Since the middle of the last century Cyprus has been one of the problem areas in the world. After years of a bitter conflict that started in the 1950s the two main ethnic groups in the island, Turks and Greeks, currently live separately in the island. When the separation was almost ultimate in the past decades the Internet provided an excellent, and from time to time the only medium of communication between the two communities. The resulting new and unusual virtual communities have some distinct characteristics which are different from the "traditional" virtual communities. It must also be noted that being a medium that reflects the entire range of human behavior, the Internet is also functional in disseminating fear, resentment, and enmity that some members of each community feel against the "other."
The ubiquitous presence of Personal Computers at the end of the second millennium led to a new medium of communication between individuals and human groups. Thousands of Bulletin Board Systems, self-help groups, professional and other organizational assemblies emerged in a short period of time. Initially, the usage of computers for social interaction involved communication through telephone lines which limited the groupings to the local area. During the 1970s and 1980s, although technically feasible, high cost of long distance telephone calls was a prohibiting factor for most of the emerging "virtual communities" to exist beyond their immediate locality. Arguably the most often cited definition of virtual communities is Rheingold's [2000] where they are described as "social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace." The electronic speed and asynchronous nature of the computer-mediated communication facilitated the "shrinking of time" [Castells, 2001].
The Internet, initially a favorite of the US military and later academics, had an unprecedented growth and provided an excellent medium for computer communications in the last two decades of the millennium. The new electronic medium was further enhanced by the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1994 and the related user-friendly browser programs such as Mosaic. Unlike the previous versions of computer communications, the new hardware and software was extremely easy to use and required little or no previous computer expertise. The user-friendliness and versatility of the new medium led to the fast diffusion of the Internet to everywhere in the world. Thus, computer mediated communication also shrank space as well as time [ibid.] for millions of people and countless virtual communities.
Although the new virtual environment reflects every human activity imaginable, from an academic researcher's point of view it could roughly be investigated in two major streams. On the commercial side, the electronic environment provided a medium for new types of commercial transactions. Internet's commercialization process, which accelerated in the second half of the 1990s led to the concept of e-commerce, a concept which has a much broader span than Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) of the past. Although not without setbacks (like dotcom failure in the beginning of this decade) e-commerce is currently a growing type of commercial activity and has already become an integral part of the Management Information Systems (MIS) discipline. Naturally, as a discipline investigating the efficiency and effectiveness of computer usage in organizations, MIS has a broader span and does not limit itself to e-commerce in terms of interconnectedness of computers and humans. On the social side, the interconnectedness facilitated by computers led to the emerging area of Community Informatics (CI), "a multidisciplinary field of investigation and development of the social and cultural factors shaping the development and diffusion of new ICTs and its effects upon community development, regeneration and sustainability" as defined by Keeble and Loader [2001].
An important field of CI applications is political and social activism. Internet offers an excellent medium for activists ranging from environmentalists to advocates of a particular political party. The attractiveness of the Internet for such activities is manifold. Firstly, the cost is negligible after an increasingly affordable investment for a PC and a modem. Secondly, unlike traditional printed and electronic media the range of access is not limited to the number of leaflets, newspaper circulation, or broadcasting area. Instead, at least in theory, the material has the potential to access anyone on the globe with Internet access. Thirdly, again unlikely the traditional media lifetime of the material is not limited; once it is published it can stay in the net as long as the publisher wishes. The only problem here is the requirement for the refreshment of the content.
This paper investigates some CI applications in the ethnically divided Cyprus Island and the virtual communities and new type of activism formed by these applications. Due to the problematic status of the Cyprus, CI and virtual communities emerged there exhibit some distinct characteristics which need to be closely examined. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: The next section provides a historical background to the Cyprus problem. In the following section three Cypriot discussion lists are investigated. Section four further analyzes the lists and attempts to compare the Cypriot virtual communities with the "traditional" ones. The last section provides the conclusion of the paper.
Ottomans conquered Cyprus from Venetians in 1571 and after an agreement between the Ottoman and British empires in 1878 the island became a British proctectorate. The British annexed Cyprus in 1914 after the outbreak of WWI. The population was mainly made up of ethnic Greeks and ethnic Turks which had about four fifths and one fifth respectively. There were also small communities of Armenians, Latins, and Maronites (Christian Arabs.) All ethnic groups lived in the island in peace for centuries. However, the turbulent Turko-Greek relations in the nineteenth century led to the 1897 war and problem areas in the Near-East. For example, albeit having similar settings with Cyprus, ethnic strife among Turks and Greeks at the end of the nineteenth century had led to the effective secession of Crete, another large island in Mediterranean, from Ottoman Empire in 1898 and union with Greece in 1913. During that time Cyprus seemed to be far away from ethnic problems. Even the 1919-1922 Turko-Greek war in the Anatolian peninsula and the resulting massive population exchange between the two countries did not have much effect on Turkish and Greek Cypriots.
