Identity, visibility and legitimacy in Turkish Cypriot tourism development

Since the division of Cyprus in 1974, political, cultural and economic means have been used to underpin and legitimise the conflicting national claims of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. Turkish Cypriot efforts to develop tourism in the north and to market Northern Cyprus as a tourist attraction highlight the contested identity of Cyprus and place of Turkish Cypriots in its past, present and future.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the issues of Turkish Cypriot identity, visibility and legitimacy through the lens of tourism development in the north. Access to the capital resources of land and finance; business relationships and job-seeking behaviour; and the packaging of local culture and the construction of history and landscape for tourists, are all analysed in terms of their relevance to the goal of 'tanitma' [lit: "making known"], which is a central concept in Turkish Cypriot tourism development, and which can be understood in three ways: as the activity of marketing and promoting tourism in Northern Cyprus; as the goal of gaining international recognition for the existence of a Turkish Cypriot political, social and cultural entity; and as the project of creating and making known to its own citizens as a Turkish Cypriot state based simultaneously on the idea of historical continuity - the long-standing presence of Turks in Cyprus and their cultural imprint on the island - with discontinuity - the creation of a Turkish Cypriot state in the north.

The thesis also incorporates an examination of the relationship between tourism and anthropological theory in order to offer a critique of models of culture, identity and causation which feature widely in the tourism literature. I examine the encounter between the "professionalised" international tourism sector and internal social networks; between "hosts" and "guests"; and between locals and migrant workers; and discuss how the meanings generated by these encounters illuminate the issues of identity, culture and boundaries, and the categories of "inside" and "outside".