Latest / Diplomacy and International Relations / Make-Believe Statehood in Turkey and Cyprus. The power of documents

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Make-Believe Statehood in Turkey and Cyprus. The power of documents · Diplomacy and International Relations

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  Welcome to Diplomacy and International Relations by
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  Bastian Freiburg. It is also possible to subscribe
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  to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcast for a small
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  monthly fee to help keep the podcast running and gain access
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  to extra episodes. Link in the description.
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  Glad to be here for this one. It's going to be a fascinating
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  discussion. It really is.
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  Today's exploration uses the anthropological research of Yael
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  Navarro Yashin, specifically drawing from her books Faces of
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  the State and the Make Believe Space Right.
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  Two incredible pieces of research, yeah.
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  And for those of you listening who are maybe deeply interested
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  in international relations or, you know, even Danish politics.
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  Where things are very structured.
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  Exactly. In Denmark, statecraft and
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  bureaucracy are viewed through this lens of high social trust,
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  digital permanence, massive consensus.
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  So our mission today might completely upend how you view
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  political institutions. Because we are looking at the
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  exact opposite of that permanence.
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  We are examining the invisible forces that shape international
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  relations in statehood. We're going to look at how the
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  idea of the state isn't just some rigid political
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  institution, but something that lives in our psychology, our
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  everyday habits, the documents in our pockets, and even the
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  physical ruins of post war geography.
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  And we are using 1990s Turkey and Northern Cyprus as our
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  primary lenses to do this. Yes, but before we get into the
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  thick of it, because we're dealing with the politically
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  charged material regarding secularists and Islamists in
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  1990s Turkey, I need to explicitly tell you, the
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  listener, that we are not taking any sides here.
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  Right. Absolutely not.
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  We are simply reporting the viewpoints contained in the
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  original anthropological source material to understand the
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  broader political dynamics. We're just your guides today.
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  And that's really the perfect framing.
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  We aren't judging political platforms.
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  We want to observe how these groups interact with the very
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  concept of the state. How do they define culture?
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  How do they use physical spaces to assert their identity?
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  OK, let's unpack this with a really powerful analogy from the
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  sources it actually comes from, The Little Prince by Antoine
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  descent Exi Peri. Or I love how Navari Oshin uses
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  this. So good.
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  So in the story, there's a Turkish astronomer who makes
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  this brilliant discovery about an asteroid.
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  He goes to an international Congress to present his
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  findings, but because he arrives wearing traditional clothing,
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  absolutely nobody believes him. They completely ignore his
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  rigorous scientific data. Purely based on his outfit, It's
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  only years later when a dictator forces his people to wear
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  European clothes that he returns to the exact same Congress in an
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  elegant western suit. And he gives the exact same
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  presentation. The exact same data, and
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  suddenly everybody applauds and accepts it as undisputed fact.
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  Connect this to the westernization narrative in
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  international politics, right? The international community in
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  that story is looking at culture through what we call a
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  positivist lens. Let me make sure I'm following.
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  So a positivist lens treats culture sort of like a Russian
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  nesting doll. Yes, exactly.
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  Like if you just peel off the outer layers, the suits, the
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  modern adaptations, you eventually find the true
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  authentic core of a native culture hiding underneath.
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  That's spot on. In international relations, the
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  assumption is often been that layers of European costume
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  supposedly hide an authentic underlying native culture.
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  But this research argues that both the suit and the
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  traditional robes are political constructs.
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  They're just different vocabularies of power.
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  They're both used to legitimize oneself on the world stage.
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  Right. And what's fascinating here is
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  how this introduces the concept of the faces of the state.
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  We usually think of the state as something you can locate.
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  A parliament building? A president.
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  Exactly. But the state is unsuitable.
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  It's everywhere. The text gives this vivid image
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  of Taksim Square in Istanbul. You have police, the literal
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  agents of the state, protesting against the state.
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  Which is wild to think about. It is.
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  You also have the flash of a journalist's camera framing A
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  narrative which is another face of the state, or even a
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  pedestrian emerging from the crowd to physically attack a
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  protester taking state authority into his own hands.
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  And what struck me is how people constantly critique the state.
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  In these accounts, citizens are sitting in cafes deconstructing
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  the government with incredible cynicism.
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  You'd think that kind of relentless critique would
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  destroy the state's power. You really would.
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  But it survives. How?
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  We could explain this through the concept of fantasies for the
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  state. Even when citizens deconstruct
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  and cynically criticize the government, their subconscious
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  psychic attachments actually do the everyday maintenance work of
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  regenerating state power. So the cynicism itself is the
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  glue. Yes, by constantly complaining
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  about the state, expecting it to be heavy-handed or corrupt, you
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  are normalizing its presence in your life.
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  You're maintaining it psychically.
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  Here's where it gets really interesting.
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  Let's shift to the March 1994 municipal elections in Istanbul.
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  This was a massive turning point because the Islamist Welfare
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  Party surprisingly won a. Huge shock to the secularist
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  establishment. A total shock.
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  The sources detail this immediate moral panic among
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  secularist urbanites. There were these incredible
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  rumors spreading. People were joking they'd have
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  to wear turbans just to cover their bald spots.
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  I remember reading about the fake facts.
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  Yes, there was a witty fake facts claiming Coca-Cola would
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  be replaced by local drinks like Boza and Iran.
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  And genuine fears that the brothels and Biola would be shut
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  down. Total panic.
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  Why was the reaction so visceral?
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  You have to look at why this happened.
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  Secularists mapped their differences with Islamists
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  primarily on to the question of gender like.
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  Public lifestyle and presentation, right?
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  Fears of forced veiling, segregation of men and women.
