Transforming Identities: Accounting for Societal Responsiveness to Changing Nation-Building Policies

Based on in-depth interviews, this paper explores identity changes in post-conflict separatist political entities, which embark upon a process of state/nation-building. It provides an analytical framework to compare identity transformations across cases. It starts by addressing the puzzling case of shifting identity constructions in northern Cyprus, from ethnic to civic in 2003 and back to ethnic in 2009. It is argued that these shifts occur when external factors (EU and Turkey) open/close opportunity windows for internal elites’ reconfigurations. It then explains societal responsiveness to these nation-building changes sustaining that, over time, a from below process transforming the perception of the ‘other’ took place and a civic-territorial identity layer (Cypriotness) developed along the ethnic Turkish layer. These coexist and fluctuate depending on the given context of choice. Building on this case, the analytical framework links macro (external), meso (internal politics) and micro (societal perceptions) levels to explain the dynamics of identity-building from above and from below. The paper moves then to the study of culturally heterogeneous cases, looking at the Abkhaz (Georgia) and the Transnistrian (Moldova) identity constructions through Turkish Cyprus’ lenses. In Abkhazia, since 2000 and particularly since 2008, the need for civic nation-building is put forward in an attempt to integrate minorities, including Georgians in Gal/i. In Transnistria, since 2001, the initial aim to protect Moldovanism has become to create a Transnistrian (multiethnic) peoplehood. While the Transnistrian identification is institutionalized, the Moldovan ethnic category, part of a Transnistrian civic nation, is being purged of ethnic Moldovan attributes and thus is loosing groupness. Breaking with the common assumption that these are conflicts between unified groups, the argument highlights the fact that group members often have hybrid identifications, including newly acquired ones. The study accounts for the society’s responsiveness to changing nation-building by bringing in the concept of fluctuating multiple identifications.