[Book Review]: "De-ethnicising the Ethnography of Cyprus: Political and Social Conflict between Turkish Cypriots and Settlers from Turkey"

Abstract

Yael Navaro-Yashin’s chapter, De-ethnicizing the Ethnography of Cyprus,published in Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History, and an Island in Conflict (Indiana University Press, 2006), offers a significant intervention in the study of the Cyprus conflict. Moving beyond conventional analyses that frame the island’s division as a binary ethnic struggle between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots, Navaro-Yashin challenges the assumption of internal homogeneity on the Turkish side. This review argues that Navaro-Yashin’s work makes a significant contribution to the analysis of the Cyprus issue in terms of internal social tensions and the reshaping of daily life, but that is flawed due to its one-sided ethnographic perspective and its failure to engage sufficiently with class and broader comparative frameworks.