The 1950s witnessed an accelerating independence movement in the island. Many Greek Cypriots demanded union with Greece (Enosis), an act that was vehemently rejected by the Turkish Cypriots who were concerned by the possibility of becoming an oppressed minority. The two communities started to get involved in a bitter conflict in the second half of the 1950s. In search of a remedy, Turkish, Greek, and British governments and the representatives of the two communities signed the Zurich and London agreements in 1959 which paved the way to the foundation of Republic of Cyprus in 1960. The president of the new republic would be of Greek, and the vice-president would be of Turkish ethnicity. Seventy percent of the parliament would be allocated to the ethnic Greeks, thirty percent to the ethnic Turks.
After a relatively calm period, the ethnic strife started again in 1963 which resulted in the hard times for the Turkish community which had to seek refuge in small enclaves. In 1974 the ailing Greek junta organized a coup against President Makarios, who had to flee from the island. The main aim of the coup was Enosis and left-wing Greek Cypriot parties along with the Turkish community were the targets of the coup. Based on the 1959 agreements recognizing Greece, Turkey, and the UK as the three guarantor states, Turkey initially sought to cooperate with the UK to counter the coup. However, satisfied with its two bases in the island, the UK was reluctant to get involved in such an intervention. The Turkish army intervened (this is the Turkish vocabulary; in Greek the act is invasion) the island on 20 July 1974, five days after the coup. This led to the removal of the Greek junta in Athens three days later. The Cyprus war lasted for about one month resulting in high lost of civilian population from both sides and hundreds of thousands of refugees. Since that time Cyprus is a divided island where Turkish Cypriots live at north and Greek Cypriots live at south. The Turkish area covers about 36% of the island. The so called "Green Line" divides the island as well as Nicosia, the former capital of the Republic of Cyprus which is currently the only split capital city in the world. The buffer zone is controlled by UN troops (UNFICYP - United Nations Force in Cyprus) and according to the Greek Cypriots the Northern part of the island is invaded by the Turkish army which has installed an unlawful state (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) there; while the Turkish Cypriots, remembering the bitter events of the 1963-1974, are enjoying peace and security since that time. Yet, it must also be noted that the economic hardship at north is leading to increasing dissatisfaction among the Turkish Cypriots. Although not without exceptions, physical contact including telephone communication was extremely difficult among the two communities until 23 April 2003 when the border was opened by the Turkish authorities for daily visits.
The 29 years of separation between 1974 and 2003 means that about half of the Cyprus population had never seen a person from the "other side" in their lives. This is a quite an unnatural situation for the population of a tiny island which is less than one million. Except for a few common villages and the UN-managed Ledra Palace Hotel on the Green Line, there was ultimate separation during the 1970s and 1980s. However, the 1990s witnessed an accelerating rate of contacts between the two communities. Possibly to some extent related with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, peace activists, youth and women organizations, professional groups, and political parties sought and realized contacts from the other side.
However, often the contact attempts had overcome the open or subtle obstructions from the authorities who were occasionally reluctant for giving permission. The increasing pace of such attempts found an excellent medium in the 1990s which did not require any permission: The Internet and its WWW, mainly used by the younger generation who usually had no previous contact, provided an abstract way of communication that has the potential to be converted to tangible. Several bi-communal mailing lists and web pages were established on both sides to foster communication among the communities. Since the younger generation lacked the knowledge of the other side's language, mailing lists are almost exclusively in English (thereby excluding a large number of the population) and web sites are either only in English or trilangual.
Like an overwhelming majority of e-mail discussion lists [Kirlidog & Bingol, 2003], Cyprus lists have a few active members and many more less active members. The overwhelming majority of the members are "lurkers" [Pleace et al, 2001] who are completely inactive with regard to message issuing. From this point of view an analogy could be made with the web sites: A few active members "publish" the contents of the messages for the list members. Every list has an identity which characterizes its attributes such as preparedness of its members to promote relationships to the real life and the intensity of "flaming." Flaming is a CI jargon meaning name calling and personal insults to other members in the messages issued. With the encouragement of the absence of social cues, this is a major problem in virtual communities [Docter & Dutton, 1998; Rheingold, 2000] and one of the chief reasons for the requirement of a list moderator. The identity of each list and its explicit and implicit codes of behavior are shaped by its active members. The automatic selection mechanism works for the "unfits" who refuse to accept the commonly agreed code of behavior which may tolerate some degree of flaming. There may be cases where unfits may act like an "energy creature" [Rheingold, 2000] who stir up the list with extraordinary energy and an odd need for a negative attention. Such a behavior has an arguable ethical dimension and in many cases it may cost dearly to the list by causing many members to quit before the unfits themselves quit. However, in the long run the rule for shaping of the general characteristics of the list by its active and "harmonious" members applies.