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  This is all deeply rooted in the early Republican reforms by
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  Ataturk in the 1920s and 30s. The Republic defined its
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  modernity by discouraging the veil and banning the traditional
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  fez. So Win for the Welfare Party
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  felt like a total reversal of that.
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  Exactly, and the text introduces Lavoie Sheaf's Titanic analogy
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  here, which is brilliant. Oh I love this part.
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  The sinking of the Titanic had a massive impact because the
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  catastrophe was already expected in the social imaginary.
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  The anxiety about industrial progress failing was already
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  there it. Just needed a vessel, yes?
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  Similarly, the secularists fears were a self fulfilling prophecy.
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  They already had a catastrophic fantasy of an Islamic takeover
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  long before the election results.
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  And sometimes the prophecy came true in real life.
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  There were actual incidents where gangs in robes harassed
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  women in miniskirts right after the election.
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  Playing right into the fears. But then in other instances, the
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  actual Welfare Party officials were horrified.
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  They tried to arrest those gangs and focus purely on urban
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  infrastructure like garbage election to prove they weren't
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  the caricatures the secularists feared.
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  This synthesizes the whole point perfectly.
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  It shows how political identity and nativeness the term in the
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  text is urelic are constantly contested.
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  Both groups were trying to claim it.
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  Yes, both use the language of nationalism and state craft to
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  prove they belonged. They were both modern political
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  identities fighting to define the state.
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  So we've seen how the state lives in the cultural anxieties
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  of Istanbul, but let's transition from psychological
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  borders to physical and legal borders.
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  We're moving to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, or
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  TRNC. Declared in 1983.
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  Right, but unrecognized under international law.
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  If we connect this to the bigger picture, we are looking at the
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  concept of a make believe state Udirukdevlit in Turkish.
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  Make believe sounds almost dismissive though.
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  Well, note that make believe doesn't mean it lacks real
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  effects. Fiction is the bread and butter
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  of all politics. All states rely on imagination.
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  The TRNC just exposes the phantasmatic aspect of politics
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  because the international community refuses to play along.
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  Imagine holding a passport that technically doesn't exist to the
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  rest of the world. The TRNC documents are so
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  ephemeral. People fill out these entry and
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  exit slips at the border, the guards stamp them with all this
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  authority and then once the slip is filled.
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  Up. They casually throw it away.
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  They just throw it in the trash. It completely shatters how we
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  think about permanence. Compare that to a digital CPR
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  number in Denmark that tracks you from birth to death.
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  Here the document vanishes. It's all about the effective or
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  emotional life of these documents.
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  TRNC papers transmit feelings of tentativeness, irony and
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  nonchalance. The people know the documents
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  mean nothing internationally, so they interact with them
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  ironically. But it's totally different when
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  they apply for internationally recognized documents.
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  Completely, when Turkish Cypriots apply for Republic of
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  Cyprus passports, it produces intense feelings, jubilation at
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  global access, but also tension and risk.
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  The recognized document feels heavy.
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  Which brings up a crazy irony. There's a thriving underground
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  market for actual counterfeit passports.
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  Fake Republic of Cyprus passports.
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  So the lines are completely blurred.
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  What's the difference between a legal form, a make believe paper
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  from the TRNC and an actual forgery bought on the black
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  market? They all require a leap of
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  faith. International legality is just a
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  highly successful, successful performance backed by power.
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  So what does this all mean? We really want you to consider
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  how your physical environment shapes your political reality.
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  We've talked about psychology and paperwork.
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  Let's talk about the dirt and the buildings.
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  This is effective geography. In Northern Cyprus.
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  There's this intense tension between the Fantasmatic and the
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  Phantomic. The phantasmatic being the
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  state's PR campaign. Exactly the new state's attempt
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  to build a unified identity on the land.
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  And the Phantomic refers to the ghosts of the displaced Greek
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  Cypriots who had to flee. The imagery in the sources is so
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  striking. You have these ruined objected
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  spaces around the Green Line border in Nicosia or Left Kosia,
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  abandoned homes, looted objects which they call Ganimet.
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  Sitting right in people's living rooms.
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  Yes, and the TRNC maps department systematically
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  changed place names from Greek to Turkish to repopulate and
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  redefine the territory. Trying to overwrite the map, but
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  you can't overwrite the emotions resonance.
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  The resulting emotion transmitted by this post war
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  environment is irritability. Irritability, like a low level
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  buzzing stress. It's a jarring, dis resonating
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  feeling. The environment is filled with
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  the debris of the departed. Political trauma isn't just in
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  the mind. It lives in the walls of
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  appropriated houses and the soil of divided lands.
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  You can't escape the ghosts of the geography.
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  And this raises an important question.
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  How does the influx of settlers from mainland Turkey complicate
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  this dynamic? Because suddenly you have
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  different tiers of belonging. Yes, you have Turkish Cypriots
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  navigating their identity alongside new settlers.
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  It creates hierarchies of belonging based on citizenship
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  documents, local dialects and social ties.
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  It fundamentally alters the fabric of the territory.
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  It's just a brilliant way to understand the state it's
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  maintained through our anxieties, our flimsy documents
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  and the ruins we walk through. The boundaries are drawn in our
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  minds before they ever hit a map.
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  And I want to leave everyone with a final provocative thought
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  that we didn't explicitly answer today.
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  Weigh it. On us.
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  If an unrecognized make believe state relies on the exact same
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  bureaucratic rituals, stamps, files, ID cards, has recognized
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  Western nations to feel legitimate, does that imply that
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  all global superpowers are fundamentally just highly
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  successful acts of collective imagination and make believe?
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  That is a lot to chew on. Are we all just operating on
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  good PR and military backing? It's worth thinking about next
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  time you hand over your passport.
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  Absolutely. Well, to wrap up, I want to
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  encourage listeners to follow the podcast and to rate it five
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  stars so the podcast can reach even more people.