of bolluk [abundance, prosperity]. The
rich Greeks had big gardens. For example, Taso's garden was full of


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 163

fruit and vegetables. Quince, plum, lettuce, onion ... Mimi had a flower
garden. In Foti's garden there were almond trees. They used to sell their
fruit, vegetables and flowers to the islanders. Have you been to the
Austrian chapel, high up in Burgaz? [I said "yes."] Good. The Austrian
nuns used to sell the spare produce to the islanders. They had cows and
chickens. The yogurt, cream, cheese, and milk that came from them
were the best I have eaten in my life.
Do you know Kalpazankaya? [I said "yes, I have been there."] Do you
know the Hirt Hirt story from Sait Faik?" [I said, "Yes I have read it."]
Sait got inspired to write the story on the way to Kalpazankaya. He
lived in Burgaz, he was much older than me but he was my friend and
Burgaz is known as Sait Faik'in adasi [Sait Faik's island]. In the story,
Sait is on the Kalpazankaya road, he hears higt higt [similar to the "psst"
sound that one person whispers to another to get their attention] but
he cannot tell where it comes from. A plum tree? A hedgehog? A per-
son? A bird? The sea? Saik writes it so well. It does not matter where
the sound comes from. It is the sound of what makes you feel alive. He
says in the end that if you do not hear hipt, then it matters. In Burgaz,
you constantly hear a higt sound, whether it is a person, a tree, the sea,
the nature, an animal; these things keep you alive.
The times of the Greeks were the times of fun. I loved attending
the church at Christmas and on important Greek Orthodox religious
days. They offered pastry, biscuits, cookies, and meals at the church.
There was not a mosque on the island until 1954. I did not care about
the mosque. I did not care when it was built. I am not interested in
religion, but I enjoyed attending the church because it was good fun to
socialize with my Greek friends. There were five gazinos [dancing and
drinking places] in Burgaz. Ingazinos, Greek and foreign music played,
sometimes live, sometimes from the gramophone. We danced day and
night-tango, slow, swing ... The Greeks knew how to drink. There
was always one person at the table who would control anyone who was
getting too drunk. Now, people do not know how to drink. They get
drunk and they start fights.
Adanin tipleri vardi [there were unique, almost crazy people]. You
know, every place has its own unique people. Ali Riza Kondos. Kondos
means short in Greek. Ali Riza was a short drunkard. He had built a
cave for himself in Burgaz. When we saw him, we used to yell pirr,
which would make him so angry; he would throw stones at us and run
after us. And then Silep [Ocean liner] Hasan ... He was so huge we
used to call him Silep. The islanders used to give names to these unique
people. Now, people are boring. The island was more diverse in the old
days, we had adanin tipleri and everyone had a particular character,


164 Deniz Neriman Duru

fault, weakness, funniness, craziness that made Burgaz a place of fun.
Now, everyone is the same. People watch TV, they go to work. They do
not have fun in their lives. There are no adanin tipleri anymore.
Orhan's memories of his youth are memories of conviviality, and they
take their sources from the shared life in Burgaz. Orhan began the story
of Burgaz with the Greeks, Turks, Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and
Germans, which shows that ethnic and religious differences were ac-
knowledged, not as "coexistence/toleration" but as part of what it meant
to live in Burgaz. Orhan, like many of my Jewish, Muslim, German, and
Armenian informants, joined and enjoyed the sociality at the churches.
Greek rituals added to the richness of Burgaz. The luxurious summer
lifestyle-full of discos, music and fun, drinking, and fishing lifestyles-
brought people from different ethno-religious backgrounds together to
socialize.
Furthermore, Orhan's perception of diversity is not limited to ethnic
and religious differences. People's particularities, stories of craziness,
anger, and jokes made Burgaz diverse and interesting to him. He also
criticized greediness as what decreases the diversity in nature. The fact
that he remembered what kind of fruits and vegetables grew in which
garden, which dairy products came from where, and the names of par-
ticular fish shows that the tastes of these foods are significant elements
that tie him to the island. He has embodied Burgaz through dancing,
fishing, drinking, attending church, socializing with his friends, and
having fun. Orhan's memories are of what Chau calls a "social senso-
rium;' a term he uses to refer to "a sensorially rich social space such
as found at a temple festival, a busy market, or a packed dance floor"
(2008: 489, emphasis in original). However, while Chau explores "red-
hot sociality:' or the way that sociality is produced through a type of
heated frenzy, Orhan refers to the way that a sense of the social, of what
it means to be a Burgazli, is produced through the experience of sen-
sory diversity. Orhan's concept of bolluk, abundance, includes a diver-
sity of people, animals, and natural beings. The "Hirt Hirt story of Saik
Faik Abasiyanik (1993) that Orhan referred to indicates that Burgaz-
with its people, nature, animals, tastes, trees, and its sea-whispers into
islanders' ears and keeps them alive. The experience of diversity is what
makes Burgaz the place that it is, and enjoying diversity is what it means
to be Burgazli.
However, while Orhan remembers the years prior to the 1950s mainly
as joyful and harmonious times for the non-Muslims and the Sunni
Muslims, these were class-based memories. Orhan was a summer in-
habitant; his friends were mainly wealthy summer inhabitants from di-


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 165

verse ethno-religious backgrounds. In contrast, in the same years, male
Alevi workers came to Burgaz from Turkey's east to do menial jobs. For
the Alevis, the 1940s and 1950s were years of hardship, adaptation, and
suffering. A couple of Alevi families came to Burgaz from Erzincan af-
ter the devastating earthquake in Erzincan in 1939. More male Alevi
migrants came from Erzincan in the 1940s, to work during the summer
season and take back what they earned to their families in Erzincan. My
Greek, Sunni, and Alevi informants relate the immigration of the Alevis
to economic factors. In the 1950s and 1960s, the migration from Anato-
lian villages to cities was increasing.
The Alevi men engaged in temporary migration to Burgaz in the 1940s
did menial jobs such as helping the Greek fishermen reel in nets when
they came back from fishing. They worked as hamal, carrying the fur-
niture of the summer inhabitants when those inhabitants moved to
the island and when they moved back to Istanbul. The Alevi men also
built and restored houses, and worked as waiters and helpers in grocery
shops, restaurants, and cafes. The building sector in Burgaz had been
increasing and hence provided new job opportunities. They worked as
doorkeepers and gardeners in Greek houses (especially in the Ay Nikola
area, which is higher up, away from the town center), where they were
given rooms or flats in which to stay. The zangog (verger) of the Greek
Orthodox Ay Yorgi church in Burgaz explained to me the story of how
Ay Nikola became an Alevi neighborhood. He said: "Alevis came to work
temporarily in summer. Most of them worked in Garipi monastery, in
Ay Nikola, painting walls, and fixing things for the church. The priest
who was in charge of the church at that time let the Alevis settle in the
Ay Nikola area, near the Garipi church. Hence, they built small houses
and made them bigger when they brought their family to the island."
Thus, Ay Nikola started to become an Alevi neighborhood.
My male Alevi informants always began their tales of this period with
the many difficulties they faced when they started working. Nuri and
Mustafa say that their fathers were among the first Alevis to come to
work in Burgaz and were looked down upon because they did menial
jobs. For instance, Mustafa's father was a shoemaker and now does free-
lance casual jobs, like painting boats. Mustafa said: "The Greeks used to
call us 'kiro' When we passed near them they said 'To kiro einai' [He is
kiro], and we started fighting with each other." Although the sentence
was in Greek, the word kiro comes from Kurdish and is used in Turkish
as a derogatory term for someone uneducated and ill-mannered. These
two Alevi informants recall that when they were children, the rich Greek
children used to exclude them because they were kiro. Nuri said, "When
we wore shorts, t-shirts, and sunglasses, they [Greeks] used to belittle us


166 Deniz Neriman Duru

and make fun of us. I was very upset about this because it was as if we
did not have the right to wear these clothes and accessories. The Greeks
behaved as if the sun and the summer belonged to them."
The tensions that arose between the Greeks and the Alevis were trig-
gered by class differences2 as well as lifestyle differences. The summer
inhabitants were generally upper-middle class, and they did not appre-
ciate the presence of the Anatolian culture on the island. There were
differences in city and village lifestyles. What people wear in Istanbul
and Burgaz and in Erzincan and how people talk in these two different
regions were markers of difference. The summer people in Burgaz wore
bathing suits and modern European clothes such as shorts and t-shirts.
When women went out in the afternoon, they wore perfume and elegant
evening dresses. The Alevis grew up in villages in Erzincan. They wore
modest and comfortable clothes to work in the fields and did not have el-
egant or fashionable dress. There were also differences in accents. Alevis
from Erzincan spoke Zazaki and a version of Turkish that has a harder
accent, in which letters like "k" and "g" are emphasized and syllables are
rolled in their throat. In Istanbul, these letters are softer and the syllables
are rolled in the mouth. In Burgaz, people sprinkle their speech with
many Greek and Ladino words, as well.
Nuri also commented that in the times of his father's generation there
was tension between Greek employees and Alevi workers. The Greeks
who worked in the building sector, constructing walls and painting, em-
ployed Alevis as their assistants. The Alevis of his father's generation
wanted to have more experience in the building sector. The Greeks gave
menial jobs to Alevis, such as carrying the cement, while they (Greeks)
performed the main duties of making the walls. When these Alevi male
workers also wanted to learn to paint the walls, the Greeks did not let
them. The Alevi men with whom I spoke interpreted this as "the Greeks
did not want us to learn more and be better, because we might take their
jobs." On the other hand, Nuri also said that the Greek women treated
them well, giving food and clothes to them and being hospitable towards
Alevi children. This also raises a significant gender issue, because while
there was tension between the male Greek employers and the male Alevi
employees, the Greek women apparently behaved in a maternal way to-
wards Alevi children.
Nuri's and Mustafa's memories are ones of conviviality in the sense
that I am using it here. My use of it derives less from the English and
French meanings that connote feasting and celebration, and more from
the Spanish convivencia, meaning "a shared life." Expanding on this
meaning for their own work in Amazonia, Overing and Passes remark


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 167

that conviviality's "features would include peacefulness, high morale and
high affectivity, a metaphysics of human and non-human interconnect-
edness, a stress on kinship, good gifting-sharing, work relations and
dialogue, a propensity for the informal and performative as against the
formal and institutional, and an intense ethical and aesthetic valuing of
sociable sociality" (2000: xiii-xiv, emphasis added). I would like to put
emphasis here on the performative aspect of conviviality, as well as the
valuing of "sociable sociality." Sociable sociality, or conviviality in the
more conventional English sense, is something that, in this definition, is
valued enough to be produced through performances that involve trans-
forming "the violent, angry, ugly capricious forces of the universe into
constructive, beautiful knowledge and capacities" (Ibid.: 6).
Conviviality, then, is not only "sociable sociality" but is the production
and performance of that sociality, which often also involves control of ten-
sions (see Bryant this volume, p. 21). Moreover, this control of tensions
appears often to be gendered. For instance, in her ethnography of gen-
dered spaces in a Karachi apartment building, Laura Ring shows that the
production of the apartment building as a peaceful space is achieved not
only through pleasurable moments but also through the management of
tension in everyday interaction and exchange (Ring 2006). While Mustafa
and Nuri were discriminated against because of differences in lifestyle,
and Alevi employees and Greek employers experienced competition, Nuri
also remembers the hospitality of Greek women. While he articulates that
it was hard for them to adapt to island life and that there was tension be-
tween the previous settlers and themselves, he also emphasizes that he was
a part of this conviviality, attending church, playing marbles, and fighting
with Greek children. All of these memories made Burgaz his home.
I suggest, then, that conviviality is not only the ways of living that Or-
han remembers so fondly but is a particular valuing of sociable sociality
in the making of place. It is the sort of "everyday coexistence" discussed
in the introduction but here given "an intense ethical and aesthetic valu-
ing" and self-consciously performed. For those who live there, what
makes Burgaz a place with which they identify is precisely this form of
sociality; to be Burgazli is to experience and value this sociality and to
invest in its reproduction. That reproduction involves the performance
of particular forms of sociality, as well as the management of tensions.
Tension, then, is not absent from conviviality, just as it is not absent
from what Bryant describes as the everyday "labor of peace.' Rather, the
management of tension is also a way of reproducing conviviality in that
it performatively demonstrates the value placed on shared ways of life
over other differences.


168 Deniz Neriman Duru

Conviviality and Coexistence
Throughout the region of what was once the Ottoman Empire, the rise
of nationalisms has led to homogenization processes: the construction
of ethnic and national differences led to violence; forced migrations; op-
pression towards "minorities;"3 conflicts over territory, shared space, and
borders; and changed demographics of the region (see also introduction
and chapter 8 by Kasbarian). Political tensions between Turkey, Greece,
and Cyprus, followed by the Turkish government's restrictive policies
on minorities (e.g., Wealth Tax in 1942,4 the expulsion of persons with
Greek citizenship in 1964) and the riots of 6-7 September 1955, which
were an attack on the socio-economic power of the non-Muslims, were
various ways of consolidating the ethnic and religious identity of the
non-Muslims and making them feel as though they were "others within."
This sensation was, I argue, a local consequence of coexistence/tolera-
tion, a creation of an Other and compartmentalization of people into
groups that had to coexist or continue to survive within the majority.
That sense of coexistence/toleration and its potential consequences trig-
gered the emigration of non-Muslims, while the sense of conviviality
tied the non-Muslim islanders to Burgaz and enabled them to remain in
the island. Conviviality also enabled the newcomers such as Alevis and
Kurds to adapt and become a part of Burgaz diversity.
The sense of coexistence/toleration appeared in Orhan's narrative in
the form of the homogenization process that took away his friends. I
asked Orhan: "You talk as if all these things do not exist anymore. What
happened? What has changed? You said there were many, many Greeks?
Where are they now?"
Orhan:
The Greeks left. They went to Greece, Australia, New Zealand, and
the United States. Varlik Vergisi [the Wealth Tax], the 6-7 September
events in 1955, the 27 May 1960 coup, the Cyprus events scared them
all. They said: "Every twenty-five years, something will come up, the
government will do something, we better leave." The government did
many things wrong. My father had a Jewish friend who was required
to pay such a high Varlik Vergisi that it was impossible to pay, thus
he was sent to do military service in Aykale. When my father's Jewish
friend came back from Aykale, my father lent him some money that
helped him reconstruct his business. Varlik Vergisi made the ekaliyet
[an older term used for minorities] suffer economically. Furthermore,
the Greeks had many shops in Beyoglu, they all got destroyed during
the 6-7 September events. Here in Burgaz nothing happened. We


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 169

protected the island and no one could enter. However, what was hap-
pening in Istanbul and in Turkey was scary enough for them to leave.
And they left. They sold their properties at a low price to Erzincanh
Alevis who were working for them. Erzincanhs had saved money while
working so Erzincanh bought these properties. Now the permanent
inhabitants are Alevis and Kurds.
When I asked Orhan what had changed, he referred to policies (the
Wealth Tax in 1942), the riots on 6-7 September 1955, the coup in 1960,
and events in Cyprus as what changed life in Burgaz. All of these were
a logical consequence of what I refer to here as coexistence/toleration,
or the management of difference. In this case, that difference was "man-
aged" by the state as a form of homogenizing social engineering. For
Orhan, it appeared as the distinction between the conviviality that he
remembered and related with such fondness, his eyes sparkling as he
looked dreamily towards the horizon, and the management of difference
that led to his friends' departure and the political tensions, which he
related staring at the ground and with much reticence. It was clear in his
mind that government policies had brought a rupture to people's daily
lives. Through those policies, the identity of the religious minorities was
crystallized around their difference. Nevertheless, he still stressed the
conviviality in Burgaz, in the ways in which his father helped a Jewish
friend in Burgaz, and how the islanders did not turn against each other
during the riots. On the contrary, the islanders cooperated with the po-
lice on Burgaz and protected the island from an outside attack, by wait-
ing at the bays, scaring away the invaders who could not get to the island.
The Lausanne Treaty of 1923 provided the framework for this coexis-
tence/toleration, as it made the Greek Orthodox, Armenians, and Jews
remaining in the new Republic of Turkey official minorities. This official
status of minority gave them recognition with particular rights, a recog-
nition that Muslim groups, such as Kurds and Alevis, have been denied.
But it also set them apart as non-Turkish, not a part of the majority,
despite the fact that the Republic of Turkey was originally intended as a
civic nationalism in which every Turkish citizen would be a Turk. More-
over, as Istanbul's Greek Orthodox were excluded from the population
exchange with Greece, Istanbul remained the center of Greek Orthodox
life until the 1950s. Istanbul, then, remained a heterogeneous city despite
the nationalizing homogenization that affected the rest of the country,
and as a result the Muslims and non-Muslims of Istanbul remember the
1955 riots as the event that caused rupture in a previous harmony.
While in Istanbul the riots are remembered as an experience of coex-
istence/toleration in which their religious identity made them the sub-


170 Deniz Neriman Duru

ject of attack by non-Muslims,5 in Burgaz the resistance against the riots
is remembered by my Greek, Muslim, German, and Alevi informants as
a result of conviviality: Burgaz islanders collectively resisted the riots and
protected their island from being invaded by outsiders. Kestane Karast
(Aktel 2005) and Son Eylil [Last September] (Aktel 2008), both novel-
istic memoirs of Burgaz conviviality, describe how the islanders (both
Muslims and non-Muslims) gathered together by ringing the bells of the
church and made a plan of waiting and protecting the bays in order to
prevent invasion of Burgaz during the 1955 riots. For instance, Ajda (a
half Turkish - half Kurdish Sunni woman, who later married a Greek)
told me that she was around fifteen years old in 1955 and clearly remem-
bers her father saying, "Unless they kill me and step on my dead body,
they will not be able to set foot in Burgaz" The shared memories of daily
life and conviviality as described in Orhan's vignette had created such a
strong Burgaz identity that it overcame ethnic and religious identities in
times of crisis. The discursive effect of these memories (Bakhtin 1981:
269) is a type of "Burgaz ideology" a sense of belonging to Burgaz that is
also infused with a moral discourse about how a "real" Burgazli should
behave, both in everyday life and in times of crisis.
In the early 1960s in Burgaz, people heard on the radio reports of the
tensions in Cyprus and of Greek Cypriots oppressing Turkish Cypriots.
Because the 1955 riots were linked to events in Cyprus, this later wave of
intercommunal violence in this faraway island made the remaining Bur-
gazli Greeks anxious. And their fear would prove to be justified. The ma-
jority of my Burgaz informants, regardless of their ethnicity and religion,
told me that 1964 was also one of the most important dates they remem-
ber, because that year was the time when their Greek friends with Greek
citizenship were expelled.6 The islanders reminisce that many Greeks of
Greek citizenship were married to Greeks of Turkish citizenship. Hence,
not only the Greeks of Greek citizenship left, but their families left as
well.
I wanted to explore how the remaining Burgaz islanders interpreted
the departure of their Greek friends. Nuri narrated:
I used to play marbles with my friends [probably in the mid-1960s] and
realized that my friends were gone. I did not understand why they left,
as I was a child. I knew that some Greeks never did military service, and
later, I understood that these Greeks were of Greek citizenship. Some of
the ones who left were the ones who did not do military service.
The 1964 expulsion was a memory of coexistence/toleration for Nuri,
because prior to that, he did not have in his mind a category for "Greeks


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 171

with Greek citizenship" and "Greeks with Turkish citizenship" Nuri re-
alized the ethno-religious and citizenship differences of his childhood
friends at the moment when they left Burgaz. One Greek informant with
Turkish citizenship (a male aged 65) recalled that when he came back
from military service in 1971, the island was "empty." For him, the ex-
istence of Greeks made Burgaz a place with meaning and when many
Greeks left, Burgaz became empty for him. The departure of the Greek
friends who had to leave because of having Greek citizenship was an
experienced consequence of coexistence/toleration.
Furthermore, the rise of Islamism and Kurdish nationalism in the
1980s and the Alevi revival in the 1990s helped to create a new appre-
ciation of political and cultural pluralism (Neyzi 2001: 422; (olak 2006:
587). During the years of my fieldwork (2009-10), the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) introduced "democratization packages" that
included increased freedom of speech and Kurdish cultural rights in-
tended to meet the Copenhagen criteria for Turkey's accession to the
European Union (Bad 2005). In addition, the government initiated a di-
alogue with the Alevis to discuss their demands for political and cul-
tural rights (Soner and Toktas 2011). During this period, the Kemalist
homogenizing impulses of early Republican Turkey were subject to new
historical scrutiny, while varying ethnic and religious groups began to
revive their identities, demand education in their native languages, and
in the case of Alevis, the right and space to worship.
In Burgaz, this political context created an atmosphere where Alevis
started to articulate their memories of coexistence/toleration by ex-
pressing the ways in which Alevis had been oppressed in and assimilated
into the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic.7 Alongside this
politicization of identity, however, Alevis in Burgaz also recalled both
bitter and sweet memories of conviviality in Burgaz. Quarrelling, fight-
ing and playing marbles with the earlier established settlers in Burgaz
and feeling sad about the departure of their Greek friends also signify
their sense of belonging in Burgaz. When, at the end of the interview,
I asked Nuri what Burgaz meant to him, he said "I was born in Burgaz,
and I have sixty years of friendship with my oldest friend. You cannot
find these long friendships in Istanbul or somewhere else for example"
In this experience of locality, Burgaz is separate from other places. His
years in Burgaz and his lifelong friends from there make the island a
unique place for him. He added:
The islanders do not know how to walk on the streets of Istanbul. We
do not know what traffic is, here on the island, we walk in the middle
of the streets. Burgaz is a biiyiilii [mysterious] place; it has its own way


172 Deniz Neriman Duru

of life. Burgaz means the sea, the seagulls and the pine trees for me.
Whenever I go outside of Burgaz and I see seagulls and pine trees, it
reminds me of Burgaz.
Nuri's comments echo those of Orhan and many other Burgaz islanders
whom I met and talked with. This sense of Burgaz as having a special
way of life is both what creates the sense of it as a place and also what its
inhabitants value and attempt to reproduce.
Negotiating Class and Religious Differences in Today's Burgaz
Burgaz is heterogeneous not only in terms of ethnicity and religion, but
also in terms of class difference. Minority religious communities in Tur-
key, as well as in Burgaz, tend to be well educated, and are financially
comfortable. These minority elites (e.g., Armenian, German, Levantine,
Greek, and Jewish) and majority elites (Sunni Muslims) usually go to the
same foreign schools in Istanbul, work in similar sectors, and hence can
afford to pay to eat out or to become members of social clubs. Sharing
the same class creates similarities in lifestyle. In Bourdieu's (1990) terms,
they have the economic and also the cultural capital and share a simi-
lar habitus. Their similar lifestyle creates milieux for interactions. They
spend the weekends at the social clubs mostly swimming, sunbathing,
playing scrabble or cards. They can afford to have most meals at cafes
and restaurants and do not cook at home, with cleaning done by a maid.
Most of the old, wooden mansions are owned by these summer resi-
dents. These mansions were designed and built by Armenian and Greek
architects, mostly at the end of the nineteenth century (Tuglaci 1992),
and are spread between the center and the peak of the island.
However, the houses in Turgut Reis, toward the back of the island, are
concrete constructions, most of them built by the permanent Zaza and
Kurdish Alevis and Sunni Muslim inhabitants with their own hands. The
waiters, seasonal workers, horse cart drivers, and menial laborers are
mostly of Kurdish origin from Southeastern Turkey or of Turkic nation-
alities (e.g., Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan). Islanders' everyday interactions
across classes, between summer and permanent inhabitants, between
customers and restaurant and shop owners, form an important part of
conviviality on the island. My last ethnographic account illustrates cur-
rent practices of conviviality and the ways in which class and religious
differences are negotiated in Burgaz today. It is a story of an Anatolian
family who moved to Burgaz and became Burgazli through acquired ap-