The bi-communal Cypriot electronic mail lists are usually oriented towards establishing a friendship environment and usually the members have a sincere attempt to understand what "the other" has to say. Some of them are rather active and functional in establishing tangible contacts such as "Peace Camps" while some contain resentful messages that reflect the official position of the parties in the conflict. However, one common and distinct characteristic of the Cypriot discussion lists is the strong desire of the members to get to know and to understand the "other." The bitter memories of the past are still alive and, as stated above, there has been an almost ultimate separation for decades in a small geography with natural boundaries. This provides an ideal situation for demonizing the "other." In such a situation, the natural consequence for many members of the island's communities, particularly for the younger generation, is a deep curiosity for the other side. Even the messages that involve hostile arguments genuinely seek for information about the position of the adversary. In this context, some lists provide daily digests of newspapers of both ethnic communities of the island along with the Turkey's and Greece's. As a result, members of the Cypriot virtual communities are extraordinarily knowledgeable about the affairs related with the both of the ethnic groups. Three active bi-communal Cyprus lists were investigated in the context of this research. All of them have archives available in the Net and last three hundred messages from each of them were examined.
The names and the URL's of the lists are as follows:
"Cyprus - Cypriot Discussion list" is hosted by MIT in the US. It is a private list where membership is required for issuing messages and browsing the current and archived ones. After membership application is approved, members can access the archives with a password they choose. The list has about one hundred members many of which have overseas e-mail addresses, an indication of the popularity of the list among the Diaspora of both communities. This is the oldest and the most active one with ten to twenty messages daily.
"The Cyprus Forum" has been created by a Greek-Cypriot residing in the US and its associated web site declares that it "is an Internet based organization, which was created so that Greek and Turkish Cypriot citizens could devise a new solution to end the division of Cyprus." The mission of the list is stated as follows:
"The village where I was born contains an eleventh century Byzantine church and a mosque--monuments which testify better than any words, to the ability of the Cypriot people to live together harmoniously. Greek and Turkish families in my village sent their children to study in the separate but equal schools, spoke each other languages and conducted business with one another without strife. Today, Cyprus is divided by the "green line" - a no man's zone that cuts across the island. But no such divisions exist in cyberspace. We encourage every individual desiring peace in Cyprus to join us in our efforts to ensure that the cooperation and peace which characterized the relationship between Greek and Turkish Cypriots for centuries, may again be restored and enjoyed by future generations."
The group has in excess of 130 members and anyone may view and become a member without the permission of the list manager. After its foundation in June 2001 it was fairly inactive for two years and perhaps related with the opening up of the border, it suddenly became active in the summer of 2003. Ironically, contrary to the mission statement, the members from both communities occasionally get into rather bitter disputes reflecting their the positions of their ethnic groups.
"Turko - Hellenic Bicommunal Dialogue group" has been established by two Cypriots, one ethnic Turk and one ethnic Greek in February 2001. The message archive is open to everyone in Internet. As by the end of 2003 the list had more than 120 members and about one thousand messages, which means that roughly one message per day has been issued. It has a member population which is usually critical not only to the both governments in Cyprus, but also to the concept of power structures and social hierarchy as well as the "official left-wing parties." As stated in the associated web page (http://www.burleehost.net), the list aims to "by-pass the structures of authority, power and profits" which it sees as the source of all troubles in the island and thereby establish a friendship environment between the two ethnic groups. The list owners are closely associated with the independent news organization Indymedia [Kidd, 2003] (see www.indymedia.org) which was established as an alternative to the international news media corporations and through Internet. It allows "the open publishers" to distribute real-time video, audio, text, and photo. It uses a special software developed jointly by an Australian and a US developer and it is freely downloadable from the net [Gurstein, 2001]. It has several branches all over the world and the Cyprus branch is a trilingual web site which publishes material usually in line with the described characteristics of the list. Beyond discussion, the list seems to be quite functional for organizing tangible events such as establishing bi-communal "peace camps" and collecting humanitarian aid material for Palestine Refugee Camps.
An important division line in the lists is the position of their members against the governments of their own side. The lists whose members are mainly comprised of dissident movements such as greens or alternative radicals constitute an excellent meeting ground to criticize both of the governments in the island which, in essence, are not regarded different from each other. In such lists there are relatively fewer disagreements and quarrels among the members. The energies of the members are usually directed against the governments and the establishments on both sides. The favorite and "secure" topic in such lists is to criticize her/his own government as an obstacle for peace while criticizing only the other government in a message usually attracts carefully and politely worded controversy. The tone of the controversy increases if coming from the own side. Thus, to be on the safe side, most members prefer to criticize both of the governments even when only one deserves criticism for a particular subject. "Turko - Hellenic Bicommunal Dialogue group" is an example to this classification.
