SharedWor!ds
SharedWor!ds project is a bi-communal conflict resolution, peace building and post conflict reconciliation project that will focus on creating common ground and common sense for the Turkish Cypriot and the Greek Cypriot Communities by revealing the common words of Turkish and Greek languages, and hence the common traditions of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot Communities as a reflection of their common culture.
This project is important because it will influence, motivate and encourage the dialogue of polarised communities of Cyprus by drawing attention to the commonalities and similarities of the two communities and it will increase tolerance during the inter-cultural communication.
Unfortunately, nowadays —as it was in the past— nationalist education systems, political conflict of interests, religious differences, historical grievances, and differences in the languages of the communities polarise the two communities of Cyprus in spite of the fact that these two communities have many things in common regarding culture and traditions. The Cyprus issue remains unsolved due to prejudice, lack of understanding, lack of grass root activities, disinformation, and manipulation of the two societies. Nearly 5000 common words in the languages they speak in their daily life and tens of idioms that are formed by those commons words are the evidence of how these communities are connected to one another by similar characteristics.
Finding common ground between the polarised groups is the only way to bring opposite sides together. For decades common ground between the two communities has been tried to be created by usage of third party languages and by third party groups of people; however, a lot more needs to be done to reach deep enough to touch the roots of the problems between the communities, in order to relieve the historical grievances, to overcome prejudice, and the lack of understanding. Common words as a reflection of common characteristics of the two communities in Cyprus are intersectional points of the languages and clarify the importance of why they should be used to motivate the polarised communities of Cyprus and how to encourage them to focus on their similarities that unify them instead of their differences that separate them. With SharedWor!ds project we are planning to change the way that the two communities see and approach one another.