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 173

preciation of the cultural diversity that is explicitly valued in the island
and is what people there consider to be "sociable sociality."
I met Zumrut on a winter day in January 2010 at the embroidery class
taken by the permanent inhabitants, mainly Sunni Turkish and Kurd-
ish Shafi'i women. While the other women were embroidering flowers
and animal patterns on their fabric, Zumrut wanted to embroider a big
cross, a symbol of Christianity, and was looking for a cross pattern. I told
her that I could bring a pattern and asked what she planned to do with it.
Zumrut: I want to make a big cross for Niko Agabey (elder brother).
He is my boss and he is so nice. If I embroider a big cross on a big piece
of fabric, he will be very happy and then we can put it in the church.
Author: I know Niko! He is in charge of Ay Yanni Church, isn't he?
And how come he is your boss?
Zumrut: I am the verger of the Metamorphosis church on the top of
the island. Niko Agabey [whom the reader will know from the previous
section] is in charge of the bills and formalities of Ay Yanni and Meta-
morphosis churches.
I was struck by the fact that a Sunni Muslim family took care of the
Greek Orthodox Church and that she called her boss agabey, and so I
went to visit Zumrut Abla, coincidentally on Easter Day 2010. As I was
thumbing through her poetry book, where she wrote about welcoming
the spring on top of Burgaz, we heard some people entering the garden.
A French tourist couple came to visit the church as guests of a Turkish
and a Greek Burgazli couple. I found myself in the middle of translat-
ing in Turkish and French the conversations between Zumrut and the
couple. The French woman asked how and why Zumrut took this job.
Zumrut responded:
When I was young, with my friends, we used to clean the mosque in
our village in Sivas, in Anatolia. I married my paternal uncle's son and
came to Istanbul as a bride in 1987. While working in Istanbul, my hus-
band developed good relationships with the Greeks. These Greeks who
lived in Istanbul also had houses in Burgaz. When they proposed to us
the job of taking care of the church, my husband and I accepted. I said:
"both mosques and churches are the houses of God. Why wouldn't we
take care of the church?"
When the French woman heard this, she had tears in her eyes and said,
"While there are wars between different religions, it is very touching


174 Deniz Neriman Duru

to see a Muslim woman taking care of a Christian church, this is very
moving and impressive." When I translated that, Zumrut did not react
as if she was doing something spectacular or extraordinary but that was
a natural act for her.
After regular visits to Zumrut, I learned more about how she keeps
the traces of her Anatolian rural life and how much she has learned from
the Greek community. She climbs up and down Burgaz on her donkey,
makes manta (Turkish tortellini), and grows vegetables and herbs in
her garden as she did in her village. Nonetheless, through interactions
with Greeks and to do the job properly, Zumrut and her son picked up
a few Greek words, which are used in the mass, like yiwui (bread), Kpcrl
(wine), vep6 (water). Her little son, aged nine, puts out the candles of the
church, carries the ritualistic items listed above and holds the big keys
of the church. Zumrut knows the important Greek Orthodox religious
days and the meaning of rituals, and she paints and cleans the church
and shows it to visitors. While Niko was telling me the story of the de-
parture of some Greeks, he added, "Today Greeks do not want to work
as a verger. There are not many Greeks left to take care of the church,
and those who stayed are all educated, with good jobs, and do not want
to do this job." This sentence shows a significant class difference and also
economic mutual dependency between the Greeks and the Muslims.
In Niko and Zimrit's case, class difference and mutual dependency
played a positive role in the ways in which they embraced their religious
differences. Zumrut and her husband accepted the job out of necessity.
As they took care of the church, they were given free accommodation
and salary. If Zumrut and her husband had been religiously conserva-
tive or prejudiced, they could have simply refused to work under the
authority of a Christian and taken jobs similar to those of other Muslims
in the island. On the contrary, Zumrut and her husband greatly respect
Niko, their boss whom they address with a kinship term "elder brother."
Zumrut does not only do the basic duties of a verger, she looks after
the church as if it were her own house, through cleaning the crystals of
the church lantern one by one. She even embroidered a large cross on
a piece of cloth that would be put on the alter table of the church, as a
present to Niko Agabey. To show their appreciation, the Greek com-
munity held Zimrit's son's circumcision ceremony in the garden of Ay
Yanni Church: a Muslim ritual took place in a Christian religious setting.
Even though the Muslim family took the job of a verger out of neces-
sity, then, the relationship between Zumrut and Niko goes beyond an
employee/employer relationship. This is again an example of conviviality,
where we see that Niko is not a "Greek" in Zimrit's mind, but an "elder


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 175

brother." Zumrut, in return, is not "just a verger" or "Muslim" to Niko
and the Greek community. They work together, they exchange gifts, and
they make Burgaz a place where they can easily practice their religious
rituals. The relationship between Zumrut and Niko is not an exception.
The boundaries of client/customer and employer/employee blur quite
often and become that of friendship among cafe and restaurant owners
or waiters and their regulars; grocery store owners and their clients; and
Burgazli people from different class, ethnic, and religious backgrounds.
Conclusion
This chapter argued that in the Turkish context, where the main word for
living with difference is "toleration," "coexistence" represents a compart-
mentalization of the community into fragmented ethnic and religious
groups who have to live together and share space. This sense of coexis-
tence/toleration was contrasted with shared ways of living and a sense
of belonging to a place through the prism of conviviality. I described the
homogenization of nation-building and crystallization of ethnic and re-
ligious identities as a logical consequence of coexistence/toleration. De-
spite the negative connotations of ho~gra (tolerance), however, a new
discourse of human rights attached to minority groups has also resulted
in a politics of difference that mobilized Alevis to ask for recognition. My
approach to "conviviality;' on the other hand, highlighted the cohesions
and tensions that emerge from shared lifestyles and class difference, and
how these tensions are managed in daily life and create a sense of place
and belonging. I suggested that a more careful ethnographic analysis of
specific locations in the post-Ottoman space may direct us beyond the
coexistence/toleration paradigm to see the ways in which conviviality, or
common ways of living, may lead to a conscious valuing of the sociable
sociality of plural lives.
The research was supported by the University of Sussex under an An-
thropology Departmental Fellowship; ORSAS (Overseas Research Stu-
dent Awards Scheme); and Funds for Women Graduates under Founda-
tion Grants.
Deniz Neriman Duru is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Media,
Cognition, and Communication Department, University of Copenha-
gen. She wrote her Ph.D. dissertation in Social Anthropology at the
University of Sussex on "Coexistence and Conviviality in Multi-Faith,
Multi-Ethnic Burgazadasi, Istanbul" and worked afterwards at the so-


176 Deniz Neriman Duru

ciology department at the University of York. Her research interests
include multiculturalism, diversity, conviviality, coexistence, anthropol-
ogy of Turkey, Turkish migrants in Europe, and international migration
within the Eurocrisis context.
Notes
1. In that sense, Freitag's take on conviviality is similar to Werbner's (2008)
working class cosmopolitanism and Diouf's (2000) vernacular cosmopoli-
tanism, in the ways in which they criticize Hannerz's (1990) elitist view of
cosmopolitanism.
2. See Passerini (1987) and (1992), where she analyzes memories of the work-
ing class in Turin under a totalitarian regime.
3. During the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the "minoritization"
process (Cowan 2001), the concepts of minority and majority came into the
Balkan nations' state system. Cowan (2001:156) points out, "A minority is
better understood as a product of particular ideological, social, political and
economic processes, rather than a clear-cut component of a pre-existing
multiplicity. In most cases, minorities are formulated at the moment of
state formulation."
4. The CHP (Republican People's Party) government of Ismet Indnu passed
the Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax) law in 1942 and explained that Varlik Ver-
gisi aimed to redistribute the capital that was unequally and unfairly dis-
tributed during World War II (Okte 1951: 15, cited in Guven 2006: 135;
Kuyucu 2005: 370). Ddnmes (non-Muslims, mostly Jews, who had con-
verted to Islam) were supposed to pay double and non-Muslims had to pay
ten times more (Guven 2006: 139, 141).
5. There has been a recent proliferation of writing and representation of the
events. See especially the documentary films, Unutulmayan iki gun 6-7
Eylil [An unforgettable two days, 6-7 September] (2007) and 6-7 Eylil
Belgeseli [The 6-7 September documentary], as well as Aktel (2008), Guven
(2006), Kuyucu (2005), and Mills (2010).
6. The Greeks of Turkey with Greek citizenship were blamed for helping the
Greek Cypriots economically (Akgonul 2007: 267) and also accused of
being on the Greek side (Akgonul 2007: 252). In March 1964, the Inonu
government decided to expel the Greeks with Greek citizenship (Akgonul
2007: 257, 409). The Turkish government did not renew the Seyrisefain
pact, which was signed between Turkey and Greece in 1930, and which gave
residence and free movement to Greek citizens in Turkey (Akgonul 2007:
86-87). With this pact, the Greeks who had migrated to Greece during the
population exchange, and who had become Greek citizens were allowed to
settle back and work in Turkey (Akgon6l 2007: 87). Hence, work permits,
freedom of movement and residence of Greeks with Greek citizenship were
cancelled. Furthermore, this expulsion would make the Greeks of Greek
citizenship lose their jobs thus enabling the Turks to take their places (Ak-


Memory, Conviviality, and Coexistence 177

g6nul 2007: 261, 265). This would also "solve" the unemployment problems
of the immigrants from the Anatolian villages to cities (Akgdnul 2007: 265).
7. See Neyzi (2004) and Shankland (1999) for Alevi memories of the 1938
rebellion in Dersim and the massacres in forum, Kahramanmaras, and
Sivas/Madimak.
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Oxford University Press.


°"Chapter 7 +
"If You Write This Tac'no,
It Will Be Tocvno!"
Language Ideologies and Linguistic Practices
in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina
AZRA HROMADZIC
This chapter is not available in the open access edition due to rights
restrictions. It is accessible in the print and retail e-book editions, span-
ning pages 180-204.


Part III
Negotiating Everyday Coexistence
in the Shadow of Conflict



+ Chapter 8 I

The Istanbul Armenians
Negotiating Coexistence
SOSSIE KASBARIAN
Dismantling Nationalist Narratives, Critiquing the Nation
With the prospect of membership into the European Union (EU) in
sight, Turkey has been undergoing a tortuous democratization since the
early 2000s. A question at the heart of this process is whether it can deal
with its internal diversity, reconcile historical tensions, and heal deep
wounds.1 This involves the rethinking of fundamental concepts like na-
tionhood and belonging, citizenship and rights, and relations between
state, authority and religion. This chapter looks at everyday personal and
social negotiations in being Armenian in Istanbul and the struggle to
claim a coexistent Armenian space within the Turkish nation.2
One founding myth of the Turkish Republic established in 1923 is
the ethnic purity of the nation, rendering the very existence of Others
and Other narratives problematic from the outset. Unlike the Ottoman
identity, the new republic privileged ethnicity over religion, a particu-
larly difficult condition for the non-Muslim, non-Turkish communities.
From the turn of the century onward Ottoman leaders and Young Turks
pursued an agenda that relentlessly aimed to decrease the number of
non-Muslims living within the new borders of the emerging nation. Mus-
tafa Kemal and his followers introduced policies and programs designed
to aggressively homogenize Turkish society and to create a new national
identity that excluded Others. A nationalist historiography rooted in the
famous three-day speech given by Kemal in 1927 at the Second Congress
of the Republican People's Party "articulated and narrated the excluded
minorities as the vanquished, and then proceeded to attribute to them
the exactly opposite characteristics: the excluded were stripped of most
of their agency, and the very little they were permitted to exercise was


208 Sossie Kasbarian

of course depicted within parameters defined by the triumphant group,
thereby appearing totally subversive and immoral" (G69ek 2006, 2013:
89). The emerging nation and new state were "constructed through a
narrative that denied, forgot and silenced minorities" (Mills 2008: 386).
G69ek's analysis links the "hegemony of Turkish nationalism" and
"the hegemony of 1915" in constructing a prevailing master-narrative
whereby Armenians (and other non-Muslim minorities) were depicted
as untrustworthy and inferior, and ultimately ungrateful and treacher-
ous to Ottoman/Turkish benevolence and tolerance.
Although there was considerable continuity between Ottoman and
Turkish institutions, there was a concerted policy of "engineering obliv-
ion" that cut off the Republic from its past and in particular from its
non-Muslim and non-Turkish peoples and their histories (Kadioglu 2007:
289). Kadioglu singles out education as the "vehicle for the reproduction
of oblivion in Turkey" making contemporary Turks "ignorant about the
multi-religious and multi-ethnic history of the lands that they inhabit ...
paving the way to an official rhetoric of denial" (Ibid). Hence, the very
concept of the coexistence of Others and their respective experiences,
their non-Turkish, non-Muslim identities, were wiped out in the foun-
dation of the Turkish state and their continuing existence problematic.
In 1913 one in every five people in (what became) Turkish lands was
a non-Muslim. At the end of 1923 that number was one in forty (Key-
der 1989: 67). Despite the constitution of 1924 stating that being a Turk
is self-ascriptive, in practice non-Muslim minority groups have always
been considered Others. The Turkification policies in operation rein-
forced the dominance of Sunni Islam and Turkishness in every aspect of
life. Today the non-Muslim minority groups constitute less than 1 per-
cent of the population of Turkey. Of these, the Armenian Orthodox are
estimated to comprise around 65,0003 (US State Department 2010).4 The
Turkish state distinguishes between two types of minorities. The first are
the three officially recognized non-Muslim minorities (the Armenian
Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox, and the Jews) as protected by the Treaty
of Lausanne (1923). The second category covers religious communities
that are not linked to a particular ethnic group (e.g., the Jehovah's Wit-
nesses and the Baha'is.) All Muslim minorities (Kurds, Alevis, Circas-
sians, etc.) were deemed to belong to the Turkish nation at the time of
the foundation of the Republic. Despite the fact that minorities were
legal citizens, in practice citizenship became an instrument of forced as-
similation to a Turkish national identity rather than a guaranteed set of
rights. In discussing the concept of minority in the Turkish context, Ak-
gonul (2013: 77) says, "[N]on-Muslims were meant to be exterminated,
not assimilated, during the efforts to build a homogeneous nation. As


The Istanbul Armenians 209

in all nation-building processes, the utopia of a homogenous nation in
Turkey based itself on three principal mechanisms: extermination, as-
similation and folklorization" The remnant non-Muslims, were either
made invisible, forced to flee, or "ornamentalized"
Kemalist secularist principles that founded the state, meant that
religion, in particular non-Muslim religions, have not been practiced
freely. Religious identity and the practice of religion remains an area
fraught with constant negotiation in modern Turkey, caught between
the forces of conservative Islamism (as represented by the ruling AKP)
and a strict Kemalist secularism (represented by the Republican People's
Party, CHP). The Treaty of Lausanne stipulated equal treatment under
the law, and rights and privileges to be given to religious minorities, in-
cluding the right to maintain their own schools, churches, foundations
and other institutions, which enabled them to maintain their ethnic, re-
ligious, and cultural identity, at least in theory.5 In practice all of these
institutions face fundamental problems due to this relationship with
the state. Since the foundation of the Republic in 1923, there have been
strict restrictions on religious minorities owning, maintaining, or trans-
ferring their property (individual and communal), as well as restrictions
in the training of teachers and clergy of the minority. In fact successive
Turkish governments have systematically confiscated properties from
religious minorities since the foundation of the republic, most notably
in 1936 with the Foundations Law, in 1971 with the Private University
Law, and in 1974 when a law recognized only the ownership of religious
community properties registered in 1936.
According to the national census of 1927, Turkish was not the native
language of around 28 percent of the city's population. Out of 794,000
people in the city, 92,000 spoke Greek, 45,000 spoke Armenian, 39,000
spoke Ladino, 6,000 spoke French, and 6,000 spoke Albanian. The re-
maining 31,300 spoke a mix of other languages, including Arabic,
Kurdish, Persian, Circassian, and Bulgarian (Aslan 2007). After the Re-
publican period, there continued an assault by assimilationist and exclu-
sionary policies and practices, designed to eradicate these differences.
The "Citizen Speak Turkish" campaign initiated in 1928 (but with lasting
impact) made the speaking of minority languages in public an offence,6
enforcing Turkification in the public sphere. Many of my interviewees
spoke of childhoods fearful of inadvertently speaking to their parents in
Armenian when out in public, creating another layer of personal trauma
and insecurity in the shared urban space. The Law of Settlement in 1934,
which aimed to assimilate Balkan Muslims and Kurds by settling them in
areas populated with Turkish speakers, also banned those whose mother
tongue was not Turkish from establishing towns and villages. The state


210 Sossie Kasbarian

changed the names of cities, towns, and villages into Turkish. The Law
of Surnames of 1934 forced all citizens to take Turkish surnames (Aslan
2007). There continued state policies designed to make life for the mi-
norities uncomfortable and in some cases to threaten their existence,
including the Wealth Tax in 1942 (which disproportionally affected
non-Muslim minorities), and the Istanbul pogrom of 6-7 September
1955, when gangs organized by state institutions attacked minority
businesses, homes and churches. During the Cyprus crisis in 1963-64,
minorities were forced to flee Turkey, and limited to taking only $100
with them. These policies together reveal a state intent on eradicating or
subjugating its non-Muslim minorities. G69ek (2006, 2013: 102) stresses
the historical continuities of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish re-
public in "state-sponsored prejudice and violence against minorities in
the name of nationalism.
Furthermore, the conceptualization of non-Muslim minorities in
modern Turkey is directly linked to how the Ottoman Empire and its
legacies are approached in popular and political discourse. There are
two broad, seemingly contradictory, myths at play when one looks at the
discourse surrounding the change from an Ottoman to a Turkish state.
The first is the reigning nationalist discourse that presents Turkey as a
homogenous state of ethnic Turks and Muslims. In this exclusionary
discourse, all Others are deemed foreigners, and should they not prove
docile and compliant, they are seen as threats to the integrity and coher-
ence of the Turkish state.
The second is a nostalgia for a cosmopolitan empire, with Istanbul the
city of cities at its center, viewed with a romantic and sentimental wist-
fulness for a mythical period when people of different ethnicities, reli-
gions, languages, classes, and backgrounds lived side by side, in what the
late Tony Judt (2010: 206) has called "lost cosmopolitan cities." In recent
years this celebratory nostalgia for an apparently peaceful and idealistic
past has been expounded by both Turkish and non-Turkish writers and
scholars, with little critical reflection, nor adequate engagement with
historical data. In Turkey, this extended to musings about the multicul-
tural past inhabitants of Istanbul, of which there are tiny communities
left over. In some cases this "boutique multiculturalism"8 led to "white
Turks" (middle class, secular, Kemalist, Sunni, urban, liberal) attending
Christmas services in churches in Istanbul, as part of a self-consciously
constructed Europeanness. This nostalgia tends to gloss over the struc-
tural and everyday discrimination minorities experienced under the
Ottoman regime, and it infantilizes and fossilizes the remaining com-
munities as a historical relic. As Bryant argues in the introduction to
this volume (p. 6) "current popular nostalgia for a multicultural past may


The Istanbul Armenians 211

mask denial of the ways in which that multiculturalism was destroyed"
and it certainly ignores the intrinsic violence of imperialism and the
power asymmetries contained within. Mills, Reilly, and Philliou (2011:
135) talk about the paradoxical way that the Ottoman past is viewed in
scholarship, through "the lens of nostalgia," but also as a "time of back-
wardness and decline leaving a dolorous legacy that must be undone and
overcome." This paradox can be extended to the Christian minorities,
the "physical and social remnants of the past" in modern Turkey as being
"both ubiquitous and unacknowledged, both remembered nostalgically
and rejected ideologically" (Ibid.).
Cosmopolitan nostalgia has been very limited in terms of political
potential to open up Turkish notions of citizenship, identity, and belong-
ing. This trend among Turks who are unsympathetic to the ruling AKP
is partly a response to their perceptions that the party has an Islamist
agenda that seeks to dismantle the laicist foundations of the Kemalist
state. "White Turks," according to Akg6nil (2013: 90) find themselves
confronting "a new type of otherness, the 'Islamist' movement-with
the headscarf as an icon-on one side and the Kurdish presence associ-
ated with violence, on the other," resulting in nostalgia for the "former
others" along with "a firm belief that Istanbul was more cosmopolitan,
'civilized' and 'habitable' before the non-Muslims were deported or
forced to flee."
Central to the Ottoman nostalgia is "tolerance as a political discourse"
and the vision of a pluralist empire with Istanbul as its cosmopolitan
center. This tolerance is often presented as a critique of an intolerant
present (reflected in the intolerance each Turkish faction has for the oth-
ers). Implicit in the tolerance discourse is the existence of the dominant
majority that is doing the "tolerating" and therefore an intrinsic disap-
proval at the core for the "tolerated" (Mills 2011). As Bryant discusses
in the introduction to this volume (p. 12) "toleration implies living with
or tolerating beliefs of practices that one finds wrong or disagreeable
for social, economic, or political reasons" and "tolerance assumes that
difference is perceived negatively." She contrasts the ideological position
of "tolerance" to quotidian realities and negotiations encapsulated in
"coexistence" the day to day living together that "attempts to interrogate
understandings of difference and boundaries including indifference to
difference" where there are "rituals of accommodation that simultane-
ously define(d) and cross(ed) boundaries."
All nation-states are built on forgetting and remembering selectively.
In the Turkish case the persistent denial of the harsh realities of the Ot-
toman past in relation to the minorities still within constitutes the very
foundation of the nationalist state and is constantly reproduced in the


212 Sossie Kasbarian

hegemonic narrative. Central to this hegemony is the complete silencing
of the voice of these minorities, where counter-narratives are regarded
as threats to the nation. Historically the coexistence of different nar-
ratives has not been tolerated, and regardless of the apparent democ-
ratization and liberalization policies since 2000 they are interpreted as
developments that need to be suppressed, and opposed. Despite this,
recent oral history projects have unearthed a hesitant emerging space
for counter-memories and counter-narratives (Mills 2008; Ungor 2014).
Mills (2010: 211) remarks, "The price of belonging in Turkey comes at a
cost-the forgetting of particular histories at the expense of the frequent
retelling of others and the silencing of particular memories that cannot
entirely be repressed" In the Armenian case, the specter of the genocide
of 1915 and being considered fifth columns in the state of the perpe-
trators led to a particularly alienated position. As one recent analysis
has poetically put it, it has led to "one hundred years of abandonment"
alongside "a clear disengagement from a quest of justice for themselves,
but also a clear-albeit forced-disengagement from their relatives in
the diaspora.... The never-spoken cost for Istanbul Armenians was the
complete negation of their political identity and history" (Erbal and
Suciyan 2011). Suciyan (2012), drawing on Hannah Arendt's study of
being a Jew in Europe in the nineteenth century, talks of the pressure
on Armenians in Turkey "to assimilate into anti-Armenian campaigns,
which also entails hatred against and dehumanization of the Armenian
diaspora.... In this way, you are expected to become an enemy of your
own past, of your own biography, and reject your own present" One
recent example of this, in April 2014, was the apparent wish of Turkey's
Armenians to nominate PM Erdogan for the Nobel Peace Prize.9 This
demonstrates the utter subjugation of this community, who (outwardly
at least) were grateful and impressed by Erdogan's acknowledgment
of the deaths of Armenians during the end days of the Ottoman Em-
pire,1 in a statement" that Oktem has called a "perfect example of de-
nialist-lite"12 much to the dismay and shock of the Armenian diaspora.
Suciyan posits that a rejection or surrendering of the Armenian past and
indeed the present in Turkey is the "only way offered to survive in a state
of denial." The charge is that "coexistence" in the Turkish state for Arme-
nians has necessitated the usurping of one's identity and an alienation
of the self, leading to a chastened and insecure existence. The Istanbul
Armenians are in the unique position of being the physical embodiment
of a highly politicized wound in the nationalist narrative-physical re-
minders of the genocidal past but also the remnants of centuries of Ot-
toman Armenian lives and contributions to the nation, both of which
the Turkish state denies, erases, or belittles.


