A Taste of What is Ahead (New Publication on Northern Cyprus)

Women’s Life Writings from a “No Wo/Man’s Land”: Northern Cyprus

Abstract

The phrase “Cyprus problem” triggers many associations. As a story gatherer, I think of people’s untold stories as opposed to the heavily edited official histories. Challenging the lack of resources and venues for underprivileged people to speak for and about themselves is my driving force here. I counter the hierarchical process of knowledge making which is usually applied to life narratives in exploitative ways. My work on immigrant women in Northern Cyprus follows a recent academic tendency, favouring “soft issues” of culture, identity and representation in life writings, rather than fixations on “hard issues” of economics and politics. I borrow the metaphor from Fischer-Tiné and Gehrmann[1]. The term “life writing” has the potential to cross genre boundaries and disciplines; and it functions under the influence of different schools of thought [2]. My target population are the immigrant Turkish women who live in Dipkarpaz, an underprivileged area. Stuck in the interactions of multiple systems of discrimination, the women whose life stories I recorded are rarely asked for their opinions. The dominant literature in academia depicts a bi-communal society in conflict, which results in silencing smaller communities. I aim to contribute to an alternative knowledge production and introduce “other” people’s lives without taking a rigid political stance. The Republic of Cyprus’ non-recognition of the northern side of the divide has its paradoxes, but the narrative is still constructed by the privileged men. In the life story interviews, my approach is the naturalistic, person-centred view and it has evolved from an interdisciplinary context[3].

Key words: Women’s life writing, Northern Cyprus, Dipkarpaz, Rizokarpaso, fragmented narratives.

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1.             May a Wasp Sting My Tongue^[4]: Language for Life Writings

When I moved to Northern Cyprus in 2007, I had no idea that I was in an area where ‘acts of crossing, translating, inventing new hybrid languages’ were everyday practices.[5] After collecting, remembering and exposing many anecdotes regarding the use of language in establishing hierarchical structures for communication, I decided to share some with the English-speaking reader. The reader has access to the selected women’s voices through translation, yet should bear in mind the existence of several invisible languages, dialects, accents and mixed languages, which could not be reflected here. Acknowledging this unfairness, I prepared a language-list: Arabic used by immigrants from Hatay (Turkey), Cypriot Greek, Cypriot Maronite Arabic, Cypriot Turkish, English, Kurdish, and Turkish.

According to Michel Foucault, language is a control mechanism because it has the ability to exclude. For instance, institutions control people by using language that not everyone can interact with. For Foucault, this creates power structures, separating those that are in control and those that are not.[6] Gloria Anzaldua would agree with Foucault’s idea that society is controlled by language because it forms a barrier, since she claims that language shapes all environments.[7] These two scholars confirm the idea that language creates a system of hierarchy. The way I spoke Turkish made it obvious that I was an urban, educated person from Turkey, since the way Turkish Cypriots spoke was different. They spoke a dialect of Turkish, not expressed in writing or in official documents. Although rather charmed and confused at first, instead of describing it as “cute” or “weird” as most outsiders do, I have done my best to learn its subtleties.

The fragmented passages presented in the third section (Potpourris) are evidence for a hierarchical system. Using fragmentation as a narrative style while reflecting the women’s voices, does not mean that I am in favour of deconstructionism in the Derridean sense. Despite the barriers and instances of miscommunications, it is my hope that even a “stung tongue” can manage to get some messages across. This is also the reason why I prioritize the language section over the other subtitles.

For some time I have been actively working on women’s “life writings,” a phrase reclaimed by Marlene Kadar in Essays on Life Writing. She uses it to contain many kinds of texts, fictional and non-fictional, and it includes more than life stories. It has the potential to cross genre boundaries and disciplines; and it functions under the influence of hermeneutics, reader-response theory, feminism and psychoanalysis. [viii] Inspired also by Ruth Behar’s work in the late 1990s, I became engaged in reading reflexive and autobiographical ethnographies, often written by feminist scholars. I have also been affiliated with The Network for Reflexive Academic Writing Methodologies founded by Mona Livholts in 2008.

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[1] Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann, eds. ‘Empires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class and Gender in Colonial Settings.’ (New York, USA: Routledge, 2009). 3

[2] Marlene Kadar. ‘Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice. (Toronto, Canada: Toronto University Press, 1992).  152-155

[3] J.F.Gubrium and J.A.Holstein. ‘Narrative Practice and the Coherence of Personal Stories.’ Sociological Quarterly 39 (1998). 163-187

[4] This is the verbatim English translation of the Turkish curse “dilini eşek arısı soksun,” used when something said is disapproved of. Since this essay exposes some prejudices and problems known to the locals but not easily shared with outsiders, the curse is deserved by the author since she makes insider information available in writing and in English. However, what is revealed also includes academic hierarchies and knowledge production barriers so the reader decides how much of the sting is earned for sharing those. 

