By Doğgül Akgül
My name is Doğgül Akgül and I was born in Nicosia. As you can tell from my name, I am a Turkish Cypriot.
I’m living in Famagusta. The neighborhood that I am living is next to Varosha. So having the image of the ghost city during my childhood made me more curious about what happened in my country. Even though, the school taught me the history of my country, I knew that there were always two sides to it. In this case the north side and the south side. This situation affected every step that I took in my life till the present time.
Right now, I am doing my masters degree and I am studying Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design in Famagusta. Even though, there are a huge variety of concepts in my projects, I always choose to work on something related about the Cyprus culture and heritage. So, my latest project is about how the Social Media became an important essential in people’s lives and how it is reaching to huge masses with just a click.
For this project, I decided to create a Facebook page called “Hade re Kipros / Kıbrıs” about the common culture, values and shared words in everyday lives of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. Even the passing years created many differences between the two communities, I preferred to focus on the similarities which were already there since many centuries.
I think that the differences that we created are formed by foreign factors. But the similarities that we have together were formed by our way of life, our gestures and our values. You would be surprised with how many “words-phrases” and “stories” exist and are used in the daily lives of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot people from the neighborhoods and the coffee shops, from the bazaars and the funfairs, from the songs and the dances, from the working fields and the streets… etc.
I believe that by focusing on our similarities, both sides can start to acknowledge how we are similar in many ways. Even though we talk different languages and we believe in different religions, the most amazing thing about us is what we have in common. So it is time to give a little help to the future of Cyprus that we will build together. Because we are the hope of the next Cypriot generations!
(You can find the Facebook Page Hade Re Kipros/Kibris at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hade-Re-Kipros-K%C4%B1br%C4%B1s/576511739047385 and you can click LIKE )