The Istanbul Armenians 213

Signs of Change: Post-2005
While there have been ground-breaking works in scholarship on the
tragic fate of the Ottoman Armenians in recent years,13 it is the emer-
gence of pioneering Turkish academics engaging with these issues in a
critical manner that has had the most impact in Turkey itself.14 In late
2008 a controversial "apology campaign" initiated by four Turkish intel-
lectuals was circulated, gathering over 30,000 signatures of Turks and
Kurds "apologizing" for the events of 1915.15 The works of novelists like
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak have also had widespread
international impact, although both, along with other public intellectu-
als and journalists, have been chastened by the threats from the state,
under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code that makes it a crime to
"insult the Turkish nation."
If one were to pinpoint a date for the "opening" of a public debate on
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, it would be 2005, when the nine-
tieth anniversary of the genocide sparked a new effort by a few Turk-
ish intellectuals to confront the official denialist line by focusing on the
human story. The ground-breaking conference, "Ottoman Armenians
during the Demise of the Empire: Responsible Scholarship and Issues of
Democracy," in September of that year marked a turning point in public
discourse in terms of what was possible to discuss and the terms of that
debate. The conference was referred to as the Genocide Conference in
the mainstream media, and there was pressure to cancel it from politi-
cians and officials, leading the venue to be changed several times and
some ugly scenes at Bilgi University, where it was eventually held. Those
present, upon returning to their home institutions, continued working
in this field, creating, claiming, and shaping a new space and discourse
that transgressed the hegemonic operative of genocide recognition and
denial (Kasbarian and Oktem 2014).
Arguably the most influential vehicle for a change in social attitudes
in Turkey was My Grandmother ( etin 2004, 2008), a biographical story
written by the human rights lawyer Fethiye Cetin about her grand-
mother, who revealed near her death that she had in fact been born Ar-
menian and had survived the genocide by being taken in by a Turkish
family. The incredible impact of this modest book lies in its poignant
human story. Columnist Tuba Akyol in her review of the book stated,
"stories can do what large numbers or concepts cannot do.... Concepts
are cold, stories can touch you inside" (Akyol 2005). Ayge Gl Altinay
has written of the success of My Grandmother in employing "Arendtian
storytelling to open up a creative space for historical critique and rec-
onciliation" (2006: 127), by evoking curiosity about one's ancestry, de-


214 Sossie Kasbarian

constructing the nationalist homogenous nation, thereby allowing for
a construction of a hybrid Self. She describes the momentum the book
has created as a completely unexpected "phenomenon" with Cetin tour-
ing throughout Turkey and internationally, being treated as a "celebrity"
by both Turks and Armenians16 (and others) who are touched by this
powerful personal story in surprising ways. Cetin herself talks about the
shocking discovery of her Armenian roots as suddenly seeing "the world
through different eyes" (quoted in Bilefsky 2012).
This development in particular, tapping into the critical studies and
gender studies space, introduces a radical new space for empathy, the
exploration of personal and historical memories and sharing of personal
stories. It is both subtle and powerful, as it is not taken seriously in the
realm of high politics and yet has a real impact on people's attitudes.
This approach is a serious challenge as it is an entirely different kind
of discourse to which nationalists cannot respond-thereby acting as a
transgressive undermining of the state discourse.
These tentative surfacings of hidden or silenced histories and iden-
tities have led to a wave of Turkish citizens discovering and uncover-
ing their Armenian (and other non-Turkish) roots and working through
their family histories. Some Armenian orphans of the genocide and later
massacres were taken in by local Muslim families, who changed their
names and converted the children to Islam. The Dersim Armenians are
one such case of a group reclaiming their Armenian identity and some
now choosing to get baptized. They have even formed a union to teach
Armenian and restore graves and churches in the Tunceli province.17
There has emerged a distinct phenomenon of the "Islamized (or Muslim)
Armenians;' a subject explored in a trail-blazing conference at Bogaziei
University in November 2013.18 Islamized Armenians as a concept are a
huge challenge for the Turkish (almost exclusively Muslim) state, which
has to confront the previously silenced, growing numbers of citizens
rediscovering and claiming Armenian roots. There has simultaneously
also been a new awareness of the mongrel roots of most Turkish citizens,
something that contradicts and challenges Kemalist principles and the
state's official nationalist discourse. This process of discovery for some
has led to a personal crisis; for others it has been a chance to question the
exclusionary racist tenets of Turkish nationalism from a personal posi-
tion. Nikhet Kardam, writing in Today's Zaman, expressed this lyrically:
Once I dug into my family history, I found forgotten, hidden and sup-
pressed identities. My grandmother's father is a "Rum" the descendent
of a Byzantine "Tekfur" who fought alongside the Ottomans and later
converted to Islam. My grandmother's mother is the grandchild of the


The Istanbul Armenians 215

revered Kurdish leader Mir Bedirhan who ruled a large semi-autono-
mous Kurdish territory in the Ottoman Empire. My great uncle's wife
is Greek but had to change her name and religion in order to marry
the love of her life. My family adopted a girl and included her in our
family registry. She was born in 1910, in Erzincan in Eastern Turkey.
She could very well be Armenian, as many Armenian children were
saved and adopted by Turkish families during that time. I now look
at Greeks, Armenians, and Kurds with a very different eye, now that
I know I belong to each one in some way. I then began to ask myself
many questions about who really is a Turk. (Kardam 2011)
This intertwining of the historical, the political, and the intimate offers
a radical new space for exploration, expression, and political action.
Whereas high politics has a distancing quality and can be ignored by
(the increasing number of) disenfranchised and disinterested popula-
tions, politics as embodied in the personal speaks to our common hu-
manity and revives interest from a human position.
These developments have led to the inevitable nationalist backlash.
The most significant event was the gunning down of the prominent Is-
tanbul Armenian and newspaper editor, Hrant Dink, outside the offices
of Agos19 in central Istanbul on 19 January 2007. His murder and his
funeral march when hundreds of thousands took to the streets bearing
the signs "We are all Armenians; we are all Hrant Dink" marked a turn-
ing point for Istanbul Armenians, and arguably for Turkish society as a
whole. This great show of solidarity with the Armenians of Turkey was
highly symbolic and perhaps the most public display of the possibility of
an emerging shared post-nationalist common identity in Turkey (despite
immediate nationalist backlashes). This unprecedented development
also exposed the polarized attitudes around "the Armenian issue" and
forced the idea of "Turkishness" forward for public debate and reflection
(Turkmen-Dervigoglu 2013: 675).
The loss of the most noted Armenian public intellectual in Turkey
was an unmitigated calamity for the community. One Turkish activist
said to me, "the Armenian community has lost its voice;' and yet his
death has given an impetus to many others. Dink's murder brought the
plight of the Istanbul Armenians to the forefront, and opened up the pa-
rameters of what it was possible to discuss. The same activist explained,
"What has changed is that people can now talk freely about the geno-
cide, it seeped into people's discourse and conversation more. People
also started talking about their own families and the past."20
Within the Armenian community Hrant Dink's murder resulted in
two apparently contradictory trends: on the one hand there is greater


216 Sossie Kasbarian

fear and retreat by some elements of the Armenian community; and on
the other, especially among the younger generation, an increased bold-
ness in remembering and claiming their identity and making demands.
With regard to the former tendency, I heard several stories of Armenian
families buying property in Armenia or getting visas for the West in case
they had to make a quick escape. For the latter group, the assassination
was a wake-up call to fight for the rights and freedoms that Dink had
dedicated his life to, to retrieve their lost and silenced voices and iden-
tities.21 The murder has also made the local and transnational network
of Turkish, Armenian, and other activists working in this new, emerging
shared space, closer, more coherent, and more confident (Kasbarian and
Oktem 2014).
The perpetrators of Dink's murder have not been brought to justice,
and the protracted legal process has been farcical. Murders of religious
minorities have continued steadily with few repercussions, giving the
impression that the infamous deep state tolerates this.22 Turkey is con-
sidered a "country of particular concern" by the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom.23 Most recently, an Armenian soldier
was shot dead under suspicious circumstances while performing his
national service, on 24 April (the day the genocide is commemorated)
2011. His murder was whitewashed by a military court in Diyarbakir in
March 2013.24
And yet there does seem to be a creeping sense of realization that
despite the nationalist backlashes, and denialist strongholds in state in-
stitutions, developments in the liberal public sphere have radical long-
term potential. Nonetheless, there is no real change at the official level,
nor is there a mellowing in the militancy of nationalists, and arguably
among wider Turkish society, where negative portrayals of, and attitudes
toward, Armenians are the norm.25
Istanbul as Hub and Synergy
Istanbul acts as a hub for the launch of new Armenian-Turkish initia-
tives and the creation of a new space and discourse. While not the focus
of this chapter, it is important to recognize that Istanbul also acts as a
site for reconciliation initiatives, often financed or led by non-Turkish or
Armenian groups, mediators, and international organizations.26 In this
process the Istanbul Armenians have a potentially unique pivotal role
to play, and yet they rarely seem to be at the forefront of such projects,
lacking the agency to take on a leadership or public role.


The Istanbul Armenians 217

Osman Kavala, Chairman of the Board of Anadolu Kiltfir,27 a prom-
inent NGO working in art and culture, talked about a three-pronged
approach-local community, diaspora, and the Republic of Armenia. He
stressed the importance of the city as the site where all these factions
can meet: "Istanbul is really a cosmopolitan place and the infrastructure
allows us to work well with others here-NGOs, academics, artists....
Istanbul is a natural place for such meetings, making for a kind of syn-
ergy."28 Kavala prefers to limit his remit to the civil society sector, though
getting involved with the state is sometimes unavoidable, as in the case
of Anadolu Kultur's project in Ani to restore churches. Being located
in Istanbul has meant that these initiatives are able to attract external
funding from a wide range of sources invested in these fields. Kavala
is realistic about the impact of exhibitions and programs in Istanbul,
saying that the audience is usually limited to a progressive elite who are
already receptive to these ideas, but at least these projects document
and publicize the historic and contemporary presence of minorities.
There is also a recent trend to explore or rediscover the multi-eth-
nic past (inhabitants) of Turkey through artistic projects. Many of these
projects also travel to other countries, facilitated and supported by dias-
pora groups and institutions, an intrinsic part of the burgeoning trans-
national network of Turks, Armenians, Kurds, Greeks, Cypriots, and
others committed to constructing an emerging shared space. One prom-
inent exhibition was My Dear Brother: Armenians in Turkey 100 Years
Ago, a collection of eight hundred postcards depicting Armenian life in
Anatolia at the turn of the century. The exhibition opened at the Kari
Gallery in Istanbul in January 2005 and travelled to several cities, in-
cluding London, where it attracted great attention at the Brunei Gallery
of the School of Oriental and African Studies for nearly three months.29
The exhibition of both enlarged images and original postcards was con-
ceived and put together by Osman Koker. A few initiatives showcasing
the minorities came through the Istanbul 2010 European City of Cul-
ture program, including the book Classical Ottoman Music and Arme-
nians by Istanbul-born French Armenian Aram Kerovpyan (2010). Most
important in articulating the position of Armenians in Turkey (amid a
wider remit of democracy-building and human rights issues in Turkey
and beyond) is the Hrant Dink Foundation,30 established after the assas-
sination of the most prominent Istanbul Armenian.
While Istanbul is the natural hub for meetings, negotiations, and plans,
many of the actual projects also concern the historic Armenian lands in
the east. The retrieving and piecing together of past Armenian life might
emanate from Istanbul where the residual community survives, but it


218 Sossie Kasbarian

also connects to their historical spaces in Anatolia in particular. One
notable recent development concerned the tenth-century Cathedral
Church of the Holy Cross, on Aktamar Island on Lake Van. Between
May 2005 and October 2006, the church underwent a controversial res-
toration program financed by the Turkish Ministry of Culture. It offi-
cially re-opened as a museum on 29 March 2007 in a ceremony attended
by the Turkish Minister of Culture, government officials, ambassadors
of several countries, the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul Mesrob II, a
delegation from Armenia, and international journalists. The Governor
of Van described the refurbishing of the church as "a show of Turkey's
respect for history and culture;' and yet the fact that it was turned into
a museum rather than re-opened as a place of worship, that permission
to remount the cross on top of the church was not given, that the official
name of the museum was changed to Turkish, and very sparse reference
was made to anything Armenian, led many others to criticize the move
as a public relations stunt.31
In September 2011, for the first time in a century or so, a church ser-
vice was permitted to take place in Aktamar, with worshippers coming
from Armenia, Istanbul, and a smattering from the diaspora. The now
annual service was controversial, with many in the diaspora interpreting
it as a shallow gesture. Yet for others, like the British Armenian historian
Ara Sarafian, it is a meaningful and unprecedented first step upon which
to build.32 Sarafian was at the helm of the publication of Aghtamar: A
Jewel of Medieval Armenian Architecture, a bilingual Turkish and En-
glish book launched in Van and Istanbul in September 2010,33 where it
attracted much discussion. These developments require a radical shift in
mindset on the part of diasporans to comprehend the changing political
landscape of Turkey, and also to capitalize on it, something that only
small sections of the diaspora have thus far been able to do whole-heart-
edly. In general there is a cautious attitude to "wait and see" how things
will actually pan out.
The current big project concerns the sixteenth-century Armenian
Apostolic Cathedral Sourp (Saint) Giragos in Diyarbakir, the biggest Ar-
menian church in the Middle East with a capacity of three thousand,
which has lain in ruin for decades. Abdullah Demirta§, Diyarbakir Sur's
district mayor, seems sincerely committed to the principle of multicul-
turalism, through the resurrection of the different languages, places
of worship and cultures of the city.34 This renovation has been mostly
financed by the Armenian diaspora, through the initiatives of Vartkes
Ergun Ayik, a businessman of Armenian origin from Diyarbakir, and
Raffi Bedrosyan, an Istanbul Armenian now living in Canada. Bedrosyan
explains, "The church, when reconstruction is completed, will become


The Istanbul Armenians 219

a historic destination of pilgrimage for all Armenians-a memorial and
reminder of the past Armenian presence in Anatolia, and a hope for
the future."35 At the heart of this project (and others like it) seems to
be the need to validate (and consecrate) the past coexistence of Arme-
nians alongside Turks, Kurds, Greeks, and others in Anatolian lands,
rather than a realistic possibility of future such coexistence. It is import-
ant to recognize that in the wider Armenian-Turkish terrain, the strug-
gle for negotiating coexistence is premised upon the perceived need to
"prove" and document past coexistence, and the past lives of Armenians
in these, their historic homelands. The fact that these past inhabitants
were forcefully expelled or annihilated makes this an extremely charged
and complex mission. It is understandable then that this project is best
undertaken by Western diasporans who are relatively exempt from the
powers and tentacles of the Turkish state, as opposed to Turkish Ar-
menians who live with the possibility of being charged with "insulting
Turkishness" or Islam.36
By using private funds, the church can be used as a consecrated house
of worship, rather than a state-controlled museum like the Aktamar
Church in Van, where only one annual religious ceremony is permitted.
Although there is no Armenian community in Diyarbakir, a priest has
been named by the Patriarchate to conduct occasional services for visi-
tors. At the conclusion of the inaugural mass, Diyarbakir Mayor Osman
Baydemir movingly addressed the congregation, in Armenian, and then
Kurdish, Turkish, English, and Arabic: "Welcome to your home. You are
not guests here; this is your home.... We all know about past events" he
said, referring to the genocide, "and our wish is that our children will
celebrate together the coming achievements." The Sourp Giragos project
has also been controversial among some diasporans and locals, with the
charge that it is supporting Turkish and Kurdish interests and is unnec-
essary as there are no Armenians left in the region.
In Istanbul I spent some time with a visiting group of diasporan
Armenians who visited the Sourp Giragos Cathedral along with some
Istanbul Armenians who helped facilitate the trip. Despite it being
deemed a good thing, the renovation was criticized by several of them
in that it (paraphrased) "is essentially like being given permission by the
people who stole your house to renovate it and pay to visit it now and
again while it continues to be in their possession."7 Beyond the senti-
mentalism of visiting "the old country" that was very much embraced
by this group, this renovation was criticized, especially by the younger
members of the group as a "PR exercise by the Kurdish community as
a model of managing minorities." Rather than having significant im-
pact for potential diasporan tourism the project was considered by one


220 Sossie Kasbarian

interviewee as "a propaganda device by the Kurds and very clever of
them."
The Kurdish role in the Armenian-Turkish terrain has yet to be fully
critically engaged with. The Kurdish leadership's acknowledgement of
the role played by the Kurds in the genocide has affected the public dis-
course of some Kurdish activists, as well as leading to the uncovering
of Armenian grandparents and unearthing of hidden identities. Some
Kurds, as more recent victims of aggressive Turkish nationalism, have
claimed solidarity with Armenians in a pan-minority movement in the
democratization process (Neyzi and Kharatyan-Araqelyan 2010: 19-20).
Yet from the perspective of many Istanbul Armenians, and especially di-
asporan Armenians, there is much that still needs to be addressed and
reflected upon with greater critical honesty. There is also the sense that
in the current political context Armenians lack agency and are reacting
to initiatives and the unfolding agenda of others with uncertainty.
In recent years a tiny tourism industry run by Istanbul Armenians has
started and is aimed at Western diasporans seeking to explore the lands
from which their families originated pre-genocide. This phenomenon
defies its small numbers in terms of impact in the diaspora communities
from which the tourists come and the wider diaspora, as well as con-
tributing to a change of attitudes towards the Turkish people (though
not the state) of Western, mostly North American diasporans. Bakalian
and Turan (2015) have written eloquently of the "subversive" quality of
this tourism and its potential impact within the transnational space of
Armenians, Turks, Kurds, and others, dedicated to uncovering, redis-
covering, and remembering the Armenians of the Ottoman, particularly
Anatolian, lands and centuries of coexistence.
Negotiating Identity and Coexistence
in Private and Public Spaces
On the personal level interviewees shared many moving memories and
encounters that they were in the process of reflecting upon from a more
informed position. Thus the "everyday diplomacy" (Bryant this volume,
p. 21) intrinsic to coexistence was constructed, narrated, and reflected
upon in their own oral histories as the interviews unfolded.
Rana, a middle-aged Turkish woman, told the story of how as a young
girl she had been invited to her friend's house where they had eaten pas-
tries unfamiliar to her and colored, hard-boiled eggs. Only years later
did she realize that this had been an Easter celebration and that the fam-
ily had wanted to share the occasion with her but had been unable to


The Istanbul Armenians 221

tell her what it was, which would have meant revealing that they were
Christians and Armenians. Rana remembers that "there was fear in the
mother's eyes" and is able to reflect upon this with empathy and sadness.
As a filmmaker, Rana is now working on a film project of the "geno-
cide trail" through Anatolia to the Levant. She recounted how, even
before she gets the chance to ask, the elderly village and townspeople
spontaneously share the fact that they once had Armenian neighbors
and share stories of this past. It is an interesting realization that just
as genocide survivors and their descendants are haunted by memories
(personal and received), so too are the perpetrators and bystanders,
and their descendants: "There was a desperate need to unburden them-
selves" Rana observed.
Pelin is a 62-year-old professional working in the media, having lived
a typical Armenian life-born in Istanbul, living for long spells in Lon-
don, the U.S., travelling regularly to her extended diaspora family and
friends scattered in the Middle East, Paris, and North America, and fi-
nally resettled in Istanbul. She wryly observed, "Wherever you go you
are a foreigner, even here where I am born" Her personal reflections,
while representative of others of her age group, were also poignantly
unique. When asked about what part her Armenian identity has played
in her everyday life in her childhood, she shared:
My grandparents never told us their stories; we grew up without know-
ing these things. Now there are books and you can find out and learn.
But in those days we knew nothing. We started questioning as we got
older, but they always covered up and closed the subject. It was only
after we moved to the U.K. that my grandfather told us the stories-
he explained, so as not to make us turn against the country where we
lived.
Many others spoke of this lack of information, that they were aware
that there were secrets and hidden areas, and that they felt powerless
to probe their elders, as there were subjects that were clearly off-limits
and couched in fear and insecurity. This "subliminal knowledge" and the
struggle to "piece together" a true version of the past was also some-
thing Turkish interviewees talked about, through their childhoods in the
1970s and 1980s where information within Turkey was limited. Silences
and gaps featured in stories of the past of their elders and society more
widely (Kasbarian and Oktem 2014).
Pelin and many other interviewees recalled having Turkish friends
who were "like siblings" who protected her through trials like the reac-
tions to the ASALA campaign38 in the 1970s and 1980s. A Turkish family


222 Sossie Kasbarian

friend loaned her father the money for her brother to study in the U.S.
after he was expelled from a Turkish university following a politically
motivated quarrel with a professor. Indeed, she and others recounted
many acts of extreme kindness and experiences bordering on familial
closeness and intimacy.39 Implicit in these stories lies also a postcolonial
dynamic-"the Armenian" as needing protection (from "bad Turks"?)
and as infantilized in this encounter with "the Turk." By lacking agency
and reduced to appealing to the good will of "good Turks" the Arme-
nians continued the subjugated relationship from Ottoman times, and
power structures were replicated in diluted forms, extending to Arme-
nians' self-perception.40
Most interviewees, when asked if they had suffered discrimination,
insisted that they had not, and yet within minutes remembered incidents
from their childhood or even quite recently. Yet officially the answer
seems to be "no;' perhaps putting a brave face on, perhaps because these
memories have been buried, maybe because they are commonplace oc-
currences to which one is immunized through time, or because there is
no safe space to adequately express and articulate these experiences. The
silencing of Armenian voices extends well beyond the genocide to con-
temporary experiences, where individuals lack the tools, the language,
or the agency to own and express their experiences openly. The per-
ceived impossibility of the coexistence of different narratives leads to the
complete negation of the Armenian experience in the public sphere. The
hegemonic narrative invalidates the Armenian experience to the extent
that individuals have internalized this obliteration and are only able to
extract and read their memories upon conscious, focused reflection, al-
most as if the stories that surface happened to someone else.
When contemplating coexistence, therefore, the coexistence of differ-
ent narratives is at least as essential as physical coexistence. This marks a
need for the radical reconceptualization of the master (nationalist) nar-
rative, which can make space for the experience of others. Thus, stories
like Cetin's or the subsequent Grandchildren (Altinay and (etin 2011)
are pioneering trajectories that are carving out a space in the public
sphere for the possibility of counter-narratives from below and from the
margins. The deconstruction and critique of the state master-narrative
and the proliferation of other voices is an essential part of coexistence
beyond "everyday diplomacy;' underpinned by narratives that articulate
and validate the subaltern experience. Spivak (1994) when asking "Can
the Subaltern speak?" argues that a narrative of identity is an essential
condition for agency and subjectivity. Arendt (1958) too stresses the need
to hear one's story from others as key to constructions of identity and
also to social relations.


