Abstract

In Cyprus, national leaders play a crucial role in international and diplomatic initiatives for a solution on the island and their policies and actions are extensively communicated through the mainstream news media. Yet, so far, the news media’s dominant approach has been nationalistic, defining the key issues related to the conflict in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad, rather than acting as a pluralistic public sphere. This chapter, focusing on the meetings that took place between the Turkish-Cypriot and the Greek-Cypriot community leaders Mehmet Ali Talat and Demetris Christofias in July 2008, and Derviş Eroğlu and Nicos Anastasiades in February 2014, analyses these processes, focusing on the press’s production and articulation of national identities via the construction of the ‘other’. By examining the messages the news media have been articulating for the public on both sides of the island, evidence is provided about the practices and discourses that are employed to mobilise readers around certain national imaginings concerning the Cyprus Problem.