Explaining the Role & Impact of International Policies within the Context Cypriot Conflict: A Multimethod Case Study

Despite all attempts to the contrary, conflicts involving unrecognized breakaway states (UBSs) appear to inevitably become intractable. However, the literature on these conflicts, while emphasizing balances of power or primordial, ethnic hatreds, fall short of explaining the reason behind this common thread among UBSs. Nevertheless, the few existent studies of unrecognition and the behavior of UBSs, which fall outside of our immediate field, indicate that the current practices of isolationary unrecognition stabilize the conflicts created by these states by encouraging and sustaining the status quo while also regionalizing – and, in fact, globalizing – the conflict by inviting arms, drug, and human trafficking, as well as organized crime and smuggling. Clearly, there is a need to assess the short- and long-term impacts of isolationist unrecognition on the Cypriot Conflict at large and on the TRNC in particular. Therefore, this dissertation project will aim to conduct a case study (with data collection methods including archival analysis, media analysis, meta analysis, and interviews) in order to answer the question of why conflicts involving UBSs become protracted and also: a) develop a framework for studying UBSs at large and for studying the TRNC in particular; and b) to provide an empirical analysis of the effects of unrecognition on the socio-structural development and conflictual behavior of a 'state'.