The Istanbul Armenians 223

The lack of coexisting multiple narratives of identity led to deeply
buried and ambivalent identities. Helin recounts that in 1960, when she
was ten years old,
We had very good Turkish neighbours and we little girls used to play
together every day. One day I went over as usual to her house, the little
girl stood at the door and said "My grandmother does not want us to be
friends anymore because you are Armenian." I didn't understand what
this meant and went home crying, "what does being Armenian mean?"
Hagop, a 38-year-old man, recounted how as the only Armenian in high
school he encountered some problems especially in the "ASALA days,"
was referred to as The Armenian, and was involved in a few fights. This
resulted in him becoming withdrawn, something that seems to have be-
come a permanent part of his character. He has two clear sets of friends
that do not overlap-Turks and Armenians. He said "with some Turks
when they find out you're Armenian they make banal and patronizing
statements like 'they are good people; and other Turks don't want to be
friends once they find out"
This in-betweenness also applies to many individuals who are profes-
sionally active in mainstream society, where they have to negotiate (or
hide) their Armenianness, and are also involved with the factious Arme-
nian community, where they also have to manage their identities. Jour-
nalist Anahid, who has experienced extensive criticism from the various
Armenian factions and their competing agendas, finds this is a tiring
and demanding position: "I feel very lonely deep inside" and "sometimes
I am more afraid of Armenians than Turks" This example also demon-
strates the complexities of a layered identity, which can be stifling and
restrictive when the state (and your community) deems you different
and polices boundaries of identity and belonging. In the words of an
interviewee in Beirut "it's impossible to escape my Armenian identity
even if I wanted to."41
It became apparent through my interviews that individuals thought
in terms of clearly defined spheres and the need to transgress and move
from one to the other. There are a few ways in which these demarcations
were blurred. For example all the Istanbul Armenians I met had Turki-
fied surnames, and many had first names that were not obviously Ar-
menian (like Helin). Schools reported a decrease each year of obviously
Armenian-sounding first names. I was also told that some Catholic Ar-
menians are using Turkish first names, the expressed aim being "to be
totally invisible." Some Istanbul Armenians have two business cards-
one with their Armenian name and another with the Turkish version.


224 Sossie Kasbarian

Many individuals recalled taking on a Turkish name when in the work-
place-for example as boys working in the Grand Bazaar. Famous places
like Ara Cafe owned by the noted Istanbul Armenian photographer Ara
Guler also play on the fact that Ara means gap or interval in Turkish (the
cafe is in a pedestrian side street), and most of the clientele are unaware
that this is an Armenian establishment. These subtle forms of negoti-
ation have the desired effect of being able to blend in and not attract
unwanted attention.42
This sometimes extends to a kind of duality in that Armenian, if spo-
ken at all, is confined to the house. Public life to all appearances must be
Turkish, including names. Community identity therefore is limited to
the private sphere, and often not even that. This divided self can result in
feelings of exclusion from every side, being neither a Turk nor an Arme-
nian, especially if one does not speak Armenian (an increasing trend) or
practice the religion. Identities are complex and multi-layered but when
politicized can result in profound disempowerment for those that fall
outside the boundaries. This process affects individuals from a young
age when they are grappling with their identity and sense of belonging.
This often results in a compartmentalizing of identity, based on context.
Neyzi and Kharatyan-Araqelyan (2010: 57) quote one such person from
Sason in southeastern Turkey: "We are three things. We are Kurds at
home, we speak Kurdish. Second, we are Turks at school, we speak Turk-
ish. Third we are Armenians at the camp, we speak Armenian. We are
Armenians in summer, Turks in school in winter, and Kurds at home."
Negotiating Coexistence, Rights, and Belonging
The Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul (past and present) has tradition-
ally kept a low profile, a policy considered to be the wisest in order to
protect the community from nationalist backlashes.43 This extends to
taking positions contrary to those of the diaspora, leading at times to a
fraught relationship of mutual disappointment and misunderstanding.
For example, genocide recognition is viewed fearfully by many Istanbul
Armenians, including Patriarch Mesrob II, who conveyed this to the am-
bassador of the United States following the nationalist backlash after the
murder of Hrant Dink (as leaked by Wikileaks in 2011).44 The diaspora in
general is perceived as not being appropriately sensitive to the vulnera-
ble nature of the Istanbul Armenians, who will ultimately bear the brunt
of any repercussions, as they have previously.
Minority religious leaders at first seemed cautiously optimistic about
the AKP government. There were initially a number of positive signs


The Istanbul Armenians 225

and gestures from the government, though these were on an "ad hoc ba-
sis, leaving open the possibility that they could be revoked or discontin-
ued."45 Historically, the Armenian religious foundations and the Istanbul
Armenian Patriarchate have faced great difficulty in preserving or pro-
tecting the church buildings and schools under their jurisdiction. There
would be no permission from the government to carry out repairs or
renovations. But this seems to have changed somewhat with the present
government. The Deacon at the Patriarchate was cautiously optimistic
about the future, saying that the current government has taken unprec-
edented steps, due to pressure from the EU as part of the conditions
in the accession package.46 The Armenian Patriarchate has also lost its
strength in the last few years as the Patriarch has been seriously ill and
the institution has been left in a kind of limbo with squabbles among
the community as to the way forward. Since 2008 Archbishop Aram
Atesyan has been the acting patriarch, his appointment a point of great
contention in the community.
The government has recently announced its plans to return the prop-
erties confiscated after 1974-a move deemed "necessary but insuffi-
cient" but hailed as a magnanimous gesture by the state itself. In fact it
is also a shrewd and strategic act to avoid having to pay compensation
through the European Court of Human Rights, and one undertaken with
pressure from both the EU and the U.S. The present government has
pledged to return 162 of the 1,410 assets of minorities confiscated in
1974. The state closed down minorities' seminaries so clergy cannot be
trained in Turkey, and there are currently only twenty-six Armenian Or-
thodox priests in the whole of Turkey (U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom, 2012 Annual Report). These restrictive measures se-
riously threaten the long-term viability of the Armenian community as
a religious community.
There are also thought to be up to 25,000 Armenians from Armenia
living illegally in Istanbul, forced to migrate temporarily for economic
reasons.47 A 2009 study carried out for the Eurasia Partnership Foun-
dation (Ozinian 2009) reported that most illegal Armenian migrants in
an interview pool of 150 originated from the northwestern Armenian
region of Shirak, the site of the devastating 1988 earthquake. Of the re-
spondents 94 percent were women employed in domestic work. Prime
Minister Erdogan has made threats to expel illegal Armenian migrants
several times, claiming that there are close to 100,000. These comments
are seen as retaliation for Armenia's push for recognition of the geno-
cide. Alongside this regressive talk, there are some promising signs, too.
For example, the children of the thousands of illegal Armenian workers
have until recently not been allowed to attend (Armenian) community


226 Sossie Kasbarian

schools. However in 2011 the government announced that this ban
would be lifted so long as the children did not receive any official doc-
uments that might facilitate their long-term stay in Turkey (Ozinian
2011).
Although this is hailed as a step forward by the Armenian community,
there are also fears about the already-limited resources of the fourteen
primary schools and five high schools in Istanbul being further stretched.
This concerns not just material resources but also teachers. The general
trend is acknowledged to be one of decline, both in terms of enrollment
numbers and in terms of the quality of Armenian education. The schools
must follow the Turkish curriculum in full, while allowing for classes in
Armenian language and literature. However, they are not permitted to
recruit teachers from outside Turkey and hence the standard of teaching
of Armenian is limited. They are only permitted to teach official Turkish
history. Furthermore, all minority schools have a Turkish vice-principal
appointed by the state to act as the "eyes and ears" of the state and make
sure they stay in line. This role is apparently being taken less seriously
in schools in recent years, but it is still a reminder of the watchful state,
along with the images of Ataturk adorning every classroom. The fact
that there is no Armenian Studies at university level in Turkey means
that the schools are forced to employ teachers of Armenian language
who are merely high school graduates, thereby also compromising the
standard of instruction. The general decline of the Armenian language
in Turkey is also evident in the reduced number of pages published in
Armenian of Agos.48 This has led to much soul-searching among many in
community leadership roles, about "what makes us and keeps us Arme-
nian, just language ... or religion or something else?" Armenian schools
are full of pupils who "are already very Turkified, speak Armenian with
Turkish accents, sometimes struggling to speak it at all.49
Whether change should come from above or below is a subject of
much discussion. Traditionally the community organizations have kept
a low profile and have only very cautiously made the slightest responses
to adverse state policy. This docile position was taken in order to pro-
tect and preserve an already threatened and fearful community, thereby
leading to a culture of meekness. Some groups and individuals are now
arguing that the community needs to take on an active role in making
changes rather than just accepting things. One primary school principal
talked too of a "self-censorship" by the community that is entrenched
in its ways, exuding inertia and acceptance of the situation. This bind
also results in contradictory positions. For instance, wealthier patrons of
the schools gift money but do not send their children there, preferring
to send them to private, more prestigious schools, where the standard


The Istanbul Armenians 227

of education is higher. So although they are committed to (financially)
supporting community institutions, they are not so invested personally.
The same principal and others talked about the need to be "clever and
creative" in their teaching-to bring in Armenian history in an oblique
or roundabout way, as it is not permitted to be taught.50 In the case of
the Church, Armenian history is brought in where possible under the
guise of religious lessons, another example of the subversive "weapons
of the weak" (Scott 1990) that subaltern groups use to resist the power
of, in this case, the authoritative state.
Contemplating Coexistence, Beyond "Tolerance"
One major area of contention with regard to the coexistence of the mi-
norities in Turkey is the properties of their foundations, religious and
secular. These valuable and impressive properties and their extent hark
back to a period where there were significant minority populations in
Turkey, and in Istanbul in particular. Akg6nil (2013: 91), considers the
foundations as "the most important element that guarantees the ex-
istence of non-Muslim minorities in Turkey" and the foundation sys-
tem as "a tether for minority institutions-religiously and symbolically
as well as financially." Historically there have been severe restrictions
on the minorities with regard to these properties, their ownership, use
and maintenance. In 2008 the Foundations Law was amended in several
ways, including the possibility of applying for the return of minorities'
property confiscated by the Turkish state, though the scope and mecha-
nisms of the law are limited and a small number of properties have been
returned to the religious foundations thus far.
Lakis Vingas is the minority representative on the General Director-
ate Council for Foundations, representing the 162 minority foundations
in Turkey. He is the first ever such representative, serving alongside four-
teen others representing the non-minorities, since December 2008. For
the first time in the history of the republic a representative has been
appointed especially for minorities, and his position has been a difficult
one, balancing the suspicions and criticisms of the directorate on the
one hand and the minority foundations on the other. He believes that
the time is right for minorities to be at the forefront of the demand for
change:
I know there is progress because I know both Turkeys. I know from
where to where (we have come).... The progress is huge, but we have
no time, we are tired. We cannot have more suffering. The new gen-


228 Sossie Kasbarian

erations will not work as we used to. We need to be demanding, to be
claiming-look at how far the Kurds have progressed in this compared
to ten years ago and they say still it is not sufficient. Things need to
happen quickly!
The Ottoman principles of "tolerance" and "protection" with which
the religious minorities are still approached sound anachronistic and
potentially offensive. As discussed by Bryant in the introduction to this
volume, etymological meanings of tolerance carry a sense of burden and
forbearance (Kaya and Harmanyeri 2012: 398). In the Ottoman Empire
tolerance simply meant a lack of persecution, so long as the subjects
obeyed the laws and obligations set out through the dhimmi system of
governing. Kaya and Harmanyeri (2012: 414) talk about the myth of tol-
erance that functions to "conceal the mistreatment of ethno-cultural and
religious minorities." "Tolerance" as a political principle has been criti-
cized by minorities for its grudging acceptance of difference as opposed
to the possibility of incorporating and celebrating diversity (Kasbarian
2009; see also Duru this volume). In the words of one middle-aged in-
terviewee, "I don't want to be tolerated, private, and special, I want to
be equal. I don't need to be treated as a piece of antique that needs to
be protected.... If we don't feel equal or if they don't see us as equal we
cannot progress!"
Formally, minorities in Turkey have the status of "equal citizens" yet
they cannot use the same rights granted by this citizenship, with dis-
criminatory practices commonplace in the institutional, political and
social realms. Citizenship is increasingly viewed beyond its legal defi-
nition, as "a set of discourses and practices that are translated unevenly
across unequal social groups and local contexts" and as a "hegemonic
strategy" that "works to define these groups or localities, to fix the power
differentials between them, and then to naturalize these operations"
(Secor 2004: 354). The prospect of EU membership has acted as a re-
forming project in Turkey, as it has in other candidate countries (Kas-
barian 2009), gradually addressing restrictions upon minorities. Since
2002 Turkey has undergone a serious program of reform, but this has
fallen short of addressing non-Muslim minorities' demands and rights
(Goltz 2006, 2013). While meeting EU standards is a promising means
of promoting freedom, democracy, and human rights, legislation alone
cannot change deep-seated attitudes and historic grievances. What we
are witnessing in Turkey is the potential for redefining Turkish iden-
tity, to reconsider the question of "who is a Turk"-and the creation of
a Turkey not for ethnic Turks but for all citizens of Turkey, regardless


The Istanbul Armenians 229

of ethnicity or religion. Though there have been a few overtures by the
state,51 window-dressing gestures fall short of the fundamental changes
that are necessary. What is needed is for the state to redefine and create
meaningful and sufficiently open categories of identity and belonging,
and for policy to reinforce the gradual advances in civil society.
Clearly, genuine coexistence that fully acknowledges Others needs
to go beyond "tolerance." For genuine coexistence there needs to be a
structural framework that underpins equality and respect for diverse
groups (and allows for their internal differences). For this the work of
civil society is essential in changing attitudes, opening up spaces for
discussion and expression, and challenging the nationalist and exclu-
sionary foundations of the Turkish state. Acknowledging different nar-
ratives may liberate people from being forced to inhabit fixed categories
of identities ascribed by competing nationalizing projects, and allow
for a reconceptualization of identity (on all levels). Where nationalizing
projects and practices seek to enclose and confine identities, the real-
ity of lived experience, of coexistence despite real and perceived differ-
ence, is testimony to a different narrative and with it the possibility of
a redemptive post-nationalist future. The legacy of the genocide and its
continuing denial make the Armenian existence in Turkey highly politi-
cized. Yet despite state denialism and a wider climate of political regres-
sion and polarization, there continue to be significant developments at
the level of civil society (Kasbarian and Oktem 2014). Intrinsic to this
process is the recognition of different narratives and of being able to
articulate and own one's own story. That this is a mutually reinforcing
project, and needs to be underpinned by a transformation in the state
narrative (and structures) is a given. Only then can Istanbul Armenians
speak and act with confidence and dignity as Armenians and Turkish
citizens.
Sossie Kasbarian is Lecturer in Middle East Politics at Lancaster Uni-
versity. She is co-editor of the book Diasporas of the Middle East - Con-
textualising Community (with Anthony Gorman, Edinburgh University
Press, 2015) and author of several articles relating to the Middle East
and Diaspora Studies. She is co-editor (with Kerem Oktem) of the spe-
cial issue of the journal Patterns of Prejudice entitled Armenians, Turks
and Kurds Beyond Denial (Vol. 48, May 2014), as well as co-editor (with
Kerem Oktem) of the forthcoming special issue of the journal Nation-
alities Papers, entitled, Possibilities of a shared memory: Reflecting on
"Travails de memoire' civil society activism, nation-building and contes-
tation in Armenia, Turkey and the Diaspora in 2015.


230 Sossie Kasbarian

Notes
My thanks to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for insightful and helpful
feedback on this chapter.
1. This chapter was written before the dramatic downward spiral in Turkey
and the polarization of Turkish society, exemplified by the Gezi Park pro-
tests of 2013; the witchhunt against the AKP's former Islamist allies, the
Hizmet movement of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen; the clear re-emer-
gence of ultra-nationalists and the 'deep state' in violent attacks against op-
ponents of the AKP, and the complete collapse of the uneasy peace with
the PKK in 2015. There has been an escalating crackdown on basic free-
doms and rights, to the extent that a recent report by the senior Turkey
researcher at Human Rights Watch stated, "Human rights and the rule of
law in Turkey are at the worst level I've seen in the 12 years I've worked on
Turkey's human rights." (Emma Sinclair-Webb, "No EU, Turkey is not safe
for everyone" 23 October 2015, Open Democracy, https://www.opendem
ocracy.net/emma-sinclair-webb/no-eu-turkey-is-not-safe-for-everyone)
2. This chapter draws upon one month of fieldwork and over thirty formal
and informal interviews in Istanbul in June-July 2011. This included (Ar-
menian) community leaders and activists, as well as a representative cross-
section of the Armenian community, spanning different ages, socio-eco-
nomic and educational backgrounds, and degrees of affiliation and involve-
ment with the Armenian community. All names (unless speaking in an
official capacity) have been changed to protect anonymity.
3. This figure refers to Turkish citizens. It does not count the significant num-
bers of Armenians from Armenia working in Turkey as seasonal or more
long-term economic migrants, usually illegally. This has been a subject of
media and political concern, as well as being used as a political tool on
more than one occasion. See section below.
4. The 2010 estimates from the U.S. State Department include 23,000 Jews;
15,000 Syriac Christians; 10,000 Baha'is, 5,000 Yezidis; 3,300 Jehovah's Wit-
nesses; 3,000 Protestants; and 1,700 Greek Orthodox.
5. For an analysis of the Treaty of Lausanne and "Protection of Minorities" see
Akgdn6l (2013: 65-101).
6. For a comprehensive analysis of the campaign and its legacies, see Aslan
(2007).
7. G6 ek's latest book focusses on this. (Fatma Muge G6 ek [2015], Denial
of Violence - Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and the Collective Violence
against the Armenians 1789-2009. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.)
8. Stanley Fish (1997: 1) says, "Boutique multiculturalism is characterized by
its superficial or cosmetic relationship to the objects of its affection. Bou-
tique multiculturalists admire or appreciate or enjoy or sympathize with
or (at the very least) 'recognize the legitimacy of' the traditions of cultures
other than their own; but boutique multiculturalists will always stop short


The Istanbul Armenians 231

of approving other cultures at a point where some value at their center gen-
erates an act that offends against the canons of civilized decency as they
have been either declared or assumed."
9. http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/134778/turkeys-armenians-suggest-er
dogan-for-nobel-prize
10. Erdogan went on the Charlie Rose show that same week and claimed that if
there had been a genocide there would not be any Armenians still living in
Turkey, thereby exposing the way that this community are held hostage and
employed instrumentally by the state, and the extremely precarious position
they find themselves in. See http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60382027
11. http://www.basbakanlik.gov.tr/Forms/_Article/pgArticle.aspx?Id=e11
bde56-a0b7-4ea6-8a9a-954c68157df9.
12. Personal communication, June 2014.
13. See, for example, Bloxham (2005).
14. The most significant include Taner Akgam, Fatma Muge G6 ek, Baskin
Oran, Ugur LTmit (Tngdr, Kerem Oktem, Ayge Kadioglu, Cengiz Aktar, Ay e
Gul Altinay, among others. There is also a growing new generation of schol-
ars whose work follows these pioneers and promises to be very exciting.
15. The instigators were scholars Ahmet Insel, Baskin Oran, Cengiz Aktar, and
journalist Ali Bayramoglu. The campaign was denounced by the Turkish
state and nationalists, and criticized for not going far enough by others. For
a critical reading of the campaign see Erbal (2012).
16. Interview with Ayse Gil Altinay, Istanbul, June 2011.
17. The founder of the union, Mihran Gultekin, says that he knew that he was
Armenian since he was seven but only managed to reclaim his identity
formally at the age of fifty. His 21-year-old son has also been converted,
and is baptized Hrant. Over 200 families in the region have reclaimed their
Armenian identity in recent years. Gultekin claims that 75 percent of the
Dersim population is composed of converted Armenians. (Dersim is a
region of eastern Turkey that includes Tunceli Province, Elazig Province,
and Bingdl Province.) See for example, http://massispost.com/archives/
1752.
18. The conference on Islamized Armenians was organized by the History
Department of Bogazigi University, the Hrant Dink Foundation and the
Charitable Association of Armenians from Malatya (HAYDer), and held in
Istanbul on 2-4 November 2013. For links to the conference and related
pieces, see "Conference on Islamized Armenians" 14 November 2013, avail-
able on the Hrant Dink Foundation website (www.hrantdink.org/?Detail
=753&Lang=en) (accessed 2 April 2014).
19. Agos (meaning "furrow" in Armenian) is an Armenian weekly newspaper
published in Istanbul since 1996. It has both Armenian and Turkish pages
(see http://www.agos.com.tr). Hrant Dink was one of its founders and chief
editor until his murder in January 2007.
20. Interview, Istanbul, June 2011.
21. This theme is eloquently explored in Anahit (2014).


232 Sossie Kasbarian

22. For a discussion of the deep state in contemporary Turkey, see Karabekir
Akkoyunlu (2015) "Old Demons in New Faces - The 'Deep State' meets
Erdogan's 'New Turkey"' (October 25, 2015, The Huffington Post http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/karabekir-akkoyunlu/old-demons-in-new-fac
es-t_1_b_8383086.html
23. U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom 2012 Annual Report.
24. See for example, "Sevag Balikgi was Shot By Mistake, Court Rules" by
Ekin Karaca, http://www.bianet.org/english/minorities/145402-sevag-bal
ikci-was-shot-by-mistake-court-rules.
25 This was apparent in the run-up to the commemoration of the centenary
of the Armenian Genocide in April 2015. See Kasbarian and Oktem, 2016
(forthcoming).
26. There are currently a number of successful Armenian-Turkish initiatives
at the level of civil society aimed at encouraging relations between the two
countries. For instance, the Armenia-Turkey Cinema Platform (ATCP)
organizes meetings between film-makers of both countries and explores
themes of identity and common roots. ATCP was founded through the
cooperation of Anadolu Kultur and Golden Apricot Yerevan International
Film Festival in 2008 to encourage a common network and projects, and
has been supported by organizations including USAID, the Eurasia Part-
nership Foundation, the International Center for Human Development, the
Yerevan Press Club, and the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen of
Armenia.
27. http://www.anadolukultur.org/
28. Interview with Osman Kavala, Istanbul, June 2011.
29. The Armenian Institute organized the exhibition and cultural program,
sponsored by the St. Sarkis Charity Trust and Diana and Panos Katsouris.
http://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/mydearbrother/
30. For the vision and activities of the Foundation see http://www.hrantdink.
org/index.php?About=18&Lang=en
31. The controversial cross was finally erected on the top of the church on 2
October 2010.
32. Book Launch in Hai Doon (Armenia House), London, October 2010.
33. Coproduction between Gomidas Institute in London and Birzamanlar
Yayincihk in Istanbul.
34. For which he has had charges brought against him numerous times. Lo-
cated in the city's Gavur (infidel) district, St. Giragos is close to St. Peter's
Chaldean Catholic church (also undergoing restoration), a mosque, the Di-
yarbakir Protestant Church, and a synagogue, with construction plans for
places of worship along the same street for Alawites and Yezidis. Mayor
Demirta 's vision is to make Diyarbakir "Anatolia's Jerusalem."
35. "Evolving Armenian Realities and the Surp Giragos Dikranagerd Church"
by Raffi Bedrosyan. Posted on July 1, 2011, http://www.armenianweekly
.com/2011/07/01/evolving-armenian-realities-and-surp-giragos-dikranag
erd-church.


