ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on loss as such an analytic frame for studying the Greek-Turkish encounter in Cyprus. It examines a series of interviews with refugees who are members of the Greek Cypriot community, most displaced during the war of 1974. Memories, social relations, community or the life we could have had, as some of the interviewees put it, are examples of intangible losses that do not simply augment, but also complicate that inventory. In the Greek Cypriot context, loss is articulated in relation with the hegemonic discourse of nationalism. The common victimization of both Greek-and Turkish Cypriots thus hinges on the loss of home and homelands as integrally connected to social life, whereby individuals from both communities coexisted in work and leisure. The loss of individual property is subject to the same nuanced processing. Erdal Ilican argued that the litigation-ization of the property issue in Cyprus testifies to neoliberalism's insertion into the political.
