Notes to Caesar V. Mavratsas, "The ideological contest between Greek-Cypriot nationalism and Cypriotism 1974-1995: politics, social memory and identity," Ethnic and Racial Studies.

1. Cyprus is located in the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea, 60 miles from Syria (to the east), 40 miles from Turkey (to the north), 300 miles from the Greek island (to the west), and 250 miles from Egypt (to the south). In 1960, when the island became an independent republic, official census figures showed inhabitants to be 77 per cent Greet Cypriot and 18 per cent Turkish Cypriot.

2. It must be stressed that the emphasis of this article on Greek-Cypriot nationalism it analytical and by no means implies that the Greek Cypriots bear the greatest responsibility for the current division of the island. Even though the extremities of Greek-Cypriot nationalism certainly contributed to the creation of the Cyprus problem, it would be naive to disregard the role of Britain and the West, the Greek military regime of 1967-1974 Turkish-Cypriot nationalism, and, of course, Turkish expansionism. The article, it must be made clear, is not intended as a complete history of the Cyprus problem.

3. It is interesting to note that AKEL has recently issued a statement criticizing and renouncing its pro-enosis stance in the 1960s. Admitting past 'mistakes' is a conscious and stated attempt at reappropriating the past - a rare occurrence in Greek-Cypriot political history in which most efforts to rewrite history do not have a self-conscious character and seldom include the admission of mistakes.

4. That the centrist and pro-establishment DIKO, with its hard-line nationalist position on the Cyprus problem, struck an alliance (for the most part, on its own terms) with the right-wing DISI, which has more moderate views on the Cyprus issue and has been more sympathetic to the idea of federation, indicates how Greek nationalism in Cyprus continue to function as an ideological mechanism in support of entrenched interests. The common enemy of DIKO and DISI was none other than the communist AKEL.

5. Kitromilides' analysis challenges the conception, prevalent in mainstream Greek historiography and political discourse, of Orthodoxy as the spiritual champion of nationalism. Kitromilides locates the origins of this view in the second half of the nineteenth century and argues that the identification of Orthodoxy with nationalism is a modern development which runs counter to the traditional understanding of religion and ethnicity in the Balkans. There can be no doubt that the Orthodox Church in the Balkans 'did contribute to the preservation of collective identity under Ottoman rule by institutionalizing and safeguarding the distinction of the Christian subjects from their Muslim rulers' (Kitromilides 1989, p. 178); nor can it be doubted that in performing this role, the Orthodox Church also assisted in the preservation of ethnolinguistic particularities and traditions. Identification with Orthodoxy, however, had a religious and not a national character. The injection of national content into that traditional religious distinction is an ideological anachronism which cannot be sustained by the historical record' (Kitromilides 1989, p. 178).