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Comparative Studies in Society and History Comparative Studies in Society and History

Article contents

Partitions of Memory: Wounds and Witnessing in Cyprus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2012

Rebecca Bryant
Rebecca Bryant*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics
*
r.e.bryant@lse.ac.uk
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Extract

The image has become an iconic one: five young men in dirty uniforms kneel in the middle of a dusty plain with their hands behind their heads. They squint in the blinding midday sun, their faces expressing anxiety and a measure of fear. A Turkish soldier leans to talk to one of them, appearing calm, even friendly. To one side another Turkish soldier whose face we do not see stands guard. This photograph has become one of the most famous images to come out of the Cyprus conflict. The men's kneeling posture, the fright in their eyes, and the apparent calm of the soldiers all evoke a vulnerability to violence. And like the bloody photo of a woman and her children murdered in their Nicosia home that was used for decades by the Turkish Cypriot administration, or like certain photographs of distraught women crying for losses that we can only imagine, the image of these five young men has been reprinted in pamphlets and brochures, newspapers and books, in ways that take for granted its power to evoke their uncertain fate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 332 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2012

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