[5] Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, eds. ‘Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives.’ 2^nd edition. (Minneapolis, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 46

[6] Dianna Taylor. ‘Michel Foucault: Key Concepts.’ (Bloomington, USA: Indiana University Press, 2011). 45

[7] http://geanzaldua.weebly.com/what-is-linguistic-terrorism.html.

[viii] Marlene Kadar. ‘Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice.’ (Toronto, Canada: Toronto University Press, 1992).  152-155

A poem

LOVE
 

Is there any consolation in knowing

We are all failures at it

Or its derivation, defeat, trying to avoid it?

Maybe you don’t want to read this?

So try Puget Sound

in early morning light

When you might catch an eagle

Sliding over the wrinkled water-

That’s lovely enough

Especially with a hot cup of coffee in your hand

A little respite from love

But like the tide, defeat always returns

Look at it this way, I am in love too

Anything less would be a waste of time.

I include bird-watching though sighting an eagle

Can make one forget for a while, his failures

The hooked beak, yellow eyes.

 The first woman I loved killed herself,

Although if you had seen her black hair,

Heard her laughter,

Or the fight she put up to live

No eagle was more fierce.

I am not going to lie to you

About love, how it breaks us all in the end

For sure, but usually long before.

Maybe you do what I do,

İmagine that you are a better person then you are

The little lies are all right, I think,

To get us from one sunset to the next.

But more and more I hear the water lapping the shore

And it frightens me, maybe you too,

With its frankness.

The second woman I loved

loved me too, but no one wants to know

how love fails, for no special reason

like random driftwood

or tangled rope

or the odd ketchup bottle,

half empty, coming ashore. 

Tom Crawford, the Temple on Monday

Doğuş Derya ODTÜ Kuzey Kıbrıs'ta

Doğuş Derya’nın "ODTÜ farkı" sandığı kalabalığı aslında Türkçe ve Tarih hocalarımıza borçlu olduğumuzu söylemeden ve bunun için kendi adıma onlara kocaman bir teşekkür edemeden bu yazıya başlayamadım. Bu tür etkinliklerde not ortalamasına ya da yoklama kayıtlarına dayalı ufak “hediyeler” vaat etmenin sonuna kadar arkasındayım.

Doğuş Derya benden dört yaş küçük feminist bir milletvekili. Ama benden çok daha sabırlı. “Arı kovanına çomak sokmak” adı üzerinde tehlikeli ve bireyin kendisine zarar vermesine kapı açan bir eylemdir. Risk almaktır. Arı ve türevlerinin zehirli iğnelerine karşı cesurca durmak, sonuçlarını bile bile aktivizmdir. “Namus da zerre kadar umrunda olsa” diyerek gülümsemek ve yemin töreni sonrasında onu belden aşağı, yani kadınlara yönelik küfürlerle incitmeye çalışanlara nanik yapabilmektir. Sonra bir anda en kırılgan yanını da gösterebilmek yoluyla (“öfkeleniyorum ve ağlıyorum”) öğrencileri provoke etmek, onların kendi özellerini açmalarını sağlamaktır. Özellikle feminizme gönül verenlerin aslında ne kadar yalnız bir yolda yürüdüklerini de söyleyebilmek, FEMA’ya gönüllü katılanlara “bakın uyarıyoruz, yalnızlaştırılıp ötekileştirileceksiniz, buna rağmen çalışabilecek misiniz bizimle?” diye dürüst bir tavır sergilemektir. Pro-feminist erkek gruplara konuşmasında birden çok defa referans vererek “feminizm=erkek düşmanlığı” gibi artık çok klişeleşmiş ama malesef aramızda hayalet gibi dolaşan inanışlara “artık yettiniz!” diyebilmektir. KKTC’de bir türlü doğru düzgün kaynak bulamadığım seks köleleri hakkında temel bilgiler sunmaktır. Seks işçisi ile köleliğini ayırt etmektir. İşte tüm bunlar ve o dolu dolu geçen iki saatin içine sığıp da bu yazıya sığamayacak onlarca bilginin, sabırlı açıklamaların topu ve tamamıdır feminist aktivizm. Bu yazıyı uykuya dalmadan önce içimi açmak, daha iyi hissediyorum diyebilmek ve tabii teşekkür etmek amacı ile yazdım.