The Istanbul Armenians 233

36. The latest victim of this is the writer and linguist Sevan Niganyan (May
2013), sentenced to prison for alleged blasphemy, http://www.globalpost
.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/turkey/ 130523/sevan-nisanyan-turk
ish-armenian-blogger-jailed-blasphemy.
37. Informal conversations, Istanbul, July 2011.
38. The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA)
launched a violent campaign against Turkish diplomats from the late 1970s
to the early 1990s. For an overview see Dugana, Huang, LaFree, and Mc-
Cauley (2008). For a reading of these groups as part of a third world liber-
ation movement and their mission to awaken the Armenian diaspora, see
Tdldlyan (1988).
39. See also Anahit 2014.
40. In Ottoman times, the Armenians were known as "the Loyal Millet" (Mil-
let-i Sadika).
41. Interview, Beirut, March/April 2003. In Lebanon, the "country of mi-
norities" the Armenian Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants are among
the eighteen state-recognized religious minorities, with the "private do-
main" being conducted by religious leaders and within the arena of the
community.
42. Not one of my interviewees (apart from the few that spoke in an official
capacity) was willing to be recorded, revealing an insecurity and fear of
repercussions.
43. In contrast, the Greek Patriarch Bartholomew is viewed as strong and
outspoken in a way that Armenian equivalents feel they cannot be. This is
explained not just by personality but also by the relative strength and im-
portance of Greece compared to Armenia, as well as the much more cordial
links.
44. For full text from Wikileaks (based on a meeting between Patriarch Mes-
rob II and then-Deputy U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and
Eurasian Affairs Matthew Bryza in February 2007) and analysis see Bar-
soumian (2011).
45. U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2012 Annual Report.
46. Interview at the Patriarchate, Istanbul, June 2011.
47. See for example, Grigoriyan and Hayrapetyan (2011).
48. Interview with Agos journalists, Istanbul, June 2011
49. Interview, Armenian high school principal, Istanbul, June 2011.
50. Interview, Armenian primary school principal, Istanbul, June 2011.
51. Examples include the appointment of Armenians in minor official posts.
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+ Chapter 9 +

A Conflict of Spaces
or of Recognition?
Co-presence in Divided Jerusalem
SYLVAINE BULLE
The breakdown of the peace accords, the resumption of the Intifada in
2000, and the numerous military incursions that followed marked a new
phase in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Today, Jerusalem is a city cut in
two by a security barrier-called a wall by the Palestinians-whose con-
ception and ongoing construction was initiated by the State of Israel in
2006. With the decision to build a security barrier cutting Jerusalem in
two-separating the Palestinians of East Jerusalem from other Palestin-
ians and from Israeli citizens-Israel created a visible and impermeable
border and in so doing, affirmed the spatial delimitation of an enemy
territory behind it (Brown 2010). The security barrier acts to redefine a
symbolic and spatial nomos1 (Schmitt 2003), and to safeguard the limits
between Israel and the surrounding world: a world conceived as a threat.
In this context of separation, studies of the Israel-Palestine conflict for
the most part operate under a theory of simple domination: a primary re-
lation between dominators (Israeli) and those who are dominated (Pal-
estinians), where transgression and resistance can only be understood
as interiorization or some continuation of power by which the subject
is stripped of subjectivity, thus making it impossible for a communal
world to exist. The exteriorization of power assumes that no description
of relations is possible that is unrelated to government techniques, to ju-
ridical means of exception from the common law, to modes of exclusion
that operate through enclosure within Palestinian enclaves, or else the
symbolic violence of the Israeli state.
The approach elaborated here is different. It proposes to consider the
reality of separation through the observation of Jerusalem and its bor-


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 239

Figure 9.1. Confrontation in Jerusalem: Mt. of Olives and East Jerusalem
(photo by Sylvaine Bulle).
ders and walls. Without discounting the real constraints that have been
created by the wall and its limits, this approach also considers subtle
interactions between segmented populations (Israeli and Palestinian,
Jewish and Arab) and the ways in which these interactions shape links
between these social worlds. We will thus highlight examples of acts of
communication and the mechanisms actors use to continue exchange
at the edges of Jerusalem and between Jerusalem and the Palestinian
territories. These operations may seem improbable or minor. But is it
possible to find a model of balanced justice that assumes this state of
facts, and the possibility of exchanging within a space that is fragmented
and conflictual? Does not the vision of a politics of co-presence offer an
alternative to theories and abstract political scenarios in the search for a
solution to the spatial and inter-community conflict of Jerusalem?
Co-presence or Separation?
Holding onto Contiguity at Any Price
What is this security barrier called a wall in the case of East Jerusalem? It
is a militarized and social frontier. Certain people find themselves within


240 Sylvaine Bulle

the limits of Jerusalem (on the "good" side of the wall, within the perim-
eter of the Municipality of Jerusalem). They benefit from their status as
residents of Jerusalem, a kind of socio-economic citizenship-providing
Israeli social rights to education, health, the right to live and circulate-
even if the accordance of residency has been considerably limited since
the creation of the barrier. Family reunification is difficult. Residency
status can be taken away from Palestinians from Jerusalem who leave
the territory. The de facto acquisition of residency status for a wife and
children no longer applies.2 On the other side of the wall stretches a
gray zone. In this zone, despite being a dependent part of Jerusalem,
residents are now under the control of Palestinian institutions, and as
such, lack the possibility of exchange with those who find themselves on
the opposite side of the wall. The wall has thus instituted a within and
a without; it has redefined social relations and fixed an internal limit
to the Palestinian community by distinguishing those who are included
and those who are shut out, deprived of their rights at the periphery of
the city.
Rather than aiming here to make an argument about the nature of
Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem-the exercise or not of the "state of ex-
ception" (Agamben 1998)-this chapter shows how different interac-
tions exist along the barrier and how these interactions coexist with the
idea of enclosure itself. These situations provide ways to think about the
politics of separation, modes of thinking that do not operate through a
strict vision of vertical power as it is understood in radical critical the-
ory (in political science or geography).3 What I would like to examine is
less a theory of exception (defined as the suspension of rights and of the
frontier between within and without) and more a theory of heteronomy
(Simmel 1999). Heteronomy is usually defined as influence over one's
will, i.e., less than full autonomy. For Simmel, however, heteronomy has
a dual face: it is a form of interdependence, defined by both autonomy
and constraint, and this may be figured by spatial frontiers. The tension
between the two polarities of freedom and constraint may be seen as
structural (Simmel says "grammatical") elements of social life. In Sim-
mel's reasoning, parts are isolated from the whole while still belonging
to that whole. Individuals or groups, even if they are confined by physical
boundaries, react to each other because there is a totality of meaningful
effects that both emanates from and influences them. The everyday con-
straint on autonomy is also a theory of contiguity or co-presence.
In their approach to social theory, the sociologists of the Chicago
School (Grafmeyer and Joseph 1984) also emphasized this aspect and
define what they call an "urban mentality." For Wirth and Park, a citizen
is understood as a person who is able to communicate, able to distrib-


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 241

ute attention, and to live at the same time in several worlds, between
or among multiple spheres of belonging. By extension-and as Simmel
(1971) emphasizes-the most significant aspect of the metropolis lies in
this contiguity or co-presence upon which urban life is erected. Despite
its division, co-presence also defines the city Jerusalem. The physical
"contiguity" of different communities (Jews, Arabs, and other minori-
ties) gives the city its psychological and aesthetic foundation. The at-
mosphere of the city depends upon different lifestyles that intersect at
every street corner-between customers and merchants, or in other ca-
sual encounters-generating unexpected exchanges, conversations, and
emotions. The atmosphere of the city emerges both from the possibility
of such encounters and from their realization. The city is a place where
such encounters can occur, and its atmosphere emerges from the fact
of their occurrence. Conversely, however, the very interdependence of
parts of the city defined as hostile to each other may engender fear, an-
ticipation, and other emotions caused by the threat of violence and the
permanent conflict and division. In other words, it is the fact that Pal-
estinians and Israelis interact and move in the city despite the wall that
both creates the city as "Jerusalem" and also lays the groundwork for
fear. The military presence and erection of the security fence inside the
borders of Jerusalem give to its metropolitan life a new significance but
do not end that life altogether.
Paradoxically, it is because the foundations of exchange, of neighbor-
hoods, or of existence itself are threatened that the texture of the urban
exchanges appears, i.e., the texture of the city. These are the particularly
intense urban exchanges of a divided and militarized city. Spatial con-
finement creates practical ordeals through which an individual measures
himself in relation to his environment. It is in the most problematic of
conditions that this research makes sense, when individuals affected and
troubled by events (Boltanski 2009; Dewey 2005) work to resolve the
enigma of their own lives.
To achieve this, it is useful as a sociologist to turn to ethnographic
research that may give us insight beyond a first general impression of the
constraints of the wall. Ethnography enables us to see the ways that ac-
tors use various principles and resources to resolve the problems of their
everyday lives in the face of enclosure and thereby how they assert the
plurality of their forms of existence and action. We see here that people
are not only subject to the barrier and its enforced separation but that
they also have critical and reflexive capacities. They work to continue
their existence. Within the regime of enclosure, they use an eclecticism
of relationships and actions to access primary goods: housing, labor,
mobility, education, and domestic production. We can only touch on a


242 Sylvaine Bulle

few of the actions-some superficial, others more profound-through
which the confined individual (in this case a Palestinian) reconsiders
his or her universe and sometimes his or her relation to the Other (the
Israeli).
Excursus Outside the Boundaries:
Workers, Residents and Merchants as "Transfugees"
For the citizens of East Jerusalem, the political model of separation and
security implies a new definition of territorial belonging, of exchange,
and of mobility. The separation wall has been complete since 2009 and
has become the residents' visual and existential horizon. It puts into
place a new type of challenge that is no longer a test of force (by military
control) but a challenge to reality-through administrative control and
new mechanisms for exchange and circulation. The wall has become a
frontier. Crossing through the wall is only possible at one of thirteen
checkpoints that are regulated and controlled by the Israeli military ad-
ministration, which also carries out exacting and regular patrols from
the watch-stations situated along the wall. To enter Jerusalem, Palestin-
ian residents or workers must have special work permits4 that are con-
tingent on certain civic, familial, or security-based criteria and also on
the economic needs of Israel (in the case of workers).
By describing a within and a without, the separation wall has rede-
fined social relations, erased advantages and privileges, weakened the
capacities of individuals to move about, and brought internal fractures
to light. Since the completion of the security barrier, Jerusalem as a place
of work has become inaccessible, despite the active trade and extensive
job and knowledge networks that existed in the preceding period. The
judicial and physical separation has considerably reduced the personal
connections that once existed between Palestinians and Jews or among
Palestinians from Jerusalem, while informal transactions have been cur-
tailed. Despite this, maintaining exchanges with Israel or the Territories
remains a priority for Palestinians. It is necessary to differentiate super-
ficial engagements that are created for instrumental ends-the search
for work or for business-and those that are longer lasting where the
person's ontology, as well as the ontology of the group, is itself destabi-
lized. In all cases, the interactions comprise practical, situated actions
that allow actors to meet.
Restaurant owners and shopkeepers situated at the limit of the wall
are an instance of those who must develop concrete transactions and
strategies to continue their trade. An example would be the shopkeepers


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 243

in the city of A-Ram, situated at the limit of the security barrier, near
the main entry and exit checkpoint to East Jerusalem (Qalandiya). This
checkpoint forms a true buffer zone with Israel and is particularly con-
straining for people entering the West Bank (where Israeli settlements
are located) but also for the Palestinians of Jerusalem who continue to
pursue activities or have family in Palestine. All crossings at this check-
point-cars, trucks, pedestrians-are verified.5 Workers hailing from
the Territories who are authorized to make the crossing into Jerusalem
are particularly scrutinized. These workers are not able to use their per-
sonal vehicles and must be in possession of a work or residence permit.
Despite the closed and rigid character of these security measures, many
interactions take place around the checkpoint, creating a public spec-
tacle where every act is visible to those taking part, including those of
the Israeli military personnel charged with controlling the frontier. The
area surrounding the checkpoint forms a microeconomic space with the
presence of small shopkeepers offering their services: we find coffee and
water from the nearby refugee camp al-Amari, restaurants, taxis. All are
interested in maintaining their economic interests despite the rarefied
nature of the exchanges between Jerusalem and the zones located on the
other side of the security barrier, which itself has become an impassable
frontier.
One example is striking: the ritual undertaken by certain restaurants
to "deliver" to checkpoints in order to maintain their commercial activ-
ities. This concerns, for example, restaurant owners situated near the
security barrier (A-Ram), who have created links to a Jewish or Arab cli-
entele within Jerusalem who previously frequented these restaurants and
have been deprived of this possibility by this newly constructed segment
of the barrier. This is the case for Elias, a resident of Jerusalem who chose
the site for his restaurant only several months before the erection of the
barrier at A-Ram. His pizzeria, known for the quality of its products, is
now hidden and inaccessible. Elias' movement has also been limited, and
his restaurant lost many potential clients. Nevertheless, the young en-
trepreneur found a way to counteract this loss of business. Armed with
a strong network of relations with Jewish and Christian Israelis and with
Palestinian families from the Old City, he is able to deliver his pizzas
to these privileged clients. Sensitive to Elias' economic situation, they
make the journey specially to buy his products at the Qalandiya check-
point. Pizza delivery, like a well-honed choreography, takes place in the
presence of military personnel who closely watch the exchange.
The "delivery" of merchandise, of meals, is an urban experience that
creates interactions within public space. The physical environment is mo-
bilized, while communication between partners in the exchange, Israelis


244 Sylvaine Bulle

and Palestinians, takes place within neutral and interstitial spaces such
as checkpoint parking areas (Qalandiya and Bethlehem). In the case of
these "deliveries"-or of certain micro-commercial activities that take
place along frontiers, in a space of surveillance-sovereign space relaxes
or transforms into a space of civility based on the conversation and or-
dinary acts (oral exchanges, food exchanges). These types of exchanges,
which continue despite the divide and the growing hostility between the
two communities, make it possible to stabilize relations between actors.
Take, for example, the case of farmers of Bethlehem and Hebron, who
arrive every morning at the gates of East Jerusalem to sell their products.
Their portals to the outside world (Jerusalem and Israel)-the check-
point crossings to Bethlehem-are only possible because of a chain of
tolerance and the support of different partners. In certain cases, their
excursions require the complicity of military personnel, because the
farmers do not legally have access to Israeli territory or to Jerusalem. The
officers close their eyes to foodstuffs transported in sacks, baskets and
blouses, and give the farmers the right to enter the capital clandestinely.
In turn, Palestinian boutique owners in Jerusalem agree to keep or stock
the farmers' products. The farmers themselves, often elderly, spend the
night in the back of the shops, in the doorways of shops, in residences in
the Old City or in public spaces.6 Concern for the common decency of
the Other has made it possible to establish this chain of acts that links
individuals otherwise divided socially and geographically, differentiated
one from another in terms of their status as citizens.
The consolidation of exchanges in the workplace is also striking. Lack-
ing Jerusalem-resident status, ever more difficult to come by, or else
without permits to work or freely circulate that require drastic measures
to obtain, it is difficult for businesses and job-seekers to develop con-
tacts. In part because of the increasingly complex nature of legal im-
migration procedures, maintaining access to work is almost impossible
without the aid of formal or informal networks that assist with border
crossings between Jerusalem and the West Bank. For a Palestinian to
acquire a job, for example in Jerusalem or in Israel, requires that he or
she go through an organized network-with companies based in Jerusa-
lem or in Israel that have contacts with the military administration-to
negotiate a permit or to sell products or services in Israel.
Permits are rare, depending entirely on a vertical organization be-
tween employees, employers, and the Israeli administration: a liberal
state model where economic interests-and corruption-combine with
military interests. Parallel to the official network of entrepreneurs, other
types of practices are developing. They can be understood as a possi-
ble response to the coercion that is placed upon Palestinians wanting to


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 245

work in Israel-despite the fact that Palestinian institutions symbolically
forbid Palestinians from doing so in the name of the boycott and of the
"White Intifada' the call for a sustained, nonviolent campaign of Pales-
tinian resistance. Informal practices that deal with work and the cross-
ing of the wall are indissociable from a horizontal chain of confidence
between employees and employers or within a controlled community.
Then there is an entirely different clandestine organization that shut-
tles people through the wall with organized passage points or with lad-
ders that make it possible to climb over. These activities imply complicit
neighbors, people to organize shuttling back and forth-passers-and
an entire way of thinking that leads to the creation of temporary neigh-
borhood communities of passers (Druze, Arab Israelis), businesses, and
neighbors. The interactions vary from a paid barrier crossing service to
simply the aid of the neighbors-for example, watching for the arrival of
the police. This leads to coordination between the various actors-that
is to say, communication skills. Of course, these interactions are rarer
than the everyday transactions described earlier, and they develop only
in situations where the illicit crossings are a last resort. The relationship
that links these individuals is built within space through connections
and fleeting agreements.
"We just want to live," repeat day-workers, residents of A-Ram, Bir
Nabala, or Bethlehem. Their voluntary actions take shape in a world of
suffering. To stake one's life by crossing the security barrier means risk-
ing prison for a salary, putting one's family in peril with illegal actions,
and risking the judgment of those close to you or of the community. The
latter is especially problematic in the case of Palestinian workers in the
Israeli settlements-a type of work strongly forbidden by the Palestinian
authorities?-and also in the case of intelligence cooperation with the
military regarding counterfeit work certificates. Palestinians from Jeru-
salem or the Territories working intermittently on the construction or
cleaning of the security barrier are also taking great risks.
These workers' excursions into an "enemy" world are, by all accounts,
linked to the economic motivations of the two parties. Employers have
access to labor that is flexible, easily managed, and readily available, and
the employee sees the opportunity for Israeli work as a means to better
his condition. These workers may also invoke a moral justification for
this excursion and the "collaboration" it entails. For example, he may
speak of his own victimhood and the instrumentalization of judicial and
economic resources of the "Israeli enemy" as a political act of resistance.
In most cases, the workers are blind to moral and political divergences,
or to communitarian or cultural differences between them and their em-
ployers, instead revealing mutual understandings based on confidence


246 Sylvaine Bulle

and common interest.s But the regime of forced connections with the
Other through labor and business may also lead to a moral and social
duplicity. The workers, moving between one world and another, modu-
late their rhetoric and appearance based on whether they are inside their
communities, outside, or between several sets of juridical and political
norms-for instance, situations in which they must recognize the State
of Israel or not). The actors can also be destabilized in terms of their rela-
tion to their own community by entering into contacts with other norms
during the period of transaction. They can also destabilize the grammar
of their own community-by betraying their own patriotism.
If we take, for example, the case of Palestinian workers, Bedouins,
workers in the formal and informal sector of the industrial complexes
in Mishor Adumim and in the Jordan Valley, perceived indignity and
humiliation often reappear in these workers' statements and are linked
to their labor conditions (low salaries, no social rights, and no vacation
days). And it is through these injustices that certain workers today get
in touch with humanitarian organizations to defend their basic rights
and to benefit from the same working conditions as Israelis. By turning
to the courts and to workers' aid associations with their demands and
with the discrimination they face, they implicitly recognize Israeli law
and the presence of Israeli interlocutors, such as Israeli legal aid asso-
ciations. Thus, contact with the adversary in the name of the defense
of basic rights but also with a certain liberal individualism would sug-
gest the renunciation of the principles of a Palestinian resistance that
is founded on non-contact and the boycott of enemy interlocutors in
the name of group solidarity. Encounters with outside partners (lawyers,
NGOs, courts), the confidence these meetings create and the feeling
of being defended, lead these workers to experience a certain distance
from their own community. Their families, on the other hand, may feel
embarrassed by these public efforts and the disobedience to their own
group's rules that they imply.
Situational Exchanges
We could also cite a second case that speaks of a less superficial en-
gagement with the renegotiation of collective norms through individual
choice: Palestinians who settle in Jewish quarters called Israeli settle-
ments because they are built outside of the frontier of 1967. These ur-
ban Jewish districts (like Pisgat Zeev) are populated with religious Jews
(often Hasidim) or National Religious (Zionist) and were the first to be
built outside of the Green Line. They are home to several hundred Pal-


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 247

estinians. Thirteen hundred of the 42,000 residents of Pisgat Zeev are
Arab. Very close to Pisgat Zeev, on French Hill, one person out of six is
Arab out of a population of 7,000. Finally, in Neve Yaakov, there are six
hundred Arabs out of 20,000.9
There are two motivations for this phenomenon. The first is what
many perceive as the necessity of retaining their Jerusalem residence
permit. In such cases, persons who were residents of Jerusalem before
the erection of the wall have left what is now the Palestinian side to re-
locate to an area where they can retain their residency.10 The wave of
returning Palestinians inside the limits of East Jerusalem has been an
important factor in skyrocketing real estate prices.11 As a result, Pales-
tinians concerned with conserving their rights sought out apartments
in the first settlements in East Jerusalem such as Pisgat Zeev. This rental
activity creates transactions with a network of real estate agents-Jew-
ish-that are more or less discrete, and a redeployment of communi-
tarian movements that are more or less accepted: Palestinians turn up
in cafes and in malls located in Jewish neighborhoods and more or less
also in public spaces. The recent public nature of identity has been the
source of some incidents: verbal abuse and mutual violence in the shop-
ping malls, protest posters fixed to synagogue walls, the intimidation of
Jewish real estate agents selling land to Arabs. The press and activists
for Israeli religious rights often speak out about a troubling menace: the
turning back of Jewish repopulation through Arab settlement. "The Jews
are leaving and the Arabs returning," announced a community Israeli
newspaper,12 as if the latter were imitating the former through a recon-
quest of the space, ethnicity, and real estate of Jerusalem.
But another type of more individual mobility exists: Palestinians who
already live within the perimeter of Jerusalem and make the choice to
live in the Jewish districts at the entry of East Jerusalem. Here we find
an example of pluralism that is expressed by the decision to maintain
a social life outside of one's own community. Decisions to leave Arab
neighborhoods to attempt to integrate into quarters such as Pisgat Zeev
or Ramot become a choice that speaks to concerns for a way of life: a
desire for social ascension that also makes it possible to benefit from the
cultural, educational and health facilities of Israeli Jews, judged to be
better that those in Arab neighborhoods. Such decisions to settle in Jew-
ish districts are discrete and remain unpublicized among their commu-
nity because they cannot be argued in terms of necessity.13 On the one
hand, middle-class and professional Palestinians-for instance, office-
workers, professors, or doctors working in Israeli hospitals-make a prag-
matic and subjective choice to settle within Jewish districts that may be
seen as betrayal by their own family and community. On the other hand,


