Additional Information About This Project

A note from the project coordinator:
I am a citizen of the United States of America. During the 1995/1996 academic year, I taught in the Department of Communication and Media Studies (CMS) at Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), the northern portion of the divided island of Cyprus.

Before I came to EMU I researched the Cyprus situation. I found it difficult to find information that provided a Turkish Cypriot perspective on the situation on this island 30 miles off the coast of Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean.

As I spoke with people in the U.S. and Europe, I found that they also suffered from this lack of information. The voices of all Cypriots in general, but Turkish Cypriots in particular, seem to have been lost in the world arena.

This site began as an attempt to address this situation. It started as a project in a multi-media class taught in the Spring of 1996 in the Department of CMS at EMU. Turkish Cypriot and Turkish students collected information and interviewed friends, neighbors, and family members about their personal experiences during events on Cyprus over the previous 35 years. The results of their outstanding efforts are presented in this site.

To accomodate the problems with a developing infrastructure of Internet services in the TRNC and in Turkey in 1996, this site was constructed with limited graphics and photos were reproduced in black and white.

Since its inception as a class project, this undertaking grew to include additional students and faculty members at EMU; the project greatly benefitted from their participation.

I look forward to one day including the oral histories of Greek Cypriots in an expanded "Voices from Cyprus."

Participating Students:
Bahar
Damla
Durum
Faika
Feral
Firat
Ibrahim
Sibel
Aral
Arman

Although I have since left Cyprus, I continue my role as the coordinator of this site from Menlo College in the USA.
John W. Higgins

Comments: moderator @ tcvoices . org

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