FES Cyprus Podcast - Beyond the Divide

Fighting Misleading Generalisation

In this podcast, Hubert Faustmann, Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Cyprus and the authors of the report entitled ‘Politics and Society in north Cyprus: A Survey Study’, Sertac Sonan, Ebru Küçükşener and Enis Porat, discuss the report’s main findings and recommendations.

Awareness, Policies and Prevention

This podcast focuses on a FES-report about hate speech prevalent in public discourses circulating on the internet, e.g. social media users’ offensive comments under news articles, in both Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities of Cyprus. We talk with the three authors of the report about traditional stereotypes used in daily language as well as discourses exhibited by media outlets in their representations of political events. We also discuss the responses by authorities and civil society to hate speech incidents on both sides of the divide.

In this podcast, Hubert Faustmann, Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Cyprus and Sertac Sonan, one of the co-authors of the Corruption Perceptions in North Cyprus: 2019 Report, discuss this year’s report’s findings and recommendations as well as the background of the collaboration between the authors and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Cyprus, which has started in 2016. The 2019 report is the third product of this collaboration, and the 2020 report is already in the pipeline.

Part I

Migration 2.0 Podcast - Episode 1: Hubert Faustmann and Sarah Morsheimer discuss the outcomes of a survey that looks to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers in Cyprus. They are joined by Kyriaki Chatzipanagiotou, lead researcher for the survey. They discuss the results of the survey and you will have the opportunity to hear first-hand accounts of migrant experiences during the pandemic.

This podcast is a collaboration between the FES Cyprus Office and Project Phoenix, a European NGO based in Cyprus that works towards systems change and migrant inclusion. Migration 2.0 will explore issues related to migration through multiple lenses. By amplifying migrant voices and shedding light on migration issues, we hope to promote inclusion, highlight the diversity of migrant experiences, and humanize migrants by including and centralizing their voices in the discourse.

The Cases of Larnaca and Kyrenia in Cyprus

In this podcast Hubert Faustmann, Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Cyprus and Thorsten Kruse, research associate at the Cyprus Institute Münster, discuss the treatment of religious heritage in general but mainly in Cyprus where another factor is the ethnic segregation that has persisted since 1974. Thorsten Kruse, an expert in the field of religious heritage, especially in Cyprus, exemplifies the condition and the handling of religious sites like churches, mosques and cemeteries on both sides of the divide. To explore ways to preserve the island's religious heritage both physically and digitally, Kruse conducts various projects in Cyprus, which led him occasionally into quite adventurous situations.

Tune in!

The post-pandemic return of Keynes with a vengeance: Under current circumstances, the private sector left to its own devices is not capable of triggering a spontaneous turn of the economy from recession to recovery. Nor can it ensure that the economy will come to rest at full utilisation of productive capacity. For a sustained GDP growth to increase the utilisation of productive capacity, government intervention in the economy is urgently called for. Increasing public investment, already financed by European funds is essential but insufficient. We are therefore proposing that the government should implement a medium-term wage-led strategy: This will increase the purchasing power of workers and thus private consumption, GDP and employment, leading in turn to a virtuous growth cycle.

Exacerbating Systemic Faults

In this episode, Hubert Faustmann the Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Cyprus talks with Hrishabh Sandilya and Sarah Morsheimer of Project Phoenix. They are currently working on a transdisciplinary study which seeks to understand the impact of the pandemic on refugees, migrants and asylum seekers (RMAs) in Cyprus. Phoenix Project is a young European social enterprise and NGO which seeks to systemically change the migrant inclusion ecosystem. Morsheimer and Sandilya present the findings of Part I of the study which provides an overview of events and impacts and lay the ground for the findings of Part II, a detailed survey which is currently being conducted.

Hubert Faustmann, the director of the FES-office in Cyprus talks with four activists and academics about the situation of the LGTBI-movement on the divided island.