248 Sylvaine Bulle

the diversity within a Jewish neighborhood imposes rules of civility. We
find ourselves here within the public rules of "civil inattention" (Goff-
man 1971) that define a mode of living together based on an indifference
toward communitarianism and respect for private life.14
The last example comes from the Jerusalem tramway that was put
into service in the spring of 2012. It crosses the city from northeast to
southwest, through Israeli neighborhoods created in 1948 and into the
city center. It runs parallel to the Old City, crossing Arab quarters, and
ending in colonies that are at the frontier of 1967. The tramway project
led to important ideological controversies: it was denounced as an in-
strument of Zionism, a consolidation of the annexation of Jerusalem,
and as a political project destined to achieve the unification of Jerusalem
by serving the residents of the settlements. Nevertheless, the project can
be understood as a kind of laboratory for the study of the city as mo-
saic-the open city. We note the high participation of Arab citizens and
the network's utilization by a mixed group of inhabitants: frequent tram
users are Orthodox religious Jews as well as young and old Palestinians.
Circulation is a moment of civility and diversity, a moment where a pub-
lic space is created that breaks up communitarian divisions. Mobility is
a place of contiguity and a personal or collective test where the voyagers
have to show their ability to be face to face.15 Here we find again the no-
tion of "civil inattention" and of reserve. The social order of the tramway
functions through a minimum amount of tact and a visual courtesy that
operate as a kind of poor interaction (Joseph 1997) or civil inattention.
The oxymoron suggests that the importance of the superficial exchange
is having a social function that guarantees civility. It requires partici-
pants in a situation that is public and delicate because of its intercom-
munal nature to not presume the Other has hostile intentions and to
not manifest feelings of discomfort or shame. This visual courtesy also
enables a superficial sociability to take shape. Within the tram, we speak
several languages and we identify different ways of being-religious first
of all, secular, Jewish, Arab, tourist, and foreigner-without a commu-
nitarian hierarchy, which is exactly the definition of a public space. This
mode of transportation of course makes it possible to cross the city and
also implies collective surveillance, vigilance, and a certain confidence
between groups. Circulation is thus the means through which ephem-
eral ways of living together are understood. From this point of view, the
tram is a success in that it does not lead to incidents of conflict or vio-
lence, as if it is able to engender that which diplomacy has itself been
unable to create.
Such examples give us the contours of temporary communities of con-
fidence-within economic activity, or public space-that are created in


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 249

situations where people simply come together, without affirmations of
belonging. All these situations require communication and informal ex-
change and show the potentiality of the city of Jerusalem itself, despite
the political situation, to elucidate a theory of interdependence that is
both political and sociological. From such cases, we open up several po-
tential questions related to contiguity and hospitality in divided cities
such as Jerusalem.
For a Theory of Minimal Co-presence
as Sociological and Political Frame
Rebecca Bryant, in the introduction to this volume, makes a subtle dis-
tinction in approaches to coexistence. While the term "coexistence" is
often used in general, historical, and even diplomatic terms, without
practical considerations, she asks what coexistence means at the level
of quotidian interactions. She suggests everyday diplomacy as a way to
expand spaces, relations inside a constructive ambiguity, considering
the potential self-transformation of identities and places. Bryant, in her
introduction, speaks of the necessity of a constructive ambiguity of the
boundaries of belonging as a language allowing the parties to overcome
the issues about which they were at first irreconcilable.
In a previous chapter, Anita Bakshi discusses Simmel's notion of the
stranger as descriptive of relations between Greek Cypriots and Turkish
Cypriots in the Nicosia marketplace. These were the relations of shop-
keepers with customers, of traders with clients, and of neighboring trad-
ers within the marketplace. In a city whose neighborhoods were mostly
ethno-religiously divided, the marketplace became one of the few spaces
where interactions occurred that are today remembered as "coexistence."
Although those relations for the most part were not able to survive the
fracturing of violence, they were the basic foundation for interaction
outside one's group in the context of a relatively divided society.
In Jerusalem, institutions, habits, and the recurrence of geopolitical
conflict have put into place a closed, east to west, functioning of neigh-
borhoods that reflect the hardening of identities. The disordered, chaotic,
hyper-dense, and walled-in space of East Jerusalem evokes a painful geo-
political history. Enclaves, the wall, and the refugee camps mark places
of minority life excluded from municipal politics. They form what Oren
Yiftachel calls "gray spaces":
The concept of "gray space" refers to developments, enclaves, popula-
tions and transactions positioned between the "lightness" of legality/


250 Sylvaine Bulle

approval/safety and the "darkness" of eviction/destruction/death. Gray
spaces are neither integrated nor eliminated, forming pseudo-perma-
nent margins of today's urban regions, which exist partially outside the
gaze of state authorities and city plans. (Yiftachel 2009: 243)
However, even within the confines of these gray spaces, and even in the
context of growing hatred, it is difficult to overlook the physical and spa-
tial interdependence that is the basis or has been the basis of relations.
We know that Jerusalem was always a cosmopolitan city, and that un-
til recent wars its Arab and Jewish populations had spaces for interac-
tion. In the early twentieth century, Jerusalem was home to cosmopolitan
cafes, interactions between Arab and Jewish intellectuals and activists,
and a certain atmosphere of bilingualism that characterizes the "spirit"
of many cities. The sociologist Salim Tamari (2008) has shown that sub-
sequent wars, nationalism, and sometimes the destruction of public
spaces have removed this urbanity. But does this assessment privilege
certain forms of sociality over others? Can or should the pluralist city
exist in a context of conflict and tension?
Paradoxically, the material manifestation of the Israeli-Palestinian or
Israeli-Arab conflict in the divided city of Jerusalem allows considera-
tion of the positive aspects of coexistence. Even inside the divided city,
citizens are not constrained to a trajectory on the basis of communal
affinity. Citizens weave a path, encounter obstacles and opportunities.
They travel in "foreign" areas, and necessarily encounter Others. Being
Jewish or Arab-not to mention a member of the mizrahim (Eastern) or
Ethiopian minorities, for example-today refers to a particular condi-
tion, that of identification with a neighborhood, a mosque, a synagogue,
a part of the occupied city. Yet the real city does not coincide with the
illusion of harmonious communities locked inside their own territories.
Instead, the character of the city is also one of dissonance-what Bryant
in the introduction, citing Laura Ring, refers to as "bearing tension"-
where laboring to surmount obstacles and overcome potential conflict
is also part of what it means to live together in the city.
This "moral crossing" or co-presence, I claim, is an organizing princi-
ple of civil life that can be not only understood as an urban phenomenon
but also deployed as a philosophical principle. I consider co-presence
as a sociological and political method that exceeds the metaphor of a
"mosaic" of communities and their territories, and one that may help
us think about the sources for a regeneration of urban dynamics. What,
then, are the features of a notion of co-presence? The first is understand-
ing the city as a milieu for acquaintance where the stranger might be seen
less as a foreigner-a representative or custodian of a community-and


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 251

more as a smuggler. The stranger as smuggler crosses spatial and moral
regions using bilingualism, resourcefulness, and skills of cultural trans-
lation. As a type of "everyday diplomacy," it requires self-transformation,
but it does not have the connotation of the diplomat as emissary.
A second element is the porosity of the city, which encourages all
sorts of interaction, including the right to intrusion and mobility. The
latter includes intercultural circulation, guaranteeing mixing, with the
possibility of leaving the community to which one belongs (Park 1967).
Co-presence occurs, for instance, through the circulation of people, and
the choice to live in different areas. The spatial entanglement, the de-
pendence of Palestinians on the Israeli job market, and the need for eco-
nomic trade between the two parts of the city or of the Territories make
relations necessary. And this physical contiguity in Jerusalem has, in the
very near past, resulted in an ensemble of relations.
The city of Jerusalem could be viewed as one that encourages inter-
action-in the image of the journey of the tramway, a crossing of mul-
tiple worlds, near and far, those by which the individual reconsiders his
or her universe of belonging. It is the replacement of communitarian
links by social relations that create a form of positive urban interaction.
Co-presence, then, is possible within the open city, a form of sociality
not structurally determined, but rather dependent upon circulation,
chance meetings, and superficial exchanges. Only social interaction
(what Bryant in this volume calls everyday diplomacy) can break the ri-
gidity of closed groups and of ethnic circles bound by familiarity, making
it possible to decrease hostilities.
In other words, following the sociologists of the Chicago School, we
might say that the city needs more sociality and less society: that is to
say, less collective treatment of social realities by institutions. The idea of
co-presence puts emphasis on living together as a practice rather than as
an ideal. Rather than ideals or ideologies, co-presence is a matter of tact.
It assumes that citizens in the public space present themselves with dis-
tance and reserve, as suggested in the notion of civil inattention. In Je-
rusalem, tact may be seen in the case of tram transportation that crosses
various districts of the Palestinian neighborhoods, caught between the
Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. Mobility can be seen as a test of
citizens' capacities to interact in public, to demonstrate some commu-
nicative competences.16
A third, normative element of co-presence is pluralism, understood
here not as a juridical frame but as pragmatic governance. Pluralism in
this sense begins with the encouragement of mobility and a politics of
contact. The capacity to visit, as both a moral and social virtue, assures
the possibility of meetings between individuals. This kind of co-presence,


252 Sylvaine Bulle

still existing, does not erase frontiers, but it marks forms and spaces of
contiguities. They must be understood as moments of relational con-
tiguity and of the presence between people, beyond the threshold of
rupture. This is the pluralism of hospitality, of being open to the other
while also recognizing scales of sovereignty (see Bryant this volume; also
Joseph 1997).17
Sociologically, such practical efforts already exist in Jerusalem even if
they are rare. They appear in the social mixity of adjacent neighbors-
for instance, in Pisgat Zeev-and in associations made possible by prop-
erty and social diversity. Politically, in the absence of a common gov-
ernance in Jerusalem-the PLO and the Palestinian political parties all
refuse any kind of representation in local political bodies-some asso-
ciations (Jews and Arabs) create common cause through common asso-
ciations.18 In East Jerusalem (Beit Hanina), shopkeepers, residents, and
property-owners, already engaged in the maintenance of exchanges,
progressively make up a shared community. Such practices in turn cre-
ate a habitus (Bourdieu 1980) that may be mobilized for other politics.
Such uncommon "communities of confidence" are rare and discrete but
demonstrate the potential for an idea of coexistence that includes con-
flict and tension within sociality and that allows us to think differently
about forms of urban governance (Lofland 1998).
Conclusion
Individual and ethnographic portraits have shown us forms of interac-
tion even within the most extreme conditions of division and polariza-
tion. Viewed not from the perspective of an ideal model of coexistence
but rather from its actual practice, we see that small acts of respect for
the Other-the exercise or not of domination, of courtesy, of civility-
may be able to construct a livable space, creating a place for people, while
at the same time helping to build a shared life. This is a minimalist por-
trait of what Bryant refers to as the "labor of peace" depending not on
the active maintenance of neighborly relations but instead on ordinary
civility. It is this form of "peace building"-the constraints of ordinary
civility-that I claim are central in the context of hostility where cultural
and communitarian influences are strong.
The Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh19 reminds us that the
future of Jerusalem, and more broadly speaking the treatment of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, depends on "new ideas" (Nusseibeh 2011).
Here I have addressed not the practice of coexistence per se, but rather
its necessity and pragmatics in a non-ideal world (Anderson 2010). I also


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 253

Figure 9.2. East Jerusalem (photo by Sylvaine Bulle).
suggest, however, that such a pragmatic approach to living together may
form the basis for a politics beyond the communitarian, based on socio-
economic rights and an equality of spaces. This vision of justice is based
not on control of institutions but on spatial contiguity and social respect
on the neighborhood scale. From a sociological perspective, it is not im-
probable that ordinary politics may make it possible to achieve a more
equitable city. It requires that violence disappear so that democracy can
take its place.
Sylvaine Bulle is a sociologist, assistant professor and researcher at
CRESPPA (University of Paris 8) who studies the Israeli and Palestin-
ian post-national societies, with a special focus on social justice and the
sociology of conflict. Her recent research concerns intercommunal re-
lations, state transformation, and social mobilization. She has published
widely on questions of justice, critical theory, and the political anthro-
pology of war, and is now working on the new waves of contestation
in Israel as well as in the Palestinian Territories. Her latest publication
in English is, "Toward Some Social Ecology: Policies of Domestication
in a Confined Territory (East-Jerusalem):' in Between the Lines: Social
Ecologies in a Liminal Landscape, ed. A. Grichting and M. Zebich-Knos
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).


254 Sylvaine Bulle

Notes
1. According to Schmitt, the nomos is a kind of juridical order based on a ter-
ritorial delimitation of the nation.
2. The demographic policy of Israel aims first of all to limit the presence and
the social cost of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. The capital has 765,000
people, 495,000 of whom are Jewish (65 percent), half living in the eastern
section, and 270,000 Arabs (35 percent), almost entirely Palestinians in East
Jerusalem. Furthermore, 80,000 Palestinians currently have permanent res-
ident status in Jerusalem but do not live within the municipal limits of the
capital. The Israeli administration is currently controlling the situation by
ending residence status for married persons whose partners come from the
Territories but live abroad.
3. See for instance Graham (2010); Weizman (2003); and Azoulay and Ophir
(2005).
4. Based on the needs of certain sectors open to Palestinians, such as con-
struction (approximately 60,000 authorized and legal workers) and accord-
ing to the demographic equilibrium objective in Jerusalem between the
Jewish populations (70 percent) and Arabs (30 percent) for requests for
residence in Jerusalem.
5. Every Palestinian crossing into one of the Palestinian sub-zones is hence-
forth subject to computer and biometric verification based on a personal
dossier that includes information about a person's geographic and family
origins and their employer. The management of these checkpoints is under
the control of the Israeli Defense Forces and in certain cases is subcon-
tracted to private security firms with contracts with the army. Palestinians
hailing from the Territories are not authorized to enter Jerusalem except
under exceptional circumstances (sickness or a special permit). Marriages
and family reunification between citizens of the Territories and Jerusalem
are extremely rare and must fall under specific criteria (birth in Jerusalem,
security criteria, children born in Jerusalem).
6. For example, the Damascus Gate, the northwestern gate of the Old City.
Analysis is based on surveys in Jerusalem and the West Bank (2009-12).
7. Approximately 25,000 Palestinian workers are employed in the Jewish set-
tlements (Israeli statistic 2011). Israeli settlements are military or civilian
implantations built on lands occupied by Israel during and after the 1967
Six-Day War. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank, East Je-
rusalem, and in the Golan Heights. In the 121 officially recognized set-
tlements in the West Bank live 300,000 Jews; over 300,000 Israelis live in
settlements in East Jerusalem. They have their own jurisdictions, law, and
regulations due to their extra-territorial status.
8. On this aspect see Hirschman's essay (1970) on the moral economy at the
age of capitalism.
9. According to the press.
10. The Palestinians of East Jerusalem, born and residing within the city perim-
eter benefit from resident status (without citizenship and therefore without


A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? 255

a passport). They have economic, health and social rights, access to public
institutions (hospitals, doctors, social aid), and pay city taxes.
11. Historically, only a few Palestinians inhabitants of Jerusalem live in the
western or central areas (except the historical quarters of Beit Safafa, Ein
Karem, and the old cities).
12. Matzav.com (The Online Voice of the Torah Jewry), 2/9/2009. See http://
www.thesanhedrin.org/en/index.php/Psak_5769_Av_23.
13. This also concerns the young Palestinians who choose to study, and some-
times live, at the Hebrew University located on Mt. Scopus, rather than in a
Palestinian university.
14. For Goffman, the notion of civil inattention is an attention not focused on
the Other. It consists of showing to the Other that we have understood and
are attentive to his or her presence, but without taking notice of the verbal,
oral, or gestural habits of the Other, thus without intruding into the life of
the Other.
15. Elaborated by Erving Goffman (1971). The face to face is not only a way we
define and interpret for ourselves a situation but also the way we engage
ourselves in a course of action.
16. We can refer here to a recent experience in the tram, in which sixty young
Israelis planned a demonstration in which they would speak Arabic while
using public transportation in order to encourage contact.
17. For a philosophical and closed approach, see Derrida (1997).
18. For example, there is the case of the association that was against the dem-
olition of the ancient village of Lifta situated at the entrance to West Je-
rusalem. Composed of activists as well as Jewish and Arab residents, the
association demanded that the village be listed as a world heritage site in
the name of environmental preservation.
19. Sari Nusseibeh is a Palestinian philosopher and an influential leader who is
based in East Jerusalem.
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+ Chapter 10 +

Grounds for Sharing-
Occasions for Conflict
An Inquiry into the Social Foundations
of Cohabitation and Antagonism
GLENN BOWMAN
Although the title of this collective project refers to "shared spaces"
we are for the most part discussing places rather than spaces when we
talk of the social aspects of cohabitation and/or antagonism. Places in
this context are lived-in spaces or, in more academic terms, sites of in-
habitance, while space denotes an area, of general or unlimited extent,
indifferently providing the physical setting for such places; hence the
Oxford English Dictionary notes that "place" is "a space that can be oc-
cupied ... a particular spot or area inhabited or frequented by people; a
city, a town, a village"' Spaces are far more easily "shared" than places, if
sharing is the correct term to use when referring to coexisting in contig-
uous space. When suitably organized, entities can move past and around
each other in space without effecting significant contact. Movement in
shared places, however, entails negotiation, commensality, and at times
conflict insofar as persons occupying place not only coexist with each
other but are very much aware of the fact of that coexistence. In Michael
Sorkin's fascinating discussion of "traffic" in Giving Ground: The Poli-
tics ofPropinquity we see a modernist mode of organization that chan-
nels persons and vehicles into nonintersecting pathways in order to give
priority to unimpeded flow at the expense of relations between entities
moving across the same terrain. Counterposed to this Sorkin shows us a
more traditional setting in which flow is impeded by repeated intersec-
tion and the necessary and mutually aware sharing of place:
Modern city planning is structured around an armature of ... conflict
avoidance. Elevated highways, pedestrian skyways, subway systems


Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict 259

and other movement technologies clarify relations between classes of
vehicles for the sake of efficient flow.... The result is a city altogether
different from the older Indian cities with their indigenous styles of
motion.... Typically Indian traffic is completely mixed up, a slow-mov-
ing mass of cows and pedicabs, motor-rickshaws, trucks and buses,
camels and people on foot, the antithesis of "efficient" separation. Mo-
tion through this sluggish maelstrom does not proceed so much by
absolute right as through a continuing process of local negotiation for
the right of passage. (Sorkin 1999: 2)
In the latter case we are shown not only a space occupied by persons
and entities but a place in which those inhabiting the terrain are linked
together by what he terms "a primal rite of giving ground ... the def-
erence to one's neighbour that urban existence daily demands" (Ibid.).
Here, rather than a skein of distinct and mutually disengaged pathways
encompassed within a common space we see a place inhabited by a di-
versity of persons and objects, shared through processes of mutual rec-
ognition and accommodation.
I would like to look further at this issue of "giving ground" in the
context of shared holy places in the post-Ottoman Mediterranean so
as to evaluate how such places are shared, what sorts of situations sup-
port that sharing and what sorts of events or developments disrupt it.
Sylvaine Bulle's chapter, in this volume, investigates neighborhood and
the way that within a neighborhood a multitude of different groups of
people are tied together into a community by networks that variously
engage them as individuals and groups. Foregrounded by her examina-
tion of how shared practices of being in a neighborhood enable both the
recognition of the difference of others and the framing of that difference
as something beneficial rather than problematic is the issue of whether
we can see local communities, and the set of relations that constitute
them, as forms of what Bourdieu called habitus.2 Bourdieu, in the rather
dense terminology of his Logic of Practice, writes that
[t]he conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of ex-
istence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions,
structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures,
that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and repre-
sentations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without
presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the
operations necessary to attain them. (Bourdieu 1990 [orig. 1980]: 53)
Practices of interaction and negotiation of place experienced through
living in a community imprint themselves in individuals as preconscious


260 Glenn Bowman

dispositions to act, and interpret, in the future in accordance with those
earlier experiences. A person's dispositions are neither habits nor con-
sciously applied rules but tacit knowledge, often embodied, learned
through the "prestigious imitation ... [of] actions which have succeeded
and which he has seen successfully performed by people in whom he has
confidence and who have authority over him" (Mauss 1979 [orig. 1935]:
101). As Mauss, and Bourdieu after him, make clear, it is this process of
internalizing social practices (actions, interpretations, self-presentations)
that imposes the social on the individual and that, in effect, maps the
neighborhood-and its modes of incorporating and negotiating with in-
ternal difference-onto the selves who traverse it. "Giving ground," rec-
ognizing the right of the Other to be in the same place as oneself as well
as committing to the rites of negotiating her presence, is a core element
of the habitus of neighborhood.
Two ethnographic studies, one on South India and one on the North,
exemplify the ways neighborhoods constituted by nominally distinct re-
ligious communities (communities that are elsewhere mutually antago-
nistic) are able to share place peacefully. The first text, Jackie Assayag's
At the Confluence of Two Rivers-Muslims and Hindus in South India
(2004), discusses what might be called a situational syncretism whereby
Muslims and Hindus are able to celebrate at each others' religious festi-
vals because, in the course of the communities living together for nearly
a millennium, cultural elements that might have in the past been the
exclusive properties of distinct communities have become part of an
annual cycle of neighborhood practices and thus, in effect, common
property:
The religion of Mohammed insinuated itself very gradually in a Hindu
environment already segmented by numerous castes, sects and local
traditions. This mixture of discreet elements gave rise to many sub-
tle and complex forms of acculturation caused by alteration, addition,
superimposition and innovation, which vary from region to region.
So by absorbing elements that were no longer either strictly Hindu or
Muslim, but may have been the result of an earlier assimilation, these
cultural forms allowed movement between systems of action and rep-
resentation that seemed to be mutually exclusive. (Assayag 2004: 41)
Anna Bigelow's Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Muslim
North India (Bigelow 2010; see also Bowman 2013) treats a seemingly
more conscious process of intercommunal cohabitation in the town of
Malerkotla, located in the Punjab, a far more conflicted region than As-
sayag's Karnataka. Bigelow notes that the town's cultivated tolerance


Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict 261

might be seen as a response to Malerkotlan residents' horror of the sec-
tarian cleansing that afflicted the Punjab during Partition (as well as of
the violence of subsequent sectarian riots that have taken place in the
region over the past few decades) leading to their recognition that "all
religious groups are in some regard vulnerable ... [making them] cogni-
zant that their wellbeing depends on their positive relations with oth-
ers" (Bigelow 2010: 10). She, however, demonstrates fulsomely that overt
intercommunalism is very much grounded on the town's "practice of
everyday pluralism" (Ibid.: 217) and is a projection of "the vibrant com-
munity life in the streets and homes and shrines of a locale" (Ibid.: 223).
In each case the "cultural property" of one sectarian community is seen
by members of adjacent communities as theirs as well, not because they
wish to appropriate it but because, via a process of living with the "own-
ers" of the property and engaging with them in their quotidian lives,
that property and the practices surrounding it have come to be seen as
common. Whereas in some cases, such as those described by Assayag,
sharing is for the most part unconscious because the traces of the own-
ership of significant elements of cultural property have been effaced by
time, in others, as in Bigelow's Malerkotla, practices of mutual engage-
ment in religious festivals and shrine worship are conscious moves to af-
firm community solidarities across sectarian borders. In both instances,
however, sharing in religious celebrations and festivities is an extension
of the habitus of a shared communal life.3
This is not, of course, to say that an identical "script" of community re-
sponse is instilled in all the community's members by their participation
in a neighborhood. While the term "disposition" suggests a tendency to
interpret situations and act in response to them in certain ways familiar
from past engagements with similar events, Bourdieu's work, like Mauss'
before it, makes clear that there is "play" in the system of application al-
lowing for accommodating specificities of context, of individuality, and
of intention. A disposition is a proclivity rather than an imperative. Part
of what accounts for the lability of persons' responses in communities in
general and mixed communities in particular is the multitude of iden-
tities at play in any individual's experience of everyday life. The concept
of "situational identities"4 enables us to recognize a multitude of iden-
tity contexts existing in even the least complex of societies, and when a
community creates complexity to the extent of encompassing multiple
ethnic and/or religious identities, the opportunities for a proliferation
of identity strategies expands commensurately. At different moments of
interaction within the community, different dispositions will be called
to the fore. Thus in one instance you might be working with someone
as a coworker or in an employee-employer relation whereas in another,


