Nostalgia for the British Era: Poststructuralist Critique of the Modernist Discourse of ‘Civilization’ in the Turkish Cypriot Media

This study opens up a vista onto the notion popular among a growing number of Turkish Cypriots that the British colonial period brought modernist enlightenment to Turkish Cypriots. Turkish Cypriots were subject to heavy Turkish immigration from 1974 onwards as well as Turkish authorities mandating Turkish nationalism over the native politics and value system. In response, Turkish Cypriots have harkened back nostalgically to the British inheritance in their search for the universal standards of a “metahistoric” civilization. In doing so, Turkish Cypriots constructed a nostalgic nationalist movement called Cypriotism, an “identity of difference” that stands in binary opposition to the so-called “backward” immigrants to the island from Turkey, and to Turkish nationalism. Using postcolonial theory, this study critically analyses the media constructions of nostalgic nationalism in local Turkish-Cypriot media in the light of historic landmarks and milestones. Keywords: Nostalgia, Colonialism, Post-colonialism, Nostalgia, Nostalgic Media Constructions, Modernist Thought, White Mythology, the Turkish Cypriots, Textuality.