Nicosia, an ancient walled city in Cyprus, is the only divided capital worldwide. After the Turkish invasion in 1974, Nicosia was divided by a buffer zone into two ethnic groups, the Turkish-Cypriots in the north and the Greek-Cypriots in the south. This conflict led to forced displacement, urban segregation, and human rights violation, especially for local women. After the opening of Nicosia's buffer zone in 2003, the interaction of Cypriot women sparked bicommunal actions for peace over the Cyprus' conflict. Despite being oppressed and underrepresented, Cypriot women use Nicosia's divided space as urban commons to challenge the conflict's nationalist status quo that wants the two main ethnic groups to hate and fear each other. Women's actions shift the geopolitical focus of Nicosia's territorial conflict to a social territory reproduced by their bodies while they navigate their everyday lives in the contested city. Unfortunately, women's agency and action for peace are still invisible locally. This project aims to map women-led bicommunal initiatives in Nicosia's urban space that bring together agents across geographies to address the future of the Cypriot conflict. The preliminary mapping included in this project, shows the locations of women's bicommunal interaction and examines how the urban space influences their actions. The next step is to visit these spaces in person, conduct interviews with women of the community, and understand how they are a crucial influence as social actors of the Cyprus conflict and how they use Nicosia's space to come together.
Researcher: Areti Kotsoni
Keywords: conflict, buffer zone, gender, urban space