262 Glenn Bowman

sometimes even contiguous with the first, you might be called on to rep-
resent a family or a religious denomination. Each of these situations will
call on distinct dispositions and may in fact call for enunciating those
dispositions in ways that improvise on previous enactments. What is
important to stress is that none of these enacted identities are primary
other than in situations-some of which will be elaborated below-in
which the primacy of one of those identities is staged as more import-
ant than, and either subsuming or obviating, others. Recognition of the
situatedness of identity articulations allows us to understand the ways
numerous linkages can be made between diverse persons within a com-
munity, but also to see that certain events or developments might render
previously amenable identities incommensurate and thus conflictual.
Nonetheless investigation of the character of neighborhood bonds
resonates with Bigelow's investigation of Malerkotla's "daily work of
community maintenance" (2010: 122) and indicates that in most in-
stances communities will seek to perpetuate communal cohesion. The
concept of habitus makes clear that the degree to which people are who
they are is a consequence of the appropriateness of their learned dispo-
sitions to settings the same as, or not unlike, those in which they im-
bued those dispositions. Radical reworkings of those settings-either
through intercommunal conflict and separation or through migration or
exile-threaten selfhood. There are, of course, circumstances that bring
about the fragmentation of communities, but these often come about
through external influences that, through direct action or the indirect
impact of rumors or propaganda, create distrust and antagonism be-
tween elements of the community (compare Tone Bringa's film We Are
All Neighbours [Bringa 1993]). Left to its own devices a community will
not only celebrate its social arrangement as natural and heimlich (home-
like) but may, as in the instances described by Marcel Mauss in his study
of magic, imagine the domain of its everyday life as knitted together by
a skein of connections defying scientific conceptions of cause and effect
and allowing efficacy at a distance through the manipulation of objects
or settings associated via contiguity, similarity, or opposition (see Mauss
1972 [orig. 1950]). Here persons, powers, and things associated in ev-
eryday experience are seen as connected even when literally apart. For
Mauss magic works by laying over the place of the everyday a distort-
ing mirror that not only draws together diffuse elements but also allows
power to operate across its surfaces. "In society there is an inexhaustible
source of diffuse magic.... Everything happens as though society, from
a distance, formed a kind of huge magical conclave around [the magi-
cian]" (Ibid.: 138). For Mauss, rites can bring about "direct, automatic
efficacy, without the presence of differentiated spiritual intermediaries"


Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict 263

(Ibid.: 136) so that, in the case of Dayak women engaged in war dances
to support their men, who have gone off to battle,
time and space no longer exist; they are on the field of battle.... Their
sensibilities are overwhelmed by the awareness of their existence as a
group of women and the social role they are playing in relation to the
warriors, an awareness which is translated into sentiments about their
own power and the relation of this power with that of their menfolk.
(Ibid.)
Muslims and Christians in the Monastery of
Sveti Bogoroditsa Prechista
I mention this embodied sense of a habitus accessible through magic
and ritual not so much to explain the mechanisms of how shrine prac-
tices can effect cures or the redirection of fortune but to suggest that the
powers people imagine as working in and on their world are social pow-
ers, imagined in the image of their own experience of the world. Let me
expand on this using an ethnographic encounter I had in Kicevo, Mace-
donia, in April 2006. I had been researching, with the help of Elizabeta
Koneska of the National Museum of Macedonia, Muslim and Orthodox
Christian uses of Sveti Bogoroditsa Prechista (the church of the Holy
Mother of God Most Innocent) outside of Kicevo, itself a mixed Muslim
and Christian town. In the course of examining the context of shared
shrine practices, we interviewed the imam of the local Sunni mosque.
He, trained in the renowned Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, re-
sponded to our queries about Muslims attending the nearby Sveti Bo-
goroditsa monastery by asserting strongly that he had never gone there
and never would. He nonetheless went on to explain that he would ad-
vise members of his congregation to go to the monastery for help with
particular problems because "the world of demons, like our world, is
made up of Christians and Muslims. When someone is afflicted by a
Muslim demon I can deal with the problem, but when someone is trou-
bled by a Christian demon there is nothing I can do, so I send them to
the church" (interview Kicevo, 30 April 2006).
What is of interest here, besides the concept of a mirror world of de-
mons that replicates the demography of the lived world, is that-in this
local context-the imam seems to see no incommensurability between
this vision of the interaction of the demonic and the human worlds and
that of a more Orthodox Sunni theology with its considerably more
strict definition of domains, borders, and pollutions. However, as I will


264 Glenn Bowman

show later, when the world of religious orthodoxy impinges upon lo-
cal practices it disrupts this inter-communalism, asserting property and
propriety issues at the expense of sharing. Here, however, relations be-
tween the human and the demonic world are analogous to those occur-
ring in the quotidian world of social interaction, and rites and obeisances
made in the human world engage an economy or reciprocity with the
demonic. Just as the demonic world mirrors the intermixing of Mus-
lim and Christian while maintaining the difference between the two, so
too do movements within the ritual space of the church maintain that
differentiation, even as Muslims "tap into" Christian rituals to ward off
Christian demons.
Sharing the space of the Sveti Bogoroditsa monastery's chapel does
not entail a syncretic blending of identities, just as interacting on the
streets and in the markets of Kicevo and its satellite villages does not
effect an effacement of sectarian identities (compare Lockwood 1975:
especially 195-211). Muslims within the walls of the church seem, on
initial observation, to go through the same procedures of reverencing the
saints and the sites of power as do the Christians: they circulate through
the church, they light candles in front of the icons (particularly those of
the iconostasis before which they lay gifts of clothing, towels, and some-
times money), they proceed to the rear left of the church where, like the
Christians, they pass a string of cross-inscribed beads over their bodies
three times before crawling three times through a passageway beneath
a pair of healing icons toward a well from which, in leaving, they take
water to splash on their faces and carry home in bottles for healing (see
Bowman 2010: 206-9, for a more detailed description). Closer observa-
tion reveals that this apparent mimicry is subtly but significantly differ-
entiated. Muslims, holding back from Christian groups, introduce small
but important differences of deportment. They do not cross themselves,
they bow their heads to but do not kiss the icons, and in praying they
silently mouth Muslim prayers while holding their hands close to their
chests in front of them with their palms up. Muslims here "work" an
environment they know through the social world they share with their
Christian neighbors and in so doing both engage in ritual acts that they
have learned are efficacious from their neighbors (and their imam) and
render appropriate obeisance to the powers resident in the place (the
Virgin Mary, the saints, the Mother Superior, and the nuns). At the same
time they refuse to violate their own identities by sacrilegiously adopting
the signifiers of Christians as though they were their own. Here, in a reli-
gious setting we have an interaction analogous to what Sorkin describes
in the dense streets of Indian cities-"the continuing process of local
negotiation for the right of passage" (Sorkin 1999: 2).


Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict 265

Property and Propriety in Jerusalem's
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
The "sharing" described above-a sharing extending into religious places
the same modes of intercommunal mixing one sees in the everyday in-
teractions of neighbors in the streets and workplaces of the region-
differs substantially from the types of interactions one sees between
strangers in sites they commonly revere, but not "in common." I will
try to resolve that seeming contradiction between "commonly revering"
but not "in common" through the use of Slavoj Zizek's rendering of Saul
Kripke's concept of the "rigid designator" (Kripke 1980). Zizek contends
that the name for a phenomenon-the rigid designator-constitutes the
ideological experience of the thing rather than the thing itself. Thus it is
the word which, as a word, on the level of the signifier itself, unifies a
given field, constitutes its identity. It is, so to speak, the word to which
"things" themselves refer to recognize themselves in their unity.... It is
not the real object which guarantees as the point of reference the unity
and identity of a certain ideological experience-on the contrary it is
the reference to a "pure" signifier which gives unity and identity to our
experience of historical reality itself. (2izek 1989: 95-96 and 97; see
also Volosinov 1973 [orig. 1929]: 79-80)
Generally, in a world of shared experience, "rigid designators" suffice to
indicate objects and experiences common to those sharing that world,
subsuming idiosyncrasies of personal experience or contextual applica-
tion. However where quotidian experience is not shared, identical signi-
fiers may conjure up very different signifieds for the communities using
them, and the differences may in fact prove to be incommensurabilities.
In earlier examinations of the politics of Palestinian identity before and
after Oslo (Bowman 1988, 1994) I wrote of the different ways the name
"Palestine" signified both a future homeland and a reunified people to
communities in different locales of exile, both outside and inside the
borders of historic Palestine. So long as those populations remained
isolated from each other those disparities of understanding remained
relatively unproblematic, but once Oslo effected a regathering of the
Palestinians from the various sites of their dispersion serious conflicts
erupted between groups over what Palestine should be, what Palestin-
ians should be like, and who in fact was even truly Palestinian.
Something very similar happens at holy places with constituencies
that gather from dispersed locales. Rather than neighbors sharing a sa-
cred place we talk here of strangers coming together in the same space.


266 Glenn Bowman

The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, known to Orthodox Christians as the
Anastasis, lies at the center of an extended web of narratives dealing
with the death and resurrection of Jesus.5 When I carried out field re-
search on Jerusalem pilgrimage in the early 1980s, the Holy Sepulchre,
like other sites throughout the "holy city" of Jerusalem, was visited by
pilgrims from twenty-seven distinct Christian denominations (these, for
the most part, are further divided into distinct national and linguistic
communities) as well as by a multitude of tourists, many from Christian
backgrounds but also many non-Christians. Five sects had places within
the church-the Greek Orthodox, Catholics, and Armenians occupy-
ing the most territory, with the Coptic and Syrian Orthodox holding
tiny chapels-while a sixth, the Ethiopians, held two external chapels
and a rooftop. Despite that sectarian topography the church was swept
daily with crowds of pilgrims and tourists flowing indiscriminately
through the corridors and chapels.6 Such heterodoxy within a limited
space could give rise to "traffic problems" (pushing, expressions of hos-
tility, and occasionally fights, usually between individuals not travelling
in organized groups), but for the most part conflicts were avoided by
what appeared to be spontaneous traffic management. This took place
not through "local negotiation" but because groups moving through the
church effectively "enclaved" themselves into mobile units flowing past
and alongside each other without either engagement or significant rec-
ognition (see Bowman 2011: 376-77). These groups, often made up of
people coming from the same locale or brought together prior to the
visit by an institution or a leader, constituted "in-groups" able not only to
insulate themselves from others but also, under the authority of spiritual
or secular guides associated with the respective groups, to ensure that
their perceptions of the sites and events they encountered confirmed
and built upon their expectations. Such a mode of engaging with holy
sites7 protected the integrity of the connection between rigid designa-
tors and the experiences they signed while preventing the cognitive dis-
sonance of other's readings of those shared designators from disrupting
that alignment. While individuals within these groups shared with each
other an experience of place, they simultaneously related to members of
other groups like bodies in space, moving past and around them with-
out effecting significant contact. Thus while this site might nominally be
termed a "shared site," the character of this interaction throws doubt on
the applicability of the phrase "shared."
The relations described above rarely become conflictual because while
those involved share the same space they rarely share the same place. For
the majority of pilgrims travelling in mobile enclaves the experience of
holy places provides an intimate confirmation of the "reality" of those


Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict 267

sites and of the pilgrims' personal relations to that "reality"; seeing the
"real" place, without being forced to acknowledge the dissonance of
others' interpretations of its reality, provides a sense of spiritual own-
ership that visitors take back to their places of origin.8 "Strangers" do
not need literally to own the place because they do not live there. For
them it is enough to experience the place and possess the knowledge of
its reality.
Relation to place is very different for the monks and priests who
move through and live in the immediate vicinity of the church. They see
themselves as "owning" the holy sites in a much more literal way, and
their conception of property-and of propriety (an etymologically re-
lated term)-can but be conflictual when others who are not of the same
community have similar claims on the sites and different conceptions of
the modes of deportment proper to them. The Franciscan, Armenian,
and Greek Orthodox brotherhoods that care for their respective chapels
within the building9 are brought into daily, often conflictual, contact with
others whose senses of the site's significance, the legitimacy of its pos-
session, and the appropriateness of ritual activities carried out therein
differ on numerous points. Although these men cohabit the Holy Sepul-
chre and its neighborhood, they do not share locale and dispositions
in the ways set out in the opening of this chapter. Jeff Halper describes
the monasteries of the Christian Quarter in the late Ottoman period as
each enclosing radically different lifeworlds, redolent of the nations of
the monks' origins (Greece, France, Armenia) rather than of Jerusalem
(Halper 1984). In many ways, at least in terms of self-sufficiency and
ideological closure, the situations in the monasteries have not changed
much. These insulated habitus produce literal neighbors who are, in ef-
fect, strangers (compare Duru and Bulle this volume). Unlike pilgrims
who move past each other in the holy sites as migratory strangers, these
hierophants are continuously forced to deal in "their" holy places with
the presence of others who see those places as their own. For the monks
and priests the holy sites in the "shared" space of the Anastasis or Holy
Sepulchre are organically connected to the "pure" cultural spaces of the
monasteries, and the presence of others in "their" spaces, much less the
attempt of those others to claim the spaces as "their" own, is anathema.
Whereas in the above cited situations of urban Indian traffic and Mace-
donian shrine sharing mutual investment in "common ground" gives
rise to generally amenable and decorous ritual processes of negotiation
over co-presence, in the Holy Sepulchre quotidian encounters between
representatives of the respective churches are only prevented from rou-
tinely breaking into open violence by the regimen of the Status Quo, a
system of spatial and temporal regulations initially imposed by the Otto-


268 Glenn Bowman

man state and currently maintained through fear of the open intercom-
munal warfare and state side-taking that its rejection would provoke.10
At the core of this conflict is not a simple issue of property ownership;
actual property can-as the tenets of the Status Quo themselves assert-
be shared, albeit through complex ritual regimes. We are instead look-
ing at issues more closely tied to propriety, and through that to identity.
Monks and priests associated with the Holy Sepulchre are able, when
outside of domains demarcated as sacred, to relate to secular locals and
even to members of other fraternities in non-conflictual-sometimes
even amenable-ways. In contexts where religious identities are fore-
grounded, however, particularly in the choreographies of movements
through the spaces of the holy sites, they become representatives of their
particular religious community or, in the terms members of the Greek
Orthodox Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre in the wake of a fight with
Armenian monks over territory referred to themselves, as "defenders of
the holy places" (fieldnotes, 31/12/84). In these contexts they, and the
places they "protect" manifest the truth value of their church and its the-
ology; their presence in the places, and the rituals they carry out there,
are seen to "suture" their dogma and their orthopraxy toward real Chris-
tian revelation. The presence of others carrying out their apostate rituals
and asserting their authority in those places constitutes what Laclau and
Mouffe term an "antagonism" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 93-148)-liter-
ally a radical denial of their own assertions of identity as the sole vehicles
of the true church.
In the case of antagonism ... the presence of the 'Other' prevents me
from being totally myself.... (it is because a peasant cannot be a peas-
ant that an antagonism exists with the landowner who is expelling him
from his land). Insofar as there is antagonism, I cannot be a full pres-
ence for myself. (Ibid.: 125)
It is in this context that property, and the propriety of liturgical de-
meanor therein, becomes an issue of overarching concern. Concern
with overcoming the antagonism presented by the presence of other be-
lief communities is what motivates the insistence of the various religious
communities that they "own" holy places and drives the demands of re-
ligious authorities worldwide that shrines and holy places be purged of
heterodox practices and persons. The politics of the "rigid designator" is
insistence that there is but one signified for the signifier. While this may
appear to take the shape of straightforward demands for sole posses-
sion and inhabitance of a holy place, beneath that demand is the asser-
tion of the truth value of a core identity and the insistence that no other


Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict 269

representation can lay claim to the place where that identity manifests
and celebrates itself. As a Greek monk told Nikos Kazantzakis when he
visited the Anastasis in 1927: "this entire church belongs to us, the Or-
thodox. All the sacred shrines are ours.... [W]e're going to throw the
Armenians out.... Whatever the Latins tell you is a lie. All their shrines
are fakes. I hope to God the day comes when we can throw them out"
(Kazantzakis 1973: 153).
Sveti Nikola/Hadir Baba: Simultaneity of Place
The concept of "property" functions in various ways in sites we refer to
as "shared." In the case of Sveti Bogoroditsa Prechista, Muslims attend-
ing the monastery's church do not in any way dispute the Macedonian
Orthodox Church's ownership of the site, visiting and using it with due
deference to the nuns who live there. The Mother Superior and the ma-
jority of the nuns are in no way threatened by the presence of Muslims
in the church, appreciating their generosity ("they give more than the
Christians") and recognizing coexistence within the site as a welcome
consequence of the long-term good relations of Muslims and Chris-
tians in the nearby town and surrounding countryside" (see Bowman
2010: 209). In another Macedonian site I have written on, Sveti Nikola in
Makedonski Brod, Sufi and Sunni Muslims praying in the church recog-
nize the authority of the Orthodox caretakers, yet simultaneously asso-
ciate the edifice and the tomb within with the Bektashi saint Hadir Baba.
Relations between the Christian visitors from the town and the Muslim
visitors from neighboring settlements are cordial, and lubricated-as at
Sveti Bogoroditsa-by the generosity of Muslims whose copious gifts
are auctioned off to support the town's main church. Intriguingly, in the
case of Sveti Nikola/Hadir Baba mutual commitment by both communi-
ties to the continued sharing of the site is manifest in the simultaneous
display of Sufi and Christian iconography within the church although,
as I describe in my study of the site, perceived imbalances of display
are able to give rise to aggrievement and potential hostility (Bowman
2010: 203-6). In both instances, as at the shrine of Haider Shaikh in
Malerkotla described by Anna Bigelow, the local communities as well
as the officiants at the religious sites commit themselves to maintaining
forms of intercommunal cooperation in the shrines cognate with those
taking place beyond their perimeters. Changes in that wider context of
social relations, resulting in a breakdown of conviviality, can fracture that
commitment, making way for one or the other community to attempt
to force the other from the shrine; such an expulsion would mirror that


270 Glenn Bowman

effected in the surrounding social world. In other instances religious au-
thorities, often backed by individuals of influence over local members
of one or the other local religious community, may exploit frictions or
fissures in the local community to push for the "purification" of a shrine.
Even, however, in such instances the perceived sanctity of a site may
be retained by the general population so that not only might members
of the religious and ethnic communities banished from the site return,
covertly and sometimes overtly, but also, as relatively amicable inter-
communal relations in the surrounding locale are re-established, the
site may again begin to be shared (see Bowman 2012: 215-17; see also
Hayden this volume).
Shrines such as the Anastasis or Holy Sepulchre are very different
insofar as rather than being perceived as properties of the local commu-
nity (in both the sense of belonging to the local milieu and being charac-
teristic of that social formation) they are presented as standing outside
of their immediate context, belonging instead to ideologically consti-
tuted communities that may originate, and even reside, at a substantial
physical and cultural distance from their literal site. For pilgrims visiting
such sites from afar the holy places "belong" to them in a spiritual or
devotional sense. They ideologically imagine the place as a spiritual pos-
session that, once witnessed, can be "taken home" with them for medi-
tation and validation, but their desire to literally possess the place rarely
extends further than their wish to collect relics (oil, candles, carved olive
wood crosses) to metonymically connect them with the place. For resi-
dent clergy, however, such holy places not only "belong" to their sects in
a spiritual sense but must literally belong to their churches, since pos-
session of the site both confirms their core identities as guardians of the
holy places and authorizes and amplifies the sanctity of the site through
their provision of appropriate liturgical practices (and their blockage of
heterodox practices). Here the presence of others not only presents an
integral challenge to their identities but also desecrates the sanctity of
that central site (see Hassner 2009). "Tolerance" is anything but tolera-
tion in this context as it is in effect no more than enforced cohabitation.
Strangers and Neighbors
The distinction between "space" and "place" set out at the opening of
this chapter is key to understanding the emergence of antagonism in
shared sites. Space, as an encompassing container, is able to hold a num-
ber of entities without their having any relation aside from that of con-


Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict 271

tiguity. Place, as a site of inhabitance, can contain differentiated bodies,
but these, by sharing place, enter into relations with each other. Thus,
on the one hand pilgrim groups, converging on the same holy sites from
different places of origin, are able to flow around and past each other,
each pursuing their own realizations of their own envisionings of the
significance of the sites they temporarily occupy. The "place" each group
inhabits is effectively rendered discontinuous with the "places" of oth-
ers, and interaction is kept minimal and impersonal. On the other hand,
neighbors of different sectarian affiliations can meet in local holy places,
engaging with each other through media of negotiation and mutual rec-
ognition analogous to those they use in their everyday interactions out-
side of holy ground. Here each group simultaneously occupies the same
place and must engage modes of mutual accommodation, rendering that
coexistence as non-conflictual and as mutually beneficial as possible. In
the instance of the Holy Sepulchre or Anastasis, a situation not unlike
others worldwide in which religious powers work to present a site as a
pure signifier of an exclusive identity that must be defended from the
pollution of other forms of worship,12 two or more communities attempt
to construct, and inhabit (literally and ritually), exclusive places at the
same time in coterminous spaces. Such cohabitation is, in terms of their
respective discourses, an impossibility, and thus the presence of the other
presents a literal antagonism that must either be overcome through ex-
pulsion or succumbed to by withdrawal. The "stand-off" that is the cur-
rent status quo effected by the Status Quo is an ideological impossibility,
and the Holy Sepulchre/Anastasis will remain a flashpoint, surrounded
by the tinder of cadres of ideologically motivated monks, until either a
discursive shift in the respective theologies replaces antagonism with
fraternity or one group successfully expropriates and "cleanses" the site.
In the post-Ottoman sphere, where conceptions of "nationalist" iden-
tity increasingly impose themselves on domains where "national" identi-
ties had served as markers of nominal difference within mixed commu-
nities,13 places that had been shared-whether secular or sacred-are
transformed into the exclusive properties of ethno-nationalist groupings.
Sharing, or even mixing, is there rendered contentious, and local events
in which individuals with different allegiances clash come to be read
more widely as indubitable signifiers of irresolvable inter-communal an-
tagonisms. Once such a discursive shift has taken place, and shared sites
have been transformed into terrains on which struggles for possession
take place, it becomes increasingly impossible to imagine contemporary
cohabitation and sharing, and the image of coexistence fades into a uto-
pian fantasy of a distant "Ottoman" past.


