Countless visitors have asked, “Why so many flags?” The answer to which has usually been, “Because we want the Greeks to know that we are here, and that we are here to stay.” Today, however, many are asking, “Why are there even more flags than before?” Wednesday’s 24th anniversary of the founding of the TRNC goes only part way to answering the question. It can explain why all official buildings were draped in flags and traffic junctions were decked out in bunting; it might also be an explanation as to why two more enormous flags were erected on the hillside overlooking Kyrenia this week. But it does not explain away the relatively newfound need of ordinary people to express their Turkishness by placing flags in just about every free space. “There is a kind of flag fetishism,” says Dr Erol Kaymak of the International Relations Department at the Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) in Famagusta. “Every time a car passes me I see a flag and a sticker saying ‘How happy I am to be a Turk’.” Kaymak sees this increasing need to outwardly express national identity as a trend that has its roots in many causes, some of which stem from Turkey, and some from Cyprus. In Turkey, Kaymak says, nationalism has been on the rise for several years, fuelled mainly by growing disillusionment with the EU. Many Turks, he says, now believe the EU will never accept Turkey as a full member and therefore feel little need for their country to continue the project of transforming itself from a military strongman to a liberal democracy. Adding to this, nationalism has been further boosted by the military’s recent stepping up of a campaign to wipe out the Kurdish separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which it says is seeking to establish a Kurdish nation within Turkey’s borders. With 100,000 Turkish troops currently poised on the Iraqi border to launch an incursion into northern Iraq in pursuit of the PKK, nationalism is at an all-time high. Naturally, the rise of nationalist fervour in Turkey has had a spin-off effect on the north of Cyprus. The mere fact that tens of thousands of mainland Turks live there is enough to account for that, plus, of course, the fact that the Turkish state, government and military are the sole sponsors of the breakaway state make it unthinkable that it would be any other way. But in northern Cyprus the mood is a different from the one currently felt in Turkey, because although Turkish Cypriots to some extent sympathise with Turkey’s problems with the PKK, it is not a burning issue for them. Kaymak’s colleague at the EMU, International Relations professor Ahmet Sozen, says, however, that there are links between the nationalist phenomenon in Turkey and the smaller, but by no means less tangible, nationalist resurgence in north Cyprus – and these links stem from the political alliance that exists between the Turkish civilian government and presidency, and the administration in northern Cyprus. Both the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot leaders, he says, have scored major political victories against the military – primarily by winning elections and introducing reforms that chip away at its hegemony – and the military is not pleased. The upshot now is that the military wants to reassert itself as the true ruler of Turkey and northern Cyprus. “Some people are trying to prove something. The army is not pleased, and is trying to show who’s boss,” Sozen says. “The army is trying to find every loophole to punish the AK party [Turkey’s ruling party], and by slapping the CTP [the ruling party in the north], it is indirectly hitting the AK party,” he says. What is happening in northern Cyprus is ultimately a microcosm of what is happening in Turkey. How then is the military “slapping” the Turkish Cypriot administration and its leader Mehmet Ali Talat, and what is the link between the military’s pique and the preponderance of flags and increase in nationalistic zeal in the north. Kaymak says flags and nationalistic symbols can and are being used to undermine Talat, and that he believes Talat was probably opposed to the erection of the two new giant flags over Kyrenia. “When they [the flags] were first proposed about eight months ago, he probably persuaded the military to put the idea on the back burner, thinking such a move would have a negative effect on negotiations [with Greek Cypriots]. But this time there was no discussion”. Ultimately, he says, Talat’s hand is being forced. He can’t openly oppose. Kaymak also believes that Talat’s inability to oppose the overt nationalism of the military is causing splits within the leadership’s ranks and traditionally pro-solution Republican Turkish Party (CTP) from which Talat hails. Just two weeks ago, Talat’s chief adviser and right-hand man in negotiations with the Greek Cypriots resigned, citing disillusionment with the pace of reforms as his reason. Increasingly large cracks are also appearing within the CTP, dividing those who believe the party has shifted too far to the right in order to ride out the nationalist storm, and those who still believe that the party’s overriding philosophy should be centred on uniting Cyprus. Kaymak believes Turkey and the north is now heading for “round two of an old fight”, between those who wish to see liberal reforms taking place in both Turkey and northern Cyprus, and those who want power to remain firmly in the hands of the military. The first round of the “old fight” saw the mergence of the reformist AK party in Turkey, while in northern Cyprus it saw Denktash and his supporting parties removed from power. Both developments dented the military’s hegemony, and now it and the right-wing parties that lost at the ballot boxes are fighting back. “The right is emboldened and trying to back into the driver’s seat,” Kaymak says. Who will ultimately win the fight remains to be seen, but in an atmosphere, both in Turkey and north Cyprus, where unwillingness to join in the nationalist carnival is seen as heresy, something will undoubtedly give.”
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