National and Ethnic Discourses on Cyprus Television

• Pages: 93-119
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0275-7982(2011)0000006008
• Date: 14 October 2011
• Published date: 14 October 2011
• Author: Nayia Roussou

NATIONAL AND ETHNIC

DISCOURSES ON CYPRUS

TELEVISION

Nayia Roussou

ABSTRACT

Cyprus, a small island state in the far eastern corner of the

Mediterranean, is an appropriate example of modernising states faced

with the influx of Media pluralism and all the boons of a rich age of

information communication systems, while its indigenous political

problems remain unsolved. The invasion of Cyprus by Turkish troops in

1974 and the dichotomy of the land, with Turkish-Cypriots occupying and

living in the Northern part and Greek-Cypriots living in the southern part

of the island, has created a state in transition, from nationalism to

internationalism, from the stage of ethnic cleavage to the stage of

modernisation and globalisation. Media pluralism with the proliferation

of imported programmes is another dimension in the life of the island. The

ethnic/national issues, together with the content of television programmes,

were the subject of the present study among youth. The discourses in these

issues are presented through the three stages of the research conducted:

the statistical research survey, the discourse analysis of 5 out of the top 10

programmes popular among the sample and the 23 interviews and 2 group

discussions conducted with members of the sample. The results establish a

relationship between television and national/ethnic issues and opens areas

Human Rights and Media

Studies in Communications, Volume 6, 93–119

Copyright r2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 0275-7982/doi:10.1108/S0275-7982(2011)0000006008

93

of research on television/media discourses about human rights, identity

and nationality in an age of globalisation. The world may be sharing

images, but individual countries are called upon to face internal national

and political realities.

INTRODUCTION: THE CYPRUS NATIONAL

PROBLEM

The history of Cyprus has been marked by centuries of foreign occupation,

adventures and political vagaries. Its strategic position at the geographical

crossroads of three continents, combined with the indigenous resilience and

cosmopolitan consciousness of its people, has helped the population not

only to survive but also to adjust to and integrate the ongoing process of

modernisation, which began with the British rule of the island, in 1878,

when the Ottomans ceded Cyprus to the British Empire. After the 1955–59

EOKA struggle and the ensuing Independence Treaties of Zurich and

London, in spite of the strong Enosis-with-Greece movement in the island

still existing at the time, as mainland Greeks and Greek-Cypriots shared the

same culture, this Enosis vision began to fade out and was ultimately

relegated to historical nostalgia. This, according to Kyriacos Markides

(1977), was due to a number of differences in the political and economic

institutions in the structure of Greek and Cyprus society:

Although mainland Greeks and Greek Cypriots shared the same culture, the structure of

their societies and their political and economic institutions were diametrically different

and often contradictory. Cyprus was spared the various historical convulsions that

plagued Greece during the twentieth century and obstructed the normal evolution of the

Greek society. It was spared the two world wars, the Asia Minor disaster of 1922 and the

bloody Greek civil war of the 1940s. The Cypriots were able to develop their social and

economic institutions relatively unhampered. (p. 78)

Cyprus remained a member of the British Commonwealth after

Independence, most of its external trade was conducted with the former

colonial metropolis and there was an abundance of goods in the island. In

spite of this modernising process, however, internal forces of tradition, like

the church and its power, education in the sense of Hellenistic paedhia (body

of cultural knowledge) and even forces like the cooperative movement

preserved the sense of historical continuity and cultural progress in the

island.

NAYIA ROUSSOU94