272 Glenn Bowman

Glenn Bowman is Professor of Socio-historical Anthropology at the
University of Kent, Canterbury. He has conducted fieldwork in Jeru-
salem, the Occupied West Bank, Yugoslavia, and Macedonia, on how
people in communities marked by diversity-particularly by different
religious affiliations-manage for the most part to live together but, in
certain circumstances, divide into antagonistic groupings that war with
each other. Since 2004 he has researched "walling," i.e., processes to
block any contacts between communities, in Israel and Cyprus. He is a
former editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the
author of numerous articles and the editor of Sharing the Sacra: The Pol-
itics and Pragmatics of Inter-Communal Relations around Holy Places
(Oxford: Berghahn, 2012).
Notes
1. Place, n.1. OED Online. March 2013. Oxford University Press (accessed 19
April 2013), see also Casey (1997), Casey (2002), and Massey (2005).
2. The concept of habitus, itself a Latin translation of the Greek hexis, has a
long genealogy stretching back nearly two and a half millennia from Bour-
dieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977 [orig. 1972]) and Logic of Prac-
tice (1990 [orig. 1980]) via Mauss' Les Techniques du Corps (1935, see also
1979) and Aquinas's Summa Theologica (la2ae, 49-54) to Aristotle's Nich-
omachean Ethics (1098b33).
3. See too the essays collected in Albera and Couroucli (2009 and 2012) and
Bowman (2012).
4. "Situational identity" is a concept generally assumed to have been gener-
ated by, but not specifically used in, Erving Goffman's theory of the dra-
maturgical construction of social identity developed in The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life (1959). Max Gluckman had, however, elaborated the
concept of "situational selection" in 1940 whereby individuals shape their
behaviors, in different social contexts, so as to conform to the values and
practices of groups they associate with there: "the shifting membership
of groups in different situations is the functioning of the structure, for an
individual's membership of a particular group in a particular situation is
determined by the motives and values influencing him in that situation. In-
dividuals can thus live coherent lives by situational selection from a medley
of contradictory values, ill-assorted beliefs, and varied interests and tech-
niques" (Gluckman 1958 [orig. 1940]: 26).
5. Despite the difference in name the "place" of the crucifixion, tomb ("sepul-
chre"), and resurrection ("anastasis") of Jesus is established at the heart of
New Testament biblical narratives so that that "place" can be seen to func-
tion as a rigid designator even when ideas of its actual location can differ by
several hundred meters (as with the Anglican Garden Tomb).


Grounds for Sharing-Occasions for Conflict 273

6. The Greek Orthodox Katholicon was, however, normally closed to all but
the Greek Orthodox.
7. These strategies were carried out throughout Holy Land pilgrimages and,
one suspects, across other forms of organized travel-see Schmidt (1979).
8. Those whose experiences do not live up to their expectations, or in fact
seem to refute them, may be impelled to deny that the sites are the "real"
sites (either because the real sites are elsewhere or because they have been
effaced by time) or may be forced to question their previous assumptions
and beliefs.
9. The Coptic, Syrian, and Ethiopian Orthodox, who possess chapels because
of historic precedent, are small communities with little political or eco-
nomic power, and their presence in the church is rarely challenged by the
dominant religious communities (although they fight among themselves
over the territories they do control; see Bowman 2011: 389-91).
10. See Fisher-Ilan (2004) for one of many examples, Cohen (2008) and Bow-
man (2011, 2014) for different interpretations of how and why the Status
Quo is maintained.
11. Although one university-trained novice, recently relocated to the monas-
tery from Skopje, expressed hostility toward Muslim visitors, claiming they
were planning to "steal" the church (Bowman 2010: 209).
12. A salient example is the 1992 destruction by Hindu activists of the Babri
Mosque at Ayodhya in order to clear the site for the construction of the Sri
Ram Janam Bhumi Temple commemorating the birthplace of Lord Rama
(an avatar of Vishnu).
13. See Bowman 2015 as well as my discussion of the Titoist treatment of "na-
tional" versus "nationalist" identities in Bowman (2003: 229-30).
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Index

A
A-Ram, 243, 245
Abasiyanik, Sait Faik, 163-64
Abdul Mecid, Sultan, 45
Agamben, Giorgio, 240
Agos (newspaper), 215, 226, 231
agriculture, 26, 44, 46-48, 51, 55n8
cultivation, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51,
55n8
agro-sylvo-pastoral system, 47
irrigation, 47-48, 51, 55n9
sharecropping, 48
shifting cultivation, 47-48, 55n8
subsistence, 44
AK Party (AKP, Turkey), 171, 209,
211, 224, 230
Ak-yazul Baba tomb (Bulgaria),
75-76
Akgdn6l, Samim, 208, 211, 227,
230n5
Aktamar, 218-19
Aleksander Nevsky Cathedral
(Sofia), 75
Alevis, 158, 165-66, 168-69,
171-72, 175, 208
Alexandria, 29, 129-31, 134-36, 145,
151-52
Allerton, Catherine, 20
Altinay, Ayge Gil, 213, 241n14,
241n16
Anadolu Kiiltiir, 217, 232
Anastasis (Jerusalem). See Church of
the Holy Sepulchre
apology campaign (Turkey), 213
Arab Israelis, 245
Arendt, Hannah, 212-13, 222

Armenians
Armenia-Turkey Cinema
Platform, 232
Armenian Club (Nicosia),
118-19, 122
Armenian Orthodox, 208, 225
in Istanbul, 28, 215-16, 219,
220, 223-26, 229, 230n2
in Turkey, 4, 212, 217
Article 301 (Turkish Penal Code),
213
ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for
the Liberation of Armenia), 221,
223, 233n38
Assayag, Jackie, 260-61
Ayik, Vartkes Ergiin, 218
B
Balkan wars. See Yugoslavia, war
Banya Bali Mosque (Sofia), 74-5
Barkey, Karen, 12-13, 15, 60
Bartholomew, Patriarch (Greek
Orthodox), 233
Baydemir, Osman, 219, 232
Bedrosyan, Raffi, 218
Bethlehem, 244-45
Bentley, Eric, 133, 153
Bektashi
religious order, 76-78, 99
saint, 77, 269
Bigelow, Anna, 260-62, 269
Bilaniuk, Laada, 199, 201
Black Mosque (Sofia), 74-5
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 181-92,
194-96, 199-200
Herzegovina, 186, 194, 196


Index 277

Bosnian language, 185, 189, 191, 200
and Bosniak, 191, 193, 197
Bourdieu, Pierre, 172, 259-61, 272n2
Boykov, Grigor, 82n2
Brahim Baba (Crete). See Ibrahim
Baba spring
Bringa, Tone, 1-2, 262
Brubaker, Rogers, 31n10, 79-80
Buffer Zone (Nicosia), 107-8
Burgaz Island, 7-8, 29, 159-75
Bursa (Turkey), 59-60, 62-63
Butler, Judith, 134
C
agaptay, Suna, 61, 63
Candea, Mattei, 19
Cathedral Church of the Holy Cross,
218
Cathedral of the Holy Mother of
God (Plovdiv), 73-4
centrality (concept), 73-74, 81n1
etin, Fethiye, 213-14, 222
My Grandmother (Anneannem),
213
Chalom (character), 129-32, 135,
138, 144-49, 151n10, 152n22,
153n32, 154n35
Chau, Adam Yuet, 164
Chicago School, 240, 251
Christodoulou, Demetrios, 42,
48-49
Church of the Holy Mother of God
Most Innocent, 263-64, 269
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
(Jerusalem), 69, 266-68, 270-71,
272n5
Church of the Resurrected Christ
(Serbia), 66
"Citizen Speak Turkish" campaign,
209
civil inattention, 8, 27, 30, 248, 251,
255
coexistence, 3-12, 14, 21-30, 31n12,
41-44, 53-54, 62, 67, 80-81, 86-
87, 92-94, 97,100-2,108-110,

121, 129-30, 135-36, 144, 148-49,
152n21, 157-59, 161, 164, 167-71,
175, 180, 186, 208, 211-12, 219-
20, 222, 227, 229, 249-50, 252,
258, 269, 271
peaceful, 4, 9-11, 23, 28, 41, 62,
80, 86-87, 93-94, 97, 100, 102
cohabitation, 8, 14, 144, 258, 260,
270-71
Cohan, Steven, 150n2
commensality, 2, 154n33, 258
communities of confidence, 8, 30,
248, 252
Constantinou, Costas M., 2, 9, 21
constructive ambiguity, 21-23,
25-27, 29, 46, 121, 249
contiguity, 29-30, 240-41, 248-49,
251-53,262
conviviality (convivencia), 7, 158-61,
164, 166-75, 176n1, 269
co-presence, 8, 29, 120, 239-41,
250-51, 267
cosmopolitanism, 6-7, 91-92,
102-3, 151n13, 160, 176n1
Cowan, Jane, 176n3
Cretan Question, 97
Croatian language, 181, 183-84,
188-98, 200. See also Serbo-
Croatian language
cultural fundamentalism, 180
cultural property, 261
Cyprus, 1, 3, 10, 19-20, 22, 28,
31n11, 41-44, 46-52, 54, 55n8,
55n10, 56n15, 64, 79-80, 108-9,
112-14, 116, 123, 168-70, 210
D
Demirta , Abdullah, 218, 232n34
Derinkuyu (Turkey), 79
Dersim (Tunceli), 176n7, 214, 231n17
Dink, Hrant, 215-216, 224, 231n19
Hrant Dink Foundation, 217,
231n18, 232n30
diplomacy, everyday, 9, 21, 23, 25,
27, 30, 42, 101, 220, 222, 249, 251


278 Index

domovina, 29, 193-94
danme, 176n4
Doumanis, Nicholas, 5-6, 10, 25-26,
30n3, 31n8, 159
Druze, 245
Dumont, Louis, 60
E
effendi masculinity, 134-35, 152n22
effendiyya, 135
enclaves, Turkish Cypriot, 52
endogamy, 4, 61
Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 212, 225,
231n10
Erzincan, 165-66, 169, 215
European Court of Human Rights,
53, 225
European Union (EU), 77, 171, 207
F
farce, 29, 132-33, 143, 153n28
bedroom farce, 133-34, 140, 146
Victorian, 152n16
vs. burlesque, 133
Fish, Stanley, 230n8
Ford, Richard Thompson, 134
Forty Martyrs Church (Sofia), 75
Foundations Law. See Law of
Foundations
G
giving ground, 8, 30, 258-60
Goffman, Irving, 29-30, 255n15,
272n4
Gluckman, Max, 272n4
gray spaces, 249-50
Guler, Ara, 224
Ara Cafe, 224
Gultekin, Mihran, 231n17
H
Habitus, 120, 172, 197, 252, 259-63,
267,272n2
Hadir Baba tomb (Macedonia), 77,
269

Hagia Sophia (Istanbul), 66, 68
hali, 45
halloumi, 21, 114-15
Halper, Jeff, 267
Hammett, Dashiell, 152n20
Hanson, Ellis, 134
Harmanyeri, Ece, 228
Hasluck, F. W., 62, 67, 75-76, 78
Hassner, Ron, 81n1
Hatay, Mete, 10, 80
Hebron, 244
heteronormativity, 142-43
Hocart, A. M., 20
Holy Sepulchre, Church of
(Jerusalem), 69, 266-71
Horden, Peregrine, 46, 48
ho~grii, 157, 175
hospitality, 9, 19-21, 24, 26-27,
32nn18-19, 42, 167, 249, 252
huzur, 9, 15
I
Ibrahim Baba spring (Crete), 93
Ibrahim Pasha Mosque (Bulgaria),
173
Immovable Property Law of 1946
(Cyprus), 49
intercommunality, 5, 25-26
interdependence, 18, 27-28, 240-41,
249-50
intertemporality, 68-70
Intifada, 238, 245
"White Intifada" 245
Iraklio, 6, 87-89, 92, 95-96, 99, 102,
103 n. 1
Islam, 60-63, 79, 94, 96, 153n27, 171,
176n4, 208-9, 211, 214, 219
Islamism, 171, 209
Islamist, 211, 230n1
Islamized Armenians, 213-14,
231n18
Sunni, 24, 77-78, 158, 160,
164-65,170,172-73, 208,
210, 263, 269
Shafi'i, 160, 173


Index 279

Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 238, 250,
252
Israeli settlements, 243, 245-248,
251, 254n7
Istanbul, 6-7, 17, 28-29, 66, 68,
160-62, 165-66, 169, 171-73, 207,
210-12, 215-21, 223-27, 229
Armenian community. See
Armenians, in Istanbul
Greek community, 6, 162-66,
168, 170-71, 173-75, 176n6
riots (1955), 161, 168-70,
176n5, 210
J
Jacob, Wilson, 134-35, 152n22
Jerusalem, 69, 120, 238-45, 247-52,
254-55, 266-67
East, 238-39, 242-44, 247, 249,
251-52, 254
Municipality of, 240
tramway, 30, 248, 251
Jordan Valley, 246
Justice and Development Party
(Turkey). See AK Party
K
kadi, 44
Kardam, Nikhet, 214-15
Kardjali (also Karcali), 83-84
Kasim Pasha Mosque, 64
al-Kassar, cAli, 131-32, 135, 151n11,
152n16
Kavala, Osman, 217
Kaya, Ayhan, 228
Kazantzakis, Nikos, 93-94, 269
Kemalism, 171, 209, 209-11, 214
Kicevo (Macedonia), 263-64
kom uluk (komsiluk), 14, 16-18, 23,
31n15, 158, 181, 199nl
Koneska, Elizabeta, 77-78, 263
Kosovo, 79
Kripke, Saul, 265
Kurds, 158, 160, 168-69, 208-9, 213,
215, 217, 219-20, 224, 228

L
labor of peace, 9, 17, 21-22, 25, 27,
46, 158, 167, 252
Laclau, Ernesto, 268
Lafi, Nora, 7
land fragmentation, 47-48, 50. See
also agriculture
and inheritance, 41, 47, 49
Land Reform of 1946 (Cyprus),
49-50
language ideologies, 181, 201n15
Law of Foundations, 209, 227
Law of Settlement (1934), 209
Law of Surnames (1934), 210
Levantine
aesthetics, 29, 136, 144-145, 148
ethics of coexistence, 136, 144
identity, 8, 29, 133-136, 148,
152nn19-21
idiom, 8, 29, 130, 133-135, 143,
152n24
queerness and, 130, 134,
152nn19-21
"liberation churches" 74
linguistic nationalism, 196
linguistic purism, 190
Lowry, Heath, 78
M
mahalle, 9, 14-15, 17, 22, 24, 99,
103n5, 107, 117, 121, 158. See also
neighborhood (concept)
Malerkotla, 260-62, 269
manuals, ethics, 16, 32n17
Market Mosque (Sofia), 74
Massey, Doreen, 110, 120, 125n16
Mauss, Marcel, 260-62, 272n2
Melnyk, Svetlana, 199, 201
melodrama, 132-33, 152n18
and the nation, 133
Menicucci, Garay, 152n24
Mesrob II, Patriarch of Istanbul
(Armenian Orthodox), 218, 224,
233n44
metruk, 45


280 Index

micro-region, 46-48
millet, 4, 8, 11-12, 92, 95, 97-98,
157-58, 233n40
Mills, Amy, 6, 211-12
miri, 44-45
Mishor Adumim, 246
mizrahi (pl. mizrahim), 143, 250
and mashriqi, 143
Mizrahi, Togo, 129-36, 143, 150n3,
151nn5-6, 151n9, 151nn11-12,
151n14, 152nn19-22, 153n24,
153n27, 153n30, 153n32, 154n33
Doctor Farahat, 130, 132, 136-
43, 146-47, 150n3, 151n6,
151n12, 151n15, 153n30
Mistreated by Affluence,
129-30, 136, 138, 143-44,
146, 148-49,150n5,151n
9, 153n25, 153n32, 154n33,
154n35
modernization, 28, 43, 49-50, 89
Mostar, 9, 29, 181, 185-96, 198,
201n16
bridge, 9
Gymnasium, 29, 181, 185-96,
198, 201n16
Mouffe, Chantal, 268
Movement for Rights and Freedoms
(Bulgaria), 74
milk, 45
Muradiye Mosque (Bulgaria), 73
N
narod, 189, 193
neighbor's right, 16
neighborhood (concept), 2-3, 5,
8-9,14-21,24-26,31n15, 41-43,
45-48, 53, 54n1, 71, 101, 107,
117-18, 121, 148, 199n1, 241, 245,
249-50, 253, 259-62.
neighborliness (also see kom uluk),
9, 14, 16-19, 21, 23, 26-28, 30,
31n15, 42
Nicosia, 8, 27, 51, 107-10, 114-20,
122, 124n7, 125n10, 249

Niganyan, Sevan, 233n36
nostalgia, 4, 6-7, 10, 17, 26, 88, 91,
94, 98, 103, 123, 151n13, 159-60,
210-11
cosmopolitan, 6-7, 88, 151n13,
159, 210-11
imperialist, 91
neo-Ottoman, 7
post-Ottoman, 17, 159
Nusseibeh, Sari, 252, 255n19
O
Obrochiste (Bulgaria), 75
Oktem, Kerem, 212, 231n14
arf, 44
OSCE (Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe), 188,
191-92,196
Oslo Accords, 71, 265
Ottoman Empire (also Ottomans),
3-4, 8, 11-15, 17, 22, 24, 31n8,
43, 45, 55n10, 59-60, 62, 64-67,
72-73, 87, 90-92, 98, 157-59, 168,
171, 176n3, 183, 210-15, 228
Ottoman Land Code, 45-46, 49, 55
Overing, Joanna, 166-67
P
Palestinian territories, 239, 253
Pantopolio/Bandabulya, 113,
115-16, 123, 125n12
Park, Robert, 240
Partition (South Asia), 3, 261
Pasieka, Agnieszka, 6
Passes, Alan, 166-67
Peasants, 43-44, 47, 49-50, 53,
56n12,60
Pecs, 59, 63-64
Peleikis, Anja, 25-26
perceptibility, 72-74
performance (concept), 8, 20, 26-27,
29-30, 134-136, 141, 149, 167,
181,186,196-198
language, 181, 186, 193, 197-8
performativity, 18, 26, 29, 134-36


Index 281

Philliou, Christine, 211
Pisgat Zeev, 246-47, 252
place (concept), 2-4, 7-8, 16-18, 21,
26, 30, 59, 71, 80, 109-11, 122-23,
159-60, 167, 171-172, 175, 217,
241, 249, 252, 258-260, 265-271,
272n1, 272n5
Plovdiv (Bulgaria), 72-74
population exchange, 79
of 1923, 66, 91, 98, 159, 169,
176n6
Purcell, Nicholas, 46, 48
Q
Qalandiya, 243-44
queer (including queerness,
queering), 129-30, 133-34, 136,
138, 141, 149, 150n2, 152nn19-21
theory, 134
and gender identity, 129, 138
R
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 69
Razgrad (Bulgaria), 73
Reilly, James A., 211
religioscape, 24, 67, 71, 74-75, 78-
81
Republican People's Party (CHP),
176n4, 207, 209
Republika Srpska, 79, 182
rigid designator, 265-66, 268, 272n5
Ring, Laura, 22-23, 26, 167, 250
riot, in South Asia, 13, 30n2
Robbins, Joel, 60, 91
Rodrigue, Aron, 6, 13
Rosaldo, Renato, 88
S
Saint Atamas tomb (Bulgaria), 76
Saint Barnabus Monastery (Cyprus),
79
Saint Mamas Church (Cyprus),
79-80
Saint Mary of the Mongols Church
(Istanbul), 66

Saint Nedelya Church (Sofia), 74-75
Saint Nicholas Church
in Chania, Crete, 65
in Famagusta, Cyprus, 64
in Makedonski Brod, Macedonia
(also Sveti Nikola), 64-65, 73,
77
Saint Sophia Mosque (Cyprus) (also
Aya Sofya), 64, 113, 117, 125n13
Sarafian, Ara, 218
Sarajevo, 16, 59, 72, 195, 263
scale (concept), 9, 17, 19, 24-25, 71,
78, 80, 158, 252-53
scale-free abstraction, 19
Schmitt, Carl, 254nl
security barrier (Israel), 238-39,
242-43, 245. See also separation
wall (Israel)
separation wall (Israel), 238-42,
245, 249. See also security barrier
(Israel)
Serbo-Croatian language, 181,
183-84, 195, 198, 200
Shari'a, 44-45
Shryock, Andrew, 24-25, 32n18
Simmel, Georg, 8, 27, 108, 120, 123,
125n17, 240-41, 249
Sinclair-Webb, Emma, 230nl
situational identities, 261, 272n4
smuggler (as stranger), 251
social stratification, 44, 53
Sofia (city), 66, 74, 78
Sorabji, Cornelia, 16
Sorkin, Michael, 258-59, 264
Sourp Giragos Cathedral
(Diyarbakir), 218-19, 232n34
sovereignty, 9, 18-21, 24-25, 240,
252
multi-scalar, 8, 18, 24, 119
space (concept), 2-4, 8-9, 12-14,
16, 19, 21, 24-25, 27-30, 31n14,
41-2, 59-63, 66-67, 71-73,
78-81, 81n1, 93, 98-102, 107-11,
118-19, 121, 125n8, 158-59, 161,
164, 167-68, 175, 180, 192, 198,


282 Index

216-17, 239, 243-45, 247-53,
258-59,263-68,270-71
post-Ottoman, 3-4, 9, 16, 21,
25, 59-61, 78, 159, 175
spatial governmentality, 182, 186,
200n6
Spivak, Gayatri, 222
Status Quo, the (Jerusalem), 267-68,
271, 273n10
stranger (concept), 20-22, 250, 265,
267
the (Simmel), 8, 27, 108, 120,
123, 125n17, 249-251
structural functionalism, 69
Suciyan, Talin, 212
sulh, 6, 9, 15, 22
Sveti Bogoroditsa (Plovdiv). See
Cathedral of the Holy Mother of
God
Sveti Bogoroditsa Prechista
(Bulgaria). See Church of the Holy
Mother of God Most Innocent
Sveti Nikola Church (Macedonia),
77, 269
T
Talcat Harb, Muhammad, 131
Tamari, Salim, 250
Tanzimat, 74
Tarnovo, Veliko, 60
threshold (house), 21, 23-24, 26-27
tolerance (also toleration), 5-7,
11-13,17,67,157-159,161,
164, 168-71, 175, 186, 208, 211,
228-229, 244, 260, 270
antagonistic, 5, 31n5, 60, 67
Ottoman, 11-12, 17, 31n12,
31n8, 208, 218
traffic (concept), 258-59, 266-67
trapped minority, 189, 201n17

Treaty of Lausanne, 98, 157, 169,
208-9
Trigg, Dylan, 108
Trilye (also Triglea), 63, 66
Tunceli, 214, 231. See also Dersim
Turkification, 208-9, 223, 226
Turkocretan, 87, 90-91, 95, 97-99,
101-102
U
Umm Kulthum, 131, 151n8
Uzundzhovo (Bulgaria), 79
V
vakif (pl., evkaf), 45, 53, 116, 124n6
Valtchinova, Galia, 14
Van, Governor of, 218
Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax, Turkey),
168, 176n4, 210
Varshney, Ashutosh, 27
W
Wealth Tax. See Varlik Vergisi
West Bank, 243-44, 254nn6-7
Wirth, Lewis, 240-1
Y
Yiftachel, Oren, 249-50
Yilmaz, Fikret, 15
Yugoslavia, 183-184, 186, 190-1,
196, 200n10
war (also Balkan wars), 1, 9,
31n15, 180, 186
Z
Zagreb, 193-94
Zaim, Dervi , 1-2
Zaza, 160, 166, 172
2izek, Slavoj, 98, 265