Mete Hatay

Senior Research Consultant

Mete Hatay
Email: mete@prio.org
Work phone: (+357) 22 456555/4
Twitter: @metehatay
Mete Hatay is an External Associate at PRIO.

Background

​​​Mete Hatay is Senior Research Consultant at the PRIO Cyprus Centre.  Hatay has been a political analyst and freelance writer since 1985, primarily researching and writing on the Cyprus conflict, Cypriot cultural history, immigration, Islam, and ethnic and religious minorities in Cyprus. Before joining the PRIO Cyprus Centre, he worked as co-director of a consultancy firm that provided media monitoring, social and commercial research, and public relations and communication strategy services for international organisations, including the EC Representation in Cyprus. He has taught at Near East University and Cyprus International University and served as a board member of the Turkish Cypriot Education Foundation. He is currently serving as a board member of the Turkish Cypriot Human Rights Foundation and a member of the editorial board of The Cyprus Review.

Between the years of 2003-2004, he worked as a project development officer at the PRIO Cyprus Office as part of the ‘Public Information Project’ on the Annan Plan, the last United Nations proposal to reunify the island. As part of this work, he was involved in the preparation and distribution of booklets that explained the plan to a general audience.  He also aided in the construction of a website, held public seminars, facilitated discussions, and made presentations on local and international TV and radio stations.

​From 2003 to 2005, he was also part of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation’s Cyprus monitoring team, which was responsible for informing the Turkish public about developments in the Cyprus conflict and their effect on Turkey’s European Union accession negotiations.  In addition, he presented the results of the team’s research in policy fora in Europe and the U.S.

Since January 2005, he has led PRIO-Cyprus Centre’s project on demography in Cyprus.  Much of his work has concentrated on immigrants and settlers in the north of the island.  His monographs Beyond Numbers and Is the Turkish Cypriot Population Shrinking? were published as PRIO reports.  He has also been engaged in a large-scale EU 7th framework project on conflict and cultural heritage, as well as in another EU-funded program on internal displacement in the island. He works on Sufi Islam in Cyprus and is the regular reporter on Islam in Cyprus for the Muslims in Europe Yearbook. He is currently working with co-author Rebecca Bryant on a book manuscript about the period of Turkish Cypriot enclavement between 1963-74 and the later transformation of enclaves into an unrecognized state. Besides his regular appearances and commentaries in local media sources, Hatay has also published academic articles in venues such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, American Ethnologist, Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, and Cyprus Review.

Apart from popular and academic writing, Hatay is also a composer who has produced two albums, as well as music for numerous documentary films.


 


Events

PRIO started tracking events online in 2007. This listing is not complete. Past events may be mentioned in our news archive.

Publications

The following publications are specific to the PRIO CCC Centre. A more complete list is available at www.prio.org.

All Publications

Peer-reviewed Journal Article

Hatay, Mete (2021) Performing peace: Vernacular reconciliation and the diplomacy of return in Cyprus, Journal of Refugee Studies. DOI: 10.1093/jrs/feab003.
Hatay, Mete (2019) From Salvation to Struggle: On Commemoration, Affect, and Agency in Cyprus, History and Memory 31(1): 25–58.
Hatay, Mete (2012) Conflicts and Uses of Cultural Heritage in Cyprus, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 14(2): 177–198.
Hatay, Mete (2011) Guns and Guitars: Simulating Sovereignty in a State of Siege, American Ethnologist 38(4): 631–649.
Hatay, Mete (2010) Cyprus, Ethnic Conflict and Conflicted Heritage, Ethnic and Racial Studies 33(9): 1600–1619.
Hatay, Mete (2009) Politics, Society and the Decline of Islam in Cyprus: From the Ottoman Era to the Twenty-First Century, Middle Eastern Studies 45(6): 911–933.
Hatay, Mete (2009) The Problem of Pigeons: Orientalism, Xenophobia and a Rhetoric of the 'Local' in North Cyprus, The Cyprus Review 20(2): 145–171.
Hatay, Mete (2008) The Jasmine Scent of Nicosia: Of Returns, Revolutions, and the Longing for Forbidden Pasts, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 26(2): 423–449.

Book Chapter

Hatay, Mete (2019) From Salvation to Struggle: Commemoration, Affect, and Agency in Cyprus, in Memorials in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict: from History to Heritage. London: Palgrave (61–93).
Hatay, Mete (2015) The Cultures of Partition and the Partition of Cultures, in Music in Cyprus. Farnham: Ashgate (19–36).

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