Contrary to the radical views of the first group, the second group of lists has more mainstream members who are inclined to advocate the official view of their own ethnic groups. Consequently, the intensity of the disputes is higher in such lists. Although most of the members are usually prepared to acknowledge the pain of the "other" along with their own, emotions run high at times and one cannot help to feel that the communication environment can be vulnerable to breaks in case of an undesired major conflict in future. In such lists, majority of the messages reflect the position of the own side with convincing arguments. They are usually carefully and politely worded. The frustration resulting from an "unacceptable" idea or comment from another member occasionally leads to a "farewell message" which in turn attracts messages from both ethnic groups calling the member to stop the "childish" behavior and returning back to the list. "The Cyprus Forum" is an example for this group. Many bi-communal discussion lists fall somewhere in between the two groups described above. They have the traits of both of the groups. "Cyprus - Cypriot Discussion list" could be regarded as an example to this third group. Many of the members of this list advocate a "Cypriot identity" arguably independent of the ethnic roots. They seem to be more critical to the Turkish administration than the southern one.
Interestingly, the level and quality of the civic interaction is fairly high in the Cyprus lists. In the three lists investigated the level of flaming is fairly low. Moderator is usually required only to prevent spam and commercial messages, another factor that has the potential to plague the lists. An important factor for the low level of flaming in bi-communal Cyprus lists seems to be the composition the membership population. As stated above, predominantly English language is used for communication and the necessary level of English comes only with good education. This has positive and negative effects. On the positive side the lists have quantitatively and "qualitatively" low level flaming and on the negative side the memberships are limited to a small percentage of the greater population. The active Turkish and Greek membership numbers usually reflect the one fifth and four fifths ratio of the greater population.
Unlike the more homogeneous electronic mail lists, the WWW reflects the entire range of positions in both communities. The spectrum here is from the bi-communal friendship web sites to the racist and xenophobic ones which regenerate the demonizing process of the "other." The most favorite method of the latter is to reiterate the atrocities of the other side. They are usually inclined to accuse individuals and groups who have friendly contacts with the other side with treason. Another source of treason accusation is the funding of some bi-communal web sites by international organizations such as United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and European Union or the US Embassy in Nicosia.
Although difficult to generalize, a slight pattern seems to emerge in the spectrum of antagonism to amity with "the other" in both communities. This spectrum roughly matches with political spectrum from right the left. In other words, individuals and organizations on the left of the political spectrum are usually more inclined to establish tangible and intangible contacts with the other side.
An important limitation of this research is that not all the messages in the lists were examined. Ideally, all messages from the beginning should have been examined and categorized according to their nature such as the ones that contain hostile arguments or the ones simply issuing a question for understanding the position of the other side in a particular topic. Those categories should then be quantitatively analyzed and later triangulized [Kaplan & Duchon, 1988] with qualitative analysis for verification. Such an analysis should yield a deeper insight for the nature of this unique type of CI.
The nature of the CI implementations is different before and after the opening of the border. Before 23 April 2003 CI offered the two communities the most important, and sometimes the only medium of communication. It was definitely the only medium for the Diaspora as well as the island's greater population who did not have any other means of contact such as common picnics of the divided villages in the UN-monitored mixed village of Pyla. Another advantage of CI is its immunity from the intervention of the authorities. Yet another advantage is the anonymity it provides. In fear of reprisal of their own ethnic community, many Cypriots may be reluctant to have open contact with the other side and a Hotmail or Yahoo account offers anonymous, theoretically untraceable, and unstoppable contact.
After the border was opened the relative importance of the CI relatively declined. Currently, it is not the only communication medium for many people any more. In other words, its unique quality for being the only medium available for "space shrinking" in a tiny geography is currently not the only way of communication between the two ethnic groups. Nevertheless, there has not been any decline in the liveliness of the bi-communal Cypriot virtual communities. On the contrary, it could be argued that they are now more active with additional functions such as announcement of the tangible bi-communal events.
The "bridging" characteristic of the bi-communal Cyprus discussion lists for the efforts of understanding and getting acquainted with the "other" after a long period of enmity is arguably unique in the world and it enriches the community development, regeneration and sustainability dimensions of the above-mentioned CI definition [Keeble & Loader, 2001].
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http://www.burleehost.net/cyprus/The_Short_Statement.htm#Short accessed 10 January 2004
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