Nationalist Discourse in Late-1960s Turkish Cypriot Children’s Magazines

The final speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen, whose focus is on nationalist discourse in the late-1960s Turkish Cypriot children’s magazine Tuncer (named after a teacher supposedly killed by Greek Cypriots). Cyprus is of course an island divided between Turkish and Greek Cypriot areas since the Turkish invasion of the early 1970s, and populated by Turkish and Greek communities since at least the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus.

Nationalism is a discourse structured around the nodal point of ‘nation’, and its distinction from other national identities, so the present study takes a discourse-theoretical approach. Here, this is predicated on Turkish language, history, territory, faith, genealogy, and (in Turkish culture) also military values. This positions Turkish Cyprus as belonging to a wider Turkish nation that extends beyond the country of Turkey itself, and excludes Greek Cypriots, the Cypriot Arabic and Cypriot Armenian minorities.

These ideas are strongly embraced by the children’s magazine, which promotes Turkish language and even ignores the distinct Turkish Cypriot dialect; positions Turkish Cyprus within a broader Turkish history that transcends Turkish national history; claims Cyprus as belonging to Turkish territory; and includes Cyprus in the Turkish myth of being an Islamic military nation. This sheds light on some of the dimensions of this ongoing, if currently static, conflict.