Echoes of home: Turkish Cypriot IDPs and home perception in the context of ruins

Abstract

This paper examines the home perceptions of Turkish Cypriot internally displaced persons (IDPs), whose villages and homes have remained abandoned and uninhabited since 1975. While Cyprus has endured one of Europe's longest internal displacement crises, the scholarly attention has predominantly focused on political-legal aspects of displacement or experiences of the Greek Cypriot IDPs. Based on three years of research, including photographing abandoned settlements and in-depth interviews with ten Turkish Cypriot IDPs from Zacharia and Melandra, this study explores how displaced individuals perceive the meanings of 'home.' Findings reveal a strong attachment to their pre-1975 homes, while viewing post-displacement homes as temporary shelters that were belonging to 'someone else'. While their pre-1975 villages and homes were idealized, frozen in their memory, revisits after the checkpoint openings in 2003 revealed a difference between nostalgic memories and present realities. The moment of return triggered a shift from nostalgic longing to reflective nostalgia, as participants were confronted with the emotional weight of ruins and absence, experiencing a form of mourning related to both place and time. This encounter created a sense of frustration with nostalgia, not rooted in a desire to reconstruct the past, but in the painful awareness that the home preserved in memory no longer exists. Their visits, approximately twenty-eight years later, only confirmed that nostalgia is not about restoring the past but about feeling both the longing and the mourning of what is lost. These findings refine researchers understanding of how displacement and nostalgia shape conceptions of home and identity, extending insights into broader discussions in the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences.