Description
The lasting separation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the small island of Cyprus has long been a contentious issue of the Eastern Mediterranean. The protracted yet ‘comfortable’ nature of the Cyprus conflict profoundly affects both Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, as it inevitably entwines in their daily lives. For residents of cities such as Nicosia, the capital of the Republic of Cyprus in the south and the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in the north, the patterns of everyday peace practices are embedded within and between communities. Nicosia, as the last divided capital in Europe, is ‘rife with symbols of conflict that demarcate division, and in turn demarcate the conflict in the imagination’ in the experiences of both communities (Bakhsi, 2012: 5). The conventional peacebuilding initiatives often fail to address the space-based issues however, as Björkdahl (2013: 220) argues, peacebuilding needs to be urbanised to better address and mitigate tensions and ethnocratic spatial practices in the city’. This paper will focus on the youth narratives on everyday peace in Nicosia and the impact of space and place on it based on the broad interviews with the Cypriot youth.
